Fauci lies. He CREATED the pandemic

Above: main critic of Fauci, Senator Dr Rand Paul, talks to Stephen A. Smith

When I look back at my coverage of the Covid Pandemic, I'm pretty happy with what I wrote. It stands up well. 

On Anthony Fauci, for example, I see that I was early in seeing through the man. Who appeared this week at a Senate Committee to be grilled by Rand Paul, only to "Plead the Fifth" (aka, not answer), 111 times. 

I was early in coming to the judgement that Fauci was (and remains) complicit in creating the Covid pandemic, via the gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Which all credible observers and analysts are now pretty much unanimous was the source of the virus via the escape of an experimental virus. Which we might concede was an "accident" ... if we're being charitable.

And of course the reason Fauci denied the Lab-leak theory is that he was the main man responsible for it! It's just as much "the Fauci virus" as it was, per Trump, "the China virus". 

Fauci was at the very, very long-time head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Who, absolutely coincidentally I'm sure, had billions to give away to epidemiologists who supported his deceptions. His murderous duplicity.... 

Those were judgements I came to based on studies of what Fauci said and did during Covid, and the mountain of evidence, circumstantial as it was, for the Lab-leak vs Zoonotic origins.

There was a better way to deal with the pandemic than the Fauci way. What's more we knew it at the time. Even though Fauci crushed dissent and discussion of it. Shameful. (We know why, Tony. We know).

That alternative was published at the time as the Great Barrington Declaration. 

My first post of it was on 15 October, 2020 as "The Great Barrington Declaration". 

A principle architect of it, one of the three co-signatories, was then professor Jay Bhattacharya. He is now the Head of the National Institutes of Health, with oversight of the the very Institute that Dr Anthony Fauci headed for 38 years. 

I signed the Barrington Declaration in 2020. As did thousands of others, laypeople and professionals. We were all smeared as purveyors of "Disinformation", by Fauci and his acolytes. The media. But it's we that have turned out correct. Though we will hear nothing of that from the MSM, let alone an apology. Because the drill is: if the Left gets something wrong, it's "let's move on". Let's "not re-litigate what happened years ago".... But it remains important. The source of any major virus is always important to know. 

Fauci labelled professor Bhattacharya a "fringe epidemiologist" for having the temerity to suggest an alternative to the policies of lockdows, school closures, forced vaccinations, mandated masking and all the rest of it. 

Now that same "fringe epidemiologist" is the boss of the organisation that Fauci once headed. 

Oh the sublime Schadenfreude!

Dr Vinay Prasad gives more detail on the whole "Fauci thing". Prasad doesn't charm everyone, but he's knowledgeable and spot on: "Biden Covid Czar says it was Lab Leak". 

If you're interested in ancient history as it pertains to the pandemic, you can click on the Labels on the right: "Barrington Declaration", or "Coronavirus", or "Zero Covid Policy". 

Or in the Search Box on the right "Fauci". 

The Barrington Declaration is still relevant because if/when there is another pandemic, it's the road map of what we should do. For heaven's sake, NOT the Fauci roadmap. 

As Jay says: "there is nothing novel in the Declaration. It's what we've done with every pandemic in the past. It's the way we actually went about trying to prevent the spread of Covid that's the novel path." Talking here to The Goodfellows. 

I seem to be running a few laps glazing myself here. But, oh well, I'm nearly 80 and if I wanna I gonna. 

"RFK Jr. Describes His Lifelong Love Of Falconry" | Robert Kennedy Jnr

Click above for the video

Robert Kennedy Jnr is the candidate for the job of Secretary of Health and Human Services. He's being attacked, loudly and sometimes hysterically, by Senators on the Dems side of the House. They especially hate him because he went from being with the Dems to being with Trump. But he never would have left if Biden & Co had not driven him out. While Trump welcomed him into the Big Tent. 

I've thought my whole life that RJK Jr was an "anti-vaxxer". Because that's what I was told. Then I thought, there's lies aplenty about the Russia Collusion hoax, the Hunter Laptop being Russian disinformation, and so on, that maybe they've been lying about him as well. Turns out they had. 

For he is not an "anti-vaxxer".  I've read his writings, and followed his career since converting over to Team Trump. 

