In the last two years there has been increasing evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus arrived across the world as the result of a laboratory leak. There has likewise been increasing evidence that neither masks nor lockdowns materially altered the transmission of the virus, and also that the vaccines (which are in truth a gene therapy product) have significant risks of side-effects. The number and nature of these remain unclear, but some very recent research even suggests that repeat vaccination increases the likelihood of major side-effects. Worse, there is no clear evidence that they decrease individual susceptibility. Thus the mantra of “safe and effective” is open to question. Added to this is the discovery from Freedom of Information requests that some of the trials were constructed and run in a questionable manner, and that vaccine manufacturers were careful to write into their supply contracts absolution from indemnity. Yet this week a new advertising campaign by the NHS is encouraging the U.K. public to get revaccinated against coronavirus.
The origin of the virus is of academic interest. Wherever it came from, it is with us and we have to live with that. The issue of management by isolation is of academic medical interest, though not of academic economic interest. It has become very clear that the processes of lockdown have been highly damaging and it seems likely that no proper analysis was done on what the effect on the national economy (and education, and mental health) might be. That the vaccines may cause significant problems has an explanation; they are designed to make the body create copies of the spike protein of the virus, which is the very part that causes the recorded issues of myocarditis, thrombosis etc. due to overstimulation of the immune system in the virally-induced syndrome commonly called COVID-19. The variability of effect between individuals, either with COVID-19 or a vaccine, may depend on genetic susceptibility. Other forms of hyperimmune syndrome, or cytokine storm (CSS), were well-known to be more common in certain ethnic groups long before SARS-CoV-2. Given the total absence of any research into who suffers vaccine complications and why, it is remarkable that politicians and managers are keen to plough on using them. It’s not as if such complications are denied; there is a compensation programme running, and the AstraZeneca vaccine was withdrawn because the complications were becoming unacceptably prevalent.
The recent book by Norman Fenton and Martin Neil, Fighting Goliath: Exposing the flawed science and statistics behind the COVID-19 event, has exposed numerous faults in differing aspects of testing and vaccination. But perhaps the most egregious flaw in vaccination has been to categorise subjects as unvaccinated until 14 days after receiving the vaccine. If, as appears highly probable, the major life-threatening side-effects of vaccines are due to CSS, this can develop within 48 hours. Indeed in the drug trial at Northwick Park Hospital, where what turned out to be a highly immunogenic preparation was injected into six subjects, the subjects developed symptoms in minutes rather than hours. Thus, in the analyses performed, a substantial number of people falling ill with COVID-19 type symptoms immediately following vaccination (which is as one would expect) will have been incorrectly labelled as unvaccinated, significantly distorting the risk-benefit conclusions of the trials and rendering them useless.
That said, does any of it matter? I am going to say – no, it does not. Let us go back to the beginning.
What happens when a person acquires the SARS-CoV-2 virus? Most will be ill. A bit ill on the spectrum of seriousness. They will have cold-like or flu-like symptoms, may lose their sense of smell or taste, but will not collapse into a state of respiratory failure, widespread thromboses, stroke and renal shutdown. These serious events (COVID-19 proper) are the result of a cytokine storm; the immune system goes into overdrive producing abnormal quantities of inflammatory chemicals. Only a small proportion of the population will suffer any of these serious symptoms. So for the vast majority who do not, and will get better fairly quickly, nothing needs doing. For that small proportion, however, it is critical that they are identified and treated. A series of blood tests and measurement of oxygen saturation do the former, while steroids and anti-cytokine treatments do the latter.
If you accept this analysis you will have to agree that almost all of the coronavirus pandemic measures were completely unnecessary. If you don’t, then I suggest you read the textbook on cytokine storm syndrome written by Cron and Behrens, which appeared in 2019, before Covid, or his review article from 2023. There you will find all manner of triggers, including viruses, and more specifically coronaviruses, and all the clinical consequences of CSS which are identical to those of COVID-19. There also you will find tests to be done, and treatments to be applied to those who get very ill. And guess what? In the main, if caught in time, they will get better.
This explanation is clinician-generated. I am not the only one who has come to this conclusion. And yet the pandemic management was conducted, not by clinicians, but by people with no clinical experience. Experts maybe, but the wrong experts. If you had a heart attack would you want to be treated by a plumber? He may know a lot about pipework, but it would be the wrong sort of pipework.
This was the gist of my 20 page submission to the Hallett Inquiry in November 2022. I had an acknowledgement of receipt, and since then nothing. This month I read a summary of Professor Sir Chris Whitty’s latest evidence and was thereby prompted to go to the inquiry website and see where my submission was filed. I could not find it. So I wrote to the contact address of the inquiry asking where it was, and when I would be called to give my evidence. Two weeks have passed and I have had no response.
The inquiry has spent and continues to spend vast sums of money barking up the wrong tree. It might, it is true, conclude that lockdowns did not work, that economic disruption should have been factored into the risk-benefit equation, but we know that already. It has concentrated on process and missed the essential point – that all that was necessary was for those who got very sick to be rapidly identified and correctly treated.
I remain puzzled as to why my analysis has been ignored. In fact (as readers of my blog will know) I outlined this strategy in May 2020. I pointed out that I had personally treated a case. It was ignored then. Had it been implemented – and I have no doubt that if the right experts had been consulted it would have been – many deaths would have been saved, there would not have been any lockdowns, no vaccination fiascos, no inquiry. If the Hallett Inquiry does not conclude this then it will have been a complete waste of money, not just a partial waste but, given the omission of any informed input and the exaggerated respect accorded to those interviewees who made the wrong decisions from the beginning, I fear a whitewash.
There is one upside to the Covid saga. Thanks to the internet, scientific papers have been subjected to far more intense scrutiny than in the past, and many have been found wanting; critics from across the globe explain failures in trial design, sidelining of potential confounding factors and inadequate statistical analysis. But it remains true that research contradicting “settled science” (an oxymoron if ever there was) remains under significant and often irresistible pressure for it to be retracted. Proper science should allow proper debate. If a settled scientist finds evidence of errors in the work of “deniers” those errors must be detailed. It’s not enough to shout “Rubbish!” An example: after one of my blogs suggesting every physician (and politician) should read Cron and Behrens I received a comment that I should not trust textbooks. I indicated I was pleased that someone had read that textbook, and asked for a quick summary of what was wrong with it. The reply came back that he had not seen it. I rest my case.
Dr. Andrew Bamji is a retired Consultant Rheumatologist and was President of the British Society for Rheumatology from 2006-8. He is the author of Mad Medicine: Myths, Maxims and Mayhem in the National Health Service. His Covid blog can be found here.
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