Ah, Vaccines! They Are Not What You Think

by Jon Rappoport

December 10, 2020

Now that governments are going to roll out “a vaccine to save the world” (see here and here), people should become aware of a history they don’t know exists.

The article below was a small section of my book, AIDS INC., which I wrote in 1987-8. At the time, I decided to take a look at vaccines and see what I could find out about them.

My ensuing research led me into all sorts of surprising areas.

Since the period of 1987-8, much more has come to light about vaccine safety and efficacy. Here is what I discovered way back when—


“The combined death rate from scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough and measles among children up to fifteen shows that nearly 90 percent of the total decline in mortality between 1860 and 1965 had occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunization. In part, this recession may be attributed to improved housing and to a decrease in the virulence of micro-organisms, but by far the most important factor was a higher host-resistance due to better nutrition.” Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis, Bantam Books, 1977

“In a recent British outbreak of whooping cough, for example, even fully immunized children contracted the disease in fairly large numbers; and the rates of serious complications and death were reduced only slightly. In another recent outbreak of pertussis, 46 of the 85 fully immunized children studied eventually contracted the disease.

“In 1977, 34 new cases of measles were reported on the campus of UCLA, in a population that was supposedly 91% immune, according to careful serological testing. Another 20 cases of measles were reported in the Pecos, New Mexico, area within a period of a few months in 1981, and 75% of them had been fully immunized, some of them quite recently. A survey of sixth-graders in a well-immunized urban community revealed that about 15% of this age group are still susceptible to rubella, a figure essentially identical with that of the pre-vaccine era.” Richard Moskowitz, MD, The Case Against Immunizations, 1983, American Institute of Homeopathy.

“Of all reported whooping cough cases between 1979 and 1984 in children over 7 months of age – that is, old enough to have received the primary course of the DPT shots (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus) – 41% occurred in children who had received three or more shots and 22% in children who had one or two immunizations.

“Among children under 7 months of age who had whooping cough, 34% had been immunized between one and three times…

“… Based on the only U.S. findings on adverse DPT reactions, an FDA-financed study at the University of California, Los Angeles, one out of every 350 children will have a convulsion; one in 180 children will experience high-pitched screaming; and one in 66 will have a fever of 105 degrees or more.” Jennifer Hyman, Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, special supplement on DPT, dated April, 1987.

“A study undertaken in 1979 at the University of California, Los Angeles, under the sponsorship of the Food and Drug Administration, and which has been confirmed by other studies, indicates that in the U.S.A. approximately 1,000 infants die annually as a direct result of DPT vaccinations, and these are classified as SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) deaths. These represent about 10 to 15% of the total number of SIDS deaths occurring annually in the U.S.A. (between 8,000 and 10,000 depending on which statistics are used).” Leon Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, CW Daniel Company Limited, Saffron Walden, Essex, England, 1987.

“Assistant Secretary of Health Edward Brandt, Jr., MD, testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, rounded… figures off to 9,000 cases of convulsions, 9,000 cases of collapse, and 17,000 cases of high-pitched screaming for a total of 35,000 acute neurological reactions occurring within forty-eight hours of a DPT shot among America’s children every year.” DPT: A Shot in the Dark, by Harris L. Coulter and Barbara Loe Fischer, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

“While 70-80% of British children were immunized against pertussis in 1970-71, the rate is now 39%. The committee predicts that the next pertussis epidemic will probably turn out to be more severe than the one in 1974/75. However, they do not explain why, in 1970/71, there were more than 33,000 cases of pertussis with 41 fatal cases among the very well immunized British child population; whereas in 1974/75, with a declining rate of vaccination, a pertussis epidemic caused only 25,000 cases with 25 fatalities.” Wolfgang Ehrengut, Lancet, Feb. 18, 1978, p. 370.

“… Barker and Pichichero, in a prospective study of 1232 children in Denver, Colorado, found after DTP that only 7% of those vaccinated were free from untoward reactions, which included pyrexia (53%), acute behavioral changes (82%), prolonged screaming (13%), and listlessness, anorexia and vomiting. 71% of those receiving second injections of DTP experienced two or more of the reactions monitored.” Lancet, May 28, 1983, p. 1217

“Publications by the World Health Organization show that diphtheria is steadily declining in most European countries, including those in which there has been no immunization. The decline began long before vaccination was developed. There is certainly no guarantee that vaccination will protect a child against the disease; in fact, over 30,000 cases of diphtheria have been recorded in the United Kingdom in fully immunized children.” Leon Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, p. 58.

“Pertussis (whooping cough) immunization is controversial, as the side effects have received a great deal of publicity. The counter claim is that the effectiveness and protection offered by the procedure far outweigh the possible ill effects… annual deaths, per million children, from this disease over the period from 1900 to the mid-nineteen seventies, shows that from a high point of just under 900 deaths per million children (under age 15) in 1905, the decline has been consistent and dramatic. There had been a lowering of mortality rates of approximately 80% by the time immunization was introduced on a mass scale, in the mid-nineteen fifties. The decline has continued, albeit at a slower rate, ever since. No credit can be given to vaccination for the major part of the decline since it was not in use.” Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, p. 63.