RJK Jr says quite clearly, "I'm pro vaccines". He is vaccinated. His children are vaccinated. What he wants is more testing, of all medicines, including vaccines, to make sure of their safety. He wants more science in the management of drugs. He wants is to make America healthier again. He wants more control of Big Pharma. For this, he gets hammered in the hearings, by the Dems who used to all stand for these very same things. They just don't now, because it's Trump's candidate that says them. 

I did not know that Robert Kennedy Jr had a lifelong love of Falconry, and ancient sport. I only learned this because his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, slammed him for being a "predator", because he kept predatory birds. Snarky. 

But his love of Falconry makes him a better man. Makes him a lover of nature. Makes him a lover of animals. A lover of the intertwining of man and animal. 

Some of the vids about his confirmation: 

• Trump's Nominee Confirmation Hearing GOES UP IN FLAMES, DeVory Darkins
• Bernie Sanders LOSES HIS MIND As Audience ERUPTS After RFK EXPOSES His CORRUPTION At Senate Hearing!, Greg Foreman (Black Conservative Perspective)
• RFK Jr refuses to bend the knee. Greg Foreman
• Senators Try Fear-Mongering and Distraction to Torpedo RFK Nomination, with Calley Means, Megyn Kelly
• Democrats Shill For Big Pharma In RFK Jr Confirmation Hearing, Matt Walsh
• RFK Jr. V Elizabeth Warren et al. RFK by a knockout!, Alan Dershowitz

====================

ADDED: 

I went falconing myself, with Alistair the Falconer, when I was working as a Butler's Assistant, at Glenfiddich Lodge, in August 1973. Where we looked after the posh folks for the grouse shooting season. Here some old photos of yours truly age 23, in Scotland. 

Yes, Glenfiddich Lodge was and is the source of the Glenfiddich Stream, which is the water used for the famous -- famous even then -- single malt whisky. Which I also drink to this day. In the high upper reaches of the stream, when it's barely a trickle, there's a small plaque, hard to find now, carved in slate, telling us that Queen Victoria had passed by, and rested on this rock. 

"Everything WRONG With The Modern World” | Sam Harris talks to Rich Roll

Click above for the video

Oh dear. Sam Harris again. I do have a thing about him. I’d say I’m a once and maybe future fan. I have all his books. I was a subscriber to his podcast until I wasn’t cause I got so pissed off at his TDS, which broke his brain. 

He does criticise the craziness of the far-Left in the United States in supporting the death cult of Hamas. He’s spot-on there. Meaning: he agrees with me. 

But at the beginning of the pod above, talking to Rich Roll, he goes on again about Covid. About which (I think) he was wrong on nearly every count. 

Over at his podcast in March of 2020, when the pandemic was still new, he talked to Nikolas Christakis. They both shared views at the extreme end of the panic spectrum. They were both alarmist and what they were pushing for turned out to be the worst policies. 

I kept this blog all during Covid,  which I would line up with Sam’s at any time -- and I’d be shown correct in my take on it. Which was, simply: don’t panic. I was also pretty quickly “lockdown skeptic”, because the data. Some of which I generated myself with figures from Oxford University on the severity of the Lockdowns worldwide, vs. the death rates per country, which showed no correlation. I was also right about schools closures being wrong, and about masks being ineffective. But, for Sam, Sam’s right. 

At the site over there, I made a comment just now: 

I’m back here 4 years later coz Sam is back on some pods saying pretty much the same thing as he said then: namely that he got it all right and everyone else was wrong. That is itself Wrong! 

From the first few minutes of the pod above I note the following mistakes in what Sam Harris says “these ar the facts, that I hope we can agree on”:

1) Covid much worse than Flu, says Sam. No. Covid IFR was 0.02% cf. Flu of 0.03%. So slightly more for Covid than flu, but with Covid skewed significantly to super-elders with comorbidities. 

Children just as much at risk, says Sam. No. Not in the United States, nor here in Hong Kong from where I’m writing this, nor anywhere else in the world. The stats simply do not bear this out.

2) Social distancing “essential”, says Sam. No. Fauci now admits that there was no scientific basis for the distancing measures. And to the extent they kept people indoors, they only led to increased transmission. Best thing we could have done is to encourage people to go outside. And to get fit. And to lose weight. None of which was suggested by either Sam or Fauci, or the CDC.

