A new meta-analysis regarding the effectiveness of lockdowns examined evidence to determine if there is actually any empirical evidence to support the belief that lockdowns reduce COVID-19 mortality.
It was published by Jonas Herby, a special advisor at the Center for Political Studies in Copenhagen, Denmark. Lars Jonung, a professor emeritus in economics at Lund University in Sweden, and Steve H. Hanke, a professor of Applied Economics and Founder & Co-Director of The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.
The meta-analysis looked at 18,590 studies that address the belief that lockdowns were effective. The authors explain,
“After three levels of screening, 34 studies ultimately qualified. Of those 34 eligible studies, 24 qualified for inclusion in the meta-analysis. They were separated into three groups; lockdown stringency index studies, shelter-in-place order (SIPO) studies, and specific NPI studies. An analysis of each of these three groups support the conclusion that lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.
More specifically, stringency index studies find that lockdowns in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average. SIPOs were also ineffective, only reducing COVID-19 mortality by 2.9% on average. Specific NPI studies also find no broad-based evidence of noticeable effects on COVID-19 mortality.”
The paper goes into detail about the screening methods applied. 1,048 studies remained after a title-based screening. After this 931 were excluded because they did not measure the effect of lockdowns on mortality or did not use an empirical approach. 117 were left, read and inspected for a more thorough assessment by the authors, which left only 34 studies that were eligible for this meta-analysis.
The paper points out that researchers at the Imperial College London early on in the pandemic (Ferguson et al. (2020)) predicted that lockdown strategies would reduce COVID-19 mortality by up to 98%. This is what motivated the researchers to look into this deeper. Another big motivation was the fact that “there was no clear negative correlation between the degree of lockdown and fatalities in the spring of 2020.”
“Given the large effects predicted by simulation studies such as Ferguson et al. (2020), we would have expected to at least observe a simple negative correlation between COVID-19 mortality and the degree to which lockdowns were imposed.”
Overall, despite that the topic still seems to remain an open debate with no clear answers, this meta analysis found that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had and no effect on COVID-19 mortality. They did however find that business closures may have reduced COVID-19 mortality, “but the variation in estimates is large and the effect seems related to closing bars.”
All kinds of studies were used, ones with controls and ones without, peer reviewed literature, working papers, long term data, short term data etc.
The report dives deep into the data, methods and limitations. All studies can be criticized, so it’s important to go through the report for yourself and take away whatever conclusions you may.
Keep in mind that currently, there are more than 400 studies on the failure of compulsory COVID interventions.
One thing that is certain across the board, however, regardless if one thinks lockdowns did or did not have any effect on COVID-19 mortality, they did indeed have catastrophic consequences. This has been evident throughout the pandemic.
For example, renowned Swedish Clinical professor in infectious disease and professor of epidemiology from the Karolinska Institute, Anna-Mia Elkström, along with professor Stefan Swartling Peterson, a Public Health Physician and Professor of Global Health also from the Karolinska Institute, found that nearly one year into the pandemic, lockdowns may have killed more people than COVID. They did so by going through data collected by UNICEF and UNAIDS. They were interviewed about these findings multiple times in Sweden.
Just five months into the pandemic a Lancet study reported that government strategies to deal with COVID such as lockdowns, physical distancing, and school closures are worsening child malnutrition globally, whereby “strained health systems and interruptions in humanitarian response are eroding access to essential and often life-saving nutrition services.”
Just nine months into the pandemic, on an international scale the lockdowns placed 130 million people on the brink of starvation. Even The World Economic Forum estimated that the lockdowns will cause an additional 150 million people to fall into extreme poverty, 125 times as many people as have died from COVID.
In November 2020, Professor David Paton, Professor of Economics at the University of Nottingham and Professor Ellen Townsend, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Nottingham School of Medicine wrote the following,
Taken together, the data are clear both that national lockdowns are not a necessary condition for Covid-19 infections to decrease and that the Prime Minister was incorrect to suggest to MPs that infections were increasing rapidly in England prior to lockdown and that without national measures, the NHS would be overwhelmed…Lockdowns have never previously been used in response to a pandemic. They have significant and serious consequences for health (including mental health), livelihoods and the economy. Around 21,000 excess deaths during the first UK lockdown were not Covid-19 deaths. These are people who would have lived had there not been a lockdown.
A paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in June 2021 found that excess deaths increased shortly after the implementation of these measures.
A paper published by SSRN, a well known global E-Library that provides 1,063,815 research papers from 693,848 researchers in more than 65 disciplines explains,
The extent of human life loss due to lockdowns themselves has never been taken into consideration in the decision-making process…The forecasts which were chosen for political decision making systematically overestimated the threat, supporting excessive measures. The pro-lockdown evidence is shockingly thin, and based largely on comparing real-world outcomes against dire computer-generated forecasts derived from empirically untested models.
I digress, I think you get the point.
All if this is mixed in with the fact that for most healthy people, COVID has a high survival rate, and ones chances of ending up in the hospital are quite slim. This is even more pronounced for children. Most people who suffer from COVID are already quite ill. In the United States for example, 95 percent of people who died with COVID also had an average of four other causes listed on their death certificate. In the UK, there have only been 6,183 deaths caused solely by COVID in England and Wales between Feb 2020 and Dec 2021.
It seems like a more focused protection approach like The Great Barrington Declaration advocated for would have been a more adequate approach. This brings me to my next point, mass censorship.
Whether or not lockdowns were effective at reducing COVID-19 mortality is besides the point. Why was there such an active campaign to censor and ridicule scientists and experts who opposed these measures? A proper discussion and debate was not had within the mainstream, instead the masses were led to believe that these sentiments were coming from “conspiracy theorists” and not actual data. This censorship in itself is suspicious, the truth does not take much to defend itself, so if lockdowns were so effective why put such a large effort into censoring opinion and evidence stating otherwise?
This new meta-analysis will be added to the long list of data sets that have gone completely ignored by government health agencies, who have a long history of not being able to admit when they’ve been wrong while completely ignoring information that opposes what they deem to be fact, when in fact, it could be fiction.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday issued a bulletin warning of a heightened terrorism alert in the United States. One of the “key factors” for the heightened threat, which the DHS considers terrorism, is “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.”
Naturally, this has many folks concerned, especially considering the examples cited in the bulletin which include “false or misleading narratives” about “unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19.”
While parts of the memo cite calls for violence and attacks by foreign terrorist organizations — which are actual terror threats — as cause for concern, the idea that the government’s definition of misinformation could potentially earn you the label of “terrorist,” is shocking.
The bulletin is titled, “Summary of Terrorism Threat to the U.S. Homeland” and reads as follows (emphasis added):
The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors. These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence. Mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence conducted by lone offenders and small groups acting in furtherance of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances pose an ongoing threat to the nation. While the conditions underlying the heightened threat landscape have not significantly changed over the last year, the convergence of the following factors has increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the threat environment: (1)the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions;(2) continued calls for violence directed at U.S. critical infrastructure; soft targets and mass gatherings; faith-based institutions, such as churches, synagogues, and mosques; institutions of higher education; racial and religious minorities; government facilities and personnel, including law enforcement and the military; the media; and perceived ideological opponents; and (3) calls by foreign terrorist organizations for attacks on the United States based on recent events.
As stated above, reasons 2 and 3 are obvious threats of terror and make sense. However, given the government’s tendency to paint with a broad brush, undermining public trust could make millions of people terrorists, including the Free Thought Project.
