Pandemia run riot

Well, the alarmists are at it again, and their divorce from data continues.

Dire predictions are rolled out, based on “increasing” positive tests and a spike in daily deaths being reported. Medical prognosticators indicate that relaxing of restrictions should have happened when “vaccination goals” were met and cases truly plateaued, “perhaps in four to eight weeks”.

In a brief flirtation with reality, they concede “the suffering” imposed on the people (perhaps these good folk could donate their salaries for four to eight weeks to show solidarity with such “suffering” which has been imposed in recurring bouts of prescriptive futility) but say “economists must be alive to revive the economy”. That, at least, is medical insight we can all agree with. 

Other medical experts assure us that despite the ICU demands of oxygen, we can cope, but if a crisis point is reached, there will be “no hesitation” to revert to more pointless restrictions and utterly futile lockdowns on the theory of doing whatever doesn’t work, harder.

Let us unravel this. Stop testing! Deal with the symptomatic. There are numerous treatments! To be oblivious here despite overwhelming demonstrations to the contrary, leads one to wonder what agendas might be afoot. Doctors use their clinical experience and “not treating” the symptomatic until they are critically ill is crazy. There are protocols aplenty, and clinicians with unimpeachable credentials and clearly demonstrated results from March 2020 on, are ready to share them with us and guide our medical front line heroes. 

The PCR “tests” are deficient, as we’ve highlighted over and over, hence Sweden is not using them, Singapore has said it will stop mass testing, WHO even indicates mass testing of the asymptomatic should not continue. So terrorising people with specious, unreliable tests that cannot testify to “live” infectiousness is silly. Using them to blow up livelihoods and lives verges on far worse.

The rise in deaths seems suspicious. Of course, we mourn each one. But the comorbidity roster is missing. How many are “from” COVID actually, rather than a “positive test” translating them to “COVID related” as our reporting euphemism indicates, whereas the primary cause of death was clearly something else? 

If Delta is truly dominant, a marked rise in deaths is completely at odds with the data of Israel, the UK, the US and more. Delta is highly infectious and mildly virulent. UK has 30,000 daily positive tests, and around 120 COVID “ascribed” daily deaths, no excess mortality in the UK over the period, and the flu has been killing more for weeks. The US open jurisdictions of Texas and Florida have a “positive test surge”, around 12-15,000 positive tests per day, but 70-140 COVID ascribed deaths per day. 

Here, we don’t know our real COVID death stats, but Delta anyway has not been spiking deaths globally, and there is to date no excess mortality in Sri Lanka over 2020 or 2021, which should surely be the real basis for calmly managing or anxiously.

So, saying “economists have to stay alive” suggests some mortality scourge is afoot in the land. There isn’t, never has been. In fact, every time we lock up, we just postpone our immune system’s encounter with variants they have become enfeebled in dealing with. Saying most of those in hospitals are “unvaccinated”, requires we only compare the few months we’ve had vaccines, not aggregate hospitalisations from the beginning. Even now, only 12% are vaccinated, making that mathematically inevitable, even if the records are accurate, and we have only had assertions, and no real data shared.

Relative to economic peril, the last pointless attempt to restrain an airborne virus that had already spread everywhere, by locking up the healthy, resulted in gutting the middle class, finishing off many more SMEs and causing incalculable losses in business results, schooling and more. 

Our debt to GDP levels are over 100%, over 80% of Government revenues are spent on interest payments alone. With our crazy unwillingness to focus on the symptomatic and go for early treatment options, we will continue to hobble our tourism industry. Colombo’s dollar denominated government bonds are among the most distressed in the emerging market universe. There is widespread concern and scepticism regarding the short-term measures given weak debt sustainability and external positioning. 

We are responding, and we can respond, but not with an on/off switch every time there’s a surge of positive tests based on a PCR template the US CDC has now withdrawn its Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) request for, urging that testing methods have to be able to differentiate “between COVID and influenza”. That suggests to date, the tests have not excelled in that regard. So, in such a precarious economic plight, we cannot take further madcap measures like penal lockdowns based on untrustworthy tests. 

Let’s treat symptoms and focus on excess mortality.

Real data

Latest UK data (just released Imperial REACT study) indicates vaccine effectiveness (vaccine type unspecified) among 18–64-year-olds of 49%. They indicate given the low number of positive test results they can’t be sure it isn’t as low as 22%. Moreover, for the first time, there is a narrowing of the gap between positive tests and hospitalisations and deaths among the vaccinated, suggesting either “sudden” heightened virulence of Delta which seems unlikely three months later, or a waning of protection.

Israel and the UK both post daily data, making it harder to manipulate. In Israel, serious cases have risen about 10-fold since the beginning of July to about 40 a day. The link among serious illness and older vaccinated people has risen 12-fold in a month.

The rates of serious illness among the vaccinated is now as high as among the unvaccinated two weeks ago. 

Israel is forecasting a quadrupling in the next 20 days. If so, that would take us to the peak of the winter surge (likely fuelled by a spike in cases following the first vaccine dose). If so, this spike cannot be blamed on the unvaccinated, as 85% of adults over 30 in Israel are vaccinated. Hence, as vaccines do not purport to provide sterilising immunity, beyond a short-term flood of antibodies, this verifies that herd immunity will not be forthcoming via vaccinations.

