Tilak Doshi Contributor
Energy
I analyze energy economics and related public policy issues.
Just over a year ago, I wrote in these pages an article noting the remarkable similarities in government policy responses to the impacts of the global Covid-19 pandemic and to those of climate change. Developments over the past year have only served to emphasize the resilient nature of these similarities. The striking parallels in government policy to mitigate perceived “existential threats” to humanity have become even more notable. They betray a range of critical defects in policy making, from an inordinate dependence on speculative models to the lack of transparency and the ideological corruption of science, selective reporting and group think, and the suppression of sceptics. Let’s revisit some of these parallels in government policy towards the Covid pandemic and climate change.
Two Recent Events
On the Covid-19 front, the most explosive development relates to the increasing plausibility of the view that the Sars-Cov-2 virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This occurred after over a year of outright denials by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to the president. This was accompanied by an onslaught of supportive articles by the mainstream media and the demonization of Senator Tom Cotton as a ‘conspiracy theorist’. He was among the first to raise the likelihood about the lab-release of the corona virus from the Wuhan institute. Newly released emails from Dr. Fauci now suggest that that he may have known that the Chinese research institute was carrying out dangerous gain-of-function research.
In the climate change wars, perhaps an equally important development is associated with the publication of Steve Koonin’s book “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters”. Professor Koonin is a leading climate scientist with degrees from Caltech and MIT with over 200 academic papers. He was previously provost at Caltech and chief scientist for BP. Most importantly, he was former President Obama’s science advisor who “takes an axe” to the “climate emergency” narrative after leaving his government job and re-joining academia. Despite his unimpeachable scientific credentials and his previous position with a Democrat administration, there have been no lack of attempts to ‘cancel’ Koonin and hatchet jobs on his book are rife (here, here and here).
The Use and Abuse of Models
The use of predictive models, often with highly disputed assumptions, has played an out-sized role in guiding government responses. In my previous article, I already pointed out how the not-fit-for-purpose model of Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, London panicked governments in the UK and the US into severe economic and social lockdowns with incalculable collateral damage on the lives and livelihoods of entire populations in many countries. This could be compared, as I previously pointed out, to the alarmist “hockey stick” global warming chart adopted by climate activists, mass media and politicians since its publication in 1999. This led to vast public resources being spent on subsidies and mandates over the past two decades in the US and Western Europe to push expensive and unreliable “renewable energy” technologies, ultimately with little impact on global dependence on fossil fuels.
My previous article suggested that lockdown policies are to the pandemic what decarbonization (“net zero by 2050”) is to climate change. There has been an increasing body of research that lockdowns – people forced to stay at home, small and medium-sized businesses forced to shut down – don’t work. There is no correlation between the severity of lockdowns and Covid mortality. A paper published last month by the NBER found no beneficial effect of “shelter in place” or lockdown policies on excess mortality. The effect of lockdown orders was assessed in 43 countries and all 50 US states. The key finding was that shelter-in-place orders not only did not reduce excess deaths but in fact led to excess deaths from all causes. Well documented collateral damage of lockdowns include widespread poverty, depression, bankruptcy, and unemployment (here, here and here). It has become increasingly apparent that the lockdowns had little basis in scientific research, and hysteria and groupthink were largely responsible for their adoption. The folly and hubris of central planners and favoured technocrats were on full display.MORE FOR YOUHighlighting Women Shattering Age And Gender NormsUncertainty 2020: Embrace Ambiguity Because No One Really Knows What’s NextCovid On The Street: Pandemic Graffiti From Around The World
The inordinate costs of “decarbonization” policies pursued in many countries have also been well documented. The German Federal Audit Office warned in a recent report that the drive to “net zero” has turned into an existential threat to the economy. The government auditor sees “sees the danger that the energy transition in this form will endanger Germany as a business location and overwhelm the financial strength of electricity-consuming companies and private households”. The report finds that decarbonization with escalating energy costs not only threatens the country with de-industrialization but it also sees an alarming threat to the country’s security of energy supply. California, with aggressive decarbonization policies akin to Germany’s, now face looming blackouts as electricity costs “explode”.
The path to “net zero by 2050”, pushed by the International Energy Agency, the European Union, and the UK and US governments, now threatens global inflation according to Roger Bootle, founder of Capital Economics Ltd and author of the 1996 book `The Death of Inflation’. He stated that “If I had to put my money on a single factor that was going to push up costs in the years to come, I would say it was the environmental emphasis and in particular the drive towards net zero… I think this is going to lead to a whole series of costs and price increases across the [global] economy.”