“… the swine-flu vaccination program was one of its (CDC) greatest blunders. It all began in 1976 when CDC scientists saw that a virus involved in a flu attack outbreak at Fort Dix, N.J., was similar to the swine-flu virus that killed 500,000 Americans in 1918. Health officials immediately launched a 100-million dollar program to immunize every American. But the expected epidemic never materialized, and the vaccine led to partial paralysis in 532 people. There were 32 deaths.” U.S. News and World Report, Joseph Carey, October 14, 1985, p. 70, “How Medical Sleuths Track Killer Diseases.”

“Despite (cases) in which (smallpox) vaccination plainly failed to protect the population, and despite the rampant side-effects of the methods, the proponents of vaccination continued their attempts to justify the methods by claims that the disease had declined in Europe as a whole during the period of its compulsory use. If the decline could be correlated with the use of the vaccination, then all else could be set aside, and the advantage between its current low incidence could be shown to outweigh the periodic failures of the method, and to favour the continued use of vaccination. However, the credit for the decline in the incidence of smallpox could not be given to vaccination. The fact is that its incidence declined in all parts of Europe, whether or not vaccination was employed.” Chaitow, Vaccination and Immunization, pp. 6-7.

“Smallpox, like typhus, has been dying out (in England) since 1780. Vaccination in this country has largely fallen into disuse since people began to realize how its value was discredited by the great smallpox epidemic of 1871-2 (which occurred after extensive vaccination).” W. Scott Webb, A Century of Vaccination, Swan Sonnenschein, 1898.

“In this incident (Kyoto, Japan, 1948) – the most serious of its kind – a toxic (vaccine) batch of alum-precipitated toxoid (APT) was responsible for illness in over 600 infants and for no fewer than 68 deaths.

“On 20 and 22 October, 1948, a large number of babies and children in the city of Kyoto received their first injection of APT. On the 4th and 5th of November, 15,561 babies and children aged some months to 13 years received their second dose. One to two days later, 606 of those who had been injected fell ill. Of these, 9 died of acute diphtheritic paralysis in seven to fourteen days, and 59 of late paralysis mainly in four to seven weeks.” Sir Graham Wilson, Hazards of Immunization, Athone Press, University of London, 1967.

“Accidents may, however, follow the use of this so-called killed (rabies) vaccine owing to inadequate processing. A very serious occurrence of this sort occurred at Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, in 1960. No fewer than 18 out of 66 persons vaccinated with Fermi’s carbolized (rabies) vaccine suffered from encephalomyelitis and every one of the eighteen died.” Sir Graham Wilson, Hazards of Immunization.

“At a press conference in Washington on 24 July, 1942, the Secretary of War reported that 28,585 cases of jaundice had been observed in the (American) Army between 1 January and 4 July after yellow fever vaccination, and of these 62 proved fatal.” Sir Graham Wilson, Hazards of Immunization.

“The world’s biggest trial (conducted in south India) to assess the value of BCG tuberculosis vaccine has made the startling revelation that the vaccine ‘does not give any protection against bacillary forms of tuberculosis.’ The study said to be ‘most exhaustive and meticulous,’ was launched in 1968 by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) with assistance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.

“The incidence of new cases among the BCG vaccinated group was slightly (but statistically insignificantly) higher than in the control group, a finding that led to the conclusion that BCG’s protective effect ‘was zero.’” New Scientist, November 15, 1979, as quoted by Hans Ruesch in Naked Empress, Civis Publishers, Switzerland, 1982.

“Between 10 December 1929 and 30 April 1930, 251 of 412 infants born in Lubeck received three doses of BCG vaccine by the mouth during the first ten days of life. Of these 251, 72 died of tuberculosis, most of them in two to five months and all but one before the end of the first year. In addition, 135 suffered from clinical tuberculosis but eventually recovered; and 44 became tuberculin-positive but remained well. None of the 161 unvaccinated infants born at the time was affected in this way and none of these died of tuberculosis within the following three years.” Hazards of Immunization, Wilson.

“We conducted a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial to test the efficacy of the 14-valent pneumococcal capsular polysaccharide vaccine in 2295 high-risk patients… Seventy-one episodes of proved or probable pneumococcal pneumonia or bronchitis occurred among 63 of the patients (27 placebo recipients and 36 vaccine recipients)… We were unable to demonstrate any efficacy of the pneumococcal vaccine in preventing pneumonia or bronchitis in this population.” New England Journal of Medicine, November 20, 1986, p. 1318, Michael Simberkoff et al.

“But already before Salk developed his vaccine, polio had been constantly regressing; the 39 cases out of every 100,000 inhabitants registered in 1942 had gradually diminished from year to year until they were reduced to only 15 cases in 1952… according to M. Beddow Baylay, the English surgeon and medical historian.” Slaughter of the Innocent, Hans Reusch, Civitas Publishers, Switzerland, and Swain, New York, 1983.

