Amici, a Chairde,
As more and more people receive their Covid "vaccines", I shudder at the idea in horror –
I'm over 60, have COPD, and after a close reading of many of the
various issues, arguments, ideas and counter ideas about Covid over the
past year, believe me when I say you'd have to literally shoot me to
take on of these things, injecting it into me after being shot. Why? I
was trained as a journalist, worked off and on in that profession,
worked mainly as a textbook writer/researcher, and then nine years as a
technical writer, and I can say I do know how to research things, to
relook at what the people on top are saying and to ferret out those who
are pushed aside, down, and out because they disagree with the grand
poobahs. And of course to always and ever weigh the "minority report"
evidence.
Over the past year I've tried to pass on some of what I've learned to you. Here are just a few more, for the record.
Regarding a 'minority report' mindset, here's a great debate at an interesting site for lockdown sceptics. An excerpt:
Lockdown
sceptics have made all kinds of important, well-reasoned, fact-based
arguments against the lockdowns and other restrictions that have been
imposed upon us. The problem of ‘deaths with’ COVID-19; the many issues
with the accuracy of PCR tests; the inflation of the IFR; the
comparisons to other diseases; the excess death charts; the fact that
the NHS is always nearly overwhelmed every year. None of it has cut
through, because most people just don’t respond to fact-based argument.
They respond to what they consider to be the moral truth. More
importantly, they really don’t respond to fact-based argument if that
would mean owning up to being immoral and abnormal. If in order to
change your mind you have to become a pariah, then human psychology 101
provides a quick answer: you won’t change your mind.
Second – and
this is an even bitterer pill, perhaps the bitterest of all – we have
the failure of our liberty-based arguments. We have made all kinds of
appeals to freedom and civil liberties during the past year. But the
brute fact is that most people apparently couldn’t give two hoots about
freedom when the chips are down. Security and safety are what matter.
The moral truth for our compatriots is not that the Government rode
roughshod over our liberties this year. The moral truth for them is that
the Government justifiably deprived us of our liberties to keep us safe
– and we’re grateful for it. We can bemoan this and debate the reasons
for it all we like. But it’s the world in which we live.
An P again:
I
highly recommend the whole article. The lockdown problem is especially
acute in the UK, which has had the biggest economic collapse in 300
years. Suicides, domestic violence, depression and mental disorders
galore must be resulting. It is simply insane.
Recently,
I've come across an excellent essay on Covid (with many graphs) by an
English doctor named Malcolm Kendrick. Kendrick has signed many a death
certificate, and insists that one cannot often cannot really be sure of a
cause of death (outside of accidents or crime, obviously). It gets
murky, particularly with older folks, the population segment most likely
to die "of Covid". Kendrick's bottom line, like so many others I have
read, is to look at the national mortality rate for the past few years
to see when (or if) there's been a "spike" in the death rate. In his
essay, Kendrick writes: "Thus, I have tended to look to EuroMOMO.
The European Mortality Monitoring project that detects and measures
excess number of deaths related to viruses across many countries in
Europe."
He
documents his research with many graphs, of Europe itself, and then of
individual countries. Two things are evident: there's been no spike in
average mortality rates except one occurring about April of 2020, when
there definitely was one, but otherwise, nothing. This is so crucial for
everyone interested in Covid to understand, but few seem to care. The
second thing is different countries vary greatly in many details, but
again, overall, there's not much difference between the countries (even
Sweden) when averaged out.
Then,
in a second essay on Kendrick's blog, he looks at the U.S. stats and
ten of the countries with the highest death rates. In the U.S. states,
states that didn't lockdown have no more "Covid-related" deaths than the
national average, while certain heavily locked-down states (NY, NJ)
have much higher death rates than the average (which as NY's governor
Cuomo seems about to be impeached for "bad Covid behavior", seems to be
because of state government actions).
While
Kendrick stresses what we don't really know about Covid and the
mortality it has caused, the bottom line is he insists all this mass
panicking is stupid and will only set the precedent for even worse panic
in some future contagion. All-in-all, a "must read" pair of articles if
you are interested remotely in Covid.
Otherwise, refer to Dr. Kendrick's blog and this essay, "Does Lockdown Work, Or Not?", he writes about his RT
article and how the fact-checkers RT employed kept challenging him, but
RT published it in the end. Also in his blog, Kendrick discusses two
medical ideas that became sacrosanct for decades before being abandoned:
i.e., radical mastectomies for breast cancer in women and enforced bed
rest for those surviving heart attacks. Both ideas were wrong, but were,
for decades, considered self-evident, etc. (This reminds me of the
infamous Lysenko in Soviet Russia, whom Stalin decided was the oracle of
all things agricultural, and it also reminds me of the Eugenics craze,
which was so big in the U.S. in the 1920s – Hitler himself
wrote a "fan letter" to an American Eugenicist. Both of these ideas, as
were the two Kendrick mentions, false. But it took decades for that to
be revealed.)
Finally,
in his blog article, Dr. Kendrick's points out a study of the ten
countries with the highest death rates all locked down early (March,
2020) and the lockdowns had no effect of the death rate. In his RT
article, he says that while he can't know for certain (and no one can),
he thinks Covid-19 is "About as deadly as the influenzas of 1957 and 1967, probably."
Anyway, I pass this information along. At least you can't say you weren't informed.
Finally, there's on further essay at RT worth reading (if you dare to read anything at RT) by an Irish writer. The author is Peter Andrews: "Peter
Andrews, Irish science journalist and writer based in London. He has a
background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of
Glasgow with a degree in genetics." The gist of this one is that as it
is obvious the various governmental authorities are going to keep with
the lockdowns in the UK, Ireland, and in Europe (in the U.S., Biden is
saying masks must be worn through 2021, etc.). Andrews argues references
Dr. Kendricks (this is how I found Kendricks, actually) and the failure
of logic and reason in dealing with "Covid Inc", and advocates refusing
to play along any longer. "But enough is enough. It is time to draw a line in the sand and refuse to comply with their diktats any longer."
But
in a world where, as we see in the U.S., utterly illegal actions
(Congress trying a man in an "impeachment" when he's out of office,
etc., and 57 high officials can vote "guilty" upon no evidence at all)
occur with official sanction, nothing might work. But there's
always hope. Two governors of U.S. states have fulfilled campaign
promises to lift "mask mandates" (i.e. the new governor of Montana and Iowa governor)
If people don't "push back", this is how we'll end up:
PS Here's a heavily science essay on why masks don't work, by Paul E Alexander MSc PhD, McMaster University and GUIDE Research Methods Group, Hamilton, Ontario.