I read this book this week and found a good book review in “City Journal,” titled “Three Blind Mice.” Atlas began as an academic neuroradiologist and then transitioned to a 15 year career as a health policy researcher. I did something similar when I was forced to retire at age 55 with an old back injury. I spent a year at Dartmouth learning methodology and biostatistics. I don’t know enough about Atlas’ story to know if he did something similar. Quite a few academic physicians have done similar transitions, especially as they get older.
In Atlas’ case, once he was recognized by the Media, he was immediately denigrated as “a radiologist.” He was also labelled as “not an epidemiologist.” It did not matter that none of the other three MDs on the Task Force was an epidemiologist, either. Atlas was in contact with many epidemiologists who were feeding him data and statistics.
He found the “Three Blind Mice” of Birx, Fauci and Redfield were uninterested in data or the scientific publications he kept bringing to the meetings. Eventually, he gave up going to the meetings. He found Trump receptive and he agreed with Atlas’ program of protecting the high risk population, especially nursing home residents, plus others with pre-existing conditions, one of which has turned out to be obesity. He blames Trump and his team for being afraid to sack Birx who was the one telling all the Governors to lock down their states. As he says in conclusion, “It didn’t matter. They still lost the election.” They feared a firestorm in the press if she was demoted.
Atlas was in despair as they continued to emphasize testing the asymptomatic and neglect the nursing homes where almost 50% of the deaths occurred. The psychological and economic damage from the lockdowns may last for years. Masks are useless and he quotes many studies to prove it. The one study quoted by Birx all along was based on two beauty parlor employees. That was it.
In the end, he quit after the election although Trump wanted him to stay. He continued to communicate by email. He describes the insane abuse he took from the Media and may spend a little too much time on it in the book. Some professors at Stanford (not the epidemiologists) sent out an email letter attacking him for working with Trump.
He has one section about Florida Governor DeSantis who, he writes, was already familiar with the literature and who implemented most of Atlas’ policies on his own. I remember the Media attacking DeSantis when he set up treatment facilities at a large retirement community, accusing him of treating supporters first. He was following the science they ignored in their identity politics frenzy. Florida could have been as big a disaster as New York with their huge senior population. The fact that DeSantis followed the science and not the Media prevented that outcome.
Other books are beginning to come out now but this one seems authentic by an insider. Here is the book at Amazon. I read the Kindle version. The hardcover came out a few days later.
Thanks for your summary.
Atlas was poorly treated by the media; he is not without ego but clearly he does value the scientific method and facts. We would all have been better off if others had listened to him and even if others followed his methods without accepting his conclusions. No wonder he sometimes seems bitter. And her remains resolute, with confidence in the scientific method.
The last few years should make us wary of someone like Biden (and many who appear more “scientific” than he, of course), who values narrative (“my truth”) over facts, as he said that in his usual awkward and word salad way. The difference between bureaucratic accreditation and the scientific method (often observed scrupulously by dilettantes who respected its practical and effective conclusions and who’ve made our last two centuries so much more pleasant) has become clearer and clearer. How distinct are the scientists at Stanford from the scientists at Hoover? There he did seem to have some real friends. His talks (did his book?) tend to clarify rather than obfuscate without patronizing curious but not knowledgeable or scientific people like me. I liked that.
Covid was teed up so easily for Trump–blame China and the “elite”, close the borders, boost the doctors at the ground level rather than the bureaucrats, etc. The forces arrayed against him were strong, but he totally blew it.
I think the whole COVID disaster with regards to Trump goes right back to the sad fact that he made the classic Animal House-like mistake: He trusted them. Trump apparently thought that the bureaucracy was apolitical, and immune from being used by his political opponents.
Turns out, not so much.
Fauci should have been shitcanned back during the AIDS “crisis”, which he mostly made happen all by his lonesome. There was never a severe threat of heterosexual transmission, and if they had treated the outbreak in the homosexual community without fear or favor, using the traditional tools of quarantine, contact tracing, and everything else we’ve done for centuries with newly-encountered diseases, well… Yeah. Unfortunately, we had Fauci running things, and he’s not a doctor, not a scientist, or much of anything beyond a self-serving bureaucrat seeking to build empires out of tax dollars.
On performance alone, he should have been fired. Nothing he did worked on AIDS; should be surprised that his advice with regards to COVID wasn’t any better?
Trump’s key mistake was trusting the bureaucracy, on several levels: On one, the poor sap thought they weren’t political. On another, he thought they were competent. He never looked at the track record these assclowns have, which he should have done from the beginning.