It is the job of a true journalist to undermine trust in the government and given the shifting goal posts on what is defined as “misinformation” over just the last two years, literally anyone could find themselves subject to this definition. To hammer their point home, DHS specifically calls out misinformation on COVID-19.
Key factors contributing to the current heightened threat environment include:
The proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions:
For example, there is widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19.
Remember in 2020, when any talk of a potential lab leak theory was considered “misinformation”? By this definition, everyone who talked about the lab leak theory was a potential terrorist.
Doctors like Robert Malone and Peter McCullough, who challenge the vaccination mandate, are now, according to this bulletin, terrorists. Given the fact that the government is urging Spotify to censor Joe Rogan for “misinformation,” according to this bulletin, Rogan is also a terrorist. Their information and discussions on Covid-19 have certainly sown discord and undermined public trust — and rightfully so — but does this make them a terror threat?
Obviously, it does not. The only people who would be threatened by healthy, science-based skepticism as espoused by doctors like these two, are tyrants who wish to control the narrative.
Given the extremely broad definition of what the government considers “misinformation,” this bulletin is one of the most worrisome documents to come from the feds in recent history. What’s more, the mere act of releasing such a document, actually “undermines public trust in U.S. government institutions” by threatening those who would dare question the status quo.
Make no mistake, this is a move to criminalize free speech by allowing the executive to declare anyone who disagrees with their dictates, a terrorist. With declarations like this, the government doesn’t need terrorist organizations to “sow discord” — they are doing it themselves.
Joe Rogan has just been cancelled. Again. It’s not about covid “misinformation” this time.
No, now he’s a racist.
Some enterprising young mind combed through 13 years and hundreds of episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience, and cut together around twenty instances of Rogan using “the n-word”.
This video was shared by award-winning musician India Arie, and used to explain her pulling her music from Spotify’s platform in protest of Rogan’s continued presence there.
Rogan claims that these clips are all taken out of context in his recent apology video, and none were ever intended to be racist. This may well be true…we can’t check for ourselves, because Spotify removed all the episodes.
These important bits of context were, naturally, removed from the viral video. Besides, it has since been said that context doesn’t even matter.
And you know what, they’re right. The context doesn’t matter, perhaps the intention doesn’t even matter, what matters is “Why now?”
Some of these clips are over twelve years old, and yet there have never been any calls to boycott Spotify or cancel his show until just the last couple of days.
Were they not racist before? Or was everyone just OK with the racism? Could there be something else behind this?
…but why bother pausing the hate-fest to ask questions, right?
Of course the cyber-torches and internet-pitchforks coming for Joe Rogan is nothing new. Having preached the tenets of a healthy lifestyle, promoted alternate Covid treatments, and invited dissenting experts onto his show, Rogan has obviously been on the establishment’s hit list for a while.
This reached a peak in January when ageing rock royalty Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum: Remove Joe Rogan’s “misinformation”, or take my music down.
Despite adding a weasely disclaimer to the beginning of the podcast’s episodes, Spotify essentially sided with Rogan, probably because they couldn’t be seen to bow to that kind of pressure, and because they figured most people had forgotten Neil Young was still alive.
In short, and despite other musicians like Joni Mitchell adding their voices to Young’s, the gambit failed and Rogan remained on the air.
Then, just last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki added fuel to the fire by announcing the President would like to see “more done” by tech companies to “limit the amount of misinformation” on their platforms.
Within days of that press conference, the viral video compilation of racial slurs had appeared, and Rogan is now a racist as well as an “anti-vax covidiot” or whatever they are calling us these days.
He’s also an object lesson in the entire purpose of cancel culture, and extreme identity politics in general.
I don’t know how many of our readers are gamers, or remember Half Life 2, but go with me here…
Around two-thirds of the way through the game you encounter giant insect-like aliens called Ant Lions, and soon afterwards get a special attack: The ability to “paint” enemies with pheromones which cause an unending swarm of Ant Lions to attack them.
Of course, the giant insects don’t know WHY they are attacking your enemies, they don’t sympathise with your aims and are not capable of understanding your plans, all they know is the chemical signals driving them to fits of rage.
You probably don’t need me to explain the metaphor.
This is the purpose of rampant, hysterical identity politics. You can paint your enemies as a target and watch the mindless swarm do its work.
As much as “cancel culture” is portrayed as a totally organic process, without any top-down control, this is simply not the case.
It is almost NEVER organic, and seemingly ALWAYS contrived.
If you need to be persuaded of that, simply look at who is immune to it.
Both Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau have got enough racist (or at least racist-seeming) scandals to get them cancelled if the process really was anything but a covert tool of maintaining the status quo. And yet still they stand.
To show how selective it is, we have examples of the same exact behaviour eliciting complete opposite responses depending on the person involved.
When Margaret Hodge made similar comments about Corbyn’s Labour party, there was no rebuke at all.
It seems only people outside the establishment, or promoting the ‘wrong’ opinions, are ever in real danger of falling victim to ‘organic’ cancellation.
Indeed, one can be a totally white-bread member of the entertainment industry for years and be safe in the knowledge your racism/homophobia/misogyny etc will never really come to light, but step out of line on the wrong subject at the wrong time, and you will suddenly find yourself facing a tidal wave of past “sins” about to wash over you.
Look at Donald Trump, an insider to the bone when he was just a billionaire reality TV host, but then he ran against Hillary and became “literally Hitler” overnight.
Rogan is a perfect examplar of this phenomenon. Spend ten years going on about legalising weed, taking DMT and talking about martial arts and you can say “the n-word” as much as you want and nobody notices or cares. But the minute you even mildly interrogate an important media narrative, then the mob ‘organically’ remembers you were a racist the whole time.
The evidence of contrivance is obvious. Simply ask yourself: where did this video compilation of racial slurs actually come from? Who made it?
Rogan’s uses of “the n-word” are not new. They are all several years old and from 23 separate episodes, all multiple hours long. And there are almost 1800 episodes of the show to plough through if you decide to go searching. So making this video is at least two days’ work of simply watching the episodes – and that’s assuming you know where to start looking.
And that’s before editing or trying to make it “go viral”.
Was all this done on a whim by some bored pro-vaxxer?
Does that sound likely?
Far more likely is that it was created and deployed to discredit Rogan’s COVID-questioning without having to engage with the Covid sceptic evidence or arguments.
It’s even possible the video may even have already existed before the current controversy. After all, why create this climate of stifling sensitivity if you don’t have the tools to use it?
Perhaps most authors, actors, comedians etc. have a “tape” in the vault somewhere. A database of racism, homophobia or transphobia just waiting to be released when needed. A collection of neo-kompromat that works best as a deterrent, but is always ready to be loosed if needed.
Those people who do step too far out of their box are taken down, and act as an example to others. Ensuring everyone on the public stage is singing from the same hymn sheet.
Because that, it seems, is what cancel culture is for.
It seems we may have reached the moment when it is time to say goodbye. It has been fun, educational and sometimes cathartic – for me at least. I hope you got something from our time together too.
I am not going anywhere, of course. Not for now at least. I love to write. For as long as I feasibly can, I will continue to rail against injustice, call out corporate power and its abuses, and demand a fairer and more open society.
But I have to be realistic. I have to recognise that a growing number of you will not be joining me here on this page for much longer. And it feels rude after so much time together not to bid you a fond farewell before it is too late. I will miss you.
