Harvard Prof. on Covid Science Denial by Both Government and University

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.

Covid Hoaxsters, No. 79: UK's National Health Service Boss and Liar-in-Chief, Amanda Prichard

Amanda Pritchard, the head of NHS England, recently made the following claim:

"There is no doubt that the NHS is running hot and there are some very real pressures on health and social care. We have had 14 times the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 than we saw this time last year."

Needless to say, this was faithfully reported by various media outlets. For instance, ITV News ran a story on it headlined: “Hospital Covid admissions 14 times higher than this time in 2020.”

There was only one problem: it isn’t true. The number of COVID-19 patients currently in English hospitals is 7,510 according to the Government’s Coronavirus Dashboard, whereas the number in November 2020 was over 11,000.

Read more

But for even more shocking proof of official Covid lies, see this:

For Whom Do The COVID "Fact-Checkers" Really Work?

Related:

Naturally-Acquired Immunity Versus Vaccine-Acquired Immunity

Meltdown at the UK Health Security Agency Over Data Showing Infection Rate Higher in Vaccinated than Unvaccinated

MIT Scientist and Professor on Exposing COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries: “You Have to be Careful Because You Could be Eliminated”

Archbishop Viganò slams Pope Francis for pushing covid “vaccines,” warns about aborted baby tissue ingredients

Vaccines have plunged from 88% effectiveness against covid infections to just 13% in mere months

Vaccine Mandate is Cloward-Piven Plan to Destroy USA and End Capitalism

Mega-vaxxed Vermont blows up lying media’s narrative with fresh Covid spike…

Covid-19: Why the Panic?

Referring to the panic reaction to Covid 19, a commenter at the Unz Review remarked:

This is looking more and more like an epidemic of mental illness.

But although what is being done to the mass of ordinary folk may cause an epidemic of insanity, the politicians and their media enablers, mainstream or "alt", who are using the Covid pandemic as  a pretext for destroying the livelihood of tens of millions, are surely not insane.

The question, then, is what's the objective? And the answer to that question must be something that can be inferred from the consequences.

So what are the consequences?

(1) The sharpest rate of job losses every recorded, leading to Great Depression levels of unemployment.

(2) Consequent upon (1), massive loss of income for the salaried workforce, business owners, and beneficiaries of pension funds etc., (the last having sustained large and soon to be larger investment losses).

(3) Consequent upon (2), massive reductions in consumption spending.

(4) Consequent upon (3), big cuts in imports to the West of products of cheap Third World labor.

(1) Means real wages will fall, thereby raising potential economic competitiveness of manufacturing in the US and other Western nations, i.e., reindustrialization of the West as will be essential in an emerging East-West cold war.

(2) Means many small businesses will fold, opening the way for expansion by the big boys: Starbucks,  Dominoes Pizza, Amazon, etc.

(3) Means fewer goddam plebs cluttering the best beaches, ski resorts, tourist meccas.

(4) Means a slowing of China's economic growth and reduced Chinese access to dollars with which to buy American and European technology and businesses, from GE Appliances to Motorola Mobility, and from the Chicago Stock Exchange to the Waldorf Astoria.

As for those few the virus kills, they're just old geezers, useless eaters, wasn't that what Adolf called them?

So, nothing crazy about this fake plague: what's not to like about it?

And to put things into context, the situation is much like that during the Great War that led to the still ongoing destruction of Europe. Then, British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George remarked:

If the people knew what is happening, this war would end tomorrow. But of course the people cannot know what is happening.

Likewise, they cannot know now, thanks to the MSM and its "alt" auxiliaries.

Related:
Nic Lewis: Why herd immunity to COVID-19 is reached much earlier than thought

New York City: The Bronx Tests 27% Positive for Covid-19, And That's Good News, Not Bad

Breaking down the New York City report, Cuomo noted that the Bronx had the highest infection rate of the five boroughs, with a staggering 27.1% of respondents having COVID-19 antibodies. ...  “That number remains obnoxiously and terrifyingly high,” Cuomo said. “It’s not where we want it to be.” Source

There is a pernicious idea that the media, politicians and public health officials in the US, Canada and elsewhere seek to encourage, namely, that the spread of Covid19 is a bad thing. Actually, it's a good thing: here's why.

Epidemics don't end with everyone in quarantine, because life cannot be sustained by a population in perpetual quarantine. Eventually, a quarantined population must get back to work. then people will have to come face to face once again, and the disease will resume it's spread.

