This new book by Norman Fenton and Martin Neil, sub-titled ‘Exposing the flawed science and statistics behind the COVID-19 event’, needs to be read. Of all the books on the COVID-19 years, this one really has the COVID-19 narrative on the ropes.
It strikes me that there will be four ways the material in Fighting Goliath is approached.
The first approach will be to ignore it completely and assume that this is all nonsense and written by a couple of conspiracy theorists who don’t understand the real science behind COVID-19. That would be a mistake.
The next would be the approach of those who could be described as smugly certain about the COVID-19 narrative. These are the people who will not dirty their hands with figures and statistics and think this is unnecessary as they are sure they know the truth about COVID-19 (and many other things) without the need for evidence. It is insufficient to claim that you are in the know about the supposed COVID-19 conspiracies and it is inadequate to expect other people to believe you. It is essential to provide evidence. Evidence is the only thing that will change the minds of the health promoters, policy makers and politicians and specifically those who imposed such dreadful measures as lockdowns, face masks, social distancing and compulsory vaccination on huge numbers of the population with such detrimental outcomes.
Then we have the virus deniers, who prefer to be called virus sceptics. These are people who don’t believe that viruses exist and are, in and of themselves, part of a great scientific conspiracy. There is a spectrum of virus sceptics from those who propose some serious and reasonable arguments as to why the viral hypothesis is not correct up to and including the seriously deranged, amongst whom are many grifters using the no virus hypothesis to promote their own quackery and alternative medicine. At the most extreme end of the spectrum there are those who do not even believe in bacterial infections or the use of antibiotics. These are seriously dangerous people, and they believe exclusively in the terrain theory of health. They begin from a mistaken perspective.
However, there is a fourth group: the informed sceptics and the authors of Fighting Goliath are exceedingly well-informed sceptics both being respectable academics and statisticians who have risked their reputation and careers to speak out against the prevailing COVID-19 narrative. Anyone sceptical of the COVID-19 narrative will find the hard evidence he or she needs in this book.
Fighting Goliath is a barely expurgated version of the collected writings of the authors, along with many acknowledged co-authors. Most of the writing has been published in blogs and alternative news outlets such as the Daily Sceptic and TCW Defending Freedom because these are the only outlets that would tolerate a sceptical view of the ‘pandemic’ and, especially latterly, the dangers inherent in the COVID-19 vaccines over and above the fact they were largely or perhaps completely ineffective. Nevertheless, the fact that these alternative outlets have been used does not detract from the rigour with which the authors approach the subject.
The main arguments in the book are around the exaggerated lethality of COVID-19 and, concomitantly, the exaggerated data about spread of the virus and data around vaccine efficacy and COVID-19 vaccine deaths. The only data that were downplayed in the official narrative were those on vaccine hesitancy, presumably to make the refuseniks and the reluctant feel like an outlying minority. The authors demonstrate how the unvaccinated were far from alone.
A convincing case is made in Fighting Goliath for the claim that influenza did not miraculously disappear at the height of the COVID-19 years but was either deliberately not being sought or data were simply being ignored with the purpose of maintaining the focus on COVID-19. However, readers should note that there are competing theories from within the sceptical movement to explain biologically how influenza could have been outcompeted by COVID-19 through the phenomenon of viral interference and evidence from laboratory data that influenza had in fact disappeared, at least in the U.K.
Regarding COVID-19 deaths, the issues of how they were classified, leading to anyone with a diagnosis of COVID-19 or testing positive for COVID-19 (not necessarily the same thing) being classified as a COVID-19 death, regardless of the actual cause of death, is covered. In the same vein, the overuse of artificial ventilation, undoubtedly a plausible independent cause of ‘COVID-19’ deaths, is also considered.
The authors also investigate the case of the disappearing antibiotics, despite stockpiling — presumably for use — during viral pandemics being recommended public health practice. Could the disappearing antibiotics and the copious distribution of the tranquiliser midazolam have had anything to do with the excess deaths observed during the COVID-19 years, especially of older people warehoused and imprisoned with all visiting privileges withdrawn in nursing homes? Probably.
There is an inescapable message in Fighting Goliath that people who were aligned with the COVID-19 narrative could promote any old nonsense with impunity. But sceptics providing hard evidence and arguments were pilloried, cancelled, struck off and ostracised.
It is abundantly clear from the book that the lethality of COVID-19 was wildly exaggerated by several orders of magnitude. There is also the little-known fact — certainly new to me — that the COVID-19 virus was declared to be of low lethality and risk to the general population prior to the day that the first lockdown was imposed. Lockdown, therefore, was imposed with the full knowledge that this was not a dangerous situation. Of course, the figures now speak for themselves. Take China, the presumed source of COVID-19, where remarkably few people died of the virus and where the emergency centres (equivalent to our ridiculous and never used Nightingale wards) were dismantled within about a month of their erection. Ours were still up over a year later.
As someone who has followed the authors’ Where are the Numbers Substack, I well recall how the scales fell from my eyes over COVID-19 vaccine efficacy (or lack thereof) when they exposed what is described in Fighting Goliath as the “cheap trick”. The trick, which purports to demonstrate vaccine efficacy by comparing deaths or infections between vaccinated and (allegedly) unvaccinated individuals, involves the (mis)classification of some vaccinated people as being unvaccinated if they had only received the vaccine at some arbitrary point prior to when the outcomes were compared. Thus, two vaccinated people could be classified in a case control study or prospective trial into different arms if, say, one of them had been vaccinated within two weeks of the endpoint of the study.
In another chapter the authors demonstrate the importance and the influence of timing in collecting and reporting outcomes, especially deaths, when comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated people. If there is no protective effect of a vaccine and deaths are measured simultaneously, then the true outcome will be observed. However, given that in any large group some people will die, then if the deaths in the unvaccinated group are measured a week later than those in the vaccinated group it will appear that the vaccine has some protective effect. This is beautifully demonstrated using two tables.
The material in Fighting Goliath is presented chronologically. It is remarkable, in that light, that some of the material presented was written very early in the sequence of COVID-19 events. Having initially accepted the official narrative the authors began to take some ‘deep dives’ into the data which showed that, at the least, the official narrative was flawed or, at worst, being manipulated to heighten fear and subjugate the population, possibly merely to see if it could be done. Therefore, Fenton and Neil (along with others) were exposing the flaws very early but were completely ignored. The authors explain how they were denied access to mainstream scientific journals, had papers retracted and were even prevented from publishing and retracted from pre-printing sites. The control of the official COVID-19 narrative was as far-reaching as it was strong.
Due to the running order and the nature of the text, Fighting Goliath has some internal duplication of material and repetition of arguments. That, clearly, is what the authors intended and anyone who wants to use their evidence to test or support their own arguments will find it all here, and in the copious links to supporting material. Perhaps Fenton and Neil have had enough of fighting Goliath and wish to reclaim their lives. But I would love to see a complementary volume which is presented as a condensed, heavily edited and proof-read version under subject headed chapters, each with a firm conclusion.
Many within the COVID-19 sceptical movement will disagree with some of Fenton’s and Neil’s claims and everyone outside of the COVID-19 sceptical community will disagree with most or all of them. However, now we have Fighting Goliath, we should be very grateful for it, for the authors and for their many eminent collaborators.
Fighting Goliath (Sovereign Rights Publishing) is available on Amazon.
Dr. Roger Watson is Academic Dean of Nursing at Southwest Medical University, China. He has a PhD in biochemistry. He writes in a personal capacity.
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