Many of you may have assumed it wouldn’t end this way. You probably imagined that I would get banned by Facebook or Twitter. You would be able to rally round, send in complaints worded in the strongest possible terms, and lobby for my reinstatement. Maybe even sign a petition.
But it isn’t going to end like that. There will be no bang. I have been too careful for that to be my fate. I have avoided rude and crude words. I have steered clear of insults (apologies if my responses have sometimes been a little caustic). I have not defamed anyone. I have avoided “fake news” – except to critique it. I have not peddled “conspiracy theories”, unless quoting the British Medical Journal on Covid now counts as misinformation (yes, I know for a few of you it does).
But none of that has helped. My blog posts once attracted tens of thousands of shares. Then, as the algorithms tightened, it became thousands. Now, as they throttle me further, shares can often be counted in the hundreds. “Going viral” is a distant memory.
No, I won’t be banned. I will fade incrementally, like a small star in the night sky – one among millions – gradually eclipsed as its neighbouring suns grow ever bigger and brighter. I will disappear from view so slowly you won’t even notice.
Which is why I am saying my goodbyes now while I can still reach you, my most obstinate followers.
But this isn’t really about one small light being snuffed out. This isn’t just about our relationship coming to an end. Something bigger, and more disturbing, is taking place.
Journalists like me are part of an experiment – in a new, more democratised media landscape. We have developed new reader-funded models so that we can break free of the media corporations, which until now ensured billionaires and the state controlled the flow of information in one direction only: to speak down to us.
The corporate media need corporate advertising – or their owners’ deep pockets – to survive. They don’t need you, except as a captive audience. You’re both their prisoner and their product.
But the lifeblood of a reader-funded journalist, as the name suggests, are readers. The more of you we attract, the better chance there is that we can generate donations and income and make the model sustainable. Our Achilles’ heel is our dependence on social media to find you, to keep reaching you, to offer you an alternative from the corporate media.
If Facebook (sorry, the Meta universe) and Twitter stop independent writers from growing their readerships by manipulating the algorithms, by ghosting and shadow-banning them, and by all the other trickery we do not yet understand, then new voices cannot grow their funding base and break free of corporate control.
And equally, for those like me who are already established and have significant numbers of readers, these tech giants can whittle them away one by one. Ostensibly, I have many tens of thousands of followers, but for several years now I have been reaching fewer and fewer of you. I am starved of connection. The danger, already only too obvious, is that my readership, and funding model, will slowly start to shrivel and die.
Joe Rogan, Russell Brand and a handful of titans of the new media age are so big they can probably weather it out. But the rest of us will not be so lucky.
Readers will lose sight of us, as our light slowly fades, and then we will be gone completely. Vanished.
I have lost count of the followers who – because, god knows, an algorithm slipped up? – tell me they have received a social media post many months after they last saw one from me. In the cacophony of media noise, they had not noticed that I had unexpectedly gone quiet until that reminder arrived or else they assumed I had given up writing.
Which is why, if you want to keep seeing posts from me and writers like me, if this is not soon to be a final goodbye, if you think it important to read non-corporate analysis and commentary, then you need to act. You should be bookmarking your favourite writers and visiting their sites regularly – not just when you are prompted to by Mark Zuckerberg.
You need to be an active consumer of news – not a passive one, as you were raised to be when the choice was between three TV channels and a dozen print newspapers.
You need to search out and maintain those connections before they are gone entirely and the window has closed. Because those voices you prize now will wither and decay like autumn leaves if they have no audience. If you leave it too long, even when you finally remember to go search for them, you may find they are no longer there to be discovered. You will have missed the chance to say goodbye.
So let us say it now, while we still can: Farewell.
UPDATE:
Writing is a solitary activity, and it can be easy to imagine that what was obvious inside your head will be clear to others when that idea takes its place in the outside world. But a proportion of early readers of this post have mistaken it for an actual goodbye, rather than as a cautionary tale of what has been happening and what is still to come. So let me reassure you: I am going to continue writing and you can continue reading me, so long as either Twitter and Facebook direct you to me or you make the effort to find me.
Here’s hoping that my goodbye will prove unnecessary.
People crowd along a street of Barcelona to buy books and roses at makeshift stands as Catalans celebrate the day of their patron saint, Sant Jordi. Emilio Morenatti | AP
The corporate media is not our friend. Its coverage of the pandemic is not there to promote the public good. It is there to feed our anxieties, keep us coming back for more, and monetize that distress. The only cure for this sickness? A lot more critical thinking.
When I criticize meddling in Syria by Britain and America, or their backing of groups there that elsewhere are considered terrorists, it does not follow that I am, therefore, a cheerleader for the dictatorship of Bashar Assad or that I think that Syrians should be denied a better political system. Similarly, when I criticize Joe Biden or the Democratic party, it does not necessarily follow that I think Donald Trump would have made a better president.
A major goal of critical thinking is to stand outside tribal debates, where people are heavily invested in particular outcomes, and examine the ways debates have been framed. This is important because one of the main ways power expresses itself in our societies is through the construction of official narratives – usually through the billionaire-owned media – and the control and shaping of public debate.You are being manipulated – propagandized – even before you engage with a topic if you look only at the substance of a debate and not at other issues: such as its timing, why the debate is taking place or why it has been allowed, what is not being mentioned or has been obscured, what is being emphasized, and what is being treated as dangerous or abhorrent.
If you want to be treated like a grown-up, an active and informed participant in your society rather than a blank sheet on which powerful interests are writing their own self-serving narratives, you need to be doing as much critical thinking as possible – and especially on the most important topics of the day.
Learning curve
The opportunity to become more informed and insightful about how debates are being framed, rather than what they are ostensibly about, has never been greater. Over the past decade, social media, even if the window it offered is rapidly shrinking, has allowed large numbers of us to discover for the first time those writers who, through their deeper familiarity with a specific topic and their consequent greater resistance to propaganda, can help us think more critically about all kinds of issues – Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Israel-Palestine, the list is endless.
This has been a steep learning curve for most of us. It has been especially useful in helping us to challenge narratives that vilify “official enemies” of the west or that veil corporate power – which has effectively usurped what was once the more visible and, therefore, accountable political power of western states. In the new, more critical climate, the role of the war industries – bequeathed to us by western colonialism – has become especially visible.
But what has been most disheartening about the past two years of Covid is the rapid reversal of the gains made in critical thinking. Perhaps this should not entirely surprise us. When people are anxious for themselves or their loved ones, when they feel isolated and hopeless, when “normal” has broken down, they are likely to be less ready to think critically.
The battering we have all felt during Covid mirrors the emotional, and psychological assault critical thinking can engender. Thinking critically increases anxiety by uncomfortably exposing us to the often artificial character of official reality. It can leave us feeling isolated and less hopeful, especially when friends and family expect us to be as deeply invested in the substance – the shadow play – of official, tribal debates as they are. And it undermines our sense of what “normal” is by revealing that it is often what is useful to power elites rather than what is beneficial to the public good.
Emotional resilience
There are reasons why people are drawn to critical thinking. Often because they have been exposed in detail to one particular issue that has opened their eyes to wider narrative manipulations on other issues. Because they have the tools and incentives – the education and access to information – to explore some issues more fully. And, perhaps most importantly, because they have the emotional and psychological resilience to cope with stripping away the veneer of official narratives to see the bleaker reality beneath and to grasp the fearsome obstacles to liberating ourselves from the corrupt elites that rule over us and are pushing us towards ecocidal oblivion.
