Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart; A rare admission from New York Times that defying expert advice, and closing borders in the face of the Covid outbreak was the right thing to do. According to the NYT, the World Health Organization’s bad advice was based on politics, economics and speculative mathematical models not based on real world data, which turned out to be deeply flawed.
BEHIND THE CURVE
SKI, PARTY, SEED A PANDEMIC: THE TRAVEL RULES THAT LET COVID-19 TAKE FLIGHT
By Selam Gebrekidan, Katrin Bennhold, Matt Apuzzo and David D. Kirkpatrick
The World Health Organization said open borders would help fight disease. Experts, and a global treaty, emphatically agreed. But the scientific evidence was never behind them.
…
When the coronavirus emerged in China in January, the World Health Organization didn’t flinch in its advice: Do not restrict travel.
But what is now clear is that the policy was about politics and economics more than public health.
Public health records, scores of scientific studies and interviews with more than two dozen experts show the policy of unobstructed travel was never based on hard science. It was a political decision, recast as health advice, which emerged after a plague outbreak in India in the 1990s. By the time Covid-19 surfaced, it had become an article of faith.
“It’s part of the religion of global health: Travel and trade restrictions are bad,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University who helped write the global rules known as the International Health Regulations. “I’m one of the congregants.”
Covid-19 has shattered that faith. Before the pandemic, a few studies had demonstrated that travel restrictions delayed, but did not stop, the spread of SARS, pandemic flu and Ebola. Most, however, were based on mathematical models. No one had collected real-world data. The effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the latest coronavirus is still not understood.
…
As scientists worldwide race to make a vaccine, understanding the role of travel in a pandemic — and what types of restrictions could prove effective — is also critical, if likely to take much longer. This month, the W.H.O. began another review of the international health regulations.
Dr. Heymann, who helped shape the last revision, acknowledges that the current regulations “are not fit for purpose on travel and trade.”
“More and more,” Dr. Heymann said, “we’re understanding that there are some times when travel and trade might need to be restricted.”
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/world/europe/ski-party-pandemic-travel-coronavirus.html
The rest of the NYT article is well worth a read, it provides a lot of context to their assertion the WHO made a scientifically unsound call.
President Trump likely saved countless lives, by closing the US border to China in early February, against WHO advice – advice we now know was deeply flawed. Even slowing a dangerous disease down saves lives, by reducing the risk of overwhelming hospital and medical services.
At the time of the border closure, President Trump faced widespread criticism, including an attack from Democrat candidate Joe Biden, who accused Trump of “Xenophobia”.
While I applaud the New York Times admitting the WHO let everyone down, I would have been more impressed had NYT taken an extra step, and discussed the implications of this revelation for US policy.
Politicians who advocate placing blind faith in experts, without demanding a personal review and evaluating the evidence for themselves, leave their nations at the mercy of groupthink, institutional incompetence and hidden agendas, as the shameful exposure of the WHO’s inept handling of Covid-19 has demonstrated.
PLANDEMIC UNMASKED: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
video – 49 mins
Through an international lawyer’s network, which is growing larger by the day, the German group of attorneys provides to all of their colleagues and all other countries – free of charge – all relevant information, including expert opinions and testimonies of experts showing that the PCR test cannot detect infections. And they also provide them with all relevant information as to how they can prepare and bundle the claims for damages for their clients so that they too can assert their clients claims for damages – either in their home countries law courts or within the framework of the class action explained above. These scandalous Corona-facts, gathered mostly by the Corona Committee and summarized above are the very same facts that will soon be proven to be true, either in one court of law or in many courts of law all over the world. These are the facts that will pull the masks off the faces of all those responsible for these crimes. To the politicians who believe those corrupt people, these facts are hereby offered as a lifeline that can help you readjust your course of action , and start the long overdue public scientific discussion, and not go down with those charlatans and criminals. Dr Reiner Fuellmich
Here is the best argument against the effectiveness of mask mandates. France instituted their first mandate back in April. In early July they voted in a second more restrictive mask mandate. France has had high compliace from their population in obeying the mandates. Despite these two mandates the number of new cases in France have surged to triple the number of the original high numbers which they saw back in April. So, why didn’t the mask mandates work?
Currently, France’s new case numbers have been as high as 17,000/day. In respect to the population differential between France and the US that would be the equal of around 85,000 US new cases in one day. So their new case numbers are almost twice as high as in the US in recent weeks. How does consensus science explain those numbers, and the fact that the mask mandate failed to suppress the spread of the Chinese virus?
The mandate is grotesque. We must wear a mask alone in the street, but they don’t have one on TV and radio. Why? They tell us because of ceiling in these places is at 5 m. Or 4 m. Or 3 m. They don’t know. (It’s more like 2 m in radios.)
“Human Mobility Networks, Travel Restrictions, and the
Global Spread of 2009 H1N1 Pandemic”
There was no pandemic. It was a hoax. That flu was very minor all over the world.
Disagree.
You can’t stop spread.
Hospitals in Italy were overloaded by a stupid policy of putting every infected person into hospital.
Deaths in Italy were largely in care residences, yet few other countries grasped that – not even Sweden, yet Florida did and acted assertively to protect them. WB.C. did not.
Collateral deaths are numerous: http://www.moralindividualism.com/covextra.doc.
Statistics and expert opinion in http://www.moralindividualism.com/covidgov.htm
Why is there such emotionalism over yet another strong corona virus, such as Hong Kong flu, swine flu, and SARS v1? Similar seen with climate alarmism. Because schools have been teaching subjectivism not rationality.
(I recommend Harry Binswanger’s book How We Know regarding knowledge.)