If you've been listening to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation or just about any other major media outlet in the Western world, you must know the reason: Covid19 is an existential threat on the scale of the Black Death that killed something like half the population of Eurasia during the Fourteenth Century.
Except that it isn't.
Covid19 kills almost no one. Well, almost no one compared with most other causes of death. In Canada, for example, about six and a half thousand deaths have been attributed, reliably or otherwise, to Covid 19. However, most of those deaths, 82% as of early May, have been of sick and elderly inmates of so-called care homes. So other than knocking over a few people within days, weeks, or at most, months of death due to other causes, Covid19 has thus far killed about 1200 Canadians, most of whom were old, or suffered other predisposing conditions such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, or respiratory disease.
“It’s All Bullshit” Three Leaks that Sink the Covid Narrative. In recent days a series of leaks across the globe have further shown the “official line” on coronavirus does not hold water. Kit Knightly: Off Guardian May 31, 2020: The science of the coronavirus is not disputed. It is well documented and openly admitted: Most people won’t get the virus.This is borne out by the numerous serological studies which show, again and again, that the infection fatality ratio is on par with flu. There is no science – and increasingly little rational discussion – to justify the lockdown measures and overall sense of global panic. Nevertheless, it’s always good to get official acknowledgement of the truth, even if it has to be leaked. Read more |
We mourn for the 1200, and indeed for all of the six and a half thousand who's death was hastened, whether only slightly or substantially, by Covid19. But we strive also to keep things in perspective. While 1200 non-care home residents in Canada have been felled by Covid19, in 2018, the most recent year for which Stats Canada provides data, almost four times that many people killed themselves. Alzheimer's disease and diabetes each ended the lives of about five times as many, while the big three, cancer, heart disease and stroke between them carried off about 120 times as many.
If combating the novel corona virus demands such heroic efforts to suppress it, should we not be devoting most of the national GDP to eliminating cancer?
Or are there sinister forces at work that guide the government of our Castro-loving, Communist dictatorship-admiring, black-face wearing, Mr. Dress-up Trudeau?
The question came to mind in response to a reader's comment:
"We still do not have mass testing or any truly statistically valid handle on the virus."This fact is quite bizarre.
Why would a government not monitor the spread of a disease by repeated serological surveys or other means, if it were seriously attempting to stop disease spread?
 |
| Image source: South China Morning Post |
Now Americans, Brits, Canadians, etc. are obviously not as smart, diligent or technically competent as the Chinese.
Still we could surely do a random survey -- you know, like an opinion poll. You select a few hundred people at random and, for a fee or some other inducement, you get them to submit to testing.
You do that every couple of days and then you know what you're dealing with.
However, if the goal is not to end the epidemic but to scare people, real information about the prevalence and lethality of the disease, even if it has been obtained, will naturally be withheld.
But why would governments want to scare people (and there is clear evidence of intent, e.g., here)?
In order to maintain the lockdown.
And why would governments want to maintain the lockdown?
That, surely, is the essential question.
What is the answer, I am unsure, but here are what seem the most obvious possibilities:
(1) To kill most of the small business sector, to the benefit of the big boys - Starbucks, MacDonald's, Amazon, etc. The objective, in other words, being to complete the transition in government from any semblance of democracy to a purely plutocratic system organized on a global basis.
(2) To drive up unemployment and thus depress wages, also to the benefit of the big boys.
(3) To drive down GDP and hence consumption spending leading to reductions in all kinds of pollution, carbon dioxide, plebs at the better beaches and tourist spots, traffic congestion, etc.
(4) To drive down fertility rates and hence population worldwide (despite the fact that fertility rates in Europe, North America, Japan, etc. are already well below replacement).
But perhaps others have better suggestions. Comments welcome.
Meantime, doctors warn that lockdowns cause more deaths than Covid19.
Related
ZH: Again, What Were The Benefits Of Locking Down?
ZH: 60% Of People Naturally Resistant To SARS-COV2, New Study Reveals
WaPo: Lots of us are infected by the coronavirus — and don’t know it. Here’s what that means
OG: REPORT: Over 95% of UK “Covid19” deaths had “pre-existing condition”
ZH: COVID-19 Has Properties That Have Never Been Found In Nature Before
ZH: Satellite Data, Internet Searches Suggest COVID-19 Hit China 'Long Before' Previously Known: Harvard
OG: Is the Coronavirus Scare a Psychological Operation?
