Contribution 122/21 # 13)
What is the reasonable policy justification for a shift to lockdowns, draconian travel restrictions, masks, “jab everybody” etc?
BRADES, Montserrat, August 26, 2021 – Last time, we saw how eminent Doctors in Jamaica challenged the Jamaican Government to permit the importation of Ivermectin and its use “off label” to treat COVID-19.[1] Similarly, in the UK, a circle of British Doctors has written the National Government and the “devolved” administrations to raise concerns regarding the policy response to the Pandemic. This allows us to see points of concern globally, as the UK’s response has been typical.
Some of the key concerns raised in their August 22nd letter[2] include:
[1, The novel, Lockdown approach:] “. . . lockdown policies were never part of any pandemic preparedness plans prior to 2020 . . . they were expressly not recommended in WHO documents, even for severe respiratory viral pathogens and for that matter neither were border closures, face coverings, and testing of asymptomatic individuals.”
[2, The unexplained change in policy:] “. . . the policies being pursued before mid-March 2020 (self-isolation of the ill and protection of the vulnerable, while otherwise, society continued close to normality) were balanced, sensible and reflected the approach established by consensus prior to 2020. No cogent reason was given then for the abrupt change of direction from mid-March 2020 and strikingly none has been put forward at any time since.”
[3, Miscounting and exaggerating Covid-19 death tolls:] “By including all deaths within a time period after a positive test, incidental deaths, with but not due to COVID, were not excluded thereby exaggerating the nature of the threat.”
[5, Failing to focus on the elderly:] “The average age of a COVID-labelled death is 81 for men and 84 for women, higher than the average life expectancy when these people were born . . . It cannot be said that a disease primarily affecting the elderly is the same as one which affects all ages, and yet the government’s messaging appears designed to make the public think that everyone is at equal risk.”
[6, A distorted, alarmist picture of the death rate:] “The fact that deaths due to non-COVID causes actually moved into a substantial deficit (compared to average) as COVID-labelled deaths rose (and this was reversed as COVID-labelled deaths fell) is striking evidence of over-attribution of deaths to COVID . . . [D]ata from earlier years would have demonstrated that the 2020 mortality rate was exceeded in every year prior to 2003 and is unexceptional as a result.”
[7, Distorting evaluation of effective alternative treatments:] “[E]vidence on successful treatments has been ignored or even actively suppressed . . . More than 24 randomised trials with 3,400 people have demonstrated a 79-91% reduction in infections and a 27-81% reduction in deaths with Ivermectin.[3]”
[8, Ineffectiveness of masks:] “ . . . there is no robust evidence showing that wearing a face-covering (particularly cloth or standard surgical masks) is effective against transmission of airborne respiratory pathogens such as SARS-Cov-2 . . . . Empirical data from many countries demonstrates that the rise and fall in infections is seasonal and not due to restrictions or face coverings.”
[9, Masks as a signal of blind conformity:] “[T]he use of face coverings is highly symbolic and thus counterproductive in making people feel safe. Prolonged wearing risks becoming an ingrained safety behaviour, actually preventing people from getting back to normal because they erroneously attribute their safety to the act of mask-wearing rather than to the remote risk, for the vast majority of healthy people under 70 years old, of catching the virus and becoming seriously unwell with COVID.”
[10, Informed consent and experimental vaccines:] “Based merely on early “promising” vaccine data, it is clear that the Government decided in summer 2020 to pursue a policy of viral suppression within the entire population until vaccination was available (which was initially stated to be for the vulnerable only, then later changed – without proper debate or rigorous analysis – to the entire adult population) . . . . [A] number of principles of good medical practice and previously unimpeachable ethical standards have been breached in relation to the vaccination campaign[4] . . . . [For example, due to] omission of information permitting individuals to make a fully informed choice, especially in relation to the experimental nature of the vaccine agents, extremely low background COVID risk for most people, known occurrence of short-term side-effects and unknown long-term effects.”
[11, Fear of novel strains:] “The mutation of any novel virus into newer strains – especially when under selection pressure from abnormal restrictions on mixing and vaccination – is normal, unavoidable and not something to be concerned about. Hundreds of thousands of mutations of the original Wuhan strain have already been identified . . . [T]here is no convincing evidence that any newly identified variant is any more deadly than the original strain.[5]”
[12, The PCR Test vs infectiousness:] “The PCR test, widely used to determine the existence of ‘cases’, is now indisputably acknowledged to be unable reliably to detect infectiousness. The test cannot discriminate between those in whom the presence of fragments of genetic material partially matching the virus is either incidental (perhaps because of past infection), or is representative of active infection, or is indicative of infectiousness. Yet, it has been used almost universally without qualification or clinical diagnosis to justify lockdown policies and to quarantine millions of people needlessly ”
[13, Governance breakdown:] “You have failed to engage in dialogue and show no signs of doing so. You have removed from people fundamental rights and altered the fabric of society with little debate in Parliament. No minister responsible for policy has ever appeared in a proper debate with anyone with opposing views on any mainstream media channel.”
Such concerns (and the many further details in the letter) paint a quite familiar picture. Given the manifest economic, social and personal harm, there had better be a very good health and safety reason for the drastic pandemic policy changes. What is it?
For example, right from the beginning, it was pointed out that deaths of despair due to suicides, etc. triggered by economic and social disruption could easily outnumber direct deaths due to Covid-19. It is also widely pointed out that actual deaths from Covid-19 are a small fraction of deaths with Covid-19. The inconsistency in standards of evidence between what officialdom objected to (e.g. Ivermectin) and what it wanted to push (e.g. masks etc. or novel, now failed treatments such as Remdesivir) has been repeatedly noted. Then, there is the question, which masks work, which don’t, and is it wise to turn them into in effect a loyalty test. The concern that Covid-19 may become endemic with annual new strains also points to a need to restore more balanced, sustainable approaches. These include, that large-scale inflationary fiscal measures to cushion dislocations must be temporary if we are to avoid getting back into the stagnation with inflation trap we saw in the 1970s. Here in the Caribbean, we have to re-think Tourism.
[1]See https://www.themontserratreporter.com/jamaican-doctors-stage-an-ivermectin-uprising/
[2] See https://trialsitenews.com/our-grave-concerns-about-the-handling-of-the-covid-pandemic-by-governments-of-the-nations-of-the-uk/
[3] TMR note, see https://www.themontserratreporter.com/ivermectin-some-population-level-evidence/ and also https://www.themontserratreporter.com/ivermectin-and-the-vaccine-debate/ with key reference https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/FLCCC-Ivermectin-in-the-prophylaxis-and-treatment-of-COVID-19.pdf
[4] TMR note, see https://www.themontserratreporter.com/compulsory-jabs-vs-the-nuremberg-code/
[5] TMR note, see https://www.themontserratreporter.com/the-emerging-covid-vax-booster-shot-train/
