Tag: coronavirus

Human Rights Watchdog Says Governments Using Pandemic To Crack Down On Online Dissent

Governments around the world are using the ongoing pandemic to crack down on online dissent according to a human rights watchdog.

Washington-based Freedom House said dozens of countries have cited CV as a means “to justify expanded surveillance powers and the deployment of new technologies that were once seen as too intrusive.” They added that it marks the 10th consecutive annual decline in internet freedom, Barron’s reported.

The expansion of technological systems is enabling governments social control, according to the report.

“The pandemic is accelerating society’s reliance on digital technologies at a time when the internet is becoming less and less free,” said Michael Abramowitz, president of the nonprofit group.

“Without adequate safeguards for privacy and the rule of law, these technologies can be easily repurposed for political repression.”

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COVID-19 Pandemic Paradox: 2020 Has Fewer Deaths Than Five Years Prior

Scientists in the United Kingdom have coined a new term: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic paradox. The term refers to the comparison between the mortality rate in the early months of the pandemic to the last five years during the same months. Researchers at the Warwick School of Medical collaborated with the Institute of Digital Healthcare, University of Warwick, to conduct a statistical analysis of death records for the last five years in England and Wales.

The time period studied started from the inception of the pandemic in December 2019 until the end of March 2020. Data was collected from the Office of National Statistics. Weekly deaths on average were taken into account during the study period. Researchers also looked into death rates related to respiratory illnesses and created a subgroup, since COVID-19 causes respiratory trouble in serious cases. Also, shortness of breath is one of the early symptoms noted in COVID-19 patients. 

Furthermore, the research took into account population growth and other individual trends for the last five years. Finally, the researchers found that national death rates had declined in the first four months of the global outbreak compared to previous years. Particularly, the months leading up to the pandemic that was declared on March 11 by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

It is important to note that the decline in mortality rate observed early this year was only in comparison to the past five years during the corresponding months (December to March). “We used government data in England and Wales to compare weekly mortality rates during the COVID-19 pandemic and over the previous 5 years. Death rates were elevated during each week of December 2019 excepting one and throughout the first half of January 2020,” the paper explained about the trends observed.

“However, since that time, there have been consistently fewer deaths each week compared with the average over the previous 5 years: the total number of weekly deaths dropped from 11,548 to 10,841 in mid-February and from 11,498 to 10,895 in mid-March,” the paper elaborated with statistics.

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Quebec City Says It Will Isolate “Uncooperative” Citizens In Secret Corona Facility

During a press conference, Dr. Jacques Girard, who heads the Quebec City public health authority, drew attention to a case where patrons at a bar were ordered to wait until their COVID-19 tests came back, but disregarded the command and left the premises before the results came back positive.

This led to them being deemed “uncooperative” and forcibly interned in a quarantine facility.

“[W]e may isolate someone for 14 days,” Girard said during the press conference. “And it is what we did this morning…forced a person to cooperate with the investigation…and police cooperation was exceptional.”

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A no-feel Sexxit? UK reintroduces sprawling casual-sex ban amid nationwide lockdown ramp-up

The UK government has warned horny citizens that getting down with someone who lives outside their household will violate strict new lockdown measures which have reanimated an unpopular policy from earlier this summer.

British couples who don’t live together have once again been banned from bonking by London’s coronavirus restrictions, which – as of Friday – forbid individuals living in “high risk” Tiers Two and Three regions from staying overnight at the house of someone outside their “bubble.” Unlike similar regulations rolled out over the summer, even individuals in an “established relationship” are strongly discouraged from getting it on.

The new rules prohibit mixing of households indoors unless the individuals involved are members of a support or childcare “bubble.” Traveling to the next town to have a sleepover with your significant other of several years is right out, as is taking home that hot little number you met at the bar (which closed, as Covid-19 diktat requires, at 10pm) – at least, for all who live under Tiers Two and Three, designated “high” and “very high” risk areas for Covid-19 transmission.

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The Coronavirus Experts Were Wrong, Now They Need Scapegoats

Democrats claimed that they were superior because they were “listening to the science”. They weren’t listening to the science, which is not an oracle and does not give interviews. Instead, they were obeying a class of officials, some of them whom weren’t even medical professionals, who impressed elected officials and the public with statistical sleight of hand. And little else.

The entire lockdown to testing to reopening pipeline that we adopted wholesale was a typical bureaucratic and corporate exercise, complete with the illusion of metrics and goals, that suffered from all the typical problems of bureaucracy, academia, and corporate culture.

The system that determines reopenings and closings is an echo chamber that measures its own functioning while having little to do with the real world. Testing has become a cargo cult exercise that confuses the map with the world, and the virus with the spreadsheet. It gamifies fighting the pandemic while dragging entire countries into an imaginary world based on its invented rules.

When the media reports a rise or decrease in positive tests, it’s treated as if it’s an assessment of the virus, rather than an incomplete data point that measures its own measurements.

The daily coronavirus reports have become the equivalent of Soviet harvest reports. They sound impressive, mean absolutely nothing, and are the pet obsession of a bureaucracy that not only has no understanding of the problem, but its grip on power has made it the problem.

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White House Expert Scott Atlas Censored By Twitter

Social media company Twitter finished its week of apparently politically motivated censorship on its platform by banning tweets regarding the efficacy of masks from Scott Atlas, a member of the White House scientific team battling the coronavirus.

Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, not only had his tweets removed, he was banned from tweeting until he deleted the tweets that Twitter for unclear reasons objects to.

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Trump Says He Won’t Force Americans To Take COVID-19 Vaccine

It’s not every day that President Trump outflanks his progressive critics on the issue of ‘consent’.

But according to some recent comments from the president, skeptics worried about the prospect of mandatory vaccination orders in the US and in the UK have rallied to voice their opposition.

But if President Trump is reelected, Americans who are concerned about what some ‘experts’ have characterized as a ‘rushed’ approval process for the COVID-19 vaccine won’t need to worry about being forced to accept the vaccine and vaccinate their children. Because President Trump says he will not issue a mandate requiring that individuals receive the coronavirus vaccine once one becomes widely available.

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The cult of mask-wearing grows, with no evidence they work

A century ago, during the Spanish flu pandemic, authorities in many cities in this country passed mandatory mask ordinances, just like the ones we have now. Many Americans accepted them, but many others did not. In California, citizens rebelled. In January of 1919, 5,000 members of the newly formed Anti-Mask League of San Francisco gathered to call for the mayor’s resignation if he didn’t repeal his mask order. Five days later, the mayor complied.  Science vindicated that decision in the end. A year later, a study found that compulsory mask use likely had no effect on curbing the Spanish flu.

We live in a very different time. American society, of course, is far less cohesive than it was one hundred years ago, and Americans seem far more passive. Those who disagree with the prevailing orthodoxy have less power than they’ve ever had. Mass communications are now controlled by a tiny number of people, all of whom have identical agendas. There is no modern Anti-Mask League. There couldn’t be a modern Anti-Mask League. Facebook and Google would shut it down the first day. The governors of Michigan and New Jersey would indict its leaders.

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