Here’s my take on this crap: We really ought to be running a “book” on everyone in government, wherein they’re tracked for performance. Someone like Fauci would be highlighted as a self-serving incompetent, and kept away from any position of power. Similarly, we should be looking at the figures in the various other government agencies–Intel, law enforcement, homeless services. You work in the “homelessness industry”, you really ought to be tracked and held accountable; promise you’re gonna reduce homelessness with your wunnerful, wunnerful programs? Gee–Let’s take a look-see at how effective you actually are. Homelessness goes up on your patch? Maybe you shouldn’t ought to be in charge of anything. Same with the intel assholes–Miss that Iran is about to fall to the Ayatollah? That the Soviet Union is gonna collapse? Dude, you probably shouldn’t be listened to about much of anything… Likewise, if you tell the President that the Afghan government isn’t going to fall, and then it’s done and gone in a week? WTF? Why do you still have a job?
I really don’t want Trump to win in 2024, unless he’s gonna come in and wipe the slate clean of these incompetent twats. There really isn’t any point, if whoever comes in during that election doesn’t sweep all this cruft out of the system; they’re just going to get rolled again, just like Trump was in 2016.
It’s now clear as it wasn’t at the beginning that controlling the pandemic was never in the power of any conceivable government intervention. The fact that covid was circulating for months before the public acknowledgement by the Chinese government and almost certainly for more months before the Chinese government was aware made that inevitable.
A realistic assessment would be that this was about exactly what we should have expected. How much would you want to bet that a supposedly responsible and transparent government like Germany wouldn’t drag their feet announcing something that would inevitably curtail their commerce with the rest of the world?
The same assessment would leave mitigation as the only remaining alliterative. The original “Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve” was a plausible mitigation. The mistake was that when it became apparent that it didn’t work, it was extended indefinitely instead of being scrapped, and I believe data was distorted and obfuscated to disguise the failure. The same is true of masking except that the cost of masks was infinitesimal in comparison.
Keeping covid away from vulnerable populations such as long term care should have been so obvious that it should make any official that didn’t make it an absolute priority, let alone forcing known infected individuals back to infect the rest, liable for conviction for negligent homicide. At the same time, I’ve read doctors and nurses bragging about just how sick they have to be to miss work, usually in connection with the flu and colds, but you have to wonder just how much that attitude contributes to the annual flu mortality and to the pandemic.
I haven’t paid much attention to all of the various charts, and there are some very impressive ones, because whenever I followed a link for some reason, all I saw was noise. In my world, noise has a very precise definition that comes down to being generated by random variations. Trying to interpret or react to noise is the definition of futility. It becomes exponentially more meaningless (If that is even possible.) when that interpretation and reaction is driven by politics.
We live in a world where many governments don’t seem able to deal efficiently with the road damage caused by winter weather every year. Why are we surprised that, when confronted with something like a pandemic, they flail about, spreading and multiplying the unavoidable harm in all directions? It’s no accident that those politicians that seem to be the heroes here are the ones that did least and concentrated on obvious vulnerabilities like nursing homes.
I did a quick search to see if the New York Times has a review; none so far and I’m not going to hold my breath. I didn’t see any in so called major publications. I’m debating buying the book. $15 seems like a lot when I already know how it ends and can’t imagine it would do anything to help my blood pressure. I know enough infuriating details, I probably don’t need any more.
Some quick observations at sidebar (apart from the one where the pressure of events tends to keep me from participating here to the extent I would desire).
(1) It has been reviewed elsewhere – WSJ, I think, a few days back and, -maybe-, The Economist. Memory fails. Reviews moderately positive IIRC.
(2) Kirk’s first para says a lot, maybe says it all. One thing that we have to deal with is that no political leader, including DJT, should be considered omniscient. The world is just too vast and the bureaucratic apparat we have built has become overly complex to match. Atlas does confirm my gut estimate – that Trump saw through things, and rather quickly, but by that time the machinery was already out of control. Also, this is the time that Impeach The Sequel and the campaign were ramping up – so the decision seems to have been to try to ride it out rather than add another log to the firestorm by removing Fauci. He -did- try to drive Fauci and Birx back away from the microphone, but by then the media had fully coopted both of them
(3) Which brings me to the point I wanted to raise. Book recommendation: Niall Ferguson’s latest “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe”. Predominately built around the response to Covid but overall broader and longer perspective, A key point raised as he brings his final arguments: He perceives that, over the last 50 years or so, there has been a general decline in the underlying skills and capability of reponse – globally, across national, social and media boundaries, we just aren’t as sharp as we once were. Note the apparent cross-correlation with the decline in academic standards, decontextualization of arguments, ever shortening attention spans and a preference for reactive behaviors, etc.
(Oh, well…..we tried. It was just a thought – grin)
I think the root problem is the belief that something like COVID is even “manageable”. Pandemics aren’t amenable to such things; they’re inherently unpredictable in detail, while being wholly predictable across the broad swathe of things.
