It’s a shift worth marking. New York Magazine is featuring an article called ‘Covid Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It Was a Failure‘. The authors are two excellent journalists, Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean, who have also written a new book called The Big Fail, which I have not read but intend to. The ascent of the book and thesis is hugely important, if only to further blunt the impact of Michael Lewis’s The Premonition, which came out in 2021 with the purpose of valorising the absolute worst of the lockdowners.
The worry at the time was that Lewis’s book, like The Big Short, would become a major movie that would codify lockdowns as the right way to deal with infectious disease. That does not seem to be happening, and the cleverly titled book by Nocera and McLean seems to assure that this will never happen. Thank goodness. This is progress. Be grateful when we see it. It is also a tremendous credit to all those who have been pushing the Nocera-McLean thesis since the spring of 2020.
Lockdowns were always an impossible means of pandemic management. We knew that from a century ago. It was not even controversial. The orthodoxy in public health survived even up to a few weeks before the lockdowns began.
Out of nowhere, settled wisdom was completely upended. Suddenly, as if straight from Orwell, lockdowns became “common sense mitigation measures”. Meanwhile this country and most other countries around the world were being utterly tortured by a crazed bureaucracy determined to master the microbial kingdom by bullying people and wrecking their businesses, schools, churches and lives.
If nothing else, this era proves for this generation the astonishing capacity of the human mind to undertake utterly insane policy experiments on a grand scale without the slightest evidence that they could ever succeed, even while they trample on all established norms of rights and liberties.
This is a revelation, at least to me. We’ve never seen anything like it in our lives. Speaking personally, this reality utterly shattered a worldview that I didn’t know I held: namely, I genuinely believed humanity was on a path, even an inevitable one, toward greater knowledge, learning and the embrace of freedom. After March 2020, I and everyone discovered otherwise. That was both intellectually and psychologically traumatic for me and for millions of others.
We are still figuring out how and why all this happened. In order to do that, we at least need a consensus that this was a terrible mistake. Even three and a half years later, we haven’t even had that. To be sure, it is very difficult to find defenders of lockdowns [in the U.S.] They have mostly evaporated into the hedges. Even those who pulled the trigger and defended them at the time are all denying that they had anything to do with them. My favourite: we never had a real lockdown.
Regardless, the mere appearance of the Nocera-McLean article takes us quite a distance to where we need to be at least for now. Yes, it is 42 months late, but we take progress wherever we can find it.
Just some quotes from the article:
One of the great mysteries of the pandemic is why so many countries followed China’s example. In the U.S. and the U.K. especially, lockdowns went from being regarded as something that only an authoritarian government would attempt to an example of ‘following the science’. But there was never any science behind lockdowns — not a single study had ever been undertaken to measure their efficacy in stopping a pandemic. When you got right down to it, lockdowns were little more than a giant experiment.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of policy failures of which to take stock. We do an accounting of many of them in our new book, The Big Fail. But one that looms as large as any, and remains in need of a full reckoning in the public conversation, is the decision to embrace lockdowns. While it is reasonable to think of that policy (in all its many forms, across different sectors of society and the 50 states) as an on-the-fly experiment, doing so demands that we come to a conclusion about the results. For all kinds of reasons, including the country’s deep political divisions, the complexity of the problem, and Covid’s dire human toll, that has been slow to happen. But it’s time to be clear about the fact that lockdowns for any purpose other than keeping hospitals from being overrun in the short term were a mistake that should not be repeated. While this is not a definitive accounting of how the damage from lockdowns outweighed the benefits, it is at least an attempt to nudge that conversation forward as the U.S. hopefully begins to recentre public-health best practices on something closer to the vision put forward by [Donald] Henderson.
You will notice the hedge here: “for any purpose other than keeping hospitals from being overrun.” Another way to put it: lockdowns are fine for rationing healthcare. There is reason to emphatically disagree. Hospitals wildly exaggerated how overrun they were. There were two hospitals in New York boroughs that had high traffic, but this was due to exigencies of ambulance contracts. The rest were largely empty as they were around the country. This was due to lockdowns that restricted medical services to Covid only even in places where there was no community spread, plus public fear of leaving the home.
(I had a conversation last week with the head of a company that sells ventilators and diagnostic equipment to hospitals in New York. He said that in the early months of lockdown, he had never seen hospitals so empty. This was confirmation to me of what we already knew.)
This whole subject needs some serious unpacking. To my knowledge, we still don’t know where the edicts came from to lock down hospitals all over the country. That is a research project all its own. In other words, carving out an exception for “overrun” hospitals is deeply dangerous: it only incentivises the lockdowners next time to game the reporting in a way that is favourable to more lockdowns. This is precisely what happened in the U.K., where the main and even only justification for lockdowns was the rationing of healthcare services.
