Tag: lockdowns

Those Who Brought Us Lockdown Are Unrepentant

Readers of the Daily Sceptic may be interested to listen to yesterday’s UnHerd roundtable discussion conducted with Lee Cain (former Director of Communications at 10 Downing Street and a leading member of Boris Johnson’s ‘brain trust’). It is, as academics say, a ‘rich text’, with an awful lot in it to digest. But what really fascinated me about it – and what has really fascinated me about all of the General Election coverage so far – is the shoe that simply hasn’t dropped: namely, the biggest public policy decision since the Second World War, which was the 2020 lockdown.

Cain provides a very interesting diagnosis of what has gone wrong for the Tories since 2019. But it is only two thirds of the way into the conversation that the subject of Covid comes up. And it is discussed almost in isolation as though it took place in a never-never land – as though, indeed, it doesn’t touch upon almost every single thorny issue in which the Government now finds itself entangled: inflation, public borrowing, a self-entitled and unproductive civil service, NHS waiting lists, declining public order and civility, a backlog of criminal cases, excess deaths, huge increases in school truancy and behavioural problems in schools, and so on and so on.

It is almost as though spunking up to £410 billion of public money, deliberately stoking irrational fears amongst the populace, closing schools and universities for almost a year off and on, and telling people not to go to hospital for months on end was a series of actions that were always going to be consequence-free – a no-brainer that was just going to provide a sugar-rush of good opinion polling followed by a happy period of ‘building back better’. And it is painfully evident, listening to the Cain interview, that he remains stuck in that mindset, insisting that failing to have a lockdown in March 2020 would have been “against all the scientific evidence” and even doubling down on the insanity by suggesting that the main problem of Covid policy was trying to open up too quickly in the summer of that year.

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Up to Half of Excess Deaths in U.S. Nursing Homes Were Due to Lockdowns and Mitigation Measures

Up to half the excess deaths in American nursing homes were due to the impact of lockdowns and mitigation measures on frail residents rather than the virus. That’s the conclusion of epidemiologist Professor Eyal Shahar in a new analysis of a study on U.S. nursing home deaths.

The study, published in the Journal of Health Economics in 2022, found that the greater the mitigation efforts in U.S. nursing homes, the higher the death toll during the pandemic. “Those efforts not only largely failed to reduce Covid mortality, but they also added non-Covid deaths. The more they tried to mitigate, the worse the outcome was,” notes Prof. Shahar.

“These results are consistent in three consecutive periods: May through September 2020, September through December 2020, and December 2020 through April 2021. Moreover, the relationship between quality ranking and mortality became stronger over time,” he adds.

The reason was the non-Covid death toll: “The higher the ranking, the higher the number of non-Covid deaths”.

While in the first wave the harsh mitigation measures do appear to have reduced Covid deaths somewhat, this effect was “insufficient” to make-up for the non-Covid deaths associated with a higher ranking. It was also not true for later waves.

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Up to Half of Excess Deaths in U.S. Nursing Homes Were Due to Lockdowns and Mitigation Measures

Up to half the excess deaths in American nursing homes were due to the impact of lockdowns and mitigation measures on frail residents rather than the virus. That’s the conclusion of epidemiologist Professor Eyal Shahar in a new analysis of a study on U.S. nursing home deaths.

The study, published in the Journal of Health Economics in 2022, found that the greater the mitigation efforts in U.S. nursing homes, the higher the death toll during the pandemic. “Those efforts not only largely failed to reduce Covid mortality, but they also added non-Covid deaths. The more they tried to mitigate, the worse the outcome was,” notes Prof. Shahar.

“These results are consistent in three consecutive periods: May through September 2020, September through December 2020, and December 2020 through April 2021. Moreover, the relationship between quality ranking and mortality became stronger over time,” he adds.

The reason was the non-Covid death toll: “The higher the ranking, the higher the number of non-Covid deaths”.

While in the first wave the harsh mitigation measures do appear to have reduced Covid deaths somewhat, this effect was “insufficient” to make-up for the non-Covid deaths associated with a higher ranking. It was also not true for later waves.

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Lancet Study Funded by Bill Gates Lays Bare Failure of Lockdowns and Vaccines

A new study published in the Lancet and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation on the “Global Burden of Disease” has laid bare the failure of pandemic interventions such as lockdowns and vaccines.