Professor Eli Schwartz of Sheba Medical Centre conducted randomised, controlled, doubled blinded trials from 15 May 2020, through the end of January 2021 to evaluate the effectiveness of the Nobel Prize winning anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin in reducing viral shedding among non-hospitalised patients with early mild to moderate C-19. It was a huge success.

He says mournfully, “No one wanted to see our results, we tried to publish it. It was kicked away by three journals. No one wanted to even hear about it. You have to ask why when the world is suffering.” His conclusion: COVID-19 could be treated early for less than a dollar a day!

The fickle Fauci predicted that with 50% of adults vaccinated, “I feel fairly certain you’re not going to see the kind of surges we’ve seen in the past.” San Francisco has 50% of 18+ fully vaccinated, and “positive tests” are skyrocketing, nearing all-time highs. 

People are hyperventilating about Florida, fully open for over a year, because of a “positive test” surge calling it the “worst wave yet.” But the weekly average of deaths versus positive tests is currently down 70% from its peak. And why does no one ever mention that New York has four times more cases this summer than last summer, when 0% were vaccinated?

As for the other absurd Kabuki theatre of COVID, Israel is one of the most “masked” countries in the world. Yet that is working so well, in desperation they are back to outdoors masking where transmission has been conclusively shown not to take place unless perhaps in very large crowds and are preparing for another lockdown! Does ‘The Science’ that keeps snatching away our liberties ever get tired of being so consistently wrong, or is the thrill of centralised planning enough to keep them going?

August 2nd marked two weeks since Freedom Day in the UK where mask mandates and other pandemic restrictions were lifted. Numerous experts of course predicted dire results, speculating cases would mushroom to 100,000 or more per day. Cases have instead been plummeting since. Sydney’s own lockdown in June has led to escalating NSW COVID hospitalisations. Perhaps if they could next ban scanty attire on the beach…that would have about as much relevance and impact.

In Southern California, LA mandated masks, Orange County and San Diego did not. In terms of cases per million, LA has the worst performance of the three. Like any good theology though, “facts” are ignored when inconvenient. That strange land, Sweden with a mere 9% mask compliance, consistently has had and continues to have, lower population adjusted deaths per day than Germany where mask compliance is near 80% Quick question: where do all these experts think that “infected” air you exhale magically disappears to?

Causing the problem

Vilified virologist Geert Vanden Bossche is being redeemed. Other eminent scientists are now repeating his warning against viral immune escape. Mass vaccination has been leading to viral resistance. Until this plays out, we cannot, he warns, say much that is credible re infectiousness and virulence. 

There is no precedent for the effect of fighting a pandemic with vaccinal antibodies that the virus is resistant to, and which will inevitably be recalled by updated booster shots due to what is called “antigenic sin.” It has been observed that the Delta variant has undergone antigenic escape, immune escape, avoiding the antibodies of the vaccine.

We are told there are at least 125 variants out there, over a thousand potential mutations, but the variants are largely restricted to amino acid changes in the spike protein. A critical analysis from the Mayo Clinic in Boston indicates that if a population rapidly gets over 25% vaccinated, that’s enough of an evolutionary pressure to allow one of the mutant forms to become dominant. So mass vaccination, rather than targeted vaccination of the elderly and vulnerable, creates the issue of immune escape.

Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the leading champions of early COVID treatment, the most published peer reviewed author on COVID treatment, and one of the world’s leading cardiologists says, “We’re finding in clinical practice at this time that approximately 50% of vaccinated cases are failures.”

But as per Vanden Bossche, we’re getting fewer strains, becoming more dominant as they seek to escape the protective cover of the vaccines. So far, those that have, are less virulent, but that is not inevitable. Our playing with Mother Nature and compressing the diversity of the viruses can lead to results we cannot predict or fathom. Many suggest, focusing vaccination, and quickly scaling up capacities for early treatment. And this continues to beg the question, since the early treatment works, and natural immunity confers sterilising immunity…why in God’s name, not?

A little scrutiny please

The vaccine manufacturers ought to give us some pause. Pfizer has paid the largest fraud fine to the US Justice Department in history. Johnson & Johnson has paid billions in damages for having concealed for decades the presence of asbestos in their baby powder! All of them are indemnified against adverse effects, and so why should we trust them?

Prior to the pandemic, Moderna and BioNtech never produced a single product. They were founded in 2008 and 2010 respectively with the stated goal of pioneering messenger RNA (mRNA) therapies to the world. They share a history rife with secrecy, speculative hype and repeated failure to deliver their stated aims. Having delivered nothing by 2015 and looking like an investment vehicle, Moderna secured a confidential agreement with Fauci’s NIAID to develop a host of uses for its mRNA platform. Then the Gates network allocated 100 million to use mRNA therapies to combat HIV. Despite all this, Moderna could never crack the code of mRNA, the entire basis for the company’s existence.

