Tag Archives: Pandemic

Which Is More Dangerous: Mainstream Media or The Spike Protein?

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By Madhava Setty, MD

Source: Collective Evolution

Last week CE published this piece that demonstrated the obvious spin The Washington Post used to mislead their readers about the status of the unvaccinated, claiming that their rates of infection, death and hospitalization are significantly higher than vaccinated individuals when in fact they never measured these rates. In this article I will once again focus on the Washington Post and their lack of journalistic integrity. This time their propaganda is more egregious because they are targeting the largest pool of unvaccinated individuals: children.

The Washington Post urges the vaccination of adolescents

On May 10, 2021 the Washington Post published this article titled “FDA authorizes Pfizer Coronavirus vaccine for adolescents 12 to 15 years old”. The article begins with a quote from Kawsar R. Talaat, an assistant professor of international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who says,  “A vaccine gives them an extra layer of protection and allows them to go back to being kids.” 

This is a fascinating statement. Obviously kids were never not kids during the pandemic. Dr. Talaat is essentially saying that in order to be allowed to enjoy their youth kids must be vaccinated. However the restrictions that have been imposed upon their activity were never based on sound data. Asymptomatic spread could never be quantified or even confirmed. Mask mandates have been empirically demonstrated to have no effect on transmissibility or incidence of infection. The only things preventing kids from going back to being kids are the mandates that remain unsupported by any evidentiary arguments–not their vaccination status.

This statement was then further supported in the article:

”Robert W. Frenck Jr., the researcher who led [an] adolescent trial at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, who said the study was designed to test whether it triggered immune responses, not whether it prevented disease. But because of the number of children who became ill in the placebo arm of the trial, it also became evident the vaccine offered robust protection. He finishes by stating ‘That really points out how much covid there is in the adolescent community.’”

Dr. Frenck admits that the study he conducted was not designed to tell whether the vaccine prevented disease but whether children in the study developed antibodies. The point he is trying to make is that there is a lot of disease in the adolescent community. How much? In his study 16 out of approximately 1150 unvaccinated kids got Covid, all of whom recovered. That is an absolute risk of 1.4%. Compare that to the risk of getting the flu in a flu season: 8%. 

The article goes on to claim that the mortality of COVID is greater than the flu in children. The Post correctly states that of the 581,000 deaths from Covid only 300 adolescents have perished from the disease, an admittedly extremely small percentage but tragic nonetheless. However they state that this number is greater than the number of adolescents that die from the flu which justifies universal vaccinations. The article cites this paper from the CDC that they claim confirms this statistic. In it the CDC states that 188 children died from the flu in the 2017-18 season, indeed less than 300. However the paper then states that “CDC estimates the actual number was closer to 600”. We have caught the Post in what can be fairly called a lie that is being used to make their case that the threat of the disease justifies prevention through vaccination.

Vaccination Risks and what we know about the “Spike Protein”

Every medical intervention has a risk/benefit relationship that must be examined closely. The Washington Post never once addresses the potential risk of the vaccine in children. Despite mainstream media’s dogged refusal to pursue any research into potential harm of the Covid vaccines, some very troubling information has recently surfaced if one is willing to look beyond headlines and CDC reports. Unlike the Washington Post, I will also examine the risk aspect of the vaccine with a look at the role of the infamous “spike” protein.

As is well known, the Spike protein on the SARS-COV2 virus is what allows it to enter a human cell and infect it. It is also the target protein of the mRNA “vaccines” that use a novel approach to teach our immune systems to recognize it by stimulating our own cells to produce this protein ourselves, hopefully triggering our immune system to produce antibodies against it.

The vaccine manufacturers and the FDA who grant them authorization to deploy their product have made an enormous assumption: the virus is dangerous, but the spike protein is not. It is becoming clear that this assumption does not hold true. In this short article published on April 30, 2021 (11 days before the WP published their article) Salk News summarizes one of several scientific publications that demonstrate the danger of the spike protein:

“The paper, published on April 30, 2021, in Circulation Research, also shows conclusively that COVID-19 is a vascular disease, demonstrating exactly how the SARS-CoV-2 virus damages and attacks the vascular system on a cellular level. The findings help explain COVID-19’s wide variety of seemingly unconnected complications, and could open the door for new research into more effective therapies.

‘A lot of people think of it as a respiratory disease, but it’s really a vascular disease,” says Assistant Research Professor Uri Manor, who is co-senior author of the study. “That could explain why some people have strokes, and why some people have issues in other parts of the body. The commonality between them is that they all have vascular underpinnings.’”

The takeaway from these statements is that Covid-19 is a vascular disease more than just a respiratory illness. This was suspected very early on in the pandemic when many people were injured by bleeding, clots, strokes and organ failure. The authors were able to establish its mechanism by an elegant experiment. They designed a “pseudovirus”, one that had the SARS-COV2 spike protein on its surface but without any viral RNA in it. The pseudovirus damaged the lungs and pulmonary vasculature in animal models. They then isolated the molecular pathway by which spike proteins alter the metabolism of vascular endothelial cells causing injury. Conclusion: the spike protein itself causes harm in animal models.

Though we cannot definitively assert, from this study alone, that the spike protein is directly responsible for injury in humans, we must avail ourselves of the reality that this may take a very long time to prove definitively. If it is shown that an intervention is dangerous to animals there is no justification in assuming that it will be safe in a human being. That is why we use animal models in medical research to begin with.

“Fact Checkers” are Taking Notice

As expected, such statements are getting a lot of attention in the media. PolitiFact quickly responded with two articles (one here) “debunking” the theory that spike proteins are dangerous to humans. They quote Dr. Walter Orenstein (associate director of Emory University’s Emory Vaccine Center) and Dr. Paul Offit (director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) who both summarize that they are not aware of any evidence around the danger of spike proteins. Neither, however commented on the study presented in this essay.

PolitiFact also noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called the spike protein “harmless”. Once again, PolitiFact accepted their blanket statement without asking the CDC for their opinion of the evidence cited here. PolitiFact declined to query the CDC for a different explanation of why hospitalized Covid-19 patients commonly expressed systemic disease often with vascular and clotting disorders.

The Danger of an mRNA vaccine that generates spike proteins

If the spike protein is pathogenic, i.e. capable of causing disease, how do we know that when we create antibodies to it we will be completely protected from it? We don’t. How do we know that every person inoculated will mount an antibody response to them? We don’t. This should be sounding alarms in every institution charged with public health. Why? With traditional vaccines there is very little risk, if any, of contracting disease from the vaccine. For example, if a person inoculated with a Hepatitis B vaccine does not mount an immunological response they do not end up getting Hepatitis B.

The situation we may be in is much more concerning. These mRNA vaccines, if they work as intended, are in fact introducing the disease-inducing component of the virus into our bodies. As with most biological processes there will be a wide distribution of responses to the vaccine from people who have little or no side-effects to others who suffer devastating injury. Is that what we are seeing now? Yes it is. 

The vaccines migrate throughout the body after injection

More recently, more disturbing information is coming to light. Bioavailability studies of the vaccine were not made public prior to Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). A Pfizer bioavailability study, obtained through the FOIA from a Japanese regulatory agency by a group of international scientists, demonstrates where the vaccine may go once it has been injected into the muscle tissue of our shoulder. Table 2.6.5.5B in this study indicates that the very same Lipid Nanoparticles (LNPs) used in the Pfizer vaccine begin to redistribute throughout the bodies of mice. Within 15 minutes after inoculation LNPs show up in the brain, liver, gastrointestinal tract, heart, lungs and especially in the ovaries and spleen. We can infer that where the LNPs go so do the mRNA that codes for spike protein. That was the purpose behind doing this study. We can also safely say that Pfizer and the other Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers never intended for their product to migrate so far from the site of inoculation.

This story is still evolving, however these studies and recently released bioavailability reports help to explain the clinical picture of Covid-19 with its broad effects on the body that are not limited to the respiratory system. Furthermore it may substantiate the numerous reports of injury following vaccinations like strokes, blood clots, bleeding, “brain fog”, Bell’s Palsy, etc.

The spike protein is toxic. The vaccine induces our cells to make spike proteins. The vaccine spreads throughout the body after injection. Until another unifying explanation is found we must assume that these vaccines are potentially far more dangerous than anticipated.

A call to halt vaccinations in the UK

In this advisory letter to Dr. June Raine, chief executive of Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (the UK’s FDA), Dr. Tess Lawrie, the director of an evidence based medicine consulting firm, urges the director to halt the vaccination program in that country after an extensive review of the UK’s adverse reaction data was conducted.

The Takeaway

We know, through the CDC’s own data, that Covid-19 vaccines provide almost no benefit to children and adolescents. The danger of vaccination is yet to be fully understood or quantified. In my opinion, the medical community, the FDA and CDC have no reasonable argument to encourage parents to vaccinate their children at this point. The Washington Post has once again demonstrated sloppy research standards, unbalanced reporting and lack of integrity. In this case adolescents, who are among the least vulnerable to the virus, may be harmed from The Post’s inability or unwillingness to uphold basic journalistic principles.

Was there a Wuhan lab leak? An inquiry won’t dig out the truth. It will deepen the deception

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By Jonathan Cook

Source: Jonathan Cook Blog

A year ago, the idea that Covid-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan – a short distance from the wet market that is usually claimed to be the source of the virus – was dismissed as a crackpot theory, supported only by Donald Trump, QAnon and hawks on the right looking to escalate tensions dangerously with China.

Now, after what has been effectively a year-long blackout of the lab-leak theory by the corporate media and the scientific establishment, President Joe Biden has announced an investigation to assess its credibility. And as a consequence, what was treated until a few weeks ago as an unhinged, rightwing conspiracy is suddenly being widely aired and seriously considered by liberals.