I do not believe anyone tried “managing” the Hong Kong Flu, back in the day–We merely dealt with it. The great Swine Flu fiasco of the 1970s came in when we tried “managing” it all, and I have a sneaking suspicion that we’re going to see similar results from the idiocy of speeding mRNA vaccines to the fore, and “vaccinating” against the COVID.
What I think is gonna happen here is that there are going to be huge issues with the vaccines, ones that are undeniable and too big to hide–Kinda like the Thalidomide thing, only writ larger and with government collusion/enforcement. BIDENCO thought they were dealing with traditional vaccines, and are unlikely to grasp that this is a new, totally different game. If what I think is going on comes into play, we’re probably watching the opening phases of the death of the Democrat/Republican Uniparty, because this has the serious potential to blow up in their faces.
What cracks me up…? Had Trump won the election, he’d be tagged with the blame for the whole fiasco. As it was, BIDENCO came in, thought they’d steal all the glory for the vaccines, and… Yeah. I think that Trump got played by the pharmaceutical companies and the bureaucrats, who all wanted to get mRNA onto the market, untested. Ironically, his loss in 2020 means he’s gonna evade blame for the whole thing, because even at this point, I think the other side would play merry hell trying to tag him with it, what with all their “mandates”.
Mark my words… In ten, twenty years? We’re all going to be looking back, and saying “Man, they moved too fast on the mRNA crap…”. The political fallout from the way the Democrats embraced their little “vaccination follies” will be huge. I don’t see anyone involved will come out of this with their political careers intact. Except, highly ironically, Trump.
Which cracks me the fsck up, to tell the truth.
they had coordinated the response, at the wef wargame in 2019, even though there had been no evident cases yet, Rockefeller, Gates, John Hopkins, Imperial College, there had been a brief interregnum, where sanity had been restored, re the actual goals of the CDC, but they quickly drove her off, and rosenberg’s (sic) sister was brought back in,
I hope we get Kirk’s postulated 10 or 20 years to look back on. Some days I’m not so sure.
It has always seemed to me that the only way through Covid (and its spinoffs) is through it–or rather it through us. AFAIK I haven’t had it, but maybe I have . . . But the newsninnies keep giving LIVs the idea that we can dodge it, jump over it, tunnel over it, or erect a wall of masks and mandates against it by following the wise tutelage of proven liars and buffoons.
I have only ever liked Trump for the enemies he made, but I have to give him credit for not withering like the usual GOPe-dope, causing the DC critters to more and more open chicane to get rid of him. That said, I don’t want an old president, and late 70s is too old.
Eddie: “I don’t want an old president”
I look forward to the day when, as it was at the beginning, the president is an honored citizen – not an emperor; a person who faithfully observes the limitations in the Constitution, properly implements the laws that Congress passes, and vetoes anything Congress passes which contravenes the Constitution.
But I do not expect ever to see that day, regardless of the age of the president.
A thought that just occurred to me. Where are all the; “Have you lost a parent or loved one in a nursing home to covid? If so you may be entitled to a cash settlement. Call 1-800-makempay to talk to an associate about your case.” ads?
Has anybody seen any? If not, I wonder why. It would seem to be easy pickings.
MCS: In NY they passed laws to make it easier to sue nursing homes over covid, even though it was Andy’s orders that they take in sick patients. Don’t know exactly where they advertise, but there’s been tons of media coverage. Not as much since they switched to shilling for the jabs, though…
Give it time. The avid greed of the lawyer class will overcome all, I’m sure.
I would like to point out something, though… All y’all are acting like this is the end of the world, but I think it’s mostly because you’ve got limited to no perspective on the issue. We’ve been here, before–FDR screwed the pooch about as bad. Look at what happened with Teddy Roosevelt vs. the Establishment, and how he went down to defeat.
I suspect we’re in for some rough times, but that they’re survivable, and that the US as a whole is probably positioned about as well as anyone to come out of those times. Key thing is, be prepared to adapt and overcome, don’t take counsel of your fears, and remember that despair is a sin. Me? I’m cultivating a sense of the absurd, as in “How stupid can it possibly get…?”. I’m sure it will get a lot worse before it begins to get better, because there are so many stupid and naive people out there who’re going to require multiple hits from reality’s clue bat before they wise up. This process has already begun with some of the more astute–It is interesting to hear the commentary coming out of people who assured me that Obama was the second coming of Christ incarnate, and that he was the literal Light Bringer. Most of them now regard him as more “Lucifer” than “Prometheus”, and I’ve heard some nasty blowback on his reputation based on the fact that Joe Biden was his VP for both terms–People are questioning the lily-pure nature of Obama’s presidency, given all that was going on with Biden throughout. Biden is doing more damage to Obama’s post-Presidential rep than anyone could have thought possible some 12 years ago. I think it’s gonna be interesting to see the verdict of history on this clown show.