“Following the Science”
The “following the science” mantra endlessly cited by politicians to justify draconian lockdown and decarbonization policies has been used to exempt themselves from democratic constraints and the duty to exercise judgement. Relying on “The Science” is both foolish and dangerous, for science is neither consensual nor the “final answer” to any policy debate. Which scientists do you listen to? Science is a methodology constantly striving at plausible answers consistent with empirically-validated models, not some abstract end-state to ‘known knowns’. Epidemiological and climate models employed to predict outcomes of highly uncertain and only partially understood processes often yields results which are “sociological”, tuned to getting politically correct answers. These abstract predictive models, untethered to empirical validation, may well be “worse than nothing”.
Appeals to science and predictive models have dominated the advocacy of policies by the power triumvirate – lawmakers, bureaucrats and the mainstream media — to mitigate perceived threats to human welfare, be it the Covid pandemic or climate change. Yet such appeals are ultimately political. Perhaps the last word lies best with the towering American essayist H. L. Mencken, who wrote that “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”.
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Predictive models for epidemics weren’t invented during the pandemic: they are based on evidence from previous outbreaks of infectious diseases.
The infection rates put into models have, in the UK at least, been derived from randomised surveys of the population.
Evidence of success.
What the heck are Simon, griff, and Nick all doing at the CDC?
I think they are checking to see if the witches brew they were instructed to try, as a cure for everything, given to them by an uneducated Scandinavian drop out girl suffering with anger issues, really does work.
” Another wing of bat should do it Griff……”
And they were as wrong and painfull as useless.
And the fact that the referenced model was wildly wrong does not convince you otherwise?
To be fair. Griff is about right in this case. The shape of infection curves is known but the values of parameters are not: retro fitting hospital admissions and death rates establishes the value of some of them.
Its a far simpler equation than ‘climate change’.
What is unknown, because the depth of testing and the test reliability is unknown, is the case rate.
Just because your government is lying to you about everything else, especially climate change, doesnt mean that they are lying to you about Covid. In fact the general headless chicken mode suggests they hadn’t a clue it was coming and had no real idea how to react.
But never let good crisis go to waste, and they finally manged to link it to bossing the populations around and using it as an excuse for more green crap.
So “griff is about right” gets 10 upvotes?! Wonder if Mr. Stokes will award that a +1?
If, as Griff says, the models were based on prior experience, then that can only lead to one conclusion, and that is that the C-19 is not as deadly as previous experience suggests.
George, the models were not wrong, REALITY was wrong!
Here’s the thing, Griff –
5 minutes of intelligent research would have informed policy makers of the previous failures of predictions by earlier versions of these models.
Clearly, they not recognize “groupthink” when directly confronted with it.
The problem is “Predictive models” do not work if your assumptions were incorrect. The assumption was and the models were wildly off. Just because the data they use were from “based on evidence from previous outbreaks of infectious
diseases” means the modelers either used bad data, interpreted the data wrong or did not understand the problem to begin with. My guess it was a case of all the above. Anyone who think they did a good job is a fool. Now do I think these modelers learned anything, well if you are sample of how they think Griff, the answer is no.
You mean to say Griff thinks. I thought it was a robot because I can’t imagine any human being as thick skinned as it.
It is constantly bashing its head against a brick wall with very little effect.
“Predictive models” is an inaccurate term for models which have consistently predicted a future that doesn’t exist in reality. Models after all, are simply hypotheses about how the real world might work and are not actually observations or data. They have almost no value till they are validated by proving predictive ability. In this case that has not happened. The models from Imperial College failed miserably and should be tossed in the bin along with the underlying assumptions used to create them. If scientific process were being followed that would already have happened and the CoVID models would be nestled in the bin next to the majority of global climate models that predict the end of times.
Methinks you do not know how apropos “randomised” is.
Doesn’t matter how much you brag about the quality of the breeding, a horse that runs last is still last.
THE.
MODELS.
WERE.
WRONG.
Deal with it.
Money Ball quote: “If he’s such a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit so good?”
And what if you would study the history of epidemiologic models? How they described the course of epidemics since the middle years of the 18th (!!!) century? How they were continually improved during two centuries to better describe epidemics? And what if you studied the conceptual differences (epistemology, my dear!, epistemology… and a bit of philosophy) between those models and the ones that have been used and served the propaganda of governments since last year?
And what if you studied and got some knowledge on the subject that you are talking about? And what if you took serious matters seriously, instead of just repeating things devoid of any scientific and historical factual basis that you hear here and there?
One day you may convince yourself of the absurdities you espouse here, but you can be certain no one else here is fool enough to follow you there.