CB: American Euthanasia: US States Offer Care Homes Double Pay to Accept Covid19 Patients
OG: Is the Coronavirus Scare a Psychological Operation?
CB: American Euthanasia: US States Offer Care Homes Double Pay to Accept Covid19 Patients
ZH: Covid-19 Reported to be Losing Virulence
Prof. Karl Friston: Prof. Karl Friston: "80% Of Brits Not Even Susceptible To COVID-19"
Prof. William Haseltine: Human COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Are Unnecessary, Uninformative, and Unethical
ZH: Former MI6 Boss/Trickster Says COVID-19 Manmade, Escaped From Chinese Lab
Tathasta: Architect of lockdown policy admits Sweden achieved similar outcomes without lockdown
ZH: Two Doctors Explain Why COVID-19 Was Likely Lab Experiment
ZH: Enraged Italians Abandon Masks, Denounce Pandemic As Scam
DW: Belgium's coronavirus (over)counting controversy
CNBC: Remember the ‘yellow vests’? Now, Italy is seeing an ‘Orange Vests’ movement that says coronavirus pandemic doesn’t exist
Global Research: Coronavirus Propaganda Mimics War Propaganda
ZH: COVID-19 Exposed The Truth: Humans Were Born Free
ZH: China Finds 300 'Asymptomatic' Infections After Testing Entire Population Of Wuhan; Cases Jump In Hong Kong, Tokyo
CNBC: Global experts go head-to-head over claims the coronavirus 'no longer exists clinically'
AIER: Nobel Laureate Michael Levitt on the Lockdowns: “I think it is a huge mistake”
Reuters: New coronavirus losing potency, top Italian doctor says
ZH: German Official Leaks Report Denouncing COVID-19 As "A Global False Alarm"
ZH: Two 'Unusual' COVID-19 Features Convincing Scientists It Was Man-Made
Times of Israel: Scientist posits ‘wild’ hypothesis that cross immunity could slow pandemic
Tathasta: Man Dead with 0.55 Blood Alcohol Level, Was Reportedly Listed as a COVID Fatality
Global Research:Were Conditions for High Death Rates at Care Homes Created on Purpose?
DM: The apocalyptic virus that would make corona seem irrelevant: Leading scientist warns of the danger of a pandemic triggered by chicken farms that could kill half the world's population
Mises Institute: Three Ways Lockdowns Are Costing Human Lives
New England J. Medicine: We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection
ZH: South Korea Closes Schools Just Days After Reopening As New Cases Spike, Africa Confirms Another 5.5k Cases: Live Updates
DW: South Korea recorded its biggest daily increase in infections in 53 days
DM: Study claims 7% - 3.7million people - in England may have had Covid19
VGIF: The rewriting of lockdown history
Christopher Snow: The lockdown’s founding myth
MH: 1 Out Of Every 3 Americans Suffering Anxiety Or Depression During Lockdowns
WA Examiner: Top Norwegian official: We could have controlled coronavirus without a lockdown
AP: Spike in South Korea virus cases
SFGate: A third of Americans with clinical anxiety or depression, Census Bureau
OG: Were conditions for high death rates at Care Homes created on purpose?