Which I’m sure we will. The idiots are running the game, but I’m pretty sure that once it all blows up in their faces, the adults are going to have to be put back in charge, and I suspect that the idiots and dolts are going to be begging for them to fix it all, and put it back the way it was.
“Change” seems like a really good idea, right up until you find out what the implications of said “change” really are. The majority of the electorate is finding that out, right about now, and I don’t think they like what they’re seeing. Pelosi and the rest of her cabal are probably going to be ridden out of town on rails in 2022, and there may even be enough fresh blood in the countryside Republican Party that the old-school Uniparty types masquerading as Republicans are going to have to swim with the tide if they want to survive. By about 2024, it’s entirely possible that everyone in DC will have read the handwriting on the wall, and will decide that they really can’t afford to buck reality any more.
Whole thing is gaining a sense of surreality, in any event. I think there’s going to be a decided nostalgia for “the old days” before long, and the new new is going to be forced back into the closet–Likely, at gunpoint.
Brian, Good to know, I haven’t seen an actual TV commercial in several years. All the lawyer billboards in Texas seem to still be trolling for those lucky enough to be hit by semis. The different Democratic rackets suing each other should provide some amusement for the rest of us.
“The different Democratic rackets suing each other should provide some amusement for the rest of us.”
Well, for those of you not living in blue state $h!th0les, I guess…
Here in NY we have hospitals that were ordered by the government to fire 5-10% of their staff who didn’t want to get jabbed now being “overrun” by covid patients from the building winter “surge”/”wave” which is justifying the government to order them to shut down even more “nonessential” services and impose more and more restrictions on everyone else.
Ha, ha, so funny…
most of the sordid story here
https://www.yaacovapelbaum.com/2020/05/22/jaccuse/
It’s interesting that no mention is ever made of the hospital ship Trump sent to New York and that was never used. Also a tent hospital was donated and never used. Why ? Trump.
Biggest reason they didn’t use the hospital ship or any of the other military field hospitals they set up? Graft, pure and simple: Using them would have pulled money away from the existing hospitals and health care corporations that actually donate money to politicians.
They either need to get money out of the political system, or make it totally transparent, such that everyone knows and sees it going on. So long as it remains in the shadows, all we’re able to do is emulate Plato’s cave denizens, and try to work out WTF is going on from the shadows on the wall.
Personally, I think that what we need to do is just acknowledge the inherent opportunities for corruption and make them a part of the system. Want a law? Fine; it’s up for bid, open-like, with a cut going to the politician and the rest of the money going to the Treasury. Anyone is free to bid against you, and if Comcast wants a fscking monopoly on something, they pay for it. Like everyone else. China wants a US government policy? Fine; let them bid for it openly, between them and the rest of the competitors. Money going to the Treasury, cut to the sponsoring politician. You’d evaluate your politician based on how well he brings in the cash, ‘cos that means you pay lower taxes if he’s any good at bringing in the dough.
Our biggest mistake isn’t the corruption; that’s always gonna be there. The biggest mistake is this failure to comprehend that fact, and our romantic ideals that such things are wrong and beneath us. I say, let corruption reign and make it pay for “the rest of us”. In other words, weaponize political corruption and use it for our benefit.
No, the hospital ship wasn’t needed because it arrived at the tail end of the first NYC wave. We now know that covid comes in waves that last something like 6-8 weeks. Back in early 2020, although it seems a bit silly now, it was thought that we’d see exponential growth until everyone got it, which would cause absolute catastrophe, hence the whole “flatten the curve” push, remember?
Other things that are forgotten include the desperate push for production of ventilators, which we now know actually killed a ton of people. It’d be an interesting story to tell about where all those ventilators are now…
It’d be awesome if we had some serious media outlet that could just document what we “knew” in early 2020, in mid 2020, in late 2020, etc., until today, and how completely worthless the “experts” have been.
It’d also be nice to share absolute lunacy like this:
https://twitter.com/denise_dewald/status/1466103899497152525
“Schools should have silent lunches or send the kids outside to eat.”
Medical professionals who “think” like this need to be publicly shamed and driven from the profession.
Rand Paul, M.D. is frequently derided as an “optician” in WaPo’s and other left-wing media comment sections.
Kirk:
They either need to get money out of the political system, or make it totally transparent, such that everyone knows and sees it going on. So long as it remains in the shadows, all we’re able to do is emulate Plato’s cave denizens, and try to work out WTF is going on from the shadows on the wall.