3) Schools everywhere should be closed, says Sam. No. The Europeans were already reopening schools by the time of the above pod, and Sweden had never closed them. But Sam and the Left simply smeared those who pointed this out, at the time. 

School closures were dramatically bad for students. The closures were restricted to public schools, while private schools, the likes of which Sam’s kids probably go to, were kept open. Grossest hypocrisy. Which we knew then, not just now in retrospect. Unless you were Sam Harris. In which case you didn’t know it, and remain to this day proud that you didn’t.

That’s in the first five minutes. I can’t bear to go through the rest.

I did listen to this pod in real time, at the time 4 years ago, from here in HongKong where we were close to the epicentre of the outbreak, up in Wuhan, and I thought Harris and Christakis were both way over-panicky at the time. 

And we’d been though the SARS epidemic of 2002, which was more deadly than Covid. 

Let’s be plain. Sam got it wrong. He’s never come close to even hinting that he might think so. 

But he did. He got it wrong.

ADDED: I just remembered: that the reason they closed schools in mid 2020 was that Trump had said that schools should be open. For a political gain, for a political point, for TDS-broken brains, they harmed millions of school children. That alone should be cause for investigation. Shame on them. 

AND: they delayed the roll out of vaccines to past the election in 2020, because they didn’t want Trump to have an “October surprise”, by releasing a vaccine. Again, shame on them. 

Deceitful Divisive Doonesbury

Thoughts:

It’s propaganda not humour

Attacks Republicans and people with concerns about vaccine mandates (who G. Trudeau would no doubt call “anti-vaxxers”).

The study quoted (an academic study! In cartoon!) has been shown to be wrong, by Vinay Prasad an epidemiologist and bio-statistician. The error is the “fallacy of range”. Using the same data one could show that Democrats have lagged Republicans in Covid vax uptake. Further, there were confounding factors not accounted for in the study.

Hence the Deceitfulness. 

Who does Trudeau think he’s influencing? Only his own followers who are overwhelmingly on the Left of the Democratic Party. Who will only be further entrenched in their certainty that all Republicans are rubes. 

Hence the Divisiveness.

Does this help anyone? No.

Dodwell on inequality | BRICS and mortality

David Dodwell has a growing fascination with the collection of kleptocracies, theocracies and autocracies known as the BRICS.  

Somehow, because democracy is not perfect, the BRICS, this ragtag of scoundrels, are better.
Me (and also Churchill): "Democratic capitalism is the worst system … apart from all the others."

Opinion | Political silence on inequality is strangling prosperity and democracy scmp.com

ADDED: Dodwell blames the west for failing to provide Covid vaccines to “the world’s poor”, aka Africa. But Africa had better Covid mortality outcomes than all of the west (28 times fewer deaths). Without the vaccines. No one talks about that. 

“Pandemic Costs: the costs of Lockdowns vs Mortality” | Peter Forsythe April 2020

I posted this early in the pandemic. I think it stands up pretty well.

Despite this, most people, I think, stay committed to various governments' Lockdown narratives. 

If anything they say lockdowns should have been "sooner, faster, harder". Harder, harder…

There is zero evidence — even three years later — that lockdowns were effective. See this Scotland study as the latest such, showing meagre effects of NPIs and even of vaccines. Especially since the elderly, the most at risk, also tended to be the most vaccine hesitant — even here in Hong Kong where one can’t blame the hesitancy on the likes of JFK Jr. And vaccines were pushed in the young who were, and remain, minimally at risk from Covid. 

There is no evidence that the benefits (fewer covid deaths … perhaps) outweigh the costs (livelihoods, excess non-Covid deaths, mental health, education).

How to “prevent” the next pandemic? The problem is in the title

[PRE-WORD: I’d meant to write a review of this book for some time. Finally got around to posting to Amazon, copy here]

The problem is the title.

Because this book doesn’t tell us how to “prevent” the next pandemic. It suggests how to deal with the next pandemic. A pandemic that’s assumed by Gates to be on the way, just around the corner. And is going to be be worse than Covid. For sure. 

And how to deal with it is more of the same: big government like the CDC and the WH, big multinationals like the WHO, big mandates like stay at home and “mask up” (all randomised evidence aside)… in sum BIG CONTROL. Do what we did with Covid, just faster, harder, wider! 

