The three major controversies over pandemic management for the past three years have been lockdown measures, universal masking recommendations and mandates, and Covid vaccines.
The last was a pharmaceutical intervention using revolutionary new technology. The first two were radical departures from the existing scientific and policy consensus as encapsulated in official documents from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and in several national pandemic preparedness plans. They established the willingness of the state to dictate every aspect of people’s lives, down to the most ridiculous and absurd details.
For example, people were told when they could shop, the hours during which they could shop, what they could purchase, how close they could get to others and which direction they could move in by following arrows on the floor. Governments also stepped into nations’ bedrooms at home to dictate with whom people could and could not be intimate: a ukase that notoriously turned Professor Neil ‘Lockdown’ Ferguson himself into Professor Pantsdown.
Lockdowns thus proved the extent to which people would comply with state directives without deploying independent critical thinking and, like frogs in boiling water, their almost total lack of concern about the gradually increasing degree of infringements of civil liberties and personal freedoms.
Compliance with often idiotic rules was ratcheted up to another level still with mask recommendations-cum-mandates, with one additional notable feature. Governments were able to mobilise members of the public to exert peer pressure and societal coercion to enforce compliance, backed by often brutal police coercion against pockets of resistance and protest.
In retrospect, it’s doubtful if the degree of state and social coercion deployed to increase vaccine uptake would have been possible without the ground having first been prepared with lockdowns and masks.
Lockdowns were a euphemism for a wholesale shutting down of all social and most economic activities and locking up entire populations under de facto house arrest. They were imposed on and off for two years with the goalposts of justification shifting from flatten the curve in two to three weeks to protect the health system, wait for the vaccine and stop the new variant.
They were based neither on good science and best-practice medicine, nor were they commensurate with the age-stratified threat from the novel coronavirus to individual and public health. By contrast, the health, mental health, social, educational and economic harms caused by the lockdowns have locked in generational poverty and inequality within and among states.
The Neil Ferguson-led Imperial College London models of Covid mortality that panicked governments into unprecedented extreme countermeasures turned out to be several factor-fold higher than empirical outcomes. A peer-reviewed study published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation by Eran Bendavid, Christine Oh, Jay Bhattacharya and John Ioannidis in January 2021 failed to find “clear, significant beneficial effect” of stringent lockdowns “on case growth in any country”.
That remains the case to this day either when looking at countries or at U.S. states.
Early data – from China, Italy, Spain, the Diamond Princess cruise ship – told us in February-March 2020 already that the most vulnerable were elderly people with existing serious health conditions. All the data since then have been entirely consistent with this and it was also underlined in the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020: “We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.”
On November 16th 2022, the Guardian reported that Europe faces a “cancer epidemic” because 1 million cancer diagnoses were missed because of lockdowns. In the U.K., which experienced the highest proportion of lack of access to healthcare in Europe during the pandemic, there were almost 9,000 excess cancer deaths by mid-November 2022 since the start of the pandemic. Meanwhile Sweden, the object of much abusive analysis in the mainstrem media in most of 2020, was fully vindicated in 2022 with one of the lowest all-cause mortality – the metric most resistant to being gamed to fit a narrative bias – rates in Europe.
Once lockdowns were firmly in place as public policy, the next previously discredited and discarded non-pharmaceutical intervention to come on the policy agenda was facemasks for the general population in indoor and outdoor community settings. A 14-year-old British student named Jack Watson was able to spot the many inconsistencies, contradictions and absurdities of lockdown and mask restrictions for schoolchildren. A 1920 study of mask-wearing during the Spanish flu concluded that it had not shown sufficient effectiveness to “warrant compulsory application for the checking of epidemics”.
It’s worth quoting in full paragraph 4.15 from the UK Influenza Preparedness Strategy 2011 that succinctly encapsulated the scientific and policy consensus:
Although there is a perception that the wearing of facemasks by the public in the community and household setting may be beneficial, there is in fact very little evidence of widespread benefit from their use in this setting. Facemasks must be worn correctly, changed frequently, removed properly, disposed of safely and used in combination with good respiratory, hand, and home hygiene behaviour in order for them to achieve the intended benefit. Research also shows that compliance with these recommended behaviours when wearing facemasks for prolonged periods reduces over time.
This conclusion was reaffirmed in the WHO report published in September 2019 that summarised the best available studies to date: “Ten RCTs were included in the meta-analysis, and there was no evidence that face masks are effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza” (p. 26).
An Australian Department of Health document in July 2020 advised that facemasks are most likely to be effective if worn correctly and consistently (no touching the front of the mask, no pulling it down intermittently – both extremely common real-world behaviour!) for source control when worn by an infected person, but less effective in protecting uninfected people.
Facemasks is the issue on which my trust in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which exercises an outsized influence globally, was broken irreparably. The CDC tweeted that during the March-July 2020 period, “universal mask use helped reduce COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths” in Delaware. It was telling the truth, but not the whole truth.