Neither of these options may work. See Kimberley Strassel’s book, “The Intimidation Game”. Full disclosure regimes tend to chill dissent because most people who have something to hide, which is most people, won’t risk being outed by the other side. Getting money out of the political system is also a bad idea, for reasons we’re all familiar with.
In the long run there may be no solution other than to substantially reduce overall govt spending, to reduce the stakes and temptations for graft and social engineering. Fixing the education system to make it more responsive to parents may be the other necessary major reform. Easier said than done in both cases. There will be no quick fixes.
The only way to stop outside forces from buying the government is to make the government too small to be worth buying. That also means a government that can’t take sides and squash a company’s competitors.
The problem is at this point, how to get to a point where there aren’t huge multinationals. You’d need the government to rip them to pieces, then put aside all its power, and finding people who would do those two things is like finding a unicorn…
Brian: “finding people who would do those two things is like finding a unicorn”¦”
Quite possibly. But there are things we could try — In theory, of course, because the current Political Class will not give up its power until it is dragged from their cold dead fingers.
One obvious step would be to eliminate the possibility of anyone becoming a career politician. No re-election of incumbents — which was once the rule with New Mexico governors. Incumbents disqualified from running for election to any other office. Family members of incumbents disqualified from running for office. No pensions for elected service. Politicians get paid the National Average wage. Full public audits of elected officers for 3 years after they leave office. Death penalty for corruption. Etc.
Ultimately, make serving in Congress rather similar to jury service.
Kirk,
Yourvpartial reassurance at 11:03 p.m. depends quite a bit on covid-19 (or covid + mRNA “vax”) not actually being a bioweapon.
I wish I was a little more certain that being so was a complete impossibility.
Let’s start with a key question here about COVID, and whether or not it is a bioweapon.
Does it fit the characteristics of a good bioweapon?
Unless there’s a second half that’s yet to come, delivering a lethal second punch to the infected, I’d say “No. Bioweapon unlikely”.
Wouldn’t rule out that it was something they were researching, though–And, that it got out.
As such, I’d imagine that the people behind it are likely either already dead or in punitive/destructive detainment, lest they let inarguable evidence get out.
The trouble with bioweapons is that they’re so damn unpredictable. You think you’ve got something that works, and come to find out, on the day of release? It’s either not lethal enough, or too lethal to work for your purposes of spreading it.
Wouldn’t rule out that the Chinese might be thinking about trying biowarfare, but I wager that they’re going to regret ever opening that Pandora’s Box. These things have a way of turning around on you, and they’re so viscerally disturbing that if undeniable evidence ever got out that you’d done something like that…? It would be ugly.
There there is no shortage of pathogens for potential bio-weapons. The conventional limitation is being able to direct it against adversaries while protecting yourself. At the time when China was claiming to have eliminated the virus with about 200K deaths, I remarked here that that would probably be considered a successful deployment by a regime that has the blood of 50 million on their hands. Since then we have seen 200K and control as a complete fantasy. It’s clear that the Chinese are continuing to suffer massive and painful dislocations whether they admit it or not. The choice is now between an accidental or premature release of what may have been a prospective bio-weapon or a deliberate release of a botched weapon.
The picture would be much clearer if it wasn’t apparent that NIH was financing the exact thing that was released. If you believe in the omniscience of the CCP, they were playing a very long game indeed. You must then reconcile that with the same CCP that caused massive power shortages and may yet freeze some of their citizens to death in a fit of pique against Australia.
Part 1: Caronavirus
Part 2: mRNA vax
Part 3: …
That’s one conjecture I have seen espoused.
MCS,
The fact that the CCP might be engaging in conflicting or counterproductive behavior doesn’t really disprove anything, nor does the involvement of the NIH (the latter is just selling the commies the rope to hang us with.)
Mind you, I’m not really pushing this as anything likely; the safe money is still on the position that this is all just normally odd, messy reality. But these conjectures are out there, and some of them are to make us go hmmmmmm, and keep the patterns in the back of our mind for further matching as things progress, rather than wiping them entirely out of our thoughts.
We should be more open-minded about what a bio-weapon is and how it would be used.
Suppose a relatively low-harm flu-like virus was used as a bio-weapon in an economic war? The aim would not be to kill large numbers of the enemy, simply to undermine their economies so that they cannot resist your larger aims. Win without fighting, as someone once said.
Release the virus in one’s own country with great fanfare — social media photos of people collapsed in the streets; stories about welding up apartments; etc. Create an international scare.
Shut down parts of your own economy briefly — particularly the export-oriented parts.
Use the international media and foreign politicians and academics (most of whom are on your payroll, one way or another) to blow the problem way out of proportion — leading to those foreign countries Locking Down their economies, causing themselves great economic & social harm and rendering them even more dependent on your exports.