That’s not what experience from Covid taught us. Sweden, which didn’t follow the European lockdown mandates, did as well as other in the EU. Florida (open state) did as well as California (closed state) on Covid and excess deaths and better with its  economy and education (didn’t shut schools).

I’ve admired Bill Gates, but lost a lot of respect for him over this pandemic. 

Imagine the main reason he gives for masks “working” is ANECDOTAL! (The hairdressers, some masked some not).

Shame on you Bill.

This book is not the book I hoped it might be.

BTW Bill Gates not even *mentioning* the Great Barrington Declaration is just NOT ACCEPTABLE in any serious book about how the pandemic should be handled. Agree with it or not, it was a major contributing to the debate, which was silenced the powers that be, yet turned out to may well have been the best approach. Yet Ignored by Gates.

All in all, shame on Gates for this tawdry book. 

To Bill: “yeah, but nah”.

ADDED: *preventing* the next pandemic would mean finding out how Covid started. But Gates is wildly uninterested in finding that out. He blithely dismisses the lab leak theory, even though it’s gaining greater and greater traction. He hardly talks about it. How can you *prevent* something that you don’t know how it originated? 

ADDED (ii): Scottish pandemic inquiry shows limited if any impact from mandates — lockdowns. masks, even vaccines. 

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Town Hall on NewsNation”

Click above for the video: RKK Jr with NewsNation

All I’ve known about Robert F. Kennedy Jr, for about all my life, is that he’s a vaccine nutter. That he believes vaccines cause autism and that’s crazy, so we can dismiss him as a loon. 

However: he does have views on other issues,,which we see in this Townhall with NewsNation, above. On the Ukraine War, on Immigration and the crisis at the border, on Covid lockdown harms, on the drugs scourge. They all strike me as eminently sensible. Even on vaccines, he says he’s not anti-vax (he and his family are fully vaccinated) but that vaccines ought be tested fully as are other medicines.

He also makes a good point about unifying people: how can you do that without talking to people that you don’t agree with? [PF: Instead of, say, Hillary Clinton’s calling Republicans “deplorables”, and members of “a cult”; or Joe Biden's calling Republicans “semi-fascists”].

I’n not known much if anything of NewsNation, until now. They’re labelled “Centre” by AllSides rating. They do “live and unedited” Townhalls. That’s good, isn’t it? And, I must say, it’s a relief to watch something where the moderator, here Elizabeth Vargas, is not always interrupting and trying to “fact-check” the guest. 

This is a good show of one of the main candidates in the 2024 election. After watching, would you rather him, or Joe Biden? 

ADDED: yet here, is how the “Centre” site has guests on who ignore every single one of RJK Jr’s policy proposals. All of which I thought made more sense than those of candidates on either side. 

It’s Briahna Joy Gray. Yay!

Click above for video

Lately I’ve been posting a lot of Briahna Joy Gray. Because she’s good and smart and sharp and on point and just plain common-sense smart. In the video above talking about the complexity of the RJK Jr campaign. He’s not just about vaccines, and he’s not just about some vaccine/autism quackery. 

There’s another good bit in the video here by Coleman Hughes speaking on CNN, another guy that I’ve followed for a while. He’s also a smart, independent thinker. Here talking of the revolving door and regulatory capture. Some 80% of the funding of the FDA, the US’ regulatory body, comes from the pharmaceutical industry. That may be legal, but is hardly comforting. 

The Great Debate: Joe Rogan, JFK Jr, Dr Peter Hotez

Click above for video 

Briahna Joy Gray on The Rising is super smart and super articulate. I’ve followed her for some time. And her comments on the Mehdi Hasan tone-deaf attack on RFK Jr

Here she gives the best run down of the Joe Rogan, Peter Hotez, RFK Jr, vaccine debate issue. And puts the case well that Dr Hotez should accept the debate. As of writing there’s $2.6 million on the table, to Dr Hotez’ favourite charity if he accepts the challenge. 

Other takes from Jimmy Dore. And another, with the Eric Weinstein tweet. And another on Marc Cuban.  All about the current debate du jour.

You may think RFK Jr is a nutter on vaccines. And he is, IMO, on the autism stuff. But he’s polling 20% among Democrats for the presidency. For that alone hE must be heard. And debated. The anti-debate argument is elitist and arrogant. 

ADDED: Eric Weinstein’s Twitter thread on the Great Debate issue. 