CBC: One of Canada's largest long-term care operators is owned by a federal Crown corporation
ZH: Coronavirus Uses Same Strategy As HIV To Evade, Cripple Immune System: Chinese Study
ZH: Psychiatrists Wrote 86% More Prescriptions For Psychotropic Drugs During Lockdown
Yahoo: Military reports 'shocking' conditions in Ontario nursing homes
OG: Coronavirus Fact-Check #5: Infection-Fatality Ratio Update
ZH: French Intelligence Warned Of 'Catastrophic Leak' From Wuhan Lab
Prof. Karl Friston: Prof. Karl Friston: "80% Of Brits Not Even Susceptible To COVID-19"
Prof. William Haseltine: Human COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Are Unnecessary, Uninformative, and Unethical
ZH: Former MI6 Boss/Trickster Says COVID-19 Manmade, Escaped From Chinese Lab
Tathasta: Architect of lockdown policy admits Sweden achieved similar outcomes without lockdown
ZH: Two Doctors Explain Why COVID-19 Was Likely Lab Experiment
ZH: Enraged Italians Abandon Masks, Denounce Pandemic As Scam
DW: Belgium's coronavirus (over)counting controversy
CNBC: Remember the ‘yellow vests’? Now, Italy is seeing an ‘Orange Vests’ movement that says coronavirus pandemic doesn’t exist
Global Research: Coronavirus Propaganda Mimics War Propaganda
ZH: COVID-19 Exposed The Truth: Humans Were Born Free
ZH: China Finds 300 'Asymptomatic' Infections After Testing Entire Population Of Wuhan; Cases Jump In Hong Kong, Tokyo
CNBC: Global experts go head-to-head over claims the coronavirus 'no longer exists clinically'
AIER: Nobel Laureate Michael Levitt on the Lockdowns: “I think it is a huge mistake”
Reuters: New coronavirus losing potency, top Italian doctor says
ZH: German Official Leaks Report Denouncing COVID-19 As "A Global False Alarm"
ZH: Two 'Unusual' COVID-19 Features Convincing Scientists It Was Man-Made
Times of Israel: Scientist posits ‘wild’ hypothesis that cross immunity could slow pandemic
Tathasta: Man Dead with 0.55 Blood Alcohol Level, Was Reportedly Listed as a COVID Fatality
Global Research:Were Conditions for High Death Rates at Care Homes Created on Purpose?
DM: The apocalyptic virus that would make corona seem irrelevant: Leading scientist warns of the danger of a pandemic triggered by chicken farms that could kill half the world's population
Mises Institute: Three Ways Lockdowns Are Costing Human Lives
New England J. Medicine: We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection
ZH: South Korea Closes Schools Just Days After Reopening As New Cases Spike, Africa Confirms Another 5.5k Cases: Live Updates
DW: South Korea recorded its biggest daily increase in infections in 53 days
DM: Study claims 7% - 3.7million people - in England may have had Covid19
VGIF: The rewriting of lockdown history
Christopher Snow: The lockdown’s founding myth
MH: 1 Out Of Every 3 Americans Suffering Anxiety Or Depression During Lockdowns
WA Examiner: Top Norwegian official: We could have controlled coronavirus without a lockdown
AP: Spike in South Korea virus cases
SFGate: A third of Americans with clinical anxiety or depression, Census Bureau
OG: Were conditions for high death rates at Care Homes created on purpose?
CBC: One of Canada's largest long-term care operators is owned by a federal Crown corporation
ZH: Coronavirus Uses Same Strategy As HIV To Evade, Cripple Immune System: Chinese Study
ZH: Psychiatrists Wrote 86% More Prescriptions For Psychotropic Drugs During Lockdown
Yahoo: Military reports 'shocking' conditions in Ontario nursing homes
OG: Coronavirus Fact-Check #5: Infection-Fatality Ratio Update
ZH: French Intelligence Warned Of 'Catastrophic Leak' From Wuhan Lab
I'd like to compile a list of all the things the government would have done by now if the disease and the good health of the people was the objective. This would be done under the assumption the disease was as serious as alleged, which of course I do not at all believe. Or, you can think of it this way: most of us would be dead or grievously injured if it had been as serious as alleged, because the government response couldn't possibly have been adequate to such a serious disease.
ReplyDeleteThe government response has been ruinous, but that doesn't mean the government response would have been adequate. It is almost as if some of the hysterical proponents of the lock down believe that because the lock down has succeeded in ruining the economy, that is evidence it was medically sound. They are not dealing in reality.
Yes, it's a good question.
ReplyDeleteWhy was no one prepared?
It is not as if Covid19 was the first novel corona virus this century to raise the specter of a deadly global pandemic. Why they did the United States, Britain, Canada, and indeed every reasonably technologically advanced country not have a contingency plan to deal with it?
And lacking a contingency plan, why were governments so slow to develop a plan?
According to Ron Unz, the US Government knew that a novel corona virus was spreading in China by late fall of 2019. This is an entirely believable. The US has virology labs around the world including in countries adjacent to China. So there were weeks of warning, probably months, for the US and others to put in place effective control measures before the virus took hold.
