Perpetual panic

Calling it “vaccine” imparts reassurance, suggesting protection, safety, and testing. The first is unknown, the second hoped for, and the third currently woefully inadequate – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

Thursday, 1 April 2021 

Just the other day people were suggesting to me that “things were improving” because, after all, “the vaccines are here”. My fascination with repetition being the mother of nonsense continues.

What was improving? Lanka has never had an actual epidemic of COVID on any numbers; South Asia in terms of mortality, rather than the eye-watering distortions of PCR tests, hasn’t had a real pandemic.

And yet there seemed an immunity to evidence for too many initial months, and a disquieting appetite for economic suicide that malingered too long, over a repeatedly-hyped influenza strain.

The 161,000 total deaths in India cannot be called a pandemic, and with 557 alleged deaths in Lanka (when we had 12,000 car deaths from March 2020 to December 2020 despite curfews and shutdown and have roughly 12,000 people pass from all-cause mortality each month) despite highly distorting death certificate entries (comorbidities including cancer, blood poisoning, kidney failure, liver failure, heart attacks and more), we cannot be rationally in duress. 

Pakistan at 14,000 (with 220 million people) and Bangladesh at 8,800 mortalities and Nepal at 3,024, in percentage terms to population, wouldn’t qualify as a minor footnote much less a major headline.

We might as well track every palpable source of mortality with quaking fear and demand “vaccination” from life. And here in Lanka, we’ve been wide open (as indeed much of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal have been), with no real impact. And New Zealand, which had sealed itself off with such misguided sanctimony, has hospitals overflowing with influenza like ailments (don’t breathe the word “COVID”) and is preparing for a double dip economic recession. 

So what the devil is “getting better” in Lanka where businesses have been operating, people have been traveling, and attending wedding celebrations and interacting, other than the pathology of fear easing up as we intone the sacred mantra, “vaccine”?

Bizarre vaccines

Headlines tell us that despite India having refused Pfizer due to lack of local trials, Sri Lanka may be negotiating to get these experimental mRNA shots in. Can anyone explain why?

Everywhere they’ve been administered (Israel, the UAE, the UK), there is first a “surge” of positive cases and adverse effects (the CDC is reporting the same right now in various parts of the US). Then after the second shot, they abate, but we’re not sure we’re any better, as less vaccinated Sweden with an older population still has better stats than massively vaccinated Israel where cases are now falling, but which had a disastrous January and February. Do we want that here?

While factoring in the elderly C-19 is alleged to be three to six times more lethal than the normal flu based on worldwide Infection Fatality Rates and death estimates (far from apocalyptic), the vaccines, particularly the mRNA vaccines (which have a far worse adverse event profile than Astra Zeneca which after its recent European woes is only cleared for those above 65 in some European countries as of now like Sweden, and not yet cleared in others like Denmark), are demonstrated as of today to be 500 times, let me repeat, 500 times, as deadly as a flu vaccine (based just on the US VAERS reports for fully vaccinated people). Anyone willing to look at the databases can verify this without taking my word or the word of numerous researchers who have published this at face value.

Please note the mRNA shots are not in fact literally “vaccines”. By definition a vaccine is meant to provide some limited immunity to a known disease. We do not know, nor does anyone claim, even the cheerleaders (if you look at the small print) that these stop you from catching and passing on the virus (hence the uncertainty about removing the largely useless but optically reassuring masks). What it does claim to do is reduce your risk of getting severely ill if you actually contract C-19. Hence it is more akin literally to chemotherapy than vaccination.

So why isn’t it just openly called a “prophylactic drug treatment” as researchers who have retained some sceptical immunity to groupthink are asking? After all it is new, and we don’t know, can’t know anything about long term impacts, as those trials won’t be concluded until 2023. Again, this is not propagandist sputtering, but documented fact.

Calling it “vaccine” imparts reassurance, suggesting protection, safety, and testing. The first is unknown, the second hoped for, and the third currently woefully inadequate.

Leave aside that for a disease with a 99.6% recovery rate below 70, being forced to be vaccinated is anyway clearly a scam we’re being bullied and hoodwinked into acquiescing to. And since no one is claiming (yet) that you won’t infect others after your shots, it’s not even for granny’s sake. Even for the above 75, there is a 95% recovery rate, so it depends on your pre-existing conditions to some extent, and then indeed personal choice.

Remember none of these are currently FDA approved! They are being administered on the basis of emergency legislation only. Remember also, neither the politicians advocating these, nor the drug companies producing them are liable to prosecution if anything happens, they have been pre-indemnified. Ergo, you wonder, how seriously and credibly should you take their proclamations?

Then and now

To me, things have hardly been improving, and we can take a far longer sweep of history in assessing this. The most delirious jurisdiction in the midst of this has been Great Britain, which has slid down the greased pole from proud autonomy and liberalism to snivelling capitulation and crotchety authoritarianism.

If we cast our gaze back to the Hong Kong Flu (which took anywhere from one to four million lives, we’re not sure, but the population of the world was far less, and that pandemic did not track normal mortality, but abbreviated the lives of the young, unlike our current situation, where under 70, there is virtually no risk).