Every media outlet is running prominent stories wondering whether a pandemic that has killed so many people and destroyed the lives of so many more can be blamed on human hubris and meddling rather than on a natural cause.

For many years, scientists at labs like Wuhan’s have conducted Frankenstein-type experiments on viruses. They have modified naturally occurring infective agents – often found in animals such as bats – to try to predict the worst-case scenarios for how viruses, especially coronaviruses, might evolve. The claimed purpose has been to ensure humankind gets a head start on any new pandemic, preparing strategies and vaccines in advance to cope.

Viruses are known to have escaped from labs like Wuhan’s many times before, and leaked US cables show Washington was concerned about safety procedures and security at the Wuhan lab two years before the emergence of Covid-19. There are now reports, rejected by China, that several staff at Wuhan got sick in late 2019, shortly before Covid-19 exploded on to the world stage. Did a human-manipulated novel coronavirus escape from the lab and spread around the world?

No interest in truth

Here we get to the tricky bit. Because nobody in a position to answer that question appears to have any interest in finding out the truth – or at least, they have no interest in the rest of us learning the truth. Not China. Not US policy-makers. Not the World Health Organisation. And not the corporate media.

The only thing we can state with certainty is this: our understanding of the origins of Covid has been narratively managed over the past 15 months and is still being narratively managed. We are being told only what suits powerful political, scientific and commercial interests.

We now know that we were misdirected a year ago into believing that a lab leak was either fanciful nonsense or evidence of Sinophobia – when it was very obviously neither. And we should understand now, even though the story has switched 180 degrees, that we are still being misdirected. Nothing that the US administration or the corporate media have told us, or are now telling us, about the origins of the virus can be trusted.

No one in power truly wants to get to the bottom of this story. In fact, quite the reverse. Were we to truly understand its implications, this story might have the potential not only to hugely discredit western political, media and scientific elites but even to challenge the whole ideological basis on which their power rests.

Which is why what we are seeing is not an effort to grapple with the truth of the past year, but a desperate bid by those same elites to continue controlling our understanding of it. Western publics are being subjected to a continuous psy-op by their own officials.

Virus experiments

Last year, the safest story for the western political and scientific establishments to promote was the idea that a wild animal like a bat introduced Covid-19 to the human population. In other words, no one was to blame. The alternative was to hold China responsible for a lab leak, as Trump tried to do.

But there was a very good reason why most US policy-makers did not want to go down that latter path. And it had little to do with a concern either to refrain from conspiracy theories or to avoid provoking unnecessary tension with a nuclear-armed China.

Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times science writer, set out in May, in an in-depth investigation, why the case for a lab leak was scientifically strong, citing some of the world’s leading virologists.

But Wade also highlighted a much deeper problem for US elites: just before the first outbreak of Covid, the Wuhan lab was, it seems, cooperating with the US scientific establishment and WHO officials on its virus experiments – what is known, in scientific parlance, as “gain-of-function” research.

Gain-of-function experiments had been paused during the second Obama administration, precisely because of concerns about the danger of a human-engineered virus mutation escaping and creating a pandemic. But under Trump, US officials restarted the programme and were reportedly funding work at the Wuhan lab through a US-based medical organisation called the EcoHealth Alliance.

The US official who pushed this agenda hardest is reported to have been Dr Anthony Fauci – yes, the US President’s chief medical adviser and the official widely credited with curbing Trump’s reckless approach to the pandemic. If the lab leak theory is right, the pandemic’s saviour in the US might actually have been one of its chief instigators.

And to top it off, senior officials at the WHO have been implicated too, for being closely involved with gain-of-function research through groups like EcoHealth.

Colluding in deceit

This seems to be the real reason why the lab-leak theory was quashed so aggressively last year by western political, medical and media establishments without any effort to seriously assess the claims or investigate them. Not out of any sense of obligation towards the truth or concern about racist incitement against the Chinese. It was done out of naked self-interest.

If anyone doubts that, consider this: the WHO appointed Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, the very group that reportedly funded gain-of-function research at Wuhan on behalf of the US, to investigate the lab-leak theory and effectively become the WHO’s spokesman on the matter. To say that Daszak had a conflict of interest is to massively understate the problem.

He, of course, has loudly discounted any possibility of a leak and, perhaps not surprisingly, continues to direct the media’s attention to Wuhan’s wet market.

The extent to which major media are not only negligently failing to cover the story with any seriousness but are also actively continuing to collude in deceiving their audiences – and sweeping these egregious conflicts of interest under the carpet – is illustrated by this article published by the BBC at the weekend.

The BBC ostensibly weighs the two possible narratives about Covid’s origins. But it mentions none of Wade’s explosive findings, including the potential US role in funding gain-of-function research at Wuhan. Both Fauci and Daszak are cited as trusted and dispassionate commentators rather than as figures who have the most to lose from a serious investigation into what happened at the Wuhan lab.

Given this context, the events of the past 15 months look much more like a pre-emptive cover-up: a desire to stop the truth from ever emerging because, if a lab leak did occur, it would threaten the credibility of the very structures of authority on which the power of western elites rests.

Media blackout

So why, after the strenuously enforced blackout of the past year, are Biden, the corporate media and the scientific establishment suddenly going public with the possibility of a China lab leak?

The answer to that seems clear: because Nicholas Wade’s article, in particular, blew open the doors that had been kept tightly shut on the lab-leak hypothesis. Scientists who had formerly feared being associated with Trump or a “conspiracy theory” have belatedly spoken up. The cat is out of the bag.

Or as the Financial Times reported of the new official narrative, “the driving factor was a shift among scientists who had been wary of helping Trump before the election or angering influential scientists who had dismissed the theory”.

The journal Science recently upped the stakes by publishing a letter from 18 prominent scientists stating that the lab-leak and animal-origin theories were equally “viable” and that the WHO’s earlier investigation had not given “balanced consideration” to both – a polite way of suggesting that the WHO investigation was a fix.

And so we are now being subjected by the Biden administration to Plan B: damage limitation. The US President, the medical establishment and the corporate media are raising the possibility of a Wuhan lab leak, but are excluding all the evidence unearthed by Wade and others that would implicate Fauci and the US policy elite in such a leak, if it occurred. (Meanwhile, Fauci and his supporters have been preemptively muddying the waters by trying to redefine what constitutes gain-of-function.)

The growing clamour on social media, much of it provoked by Wade’s research, is one of the main reasons Biden and the media are being forced to address the lab-leak theory, having previously discounted it. And yet Wade’s revelations of US and WHO involvement in gain-of-function research, and of potential complicity in a lab leak and a subsequent cover-up are missing from almost all corporate media reporting.

Evasion tactic

Biden’s so-called investigation is intended to be cynically evasive. It makes the administration look serious about getting to the truth when it is nothing of the sort. It eases pressure on the corporate media that might otherwise be expected to dig out the truth themselves. The narrow focus on the lab leak theory displaces the wider story of potential US and WHO complicity in such a leak and overshadows efforts by outside critics to highlight that very point. And the inevitable delay while the investigation is carried out readily exploits Covid news fatigue as western publics start to emerge from under the pandemic’s shadow.

The Biden administration will hope the public’s interest rapidly wanes on this story so that the corporate media can let it drop off their radar. In any case, the investigation’s findings will most likely be inconclusive, to avoid a war of duelling narratives with China.

But even if the investigation is forced to point the finger at the Chinese, the Biden administration knows that the western corporate media will loyally report its accusations against China as fact – just as they loyally blacked out any consideration of a lab leak until they were forced to do so over the past few days.

Illusion of truth

The Wuhan story provides a chance to understand more deeply how elites wield their narrative power over us – to control what we think, or are even capable of thinking. They can twist any narrative to their advantage.

In the calculations of western elites, the truth is largely irrelevant. What is of utmost importance is maintaining the illusion of truth. It is vital to keep us believing that our leaders rule in our best interests; that the western system – despite all its flaws – is the best possible one for arranging our political and economic lives; and that we are on a steady, if sometimes rocky, path towards progress.

The job of sustaining the illusion of truth falls to the corporate media. It will be their role now to expose us to a potentially lengthy, certainly lively – but carefully ring-fenced and ultimately inconclusive – debate about whether Covid emerged naturally or leaked from the Wuhan lab.

The media’s task is to manage smoothly the transition from last year’s unquestionable certainty – that the pandemic had an animal origin – to a more hesitant, confusing picture that includes the possibility of a human, but very much Chinese, role in the virus’ emergence. It is to ensure we do not feel any cognitive dissonance as a theory we were assured was impossible by the experts only weeks ago suddenly becomes only too possible, even though nothing has materially changed in the meantime.

What is essential for the political, media and scientific establishments is that we do not ponder deeper questions:

  • How is it that the supposedly sceptical, disputatious, raucous media once again spoke mostly with a single and uncritical voice on such a vitally important matter – in this case, for more than a year on the origins of Covid?
  • Why was that media consensus broken not by a large, well-resourced media organisation, but by a lone, former science writer  working independently and publishing in a relatively obscure science magazine?
  • Why did the many leading scientists who are now ready to question the imposed narrative of Covid’s animal origin remain silent for so long about the apparently equally credible hypothesis of a lab leak?
  • And most importantly, why should we believe that the political, media and scientific establishments have on this occasion any interest in telling us the truth, or in ensuring our welfare, after they have been shown to have repeatedly lied or stayed silent on even graver matters and over much longer periods, such as about the various ecological catastrophes that have been looming since the 1950s?