Do keep up griff. Climate dooming and Covid are sooooooo yesterdays. It’s all about THE HUMMMMMMMMMM nowadays-
Can you hear the Hum? The mystery noise that says a lot about modern life (msn.com)
It is impossible to get an accurate infection rate from a survey. It would be difficult to get it from controlled lab tests. Infection rate depends on exposure which is neither precisely defined nor readily detectable. Thus infection rate is a non-empirical abstraction (just as ECS is in climate science).
The current model used by imperial college is basically the same model as was used two or three times in the early part of the century, the results never matched reality. The actual code is a mish mash of poor quality software in C, it’s available on GitHub or rather a version is available to download. There has been no attempt to incorporate any real life data.
Anything can be modeled mathematically. The hard part is proving that it is an effective model.
Due to all the changes by the CDC in how the spread and severity of the virus was measured the results range from vague to nearly useless.
Note you didn’t say anything about the accuracy or usefulness of any tests. The only useful observation that came out of any of the reports on the covid 19 virus spread was that a plateuing and drop in the number of new cases.
How about showing us how well the models you have worked?
The question is to ask, what the goal of the COV-19 politics are. It’s known, that effective medical treatments exist, to name three, Ivermectin, HCQ, ACC (NAC).
Following the effectiveness in India or in parts of India, in Mexico, both Ivermectin, Turkey, HCQ, the emergency approuval for what ever “vaccine” should be cancelled. But no, the medication isn’t accepted, the discussion about forbidden, the “vaccines” are to use what ever the human costs will be, starting with kids 12 years old and unknown later showing side effects.
Further it’s now known, that healed persons stay immune longer than only 6 month, at least, as researchers find, 11 month, the last state I read. But policymaker decide, 6 month is the limit for further normal life as a former healed person.
Could be continued af infinitum.
To heal people or to lead the pandemic to an end is not the coal, that for sure.
It is one of the preconditions of granting Emergency Use Authorisation of an untested vaccine that no other treatment is available.
That is why they steadfastly refuse to accept any of these treatments work.
As soon as they recognise any treatment, the vaccine scam falls in like a house of cards and the kick-backs from Big Pharma dry up, and states of emergency and their “special powers” evaporate.
Right, that’s why I wrote what I wrote.
Yes, I think greed and Big Pharma are the main problems.
A lot of people have died that would not have died because of this.
Tom,
Sadly, a lot of the people who died from the ChiCom19 virus were near death’s door already due to age and ill health! What we must NEVER forget is that the PTB used this emergency to seize dictatorial powers that they then used to cripple the economy, and unlawfully change voting laws to make the 2020 election steal easier!
The few truth telling journalists and investigative reporters that I look to for news seem to agree to that Trump actually received around 80 million votes! The machines were used to switch about 10% of them to Biden, but he was so wildly unpopular with the public that he still would have lost without another 8 to 10 million fraudulent votes added in the key swing states! So Trump would have won by a landslide after Bai Den spent most of the campaign hiding in his basement, had not the Wuhan Flu come along to help the DemoKKKrats in their criminal endeavors!
That’s why they are so frantically trying to push the ideas of CRT and domestic terrorism; they have to keep the US citizenry confused and fighting amongst ourselves! A re-awakened America, learning that the virus was developed by the CCP, with the approval and financing of our unelected elites; could become a major problem for those pushing the Great Reset! Not many would be in favor of worldwide fascist control of our economy, energy and health!
“The question is to ask, what the goal of the COV-19 politics are. It’s known, that effective medical treatments exist, to name three, Ivermectin, HCQ, ACC (NAC).”
Yes, and don’t forget that Pfizer says they will have a pill by the end of the year that stops all forms of corona virus dead in its tracks (based on mouse experiments).
I also read the other day that some medical people think the Wuhan virus may have the ability to target more than just the Ace2 receptor. That would be inconvenient.
Research has found that the Wuhan virus vaccines stimulate antibody creation, which is what they are supposed to do, but apparently, in some cases, these antibodies take on another characteristic that causes them to combine with other cells and form blood clots.
It seems they have found at least one mechanism to explain the creation of blood clots.
When you want to mention “COVID-19 politics”, it is important to realize that by the end of 2019 it was obvious that another year of booming economy would guarantee the reelection of “Orange Man”. Once the strange idea of “quarantining” the whole populace, instead of just the ill and vulnerable, was offered, the predictable economic results, and political power shift, were irresistible.