There were then a series of devastating exposes related to safety issues, and they never made it past animal trials (a dose strong enough to be effective had troubling effects on the liver in animal studies). Similar to Moderna, BioNtech (German based), raised hundreds of millions of dollars from nations and private individuals. Yet before 2020 they failed to bring a single product to market! In September 2019, The Gates Foundation made an investment of $55 million for treatment of cancer, HIV and TB.

The Pfizer role with BioNtech has largely been to cover logistics and manufacturing in western markets. So, we are to believe somehow that Moderna and BioNtech had repeated, persistent, consistent failure to produce a functioning, safe, mRNA product, until C-19 arrived, and a “miracle” occurred for both? Their first ever products to market produced on a novel technology platform for a “novel” virus with no animal trials and no sense of any long-term impact, with the only trials being self-reported rush jobs excluding the most vulnerable, led to safe, effective breakthroughs? 

Either we succumb to the fantasy that the mRNA puzzle was “suddenly” resolved in early 2020, or we have to wonder if something else may be going on.

Some perspective

Actual quotes: 

Tallia says his hospital is managing, but just barely at keeping up with the increasing number of sick patients in the last three weeks.  The hospital’s urgent care centres have also been inundated and its outpatient clinics have no appointments available. 

Dr. Bernard Camins, Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases, at the University of Alabama says that UAB Hospital cancelled elective surgeries scheduled for Thursday and Friday of last week to make more beds available.  

“In CA…several hospitals have set up large ‘surge tents’ outside their emergency departments to accommodate and treat…patients.  Even the, LA Times reported this week, emergency departments had standing room only, and some patients had to be treated in hallways.” 

“In Fenton, Missouri, SSM Health St. Clare Hospital has opened its emergency overflow wing, as well as all outpatient centres and surgical holding centres, to make more beds available to patients who need them.  Nurses are being “pulled from all floors to care for them”.

“It’s making their pre-existing conditions worse,” she says. “More and more patients are needing mechanical ventilation due to respiratory failure.”

“Hospitals across the state are sending away ambulances, flying in nurses from out of state and not letting children visit their loved ones for fear they’ll spread… Others are cancelling surgeries and erecting tents in their parking lots to triage the hordes of… patients.” 

“There’s a little bit of a feeling of being in the trenches.  We’re really battling these infections to try to get them under control,” McKinnell said.  “We’re still not sure if this is going to continue…”

“At Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, waiting rooms turned into exam areas as a medical tent was built in order to deal with the surge of patients.  A Houston doctor said local hospital beds were at capacity.”

“Dr. Atallah, the chief of emergency medicine at Grady, says the hospital called on a mobile emergency department based nearly 250 miles away to help tackle the increasing patient demand.  “At 500-plus patients a day you physically just need the space to put a patient in.”

“The county saw a 300% increase” 

These are all quotes from the disastrous 2018 flu season in the US demonstrating that amazing health care workers can do their jobs without the rest of us having to forfeit our lives. And life went on, and the crisis was dealt with, and balanced along with all the other exigencies of running society. Not everything was shone through one exclusive “panic porn” prism.

Perspective

Locking up is a dud. In Europe, North America and South America, the second eight months, roughly 1 November 2020 to 30 June 2021, when hard lockdowns were implemented, there were more than double the number of COVID related deaths than in the first eight months. Professor Simon Wood demonstrated through statistical analysis, new infections peaked and fell before lockdown on all three occasions in England.

Though 2020 was unremarkable globally in terms of all-cause mortality, the “pandemic period”, March 2020 to 26 July 2021, all-cause mortality was 90 million versus the annual 60 million. However, C-19 was only 4% of that (published data from World Life Expectancy)! It was exceeded in lethality still by influenza and pneumonia (which allegedly pulled a disappearing act in some jurisdictions, more likely absorbed by the C-19 testing regime) at 5%, lung disease at 5%, strokes at 10%, cancer at 13%, coronary at 16% and a whopping 35% to “other”.

Doubtless some of these were exacerbated by neglected or deferred care. The big killer diseases were ignored. And the data may still inflate C-19’s macabre standing. Car accidents are shown at 2%. But in the US alone 3,700 die per day, taking it to 1.3 million+ roughly per annum, and that’s just the US!

Nevertheless, governments became Orwellian, “All deaths are equal, but COVID deaths are more equal than others.” Why? Why are poverty induced hunger deaths for children (25,000 a day, nine million per annum), far outnumbering C-19, not as relevant? Why have repurposed existing drugs for outpatient and early treatment been ignored, a staple of medical practice until now?

Seven million people in the UK according to the Health Secretary, and he says it could swell to 13 million, didn’t come forward for help from these more lethal illnesses or for desperate mental health issues. In Canada, from March 2020 to end April 2021, 62,203 Canadians up to age 64 died. Age adjusted excess mortality was not huge, 5,535. Of those only 1,380 were COVID related. Three times as many died from lockdown related causes.

So, don’t worry, most of the economists and businesspeople will stay alive. Get rid of the mad, despotic PCR tests, and treat the symptoms, and let’s focus the vaccinating. Then, we end the charade, and Lanka wins!