Class interests

Those questions, let alone the answers, will be avoided by anyone who needs to believe that our rulers are competent and moral and that they pursue the public good rather than their own individual, narrow, selfish interests – or those of their class or professional group.

Scientists defer slavishly to the scientific establishment because that same establishment oversees a system in which scientists are rewarded with research funding, employment opportunities and promotions. And because scientists have little incentive to question or expose their own professional community’s failings, or increase public scepticism towards science and scientists.

Similarly, journalists work for a handful of billionaire-owned media corporations that want to maintain the public’s faith in the “benevolence” of the power structures that reward billionaires for their supposed genius and ability to improve the lives of the rest of us. The corporate media has no interest in encouraging the public to question whether it can really operate as a neutral conduit that channels information to ordinary people rather than preserves a status quo that benefits a tiny wealth-elite.

And politicians have every reason to continue to persuade us that they represent our interests rather than the billionaire donors whose corporations and media outlets can so easily destroy their careers.

What we are dealing with here is a set of professional classes doing everything in their power to preserve their own interests and the interests of the system that rewards them. And that requires strenuous efforts on their part to make sure we do not understand that policy is driven chiefly by greed and a craving for status, not by the common good or by a concern for truth and transparency.

Which is why no meaningful lessons will be learnt about what really happened in Wuhan. Maintaining the illusion of truth will continue to take precedence over uncovering the truth. And for that reason we are doomed to keep making the same screw-ups. As the next pandemic will doubtless attest.

Brave New Cancel Culture World

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By Pepe Escobar

Source: The Unz Review

In 2020, we saw the enshrinement of techno-feudalism – one of the overarching themes of my latest book, Raging Twenties.

In lightning speed, the techno-feudalism virus is metastasizing into an even more lethal, wilderness of mirrors variant, where cancel culture is enforced by Big Tech all across the spectrum, science is routinely debased as fake news in social media, and the average citizen is discombobulated to the point of lobotomy.

Giorgio Agamben has defined it as a new totalitarianism.

Top political analyst Alastair Crooke has attempted a sharp breakdown of the broader configuration.

Geopoliticallly, the Hegemon would even resort to 5G war to maintain its primacy, while seeking moral legitimization via the woke revolution, duly exported to its Western satrapies.

The woke revolution is a culture war – in symbiosis with Big Tech and Big Business – that has smashed the real thing: class war. The atomized working classes, struggling to barely survive, have been left to wallow in anomie.

The great panacea, actually the ultimate “opportunity” offered by Covid-19, is the Great Reset advanced by Herr Schwab of Davos: essentially the replacement of a dwindling manufacturing base by automation, in tandem with a reset of the financial system.

The concomitant wishful thinking envisages a world economy that will “move closer to a cleaner capitalist model”. One of its features is a delightfully benign Council for Inclusive Capitalism in partnership with the Catholic Church.

As much as the pandemic – the “opportunity” for the Reset – was somewhat rehearsed by Event 201 in October 2019, additional strategies are already in place for the next steps, such as Cyber Polygon, which warns against the “key risks of digitalization”. Don’t miss their “technical exercise” on July 9th, when “participants will hone their practical skills in mitigating a targeted supply chain attack on a corporate ecosystem in real time.”

A New Concert of Powers?

Sovereignty is a lethal threat to the ongoing cultural revolution. That concerns the role of the European Union institutions – especially the European Commission – going no holds barred to dissolve the national interests of nation states. And that largely explains the weaponizing, in varying degrees, of Russophobia, Sinophobia and Iranophobia.

The anchoring essay in Raging Twenties analyzes the stakes in Eurasia exactly in terms of the Hegemon pitted against the Three Sovereigns – which are Russia, China and Iran.

It’s under this framework, for instance, that a massive, 270-plus page bill, the Strategic Competition Act , has been recently passed at the US Senate. That goes way beyond geopolitical competition, charting a road map to fight China across the full spectrum. It’s bound to become law, as Sinophobia is a bipartisan sport in D.C.

Hegemon oracles such as the perennial Henry Kissinger at least are taking a pause from their customary Divide and Rule shenanigans to warn that the escalation of “endless” competition may derail into hot war – especially considering AI and the latest generations of smart weapons.

On the incandescent US-Russia front, where Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sees the lack of mutual trust, no to mention respect, as much worse than during the Cold War, analyst Glenn Diesen notes how the Hegemon “strives to convert the security dependence of the Europeans into geoeconomic loyalty”.

That’s at the heart of a make-or-break saga: Nord Stream 2. The Hegemon uses every weapon – including cultural war, where convicted crook Navalny is a major pawn – to derail an energy deal that is essential for Germany’s industrial interests. Simultaneously, pressure increases against Europe buying Chinese technology.

Meanwhile, NATO – which lords over the EU – keeps being built up as a global Robocop, via the NATO 2030 project – even after turning Libya into a militia-ridden wasteland and having its collective behind humiliatingly spanked in Afghanistan.

For all the sound and fury of sanction hysteria and declinations of cultural war, the Hegemon establishment is not exactly blind to the West “losing not only its material dominance but also its ideological sway”.

So the Council on Foreign Relations – in a sort of Bismarckian hangover – is now proposing a New Concert of Powers to deal with “angry populism” and “illiberal temptations”, conducted of course by those malign actors such as “pugnacious Russia” who dare to “challenge the West’s authority”.

As much as this geopolitical proposal may be couched in benign rhetoric, the endgame remains the same: to “restore US leadership”, under US terms. Damn those “illiberals” Russia, China and Iran.

Crooke evokes exactly a Russian and a Chinese example to illustrate where the woke cultural revolution may lead to.

In the case of the Chinese cultural revolution, the end result was chaos, fomented by the Red Guards, which started to wreak their own particular havoc independent of the Communist Party leadership.

And then there’s Dostoevsky in The Possessed, which showed how the secular Russian liberals of the 1840s created the conditions for the emergence of the 1860s generation: ideological radicals bent on burning down the house.

No question: “revolutions” always eat their children. It usually starts with a ruling elite imposing their newfound Platonic Forms on others. Remember Robespierre. He formulated his politics in a very Platonic way – “the peaceful enjoyment of liberty and equality, the reign of eternal justice” with laws “engraved in the hearts of all men”.

Well, when others disagreed with Robespierre’s vision of Virtue, we all know what happened: the Terror. Just like Plato, incidentally, recommended in Laws. So it’s fair to expect that the children of the woke revolution will eventually be eaten alive by their zeal.

Canceling freedom of speech

As it stands, it’s fair to argue when the “West” started to go seriously wrong – in a cancel culture sense. Allow me to offer the Cynic/Stoic point of view of a 21st century global nomad.

If we need a date, let’s start with Rome – the epitome of the West – in the early 5th century. Follow the money. That’s the time when income from properties owned by temples were transferred to the Catholic Church – thus boosting its economic power. By the end of the century, even gifts to temples were forbidden.

In parallel, a destruction overdrive was in progress – fueled by Christian iconoclasm, ranging from crosses carved in pagan statues to bathhouses converted into churches. Bathing naked? Quelle horreur!

The devastation was quite something. One of the very few survivors was the fabulous bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius on horseback, in the Campidoglio/ Capitoline Hill (today it’s housed in the museum). The statue survived only because the pious mobs thought the emperor was Constantine.

The very urban fabric of Rome was destroyed: rituals, the sense of community, singin’ and dancin’. We should remember that people still lower their voices when entering a church.

For centuries we did not hear the voices of the dispossessed. A glaring exception is to be found in an early 6th century text by an Athenian philosopher, quoted by Ramsay MacMullen in Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eight Centuries.

The Greek philosopher wrote that Christians are “a race dissolved in every passion, destroyed by controlled self-indulgence, cringing and womanish in its thinking, close to cowardice, wallowing in all swinishness, debased, content with servitude in security.”

If that sounds like a proto-definition of 21st century Western cancel culture, that’s because it is.

Things were also pretty bad in Alexandria. A Christian mob killed and dismembered the alluring Hypatia, mathematician and philosopher. That de facto ended the era of great Greek mathematics. No wonder Gibbon turned the assassination of Hypatia into a remarkable set piece in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (“In the bloom of beauty, and in the maturity of wisdom, the modest maid refused her lovers and instructed her disciples; the persons most illustrious for their rank or merit were impatient to visit the female philosopher”).

Under Justinian – emperor from 527 to 565 – cancel culture went after paganism no holds barred. One of his laws ended imperial toleration of all religions, which was in effect since Constantine in 313.

If you were a pagan, you’d better get ready for the death penalty. Pagan teachers – especially philosophers – were banned. They lost their parrhesia: their license to teach (here is Foucault’s brilliant analysis).

Parrhesia – loosely translated as “frank criticism” – is a tremendously serious issue: for no less than a thousand years, this was the definition of freedom of speech (italics mine).

There you go: first half of the 6th century. This was when freedom of speech was canceled in the West.

The last Egyptian temple – to Isis, in an island in southern Egypt – was shut down in 526. The legendary Plato’s Academy – with no less than 900 years of teaching in its curriculum – was shut down in Athens in 529.

Guess where the Greek philosophers chose to go into exile: Persia.

Those were the days – in the early 2nd century – when the greatest Stoic, Epictetus, a freed slave from Phrygia, admirer of both Socrates and Diogenes, was consulted by an emperor, Hadrian; and became the role model of another emperor, Marcus Aurelius.

History tells us that the Greek intellectual tradition simply did not fade away in the West. It was a target of cancel culture.