I hate to spoil your neat triumvirate construction, but you’re leaving out an important fourth leg, advocacy groups. These NGOs are vital in creating exaggerations and in distorting facts for the media to pass around. Since they are ‘private’ charities, they may escape the oversight of government entities and have near unlimited funding from the likes of Soros and Steyer. They can cherry-pick research findings, de-emphasize inconvenient truths, and make any sort of unverifiable assertion they want and no one calls them to account. They are perfect vehicles for spreading panic.
Yes, private “charities” are a powerful source of misinformation. Spokesmen (usually female) for these organisations put themselves forward as scientists and the dim bulbs in the MSM like Novaya Pravda, CBC Edition either choose to not examine scientific qualifications or don’t know how to tell the real thing from a Welsh pit pony. The various green charity industries are constantly muddying the waters for profit as per Patrick Moore’s detailed analysis.
Yes,
agree. I mention activists elsewhere in the article, but triumvirate does not capture it.
COVID-19 is simply AGW act 2.
Tilak,
Thanks for opening up the floodgates! The similarities of excessive reliance on computer models and the suppression of science that doesn’t agree with the narrative desired are only the superficial aspects of the close relation of Climastrology and the ChiCom virus bungling!
When you look under the surface there seems to be lots of evidence of a totalitarian desire to impose collectivism, and to roll back human population levels to something the fanatics call “sustainable!”
I was just reading that Fauxi wrote in 1985 that HCQ seemed to be effective against viruses, even though it is an anti-malarial drug! He was also quoted in about 2005, saying that HCQ was effective against SARS!! How anyone can believe a word coming out of this killer’s mouth is beyond my comprehension now! He has worked closely for decades with the big pharmaceutical companies; I guess he figured this was his best chance to win himself a nice little nest egg to retire on! Hopefully he will be spending all his illgotten gains trying to defend himself against medical malpractice and murder!
For those who protest that HCQ is not as effective for those who have contracted the virus, I would counter that they could then start taking ivermectin, as it is even more powerful against the virus from Wuhan!
We seem the same level of deception and lies from the priests of Climastrology! James Hansen has a graph in his 2008 paper that shows global temps falling for the last FIFTY MILLION YEARS from a point that was ten degrees warmer than the Modern Climate Optimum! How he could then turn around and speak of the dangers of global warming his enough to boggle the mind! And, of course, there are the Climategate e-mails and Mickey Mann’s hokey stick! The willingness to blatantly lie has to have more to do with religious than scientific beliefs! In the pursuit of the Progressive Utopia, the end justifies the means!
“I was just reading that Fauxi wrote in 1985 that HCQ seemed to be effective against viruses, even though it is an anti-malarial drug! He was also quoted in about 2005, saying that HCQ was effective against SARS!!”
We’ll use that at Fauci’s trial.
And speaking of a totalitarian desire to impose collectivism, I see where Biden has now said he is going to send vaccinators door-to-door in the United States to make sure everyone gets a vaccination. Yes, I’ll bet ole Joe would like to knock on everyone’s door. Joe, your representatives may not get the reception you think. You’ll have to get past my dogs to knock on my door. 🙂
Nutter Nancy is expanding her DC police goons beyond the confines of the capitol city.
Yes, I saw that. It makes no sense at all. When the Republicans take back the House, they should reverse this.
Nancy is trying to create a crisis atmosphere in the United States, with Republicans being the bad guys, and this action is part of that creation.
She is trying to turn all Repubicans into White Supremacists. She wants to make Republicans appear to be Enemies of the State.
That way, the radical Democrats can crack down on the evil Republicans.
Nancy, when the Republicans regain control of Congress, they are going to crack down on the evil Democrats. You need to cheat and lie as much as you can to try to prevent this. And I know you will.
Tom, I’m curious where these Republicans you’re talking about are going to come from. The party’s history so far gives no indication they will ‘crack down’ on anything.
That H L Mencken and Upton Sinclair’s
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
Between them cover a lot of how and why the Climate Emergency is being prolonged
Those and C.S. Lewis’:
That excerpt becomes more meaningful every day, as we watch the Democrat Socialist Authoritarians try to impose their will on the rest of us.
All true. So what can we, the people that have been manipulated and lied to, do about it? It’s getting to the point that when the MSM claims conspiracy theory it means it’s probably true.
Whatever the Leftwing Media says, assume the opposite, and you will be pretty close to the truth.
Tom,
Don’t forget that besides being left wing, the media are controlled by just a few powerful corporations; and that they are often spoon-fed by the intel agencies!
How often did we see the corporate media come out with unsubstantiated rumors from anonymous sources? That sounds like just the normal news day in the Trump admin!