So this proviso is actually dangerous in every way.
Now we must deal with another piece of this article that is far from correct. I quote (with emphasis added):
As the United States gains more and more distance from the Covid pandemic, the perspective on what worked, and what did not, becomes not only more clear, but more stark. Operation Warp Speed stands out as a remarkable policy success. And once the vaccines became available, most states did a good job of quickly getting them to the most vulnerable, especially elderly nursing-home residents.
The perspective is what we might be called the exogenous theory of the jab. The idea is that the lockdowns and masking and the whole apparatus of disease control exists in a separate system of ideological confusion, whereas the vaccine came from the outside to intervene but otherwise was not part of the planning apparatus.
I certainly once shared this view. About the vaccine in 2020, rumoured to come along at any point, I care next to nothing about it. I assumed it would be useless because my reading on the topic showed that a coronavirus is in the class of pathogens against which one cannot vaccinate.
That aside, there is a real danger associated with attempting to vaccinate your way out of pandemic. You can create the conditions that drive mutations even more, and introduce the prospect of what’s called original antigenic sin. What I had not anticipated was that the shot would be actually deeply dangerous, much less that it would be mandated.
The more research we do, the less plausible this theory of exogenous intervention is. From the very outset, the vaccine was planned and a huge part of the entire pandemic control agenda. And consider this question. Would it have been possible to drive the emergency use authorisation, indemnify the results from any liabilities, retain patents, elicit tax funds for development, plus push innumerable institutions to mandate the shots in absence of the national emergency, the frenzy, the demoralisation and the population-wide panic? I’ve asked many people this question, and the answer is always: no way.
There is no world in which Warp Speed would have taken hold absent the lockdowns. They are all part of the same system and policy. So, yes, it is strange for our authors to isolate the vaccine as good in the context of everything else which they label bad. Emergencies elicit bad actors and bad actions. They are all of a piece.
At this point, most of us have become jaded about media and messaging from mainstream sources. So an easy tag to put on this important article in New York Magazine is: limited hangout. Let’s admit failure where possible, concede mistakes and disasters along the way, even while sneaking in an approving and passing remark about the thing which in the end is the most important part of the whole epoch, namely the vaccine itself. That way, the rubes will be satisfied that there is some accountability going on, even while the biggest and deepest caper of them all gets away without a scratch.
There is no need here to chronicle the innumerable and now widely known failure of the shot. In any case, among those who still want to claim it to be a great success, their messaging is not long for this world. The evidence is too overwhelming, and felt in every part of society the world over.
What we have with this book and article is an important step. It is just one step. Lockdowns utterly shattered the protocols of public health, settled law and freedom itself all over the world. They wrecked myriad institutions, wrought an incredible economic and cultural crisis, demoralised the whole population and built up a leviathan of command and control that is not only not backing down but growing ever more. Far more will be required to utterly and completely repudiate the methods and madness of our epoch.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, where this article first appeared.
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The Daily Sceptic is excellent at this sort of well-reasoned and referenced article. The establishment will clutch at any number of straws to avoid the elephant in the room – they cannot bring themselves to even consider the possibility that the vaccines are part of the problem here, when even a sensible layman can see the argument by Will above is perfectly logical. Fair enough if a proper investigation was carried out and in the end it really was Covid rather than the vaccines that are causing this excess mortality. But by denying even the possibility, it is guaranteed that no investigation will happen, which is the only 100% certain way of the vaccines not being blamed.
Another example of how the establishment should be hanging their heads in shame, and then getting their coats and leaving the stage so people with some integrity can sort this mess out. Hopefully the next generation of academics, scientists, and politicians, will have the strength of character to finally dig into the data and give us some answers. Hopefully some of the previous lot will still be alive to take the blame.
If they haven’t recorded something, it hasn’t happened. That’s bureaucracy for you. Incidentally, the ONS site from which the ‘death graph’ is from, was a bit patchy this afternoon. No UK wide figures, and none of the local regional links worked at all. Perhaps it’ll work tomorrow – it’s quite common for it to be delayed.
Of course, the next batch of odd numbers will be in week 40, on account of this week’s funeral – at least on account of the extra bank holiday.
In the meantime, there are an awful lot of people who don’t want to see things that they have fallen into a trap with, having trusted the other side, as it were. Carry on the good work and present the available evidence, as long as it takes.
They won’t release the mortality stats by vax status until:
(a) They’ve found a way to present the information the way they want it to look.
(b) An acceptable narrative has been firmly established through the brute force of constant repetition that explains the additional mortality as not jab related.
But good on the DS to insist on the all cause mortality data by jab status. Maybe the pressure will grow and pay off.