The mandate was introduced on April 28th when Delaware had 235 cases (seven-day moving average). On June 30th cases had indeed fallen to 89. But they began to climb again in autumn and on December 12th Delaware had 826 cases: nearly four times as many as when the masks were brought in (Figure 1). Fair enough, you might say, like many others the CDC failed to anticipate the seasonal surge. Except the tweet was sent out on January 6th 2021. This is not a well-intentioned mistake overtaken by events but deliberate dishonesty.
Anthony Fauci, too, shed credibility with his notorious and numerous flip-flops on masks. His attempts to claim the noble lie as his primary motivation for the changing stance, saying he was trying to prioritise masks for healthcare workers and prevent a public run on them, only deepened perceptions of shiftiness.
Firstly, because in fact his initial scepticism accurately reflected the existing consensus, and secondly because he was repeating the same argument in a private email to a friend as well. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt tweeted after Fauci was deposed in November that the good ‘America’s doctor’ was not able to cite a single study to support his pro-mask health advice.
Incidentally, during the deposition Fauci responded to questions with “I don’t recall” an astonishing 174 times. A likely explanation for his convenient amnesia is he knows the truth is not his ally.
Masks dehumanise us and are a potent force for stoking mass fear. In December 2020, a hundred doctors, paediatricians, clinical psychologists and academics wrote an open letter to the U.K. Government warning that requiring masks in schools breached WHO guidelines and were creating a “climate of fear“. Masks should “play no part in the life of healthy children”, they said. In autumn 2021, Scotland introduced mask mandates for schools but England did not, yet weekly cases in both showed broadly similar infection curves.
One of the most valuable sets of observational data is the brilliant series of comparative charts produced by Ian Miller in Unmasked: The Global Failure of Covid Mask Mandates (2022). The most significant result of the community-wide mask recommendations was twofold: the highly and instantly visible symbol perpetuated and locked in the reign of fear and it demonstrated broad compliance with the effort of governments to exercise population-wide social control.
Ramesh Thakur is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy and a former UN Assistant Secretary-General. This article was first published by the Brownstone Institute.
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Not a bad article and it is relatively easily summarised.
A number of wholly spurious “world” organisations have decided to take over the running of our world, organisations such as the WHO and the World Bank. These outfits are peopled largely by nefarious persons who have largely surrendered any allegiances they might have had to their mother countries and now draw incomes from the taxes paid by the people of the world.
Nominally these “world” organisations are funded by grants from national governments and “donations” from wealthy donors such as Bill and Melinda Gates. However, as we all know, governments don’t have any money except that which they filch off their citizens via taxation and the large “donors” make their money from dubious products.
Bill Gates, increasingly tied to the world chemistry industry profits from the sale of dangerous drugs which are invariably paid for by national governments on behalf of their citizens via, yep – taxes. The other large donors, the Big Pharma companies similarly generate their incomes from selling a huge and increasingly dangerous product range in to the nation’s of the world where they receive generous promotion from governments.
The “world” organisations, peopled by wholly unelected and faceless bureaucrats spend their time promoting and dreaming up useless health programmes designed solely to cream a huge and increasing revenue fund from governments, which will so impoverish nation states as to ensure that the population’s of said nation states will be in a consistent state of ill health.
In order to maintain the illusion of care the “world” organisations have bought up all the Main Stream Media outlets who have been given the job of stoking a constant fear of ill health across the world and which can only be assuaged by constant use of the Big Pharma products which will be constantly tinkered with in order to deal with an increasingly poorly world population.
Nation states will be ground out of existence except where they perform a window-dressing function until we arrive at a de facto one world government where effectively ‘we own nothing but are happy.’
As I have commented previously, pandemics are a once in 500 years event and not a once or twice a decade occurrence. Unfortunately, the author of the article appears to swallow the lie that the world must constantly live on tenterhooks for the next “pandemic.” This has to be immediately and firmly put to bed.
In short, unless nation states reassert their sovereignty the end result will be a severely diminished world population, as a result of the uptake of each successive wonder drug, working solely to provide wealth for the elites of Big Pharma and the self-proclaimed “world” organisations.
This is coming at us like a WWII Blitzkrieg and our chances of escape are looking increasingly French like.
The picture isn’t pretty.
I wonder, is it true that people will be able to receive these drugs through the exhalations of other people (among other horrors)? Is there to be no escape?
How would the elites police that?
They can’t. Two ways of mitigation for them.
1) Prophylaxis as detailed above in my reply to Hugh
2) Spike protein least effects anyone with a K26R ACE2 receptor. The spike has been designed to not or only attach with difficulty to the ACE2 receptors of this cohort. The families who are leading all of this have this K26R receptor.
The puppets don’t & they will be discarded once they have served their usefulness.
The toxic spike protein is a racially specific bioweapon designed to kill off the majority of the European population, which is spread throughout Europe, US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand. Asian, African, South American genotypes are also effected but to a lesser degree.
The Military medic who passed on this information stated that interestingly the Finns are one European population who are likely to be less effected. Think back to the 1930s ideal of the perfect Aryan & you have an indication of how far back this has been planned.
Hugh, shedding of the toxic spike protein is already happening. This is all planned. There is no respect for bodily sovereignty.