In the meantime, keep stirring the pot with stories about how bad the virus is while quietly reopening your own economy and increasing exports to render foreign countries even more dependent economically upon you.
Of course, that is just a fairy tale. Those foreign countries are led by intellectual giants. They would never fall for anything like this. Would they?
China claims ~3k deaths, with approximately zero since April 2020.
And if you believe that…
Brian — 25,000 people die every day in China. 8,000 people die every day in the US. Lots of room for governments/bureaucracies to manipulate numbers dying from a particular ascribed cause any way they want. Yes, China’s Covid mortality numbers are about as reliable as the US CPI inflation numbers. But that misses the point.
The real lasting damage done by this “bio-weapon”, if Covid were a bio-weapon, is to the economies and social structures of Western countries. And if Covid was not a deliberate bio-weapon, China’s leaders would still have to get high marks for taking advantage of a not-very-serious natural illness to advance their strategic interests.
There is lots of talk these days about resisting China’s designs on Taiwan. But how could any European, Asian, North American country resist China, knowing that the first consequence of any action on their part would be for China to cut off exports of everything from high-tech to nuts & bolts? And that foreign dependence on China has grown, thanks to the CovidScam.
I was responding to MCS, his 200k numbers are very wrong.
I dunno if anyone else reads ethical skeptic on twitter (https://twitter.com/ethicalskeptic), he has some very interesting theories with data to back it up. though I don’t fully follow all of it, the upshot basically is that a lab leak happened back in 2018 or so, worked through various countries that China has tighter relations with, with excess deaths that can be seen but didn’t really cause any concern, then in 2020 they triggered the global reaction we’re still suffering through. To me the biggest piece of new supporting evidence seems to be the “omicron variant”, which looks like it diverged from the “original” version about three years ago…
The biggest objection, to me, is that the Occam’s Razor answer to why China freaked out about a few people getting pneumonia in Wuhan in early 2020 is because they were in fact freaking out, not that it was some nefarious plot. I think in that case you’d start it *anywhere* but Wuhan. Leaving the smoking gun of starting it in Wuhan where the lab has never made any sense to me.
The long-term effects of the disease and the entirely new-technology “vaccines” have yet to be seen.
Knowing what we know about the machinations of the people around Bill Gates and his ilk, I don’t trust any of this. If nothing else, it’s ripe fodder for conspiracy theorists to take up and use, which is really bad because in crisis situations, such theories and theorists can rise to influence things far out of proportion to how right they are.
The thing I’m waiting for is the effect had on long-term fertility, particularly with young women. There’s already anecdotal evidence out there that there are higher rates of miscarriage and stillbirth among the vaccinated, as well as difficulties in getting pregnant. We’re nowhere near an understanding of this crap that they’ve thrown out here, and the fact that they basically shut down the control part of the testing regime back in 2020…? Speaks volumes to my paranoia.
I’ve been predicting a population crash now, for decades. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if certain nefarious characters bought into the BS and decided to egg the pudding, with entirely unknowable outcomes ahead of us.
It’ll be a giggle, watching the boni figure out that the amazing lifestyle they have now is only supported on the backs of the billions they want to eliminate in the name of “saving the earth”. Modern technologic society has so many interlocking complexities and requirements that I don’t think anyone could really tease out that which was essential to maintaining it, and by doing what I suspect they may have, well… Gonna be a long, dark period while it all works itself out.
Which just goes to show you that we’re governed by actual morons.
Since the government is tracking everyone’s jab, and since there are millions of people refusing them still, it should be super easy to track outcomes vs jab times, compare them to the unvaccinated (i.e., the “control group”), to prove how super duper safe they are.
And yet they’re not doing it.
Kind of curious, no?
I’m not a conspiracy theorist about the jabs, I don’t believe Bill Gates wants to microchip us, or to sterilize the masses, etc., but I really blame those who might be inclined to think along those lines.
If you’re not paranoid, you’re not paying attention.
Gavin’s Chicom Masterplan Theory actually makes a lot of sense, but I don’t think it’s very likely to be true. Might be.
But I think the others make good points too. My own scenario is a bit of a hybrid–the labwork got out, everyone was encouraged to freak out, and the Chicoms were quickest to exploit the crisis for their own purposes.
I have wondered if Wuhan might be Chicom Chernobyl, but so far that’s more hope than prediction.
“but I really blame those who might be inclined to think along those lines.”
should say I *don’t* blame those lol
“China claims ~3k deaths, with approximately zero since April 2020.
And if you believe that”¦”
You are not an idiot. You understand you have among the worst outcomes on the planet for your reaction to the Covid virus? It was bottom 11 a while ago, I have not checked recently. Just because you are idiots, does not mean everyone is.