The anxieties produced by critical thinking, the sense of isolation, and the collapse of “normal” is in one sense chosen. They are self-inflicted. We choose to do critical thinking because we feel capable of coping with what it brings to light. But Covid is different. Our exposure to Covid, unlike critical thinking, has been entirely outside our control. And worse, it has deepened our emotional and psychological insecurities. To do critical thinking in a time of Covid – and most especially about Covid – is to add a big extra layer of anxiety, isolation, and hopelessness.
Covid has highlighted the difficulties of being insecure and vulnerable, thereby underscoring why critical thinking, even in good times, is so difficult. When we are anxious and isolated, we want quick, reassuring solutions, and we want someone to blame. We want authority figures to trust and act in our name.
Complex thinking
It is not hard to understand why the magic bullet of vaccines – to the exclusion of all else – has been so fervently grasped during the pandemic. Exclusive reliance on vaccines has been a great way for our corrupt, incompetent governments to show they know what they are doing. The vaccines have been an ideal way for corrupt medical-industrial corporations – including the biggest offender, Pfizer – to launder their images and make us all feel indebted to them after so many earlier scandals like Oxycontin. And, of course, the vaccines have been a comfort blanket to us, the public, promising to bring ZeroCovid (false), to provide long-term immunity (false), and to end transmission (false).
And as an added bonus, vaccines have allowed both our corrupt leaders to shift the blame away from themselves for their other failed public health policies and our corrupt “health” corporations to shift attention away from their profiteering by encouraging the vaccinated majority to scapegoat an unvaccinated minority. Divide and rule par excellence.
To state all this is not to be against the vaccines or believe the virus should rip through the population, killing the vulnerable, any more than criticizing the US war crime of bombing Syria signifies enthusiastic support for Assad. It is only to recognize that political realities are complex, and our thinking needs to be complex too.
To be clear, I haven't 'changed my view'. I've kept an open mind throughout. I scorn the media's silencing of dissenting scientists, the general celebration of vaccine profiteering, the unscientific discounting of natural immunity, and the divisive use of mandates to scapegoat https://t.co/83L1UXR4ga
These ruminations were prompted by a post on social media I made the other day referring to the decision of the Guardian – nearly two years into the pandemic – to publish criticisms by an “eminent” epidemiologist, Prof Mark Woolhouse, of the British government’s early lockdown policies. Until now, any questioning of the lockdowns has been one of the great unmentionables of the pandemic outside of right-wing circles.
Let us note another prominent example: the use of the term “herd immunity,” which was until very recently exactly what public health officials aimed for as a means to end contagion. It signified the moment when enough people had acquired immunity, either through being infected or vaccinated, for community transmission to stop occurring. But because the goal during Covid is not communal immunity but universal vaccination, the term “herd immunity” has now been attributed to a sinister political agenda. It is presented as some kind of right-wing plot to let vulnerable people die.
I've had run-ins with Off-Guardian of late, but they're right to highlight the WHO mucking about with the established definition of 'herd immunity'. This kind of thing does nothing but undermine trust in science and scientists https://t.co/SgEMqnptZu
This is not accidental. It is an entirely manufactured, if widely accepted, narrative. Recovery from infection – something now true for many people – is no longer treated by political or medical authorities as conferring immunity. For example, in the UK, those who have recovered from Covid, even recently, are not exempted, as the vaccinated are, from self-isolation if they have been in close contact with someone infected with Covid. Also, of course, those recovered from Covid do not qualify for a vaccine passport. After all, it is not named an immunity passport. It is a vaccine passport.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has at least been open about the “reasoning” behind this kind of discrimination. “In a democracy,” he says, apparently unironically, “the worst enemies are lies and stupidity. We are putting pressure on the unvaccinated by limiting, as much as possible, their access to activities in social life. … For the non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And we will continue to do this, to the end. This is the strategy.”
Notice that the lies and stupidity here emanate from Macron: he is not only irresponsibly stoking dangerous divisions within French society, he has also failed to understand that the key distinctions from a public health perspective are between those with immunity to Covid and those without it and those who are vulnerable to hospitalization and those who are not. These are the most meaningful markers of how to treat the pandemic. The obsession with vaccination only serves a divide and rule agenda and bolsters pandemic profiteering.
Crushing hesitancy
The paradox is that these narratives dominate even as the evidence mounts that the vaccines offer very short-term immunity and that, ultimately, as Omicron appears to be underscoring, many people are likely to gain longer-term immunity through Covid infection, even those who have been vaccinated. But the goal of public “debate” on this topic has not been transparency, logic, or informed consent. Instead, it has been the crushing of any possible “vaccine hesitancy.”
Dr John Campbell is always worth listening to. The bottom lines of the latest omicron research are positive: a) It's likely to be more like a cold b) It'll spread so quickly there's a good chance we'll have herd immunity within months, at minimal suffering https://t.co/GIpGYbXZOX
I have repeatedly tried to highlight the lack of critical thinking around the exclusive focus on vaccines rather than immune health, the decision to vaccinate children in the face of strong, if largely downplayed, opposition from experts, and the divisive issue of vaccine mandates. But I have had little to say directly about lockdowns, which have tended to look to me chiefly like desperate stop-gap measures to cover up the failings of our underfunded, cannibalized, and increasingly privatized health services (a more pressing concern). I am also inclined to believe that the balance of benefits from lockdowns, or whether they work, is difficult to weigh without some level of expertise. That is one reason why I have been arguing throughout the pandemic that experts need to be allowed more open, robust, and honest public debate.
It is also why I offered a short comment on Prof Woolhouse’s criticisms, published in the Guardian this week, of national lockdown policies. This evoked a predictably harsh backlash from many followers. They saw it as further proof that the “Covid denialists have captured me,” and I am now little better than a pandemic conspiracy theorist.
Framing the debate
That is strange in itself. Prof Woolhouse is a mainstream, reportedly “eminent” epidemiologist. His eminence is such that it also apparently qualifies him to be quoted extensively and uncritically in the Guardian. The followers I antagonize every time I write about the pandemic appear to treat the Guardian as their Covid Bible, as do most liberals. And they regularly castigate me for referring to the kind of experts the Guardian refuses to cite. So how does my retweeting of a Guardian story that uncritically reports on anti-lockdown comments from a respectable, mainstream epidemiologist incur so much wrath – and seemingly directed only against me?
The answer presumably lies in the short appended comment in my retweet, which requires that one disengage from the seemingly substantive debate – lockdowns, good or bad? That conversation is certainly interesting to me, especially if it is an honest one. But the contextual issues around that debate, the ones that require critical thinking, are even more important because they are the best way to evaluate whether an honest debate is actually being fostered.
Either Prof Mark Woolhouse has arrived at this view very late in the day, or corporate media like the Guardian have until now effectively gagged eminently qualified scientists critical of lockdown policy. Either way, it looks like we've been screwed over pic.twitter.com/Gmj1RjXrBe
My comment, intentionally ambiguous, implicitly requires readers to examine wider issues about the Guardian article: the timing of its publication, why a debate about lockdowns has not previously been encouraged in the Guardian but apparently is now possible, how the debate is being framed by Woolhouse and the Guardian, and how we, the readers, may be being manipulated by that framing.
Real, live conspiracy
Interestingly, I was not alone in being struck by how strange the preferred framing was. A second epidemiologist, Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician at Harvard who serves on a scientific committee to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), saw problems with the article too. Unfortunately, however, Prof Kulldorff appears not to qualify as “eminent” enough for the Guardian to quote him uncritically. That is because he was one of three highly respected academics who brought ignominy down on their heads in October 2020 by authoring the Great Barrington Declaration.