Deleting the Reset: The Imminent Struggle Ahead

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By Kevin Smith

Source: Off-Guardian

Awhile ago I wrote an article explaining my journey of learning towards the Great Reset agenda. In that piece I said that I thought this horror show would continue for some time, but ultimately it would fail, but at great cost to our society and to all of us.

More recently I’ve been researching information about the new ‘vaccines’ and like others, now seriously wonder if this is part of something sinister and perhaps even more of a threat our very existence.

For relief from the madness and heavy-reading of the scientific studies, I watch a lot of Ivor Cummins’, Dr Mike Yeadon’s, and Dr Sucharit Bhakdi online presentations which are professional, clear and powerful.  Dr Bhakdi’s recent interview here is brilliant, yet the most terrifying I’ve watched concerning the vaccines.

There are some experts out there with real passion, intelligence and an amazing ability to cut through the complexities.  We should all be grateful to have such brave people setting out the facts.

Of course, many of these experts and commentators have limited access to the so-called mainstream. They’ve been censored relentlessly.  It’s easy to become despondent that the now obvious facts over Covid-19, lockdowns and vaccines are still not getting a hearing.

For me, it’s the frustration that the public are still largely oblivious to the impending nightmare about to descend on them and their families.  And the powerlessness to stop it, like a slow-motion car crash.

DR REINER FUELLMICH

Just recently, I’ve become drawn towards some presentations and interviews involving a prominent German lawyer, Reiner Fuellmich. Quite a few readers here may have watched the same material.

He’s well known for previously taking out successful legal actions against huge companies, Volkswagen, over its fraudulent emissions data and also Deutsche Bank over a financial scandal.

Last year his attention was drawn towards the response to the so-called Coronavirus crisis and with several others, set up the German Corona Investigative Committee to look into it. Now, this committee has conducted much of their investigations and are proceeding with legal actions globally.

I think it’s worth summarising some of this here.

Also, although many of us are aware of many of the reasons, motives, timing for the so-called Great Reset, I think Reiner’s insights and thoughts are interesting and collectively provide a more complete understanding of what’s behind it all. And perhaps there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

Below includes my review and some thoughts on the above clips, Reiner’s approach, observations and findings, with some of my thoughts.

BACKGROUND

Reiner set up the investigation committee in July 2020.  This is a good summary of the timeline, concerns and questions raised and conclusions which followed.

They decided the three major questions to be answered in the context of a judicial approach to the coronavirus issues were:

  1. Is there a corona pandemicor is there only a PCR-test pandemic? Specifically, does a positive PCR-test result mean that the person tested is infected with Covid-19, or does it mean absolutely nothing in connection with the Covid-19 infection?
  2. Do the so-called anti-corona measures, such as the lockdown, mandatory face masks, social distancing, and quarantine regulations, serve to protect the world’s population from corona, or do these measures serve only to make people panic so that they believe – without asking any questions – that their lives are in danger, so that in the end the pharmaceutical and tech industries can generate huge profits from the sale of PCR tests, antigen and antibody tests and vaccines, as well as the harvesting of our genetic fingerprints?
  3. Is it true that the German government was massively lobbied, more so than any other country, by the chief protagonists of this so-called corona pandemic, Mr. Drosten, virologist at charity hospital in Berlin; Mr. Wieler, veterinarian and head of the German equivalent of the CDC, the RKI; and Mr. Tedros, Head of the World Health Organization or WHO; because Germany is known as a particularly disciplined country and was therefore to become a role model for the rest of the world for its strict and, of course, successful adherence to the corona measures?

In examining these points and to understand the big picture better, Reiner says that he spoke to over a hundred experts and took testimony.  From scientists, doctors, psychologists and many other experts in their fields, including whistle blowers with knowledge of the Great Reset.

Reiner confidently states in the interview that he has a good case to show that the combine decision making and lockdown measures in response to Covid-19 and PCR tests and other evidence, is a scandal on a massive scale and the biggest crime against humanity, ever.

Without repeating all the events over the last 14 months (which are largely covered within the above links), it’s now obvious that virtually every official western government, scientific narrative and measure has been the complete opposite of how to deal with a genuine public health crises. It’s clear Covid-19 is being used to usher in a regime of complete control over us.

LEGAL OPPORTUNITIES 

Reiner explains in the interview that the legal actions are being planned and will be multi-layered and conducted across jurisdictions internationally.  He believes that in light of favourable judgements in Portugal and Austria regarding the ineffectiveness of the PCR test, this is a good approach. 

He also explains that because the reset agenda is also not limited to one jurisdiction, it makes good sense from this perspective.

It seems to me, on the facts alone, he would have a strong case in any fair court. But I think we’ve all seen examples of European courts issuing inexplicable decisions or ducking out of a judgement on hugely important issues on a point of law or jurisdiction.

Reiner says that perhaps the best chances of legal success are in the US and Canada legal systems he is familiar with, which allow class actions.  Class actions can be joined by individuals who believe they have been disadvantaged by decisions of the state or large company, for example, by fraud, negligence or discrimination.

Reiner states during the interview that the national state systems might not be suitable for this type of case due to the sheer scale of the Covid-19 fraud and ultimately envisages a ‘Nuremberg 2’ scenario.

Some people might feel that the legal process, even if it hasn’t been bought and paid for by the globalists responsible for these crimes, will take too long to stop what’s happening. I think this is a danger, but much work has already been carried out by the German Corona Investigative Committee and much evidence is already in the public domain and cases in the pipeline soon.

In any event, I believe it will be interesting to watch these events, perhaps within the context of the continuing horror of the ongoing health, social and economic destruction and the Great Reset agenda. Such increasing public awareness might determine the outcome, how these cases proceed or are judged, or even if they proceed at all.

THE INTERESTS DRIVING THE GREAT RESET: A LAWYER’S VIEW

What was most interesting from the interview is what Reiner said about the people involved within this agenda and the possible motives behind it.  While I and many of us have a fair idea of what they are, and there seem to be many, I think we struggle to understand the structure behind it all, how it works together and how to apportion responsibility to each moving part (financial and banking, big pharma, world organisations, climate-change agenda, medical profession, judiciary etc)

Reiner’s observations of this are interesting and I think provide some grounds for optimism.

He says from what he’s learned he thinks there are about 3,000 people in the world most directly complicit acting against a population of around 8 billion. He refers to them as the ‘Davos Clique’. He says, however, that he estimates between 10 and 20% of people in the world have woken up to this agenda and possibly many more are on the path to discovery.

So that’s 3,000 hardcore criminals against perhaps as many as 1.5 billion, so far.

Reiner also says that these criminals are made up of people with competing interests and where in-fighting takes place. This, he believes, may be an opportunity to push-back just in the same way they have divided us. It seems whistle-blowers have provided information and as this terrifying agenda unfolds, this should gather pace.

Likewise, when asked who these people are and what combined motives are involved, he explains that they are made up of the ‘usual suspects’ of world organisations such as, WHO, WEF, IMF, the billionaire technocrats, pharmaceutical giants, big media platforms, banks and investment funds.

He says the motive is not primarily financial because these people are outrageously wealthy already. He describes it as more about control over humanity.  This operates under the guise of several motives and agendas, self-preservation and consolidation, Covid and vaccines, climate-change ideology but essentially it is about power. But their money is what oils the machinery below them.

I think perhaps the structure Reiner and others have described is like a pyramid.  He says that these elitist cults have filtered money down to grease the various chains of command below them, such as governments, opposition parties, media, scientists, universities, hospital trusts and so on.

Reiner says that he also believes that some individuals in government could have been bribed, coerced or threatened into co-operating.  We’ve seen possible signs of this elsewhere such as Belarus, Tanzania and Burundi.

I guess the lower you go down the pyramid you get the ‘middle managers’ and ‘foot-soldiers. Some who are being bribed with funding grants. Some who suspect something but are too afraid to speak out. Some who are oblivious to what’s going on.

It’s not hard to imagine with all the forces above pulling together, wittingly or otherwise can commence such a huge undertaking of a global coup.  My analogy is similar to Nazi Germany and the command structure looks very similar.

Reiner also mentioned two interesting scenarios which I hadn’t considered as much.  He says that he was told by a whistle-blower that the original plan was to introduce the reset in 2050.  This was brought forward to 2030 and then to now as some elements within this group became impatient.   He says that he believes this being rushed through now is why they are making so many obvious mistakes that can be exploited.

Further Reiner says he was told that Europe is the battleground where they are trying to get control over the most. This is because Europe and the central bank is essentially bankrupt and particularly the big pension funds which for obvious reasons don’t wish people to know.  They figure pushing through their agenda under the guise of pandemics, climate-change, conflict and other crisis will distract the public and by the time they wake up, they will be under full control.

After the same people caused the previous financial crash, they reassured us everything was alright again but since have been printing money and plundering more.

Reiner believes, as the financial system started showing signs of imploding again in 2019, this was when the globalists decided to meet and agreed to push the Coronavirus narrative and towards the Great Reset.

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF STOPPING THEIR POWER GRAB?

Reiner is quite hopeful that this could happen and a better world could emerge and away from the globalism which has created the world’s problems.  He says that, if we fail, it could be the end of humanity, so we can’t fail. I share this assessment and cautious optimism.

Personally, I think the globalist cults may have bitten off much more than they can chew at once.  Due to the overall agenda being a shared goal among different interests, but combine with many smaller agendas within these groups (which sometimes conflict), I think it’s hard to pull off.

I believe the courts in theory offer remedies as long as they are independent or there’s a chance at least, the globalists may back off or settle if they see the evidence against them is overwhelming and awareness growing.

Whistle-blowers could start coming forward more, perhaps caused by an unexpected event or opposition which the elites haven’t factored in or further mistakes they make. So, there’s a strong psychological element to this battle.