Just a small heads up, for the almost probable war about to begin.
Paraphrasing I am. Putin said if you will not guarantee there will be no more NATO countries on Russia’s border and no western weapons in the Ukraine, he will. That’s what the several Army Groups near the Ukraine border are for.
PengunL “the almost probable war about to begin.”
There are lots of things to worry about in this world — like most of Canada’s medications coming from China, for example. But war over Ukraine is not one of them.
It is a game of poker, and Putin is the only guy at the table who knows how to play the game. It is not clear whether Ukraine’s government has much support in Ukraine. Resident Biden* is not up to the task mentally, and his Democrat Party contains vocal anti-war elements. Europe has no real leaders, and the European population that got so worried about a flu-like sniffle is going to collapse at the prospect of becoming collateral damage in a potential nuclear war. Because — make no mistake — once shooting starts, the only choices will be surrender or go nuclear. It is highly likely that the West will fold rather than take that risk.
Probable outcome after suitable stamping around — Finlandization of Ukraine under a new government.
No one is going to go to war to defend Ukraine. Come on, man.
Given that Putin’s already invaded them twice in recent years, once overtly and once using laughably dumb plausible deniability, I don’t see why they’d undertake a massive invasion other than to humiliate Slow Joe and NATO.
To me the danger time is the last week of February, after the Olympics, when Russia and China can coordinate moves against Ukraine and Taiwan, copying Russia’s seizure of Crimea…
Thanks to Dr Malone, Dr McCullough, and Dr Weinstein. etal and the doctors of the FLCCC, who, early on, recognized that something was amiss with the public health response. At first, I was disconcerted that so many doctors, academics, and public officials, world wide, succumbed to the same rigid, monolithic, one size fits all mind set, and very few thought outside the box. Now, I think that they are/were either incompetent or coopted. Maybe it was peer pressure, the band wagon effect, or access to funding that enabled this half assed policy to spread to all the advanced countries. It is amazing that the participants and their cheerleaders assume it won’t catch up with them and that it won’t scuttle their legacies. Or, are we wrong? Will they get away with gaslighting the public for the foreseeable future?
“It’d be awesome if we had some serious media outlet that could just document what we “knew” in early 2020, in mid 2020, in late 2020, etc., until today, and how completely worthless the “experts” have been.”
This, coupled with the inability to recognize that hindsight is 20/20. Some in the commentariat practice what I call medical “presentism”, judging past actions based on what we know now.
Bojo and Trump weren’t on the lockdown bandwagon til after the events in Italy and Spain reinforced by the claims of that dumbass, Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College.
Everybody was in the dark at the onset of covid. In the spring of 2020, vaccines and a handful of barely effective antivirals were the historical gold standard against viral diseases. At the time they were the only viable option; few dreamed there would be therapeutics. In February 2020, I recall physician, Dr Marc Seigel, of Fox News, standing outside a specialized hospital, in Oklahoma, where some of the cruise ship passengers were treated. Remember Dr, Seigel fervently hoping that Remdisivir would work?
It wasn’t til late summer of 2020, that researchers began to have a rudimentary understanding of acute phase of covid and last fall when some potential therapeutics appeared on the horizon. If you are among those who believe that Ivermectin was a potential treatment it didn’t become widely known until Dec, 2020-Jan, 2021. All this required the accumulation of data.
They really didn’t start vaccinating for covid, until Trump was on his way out of the Whitehouse. Problems with the vaccines didn’t become apparent til about 8 months ago. It’s only 6 months or so ago that FLCCC published their paper that described the mechanisms and the complexity of the covid disease process in detail. The problem with Monday morning quarterbacking is that we didn’t know in spring of 2020, what we know now.
Several have blamed Trump, who made his share of mistakes. Again hindsight is 2020. It wasn’t til the emergence of Trump, that people came face to face with the coopted Regulatory/Security State and their sneaky, underhanded sabotage. It caught me by surprise and my family was in Chicago before 1860. I was born knowing that government is a form of racketeering. The aldermen of my childhood were greedy and sneaky, but saints, compared to their malignant credentialed, manicured, offspring.
Biden has basically rolled over and there will be no war today. This is actually a result of Vicky Nuland’s little visit to Moscow, where she was not treated well and left angry. She and her cabal are most of the bru ha ha about Russia attacking the Ukraine.
Biden has made it clear that Ukraine will never be admitted to NATO and I believe there were other guarantees made as well.