“Many published stories and reports have stated, implied and otherwise led professional people and the public to believe that the sharp reduction of cases (and of deaths) from poliomyelitis in 1955 as compared to 1954 is attributable to the Salk vaccine… That it is a misconception follows from these considerations. The number of children inoculated has been too small to account for the decrease. The sharp decrease was apparent before the inoculations began or could take effect and was of the same order as the decrease following the immediate post-inoculation period.” Dr. Herbert Ratner, Child and Family, vol. 20, no. 1, 1987.

“So far it is hardly possible to gain insight into the extent of the immunization catastrophe of 1955 in the United States. It may be considered certain that the officially ascertained 200 cases (of polio) which were caused directly or indirectly by the (polio) vaccination constitute minimum figures… It can hardly be estimated how many of the 1359 (polio) cases among vaccinated persons must be regarded as failures of the vaccine and how many of them were infected by the vaccine. A careful study of the epidemiologic course of polio in the United States yields indications of grave significance. In numerous states of the U.S.A., typical early epidemics developed with the immunizations in the spring of 1955… The vaccination incidents of the year 1955 cannot be exclusively traced back to the failure of one manufacturing firm.” Dr. Herbert Ratner, Child and Family, 1980, vol. 19, no. 4, “Story of the Salk Vaccine (Part 2).”

“Suffice it to say that most of the large (polio) epidemics that have occurred in this country since the introduction of the Salk vaccine have followed the wide-scale use of the vaccine and have been characterized by an uncommon early seasonal onset. To name a few, there is the Massachusetts epidemic of 1955; the Chicago epidemic of 1956; and the Des Moines epidemic of 1959.” Dr. Herbert Ratner, Child and Family, 1980 vol. 19, no. 4.

“The live (Sabin) poliovirus vaccine has been the predominant cause of domestically arising cases of paralytic poliomyelitis in the United States since 1972. To avoid the occurrence of such cases, it would be necessary to discontinue the routine use of live poliovirus vaccine.” Jonas Salk, Science, March 4, 1977, p. 845.

“By the (U.S.) government’s own admission, there has been a 41% failure rate in persons who were previously vaccinated against the (measles) virus.” Dr. Anthony Morris, John Chriss, BG Young, “Occurrence of Measles in Previously Vaccinated Individuals,” 1979; presented at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology at Fort Detrick, Maryland, April 27, 1979.

“Prior to the time doctors began giving rubella (German measles) vaccinations, an estimated 85% of adults were naturally immune to the disease (for life). Because of immunization, the vast majority of women never acquire natural immunity (or lifetime protection).” Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, Let’s Live, December 1983, as quoted by Carolyn Reuben in the LA WEEKLY, June 28, 1985.

“Adminstration of KMV (killed measles vaccine) apparently set in motion an aberrant immunologic response that not only failed to protect children against natural measles, but resulted in heightened susceptibility.” JAMA Aug. 22, 1980, vol. 244, p. 804, Vincent Fulginiti and Ray Helfer. The authors indicate that such falsely protected children can come down with “an often severe, atypical form of measles. Atypical measles is characterized by fever, headache… and a diverse rash (which)… may consist of a mixture of macules, papules, vesicles, and pustules… ”


The above quotes reflect only a mere fraction of an available literature which shows there is a need for an extensive review of vaccination. It is certain that undisclosed, unlooked for illness occurs as a result of vaccines, or as a result of infection after protective immunity should have been conferred but wasn’t. A certain amount of this sort of illness is immunosuppressive in the widest sense, and some in a narrower sense (depression of T-cell numbers, etc.). When looking for unusual illness and immune depression, vaccines are one of those areas which remain partially hidden from investigation. That is a mistake. It is not adequate to say, “Vaccines are simple; they stimulate the immune system and confer immunity against specific germ agents.” That is the glossy presentation. What vaccines often do is something else. They engage some aspect of the body’s immune-response, but to what effect over the long term? Why, for example, do children who have measles vaccine develop a susceptibility to another more severe, atypical measles? Is that virulent form of the disease the result of reactivation of the virus in the vaccine?

Official reports on vaccine reactions are often at odds with unofficial estimates because of the method of analysis used. If vaccine-reaction is defined as a small set of possible effects experienced within 72 hours of an inoculation, then figures will be smaller. But doctors like G.T. Stewart, of the University of Glasgow, have found through meticulous investigation, including visits to hospitals and interviews with parents of vaccinated children, that reactions as severe as brain-damage (e.g., from the DPT vaccine) can be overlooked, go unreported and can be assumed mistakenly to have come from other causes.

from:   https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/12/10/covid-vaccine-history-matters/

Doctors Speak: The Great Barrington Declaration

Imprimis

A Sensible and Compassionate Anti-COVID Strategy

Jay Bhattacharya
Stanford University


Jay BhattacharyaJay Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, where he received both an M.D. and a Ph.D. in economics. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and director of the Stanford Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. A co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, his research has been published in economics, statistics, legal, medical, public health, and health policy journals.


The following is adapted from a panel presentation on October 9, 2020, in Omaha, Nebraska, at a Hillsdale College Free Market Forum.