Yes, the People of the United States are not in control of the Governent. The country is being run by Leftwing Elites and the Deep State. They have combined forces to take the power away from the People.
We need to root out the Deep State. It is not our friend, it is our Enemy, and it is undermining the personal freedoms of all of us.
They are so arrogant they let Tucker Carlson know they were monitoring his communications and they are leaking his communications to reporters, and they dare him to do anything about it.
If Republicans win back control of Congress, then something will be done about the Deep State. The Deep State has come out of hiding and have shown their true ugly face, and we need to refom the hell out of all these intelligence organizations and bring them back under the control of the American people.
There’s your goal, Republicans. Knockout the Deep State that is trying to knock you out.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01529-3
…
Does the virus have features that suggest it was created in a lab?
Several researchers have looked into whether features of SARS-CoV-2 signal that it was bioengineered. One of the first teams to do so, led by Kristian Andersen, a virologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, determined that this was “improbable” for a few reasons, including a lack of signatures of genetic manipulation6. Since then, others have asked whether the virus’s furin cleavage site — a feature that helps it to enter cells — is evidence of engineering, because SARS-CoV-2 has these sites but its closest relatives don’t. The furin cleavage site is important because it’s in the virus’s spike protein, and cleavage of the protein at that site is necessary for the virus to infect cells.
But many other coronaviruses have furin cleavage sites, such as coronaviruses that cause colds7. Because viruses containing the site are scattered across the coronavirus family tree, rather than confined to a group of closely related viruses, Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, says the site probably evolved multiple times because it provides an evolutionary advantage. Convergent evolution — the process by which organisms that aren’t closely related independently evolve similar traits as a result of adapting to similar environments — is incredibly common.
The virus has genetic characteristics and a phenotype very suggestive of it being manipulated in a lab. Certain codons found in the CoVID 19 strain are not found in naturally occurring viruses but commonly used during genetic modification of viruses, and the level of infectivity is highly unusual in a new virus entering the human population. This isn’t proof of genetic engineering but, in the context of admitted research taking place in Wuhan on gain of function among coronaviruses, it is highly consistent with that conclusion.
Can you please give references for your proof the phenotype being suggestive of being manipulated in a lab, please
Ghalfrunt you are the person who advocated drinking bleach to cure Covid….shame on you
halfrunt,
Andersen was one of the participants in the Zoom meeting with Fauxi back in February of 2020, where he, several other virologists and epidemiologists, and several pharmaceutical reps discussed how to discredit the lab leak theory! There is evidence that the Grand Poobah, Fauxi himself, helped edit the paper to be more convincing!
Did you really fall for it, or are you being paid to help exonerate Dr. Death and the ChiComs?
One thing we know for certain: The Chicoms deliberately pushed the Wuhan virus out into the rest of the world, knowing full well how infectious it was, yet lied to the world, claiming the virus could not be transmitted human-to-human, when they had seen it being trasmitted for months before saying that lie.
The Chicoms conducted a Deliberate Biological Attack on the rest of the world.
Mr. runt: Dr. Fauci tried this “genome” pedantry over a year ago, but he has walked it back and admitted it could be a lab leak. Do try to keep up. BTW, if your nonsense held any water, the ChiComs would have let their good friend and patron Dr. tony and his team on the ground in Feb. ’20 to confirm the bat kissing the turtle. Do you not notice when some one acts like they are hiding something? Anyway, I appreciate your willingness to come here and give us the reverse barometer reading.
Did anyone tell the author that its not clear lockdowns were effective? In fact a recent article that includes issues of metal health related to social isolation which resulted in more suicides and drug overdoses not to mention untreated chronic diseases suggests that the treatment (lockdowns) was more deadly than the disease… and probably to a younger population. Moreover, who gets to stay home and collect a paycheck? The information economy workers who earn a lot of money in the first place, live in nice homes and can still function with a computer and an internet connection. Working class employees who have to show up at a business to generate revenue, they either ended up with extended lay-offs (restaurants, travel & entertainment) and their company might have gone under. On the other hand there were an essential employee like a sales clerk at a grocery store, custodial worker at a nursing home, delivery driver, etc. and they still had to show up every day and were exposed to the virus through the people they serve but no one thought to make certain they had N95 masks that actually might have protected them.
If you want to make a case for elitism that doesn’t work for the working class, sure go ahead and create climate policies that are as effective as Covid policies.
More recent research shows stay at home orders have no effect: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00766-0
MACK, that is just complete nonsense. Good data is available from reliable government stats….