So how do epidemics end? They end when the number of people with immunity to the disease rises to the point that the number of people each infected person infects falls below one. At that point, disease spread slows and dies.*

And what determines who has immunity? There are two key factors. One is the acquisition of immunity among those who have been infected and survived the disease. The other is the process of natural selection. Those who lack the necessary immune system genes to fend off the disease die, so that a higher proportion of the residual population has the genes that provide either immunity to infection, or the capacity for recovery from infection.

The seasonal flu is an example of a non-lethal disease that induces immunity in those infected. The plague, or black death, is a an example of a more or less lethal disease that kills many but not all that it infects, leaving a more resistant population more or less immune to the disease.

And, in the worst case, are diseases against which an entire population is vulnerable, and in that case the entire population dies, as was the fate of many Amerindian communities afflicted by diseases brought by explorers and colonists from Europe to the New World.

Covid-19, fortunately, is a relatively mild disease for most who are infected by it, leaving them with protective antibodies that reduce susceptibility to future infection. The Covid epidemics working theirs way through the nations of the world seem to be killing no more than 30 to 40 people per thousand of those infected (at least in the developed world), these being mainly the elderly with existing heart or respiratory diseases**.

The end to the Covid-19 pandemic will thus occur when the virus has gone through every population causing an increased level of immunity that halts the disease's spread.

What proportion of the population must have immunity before the rate of recovery from the disease exceeds the rate of infection is not something that can be exactly predicted, since it depends on the way people in each community interact. In a nation of hermits, the disease would never spread and there could be no epidemic. Otherwise, the particular features of specific communities, in particular the way in which people interact with one another, but also many other factors such as age distribution, air quality, nutrition, etc., determine the infection rate that must be attained before an epidemic dies.

What that means is that although lock-downs, quarantines, social distancing and face masks can slow the spread of disease, they have no effect on the incidence of the disease at which disease spread slows and ultimately stops.

So well done The Bronx. With 27% of the population reported to have antibodies for Covid19, they  may not be there quite yet, but they are well on the way to the condition of so-called herd immunity, when immunity to the pathogen is sufficiently widespread to cause its spread to slow and die even after a return to normal life.

Despite what crackpots such as Ron Unz of the Unz Review, New York State Governor Cuomo and the political class generally, plus most public health officials tell you, the spread of Covid19 and hence of immunity to Covid19 is good news that heralds the return to normality. But don't expect to hear that from the gerontological medical experts, the politicians and the vendors of patent medicines and vaccines now in the limelight and positioned to profit by the present panic.

______
* In New York City, the hardest hit place in North America if not the world, the number of new infections reported daily is down to about one third of the peak rate, indicating that, under present conditions of restricted social mobility, herd immunity has been achieved and the epidemic is dying. An end to the lock-downs in NY City may increase the infection rate if the percentage of the population with immunity is insufficiently high for herd immunity under the changed social dynamics. Certainly, an end to the lock-downs will cause a temporary increase in the infection rate, but a new downward trend leading to extinction of the virus will resume within a reasonably short time.

What percentage of the population must have immunity to achieve herd immunity is impossible to model accurately since people do not interact randomly, but in many distinctive ways according to factors such as age, profession, the need to commute, etc. Certainly, the percentage of infected people needed for herd immunity will be less than the theoretical 67% (assuming an R nought of 3.0), and quite possibly less than half that number.

** In the Bronx, with 27% having Covid-19 antibodies, the number infected is around 382,000 people, of whom 1,700 have died for an infection-specific mortality rate of 0.44%. Of those who have died, 545 were resident of nursing homes or adult care facilities, and most had other serious medical conditions. For the remainder of the population the infection-specific mortality rate has been 0.3%. (Source: Riverdale Press).

Related:
Off Guardian: How the UK’s testing policy makes their Covid19 numbers meaningless
Off Guardian: LOKIN-20: The Lockdown Regime Causes Increasing Health Concerns
The Irish Savant: How can they possibly explain this away?
Tucker Carlson: How Some Elderly Power-Drunk Epidemiologist Wiped Away the US Constitution:

Nssim Taleb: The Only Man With a Clue About Covid19?