My goal today is, first, to present the facts about how deadly COVID-19 actually is; second, to present the facts about who is at risk from COVID; third, to present some facts about how deadly the widespread lockdowns have been; and fourth, to recommend a shift in public policy.

1. The COVID-19 Fatality Rate

In discussing the deadliness of COVID, we need to distinguish COVID cases from COVID infections. A lot of fear and confusion has resulted from failing to understand the difference.

We have heard much this year about the “case fatality rate” of COVID. In early March, the case fatality rate in the U.S. was roughly three percent—nearly three out of every hundred people who were identified as “cases” of COVID in early March died from it. Compare that to today, when the fatality rate of COVID is known to be less than one half of one percent.

In other words, when the World Health Organization said back in early March that three percent of people who get COVID die from it, they were wrong by at least one order of magnitude. The COVID fatality rate is much closer to 0.2 or 0.3 percent. The reason for the highly inaccurate early estimates is simple: in early March, we were not identifying most of the people who had been infected by COVID.

“Case fatality rate” is computed by dividing the number of deaths by the total number of confirmed cases. But to obtain an accurate COVID fatality rate, the number in the denominator should be the number of people who have been infected—the number of people who have actually had the disease—rather than the number of confirmed cases.

In March, only the small fraction of infected people who got sick and went to the hospital were identified as cases. But the majority of people who are infected by COVID have very mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. These people weren’t identified in the early days, which resulted in a highly misleading fatality rate. And that is what drove public policy. Even worse, it continues to sow fear and panic, because the perception of too many people about COVID is frozen in the misleading data from March.

So how do we get an accurate fatality rate? To use a technical term, we test for seroprevalence—in other words, we test to find out how many people have evidence in their bloodstream of having had COVID.

This is easy with some viruses. Anyone who has had chickenpox, for instance, still has that virus living in them—it stays in the body forever. COVID, on the other hand, like other coronaviruses, doesn’t stay in the body. Someone who is infected with COVID and then clears it will be immune from it, but it won’t still be living in them.

What we need to test for, then, are antibodies or other evidence that someone has had COVID. And even antibodies fade over time, so testing for them still results in an underestimate of total infections.

Seroprevalence is what I worked on in the early days of the epidemic. In April, I ran a series of studies, using antibody tests, to see how many people in California’s Santa Clara County, where I live, had been infected. At the time, there were about 1,000 COVID cases that had been identified in the county, but our antibody tests found that 50,000 people had been infected—i.e., there were 50 times more infections than identified cases. This was enormously important, because it meant that the fatality rate was not three percent, but closer to 0.2 percent; not three in 100, but two in 1,000.

When it came out, this Santa Clara study was controversial. But science is like that, and the way science tests controversial studies is to see if they can be replicated. And indeed, there are now 82 similar seroprevalence studies from around the world, and the median result of these 82 studies is a fatality rate of about 0.2 percent—exactly what we found in Santa Clara County.

In some places, of course, the fatality rate was higher: in New York City it was more like 0.5 percent. In other places it was lower: the rate in Idaho was 0.13 percent. What this variation shows is that the fatality rate is not simply a function of how deadly a virus is. It is also a function of who gets infected and of the quality of the health care system. In the early days of the virus, our health care systems managed COVID poorly. Part of this was due to ignorance: we pursued very aggressive treatments, for instance, such as the use of ventilators, that in retrospect might have been counterproductive. And part of it was due to negligence: in some places, we needlessly allowed a lot of people in nursing homes to get infected.

But the bottom line is that the COVID fatality rate is in the neighborhood of 0.2 percent.

2. Who Is at Risk?

The single most important fact about the COVID pandemic—in terms of deciding how to respond to it on both an individual and a governmental basis—is that it is not equally dangerous for everybody. This became clear very early on, but for some reason our public health messaging failed to get this fact out to the public.

It still seems to be a common perception that COVID is equally dangerous to everybody, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. There is a thousand-fold difference between the mortality rate in older people, 70 and up, and the mortality rate in children. In some sense, this is a great blessing. If it was a disease that killed children preferentially, I for one would react very differently. But the fact is that for young children, this disease is less dangerous than the seasonal flu. This year, in the United States, more children have died from the seasonal flu than from COVID by a factor of two or three.

Whereas COVID is not deadly for children, for older people it is much more deadly than the seasonal flu. If you look at studies worldwide, the COVID fatality rate for people 70 and up is about four percent—four in 100 among those 70 and older, as opposed to two in 1,000 in the overall population.

Again, this huge difference between the danger of COVID to the young and the danger of COVID to the old is the most important fact about the virus. Yet it has not been sufficiently emphasized in public health messaging or taken into account by most policymakers.

3. Deadliness of the Lockdowns

The widespread lockdowns that have been adopted in response to COVID are unprecedented—lockdowns have never before been tried as a method of disease control. Nor were these lockdowns part of the original plan. The initial rationale for lockdowns was that slowing the spread of the disease would prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. It became clear before long that this was not a worry: in the U.S. and in most of the world, hospitals were never at risk of being overwhelmed. Yet the lockdowns were kept in place, and this is turning out to have deadly effects.