Likewise, many more people than we realise now could be on the verge of waking up and a spark somewhere, perhaps major civil unrest could cause contagion.  The elites could lose their nerve, become too greedy, divisions and in-fighting could follow leading to self-destruction.

But I believe the elites could double-down with further generated crisis. Food chain problems, power cuts new variants and other distractions.  There could be evil that we have not factored in.

The tragedy for humanity is if people don’t wake up now, they may not realise until they are in the nightmare, where they will own nothing and be expected to be happy, or far worse.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

Reiner says it’s not worth the effort trying to actively persuade the people who seem to have switched off their brain and rolled up their sleeves.  Rather concentrate on spreading the message and connect to like-minded individuals or those who simply have doubts about what’s going on.

In my mind there are two things we need to do as individuals. To win, and cope until we do.

My own thought is to take one day at a time, not to overthink the unthinkable. My view is also to spread the powerful messages, the grave doubts about the vaccines, passports, digital currencies, highlighting the Great Reset and what this will mean to the lives of all of us if we accept full control by a bunch of Bond Villain-style criminals.

Use strong language, call this agenda for what it is.  Communism, fascism, eco-authoritarianism or analogies with Nazi Germany.

Use fear of their real, terrifying agenda, just as they have used fear of a “virus” which is not a threat, against us. When spreading this information use images, ridicule and humour.

Finally, for me, one very compelling part of Reiner’s interview was to do with spirituality which he mentioned in parts of his clip near the end and is worth listening to.

He says that he is not religious but has come to believe that some people have perhaps a gift or ability to see things the majority can’t or won’t.  I guess he was suggesting something beyond researching events. Possibly more a superior perception of events, a spirituality, or a natural instinct well above the general human ability to perceive or rationalise things – which he feels is relevant to this and connecting with each other.

Reiner gave the example of a friend who was describing their child in the company of other children, him being different to the rest.

This is something I can relate to, in the direction of my life from one which was largely aimless and unfulfilled to today fighting injustice wherever I see it.

I feel there is a spiritual dimension there and I sense this with others fighting this and similar causes. Whether it is spiritual or there’s another explanation, I think the essence of what Reiner is saying is very true and will resonate with many people whether it’s opposing foreign wars or fighting against the war the global elites and their puppets have now unleashed on all humanity under the guise of Covid-19.

At the end of the interview, the interviewer asks Reiner if history would look back fondly on him and others who took part in this fight now.  Reiner replied “absolutely, of course”

Reiner is clearly a person of much integrity, passion and intelligence. One of many excellent people we have fighting for us.

The ‘new normal’ – what will we lose?

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By Alex Bartlett

Source: Off-Guardian

This is the question is it not? Even though tens of thousands of experts, thousands of skeptics and all of the rest of us have been consumed over the last year debating, questioning, arguing and worst of all, just listening to endless stream of covid coverage it really comes down to this.

After sifting through all of the science-sourced “facts”, claims, death statistics, cases updates (so many, many cases) and the dire, ever grim projections from our modern-day high priests with their computer models it really just comes down to this question.

What will we lose?

For many reasons I am reluctant to write about this subject. I know nothing of epidemiology or virology or public health. I really have no business writing about loss due to covid 19, my profession is in high demand for the moment, my wife is gainfully employed and recently promoted and our living situation is quite good.

I will not dare pretend that I can speak about real hardship or suffering due to covid compared to what small business owners would be going through or what the working poor have had to endure but at the same time, only a complete fool would suggest that they have not lost anything in the past year.

With this in mind, at the same time, I cannot fully ever hope to comprehend all that I, no, all that we have lost and all of the ways this has happened. The sheer magnitude of these changes, almost all entirely some kind of loss for the vast majority of us is truly staggering. Perhaps for the 1st time in a very long time, perhaps ever, the other majority, the world’s poorest citizens will finally see the rest of us experience real empathy, a genuine understanding of some of the challenges and daily injustices they have been forced to accept as a normal way of living.

The worst aspect of my personal situation so far is that my elderly mother has been basically imprisoned in a care facility for over a year, unable to see any family save for myself and my brother who have been permitted to be designated “essential caregivers” so that she may have a few visitors.

So far with this measure, our Ontario Government has not been heartless enough just yet to completely isolate the elderly but all other friends and family are forbidden to visit. The last time she was allowed outside, almost 8 months ago, she was in the presence of a “minder” who kept us 6 feet apart, masked and who afforded us no privacy. I will lose my mom soon, she may die alone, forcibly confined with simple pleasures like walks in a park, the chaotic, non-judgemental love of grandchildren with their extra exuberance on holidays and birthdays all but eliminated.

My children are also no longer allowed in school even though kids are not and never were at risk and at the moment, over 75% of our schools in Ontario did not even have a single “case” when last in session. They are not only losing education but also social skills, study skills, valuable daily interactions and life lessons as well as exercise and fresh air and tragically, a large portion of that small, finite amount of time where they could just simply be kids.

I feel despair most days when I see my daughter, perched at the dining room table in front of a laptop ready to sign into virtual school, on her own and alone. Our wonderful, neighbourhood school sits shuttered while my daughter emulates the routine of an office worker at the age of 8. At the end of the day we can sometimes catch ourselves almost berating her like low level managerial assholes for not paying attention and fooling around during the day with the computer. For Christ sakes, what have we become as parents?

My 5 years old son cannot even last a 20 minute lesson online by himself. I initially felt frustrated that he could not persist in the same fashion the other young innocents can in these disembodied zoom classes but now I could be more accepting of this except that we both have to work during this “school time” and we need him to be occupied. Maybe this lack of digital “focus” speaks to how little screen time he had prior to this abomination of online “learning” or maybe it is simply because he is just 5 years old and he has no business being treated like this.

Am I surprised at how easily I just became a jaded, middle aged man who mostly complains to like minded friends and who wears himself and others out with the same impotent questions about “why and “how” could this happen? I did try emailing almost anyone in authority to question the safety and efficacy of the school mask mandate but this effort soon failed after so many “cut and paste”, formulaic responses from the bureaucratic minders along with their links on “community spread” and “how to safely wear a mask.”

It would have been nice to actually have been able to talk to school staff about my concerns in person but parents have not been permitted inside the school for over a year now. Will we ever be allowed back inside our schools or will there be new measures, new “threats” to keep us outside or have we simply just lost this ability to view and interact with this critically formative environment we immerse our children into?

I have not had a haircut since November 2020. “Unsafe” they say while putting all hairdressers on welfare for the better part of a year and also while making “working from home” just that much more undignified. Dogs have actually been permitted more frequent access to professional grooming than adults have here in Ontario in the last year.

Perhaps this is why booze, marijuana and fast food have always been available during this pandemic. I guess they know that as long as we remain in a well-fed stupor with Netflix porting us from reality, there will be no real angst or frustration on the streets.

For a brief moment last week, when announcing our latest stay at home order due to our hypersensitive, 47 cycle PCR test cases (approximately 1 case for every 4,500 residents here in Ontario mind you), our bumbling high school educated Premier tried to impose a quasi-martial law edict. The police would have been able to stop you and question your intent if you ventured outside of you home. I found it laughable that you could legally comply by saying you were “off to buy booze, weed or fast food” and these would all be valid, essential destinations for such an excursion. Meeting a friend for a walk in the park though, this is not safe, nor recommended or even permitted!

Luckily, they pulled back from this stance, the lawyers probably said it was unlawful, the police probably said that they did not want to enforce this heavy handed stance and perhaps the weary, bleary eyed, stumbling public would have probably, finally, maybe have said “enough”.

At this point, I think only the naïve believe that our old lives are coming back. Perhaps that is why they are so willing, so adamant to get the jab. It is not really to save the lives of others or prevent the scourge of an infectious disease but because it mainly seems like most people just want to travel again or to have the chance to no longer have to hear or worry about covid constantly.

Once again, I realize I have no business writing about loss. My friends are still all employed, I really do not know anyone who runs a small shop or a restaurant. I have no idea what it would be like to watch your business disintegrate, the debts pile up and the financial vultures start circling around you. I do understand why these small business owners and employees would be so motivated for everyone to get vaccinated so that they can finally open up and claw their way out of this deep covid hole they have been plunged into with the other end of their government issued loan lifelines handed to the big banks as a financial noose around their necks that will continually tighten in the months and years to come.

For the moment the rest of us are all still shielded by this work from home employment model that has not had any significant layoffs due to a massive, unchecked national Government wage subsidy program that even pays a 70% wage subsidy to large, significantly profitable corporations that are still paying dividends to shareholders. This white-collar job market stability is still further enhanced here in Canada by the re-bounding stock market that keeps rising to ever record heights thanks to the government debt printing machines.

So, how much will they really take from us in the months and years to come?

Let’s forget about PCR testing cycles, what constitutes a “case” vs. a clinical case, vaccine trials, if masks work or if lockdowns really achieve anything. These are all unnecessarily divisive discussions that, in the absence of any real or honest mainstream journalism, will never be permitted to be resolved in the public forum.

What we should really care about is that our children have been forbidden to interact with each other, to pursue hobbies, musical lessons, school clubs or just simple play-time with their peers. They are sent to school, when deemed “safe” based on the computer models, bound and gagged as invalids for up to 8 hours a day. Lunchtimes and playtimes are truncated, discouraged and replaced with silent lunches in front of a screen and ”socially distanced” outdoor play during shortened recess periods.

What will school look like in the years to come? What kind of digital ID’s will our children be forced to carry with them at all times and which big Tech conglomerate will collect, curate, market and disseminate all of their medical, scholarly and personal data?