And the basic form of an effective control plan is surely well known.
Create capacity, including all necessary administrative measures, for virus testing on a massive scale.
Close borders with countries lacking effective control measures.
Create capacity for contact tracing and testing with procedures for isolating infected contacts.
Provide for local or regional lockdowns wherever infection clusters emerge.
Is there anything else?
The purpose of the lockdown was to ruin the economy. Once you understand that, everything about the lockdown falls into place.
ReplyDeleteNow why ruining the economy was the objsctive is another question, that is much harder to answer. But you have to realize that the objective was to ruin the economy, and not public health, to even get to the stage where you can ask it.
"The purpose of the lockdown was to ruin the economy."
DeleteThat was the premise of my post. However, it has to be acknowledged that there are other possibilities.
Politicians, according to another view, simply panicked at the huge death toll predicted by academics such as Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, London and were persuaded that a lock-down would bring the spread of the disease to a halt.
They must have been persuaded, furthermore, that once the disease had ceased to spread, those infected would recover and eventually cease to be infectious. At that point the lock-down could end.
End that is until the disease broke out again and began to spread, by which time, presumably, it was expected that there'd be some other solution? A vaccine, perhaps, or a drug.
And failing such a magic bullet, there would be time by then to have organized a test, track and trace system which would allow identification and isolation of the newly infected before they had time to spread the disease.
If that's the basis of operations now, all those put out of work by the lock-down may look forward to opportunities in the testing, tracking and tracing business.
"The purpose of the lockdown was to ruin the economy. Once you understand that, everything about the lockdown falls into place."
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree. Yet there is a political problem in that most people do not understand or agree. Some people even think the only reason we weren't decimated or suffer massively severe consequences from the pandemic is because of the lockdowns and so on and so forth. That's why I want to catalogue the ways these responses couldn't possibly have been effective. Also, in precise as possible terms, what an effective governmental response would have been. (These are close to the same, but not quite.) If you can demonstrate this satisfactorily you can show 1. The severity of the disease didn't live up to its billing, plain and simple 2. It wasn't reasonable to think the responses were effective. 3. At the very least, politicians and policy makers have made a terrible, heinous blunder of cowardice and stupidity. 3. How to outline for the future ways this blunder never is repeated, i.e. learn from the damned thing. 4. Hopefully also, if we must, come down to brass tacks who, what, where, and especially how were the ruinous policies selected and why. I lean towards your thesis, but as CS says, there are others and they aren't mutually exclusive-- they could all have contributed. This here blunder has been worldwide and has involved everyone one way or the other. We need to know in specific detail about this, even if it becomes a very complicated story to unravel.
If it was intended or not, it has ruined the economy. It has to be people think a magic economy fairy is going to be coming by to wave a wand and make everyone happy and smiling again. No one-- and this is another obvious feature of this mess-- speaks of the specifics of this. How do we do this kayak roll to right the boat again? We don't even really know -- and this is another important facet of it-- when or how we'll end the lock downs.
I have to admit-- I am still afraid the elites want depopulation. It isn't out of the question and if this goes on longer, it will be inevitable.
Enough of my rant.
Professor Michael Levitt, Stanford University, 2013 Nobel Prize Winner:
ReplyDeletehttps://thefatemperor.com/ep78-stanford-professor-and-nobel-prize-winner-explains-this-viral-lockdown-fully/
"And I guess this is going to sound strange, but in some ways I feel almost embarrassed that things I said two months ago are actually still holding true. I guess in a field moving at this rate, that shouldn’t be the case. [...] I sort of care very much about people, but I don’t really care whether they are “my people” or somebody else’s people or whatever – we’re actually all people here on the earth. And I think this also gives me a little bit of a different perspective of how this actually is. But the high level viewis that there were many signs that were really available by the middle of February, but let’s say by the end of February – indicating this is a virus that has weak legs.
Ivor (00:06:31):
Yep. So in terms of like let’s say “distancing we’ll slow it somewhat”, “lockdowns added to distancing” may be very questionable in value. What would your feelings be versus “free spread”, which happened in Europe to be quite honest, which stayed fully open till March, no one did anything at all to restrain it. And it’s a “High R value” virus, so it was obviously all over the place. So at that point when you distance, you can slow it somewhat maybe. And then the lock downs, which caused enormous collateral damage, possibly add very little extra. So what’s your thoughts on that now?