And a funny compilation of Dr Peter Hotez statements over the years. Note that the first statement saying how dangerous these mRNA vaccines are, was in the early days of Covid, during Trump. 

"Assessing COVID-19 pandemic policies and behaviours and their economic and educational trade-offs across US states from Jan 1, 2020, to July 31, 2022”| The Lancet

This is to try to explain the chart in the Lancet study.
Only those in red, left of the vertical line are 
beneficial to lower deaths. Others are ambiguous.

This is a dense and difficult paper. The above is my attempt to explain the many similar charts in the paper.

Summary: for Covid infections the policy responses (above) had some limited effects. For Covid deaths, however, the policy responses had zero unambiguous effects, apart from vaccines, which unambiguously lowered death rates. 

I’d argue that deaths per capita are the best comparison, because we know what deaths are and while we can’t know that infection rates were measured in the same way everywhere, no matter how well-intentioned the testing. 

For the next pandemic, the lesson is: get making a vaccine. And don’t mandate stuff like school closures, masking, etc. 

My earlier post on this Lancet Study

Covid: the only thing that made any difference was vaccines. All the other lockdown stuff, masks, distancing, didn’t help

Florida was lambasted during Covid, for "being so lax". In the end
Florida performed better than California.
Florida deaths: 313/100k. California 418/100k

From a new study in the Lancet, based on the 50 US States. This is the best comparison, because they are all on one continent, all keep good records, and all have a Federal government oversight of their health systems. 

The conclusion: the only thing that really helped keep Covid deaths per 100,000 down was the rate of vaccination. The other measures didn’t help. Whether or not you locked down; closed or didn’t close schools; closed or kept open the beaches; let bars and restaurants open or forced them to close. The whole lot of all that stuff, all those Non Pharmaceutical Interventions, didn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. The data are in. 

I suggest only looking the death rates and not the infection rates. Because deaths are carefully registered whereas infection rates depend on how much you test. You could have two places with the same infection rate; one tests a lot and finds a lot of infections, one doesn’t test a lot and finds few infections. Deaths per 100,000 are a more reliable measure of how well your pandemic policies worked. 

On that measure, the only thing that had an unequivocal effect was vaccination rates. All the rest: closing bars, closing restaurants, closing schools, stay-at-home orders, mask mandates, social distancing mandates, the whole panoply of what became known as NPI -- non-pharmaceutical interventions -- had zero to little effect. Yet they had massive negative effects on livelihoods; on the economy; on mental health; on kids’ education levels. 

And those effects were worst for the least privileged. The laptop class simply didn’t care for the working class. 

“Laptop class”: This needs to be a much more widely talked about category. Those who live with and by their laptop, who can be anywhere, live anywhere, make their living anywhere and don’t suffer if they are told to stay at home. Indeed, who love to stay at home. And be waited on by the gig-economy people. To be Ubered everywhere, to be Amazoned for books and other junk, who are Deliveroo’d each day their daily bread: but I’m sorry I can’t forgive them their trespasses. For they never cared for them, the untemencsch who serve them. 

Bitter, o bitter, is my feeling to the Laptop Class. 

(Of which, btw, I of course am one. And of which almost all my friends and family are part)

Covid in HK: Public Health Policy by Vox Pop?

Online here. Comments mostly mocking 

An alternative headline “Over half in city taken in by government propaganda”. 

Remember: in 2020 the CDC, the National Institutes of Health and Infectious Diseases, and the WHO, all quoted the science: masking is not necessary, because it doesn’t help stop transmission. They all, those very same organisations, reversed themselves in 2021, on the basis no new accepted science. The accepted science being: the largest review of RCT evidence, the Cochrane study earlier this year, a meta analysis of 17 Random Controlled Trials, which found no significant positive effect of masking at a population level. That remains the case. 

I’ll bet not a one of the 72% pro-maskers among the 611 interviewees will have read the literature. They all wore masks for two years because the government told them to wear masks. And told them that they worked. And they believed the government. They accepted that they worked. With no evidence provided by the government. (I know this specifically because I followed the issue closely).  

As for “vaccine hesitancy”, well there’s the fact that we now know Covid vaccines don’t stop transmission and only, arguably, reduce the severity, of an already much less serious disease than it was three years ago. Some folks just can’t let Covid go.