What will replace all of the small restaurants, pubs and shops that have gone under? Will all of these beautiful brick and mortar establishments be bought up on the cheap by a large private equity firm that will offer the least equitable employment terms to desperate applicants?

At the moment I am not supposed to leave my neighbourhood limits. When will I be able to travel internationally and what risks must I accept with new vaccines and boosters to qualify to come and go and what private information must I sacrifice upon request to comply?

I feel that most of the online world I encounter is awash in mis-information, how soon will it be before the small and beleaguered sources of genuine information that I can find online are completely demonetized, de-linked, banned or de-platformed from the internet? The access to content and commenting that we have lost in the last year alone would have been incomprehensible to almost all of us just a few years ago, now the most “liberal democrats” are braying for big tech and the regulators to do more, to take more stringent actions. Soon we may experience a very harsh and unforgiving internet, one that reports us for straying outside of the ever-narrowing community guidelines.

What about my freedom, my right to refuse a hastily developed medical technology, one that has not been thoroughly tested but is still supposed to, guaranteed to (almost) provoke the appropriate immune response to a virus that poses almost no harm to me whatsoever?

What about unintended consequences? What happens to me if I suddenly develop any number of rare or debilitating health conditions in the future? My chances of catching covid-19 or experiencing ill effects from it are quite low so why can’t I be allowed to take this risk without being judged for doing so?

What happened to our acquired knowledge as a society as to how to behave when sick? This has served us well for thousands of years. When our amazing immune systems were fighting a significant illness, it was almost always obvious that the sick individual should be cared for but isolated and kept from others.

Why have we lost this trust in ourselves and in our own judgement? We are still permitted to raise our children (for now) but we are unable to properly assess our own health and infectivity as it may pertain to others at work or at school? Exercising our own good judgement is a critical aspect of a well functioning, civil society. Removing this right, this freedom of choice will only lead to a punitive, dystopian type of society, one that eagerly turns on each other rather than to help one another.

The optimists, those that believe in the system, the same system that has half the planet living in poverty mind you but don’t worry about that, just a minor flaw, they believe this fabulous system of democracy and commerce will deliver us the health outcome we all deserve. It will protect us and our weakest and all we need to do is take a shot, or two or three, every year and don’t mind the costs or how or to whom the money was distributed, it was necessary, it will be worth it.

Once this happens, once we reach the now newly re-defined as solely vaccine derived “herd immunity” then life is back! School, travel, friends and family. You can have it all but you may need a mask for just a bit longer, maybe two masks actually.

The rest of us, a small vocal minority or perhaps, hopefully a larger, mostly silent and dumbfounded mass of citizens will finally start taking stock of what we have lost and what we are truly at risk of losing.

It is hard to do. I still want the others to be right. I want the vaccine to be safe and effective. I want the sacrifice to be worth it. I want to travel and do all the things I imagined I would do with friends and family and at work. I want my kids to have these same options that I had. I want to believe that my government and our health officials are working with our best interests in mind while unaffected by conflicts of interest.

But the data says otherwise. This data that has always been there. That data that shows us that Covid is neither dangerous or all that contagious to anyone under the age of 70. The historical data that tells us that Influenza A and B and all the other sub-types could not possibly just disappear worldwide in the last twelve months. The data, all the data, these recent 12 months of newly acquired covid raw numbers from all over the world that does not lie…

So, the media does.

So do almost all Governments as well.

They have the full cooperation of all of the big tech companies for maximum efficacy. Information has never been more widely available but then immediately censored or “fact” checked. Prominent voices of reason, objectivity and truth are shadow banned or de-platformed. Even the miniscule, insignificant frustrated comments I make against my better judgement on our national news website are quickly and automatically deactivated within minutes of posting. I should know better than to waste the pixels, however temporary they might be.

What can be done? Not much on our own but then quite a lot if we all do something. Close to a half a million marched in London on April 24th. It was wonderful to see. How many more will march in May? I hope at least twice as many will next time and that they will persist, and persist and persist. I hope that as the weather warms, more and more people will see that it is possible to be outside and inside, to be together and to celebrate our lives, our professions and our passions together without shame or fear.

What else do we have to lose?

Coronavirus – Buying a Single Version of the Truth

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By Iain Davis

Source: UK Column

The UK Column recently reported a £320 million media buy-in contract awarded to OMD Group, the brief for which was redacted from the publicly available information on the UK government’s Contract Finder website. This represents just 20% of the £1.6 billion in media buy-in contracts the government has awarded to Omnicom since 2018.

Headquartered in Manhattan New York, Omnicom is a global media, marketing and corporate communications holding company. It is currently considered the second largest advertising agency in the world, eclipsed only by WPP.

Omnicom is an advertising giant which specialises in public relations, lobbying, communications strategy, and the planning and purchasing of targeted advertising space. It builds comprehensive media campaigns for its extensive client list. Omnicom heads a North American-based network of prominent advertising and public relations agencies with a world wide collective reach.

Omnicom has been awarded a number of sizeable contracts by the UK government. These have included a December 2018 advertising campaign contract for the Cabinet Office, worth up to £184 million, a £119 million October 2020 media buy-in contract with a £230 million extension clause, and a £112 million media contract for the Ministry of Defence.

According to the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), media buying enables the government to:

buy media channels (for example, advertising space, partnerships, events and sponsorship) regionally, nationally and internationally across off and online channels.

Omnicom is the single supplier for these public relations campaigns and their UK OMD Group operations are run by Manning Gottlieb OMD (MG-OMD).

Manning Gottlieb OMD was dissolved in 2011 and struck off the companies register. It isn’t entirely clear, therefore, what the current legal status of MG-OMD is. Their website appears to be their only visible presence and it does not clarify their status. However the CCS has stated that MG-OMD is a division of OMD Group Ltd.

The CCS claim there are a number of advantages to be gained by having one US multinational corporation overseeing the UK government’s entire communication strategy, including robust pricing, neutrality and transparency. Putting aside Omnicom’s obvious monopoly, as mentioned above, when the UK Column looked at the client brief for the recent £320 million media buy-in, it was entirely redacted. We might question the CCS notion of transparency.

Who is the dominant partner in this arrangement?

Media buying is the process of acquiring space on media platforms (online and offline) to get a PR message out. In this case the UK government is the client and MG-OMD (Omnicom) is the sole supplier, often referred to as the Agent.

The supplier (Agent) is largely responsible for conducting market research and devising campaigns that will delver best value to the client. They are given a brief and then advise the client how they can achieve the client’s PR objectives.

As we have stated, it is not possible to examine the brief for the most recent contract. But the brief is available for the £112 million MoD contract. It raises some concerns.

Omnicom will agree the key performance indicators by which the efficacy of their campaigns are measured; they will evaluate and measure campaign performance and will be proactive and innovative; the Agent has the expertise to advise how to deliver all aspects of the service and it is MG-OMD (Omnicom) who deploy resources, implement the plan and collect and store the data generated by their PR campaigns on the client’s (MoD’s) behalf.

It seems that Omnicom, in the guise of MG-OMD, not only agrees what constitutes campaign efficacy, they plan, resource and operate the UK government’s communications strategy. It is not unreasonable to suggest that Omnicom is leading this process.

In 2018 the UK government awarded a four year £800 million contract to Omnicom’s OMD Group for media buy-ins. The CCS stated that the purpose of the contract was to:

Provide the best possible outcomes for communication campaigns … The successful media buying agency … will work in partnership … to deliver … fully integrated campaigns for government.

This contract is set to expire in May 2022.

Omnicom were running government PR campaigns when the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a global Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.

In an effort to maintain transparency, the signatories to the contract have been redacted as have the pricing criteria, Omnicom protected confidential commercial information and much of the Framework Agreement. However, the contract brief stated:

The Government Communication Plan is updated annually and CCS shall ensure that the Agency is notified when the plan is updated … The Agency will (if required) co-operate and work with agencies on any of the other Crown Commercial Service agreements. This includes other Framework Agencies … provision of specific single services and products including media planning and Campaign Solutions … The Agency shall manage and deliver fully integrated campaigns, either by delivering services in-house or through Sub-Contracts.

Omnicom was in place, ready and able to adapt to the UK government’s communication plans as they emerged.

Providing a “single version of the truth”

Omnicom was awarded the contract on 21st May 2018. On the 9th June (less than three weeks later), then UK Prime Minister Theresa May announced that the G7 had agreed to her Rapid Response Mechanism. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the US and the EU agreed that they would assert a common narrative.

Omnicom responded almost immediately.

In early 2019 they launched their Learn Fast & Act Fast communications strategy. This was perfect for the Rapid Response Mechanism needs of their clients.

As the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded, Omnicom was able to help the UK government to “navigate the road to a new normal.” They said they had deepened their “rapid response capabilities” which enabled their client, the UK government, to make “more informed decisions while providing a single version of the truth.”

With operations in all of the G7 countries, and in both Russia and China, where they are discovering new opportunities for growth, Omnicom is well placed to deliver fully integrated campaigns. Whenever a rapid response is required to assert the common G7 narrative, Omnicom will provide the approved single version of the truth.

In September 2019, three months after the Rapid Response Mechanism announcement, the BBC convened the Trusted News Summit. To aid transparency, then BBC Director General Tony Hall said that the meeting was held behind closed doors. The BBC effectively formed a global media cartel with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Facebook, the Financial Times, First Draft, Google, The Hindu, The Wall Street Journal, AFP, CBC/Radio-Canada, Microsoft, Reuters and Twitter.