Like Woolhouse, the Declaration offered an alternative to blanket national lockdowns – the official response to rising hospitalizations – but did so when those lockdowns were being aggressively pursued, and no other options were being considered. The Guardian was among those that pilloried the Declaration and its authors, presenting it as an irresponsible right-wing policy and a recipe for Covid to tear through the population, laying waste to significant sections of the population.
My purpose here is not to defend the Great Barrington Declaration. I don’t feel qualified enough to express a concrete, public view one way or another on its merits. And part of the reason for that hesitancy is that any meaningful conversation at the time among experts was ruthlessly suppressed. The costs of lockdowns were largely unmentionable in official circles and the “liberal” media. It was instantly stigmatized as the policy preference of the “deplorable” right.
This was not accidental. We now know it was a real, live conspiracy. Leaked emails show that Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president, and his minions used their reliable contacts in prominent liberal media to smear the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. “There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don’t see anything like that online yet – is it underway?” a senior official wrote to Fauci. The plan was character assassination, pure and simple—nothing to do with science. And “liberal” media happily and quickly took up that task.
The Guardian, of course, went right along with those smears. This is why Prof Kulldorff has every right to treat with disdain both the Guardian’s decision to now publish Prof Woolhouse’s criticisms – so very belatedly – of lockdown policy and Prof Woolhouse’s public distancing of himself from the now-radioactive Great Barrington Declaration even though his published comments closely echo the policies proposed in the Declaration. As Prof Kulldorff observes:
Hilarious logical somersault. In the Guardian, Mark Woolhouse argues that [the] UK should have used focused protection as defined in the Great Barrington Declaration, while criticizing the Great Barrington Declaration due to its mischaraterization by the Guardian.”
Hilarious logical somersault. In @guardian, Mark Woolhouse argues that UK should have used focused protection as defined in the Great Barrington Declaration, while criticizing the Great Barrington Declaration due to its mischaraterization by @guardian. https://t.co/lJfKVbzgaC
If we put on our critical thinking hats for a moment, we can deduce a plausible reason for that mischaracterization.
Like the rest of the “liberal” media, the Guardian has been fervently pro-lockdown and an avowed opponent of any meaningful discussion of the Great Barrington Declaration since its publication more than a year ago. Moreover, it has characterized any criticism of lockdowns as an extreme right-wing position. But the paper now wishes to open up a space for a more critical discussion of the merits of lockdown at a time when rampant but milder Omicron threatens to shut down not only the economy but distribution chains and health services.
Demands for lockdowns are returning – premised on the earlier arguments for them – but the formerly obscured costs are much more difficult to ignore now. Even lockdown cheerleaders like the Guardian finally understand some of what was clear 15 months ago to experts like Prof Kulldorff and his fellow authors.
What the Guardian appears to be doing is smuggling the Great Barrington Declaration’s arguments back into the mainstream but trying to do it in a way that won’t damage its credibility and look like an about-face. It is being entirely deceitful. And the vehicle for achieving this end is a fellow critic of lockdowns, Prof Woolhouse, who is not tainted goods like Prof Kulldorff, even though their views appear to overlap considerably. Criticism of lockdowns is being rehabilitated via Prof Woolhouse, even as Prof Kulldorff remains an outcast, a deplorable.
In other words, this is not about any evolution in scientific thinking. It is about the Guardian avoiding reputational damage – and doing so at the cost of continuing to damage Prof Kulldorff’s reputation. Prof Kulldorff and his fellow authors were scapegoated when their expert advice was considered politically inconvenient, while Prof Woolhouse is being celebrated because similar expert advice is now convenient.
This is how much of our public discourse operates. The good guys control the narrative so that they can ensure they continue to look good, while the bad guys are tarred and feathered, even if they are proven right. The only way to really make sense of what is going on is to disengage from this kind of political tribalism, examine contexts, avoid being so invested in outcomes, and work hard to gain more perspective on the anxiety and fear each of us feels.
The corporate media is not our friend. Its coverage of the pandemic is not there to promote the public good. It is there to feed our anxieties, keep us coming back for more, and monetize that distress. The only cure for this sickness? A lot more critical thinking.
It’s been a year since I’ve written anything for this blog. The reason, frankly, is that I have been at a loss for words. What has happened to human society in the last two years has been, for anyone with an understanding of history, beyond belief.
Of course, it should not be beyond belief because we know history repeats itself. And in the last two years it has been repeating with a vengeance.
I spent 18 years working to understand, and help others understand, the crimes of September 11, 2001. Those crimes were never honestly investigated apart from the work of independent researchers. The official accounts are widely known to be false and those who have taken the time to look deeper have found that there are good reasons to believe that people within government and major corporations were involved in planning and executing the attacks.
September 11th was a deception used by rich and powerful people to steal resources, consolidate power, and control the masses. It was just one example of such a mass deception. Others include the following.
The CIA’s assassination of JFK
The false Gulf of Tonkin incident that escalated the CIA’s war in Vietnam
The deceptions used to justify the 1991 Gulf War
The government-sponsored 2001 anthrax attacks
Claims of weapons of mass destruction used to justify the second invasion of Iraq
Previously hyped pandemics, including the 2005 “Bird Flu” and 2009 “Swine Flu” that were grossly exaggerated by the World Health Organization for the benefit of big pharma companies
Along with these conveniently over-looked crimes, the last 18 months have shown that the 9/11 lie was not taken seriously. Anyone who still believes that governments and media care about our health has forgotten that deep state actors murdered thousands of citizens on 9/11. The corporate media and corporate-owned governments then covered it up so that a million more could be murdered to steal resources and control people.
Historical illiteracy is largely to blame for the Covid scare although much of that illiteracy is by choice, through willful ignorance of events that cause cognitive dissonance. The examples cited above are but a few in the long history of deceptions used by governments to drive the agendas of the powerful few. People who ignore these historical facts not only turn a bind eye to history, they ignore painfully obvious features of current affairs including that “terrorism” has mysteriously disappeared.
People don’t want to acknowledge the fact that we do not live in democratic societies any longer. Yet today the world is fully run by an oligarchy and that oligarchy wants us to be diverted and outraged about superficial things while staying ignorant or silent on issues important to us like the following.
Indefinite detention without charges at Guantanamo Bay
Unwarranted mass surveillance
Voting machine hacking and election theft
Failure to prosecute the crimes of previous administrations (e.g. drone killings targeting weddings and funerals, torture at CIA black sites)
The increasing totalitarian censorship of dissenting views
Some people have accepted or ignored the poverty and famine being driven by the reckless response to Covid. And they have also ignored that the people driving the Covid scare have a history of crimes against humanity. Not the least of these are Bill Gates, who has monopolized healthcare and has tried to buy off the media, and Anthony Fauci, who is known for having killed nearly 200,000 HIV patients with the toxic drug AZT.
How has the public’s willful ignorance been established so easily? The Covid crimes were carefully practiced beforehand through a series of exercises conducted by governments and corporations since 9/11. And the operation builds upon elements utilized in all the previous government crimes against humanity. Here are three primary components.
As has been demonstrated through all of history, the most effective way to dumb down a population is through fear. Communism, terrorism, WMDs, virus… it all works the same way. This basic feature of the Covid scare is one of many features and outcomes that it shares with previous psychological operations.