Those who dare to talk about the tremendous economic harms that have followed from the lockdowns are accused of heartlessness. Economic considerations are nothing compared to saving lives, they are told. So I’m not going to talk about the economic effects—I’m going to talk about the deadly effects on health, beginning with the fact that the U.N. has estimated that 130 million additional people will starve this year as a result of the economic damage resulting from the lockdowns.

In the last 20 years we’ve lifted one billion people worldwide out of poverty. This year we are reversing that progress to the extent—it bears repeating—that an estimated 130 million more people will starve.

Another result of the lockdowns is that people stopped bringing their children in for immunizations against diseases like diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), and polio, because they had been led to fear COVID more than they feared these more deadly diseases. This wasn’t only true in the U.S. Eighty million children worldwide are now at risk of these diseases. We had made substantial progress in slowing them down, but now they are going to come back.

Large numbers of Americans, even though they had cancer and needed chemotherapy, didn’t come in for treatment because they were more afraid of COVID than cancer. Others have skipped recommended cancer screenings. We’re going to see a rise in cancer and cancer death rates as a consequence. Indeed, this is already starting to show up in the data. We’re also going to see a higher number of deaths from diabetes due to people missing their diabetic monitoring.

Mental health problems are in a way the most shocking thing. In June of this year, a CDC survey found that one in four young adults between 18 and 24 had seriously considered suicide. Human beings are not, after all, designed to live alone. We’re meant to be in company with one another. It is unsurprising that the lockdowns have had the psychological effects that they’ve had, especially among young adults and children, who have been denied much-needed socialization.

In effect, what we’ve been doing is requiring young people to bear the burden of controlling a disease from which they face little to no risk. This is entirely backward from the right approach.

4. Where to Go from Here

Last week I met with two other epidemiologists—Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University and Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University—in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The three of us come from very different disciplinary backgrounds and from very different parts of the political spectrum. Yet we had arrived at the same view—the view that the widespread lockdown policy has been a devastating public health mistake. In response, we wrote and issued the Great Barrington Declaration, which can be viewed—along with explanatory videos, answers to frequently asked questions, a list of co-signers, etc.—online at www.gbdeclaration.org.

The Declaration reads:

As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.

Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings, and deteriorating mental health—leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.

Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.

Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.

As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all—including the vulnerable—falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity—i.e., the point at which the rate of new infections is stable—and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sports, and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.

***

I should say something in conclusion about the idea of herd immunity, which some people mischaracterize as a strategy of letting people die. First, herd immunity is not a strategy—it is a biological fact that applies to most infectious diseases. Even when we come up with a vaccine, we will be relying on herd immunity as an end-point for this epidemic. The vaccine will help, but herd immunity is what will bring it to an end. And second, our strategy is not to let people die, but to protect the vulnerable. We know the people who are vulnerable, and we know the people who are not vulnerable. To continue to act as if we do not know these things makes no sense.

My final point is about science. When scientists have spoken up against the lockdown policy, there has been enormous pushback: “You’re endangering lives.” Science cannot operate in an environment like that. I don’t know all the answers to COVID; no one does. Science ought to be able to clarify the answers. But science can’t do its job in an environment where anyone who challenges the status quo gets shut down or cancelled.

To date, the Great Barrington Declaration has been signed by over 43,000 medical and public health scientists and medical practitioners. The Declaration thus does not represent a fringe view within the scientific community. This is a central part of the scientific debate, and it belongs in the debate. Members of the general public can also sign the Declaration.

Together, I think we can get on the other side of this pandemic. But we have to fight back. We’re at a place where our civilization is at risk, where the bonds that unite us are at risk of being torn. We shouldn’t be afraid. We should respond to the COVID virus rationally: protect the vulnerable, treat the people who get infected compassionately, develop a vaccine. And while doing these things we should bring back the civilization that we had so that the cure does not end up being worse than the disease. 

from:    https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/sensible-compassionate-anti-covid-strategy/

Questioning Klaus

By Chris MacIntosh at Capitalist Exploits

Thought for the day: Totalitarians never view themselves as totalitarian. Utopians believe fervently that what they are forcing upon others is for their own good.

If you’ve not heard of the World Economic Forum, I’d urge you to pay extremely close attention because they’ve been driving much of the mayhem you’ve experienced this year.

Klaus Schwab, who is the founder of the World Economic Forum, and Thierry Malleret featured an article accompanying the launch of a co-authored book entitled “COVID-19: The Great Reset”.

This article is a rebuttal to Klaus and all technocrats like him.


 

Already, in barely six months, the COVID-19 pandemic has plunged our world in its entirety — and each of us individually — into the most challenging times we’ve faced in generations.

Incorrect. The virus is simply a virus, similar to other viruses that humans have overcome throughout our history as a species. Indeed, here are the CDC’s numbers themselves so that we may put things into context.

Survival rates by age group:

  • 0-19: 99.997%
  • 20-49: 99.98%
  • 50-69: 99.5%
  • 70+: 94.6%

It was Klaus, our governments and institutions that have plunged the world into “the most challenging times we’ve faced”, through their idiotic draconian tyrannical policies that have been forced upon the world with zero room for debate. Highly credentialed professionals (see the Great Barrington declaration) across the world are simply censored when pointing out the madness.