Less than two weeks after the WHO declared the global pandemic, the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group in Emergencies (SAGE) issued some key advice. They outlined how our behaviour could be changed to ensure it was in line with the single version of the truth.

SPI-B (SAGE’s behaviour change experts) stated:

Guidance now needs to be reformulated to be behaviourally specific … A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened. The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging … Messaging needs to emphasise and explain the duty to protect others … Consideration should be given to use of social disapproval.

SPI-B recommended that the UK government should:

  1. Use the media (MSM) to increase sense of personal threat.
  2. Use the media (MSM) to increase sense of responsibility to others.
  3. Use social disapproval for failure to comply.

A free, plural and independent media could not be “used” to terrorise the population in this fashion. Only a controlled propaganda machine could possibly be instructed to do so. The Trusted News cartel was available. Omnicom, in the form of MG-OMD, was tasked with using it to do the hard hitting.

In doing so Omnicom has been supporting the mainstream media to stay afloat by pumping millions into their failed business models. The taxpayer funded government buy-ins directly finance the UK’s so called independent mainstream media. Like the banks, it seems they are too big to fail, and so once again the tax payer is being forced to bail them out.

OmniGOV = Fusion Doctrine

MG-OMD has given their propaganda operation the Orwellian sounding name of OmniGOV. They say they are very proud of it and recognise their responsibility as the “the single cross-HM Government agency partner.”

OmniGov were behind the snappy slogans used to change our behaviour throughout the pandemic. Phrases like “flatten the curve”, “stay home, protect the NHS, save lives” and “rule of six” all rely on a psychological mechanism called the rule of three. The £119 million Omnicom contract to modify our behaviour was in discussion long before the WHO made their pandemic declaration.

The hard hitting media campaigns designed to strike fear into the public imagination were OmniGOV public relations strategies. The now notorious “look into my eyes” campaign being another OmniGOV campaign.

“Look into my eyes” was pure propaganda. The UK government was the client and they wanted to increase the sense of personal threat and use social disapproval to compel compliance. OmniGOV created a campaign which presented a low mortality disease as some sort of plague. Covid-19 risks primarily affect older people and mortality distribution is indistinguishable from normal mortality.

OmniGOV ignored scientific and statistical evidence and presented a population scale threat that did not exist. They claimed, without evidence, that lockdowns, mask wearing and social distancing could stop the spread of a viral respiratory illness. They misled the public and suggested that following the rules would save lives.

The insinuation was clearly that those who did not obey were guilty of killing people and that their behaviour was wrong. While appearing to advocate social conscience and shared community responsibility the product was baseless fear and social division — as requested by OmniGov’s client.

OmniGOV are also proud of the other projects that have been engaged with during the pandemic. For example, they have been working with the NHS and Snapchat to encouraging young people to think differently about donating their organs, introducing them to the concept of body-tracking Augmented Reality.

A Green New Deal

If we ignore the obvious risk of having a single US corporation in apparent control of the UK government’s communication strategy, and if we set aside concerns about the vast sums we have paid them to propagandise us, some may still feel, given the claimed seriousness of Covid-19, that there is nothing to be concerned about and OmniGOV has acted in good faith.

But for that to be the case, they also have to overlook that the OmniGov led response to Covid-19 is transitioning us into a new global financial and economic model which, at the most senior level, Omnicom has being trying to engineer for years.

Omnicom is not a disinterested third party merely seeking to meet their contractual obligations. They have a significant conflict of interest. The post-Covid-19 recovery they are helping to define is in their interest, not ours.

The Chairman and CEO of Omnicom is John D. Wren. His personal Omnicom bio reads:

Mr. Wren was part of the team that created Omnicom Group in 1986. Mr. Wren is a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum and is active in a number of philanthropic endeavors.

In 2012, Wren was a contributor and co-author of the World Economic Forum’s publication More with Less: Scaling Sustainable Consumption and Resource Efficiency. The report stated:

The need for rapid action to shift towards a resource-efficient economy is high … change is now urgently required at scale and greater pace than current initiatives, policies or strategies are likely to achieve … Business can catalyse scale through transforming interactions with citizens.. and playing an active role in shaping the policies and investments that define the rules of the game … The right rules of the game can catalyse citizen behaviour … and create new markets … The private sector needs to be involved in most phases of policy-making … such collaboration should be forged as a productive adjunct to more traditional inter-governmental arrangements.

Omnicom is undoubtedly delighted that the public private partnership they have forged with the UK, and many other governments, has allowed them to help define the rules of the game. Certainly they have been busy catalysing citizen behaviour and seem to be fully involved in most phases of policy making.

In 2020 the WEF’s International Business Council (IBC), with Wren as a member, released their Measuring Stakeholder Capitalism report.

Speaking about the need to shape the recovery, they noted that the global pandemic was a fantastic opportunity. They wrote:

We must mobilize all constituencies of our global society to work together and seize this historic opportunity … The principles of stakeholder capitalism, championed by the World Economic Forum … have never been so important. In 2017, the IBC spearheaded a commitment from more than 140 CEOs to align their corporate values and strategies with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) … The IBC has been leading the way in this initiative to deliver on the promise of stakeholder capitalism.

With the UK contingent of the Trusted News cartel being supported by OmniGOV, tax-avoidant members like Google can look forward to some tax payer subsidised profits. They will be free, alongside Omnicom, to spread the single version of the truth in line with the G7’s wishes.

This is stakeholder capitalism in operation. It has nothing to do with us; we merely pay for it. Nor will we be allowed to object or even question the asserted common narrative.

Dissent will not be tolerated

The UK Digital Secretary, Oliver Dowden, recently convened a meeting of G7 technology ministers who signed a ministerial declaration on “Internet safety principles.” The declaration was based upon the UK’s Online Harms white paper and, as such, there is no specific definition of “harm.” It simply means whatever the G7, the Trusted News cartel and other stakeholders like Omnicom want it to mean.

The G7 commit to “work together towards a trusted, values-driven digital ecosystem.” They declare:

Our collective recovery from COVID-19 must be rooted in a desire to build back better. Leaders … signed a declaration containing a series of shared principles on how to tackle the global challenge of online safety, including that online firms should have systems and processes in place to reduce illegal and harmful activity.

As the UK government is contractually obliged to update Omnicom on their communications strategy, and seeing as OmniGOV are their sole media campaign managers, the 2020/2021 strategy must have been agreed with Omnicom.

Given Omnicom’s long-standing commitment to creating sustainable market opportunities, they presumably welcome the fact that it is entirely based upon the rule of three with the “Build Back Better” slogan at its heart.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office Julie Lopez MP announced that control of government information campaigns will be centralised further. We can only speculate which stakeholder partner will win the 2022 contract bid.

In the meantime, practically everything we are told about Covid-19 and the allegedly inescapable global economic and monetary transformation forced upon us, will be fed to us by the Trusted News cartel, guided and financed by OmniGOV. Omnicom and their stakeholder partners have a bright future.

Vaccine hustlers can’t keep their story straight; evangelicals, black people, Trumpers; who’s “hesitating?”

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By Jon Rappoport

Source: Jon Rappoport’s Blog

First, let’s get this straight. The term “hesitancy” would apply to your pasty-faced nephew, who plays video games 19 hours a day, who’s dragged to the beach one summer afternoon, and is reluctant to stick his toe in the water as he stands near the last little gasp of foam breaking on the sand.

Most of the people who aren’t taking the COVID vaccine aren’t hesitant at all. They’re determined to reject the shot.

Most of the people who don’t want the COVID vaccine are quite sure they want to forego genetic damage, blood clots, and death.

So…who are the “hesitant” ones the vaccine hustlers are going after?

According to an old desiccated man who could play a mortician in an Abbott and Costello movie without a minute of rehearsal, and who happens to be the director of the largest medical research facility in the world—the US National Institutes of Health—Dr. Francis Collins…

According to Collins, the prime target of pro-vaccine propaganda is the dastardly evangelical/Trumper crowd.

Last week, Collins spoke with NBC’s Chuck (aging-wonder-boy) Todd, who made his original journalistic bones deftly pointing a wand at maps of voting districts on Election Night.

Collins intoned, in the manner of a funeral home director expressing condolences to customers over the accident that took the life of their beloved family member, who was driving while drunk and steered his car over a cliff:

“Particularly white evangelicals seem to be resistant to the idea that vaccines are something they want to take advantage of.”

“…certainly Republican men in particular seem to less likely to be interested in the vaccine.”

But wait. NIH head Collins—playing politics—forgot to mention that, according to a recent Harris poll, a whopping 42% of black Americans don’t want the vaccine.

Oops.

Well, no doubt “systemic racism” must be the reason black people are failing to see how glorious the vaccine is. They’re being kept in ignorance by white people.

Actually, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. A COVID Collaborative poll discovered black Americans have shockingly low levels of trust in the FDA (29%) and drug companies (19%). I’d say those numbers reveal acute intelligence, not ignorance, on medical issues.

Any group that distrusts the FDA at the rate of 71% is medically on the ball.

On the other hand, white Americans are the victims of systemic “safe and effective” lying by The New York Times, CNN, NBC, etc.

White Republicans are also being lied to by Donald Trump, Mr. Warp Speed, who is pushing the COVID vaccine like a lifeboat on the Titanic.

Trump is fronting for the COVID shot with a fervor matched only by Biden and Fauci and Bill Gates.

In an April 16 mass email to his followers (no doubt written by an aide), Trump, a major propaganda whore for Pharma, states:

Vaccine resistance is “deranged pseudo-science.”

“The federal pause on the J&J shot makes no sense. Why is the Biden White House letting insanely risk-averse bureaucrats run the show?”