Any look at Russia’s history will reveal why they are very nervous about being attacked by their neighbours. A very flat country with no natural defences against any army that attacks it.
depends who paid for hunter’s art, i’m guessing a split between chinese and ukrainian interest, interesting how the initial aid package did not include offensive armaments,
yes the data was kept close to the vest alina chen (who has collaborated with matt ridley) luigi warren started groking pieces of the story,
Not sure what it has to do with covid but we were never going to fight to make Ukraine safe for Ukrainian corruption, said Ukrainian corruption being a major reason that there was never much chance of them joining NATO.
That said, if I was a Russian conscript on the eastern edge of Ukraine and sober enough to be thinking about anything except staying drunk, I’d be mostly concerned with getting home at the end of my hitch with the same number of limbs as I started with. It might occur to me that my former comrades in socialist solidarity have had five years to prepare a warm welcome and that the laughably deniable invasion of the Donbas has been a less humorous stalemate for about as long. Might happen anyway but won’t be cheap for Russia.
Taiwan is about the same, except they’ve had 70 years to get ready. Win or lose, there’ll be a lot of Chinese ships, planes and soldiers at the bottom of the Formosa Straight.
back in the first dustup, the Russians used the green men, spetznaz some under wagner corps cover, this it’s been a long hard slog, the whole impeachment fracas, was about the country team looking the otherway with privat’s owner, kolomoisky, who also owns burisma, shazbat he owns half of the assembly, but lost influence after the bank collapse, which took 6 billion dollars, stephen mcintyre had the nitty gritty details,
“No one is going to go to war to defend Ukraine. Come on, man.”
After finessing the Ukraine the CIA has controlled the government there. Putin finessed Crimea and the Donbass was really a rebellion by the Russian people who live there, when faced with the prospect of having an actual Nazi government, when many of their parents died fighting them. A knowledge of Ukraine and the Banderites in control now is very useful to understand the depth of feeling there.
Since then America has been doing its best to get Ukraine into NATO, and really anything they can do to pressure Russia. The recent push, undoubtedly supported by the CIA, that Zelensky created by threatening to take back both the Donbass and Crimea, and moving forces to that end, was the initial cause of the Russian build up. As a guarantor of the Minsk agreement Russia would be required to act against any attack on the Donbass. This has escalated and Russia has decided its time to set some limits.
Its to do with NATO and Russia’s very close spatial relationship. Russia cannot afford to let the west, which threatens everyone continually, create a set of missile and military bases that are adjacent to its territory. It has said it will take Ukraine to create that buffer if it has to.
Although the regime in Ukraine is very corrupt indeed, that is not what this about.
The situation in and around the Ukraine is an odd mirror-image of the Western/USSR dynamic. The Sovs were naturally concerned with having buffer states, but once they had the buffer they started feeling the need to buffer the buffer.
Now it’s NATO’s (Imperial DC’s) foolish and provocative expansions to the east since the end of the Cold War that create the danger.
Here’s an example of the rewriting of history that needs to be completely stamped out. I read this guy a lot and like his perspective, but this is just garbage.
https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1468762758753701890
I hope we learn how important it is to be crystal clear about our expectations
Vaccines are doing exactly what they are meant to – limit hospitalizations
CDC oversold them and said they stop transmission
The poor messaging was always going to come back to haunt us
That is not what vaccines are meant to do. This is a lie. They are supposed to stop you from getting sick and from transmitting it. This should not be tolerated.
Brian,
I’m not sure what you’re point is. Heretofore, vaccines simply stopped the disease. People vaccinated against smallpox simply didn’t get smallpox, the same for polio, measles, etc.
Evaluating a vaccine that reduces symptoms or hospitalizations is a completely novel situation. It hinges on being able to determine to just what extent a reduction in morbidity/mortality is because of the vaccine rather than advancing standard of care. This is a numbers game where most are sure that the numbers are distorted and many interpretations are distorted by self interest if not totally fabricated to advance a predetermined narrative.
They had one chance to get it right and chose to lie the first time they opened their mouth.
MCS: “Evaluating a vaccine that reduces symptoms or hospitalizations is a completely novel situation.”
And because it is a novel situation, it is not a vaccine. It is something different, and needs a new name to avoid confusion. Saying the genetic modification treatment for the CovidScam should be called a vaccine is like saying a hovercraft should be called an airplane.
“I’m not sure what you’re point is.”
My point is that this is utterly Orwellian, and shouldn’t be just shrugged off. There’s a huge reservoir of positive feelings towards vaccines, because a vaccine has always meant something that protects you against a disease so you don’t get sick and protects the community by preventing its spread. And this rewriting of history, both recent in terms of what was claimed about these jabs (I honestly don’t even want to call them “vaccines” anymore, I’m done with that), and in terms of what the term “vaccine” even means, is an outrage that has to be stopped, right now. Shrugging our shoulders about it is not going to cut it.