It is a defining moment — we will be dealing with its fallout for years, and many things will change forever. It has wrought (and will continue to do so) economic disruption of monumental proportions, creating risk and volatility on multiple fronts — political, social, geopolitical — while exacerbating deep concerns about the environment and also extending the reach of technology into our lives.

On this we agree. We will indeed be dealing with the fallout for years. And yes, the economic disruption is of monumental proportions. Take, for instance, suicides, Klaus, which in Japan are now 8.5X the number of deaths from covid. At this point those officials still locking down, since we know the virus is nothing more than a bad flu should be summarily fired and brought to justice for crimes against humanity.

At this point it would be worth listening to Dr Roger Hodkinson, the ex-president of the pathology section of the Medical Association and formerly certified by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada as a general pathologist in 1976 and a Royal College Fellow. Here is Dr Roger Hodkinson addressing the Edmonton City Council Community and Public Services Committee meeting on Nov. 13 about the city’s move to extend its face-covering bylaw.

Moving right along to your statement Klaus of “concerns about the environment”. Is it not time you simply dropped the mask and revealed that yes, this is what it was all about from the get go. Agenda 2030, after all, was conceived before the manufactured pandemic. One would have thought that after Al Gore’s ridiculous and demonstrably false “Inconvenient Truth”, the junk science behind “anthropogenic global warming” would have deservedly been ridiculed and discarded on the trash heap of history. But instead it’s been re-birthed as a mask to implementing Communism 3.0. under the guise of “the Great Reset”. We see through you.

No industry or business will avoid the impact of these changes. Millions of companies risk falling behind, and many industries face an uncertain future; a few will thrive.

Those that have thrived are unsurprisingly the very same clutch of folks that are your buddies from Davos. Enormous corporations that benefit from the tyrannical lockdowns. It comes as no surprise that Bezos’ Amazon, Zuckerberg’s Facebook and Dorsey’s Twitter have all sucked up more power, influence, and market share while SMEs have been squashed by — again — policy and not the virus. Amazingly you’ve the gall to talk about equality while ensuring all of this takes place. And then there’s your buddy, Bill.

On an individual basis, for many, life as they’ve always known it is unraveling at alarming speed. This said, acute crises favor introspection and foster the potential for transformation.

The only thing we can transform, without unintended consequences, is ourselves. Nature does the rest. This is because the world is complex, far more complex than anyone — certainly you — can imagine. And in believing “we” (which we know means you and your fellow accomplices complicit in this crime) can transform it implies a belief you’ve a handle on the infinite amount of data points each second that occur in the world and furthermore how each of those data points may react to any change in any other data points. In short, you’ve the same misguided belief that centralised planning works. It doesn’t.

This “opportunity” is manufactured to amass enormous attention and force feed your Marxist neo-feudal agenda of reshaping the world in a centralised approach. It is worth noting at this point that EVERY single time mankind has embarked on “reshaping the world” to meet the objectives of a small group of intolerant people it has ended in genocide. Every. Single. Time.

Systematic Connectivity

A new world could emerge, the contours of which it is incumbent on us to reimagine and redraw.

There you go again with this notion that you and your out of touch friends know what is required for the rest of us.

The sudden and violent nature of the shock the pandemic is inflicting can make the scale of this challenge seem overwhelming.

Yes, you’re quite correct on the violent shock to society. As my friend Doug Casey remarked, “Masks, social distancing, lockdowns, and non-gathering are doing immense damage to society at every level—health-wise, socially, and financially. This nonsense is rupturing the social fabric everywhere. That’s extremely dangerous.”

This impression is due in no small measure to the fact that in today’s interdependent and hyper-connected world risks amplify each other: Individual risks or issues harbor the potential to create ricochet effects by provoking others (like unemployment potentially fuelling social unrest and impoverishment triggering involuntary mass migration).

“Unemployment potentially fuelling social unrest…” Really? “Involuntary mass migration” is all due to policy, especially that of the EU, whether it be to create social justice or creating conflict. So far, all the trouble you refer to has been created by policy makers and influencers, not the average Joe. And here you are telling us to put our faith in — deep breath — policy makers.

The defining feature of today’s world is systemic connectivity: In such a world, silo-doing and silo-thinking have no place because risks converge. All the macro issues that exert direct and daily impacts on our societies, the global economy, geopolitics, the environment and technology do not evolve in a linear fashion.

If by “systematic connectivity” you mean the organised effort by the WEF, the world’s central banks, and the world’s governments to abandon sovereignty and cater to protecting international interests of a small elite, then sure. Surely, if you’re against “silo thinking,” censoring dissenting voices via the mainstream media and social media would be something you’d be dead against. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “Lord help me, I’m just not that bright.”

They play out as complex adaptive systems, and as such, share a fundamental attribute: susceptibility to matters cascading out of control and in so doing producing extreme consequences that often come as a surprise. COVID-19 has already given us a foretaste of this phenomenon.