Top analysis, as usual, but the real question is: At what annualized level of absolute deaths and absolute excess deaths will the jabbed people connect the dots and exit their cognitive dissonance in droves, regardless of the government&cos attribution shenanigans, spin, propaganda etc.?
Sure they hide and misstate vaccine deaths, sure excess deaths due to Covid were in a similar ballpark as these ones (around double officially, much, much lower as per single cause of death, 6k in total, see Fenton) and the reaction to that threat was a most ridiculous disaster. But unless one is personally impacted by such an excess death, the jabbed people will just continue to see that the vaccination hasn’t and isn’t killing them in real droves, aka millions, and will therefore happily continue to put their head in the sand, believe the government and its spinmeisters, ignore analysis like Will’s and, above all, continue to roll up their sleeves.
Oh I should just show the jab zealots stuff like this ( see below ) and see if they’re keen to rock up for their next shot in the arm, or offer their kids’ just because they want to go on holiday. Then there’s the footage all over ( I’ve shared stuff on here too ) of how the blood behaves in the vaxxed in comparison with pre-jab, and these mystery floating structures and particles are evident in the vials and the blood. Fascinating, if freaky, stuff. In fact, I think I’ve become a bit too fascinated….
But seriously, why wouldn’t heart-related deaths be up when you have these thingies in your body causing the erythrocytes to clump and die or get lodged in a major blood vessel, then there’s those weird clot things ( the result of these mystery structures interfering with red blood cells? ) embalmers are finding in dead people, I mean, no shit Sherlock.
https://lifeoftheblood.com/nanotech-in-the-shots/
Here is a <30min video where a scientist presents the findings of the German Working Group For Vaccine Analysis and then she discusses with others, including Dr Trozzi. They discuss what these strange things could be but not in the depth I would have liked. Other scientists have given more comprehensive speculation on this aspect. I always wondered what Big Pharma had to say by way of explanation when approached with these findings and it turns out nothing. They were asked but will not disclose what these mystery, undisclosed ingredients are in their products. So nothing remotely ominous about that at all then…We need another lawyer to force it out of them, like the trial data they wanted to withhold from us for 75 years, don’t we?
https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/multimedia/vaccine-analysis-sabine-sebel/
The issue is just that this information simply doesn’t reach the masses. It will eventually, but even then the vast majority will say something along the lines of “ah well, it wasn’t me, at least it wasn’t COVID. Oh look, a cheap holiday” and move on.
There is also the fact that this information is coming from organisations unknown to the mass of the population. Those people who get their information from MSM and only MSM don’t believe anything that contradicts what they say and believe.
I had a recent conversation with some friends during which I told them I’n not having any vaccinations and outlined why. The shock was evident but one of them said that you can find anything you want on the internet and that if you expect a bad outcome you’ll get one. She’s not known for her broadmindedness it has to be said. This is an educated woman who prides herself on knowing what’s going on and is fairly typical of a lot of people. I’m interested to see if I get invited to meet her again!
Somehow I misread “mortality displacement” as “morality displacement”.
I keep bumping into things – must be me balance, people putting bloody things in my way, serendipity. Cannot be me eyesight failing. Not possible. My eyes are perfectly safe and effective. Ouch – bloody chair. Seriously – passed a covid vaccine centre today. Could weep. The masks and sanitizer, people like walking corpses trooping in. Approached this masked woman guarding the entrance with her computer device at the ready. Name? Appointment time? Masks and sanitizer by the door. No, just curious how this lunacy is progressing I volunteered and wandered off.
Our neighbourhood houses a vaccination centre which has taken over the town hall thus rendering it unusable for a lot of activities. There are lots of visible yellow-jacketed people milling about just inside the glass corridor but no queues unlike last time where people were queuing outside into the street. I took this to be a good sign of a lower uptake but discovered that that there is a more detailed appointment system this time. The conversations with neighbours quickly move to when your appointment is so there is still much excitement around the vaccinations.
The mainly interesting (somewhat) thing in this article is that health experts
and functionaries (like guy from U of Essex and the minister from Singapore) still use everything somehow related to death as nothing but an opportunity for more speculative COVID bullshitting. The subtext of Dr Strain’s statement is basically Nobody ever recovers from COVID!! It’ll lay dormant in your body and will then SUDDENLY jump onto your weakest parts and kill you!!! (and – obviously -as Nobody ever recovers from COVID!! everybody who got ever infected with it remains INFECTIOUS and EXTREMELY DANGEROUS for all of his live).
I’d really like to lay dormant somewhere in the vicinity of this guy’s workplace and then suddenly jump onto his weakest parts, although a method to jump onto somebody’s brain would still need to be determined.