It was the best of climes, it was the worst of climes…
A Tale of Two Critiques?
Slightly off topic. I came across an article in Ausralia about what to make of uncoroborated accusations of sexual assault. A quote from a reply was
Let me just say this. I am sick of the word ‘compelling’. Apparently, the ex-choir boy’s evidence against Pell was compelling. The result an innocent man sent to jail. Christine Blasey Ford’s evidence was compelling. The result an honourable man and his family put through hell. Those with invented memories are compelling because they believe such memories are true.
Compelling evidence can easily be constructed because we have regressed to a society that judges truth on how it makes us feel. Those disciplined enough to accept the ugly truth, to handle the truth, are derided as mansplainers, deniers or dinosaurs.
How to make an accusation compelling? You merely make the reader feel like justice must be done. That is not how to establish if a crime was committed. That is not how to judge the quality of science.
How do I know that Pell conviction was such a scam? Comments published in the media that were about how he deserved it even if he was not guilty. He was guilty because justice must be down, not because the evidence was compelling.
Context is crucial and needs to be closely examined with respect to covid, climate and claims of abuse. In the case of the last named, one must remember that those accused of abuse among the Catholic clergy, must be examined in the context of abuse in the communities and homes from where they came. In reality there is abuse in varying levels in every community. Perhaps it was worse in certain homes than among the accused clergy in those communities.
Addressing the problem requires a recognition of the extent of the problem. The same applies to covid and climate. The latter only becomes a problem when we fail to adapt and think we can engineer the climates of the world while the former becomes a problem when we try to play God and save every life though science instead of setting up treatment protocols using what we already know.
Argument by analogy is not a winning strategy. While there are similarities there are usually more dissimilarities. In any case, what’s the point?
Actually it is becoming clear that Prof. Ferguson’s original estimates were plausible. His group suggested that there would be 2.2 million deaths in the US if no precautions were taken and that that number could go down to several hundred thousand if precautions like lock-downs and social distancing were followed. Currently 600 000 people in the US have officially died from COVID (the actually number is likely to be higher judging from excess death figures) and that is after lockdowns, social distancing and vaccinations. Similarly in the UK the number of deaths is less than the worse case estimate but higher than it would have been had the government locked down earlier and actually followed the advice of its advisors.
Izaak,
Stop lying, please, at least to yourself! The lockdowns had very little effect on the fatality rates as areas that had lockdowns had very similar rates to those that did not!
What the lockdowns accomplished was the destruction of thousands of small businesses, and the enrichment of big box stores and e-tail giants! They also caused thousands of people to miss or avoid necessary medical treatment for fear of catching the Wuhan Flu! Then there’s the increases in suicides, drug and alcohol abuse, and mental health problems!
This plandemic could have been easily and safely handled if our leaders had maintained their wits, while issuing HCQ and ivermectin to everyone, and isolated and protected the most vulnerable! That simple plan would have saved somewhere in excess of 75% of the fatalities from occurring! It would have made the mRNA genetic modification injections unnecessary, so they could have been studied further to see if they are actually safe! My definition of safe does not include something that causes more deaths and adverse reactions than ALL other vaccines over the last thirty years! And we still don’t know all of the harmful effects from the jabs; possible infertility and frequent miscarriages seem to be some of the more disturbing ones!
Stopped reading at HCQ. What is it with you lot being unable to read the facts. Wake up it doesn’t work with covid and never has….
Dr. Seigel, a Fox News Medical contributor thinks HCQ saved his 95-year-old father’s life. His father was in very bad shape due to the Wuhan virus and was given HCQ, and according to Dr. Seigel, his condition turned around rapidly for the better after that.
And as another poster above said, Dr. Fauci also used HCQ in the past on viruses and the 2003 corona virus with good results.
TDS.
Tom
One doctor saying it helped one patient is hardly a clinical trial. And in the clinical trials, it shows no efficacy. Unlike the vaccines.
Trump is suing Facebook, and Twiiter, and Google for political censorship, and during his announcement of this matter yesterday, he commented that new studies have come out showing HCQ to be effective against the Wuhan virus. Trump said, “I guess I was right”, and gave us a big smile.
I read an article yesterday that says to be effective, early treatment must begin as soon as possible, from 12 to 48 hours after the infection is noticed, for many of these treatments to be effective, and they were not talking about HCQ, but the drugs, three of them, that have been approved by the official medical authorities.
But, there are many anectdotal cases where people were *very* sick from the Wuhan virus, and took HCQ and made miraculous recoveries.
