Today we’re publishing a point-by-point rebuttal of the criticisms of the Great Barrington Declaration set out in Anti-Virus: The COVID-19 FAQ, Neil O’Brien’s website devoted to attacking “Covid sceptics”. It’s by George Dance, a former chairman of the Ontario Libertarian Party. Here are the first three paragraphs:
The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), under which thousands of scientists and medical practitioners have called for a end to lockdown policies, was drawn up last October 1st-4th, was announced on October 5th, and was already being denounced on October 6th. Over the next month, the GBD and its message were virtually buried beneath an “avalanche of scathing criticism condemning it as ‘very dangerous, unscientific, unethical, total nonsense, dangerously flawed, conspiratorial and grotesque’. Among the critics were prominent role-players such as World Health Organization director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, British chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance, and US infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci”. Defenders of the lockdown consensus released a counter-manifesto, the John Snow Memorandum, ironically named for epidemiology’s most famous dissenter from a scientific consensus.
At the time I read everything I could on the topic and made copious notes, hoping to write my own perspective on the GBD. Long before I was in a position to do that, though, the debate had moved on, and I never had an opportunity to revisit the subject.
Fortunately, there is a new FAQ in town: Anti-Virus: The COVID-19 FAQ. This new FAQ may not be the best place to go for scientific advice about the disease; the ‘doctors’ behind it seem to mainly have doctorates in economics and psychology (though I have read that there is an anonymous scientist involved), and some of their claims, such as “Covid still has a high fatality rate among younger people”, seem supported more by semantics than by science. (“Younger” in context turns out to be “younger than 65”). But at least the FAQ has revived the Declaration and assembled a ‘best of’ the criticisms levelled against it, making it worthwhile to revisit the debate.
This is an excellent, very thorough demolition job. Worth reading in full.
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I had never heard of handball until seeing this article.
Me neither but I’m liking the players. A lot.
Brilliant news.
Ww need the IHF to dig their feet in and for the players to form a single, defiant block and give the IHF authorities a monumental sex and travel response.
This has the potential to be a real goody. A sporting war. Loads of publicity and lots of bad press for the poison pushers, statistics all over the place, tragic stories. Billy and Klaus flapping. Bourla nowhere to be seen. Fishy in his cave. Sage in a bunker somewhere. Michie on a fact- finding mission in Antartica and Raine AWOL.
Marvellous.
Come on you lot.
Oh I fervently hope so.
In my own circle of musicians we dodged a bullet when a minority of Karens on a management committee tried to make vaccination a requirement of performing a symphony concert. They failed to impose the requirement, but then the venue owners imposed their own restrictions which scuppered the concert at the last moment. It’s chaos. We can’t be sure that some unknown authoritarian Karen isn’t going to veto our next attempt. Legal action looks prohibitively expensive, presumably it would be ECHR Right of Assembly Case versus Article 13 lawfare.
That’s upsetting to hear.
All the best
Michie the Bichie in the snow ! Frostbite would be too kind ! Mind you her hatchet face would probably melt the thickest ice
Nice one Freddy
The person who runs the IHF needs to be named and publicly shamed for the petty tyrant that he is.
Not yet. We want a proper set to, something that even The Times cannot ignore.
Come on lads. Get in to them!
Being a personal fiefdom, The Times can ignore whatever it wants!
I’ve looked him up. His name is Hassan Moustafa.
He’s been the president of the federation since 2000. So he’s been running the sport for 22 years, being reelected 6 times, the last 3 unopposed.
I bet he runs it like a personal fiefdom. That’s how most of these international federations operate, accountable to no one but themselves.
The Sep Blatter of Handball then !
You beat me to it Freddy.
Since when does the International Handball Federation, a perfectly private organization, have the authority to prescribe mandatory medical procedures for people attending or playing handball matches?
NB: The obvious answer is It doesn’t.
Governments have signalled over the last three years that they are quite happy for private companies and NGOs to do as they like in this regard and essentially do their dirty promotion and enforcement work for them.
And these international sports federations are completely unaccountable to anyone but themselves. Not unlike the WHO or UN. They have these pseudo democratic processes that elevate a delegate from each country to a global council which then sets rules for the entire world. And because it’s “democratic” then everyone has to follow their rules.
The moment you open your eyes, it’s impossible not to see the world as just a series of cartels. The pharma cartel, the media cartel, the energy cartel, all the sports cartels, the tech cartels, the banking cartel… etc….
The thing is the IHF really doesn’t have this authority, no more than they can randomly arrest people on premises they happened to rent. It’s neither a sovereign government enforcing some laws on its own territory nor an organization created by sovereign governments which have chosen to delegate certain powers to it. The people behind this may have the chutzpah to try it nevertheless, on the grounds that bullying oftentimes works, but bullying is all they have to support their stance.
They can keep the players out of the tournament which belongs to them, unless there are laws explicitly prohibiting that sort of discrimination.
I don’t know what the laws in Sweden and Poland say in this regard.
Of course, the players can get together and decide to boycott. At this point, they’re insane if they don’t.
After Damar Hamlin, I find it hard to imagine there is any athlete of any note who is not concerned about the vaxxes and certainly don’t want any / any more at this point in time. It only stops when we make it stop.
I don’t think your theory that the IHF is a sovereign government which has automatic exterritoriality in any place it may rent somewhere and is thus not subject to the laws of the countries its operating in and authorized to make up its own laws as it sees fit and enforce them violently is correct. But please feel free to prove me wrong by coming up with something which shows that private associations of businesspeople do actually have these rights in Sweden and Poland.
Re private companies setting mandates…
The situation is really bad in Australia where it’s likely millions have been impacted by jab mandates set by state governments, businesses, sports clubs etc.
In regard to companies, I’m challenging the jab mandate set by Westpac Bank for its employees, a jab mandate which is still in place.
See my email to the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Westpac Group: Westpac and Covid jab mandates – why were employees denied a voluntary decision on this medical intervention? 4 January 2023.
Well maybe, but where were they when people including children were being forced, coerced and gaslighted into being injected and generally vilified if they weren’t.
Most sports governing bodies are inept, corrupt because they are monopolies. Competition is the only thing that can keep them on their toes. There is little to prevent a group of professionals setting up a more democratic leaner and meaner organisation and ensure by a comprehensive constitution that the tendency to corruption and being captured by bad actors is democratically blocked. Two competing governing bodies in a region or country tend to keep each other a bit more efficient and honest. Perhaps Iceland should make a start.
Now the “Long march through the institutions’ is complete the march through sporting associations seems well underway as the England squad demonstrated in Quatar.