Translation: Globalists have implemented policies they do not understand, cannot pay for, and cannot control. A fake pandemic is now being used as the catalyst to wipe the slate clean and steal all the assets and subjugate the world to full technocratic control.

Examining Fault Lines

To a considerable extent, occurrences as different as the sharp and dramatic rise in unemployment (an economic risk), the global wave of social unrest unleashed by the Black Lives Matter protests (a societal issue) and the growing fracture between China and the U.S. (a geopolitical risk) wouldn’t have taken place without the pandemic. At the very least, coronavirus exacerbated those trends.

Those more cynical among us might call that a coincidence. Rise in unemployment is because the government made it illegal to work, which our captured media justified by terrifying people. Global wave of social unrest was fueled by Marxist fanatics (see here). And fracture between US and China is a natural result of their economic relationship and the struggle for world supremacy.

The concurrence and severity of these fault lines mean that we are now at a critical juncture: The potential for change is unlimited and bound only by our imagination — for better or for worse.

Whose imagination, Klaus? Normal people don’t feel as though they have the right to dictate how the world should be run.

Societies could be poised to become either more equitable or the opposite; geared toward more solidarity or greater individualism; favoring the interests of the few or looking to the needs of the many; economies, when they recover, could be characterized by greater inclusivity and more attuned to our global connection, or they could simply return to business as usual — now revealed to be (in so many ways) an untenable status quo.

As I mentioned in a special report (What Happens Next) on the growing cancer in society, it is individualism which is the hallmark of a free society.

This is the fundamental question upon which the success of the Great Reset depends. The scope of change required is immense, ranging from elaborating a new social contract to forging improved international collaboration. Immense but far from insurmountable, as the case for smart investment in the environment shows.

Getting It Right

Build Back Better has been adopted by leaders all around the world.

One way to invest smartly is to embed climate and environmental resilience into stimulus packages and recovery programs.

The immediate post-crisis period offers a small window to build back better by not wasting the $10 trillion that governments around the world are investing to alleviate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is evident that”Build back Better” is more about destroying Western democracy and individual human rights than it is about building anything other than a complete hell on earth.

A recent policy paper to which the World Economic Forum contributed estimates that building a nature-positive economy could represent more than $10 trillion per year by 2030 — in terms of new economic opportunities, as well as avoided economic costs.

In the short term, deploying around $250 billion of stimulus funding could generate up to 37 million nature-positive jobs in a highly cost-effective manner. We should not view resetting the environment as a cost but rather an investment that will generate economic activity and employment opportunities.

The ultimate price that will be paid here will be measured in human lives lost and contrary to what your “think tanks” say a degradation of the world environment. I will invite you to read my banned article on Greenwashing where I lay bare the absurdities that your think tanks purposefully ignore.

We must get the Great Reset right. The challenges before us could be more consequential than ever imagined, but our capacity to reset could also be greater than we had previously hoped.

I think, Klaus, at this point I’m going to simply leave you with the great words of Thomas Sowell,

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

And now I’ll leave you with some quotes upon which to reflect.

“The theory of Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” 
– Karl Marx

“You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy”
– World Economic Forum

And let’s not forget…

“The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.”
– Karl Marx 

-Chris

from:    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2020-12-05/rebuttal-klaus-schwabs-article-covid-19-crisis

New Numbers, Faulty Tests

Tested ‘Positive’ For COVID-19? Be Sure To Ask This Question

The lockdowns are based on surging “cases” which are based on positive PCR test results.

However, what exactly is a positive PCR test result? What does it mean? As Dr. Tommy Megremis summarized recently:

If you are generally aware, the PCR test is used to amplify small amount of genetic material so as to recognize patterns of DNA by “cycling.” (Also, for RNA virus, the RNA is converted to DNA in order to be detected, it’s just the way the test works) This is how we have been able to recognize the genomes in Egyptian mummies and Wooly Mammoths. It works because if you amplify and cycle enough times to “grow” legitimate DNA fragments, you get something with with a fair amount of specificity. What is becoming more and more apparent is that the PCR test was not designed as a diagnostic tool for infection, and really cannot function as one without having a huge amount of false positives, period.

When it comes to COVID, the presence of viral particles picked up by the PCR technique does not and has not been quantitatively linked to an active “symptomatic” infection. It simply cannot be so, because infection threshold as a result of viral load is different for each patient. It turns out, if you “cycle” over around 25 times, the false positivity of COVID infection starts getting very high.

I and others have explained in blogs how people can be exposed to virus, and mount a simple innate immune response and never know any differently. When you test these people with very low viral loads, who are not sick, you can find the viral RNA code that is used to “diagnose” if you cycle enough times. The last I read, Labcorp cycles at least 40 times to detect viral genome fragments. The PCR test was never intended for diagnosis of infection but as a qualitative test for presence of parts of a virus genome. I know there has been some confusion circulating the net about what the inventor Kary Mullis had said about that. But we walk daily with people who have any number of parts of killer virus or bacterial genomes which one could pick up with a PCR test if one had the specific test for it. Would we claim that that individual was an infected patient? No!

