Comments of Harvard University Prof, Martin Kulldorff via the Daily Skeptic
On the scientific community’s denial of natural immunity…
We’ve known about natural immunity since 430 BC during the Athenian plague. So this is not a new concept. It would have been shocking if the immunity from the vaccine was better than the immunity from having recovered from Covid. So by pushing these vaccines on those who already had Covid, was both unnecessary and unethical, but it also diminishes the trust in public health authorities and diminishes the trust in vaccines. […] These vaccine fanatics (e.g., Canada's low-IQ PM, Justin Trudeau) who insisted that everybody should be vaccinated, including those who already have immunity from having recovered from Covid, I think they have destroyed the confidence in vaccines in general, to an extent that a small group of pre-Covid, so-called anti-vaxxers had never succeeded.
On the reaction to the Great Barrington Declaration…
The difference was that it came from three people other than one person. All of the three of us have worked on infectious disease technology. […] All of us came from reasonably respectable universities: Oxford, Harvard and Stanford. So it was impossible to ignore. We were attacked, including by the NIH Director Collins and Anthony Fauci and Jeremy Farrar at the Wellcome Trust here and Christian Drosten in Germany who called us pseudo-scientists. But I think the key thing was to show the public that there was not scientific consensus for lockdowns.
On whether he was supported by Harvard after speaking out…
No, I didn’t get much defence from the university, no. […] I got private emails from many of the faculty members, many of whom I’d never heard of before. So there was support, yes, from individuals. […] I think that’s a huge problem for science as we move forward, because science can only thrive with discussions. It’s a process. And if we don’t have open discourse about science, science is going to die.
On the problems with epidemiological modelling…
I think these models where you predict a certain number of people are going to die, are pretty useless. And the key thing is what is the optimal strategy to use? So in the case of Covid, in the beginning, we didn’t know exactly what was the infection-fatality rate, which is what’s the risk of dying if you get infected, because we didn’t know how many people had got infected. The optimal strategy doesn’t depend on if it’s 0.1%, or 1% because the optimal strategy depends on the difference, the relative risk in the difference by age or some other factor. So in terms of deciding what is the optimal thing to do, these models that Imperial College developed, I think were very useless.
On the effects of mishandling the pandemic…
I think there will be an enormous distrust in public health agencies. I think there will be an enormous distrust in science, in the scientific community. I think that will take decades to repair, if it can be repaired, I don’t know. I’m sure there will be consequences, political consequences as well. They’re obviously enormous public health consequences from the collateral damage, which I mentioned. I think there’s also economic consequences of these lockdowns that we’re starting to see now. So I think the consequences are profound. And maybe we are in a tipping balance in terms of whether we accept this as the standard way of doing things, which I think would be terrible, or maybe we go in a different direction, where we say, this was a fiasco, let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again.
"These vaccine fanatics (e.g.Canada's low-IQ PM, Justin Trudeau, ) who insisted that everybody should be vaccinated, including those who already have immunity from having recovered from Covid"
ReplyDeleteThis is what happened to you, CS. You already had covid19 and had recovered. Clearly you had natural immunity, understood it was sufficient, but couldn't get any dimwit employed by the state to acknowledge this. This is scandalous behavior, an admission of incompetence and cowardice the modern world cannot under any circumstances countenance if it wishes to survive. (The modern world's survival indeed does hang in the balance now.)
I had to do a double take to see if the description "Canada's low-IQ PM, Justin Trudeau" was you editorializing or Martin Kulldorff's own words. I'm happy to see your assessment of Trudeau is corroborated by Harvard professors. There would be some sense of satisfaction if, from now on, any time someone said or did something ridiculously stupid, we would say, instead of, "What kind of idiot are you?" "What kind of Trudeau are you?"
"And maybe we are in a tipping balance in terms of whether we accept this as the standard way of doing things, which I think would be terrible, or maybe we go in a different direction, where we say, this was a fiasco, let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again."
I probably could make a long list of things we might do to prevent this from ever happening again. Six come immediately to mind:
(1)Conduct a thorough post-mortem. It can't be a whitewash. (Are we even capable? First, we'd have to admit mistakes were made-- we never do. Second, the investigation would have to be conducted by people with subpoena power and so forth-- Congress? A huge stumbling block, if so.)
(2)Never let a private individual or organization commandeer the funding of a governmental or quasi-governmental institution, e.g., Bill Gates and WHO;
(3) Never allow people employed by government to receive royalties for commercial products developed by themselves as employees of the government, e.g. Fauci and others in NIH and similar agencies receiving royalties on vaccines. (Fauci attempted to seem innocent by explaining he donated his to charities, but that's irrelevant. He shouldn't have discretion because he shouldn't have the royalties in the first place.);
(4) Re-examine the political power of Google, social media, twitter, and so on to censor or manipulate ideas and information they disfavor, to their own advantage, to their own interests;
(5)Never allow US government agencies to fund research illegal in the USA elsewhere, in foreign nations, e.g. Fauci funding gain-of-function experiments in Wuhan.
(6) Create institutions to ensure "following the science" is indeed following the science, and not the dictates of self-appointed "experts" whose "science" needs to be, as a matter of "following the science" thoroughly discussed, criticized, vetted, and monitored.
These reforms wouldn't be easy to legislatively craft under any circumstances, and with the crop of geniuses currently in power, are likely impossible. So here is what it all boils down to: not only getting these geniuses out of office, but taking apart the hot mess that got them there in the first place. We need to mobilize people power, democratic power. It's not impossible, even now, we can.
We can be absolutely certain it will happen again. They didn't get what they wanted with Wu-Flu so now they're just waiting to spring their next surprise.
DeleteI guess I'm a bit naive, but I never really grasped what they did want from Covid other than what was obvious, i.e., and excuse to abandon the balanced budget promise and blow up the 2020-2022 deficit to about one third of national GDP. Plus, presumably nice kickbacks from suppliers of PPW, ventilators and vaccines. And just the fun of scaring so many people near to death.
DeleteTrue they had to abandon the mask mandates and then the vax passports with potential for many add on features of control. But am I missing something big?
Re: "Canada's low-IQ PM, Justin Trudeau", I must be so used to thinking of our boy in those terms that I hadn't noticed that the learned professor from Harvard had used exactly those words. LOL.
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