It’s “sheer lunacy” for Biden “to delay millions of vaccinations and feed fears among the vax-resistant.”

“Indeed, this moronic move is a gift to the anti-vax movement.”

I spoke with a born-again Christian the other day. I asked him whether God had told him not to take the vaccine. He laughed. He said, “God told me to trust my research.”

“When did He say that?”

“I like to think it was just before I wrote to Trump telling him to wake up.”

We’re seeing hustlers on all points of the political spectrum pushing the COVID vaccine—the gene therapy that was designed, in clinical trials, to prevent nothing more than a cough, or chills and fever.

The gene therapy that has never been launched on the public before. The genetic injection that has only gained FDA certification for emergency use—a far lower and looser classification than full approval.

These criminal vaccine promoters deploy outrage and sob stories—whatever they think will play well—as they target various demographics.

Thousands of serious adverse effects from the shot are being reported. You can multiply those figures by 10 or 100 to gain a truer estimate of what is happening; and there are NO data on long-term effects.

You bet your ass people are “hesitant.” Medical authorities are telling them to accept an genetic injection that causes their cells to manufacture a protein they would never make under ordinary conditions.

Speaking of gene therapy, Dr. Francis Collins, the head of NIH, made his career on the back of discovering “genes associated with various diseases.”

In all the years of NIH’s existence, with a total budget in the hundreds of billions of dollars, show me ONE genetic cure for ANY disease across the board.

Just one.

I’m waiting.

It turns out that the history of genetics reveals the following: they can ALTER humans with it, but they can’t CURE humans.

Anthony Fauci “has no clue and no authority to lecture on what is good for India”

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By Colin Todhunter

Source: Dissident Voice

In light of the current COVID-related situation in India, Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US adviser on COVID, has called for India to implement a hard lockdown and for the mass roll-out of vaccines.

However, Fauci has no clue and no authority to lecture on what is good for India.

That is the view of journalist Ratna Chakraborty. Writing on the Empire Diaries website, she argues that the US is a rich nation, prints the world’s reserve currency, has robust financial coverage for the jobless and its population is spread out.

On the other hand, India is finance-strained, has a brittle economy that lives on the brink of disaster, does not have any financial coverage for the jobless, is densely populated and its people mostly live in congested clusters.

Given the government’s incompetence and the callousness demonstrated towards poorer sections of Indian society the first time around, Chakraborty says any new lockdown would again result in disaster. She adds that nothing has been learnt, with no attempt to upgrade the healthcare set-up nationwide.

It is worth recalling what renowned academic and activist Noam Chomsky said about India’s first lockdown.

During an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! back in May 2020, Chomsky said:

… you can almost describe it as genocidal. Modi gave, I think, a four-hour warning before a total lockdown. That’s (affected) over a billion people. Some of them have nowhere to go.

He added:

People in the informal economy, which is a huge number of people, are just cast out. Go walk back to your village, which may be a thousand miles away. Die on the roadside. This is a huge catastrophe in the making…

During the first lockdown in India, rural affairs commentator P Sainath painted a dreary picture of the impacts, not least the desperate plight of migrant workers, a shortage of cash to buy food and a potential shortage of food as farmers were unable to complete their harvests.

Sainath also reported the views of Dr. Sundararaman, a former executive director of the National Health Systems Resources Centre, who argued that there was a desperate need to:

identify and act on the reverse migrations problem and the loss of livelihoods. Failing that, deaths from diseases that have long tormented mostly poor Indians could outstrip those brought about by the corona virus.

Regardless of the destructive impact of the first lockdown in India and the questionable efficacy of lockdowns in terms of what they are supposed to achieve, another one would further push hundreds of millions towards poverty and hunger. It would merely fuel and accelerate the impoverishment caused by the first lockdown.

A new report prepared by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University (APU) has highlighted how employment and income had not recovered to pre-pandemic levels even by late 2020.

The report, ‘State of Working India 2021 – One year of Covid-19’ highlights how almost half of formal salaried workers moved into the informal sector and that 230 million people fell below the national minimum wage poverty line.

Even before COVID, India was experiencing its longest economic slowdown since 1991 with weak employment generation, uneven development and a largely informal economy. A recent article by the Research Unit for Political Economy highlights the structural weaknesses of the economy and the often desperate plight of ordinary people.

The study also found that there was a loss in monthly earnings for all types of workers: 13% for casual workers, 18% for the self-employed, 17% for those with temporary salaries, 5% for the permanent salaried and 17% overall.

The poorest 25% of households borrowed 3.8 times their median income, as against 1.4 times for the top 25%. The study noted the implications for debt traps.

Six months later, it was also noted that food intake was still at lockdown levels for 20% of vulnerable households.

How bad is COVID?

Given this impact, before listening to prominent individuals with apparent conflicts of interest related to vaccine roll-outs (see the editorial in the British Medical Journal ‘Covid-19, Politicisation, Corruption, and Suppression of Science’), the current COVID-related situation in India must be contextualised. The sensationalism needs to be put to one side.

According to Yohan Tengra, a Mumbai-based political analyst and healthcare specialist, the true number of infection rates can only be known by testing symptomatic people who have tested positive with either a virus culture test or PCR test that uses 24 cycles or less.

The PCR test has been used as the gold standard for COVID cases around the world. But it has been sharply criticised for being inaccurate, inappropriate, for using cycles in excess of 40 (thereby inflating the numbers) and for producing ‘false positives’.

It seems that even the Swedish Ministry of Health now thinks that it is not fit for purpose:

The PCR technology used in tests to detect viruses cannot distinguish between viruses capable of infecting cells and viruses that have been neutralised by the immune system and therefore these tests cannot be used to determine whether someone is contagious or not. RNA from viruses can often be detected for weeks (sometimes months) after the illness but does not mean that you are still contagious.

We also need to be reminded what the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated about the PCR in December 2020. It is especially important to focus on PCR testing because these tests are the entire basis for restrictions and lockdowns (and vaccination); even when deaths were within normal annual ranges, ‘case’ levels were high and restrictions and ‘tiered lockdowns’ were still being imposed in places like the UK.

The following extract can be found on page 39 of the report from the CDC 2010-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel:

Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms. This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.

Perfectly healthy people are being tested and small often insignificant fragments of flu, common cold or some other virus can be detected. People are then labelled as a COVID ‘case’.

But that is not all. In their recent article ‘The Nuremberg Doctors Trial and Modern Medicine’s Panic Promotion of the FDA’s Experimental and Unapproved COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines’, Dr Gary G Kohls and Professor Michel Chossudovsky state that – with regard to the so-called ‘emergency use authorization’ (EUA) of COVID-19 vaccines – it is now established and confirmed by the WHO (January 20, 2021) that the entire data base pertaining to tabulation of confirmed positive cases (RT-PCR test) (since early February 2020 in 193 member states of the UN) is invalid.

The two authors note that this flawed methodology cannot be used to confirm the existence of an emergency situation. EUA criterion is therefore not only invalid but illegal.

Furthermore, there is currently decent scientific evidence to indicate asymptomatic transmission may not be significant.

According to Tengra, the case numbers being reported in India are mainly asymptomatic cases. The directors of the All India Institute of Medical Science and the India Council of Medical Research both say that there are many more asymptomatic cases this time than in the so-called ‘first wave’.

As these ‘cases’ comprise most of India’s case numbers, we should therefore be questioning the data as well as the PCR tests being used to detect the virus.

Tengra says the case fatality rate for COVID-19 in India was over 3% last year but has now dropped to below 1.5%. The infection fatality rate is even lower, with serosurvey results showing them to be between 0.05% to 0.1%.

As has occurred in many other countries, Tengra notes the way that death certificate guidelines are structured in India makes it easy for someone to be labelled as a COVID death just based on a positive PCR test or general symptoms. It is therefore often difficult to say who has died from the virus and who has been misdiagnosed.

We should also bear in mind that respiratory diseases like TB and respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis leading to pneumonia are major killers in India. These conditions are severely aggravated by air pollution and often require oxygen which can be in short supply during air pollution crises in places like Delhi at this time of the year.

Therefore, the current harrowing scenes we see in the media might not necessarily be due to the lethality of the virus but by the numbers who are ending up in hospital.

Vaccines

If the pandemic narrative has been constructed on the house of (statistical) cards outlined thus far, then we should be questioning the need for a mass vaccination campaign, which could actually lead to aggravating the current situation.

This is not lost on Dr Geert Vanden Bossche, a virologist who has held positions at several vaccine companies, carrying out vaccine research and development. He has also been involved with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and has worked with the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). Not an ‘anti-vaxxer’ in any sense of the term.

He offers insight into why it is quite possible that mass vaccine rollouts will actually lead to very disturbing levels of deaths directly related to COVID-19. Far from reducing the numbers and facilitating immunity, he anticipates ‘vaccine assisted immune escape’.

Vanden Bossche warns that mass infection prevention and mass vaccination with Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of the pandemic can only breed highly infectious variants. He offers a truly worrying scenario. Of course, not everyone might agree with his analysis but it is certainly a cause for concern.

There is also the entire issue regarding the necessity, efficacy and safety of the vaccines now being rolled out. The group ‘Doctors for COVID Ethics’ has recently raised serious doubts in all of these areas (its concerns have been published on the UK-based OffGuardian website).

In finishing, there are two questions we should ask.

Can we have confidence in science and evidence-based health and social policy where COVID-19 is concerned? And can we just assume – as governments and the media imply we should – that Anthony Fauci and the pharmaceutical corporations have ordinary people’s interests at heart?

In response to the first question, not much. In response to the second, certain interests have been riding and fuelling a wave of sensationalism and duplicity throughout.