Censorship is another hallmark of authoritarian tyranny and we are seeing it raised to a new level in the media today. Any doctor or scientist who has spoken out about the obvious lack of scientific scrutiny applied to the Covid scare has been blocked on social media and ignored or smeared on television, radio, and in print.
In America the most useful tool driving willful ignorance has been the narrative behind the phony 2-party system in politics. The Covid scare works in part because many Americans are easily controlled through the farcical theater of “right-left” identity politics. Today if you want “the left” to take a position, all that is needed is to frame it as opposition to Trump. Control of “the right” is just as easy. This works despite the fact that we are ruled by an oligarchy that does the same things no matter who is in office.
Added to this formula of fear, censorship, and cartoonish politics has been the complete abandonment of science. Scientific illiteracy is known to be quite high in America, but that has become the case for many nations and today anyone with a lab coat and a pointer promoted by the media is accepted as a scientific authority. What people often forget is that it was doctors, not soldiers, who committed the worst crimes in Nazi Germany. These days it is just as easy to buy a doctor or a scientist as it is to buy a politician.
Scientific literacy in America took a giant leap downward after 9/11. The absurd anti-scientific approach taken by the government for the destruction of the Word Trade Center buildings was either accepted or left unquestioned by many Americans. No doubt the death of science with respect to 9/11 was a key step in enabling the Covid scam.
Here are a few examples of how people around the world abandoned science when it came to Covid.
The PCR test for Covid infection in the U.S., which was used in many other countries as well, did not identify a unique coronavirus. In other words, the test had a high rate of false positives. Still, people accepted the narrative of “cases” that drove the fear.
The policy endorsed by the WHO and the CDC that attributed Covid as a cause of death for anyone who tested positive using the false PCR test, no matter what their actual cause of death was, dramatically inflated the number of deaths attributed to Covid.
Both the word vaccine and the word pandemic were redefined by agencies like the WHO to enable the Covid scare.
The “vaccines” are experimental gene therapies that are making people sick and killing them. Those bought into the vaccine narrative responded to this fact with the diversionary claim that the Covid drugs do not change your DNA. But most gene therapies do not change your DNA. Instead, they provide a functioning gene in addition to your DNA. More importantly, all the Covid “vaccines” provide genetic material that drives the production of toxic spike proteins that cause blood clotting, endothelial tissue damage, antibody dependent enhancement, and death.
The Emergency Use Authorizations under which these Covid drugs were granted temporary approvals were based on fraudulent attacks against long-established, effective treatments like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine. The suppression of these effective drugs is responsible for the deaths of the patients who did die from Covid (instead of just with Covid).
How do we go forward realizing that many of our friends, family, and coworkers have decided to remain willfully ignorant of history and science and the facts about the Covid psychological operation?
It is a difficult question but one that has a few clear answers. First, we must stop parroting the absurd official narrative regarding Covid. It is an illness that has a 99.7% survival rate for the elderly and higher for everyone else. And it is very obviously a tool of propaganda in a psychological operation that exhibits all the features and outcomes of previous psychological operations. So, the first step is to not accept or repeat the nonsense narrative.
Secondly, since social media and other corporate media are completely compromised and engage in censorship of any facts related to Covid, we must reach people directly. This means speaking out locally, and contacting your city, county, and state government representatives to oppose the Covid agenda.
There are creative ways to resist as well. For example, if you are forced to wear a mask in public areas in order to conduct your life, put a message on the mask that lets like minded people see you. Something like “Mind Control” or “You stay safe, I’ll stay free” would work.
Finally, realizing that this will all get much worse before it gets better, plan to reduce your dependence on goods and services controlled by the oligarchy. If you can, get off the grid. In other words, find alternative sources of power, food, water, and the other necessities of life before the ultimate tool of control—the vaccine passport—limits your access.
The psychological operations of the media and political establishment are ramping up. They’re targeting every weakness of the gullible public, from its scientific and historical illiteracy to its most banal prejudices, in order to inflame superficial separations from the farcical left/right division to racial tensions. They know us better than we know ourselves.
Let’s resist these provocations and see if we can establish control groups within this corrupt system that can survive and educate future generations.
Kevin Ryan is a chemist, former laboratory director, and prominent voice in the 9/11 Truth movement. You can read more his work at his blog. You can also watch his testimony to the Toronto Hearings on 9/11 here, his video on the parallels between 9/11 and Covid here and his interview as part of our Covid19/11 series here.
That’s the buzz phrase that has rocked the internet the past two days. This comes about after the inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, Dr. Robert Malone, used the phrase to describe the current state of society on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Immediately, search engines began to alter their algorithms so that only those narratives which fit the great MSM, Silicon Valley, globalist/communist narrative were shown.
But let’s take a step back from the scientific jargon for a moment, if you will. Because the fact of the matter is that you’ve already a fundamental and inherent understanding of what mass formation psychosis is.
Daisy wrote about this when she described the “othering” taking place within society.
Americans can feel it. There’s no denying that there has been active discrimination, violence, in many cases “lawful” against the Americans who are pro-freedom/pro-Constitution/pro-human dignity. But perhaps I’m being redundant here, for a true American is all of those things.
And it’s getting worse.
You can feel it. Think about this. Have you ended up in an altercation with somebody over masks throughout the past two years? Or, have you been denied entry to a building because of your jab status or refusal to mask? Did cops use “trespassing” as the limp excuse for discriminating against you when you weren’t willing to wear the yellow star?
That’s what mass formation psychosis is. It’s a society-wide brainwashing.
Dr. Robert Malone actually says that this is what has been used against the global population throughout the past two years.
How do you end up with a “civilized” nation such as Germany turning into a state-run murder machine? Furthermore, how does a nation filled with the likes of Goethe, Mozart, and Bach turn into a world where those with wheelchairs are pushed out of third-story windows, where babies are swung by the feet to crack against the trees? How do the people who are renown for precision machinery turn to using that ability to hunt down women and pump Zyklon B into their lungs?
At what point do the doctors decide that sewing twins together is ok?
You use mass formation psychosis.
According to Dr. Malone, this is exactly what happened in Germany. And if we look at other genocides throughout history, we’ll likely see the same.
Just what is necessary for mass formation psychosis to take place though? Four separate variables which combine to create a monster. They are:
The lack of a social bond.
Free-floating anxiety
A feeling of not having any purpose
People who are confused and can’t make sense of anything around them [source]
To be clear, the theory of mass formation psychosis was developed by Dr. Matias Desmet, a professor, psychologist, and statistician, at the University of Ghent in Belgium. [source]
Dr. Desmet has been shouting for the past two years that this is what he’s currently seeing (particularly on Daily Expose, which you should be reading), but it appears as if this recent podcast is what has served as the springboard for his theory becoming a part of the common vernacular.
But what do the four aspects of mass formation psychosis mean?
Returning to the four aspects though, each of them requires a sizeable segment of society. If only a small percentage of a population experiences these factors, mass formation cannot take place by definition. From Desmet’s research, it appears as if 30% is the magic number.
Once 30% of a nation’s population has fallen into the four factors of mass formation psychosis, very troubling times are on the horizon.
The lack of a social bond is one of the first factors which must be met. Individuals need to be severely isolated from one another, creating a feeling of loneliness. It appears that solitary confinement isn’t as healthy for people as one may initially think, huh?
Perhaps by robbing people of their faces, this isolation can even be forced upon one when they’re out in public. Why have so many ancient warriors utilized covering the face when they went into combat? Because it takes away the human aspect of the person right in front of one. Instead of a man – who could be killed – now standing in front of you with katana raised high, it was a bizarre looking monster.