Columnist Neil Clark says it with shattering accuracy: “Johnson, the most sinister clown in history, a shambolic, dishevelled individual who has done more damage to Britain in one year than the Luftwaffe did during the whole of the Second World War, is quite easily the worst (Prime Minister).” 

Clark is contrasting Johnson’s bumbling and corrosive leadership to Wilson’s Labour Government’s response to the aforesaid Hong Kong Flu (1968). Not only did they not lock down the country during the two winters implicated, life went on, pubs and nightclubs thrived, people went to football matches, theatre performances and concerts were well subscribed (people still even smoked at these back then!), family and friends met, and “social distance” is something you briefly did perhaps if digestively distressed. 

The government asserted no extra-Constitutional “emergency powers”. Britain remained a free country, happily so, a further boon to the health of all concerned.

Instead of terrifying people with undocumented, unscientific, extrapolated alarmism, Wilson saw his role as “reassuring” people, sickness and benefit claims actually went down, the WWII ethos of “keep calm and carry on” continued to guide lives and behaviour

Compare that to the psychological warfare waged against the populace since March 2020 and making unhinged predictions of a “third wave” even when the “with COVID” deaths (and the UK death certificates are so imprecise re causation as to make any dispassionate observer cringe) fell below 17! 

The economic cost there is a mind blowing 2.4 billion pounds a day! The NHS has metamorphosed into the National COVID service, with who knows what impact re real killers like cancer. The NHS waiting list has swelled to about 10 million by April. When finally seen how many will be told, “Sorry, it’s too late”?

Back when deaths were recorded “from” only when clear, about 40,500 are said to have perished from the so-called Hong Kong pandemic of flu, bronchitis or pneumonia. But then when trains and buses ran to reduced timetables it was because people were actually sick (not because of manically testing and retesting the healthy). Some clinical staff were infected, and the NHS was in fact briefly overwhelmed. But for an illness that ravaged a far less populous planet, the UK did very well, and with good morale, and the economy stayed robust, with a record balance of payments surplus and public finances in surplus to the tune to 600m GBP by the end of it.

The UK would have to look back to the “Lord Protector” Cromwell’s time (1650s) to see such a decimated social and public sphere as today. In Wilson’s time, leaders seemed to be cut from a different cloth. Wilson and co came from the World War II generation and would not have taken marching orders from the less than credible frenzied modelling of Ferguson & co. And the communications industry did not hold such sway. We weren’t hearing hyperventilating hucksters animatedly suggesting we are “murdering” people by going to the beach or being bombarded 24/7 with “panic porn” from news outlets that have essentially being bought over by (in)vested interests.

The official line back then was vaccines should be considered “by those at special risk.” Today? “None of us are safe until the whole planet is vaccinated.” This was an actual Yahoo conclusion based on a recent surge in Papua New Guinea, truly, ignoring completely these aren’t, as explained, really “vaccines” (speaking of the mRNA “celebrities”), and they don’t purport to prevent fresh infection or do what natural immunity does, essentially shut down transmissibility.

And there are demonstrably effective, cheap, treatments that can stop C-19 in its tracks, HCQ and Ivermectin among them, in wide use in geographies that have virtually no outbreak. Best to ignore these options surely and just listen to the racketeering oligarchs behind big Pharma and big Tech, right?

Lockdown is a crock

While it is an incalculable mercy that we have weaned ourselves off mass shutdowns and blanket lockdowns in Lanka, and focus much more on zones, and neighbourhoods, eventually we have to realise that until 2020 this concept ran completely counter to WHO or any other public health guidelines, and this transformation (like WHO’s mask advice, admittedly changed due to political lobbying), was not based on any new evidence or set of studies. 

Reading recently of some 600 people tested in a part of Jaffna, and some 50 having “tested positive”, leading to a “lockdown” of a part of Jaffna, makes you wonder if this ineffectual voodoo will ever get transcended.

The WHO statement as of 2019: “There is a very low overall quality of evidence that quarantine of exposed individuals has an effect on the transmission of influenza.” And quarantining of exposed but “currently healthy” people is “not recommended under any circumstances”.

Over 30 studies looking at global lockdowns failed to find any positive link to C-19 mortality. The AIER website can be consulted for a listing, if so inclined. www.journals.elsevier.com/elclinicalmedicine provides a data analysis of 50 countries showing a lack of linkage with COVID-19 mortality per million people. A look at US States with and without such restrictions shows no difference in results, those without lockdown actually faring slightly better in terms of COVID outcomes.

Transmissibility is highest indoor, and sunshine and fresh air kill viruses, so intuitively it is devastatingly stupid logically as well as ineffective on the merits. Care homes and hospitals account globally for 41% of all ascribed C-19 deaths. A Chinese study indicates 80% of identified outbreaks involving three or more people emerged from home environments.

Huge collateral damage is caused with horrifying impact to livelihood especially among the poorest from pointlessly locking people up. Domestic violence surges, mental and emotional health deteriorate, other necessary medical care is interrupted or deferred often with irreparable consequences.