Published on April 3rd, the study included global age standardised mortality data during the pandemic. This Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, as the name suggests, is a massive global disease impact assessment. The report includes age-stratified mortality data from the first two years of the pandemic and therefore provides an indication of the global effectiveness of the measures implemented. The methods used for determining pandemic mortality incorporate excess death data combined with infection rates and COVID-19 specific deaths. The data within this report paint a concerning picture and demonstrate a substantial increase in global mortality across all age groups between 2020 and 2021.

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X To Pay Legal Fees Of Doctor Targeted For Speaking Out Against COVID Lockdowns

Elon Musk’s X has announced that it will finance the defense of a doctor in Canada who has been targeted and had her life savings drained away by having to fight legal battles after speaking out against COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

In the announcement, X said it is “proud to help defend Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill against the government-supported efforts to cancel her speech.”

X notes that Dr. Gill “spoke out publicly on Twitter (now X) in opposition to the Canadian and Ontario governments’ COVID lockdown efforts and vaccination mandates, she was harassed by the legacy media, censored by prior Twitter management, and subjected to investigations and disciplinary proceedings by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario that resulted in ‘cautions’ being placed on her permanent public record.”

“Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and a critical defense against totalitarianism in all forms,” the company continued, adding “We must do whatever we can to protect it, and at X we will always fight to protect your right to speak freely.”

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Four Years Ago this Month a Lockdown was Imposed by National Governments Worldwide – Never Forget What They are Capable Of.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research wrote – March 11, 2024, Four Years Ago the Covid-19 Lockdown was imposed in one fell swoop by national governments Worldwide. The Lockdown implied: “Confining the Labour Force” and “Freezing the Work Place”.  Not a single economist has acknowledged this relationship. From their standpoint, it was the virus which triggered economic and social collapse. What nonsense. 

What does this imply. The most serious economic and social crisis in World history which four years later is still ongoing, leading to economic chaos and mass poverty Worldwide. Destabilizing the social, political and economic structure of 190 sovereign countries cannot constitute  a “solution” to combating the virus. 

But that was the imposed “solution” which was implemented in several stages from the very outset of the corona crisis in January 2020.  It’s the destruction of people’s  lives. It is the destabilization of civil society. Fake science was supportive of this devastating agenda. The lies were sustained by a massive media disinformation campaign. 24/7, Incessant and Repetitive “Covid alerts” in the course of the last four years.

The  historic March 11, 2020 lockdown triggered economic and social chaos Worldwide. It was an act of “economic warfare”: a war against humanity. 

This diabolical agenda has undermined the sovereignty of nation states. 

It has contributed  to a wave of bankruptcies. It has impoverished people Worldwide.

It has led to a spiralling dollar denominated global debt. 

The powerful structures of global capitalism, Big Money coupled with its intelligence and military apparatus were the driving force.

Using advanced digital and communications technologies, the lockdown and “closure” of the global economy is unprecedented in World history.

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Lockdowns Were Counterterrorism, Not Public Health 

As previously reported, in the United States, the Covid pandemic response was designed and led by the national security branches of government, not by any public health agency or official. 

Furthermore, we do not have a public record of what the national security pandemic plan actually stated. 

So what? You might ask. Why should we care if Covid policy was determined by the National Security Council (NSC) instead of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)? What’s so bad about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) taking over as lead federal agency for pandemic response, replacing Health and Human Services (HHS)?

National security is about protecting us from threats of war and terrorism

The answer to these questions is, in short, that the national security pandemic response plans, devised under the rubric of biodefense, are aimed at countering bioterrorism attacks. They focus on preventing hostile actors from obtaining bioweapons, surveilling for potential bioweapons use, and developing medical countermeasures. 

According to the World Health Organization, “biological and toxin weapons are either microorganisms like virus, bacteria or fungi, or toxic substances produced by living organisms that are produced and released deliberately to cause disease and death in humans, animals or plants.” 

In the rare event of an actual bioweapons attack – the biodefense strategy can be summarized as quarantine-until-vaccine: keep individuals as isolated from the bioweapon as possible, for as long as necessary, until you have an effective medical countermeasure (medicine/vaccine). 

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We All Have PTSD

Two years ago, reports started appearing that compared the effects of lockdowns with post-traumatic stress disorder. As it turns out, one of the symptoms of PTSD is forgetting what happened. It’s an evolved trait that helps the human mind cope with terrible things. Our brains are good at blocking it out. I will explain the neuroscience behind this in a bit but first an anecdote from this morning.