So given all that, PeakProsperity’s Chris Martenson explains below, in great details, the answer to the most important question you should ask if you or a loved one gets a positive PCR test result.

“What’s the Cycle Threshold (CT) value for that test?”

Sounds wonky but it’s actually really important to understand. A low CT value means someone is loaded with virus. A high value, oppositely, means less of a viral load.

Beyond a certain level the load is insufficient to either infect someone else or be of any clinical or epidemiological relevance whatsoever.

The problem? Governments all over the country and world are basing their decisions on CT values that are very high. Too high.

*  *  *

Links:

WHO PCR 47 (!) Cycles

https://www.who.int/diagnostics_laboratory/eul_0489_185_00_path_covid19_ce_ivd_ifu_issue_2.0.pdf?ua=1

CT over 35 is non-infectious

https://www.infectiousdiseaseadvisor.com/home/topics/covid19/ct-value-may-inform-when-patients-with-covid-19-can-be-safely-discharged/

Cycle Thresholds Too Damn High

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html

Corman Drosten retraction request

https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/

Bad Testing Video Sept 1

https://youtu.be/ZFNdsRHKUM4

UK PCR positive standards

https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2020/03/guidance-and-sop-covid-19-virus-testing-in-nhs-laboratories-v1.pdf

Kansas CT cutoff of 42

https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1505/SARS-CoV-2-COVID-19-PCR-Ct-Cutoff-Values-PDF—10-5-20

from:    https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/tested-positive-covid-19-be-sure-ask-question?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter

The Experiment Begins, And The Lab Rats Are…

Giorgio Agamben
June 2, 2020

What is most striking about the exceptional measures that have been set in motion in our country (and in many others too) is the inability to see them outside of the immediate context they apparently function in. Hardly anyone seems to have attempted—as any serious political analysis would require—to interpret these measures as symptoms and signs of a broader experiment, in which a new paradigm of governance over people and things is at play.

Already in a book published seven years ago (Tempêtes microbiennes, Gallimard 2013)—one that now merits an attentive rereading—Patrick Zylberman described a process by which medical security, previously relegated to the margins of political calculations, was becoming an essential element of national and international political strategies. This involved nothing less than the creation of a sort of “medical terror,” as an instrument of governance to deal with a “worst case scenario.” Even back in 2005, in line with this kind of “worst case” logic, the World Health Organization warned that “avian influenza would kill 2 to 150 million people,” pushing for political responses that nations were not yet prepared to accept at that time.

Zylberman described the political recommendations as having three basic characteristics: 1) measures were formulated based on possible risk in a hypothetical scenario, with data presented to promote behavior permitting management of an extreme situation; 2) “worst case” logic was adopted as a key element of political rationality; 3) a systematic organization of the entire body of citizens was required to reinforce adhesion to the institutions of government as much as possible. The intended result was a sort of super civic spirit, with imposed obligations presented as demonstrations of altruism. Under such control, citizens no longer have a right to health safety; instead, health is imposed on them as a legal obligation (biosecurity).

That which Zylberman described in 2013 has today come to pass quite exactly. It is evident that over and above any emergency connected with a certain virus that could in future make way for another, the design of a new paradigm of government is discernible; one far more effective than any other form of government that the political history of the west has known before.

Due to the progressive decline of ideologies and political convictions, the pretext of security had already succeeded in getting citizens to accept restrictions to their freedom that previously they were unwilling to embrace. Now, biosecurity has taken things further still, managing to portray the total cessation of every form of political activity and social relationship as the ultimate act of civic participation. We have witnessed the paradox of left-wing organizations, traditionally known for demanding and asserting rights and denouncing constitutional violations, unreservedly accepting restrictions to freedom decided by ministerial decrees, devoid of any legality. Even the pre-war fascist government would not have dreamed of imposing such restrictions.

It also seems obvious that so-called “social distancing” will remain a model for the politics that governments have in store for us, as they constantly remind us. It also seems clear (from the pronouncements of the spokespersons of “task forces” consisting of people with flagrant conflicts of interest with their purported roles) that wherever possible this distancing will be leveraged to replace direct human interactions—now so suspect due to the risk of contagion (political contagion, that is)—with digital technologies. As the Ministry of Education, University and Research has already recommended, university classes will be conducted online permanently from next year. Students will not recognize their peers by looking at their faces, which may well be covered by a sanitary mask. Identification will rely instead on digital technologies that process mandatorily relinquished biometric data. Furthermore, every kind of assembly, whether for political motives or simply for friendship, will continue to be prohibited.

The entire concept of human destiny is at stake and we face a future that is tinged with a sense of apocalypse, of the end of the world—an idea adopted from our old religions, now nearing their twilight. Just as politics was superseded by the economy, now the economy too will have to be integrated into the paradigm of biosecurity, for the purpose of enabling government. All other needs must be sacrificed. At this point it is legitimate to ask ourselves whether such a society can still be defined as human, or whether the loss of physical contact, of facial expressions, of friendships, of love can ever be worth an abstract and presumably spurious medical security.

from:   https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/06/02/biosecurity-and-politics/