A post by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at the Automatic Earth blog begins with the following words:

Today, I’m going to try to show you how and why we know that in the case of a pandemic like the one we’re in, surrounded by doubts and uncertainties, there are still a series of measures that we can and, more importantly, must take. But also, how these measures are hardly ever taken, and if they are, not in the correct fashion. This has to date led us into a ton of preventable misery and death. If only we would listen. And there’s still more we can do to prevent more mayhem, there is at every step of the process.

What follows is an exposition of the risk to humanity of a viral pandemic made years ago the financial analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb, together with Taleb's conclusions as the the steps that must be taken to avoid catastrophe.

Needless as it is to say to those with any understanding of the way governments function, or more generally fail to function, Taleb's analysis and recommendations have been generally ignored with catastrophic consequences for those afflicted by Covid19, and for all who have been or will in the future be affected by the economic consequences of the Covid pandemic.

Rather than copy and paste the article from the Automatic Earth for those wanting to better understand the challenge of Covid19, here is a link to the original article:

The Only Man Who Has a Clue.

How China Ended the Corona Virus Epidemic -- If It Has Ended

Infectious diseases cause epidemics when infected individuals infect, on average, more than one other person, causing the total number of infections to grow despite recovery or death of those previously infected. The number of individuals infected by each infected person is call the Reproduction number (R0).

Epidemics end when R0 falls below one. The COVID19 epidemic in China went exponential in January, with an R0 peaking at almost 4.0, and then tailed off throughout late January and February.

Why did it tail off?

Simple: quarantines and sequestrations.

Quarantine means restricting people's movement. This may mean restricting or prohibiting travel from one city to another, often referred to as a "lock-down,"or it may mean closing schools, universities, and places of business, thereby keeping people largely confined to their homes, rather than crowding together in the streets, on trains and buses, and in all places of assembly where those who are infected but asymptomatic can pass on the infection.

Quarantines may extend to ordering people to stay home, or even physically barring them from leaving their homes.

Sequestration means keeping the infected out of contact with the uninfected, including their own family or others with whom they share accommodation. In Wuhan, that was achieved by the creation of many thousands of beds in isolation facilities. These facilities are not primarily treatment facilities, they are simply places where sick people are put together out of contact with healthy members of their family and community.

The effectiveness of sequestration can be greatly enhanced if infected and infectious, but asymptomatic, individuals can be identified. Simple and rapid COVID19 tests have been developed, although control of the epidemic in China seems to have been achieved prior to widespread use of testing.

China's success in controlling COVID19 is proof of the effectiveness of China's authoritarian form of government in handling a crisis of the kind that would be experienced in the event of a biological WMD attack. As the virus spreads around the world, we will learn whether Western governments are can achieve by gentler means, China's remarkable success in containing this novel Corona virus.

But China's success remains to be confirmed. As reported here, some in China say the victory over the bat flu is FAKE.

Related:
Moon of Alabama: Coronavirus - The Hidden Cases - Why We Must Shut Everything Down And Do It Now
Zero Hedge: WHO Declares Covid-19 A Pandemic, Deeply Concerned At "Alarming Level Of Inaction"
WSJ: Italy, With Aging Population, Has World’s Highest Daily Deaths From Virus (Corona virus has killed 5% of known cases in Italy)

Is the Corona Virus Global Pandemic a Hoax?

Ron Unz, over at the Unz Review, is running several articles arguing that the novel corona virus, COVID-19, is a US biowarfare agent most likely launched by the US armed-forces contingent at last December's Military Games in Wuhan, China. The purpose for this dastardly deed? To wreck China's economy and give the US a chance to remain global hegemon for at least another few months.

The idea seems dopey to me. To date, Covid-19 has killed far fewer than the regular late-fall flu. What's more, those said to have died are mostly, like me, over 65, i.e., a burden on the economy, not a productive asset to be preserved.

True, in response to the outbreak of this supposedly deadly virus, China has really hammed it up, barring citizens in their homes, locking down whole cities, building multiple massive hospitals overnight.

Sure makes it look like the virus is a real threat. Yet in America, the reaction to the arrival of COVID-19 is almost somnolent, with fewer tests for the virus having been conducted in the whole of the US than have been conducted in the single Canadian Province of British Columbia.

Meantime, here in test-crazy BC, life continues seemingly unaltered. The streets are filled with vehicles, the stores are filled with shoppers, and although stores are said to have sold out of face masks, no one I've seen is wearing this life-saving device.