One guy was in such bad shape that he was emailing his friends goodbye from the hospital, when one of his friends emailed him back and asked if he knew about HCQ (this was early in the pandemic). He did not, and asked his doctor if he could get some and the doctor gave it to him that night, and at about 5am the next morning he was sitting on the side of his bed feeling much better and when his nurse came in she was stunned at how well he was doing. This guy is a believer in HCQ.
Pfizer may make all this unnecessary if their new medicine (in pill form) is as effective against the Corona virus as they say it is. They claim their new development can stop all versions of Corona viruses from replicating. Due in about six months, they say.
Simple Simon Says 😀
Have a look at Turkey, they used it from the beginning, and compare their numbers with f.e. Germay.
You may see a difference 😀
Have a look at New Zealand. We have never used it…
Are you really that stupid or are you just trying to be deceptive. NZ hasn’t had enough cases to prove anything about HCQ anyway, and does NZ having never used it prove anything?
Oh the irony…
What are the death rates for NY, MN, SD and FL in the states?
What are the death rates in Sweden, UK, Spain and Greece?
Are any statistically different?
Locked down here in NZ. Haven’t had a death since the first half of last year. I’d say they work.
Remember when you were shocked that Trump closed the border with China?
Trump Russia colluuuusion am I right Simon.
Trump tax fraud, am I right?
Once again you are still a believer in Russia colluuuusion
There’s no evidence Trump is a tax fraud. He has not been charged with anything.
You’re innocent, until proven guilty, around here.
Stupid Simon,
You have moved well beyond simple now!
Please state the scientific papers that claim HCQ is ineffective! Most of the ones that made that claim used it incorrectly! Dr. Death, Fauxi, wrote in a 1985 medical text that HCQ was effective against many viruses, and in 2005 was quoted to say it was effective against SARS! Are you telling us that YOU know better than Saint Anthony? There are in excess of fifty papers now touting the benefits of HCQ, and while it is certainly not as powerful as ivermectin, it seems to have a huge upside as a prophylactic, with little or no downside for most people!
Dude, you live on a backwater island! Your country still hasn’t entered the nuclear era; something that even North Korea can brag about! It’s easy to avoid a worldwide pandemic when you’re isolated on an island; but the ChiCom virus will get there eventually! Maybe then you can sterilize all your women and cripple all your men with the cytotoxic mRNA jabs! Then the world could repopulate it with some humans that have a modicum of intelligence!
Adhom. Stopped reading there. If you have anything worthy to say you don’t need to resort to childish name calling.
Knuckles, Simon.
I don’t waste my time trying to get idiots to agree with me! It’s much more fun to treat them like a stand-up comedian would a heckler, and get back to spreading important news and info to people with functional brains!
How many people died of influenza in the US, Izaak the Idiot?
Climate hoax, COVID pandemic and “The Great Reset – Build Back Better” and “New Green Deal” communism globalism.
‘Hardly a coincidence’ political leaders all over the world parrot ‘build back better’ mantra
May 07, 2021 – 20:03PM
https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/f7078c3ba496c1337d663abc9c7cdffa
Sky News host Cory Bernardi says “it’s hardly a coincidence” you hear political leaders all over the world parrot the mantra “build back better”.
“You may have heard about the Great Reset; that’s the agenda of global elites to remake capitalism in their image and takes its name from the 50th annual conference of the World Economic Forum,” he said.
Mr Bernardi paralleled The Great Reset’s agenda, according to its website, with that of the Communist Manifesto.
“It is an inherently evil ideology that destroys human spirit, and only a power-hungry elite, would ever advocate for its re-establishment in the western world,” he said.
We have a power-hungry elite, the radical Democrats, trying to seize power in our country right now.
The whole basis of lockdowns as mitigation is based on the belief that asymptomatic carriers are vectors of disease spread. This was always contrary to scientific understanding until Christian Drosten pushed this onto the WHO. The only evidence presented was of the “Woman from Wuhan”, allegedly asymptomatic, who spread the infection in Frankfurt. A few days later a journalist published an article showing that the woman was on flu medication and so must have had symptoms. Because of this, Drosten is being sued for medical fraud by a group of lawyers for justice lead by Reiner Fulmich.
All empirical evidence to date, including a study of 100s of thousands in Wuhan, shows no asymptomatic spread. Medical theory is also strong on this. If a person is an asymptomatic carrier they have too few viral particles in them to pass on a disease to another person. To have a sufficient viral load to pass on infection, they would be coughing, sneezing, exhibiting soreness in the respiratory tract etc etc.