I was speaking to the director of a childrens’ choir and he was speaking about an age gap in his singers. The lead singer just graduated high school, and the next oldest singer is 14, which creates huge problems for the choral competence. I hesitated to do it but I finally just observed that this 3-year gap fits exactly with the lockdown period, child masking, and Zoom school.

He began to speak about what it was like to train a choir on Zoom and then conduct masked singers outdoors on winter nights. He recalled the attacks and the difficulties, and then his voice trailed off.

“Actually I’ve blocked out that whole period of life from my memory. I won’t think about it anymore. Anyway, I need to circulate a bit here but good seeing you.”

That was that.

It got me curious about the relationship between selective memory and trauma. For a long time now I’ve noticed that when this subject comes up, the response is either to quickly change the subject, which is common, or dig deeper into what seems like a bit of catharsis. Some people have so much to share, so many painful memories, so much shock and abuse to report, that once they start they cannot stop talking.

This one comment from this one choir director got me suspecting that vast numbers of people might be trying to forget it all. This is how the political debates manage to pretend like this never happened, how the major media gets away with never bringing it up, and how people like Fauci still get high speaking fees, and so on. It’s not just that they are no-good liars; too often it’s because people really do want to forget.

This is how the number one most shared trauma of our lives is fading so fast into the national and global consciousness.

It’s a well-known feature of child or spousal abuse. The memories are so terrible and grim that the human mind develops the capacity for pretending like it never happened if only so that life functioning can continue. This is fine but actually the trauma is still there and feeds other forms of pathologies like substance abuse and attachment disorders and so on. The point of therapy is to come to terms with the reality itself in the process of healing.

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Just Admit You Were Wrong!

The answer to the question “Will they ever admit to being wrong?” is of course: no. I’m speaking in particular of the architects of the lockdown and mandate policies that wrecked the rights and liberties of billions worldwide.

Now they want to pretend like it never happened or that someone else is responsible. And they do this even as they hammer out policies and treaties that normalize that exact response – OK, some tweaks here and there – in the future, while forging institutions that crush dissent.

Those people we know about. They are rather hopeless.

Let’s address a different case, the run-of-the-mill pundit who got it wrong and just cannot admit it. These are the people who should trouble us more because saying sorry in this case is completely cost-free. In fact, the opposite is true.

Readers would cheer their humility and congratulate them for honesty. The only cost would be psychological in some measure. They are supposed to be these great opinion leaders and cannot bring themselves to admit that they were so bloody wrong on such a huge topic.

This comes to mind because of an effusive and even absurdist article by Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. It was about how and why Taylor Swift is the greatest thing America has to offer.

The language here is intentionally over the top and she knows it. It’s a fun way to write. I know this because I used to write this way all the time, celebrating the glories of vending machine chicken salad or the McDonald’s cheese stick or what have you.

My argument here is not with the hyperbole as such. The problem comes deep into the article where she says the following:

“Downtowns across the country — uniquely battered by the pandemic and the riots and demonstrations of 2020 — are, while she is there, brought to life, with an influx of visitors and a local small business boom. Wherever she went it was like the past three years didn’t happen.”

Battered by the pandemic? Seriously? The pathetic pathogen never closed a single business, school, church, country club, arts theater, mall, stadium or public park. Governments did that, on the advice of crazed experts who pushed for this nonsense with no concern for public well-being.

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Doctors sound alarm over mysterious outbreak of brain infections in Nevada kids – and they believe it’s linked to COVID lockdowns

Health officials are sounding the alarm over a spike in rare and serious brain abscesses in children in and around Las Vegas, Nevada.

Experts at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating the spate of cases, while doctors across America say they are also seeing a rise in cases. 

The number of brain abscesses in minors tripled in Nevada last year, shooting up from an average of four or five a year to 18.

Dr Taryn Bragg, a pediatric neurosurgeon and associate professor at the University of Utah who treats the cases, told CNN she had ‘never seen anything like it’ in her 20 years’ experience.

Physicians are not sure what has caused the rise, but said it could be due to weakened immunity to infections due to Covid measures such as lockdowns. 

Dr Bragg was able to spot the pattern and notify local public health officials because she is the only pediatric neurosurgeon for Nevada. 

After March 2022, she said there was a ‘huge increase’ in brain abscesses, which is ‘unusual’, particularly as ‘the similarities in terms of the presentation of cases was striking’.

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