Dehumanization bred fear. It was a form of psychological warfare.
The free-floating anxiety revolves around generating massive amounts of panic and fear over something that people really have a hard time of putting their finger on. Sure, people may be afraid of the typhus which are alleged to carry (as propaganda stated throughout 1930s Germany), but there’s something even deeper than that as well.
It’s the constant state of being unsure. Of not knowing when one is going to be potentially harmed. In the Cold War this would have been the daily pressure of a nuclear attack. Children are taught to shelter under their desk, bomb shelters are being built in the city hall, and the news is telling about some type of missile crisis out in Cuba.
In modern day, it’s the fear that walking down the grocery store is what’s going to be the death of you. You just touched a door. Was it clean? Have you touched your face lately? Did you hear about Sally? She tested positive. So-and-so is in the hospital.
All of this has created two solid years of mass panic as people have become afraid of the world around them.
The third variable is the need for 30% of the population to feel as if what they’re doing has no purpose or meaning. People are upset that what they’re doing doesn’t even seem to matter. There’s got to be more out there – a bigger purpose -but nobody can really figure out just what.
And this brings us to the fourth point. People aren’t able to make sense of anything in the world around them. Perhaps their government leaders have consistently flip-flopped on telling them what they are or are not to do. One day it’s perfectly safe to stand beside your neighbor. Now, you must stand six feet away. Tomorrow, you better avoid them completely because they haven’t taken their morning anal swab yet.
For starters, those affected by the variables start to join together. They begin to feel as if they need to strive together to reach this common goal, of defeating that which is filling them with angst, and many times this pushes them against another sizeable segment of the population.
During the Holocaust, it was the need to create the “superman”, to rid the world of genetic disease, to get rid of the infirm and crippled which led to the extermination of millions at the likes of Dauchau, Auschwitz, and more.
Media can then be used to push this agenda even further
It can continue to fan the flames of fear while telling the affected what it is they need to do – who they need to push back against. The leaders of this movement “become revered – unable to do wrong.”
As Malone states, “one of the aspects of that phenomenon [mass formation psychosis] is that the people that they identify as their leaders, the ones typically that come in and say you have this pain and I can solve it for you. I and I alone….Then they will follow that person. It doesn’t matter whether they lied to them or whatever. The data is irrelevant.”
Anybody that speaks against Dear Leader is fought back against in unison by the affected. They are silenced, stripped of their jobs, or even acted against with violence.
This all takes place as those affected become almost hypnotized, in a sense. People will outright refuse any logic presented them. It doesn’t matter if the facts just don’t line up. Anything which counters the narrative which they’ve been hypnotized by is automatically rejected.
And when this happens, the seeds of totalitarianism, are sown. A despot can now spring forth, giving the brainwashed all the “righteous indignation” they need to commit atrocities they wouldn’t have even dreamed of participating in just years prior.
(To learn how to become better prepared for this type of society, check out our free QUICKSTART Guide.)
But it’s not hopeless.
The interesting thing about this research is that Dr. Malone points out mass formation psychosis follows a general distribution. This means that 30% of a nation will be brainwashed. Approximately, 40% will be those who ride the fence – unable to really make up their minds as to what they want to do, or those who are too afraid to voice their opinions.
And then there are those who refuse to bow to evil. That is the remaining 30%.
As Dr. Mattias Desmet points out, this sane 30% is that which can turn the tide for good. By speaking out, they can embolden more of the 40% of the fence riders to find the courage to speak out against evil.
But this only happens when one uses their voice.
“Continue to speak out. If other voices are available in the public space, then the mass hypnosis will be disturbed.” – Professor Doctor Mattias Desmet. [source]
There has been an unfortunate shift in Western educational practices in the past few decades away from what we used to call “critical thinking.” In fact, critical thinking was once a fundamental staple of US colleges and now it seems as though the concept doesn’t exist anymore; at least not in the way it used to. Instead, another form of learning has arisen which promotes “right thinking”; a form of indoctrination which encourages and rewards a particular response from students that falls in line with ideology and not necessarily in line with reality.
It’s not that schools directly enforce a collectivist or corporatist ideology (sometimes they do), it’s more that they filter out alternative viewpoints as well as facts and evidence they do not like until all that is left is a single path and a single conclusion to any given problem. They teach students how to NOT think by presenting thought experiments and then controlling the acceptable outcomes.
For example, a common and manipulative thought experiment used in schools is to ask students to write an “analysis” on why people do not trust science or scientists these days. The trick is that the question is always presented with a built-in conclusion – That scientists should be trusted, and some people are refusing to listen, so let’s figure out why these people are so stupid.
I have seen this experiment numerous times, always presented in the same way. Not once have I ever seen a college professor or public school teacher ask students: “Should scientists today be trusted?”
Not once.
This is NOT analysis, this is controlled hypothesis. If you already have a conclusion in mind before you enter into a thought experiment, then you will naturally try to adjust the outcome of the experiment to fit your preconceived notions. Schools today present this foolishness as a form of thinking game when it is actually propaganda. Students are being taught to think inside the box, not outside the box. This is not science, it is anti-science.
Educational programming like this is now a mainstay while actual science has taken a backseat. Millions of kids are exiting public schools and universities with no understanding of actual scientific method or science in general. Ask them what the equations for Density or Acceleration are, and they’ll have no clue what your are talking about. Ask them about issues surrounding vaccination or “climate change”, and they will regurgitate a litany of pre-programmed responses as to why the science cannot be questioned in any way.
In the alternative media we often refer to this as being “trapped in the Matrix,” and it’s hard to think of a better analogy. People have been rewarded for so long for accepting the mainstream narrative and blindly dismissing any other information that when they are presented with reality they either laugh at it arrogantly or recoil in horror. The Matrix is so much more comfortable and safe, and look at all the good grades you get when you say the right things and avoid the hard questions and agree with the teacher.
Given the sad state of science in the West these days surrounding the response to covid as well as the insane and unscientific push for forced vaccinations, I thought it would be interesting to try out this thought exercise, but from an angle that is never allowed in today’s schools:
Why don’t people trust the science and scientists anymore?
This is simple: Because many scientists have been caught lying and misrepresenting their data to fit the conclusions they want rather than the facts at hand. Science is often politicized to serve an agenda. This is not conspiracy theory, this is provable fact.
That’s not to say that all science is to be mistrusted. The point is, no science should be blindly accepted without independent examination of ALL the available facts. This is the whole point of science, after all. Yes, there are idiotic conspiracy theories out there when it comes to scientific analysis, but there are a number of scams in the world of science as well.
The usual false claim is that the average person is ignorant and that they don’t have the capacity to understand scientific data. I do find it interesting that this is the general message of the trust-science thought experiment. It fits right in line with the mainstream and government narrative that THEIR scientists, the scientists they pay for and that corporations pay for, are implicitly correct and should not be questioned. They are the high priests of the modern era, delving into great magics that we dirty peasants cannot possibly grasp. It is not for us to question “the science”, it our job to simply embrace it like a religion and bow down in reverence.
Most people have the capacity to sift through scientific data as long as it’s transparent. When the facts are obscured or spun or omitted this causes confusion, and of course only the establishment scientists can untangle the mess because they are the ones that created it. Let’s look at a couple of examples directly related to human health…
GMO Crops And The Corporate Money Train
The propaganda surrounding Genetically Modified Organisms is relentless and pervasive, with the overall thrust being that they are perfectly safe and that anyone who says otherwise is a tinfoil hat crackpot. And certainly, there a hundreds if not thousands of studies which readily confirm this conclusion. So, case closed, right?