This is why so many enlightened medics are advocating a prophylaxis of VitD3+K2, Vit C, zinc, a zinc ionophere ie quercetin & ivermectin or black seed oil with N-acetylcysteine thrown in to help with mitrochondrial repair & to degrade any graphene oxide which has made it into your system.
The thinking in these circles is that the bioweapon was seeded in the 2019 flu jabs to then get the bioweapon injection into as many arms as possible through fear. The data hidden in the Pfizer document dump warns against skin to skin contact if pregnant or planning a pregnancy for about 1 month after injection. Why??
We’re at war with these hidden & not so hidden actors who are pushing for a One World Government, the bioweapons for which have long been in the planning.
Thanks for the summary, HP. A bleak outlook indeed. I can’t think of an obvious answer to the increasing madness. I’m not too worried about myself, I’m fairly resilient in myself but I am worried for the youth of today.
I am terrified for the youth.
“Increased surveillance” would expand the market for the proponents, but at the expense of diverting worthwhile resources for normal people, perhaps. Appropriately elected politicians, and the associated governments, need to remember who they are supposed to serve, not the other way round, and put global organisations back in their place.
“Public health”
Has been turned into an oxymoron
I think we’d be better off without it
Going for a walk in the fresh air and sunshine is one of the healthiest things you can do, especially if you take a dog which ensures that you get to chat to other dog owners you meet.
Public health guidelines in Spring 2020 recommended minimising that activity.
Every single NPI introduced under Covid1984 measures was intended to seriously undermine public health.
Every Single One.
I agree with you.
Every single one was experimental as a medical intervention, therefore every single one was unlawful if one consented to not participate in a medical experiment.
Spot on. I have come to know quite a few people via their dogs; they are naturally sociable animals.
Public health is an oxymoron (the Latin contradictio in adiecto describes this even better). Health is necessarily always a property of individuals, at least insofar the kind of health supposed to be maintained with the help of the health system is concerned.
Bill Gates still thinks that viruses can be eliminated by the application of money, c.f. the early viruses that affected his software and the ‘patches’ that were provided. He is so far up his own anus that he cannot tell the differences between humans and machines. His sycophantic operatives were Farrer and Fauci.
Simple answer is to not get involved with anything he funds.
Great quote by Dr Mike Yeadon regarding Covid
‘’I tried to follow the science, but it was simply not there – I then followed the money, that’s where I found the science.’’ Dr Mike Yeadon
That’s a great remark hadn’t heard it before. Thank God for people like Mike Yeadon.
Seconded
Message to the WEF : Don’t worry the people will do it for you.
I recall that some time time back, possibly around about when the development of the first Covid 19 Vaccines were announced, Bojo claimed that the UK would become a world leading vaccine manufacturer (or something of that nature). The MHRA has now evolved from a regulator to an ‘enabler’ for the Pharmaceutical Industry and recently was the first to authorise the new bivalent vaccine. It seems that the UK may well have a prebooked first class ticket on the PPR gravy train?
The City of London is the Banker for the World…. It is at the centre of all of this.
Trying to be optimistic, whilst I have very little trust in Truss, she will be challenged to be even worse than Bunter.
By similar thought process, other than following Pol Pot’s process, it will be challenging to devise a worse approach to public health and wellbeing, than the ludicrous and frankly evil policies of the last two and a half years.
For a start, WEF, World Bank, WHO, Bill and Melinda, CEIF and all the rest should accurately be described as terrorist organisations and banned.
The likes of Whitty, Vallance, Ferguson, Michie, Hunt and Farrar should be arrested and charged for the crimes they committed.
I’m not holding my breath. But anything much less will fail to stop the rot
It seems to me we need to reconstitute a new very competently scientific based government advisory body to replace the majority of clowns in the SAGE committe that contributed to so much damage over Covid. They should have top knowledge and experience in the field they are advising on with members aware of all aspects of the effects of advice they give.They should use not only their own resources but be able to properly investigate alternative advice and be inteligent enough to establish a correct and balanced view of the advice they give. Something that was missing from the last shambles. To output responsibility to external groups like WHO or the new entities being setup to control what governments can do should not be in control of what our government can do, as they all will have bias in one form or another particularly from those who are financing them.
SAGE was the acting government of England and the supposedly elected government just a bit of traditional red tape sometimes stopping it from directly issueing orders to the civil service (optimistic perspective). And the known figureheads were just the tip of the fatberg. In principle, everybody with the right academic titles willing to support its general policy was entitled to contribute to its ‘advice’. This model of government can’t be fixed. It has to be abolished forever.
Those that stated that the whole covid reaction by governments, including throwing out the existing pandemic response plans and the one solution of Vax only while outlawing early treatments, were all painted as conspiracy theory nuts! So Bill Gates traveling the world before the lockdowns, getting private meetings with Prime Ministers was entirely innocent! These are very powerful and well funded entities that see a huge cash cow in rich countries treasuries. Need a cash flow? Create a virus! They certainly have the ability. Our elected hapless politicians are no match for these organizations. The “Deep State” is alive and well and getting larger by the minute.