Professor Levitt (00:07:03):
I would, I would agree with that. In general. I, instead of saying distancing versus lockdown, I sort of tried to say “smart distancing”. I mean lockdown is a form of distancing, but it’s a very extreme form. I’ve called it “medieval distancing”. And you know, I think there’s no doubt if you, if you had a country and you started out before there was any Coronavirus, and you were locking people down, you know, not letting people ever talk to other people. Well the the country would not get even a single case of coronavirus. So in that sense, you know, if nobody meets anybody and you don’t catch it over the internet, you’re fine. Except that – are you really fine? And you know, I think there’s an issue here about epidemiologists – who certainly used to maintain that there should be no shutdowns, there should be no stopping of global transportation. Things should be allowed to sort of reach the equilibrium in whatever way. Now the key thing here is, is controlling overloading of hospitals ICU’s and things like that and that I think requires a careful control. But I remember very early on saying that one should fiscally monitor very carefully. And one thing I did discover from the work in China is that just looking at number of cases per day, divided by yesterday’s, is a very, very good indication of how the virus is growing. So you could almost imagine that if you were a benevolent leader, you would decide that you want to try to cause as little damage, but also realize from the numbers that this virus is not going to kill much more than flu is going to kill. It’s a small number for flu, which is a bad disease. But it’s a disease which we have to put up with because flu mutates and people still don’t even take vaccines.
Professor Levitt (00:08:46):
So you could almost argue that flu is like the threshold of acceptable risk at least in terms of experience. Countries never have locked down at least since last hundred years for flu and there’s been a lot of flu around. So I think that’s a smart thing to do would be – as I said it sounds rather cruel – but basically adjust social distancing in a very dynamic way to keep the ICU full, but never overflowing. Don’t lock down locally. I think local lockdown like schools and locally makes no sense –"
Both the politicians and the media have carefully controlled which "experts" they are listening to and which messages they are allowing to be widely disseminated. This is another feature of the situation which I see as undeniable.
ReplyDeleteApparently in my state the governor ordered lockdowns after speaking with thirty medical doctors. It might have been possible to track down which medical doctors these were and check into their credentials and political affiliations, but I haven't personally done the work but then again neither have the "journalists." Even assuming these medical doctors are the best qualified to be advising the governor (I don't) or they are more fully informed about the specifics of the corona pandemic than others (I doubt it-- how could they be, given a feature of the pandemic has been a dearth of solid data and evidence) I wouldn't be terribly surprised if these were doctors of the same political affiliations as the governor, likely some of his supporters, and not neutral parties. It is also possible there were another 300 medical doctors in the state who dissented from the views of these 30, but how could we know? It might be possible to poll every medical doctor in the state on the matter, or publicly finance an emergency convention of them via internet,(it wouldn't be a good idea to interrupt their practices at such a time, but I do believe a few hours of serious discussion would be a wise investment) so some kind of consensus might form or so the public could be privy to any criticisms of the 30 medical doctors views.
We could have used something like the above at other levels, including at the national levels.
We could have had similar public discussions from different fields of expertise such as epidemiologists. Most of the time these are extremely reasonable people and not given to polemics and vitriol. I do not believe they would have used such occasions to attack each other, but somehow hammer out something to help us genuinely move ahead.
Asking doctors for advice on a question about managing a pandemic is a joke. I understand that at the largest medical school in the jurisdiction where I live, medical students receive a total of two lectures on infectious diseases.
DeleteFor state governors to be seeking advice once the pandemic has arrived is confirmation of governmental failure. In an age of multiple corona virus scares (SARS, MERS, and now Covid19) and the development of advanced biological warfare agents, when the world has been integrated by air travel as never before, any government without contingency plans for dealing with a potentially deadly epidemic is unfit to govern (which appears to have been true of all Western governments).
You said it.
ReplyDeleteDoctors have tunnel vision and I believe they are trained to have it. They are specialists by training and in trained outlook.
The inability of the US citizenry for self governance has been evident since the Reagan years. So self governance by the citizenry will no longer, even in semblance, be allowed.