I’m startled and disappointed that a School of Public Health and Primary Care thinks it’s valid to quote Vox Pop, the views of random public, essentially with no comment by the School, supposedly the experts here. We’re supposed to make policy by what the crowd thinks, now? It’s policy by mob rule, now?

“There’s a much deeper story here” | Whitney Webb

The question now is not “who was involved with Epstein?” But “who was NOT involved with Epstein?”

I’ve been a big fan of Bill Gates in these pages. But there’s more and more smoke. A fug of smoke. 

Separately he bought Pfizer for $5 a share at the beginning of the pandemic and sold them for $50 at the end, making $500 million along the way, chump change, perhaps, but, even for Gates, not shabby and maybe, perhaps, some reason he waxed loud on vax mandates. 

Suneel Dhand on all matters Covid and pandemic handling

Click above for video 

Dr Suneel Dhand, front-line physician who treated thousands of Covid patients, with observations on how the pandemic was handled by the authorities. 

“You can’t mandate a vaccine that is non-sterilising”. Polio vaccines are sterilising. Covid vaccines are not. 

It was crazy not to focus on the elderly and those with comorbidities. We knew very early in how skewed to the elderly the virus was. (He’s echoing without mentioning, the Great Barrington Declaration).

“Germophobia would be the downfall of the human race”. We need exposure to bugs and nasties. That’s why I pick up food off the floor and eat it!

“Has there ever been a time when the people doing censorship are the good guys?”

Answer: No. Except now. When that’s what the game is. Censorship is good. Being “a free speech fundamentalist” is now considered far-right! 

The extraordinary birth and growth of the Censorship Industrial Complex. 💬

Dr Clare Craig on the scientific response to the COVID-19 pandemic, lock...

Click above for video

Dr Clare Craig is a consultant pathologist with over twenty years’ experience. She is co-chair of the Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART). I don’t know HART and haven’t googled it, but I suspect it might be described as a “misinformation” group, on the basis that it doesn’t agree (or doesn’t always agree) with the government agenda. I’d rather just listen to what she says, with her expertise. She’s not a YouTube rando!

Above she talks to “British Thought Leaders”.

Lowest excess deaths in Europe 2020-2022 goes to … Sweden

	Mark Changizi ⁦‪@MarkChangizi‬⁩ Lowest excess deaths in Europe over 2020 to 2022 goes to … Sweden, the one country that did not panic and toss out all wisdom. svd.se/a/JQvVnj/ander… pic.twitter.com/vzGW0msDKd   5/3/2023, 8:52 pm

Let's recall that Sweden went its own way, which was a version of the Barrington Declaration’s “focussed protection" strategy and were widely mocked for doing so. For not locking down, for not implementing mask and vaccine mandates, for keeping schools open.

Somehow I just feel that no lesson will be learnt from this by all the countries that went the strict "Covid restrictions" route.Places like Australia, Europe, much if Asia and we here in Hong Kong. I sense that 

Preparing for the next pandemic” means getting ready to lockdown and mandate even quicker and harder than last time. Just a feeling though. But look at what Matt Hancock said of Sweden at the time: he didn’t want to see if there was anything to learn from them. He just wanted “four bullet points to make them look bad”. Shame.

I commented (positively) on Sweden over the last three years on this blog, and got some blowback for doing so. Along the lines of "just you wait, Sweden will crash and burn". 

Here are the actual receipts, as they say.

The W.H.O. going for the monster globalist grift

Click above for article. My comments on it below

David Dodwell goes all-in spruiking the WHO’s attempt to corner the global pandemic prevention market.

Without Googling, I'm struggling to think of anything positive that the WHO did during Covid. What I do remember, and this is just from memory, are plenty of negatives:

(1) The WHO were late in declaring a "pandemic", because of Chinese pressure.

(2) The WHO were late in admitting there was human-to-human transmission of Covid, because of Chinese pressure. 

(3) The WHO did not criticise China for its failure to give early warning of the virus, as they were obliged to do under protocols established (and agreed by China) post-SARS, because of Chinese pressure. 

(4) The WHO spoke glowingly (early 2020) of the Wuhan lockdowns — which was instrumental in convincing western governments to do the same, lockdowns which have in many cases been harmful. 

(5) The WHO failed to give early advice to close borders to travel from Wuhan/Hubei.