If asymptomatic spread is a fraud, then locking down whole populations of healthy people – something never before done for pandemics, for good reason – would achieve very little, and what little it would achieve is by virtue of the fact that some symptomatic spreaders who like to go to work sick, would have been prevented from doing so.
Drosten is awaiting several lawsuits, among others is the PCR test a reason Füllmich searches for indications and seems to have a lot.
It’s just someone with a big amount of vitamine C (connections) that has used manipulation techniques to promote a business in which the normal citizen, caught by irrational fear, has been forced to catch much money.
Take the German government: Merkel’s husband is a manager of the Robert Koch Institut, the institute is government’s advisor for health and viral diseases matters and at the same time has a lot of research contracts with vaccine companies (like Biontech, Moderna a.s.o). It is sufficient to have a look at the page of the institute to see the relations.
In December 2019 the German government has assigned a study to the Humbolt University Berlin concerning which means should be used to convince the biggest portion of the population to get vaccinated. December 2019. The study has been published in May 2021:
https://www.hu-berlin.de/de/pr/nachrichten/mai-2021/nr-21510
And still in Germany several politicians have relations to companies which profit from the pandemic, by selling medical equipment. Very well known is the story of Bavaria’s president’s wife whose brother is owner of a company which began producing masks, but was then in a public scandal because the opposition party AfD had discovered and rendered public the fact. So They had to quit immediately.
Of the son of Armin Laschet, who is also implied in masks business.
https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/laschet-sohn-van-laack-100.html
https://www.nachrichtenleicht.de/masken-affaere-bei-cdu-und-csu.2042.de.html?dram:article_id=493920
“The inordinate costs of “decarbonization” policies pursued in many countries have also been well documented. The German Federal Audit Office warned in a recent report that the drive to “net zero” has turned into an existential threat to the economy.”
Lol !
Told ya. Griff?
Hobgoblins: haven’t seen that in a very, very long time. Good article.
Maybe we could start referring to the pandemic epoch as another form of witch hunts. Panic people with misinformation and outright twaddle, block real info wherever possible, and then go into hollering “Witch! Witch!”
Glad I don’t live in the city any more.
There is a difference.
Local lockdowns appear to have worked, at least in the UK, as soon as they were implemented. The problem was local, and it was solved by local action. We can argue about the cost, but the means chosen did deliver the end desired.
Usually when climate is the issue, the action advocated cannot possibly have any effect on the supposed problem. The UK, for instance, closes a coal plant because global warming. But the closure of that plant will be overwhelmed by the building of the next 500 plants by China and India.
You see this in the Biden Administration’s efforts to set strong emission targets for the US. Its always said because climate. But its never said how much effect on climate the actions will have.
That is because the answer is few and none.
Figure out why the climate movement keeps advocating doing things which, according to its own theories, will have no effect, and you will be on to something very fundamental.
Does anyone recall the study that was published between august 2020 and November 2020 that calculated how many deaths would have been counted if the government were using the 2003 through early 2020 cause of death method instead of the new March 2020 updated method?
I have searched high and low for it, and it is not even in my history that I can find.
Never mind, I seem to have found it. I was using my work PC at the time when I read it.
https://jdfor2020.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/adf864_165a103206974fdbb14ada6bf8af1541.pdf
What “excess mortality”, pray tell, are you talking about? The reclassification of deaths from other usual sources as “Covid-19”? What I have learned these past months is that the PCR machine is the “virus,” and that its “spread” can be ramped up or down depending on the propaganda agenda. Simply up the amplifications for more “cases” or the reverse. It is a marvelous machine, this Kerry Mullis invention, which in the wrong hands can be turned on us like soldiers guarding a fort being ordered to point their guns inward.
I wrote/predicted something similar over a year ago:
https://www.cfact.org/2020/04/27/tale-of-two-panics-covid-climate/
David,
Great article, but you forgot a big part of the solution to the dempanic!
Lil’ Lyin’ Tony Fauxi needs to be fired and prosecuted for the numerous fatalities he helped to cause, then we need to get people in charge at NIH and the CDC that actually care about serving the public; not servicing the drug companies!
I believe Plato said it before Mencken.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Kind of ironic Sagan said that.
“Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
Why would a person give a charlatan power over them in the first place? The only reason would be that they don’t think that person is a charlatan. In other words, they are ignorant of the facts.
Thought I would add this bit from Sagan. Maybe the site could use it as a tard stick for posts.
The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking – Brain Pickings
1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.
Greenhouse theory says the atmosphere warms the earth, the GHGs warm the atmosphere, more GHGs make for a warmer earth, a warmer earth is bad.
ALL of that is WRONG!