Not quite. Here is where critical thinking is so useful and where reality escapes the indoctrinated – Who paid for these studies, and do they have a vested interest in censoring negative data on GMOs?
Well, in the vast majority of cases GMO studies are funded by two sources – GMO industry giants like Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta, or, government agencies like the FDA and EPA. Very few studies are truly independent, and this is the problem. Both the government and corporations like Monsanto have a vested interest in preventing any critical studies from being released on GMO’s.
Monsanto has been caught on numerous occasions hiding the dangerous health effects of its products, from Agent Orange to the RGBH growth hormone used in dairy cows. They have been caught compiling illegal dossiers on their critics. The industry has been caught multiple times paying off academics and scientists to produce studies on GMOs with a positive spin and even to attack other scientists that are involved in experiments that are critical of GMOs. Research shows that at least half of all GMO studies are funded by the GMO industry, while the majority of the other half are funded by governments.
There has also long been a revolving door between GMO industry insiders and the FDA and EPA; officials often work for Monsanto and then get jobs with the government, then go back to Monsanto again. The back scratching is so egregious that the government even created special legal protections for GMO companies like Monsanto under what is now known as the Monsanto Protection Act (Section 735 of Agricultural Appropriations Bill HR 993) under the Obama Administration in 2013. This essentially makes GMO companies immune to litigation over GMOs, and the same protections have been renewed in different bills ever since.
Beyond the revolving door, the government has approved many GMO products with little to no critical data to confirm their safety. Not only that, but in most cases the government has sovereign immunity from litigation, even if they’ve been negligent. Meaning, if any of these products is proven to cause long term health damage the government cannot be sued for approving them unless there are special circumstances.
If they could be held liable, you would be damn sure the FDA would be running every conceivable test imaginable to make sure GMOs are definitively safe without any bias attached, but this is not the case. Instead, the government actively propagandizes for GMO companies and uses hired hatchet men to derail any public criticism.
I, for one, would certainly like to know for sure if GMOs are harmful to the human body in the long term, and there is certainly science to suggest that this might be the case. There have been many situations in which specific GMO foods were removed from the market because of potentially harmful side effects. Endogenous toxins of plants with modified metabolites are a concern, along with “plant incorporated protectants” (plants designed to produce toxins which act as a pesticides).
There is data that tells us to be wary, but nothing conclusive. Why? Because billions of dollars are being invested by corporations into research designed to “debunk” any notion of side effects. If the same amount of funding was put into independent studies with no bias, then we might hear a different story about the risks of GMOs. All the money is in dismissing the risks of GMOs; there’s almost no money in studying them honestly.
The science appears to be rigged to a particular outcome or narrative, and that is lying. Science is supposed to remain as objective as possible, but how can it be objective when it is being paid for by people with an agenda? The temptation to sell out is extreme.
Covid Vaccines And The Death Of Science
I bring up the example of GMO’s because I think it is representative of how science can be controlled to produce only one message while excluding all other analysis. We don’t really know for sure how dangerous GMOs are because the majority of data is dictated by the people that profit from them and by their friends in government. The lack of knowing is upheld as proof of safety – But this is not scientific. Science and medicine would demand that we err on the side of caution until we know for sure.
The same dynamic exists in the world of covid vaccines. Big Pharma has a vested interest in ensuring NO negative information is released about the mRNA vaccines because there is a perpetual river of money to be made as long as the vax remains approved for emergency use by the FDA. It may be important to note that the FDA has said it will take at least 55 YEARS to release all the data it has on the Pfizer covid vaccines, which suggests again that there is a beneficial collusion between the government and corporate behemoths.
In the meantime, anyone that questions the efficacy or safety of the vax is immediately set upon by attack dogs in the media, most of them paid with advertising dollars from Big Pharma. These attacks are not limited to the alternative media; the establishment has also gone after any scientist or doctor with questions about vaccine safety.
There are clear and openly admitted ideological agendas surrounding covid science which have nothing to do with public health safety and everything to do with political control. When you have the head of the World Economic Forum applauding the covid pandemic as a perfect “opportunity” to push forward global socialist centralization and erase the last vestiges of free markets and individual liberty, any rational person would have to question if the covid science is also being rigged to support special interests.
Luckily, the covid issue is so massive that it is impossible for them to control every study. Instead, the establishment ignores the studies and data they don’t like.
The virus is being hyped as a threat to the majority of the public and as a rationale for 100% vaccination rates, by force if needed. Yet, the median Infection Fatality Rate of covid is only 0.27%. This means that on average 99.7% of the population at any given time has nothing to fear from the virus. This is confirmed by dozens of independent medical studies, but when was the last time you heard that number discussed by mainstream government scientists like Anthony Fauci?
I’ve never heard them talk about it. But how is it scientific to ignore data just because it doesn’t fit your political aims? Again, deliberate omission of data is a form of lying.
What about the multiple studies indicating that natural immunity is far superior in protection to the mRNA vaccines? What about the fact that the countries with the highest vaccination rates also have the highest rates of infections and their hospitalizations have actually increased? What about the fact that the states and countries with the harshest lockdown and mask mandates also have the highest infection rates? What about the fact that the average vaccine is tested for 10-15 years before being approved for human use, while the covid mRNA vaccines were put into production within months? That is to say, there is NO long term data to prove the safety of the covid vax.
These are easily observable scientific facts, but we never hear about them from corporate scientists or government scientists like Fauci? Instead, Fauci argues that criticism of his policies is an attack on him, and attacking him is the same as “attacking science.” In other words, Fauci believes HE IS the science.
And doesn’t that just illustrate how far science has fallen in the new millennium. Real scientists like Kary Mullis, the inventor of the PCR test, call Fauci a fraud, but they are ignored while Fauci is worshiped. I can’t even get into climate change “science” here, I would have to write an entire separate article about the fallacies perpetrated by global warming academics (did you know that global temperatures have only increased by 1 degree Celsius in the past century? Yep, just 1 degree according to the NOAA’s own data, yet, institutions like the NOAA continue to claim the end of the world is nigh because of global warming).
The stringent bottleneck on science today reminds me of the Catholic church under Pope Innocent III when church authorities forbade common people from owning or reading a bible. These laws remained in effect well into the 13th century. Instead, the peasants were to go to church and have the texts read to them by specific clergy. Often the bible readings were done in Latin which most people did not speak, and interpreted however the church wished.
It was only the invention of the printing press in the 1400s that changed the power dynamic and allowed bibles to be widely distributed and information to spread without church oversight. Much like the creation of the internet allows the public to access mountains of scientific data and methodologies at their fingertips. The free flow of information is an anathema according to the establishment; they argue that only they have the right to process information for public consumption.
Cultism requires excessive control of data and the complete restriction of outside interpretations. As information becomes openly available the public is then able to learn the whole truth, not just approved establishment narratives.
Science is quickly becoming a political religion rather than a bastion of critical thought. Conflicting data is ignored as “non-science” or even censored as “dangerous.” Government and corporate paid studies are treated as sacrosanct. Is it any wonder that so many people now distrust the science? Any reasonable person would have questions and suspicions. Those who do not have been indoctrinated into a cult they don’t even know they are a part of.
After the Crash 