(6) The WHO whitewashed an official investigation to the origins of Covid, agreeing -- under Chinese pressure -- to say a lab leak was "extremely unlikely" (I don't think it is, and neither, I believe, does the majority of expert opinion). The WHO have since said they will abandon the second phase of the investigation into Covid-19 origins. Great. 

(7)The WHO had nothing to do with the development of vaccines. They confined their involvement to berating western governments for “lack of equity” in their distribution.

(8) Along the way, the WHO failed to support the Great Barrington Declaration of “Focussed Protection”, failing even to give a chance for it to be debated. Focussed protection is now agreed to be the better way to handle a pandemic as opposed to global lockdowns. 

(9) I also seem to remember, but I’m not so sure, that the WHO failed to tell us early enough that Covid is aerosol-borne and not spread by fomites (droplets). Handling of each type is dramatically different. 

(10) Masks: the WHO gave conflicting advice. Though, TBF, so did everyone. Then again, you’d expect the WHO to have it right, if anyone would, wouldn’t you? And they could have tried to resolve the issue with RCTs on effectiveness of mask usage IRL, outside the laboratory, but failed to do so.

Meantime the EU — that most close-knit of regional organisations — immediately as Covid struck, reverted to handling of lockdowns, of vaccines, of the whole panoply of Covid responses, medical and NPI, on a national level — not as a unified Europe. If the EU can’t do it, how do we expect the WHO, this failure of an international body, to do it globally? 

Yet the WHO — with David Dodwell dutifully cheering it on — wants us to give it *hundreds of billions* of dollars — perennially! — to pursue an international pandemic *Treaty*?? To develop a “global system” of pandemic handling that experience shows us will crumple at the first encounter with reality? 

Panglossian piffle.

Pull the other one, David!

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics… wielded as cudgels by doctors with bothers

Dr David Gorski reminds me of a study that I’d seen a few weeks ago and had meant to write about because I thought it misleading. Gorski uses it to cudgel fellow medics, those who don’t agree with his hyper vax policy, those he calls “not anti vaxxers” but not pro enough for him. And the study gives him ammunition because it shows, he says, that Covid is a “leading cause of death amongst children”. I don’t agree, for reasons I’ll set out.

The above charts are from the study  “Assessment of COVID-19 as the Underlying Cause of Death Among Children and Young People Aged 0 to 19 Years in the US”, link here. 

My comments:

1. The top chart <1 y includes children that had “certain conditions arising in the perinatal period, P00-P96”, if they had Covid when they died -- from which we note how many diseases this one item includes and the number of which are very serious. These children died “with” a serious disease, rather than “from” Covid alone. Almost all of these had non-Covid illnesses serious enough for death, without Covid. Nevertheless, we know from evidence elsewhere that there were pressures to put Covid on death certificates, pressure easy to give in to because of federal government subsidies to deaths from Covid. 

This inclusion of “with” various diseases, not “from” Covid alone is revealed deep in an appendix of the study, here.

If we remove the double counting, we had a figure of around 0.4 for Covid, below influenza.

2. Dr Gorski says that Covid is the most fatal of the respiratory illnesses for children and young people. However, he does not say — perhaps he hasn’t figured it out — that the top cause on the list above, the perinatal related diseases, include respiratory illnesses. 

3. Gorski allows the lumping together of many diseases under “perinatal conditions” but breaks out the respiratory diseases, to create a separate list with Covid at the top! Manipulative, I’d say.

4. If you do break out the “perinatal diseases”, not only do they include respiratory illnesses, but it means that Covid ends up at the bottom of a much longer list of illnesses causing death amongst CYP. 

5. Given the amount of comorbidities with the CYP in this study, when we strip them out, we end up with death rates of ~ one in a quarter of a million. 

6. Just to note again that the study includes adults of 18-19, whereas Gorski and others quoting the study always talk of “children”, which is misleading. 

Gorski says he tries to convince the hesitant doctors that we used to have childhood deaths from measles, until the vaccine. To which I’d note, as I believe, (1) that the measles vaccine did stop getting the disease, whereas Covid vaccines do not and (2) that measles vaccines last a lifetime (?) while Covid vaccines last 3-6 months. 

Given death rates of healthy children catching Covid is less than 1 in 250,000, whereas likelihood of a side effect is one in 800, it ought to be up to the parents, given this knowledge, to decide for themselves.