Well, maybe you haven’t quite concluded if there even is excess mortality to be worried about, let alone its cause(s).
And maybe you want to wait until a bit more peer reviewed, international data comes to light before jumping to conclusions, and are therefore leaning towards Devi’s explanation of excess deaths caused by heat waves, missed appointments and Covid waves themselves.
But surely you can’t be 100% sure, and the precautionary principle (even if you haven’t labeled it as that yet) would dictate that you wait before injecting yourself?
This stat still floors me sometimes:
Why on earth? You’ve survived 1.5+ years of the most coercive, threatening, bullying vaccine campaign ever conceived; you’ve survived (presumably) job loss threats; you’ve navigated family and friend losses; you’ve (probably) already been infected with SARS-Cov-2 and recovered ………….. and yet you get your first dose now, in September, 2022?
Why (“Novak”), why?
I just don’t get it.
I think some are likely to be pregnant women. The additional pressure and emotional blackmail that they put on expectant mothers is on another level. They basically tell you that you and your baby will die, and it’ll be an awful painful death. I did not fall for it obviously but most do.
Some may also be people who were on the waitlist for an operation/chemo for example who are now being pressured.
Perhaps children reaching the age when they become eligible? Hopefully not.
I didn’t even know you could still get the original, now obsolete because they were formulated against a now extinct strain, gene therapies. I thought they were no longer available and countries were having to chuck millions of doses ( and millions in money down the drain, no doubt ) that were near to expiry. There really is no excuse for being such a dumbass though!
Anecdotally I continue to see a large increase in patients with joint, tendon and nerve inflammation, as well as severe inflammation following therapeutic musculoskeletal injections.
The common factor- all are multiple jabbed.
Cannot recall a single unjabbed patient with these inflammatory symptoms.
Easy to extrapolate these findings to the cardiovascular system.
I read recently that the NHS is concerned about the increased incidences of the ‘Victorian’ malady – gout. I hope this isn’t going to be another affliction for the jabbed.
Saw a patient this week who developed pseudogout, a similar inflammatory joint disease, immediately following a heart attack.
Fully jabbed.
People could be forgiven for thinking the government was trying to hide something…but then again, people are not
allowedsupposed to think anymore in case it causes offence.i don’t think there’s any real empirical evidence for the existence of a ‘SARS-CoV2 virus’. there are no pathognomonic clinical features. the virus has never been isolated. it has merely been characterised in silico using random nucleotide sequences from any old goat or papaya (RIP John Magufuli, Hero of The Resistance) detected by an intrinsically fraudulent upcycled PCR test. however, there is definitely a transmissible illness going around. is it a bird? is it a plane? is it nano-Superman? maybe we’re looking at a continually changing peptide bioweapon, behaving as if it’s a virus? the entire ‘covid’ farrago is suffused with fraud. this degrades all attempts at rational conversation about ‘covid’, in accordance with Lord Denning’s seminal 1956 judgement that fraud vitiates everything it touches.
Apparently, there is no empirical evidence for the existence of any virus. The concept of a sub-microscopic organism with the properties attributed to viruses is necessary to explain disease transmission in some cases. Which is not the same thing at all as evidence for existence.
Indeed, but Experts say there are roughly 40 million virus in every cubic metre of air. I’ve never been able to discover precisely what it is they precisely measure to reach this scientific fact – do they mean there are 40 million bits of “random” nucleotides. genetic material, aka virus, floating around in the air?
If they are correct, I’d like the expert immunologists to kindly explain the precise mechanisms by which the immune system supposedly sorts the harmful ones out.
I’m familiar with the works of Janeway, Beutler, Steinman, Isaacs etc but research into immunology sadly stopped with the rise of our wonderful genetic engineers – cue lots of money/power for you know who.
The runaway train of mRNA engineered products should stop immediately before any more harm is done to humanity.
They don’t know what the effects upon the immune system are or will be.
Putting it politely they haven’t got a bloody clue :-
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027869152200206X
Has anyone submitted a FOI request for these data?
Sarh Caul at ONS blanked all such requests in early 2021, when, as the grim jabbers first went round, spates of deaths from care homes were reported. She has steadfastly refused to give out complete information on the vaccination status of the deceased. The ONS even categorizes deaths as non-vaxxed if the person drops dead immediately on being jabbed, the rationale being that the jabs are not effective against covid for 2 weeks. Sarh Caul has accepted an MBE for her work.
Question to Will: Where does this leave Noah Carl’s 30-Aug-22 DS piece in which he showed the age-adjusted mortality rate for 2022 shows no increase over the 5-year historical average when 2015-19 (rather than the ONS’s 2016-19 + 2021) is used as the base period?