Extended lockdowns also leave us more vulnerable to infection. When our billion year “dance” with viruses and pathogens is so unnaturally interfered with, our sophisticated immune system is compromised. When we isolate the healthy, natural immunity is postponed. Simple logic told us until the COVID craziness overwhelmed our lack of “common” sense, encourage those with symptoms to self-isolate, provide extra protection for the vulnerable, and let everyone else live, earn, and “welcome” the pathogen, and bring it naturally to heel, as has happened ever since we stood upright, and probably far before then. By being “locked down” we extend the danger.

How? Well, this encourages mutants! Normally, as virologists have been at pains to explain, if the virus can circulate, there is no advantage to more transmissible variants. When locked down, the more transmissible, actually have a clear competitive advantage.

Also, in terms of virulence, normally viruses want hosts to survive, as they need a host by which to stay viable (a sick or dead person can’t pass on the virus). But with idiotic “lockdown” only the very sick go to hospital, and that more virulent varietal is what infects other patients potentially.

And as we have seen, viruses circulate, we cannot contain them, and PCR tests are rife with false positives. So we should return to nature’s playbook, focus on symptoms and the mortality needle.

Essentially according to Knut Wittowski, an esteemed epidemiologist who was attacked for suggesting sunshine was good for us (truly!), “the lockdowns gave the virus enough time to mutate, we had escape mutations that started another wave in November. So we are currently experiencing the result of the lockdowns. Without lockdowns, we would not have any COVID now.” He suggests what we are encountering now may actually be “C-20”.

When you postpone exposure, the immune system cannot develop antibodies for all the mutations that take place says Wittowski, and so the virus spreads, in a new and enhanced form, as mutations outstrip the antibodies naturally produced, normally ample to deal with these viral line extensions.

And the outdoor distancing and “masquerade” measures imposed are on the statistics and our knowledge of how transmission occurs, akin to enforcing that everyone wear a hard hat all the time, because there is a ‘possibility’ a brick might land on your head.

How is locking down a planet (and Lanka has happily graduated past that, far beyond it) justified for at worst a relatively tame risk primarily to those at or past normal lifespan, and how does it justify destroying the lives of hundreds of millions if not billions of adults and children at virtually no risk?

We need our sceptics

To too many governments, “scepticism” to their irrationality is irritating graffiti at best, and “dangerous” heresy at worst. But as our immune systems have navigated our passage through a minefield of pathogens, intelligent scepticism, has provided us immunity against ideological pathogens and thought viruses.

Imagine flat-earthers. Abu Rayhan Al-Biruni, a pioneering Muslim scientist, used the sun at noon, shadows, sticks and trigonometry and calculated the circumference of the earth to within 200 miles in the 10 century!

Copernicus in the 15th century truly “revolutionised” our cosmology by explaining the earth was in orbit not at rest. We thought the world is made of “permanent objects” but from Descartes to Kant, “perception” and the “appearances” given off by phenomena were contrasted with things as they are – whatever gives rise to our perceptions but is beyond them.

We realised that causation can be confused with correlation thanks to David Hume, and much later, Karl Popper showed us that “falsifiability” and not “verifiability” is the cornerstone of scientific progress (as the latter can rigged to keep spitting out predictable results, but if “falsifiable”, then new vistas need exploring).

Doctors have had to look beyond appearances to discover “bacteria,” and how many lives have been saved by simple sanitation and washing hands? And the number of medical deaths still attributable to less than assiduous focus on this would beggar any COVID stats. 

The legal system is based on challenging assumptions, and demanding factual affirmations, not bald assertions trumpeted by virtue of political platforms.

So, those who prefer the refuge of conformity over the exhilarating rapids of constructive yet often disruptive doubt, are evading their foremost human credentials. As the line from the play Inherit the Wind says, “Why did God plague us with the ability to think?” And it asks, “What other merit have we?” Well, also compassion perhaps. And the current COVID orthodoxy also has zero compassion for the plight of anyone not serving their agenda, the entire world can be plunged into devastation over a viral strain virtually everyone recovers from and most don’t know they had. Just repeat that and see if the insanity doesn’t blare forth. 

Truth, wisdom, are coquettish, or at least furtive. We have to seek them, we have to proposition and woo them. They do not unfurl themselves at our feet with theme songs and pop slogans. 

Lanka should stay steadfast in its progress past the paranoia, and focus on opening up the economy, becoming more sanely attractive to tourism, not panic that the pathogen will infiltrate all defences unless we keep chasing it with manically-repeated PCR tests. We have to position our port, help our industries be more competitive. And overseas when we hear governments say their strategies are working yet they don’t know how long the restrictions will be needed, and they keep mindlessly and fruitlessly repeating the same nonsense, we should realise that it is ridiculous, and stick zealously to our own vision of development.

Let the “developed” countries keep flirting with detention camps and police beatings of protestors most of whom are just everyday folk wanting to eke out survival, seeking their lives back and pushing for and praying their children’s future might eventually transcend our blinkered bleating over an unremarkable pathogen. 

Let us get on as we have been and find ways to transmute our, at times, inhibiting bureaucratic base metal into gold: productivity, enterprise, effectiveness and efficiency. That’s the real “vaccine” that will deliver us!