But why fake an epidemic? Well, for China, it provides an opportunity to test their biowarfare response systems, while for Donald Trump it allows him to breeze through the crisis exuding optimism and confidence and demonstrating that America is truly so great again that it can just shrug off the non-existent virus while hardly moving a finger to stop it.

Who knows? But for me, as a commentator, it looks to be a win-win situation. If the bug's for real and I join the ranks of the elderly victims of viral voracity, I won't be around for anyone to ridicule me, but if I'm still here by summer, I'll take a bow.

And as the 2019—2020 season flu death toll in the US heads for 20,000, the New York Post reports: Coronavirus death toll reaches six in US. To that, I say — with all due respect for the diseased, LOL.

Related:
CanSpeccy: The novel Corona Virus Is Going Global and If You're Old, It May Just Have Been Targeted On You
Jon Rappoport: How to stage a fake epidemic (and brainwash billions of people)

COVID-19, an Agent of Demographic Change: How the New Corona Virus Will Change the World

 The novel corona virus COVID-19 has three interesting properties:

(1) It is highly infectious;
(2) It has a high lethality, killing something like 3% of those infected;
(3) Risk of mortality increases with age.

What that means is that:

(a) Most people throughout the world will likely contract the disease within the next couple of years;
(b) Several hundred million people worldwide will die from the disease;
(c) Most deaths will be of pensioners in the most developed nations.

What that all means is that:

(i)  The burden of social security in the most developed nations will be radically lifted as the number of pensioners is cut by 10 to 30%, and perhaps by well over half if the virus returns over a number of years;
(ii) The number of young people engaged in the "eldercare" business will be radically reduced;
(iii) The cost of housing will fall and fertility rates will rise as the transfer of assets from the old to the young accelerates.

The most important net effect will be to save the Western nations from self genocide by suppression of native fertility (due to the burden of high housing and social services costs) and an end to mass population replacement immigration as native workers are released from service to the older generation, and thus freed to take the jobs that "natives won't do."

Whether as the result of a lucky accident or the planned release of an engineered virus, the overall effects will likely be judged by historians to have been beneficial.

Related: 
CanSpeccy: The novel Corona Virus Is Going Global and If You're Old, It May Just Have Been Targeted On You
Real Clear Science: Five Reasons not to Panic About the COVID-19 Coronavirus

Emerg. Micr. & Infections: Discovery of a subgenotype of human coronavirus NL63 associated with severe lower respiratory tract infection in China, 2018
ZH: Did China Close First Lab To Sequence Covid-19 Out Of Fear It Would Lose Bat Soup Narrative?
NY Post: Don’t buy China’s story: The coronavirus may have leaked from a lab
ZH: UK Prepares Giant Morgue in London's Hyde Park
The Economist: A broadguess is that 25-70% of the population of any infected country may catch the disease
The Lancet: RETRACTED: Chinese medical staff request international medical assistance in fighting against COVID-19
James Howard Kunstler: Hey, It’s Not Just Corona Virus
DM: Now a DOG tests positive for coronavirus

Independent: Coronavirus could kill half a million Brits and infect 80% of UK population

ZH: Japan, China Close Schools Nationwide\
South China Morning Post: Coronavirus far more likely than Sars to bond to human cells due to HIV-like mutation, scientists say
ZH: Covid-19 Infects Iranian Vice President, Kills Iran Ambassador To Vatican
ZH: Pope Cancels Event Over "Slight Illness" After Shaking Hands With 'Mask-Wearing' Public In St. Peter's Square

Is the Wuhan Coronavirus Uncontained?

Based on Government of China reports, Coronavirus infections in China had reached a total more than four thousand on January 27, having increased at a daily rate of 53% over the previous 11 days.

By January 2, according to government report, the number of infections in China had reached over fourteen thousand, many fewer than the fifty-four thousand that would have resulted had growth in the infection rate continued at 53% a day. Thus, it would appear that control measures adopted in China are limiting the spread of the disease.

But on February 1, China's Tencent briefly reported 154,023 infections, more than ten times the officially reported total, before revising the number to the official count.

So is the coronavirus epidemic in China being contained, or is it raging out of control with an infection rate now doubling every 24 hours?

To that question, the answer should soon be clear. With a doubling time of 24 hours, infections will exceed one million within a week, 128 million in two weeks and more than the entire population of China in less than three weeks.

Let's hope that the Government of China's statistics are correct.