It is the vaccines. Every single thing we have been told about Covid, the mandates and the vaccines has been a lie. 9 year olds don’t have strokes and heart attacks – or at least they didn’t before the vaccines. We are still being told they are safe for pregnant women – they were never tested on pregnant women. The mainstream press are pushing all kinds of nonsense – gardening elevates your risk of heart attacks, etc. Here is a question for you – are they having excess deaths in Africa? In Haiti? In Bangladesh? The other problem is of course that even if there was a genuine reason for this – I simply won’t believe it. I, and millions like me, simply don’t believe the physicians, university professors and other institutional ‘leaders’ anymore. Or the mainstream media. They have no credibility – or power to persuade.
The unnecessary deaths caused by the political lies will always be the most disastrous outcome remembered by individuals. But the catastrophic loss of of credibility of governing institutions throughout the West may yet turn out to be the most far-reaching consequence.
I wonder what the next dozen elections in the West will produce. It’s hard to guess, currently. Personally I hope it will be the start of an overthrow of the WEF-based order.
Good article but slightly nutty ranting comments
There are parallels with excess mortality from the post global financial crisis (GFC) data.
When the pandemic started there was clear data on the costs of societal disruption – increased excess mortality in mental health, cardiovascular and cancer deaths post GFC.
Although it is not exactly the same as covid, the parallels are manifest:
Loss of employment, insurance, loss of social connectiveness, loss of health screening all equal increased risk of death.
Maybe we should learn from recent history rather than rant.
The prominence of the ad hominem always gives away the weakness of the position. It also reveals the author to be uninterested in a fair and civil argument – the strategy is that the target (and onlookers harbouring sceptical thoughts) will stay quiet for fear of humiliation and social rejection. These anti-rational techniques have been embraced to devastating effect in the mainstream and its disappointing to see them here on a site that exists largely to try to counteract these toxins. But once all debates have collapsed into name calling, where does that leave a society with real problems to solve? When we resort to schoolyard techniques to sort out our problems, don’t be surprised that our once-enlightened society begins to resemble “Lord of the Flies”.
I ddn’t know the Conservative Government was neo-Markist. We now know thanks to Big Brother Watch that his Govenermnt was up to some pretty unscrupulous surveillance during the Pandemic under the 77th Brigade.Not everything can be blamed on left wing politics.
I ddn’t know the Conservative Government was neo-Markist. We now know thanks to Big Brother Watch that his Govenermnt was up to some pretty unscrupulous surveillance during the Pandemic under the 77th Brigade.Not everything can be blamed on left wing politics.
What we have here are a lot of very angry (myself included) people expressing their anger at the whole lying covid-management debacle, and their anger at realizing that the societal institutions can no longer be believed or trusted in. When you have been brought up to trust these institutions—with fairly good reason—and then find they no longer can be believed, it is a bitter pill to swallow. Perhaps contributing to excess deaths.
What we have here are a lot of very angry (myself included) people expressing their anger at the whole lying covid-management debacle, and their anger at realizing that the societal institutions can no longer be believed or trusted in. When you have been brought up to trust these institutions—with fairly good reason—and then find they no longer can be believed, it is a bitter pill to swallow. Perhaps contributing to excess deaths.
The prominence of the ad hominem always gives away the weakness of the position. It also reveals the author to be uninterested in a fair and civil argument – the strategy is that the target (and onlookers harbouring sceptical thoughts) will stay quiet for fear of humiliation and social rejection. These anti-rational techniques have been embraced to devastating effect in the mainstream and its disappointing to see them here on a site that exists largely to try to counteract these toxins. But once all debates have collapsed into name calling, where does that leave a society with real problems to solve? When we resort to schoolyard techniques to sort out our problems, don’t be surprised that our once-enlightened society begins to resemble “Lord of the Flies”.
It’s a fair statement, however, if we were asking the hard questions right now people wouldn’t have to “rant” as you suggest. This requires more than ranting at this stage, it requires shouting at the top of your lungs to have an independent investigative body struck that digs in, asks the hard questions, leaves no stone unturned and and does the proper data analysis. This will never happen – all manner of perverse incentives are driving our institutions to the complete opposite side of real science now. We are so far beyond a rant now.
None of this answers the question, why so many deaths in the young? Obesity? 20 pounds (even 50 pounds) overweight in the young would not be significant. Social isolation? They were not behaving like curtain twitching pensioners and carried on seeing their mates. Screening? What healthy 20 and thirty somethings spend time getting health screens?
Two obvious problems with drawing this parallel: the excess deaths we are currently experiencing are *much* higher than those following the GFC. And a large proportion of the deaths are sudden cardiovascular issues, not problems arising from the delayed treatment of treatable cancers.
I would also take issue with your description of ‘ranty’ comments: people have been raising concerns about excess deaths for many, many months but have been persistently censored, down-played or ignored – and so have had to shout.
Yes indeed, the Lockdowns were not only harmful to physical health but the dire economic consequences are playing out now. We all know that one of the biggest factors in higher death rates is poverty which the lockdowns have caused in abundance. Professors and doctors who warned about the harmful consequences of lockdowns in the Great Barrington Declaration were suppressed and ridiculed. See the Twitter files.
Such a naive comment from someone sounding intelligent. This is your issue, you can’t see common sense! If it’s that obvious how can it be ignored. It’s people like you stopping us getting to the crux of the issue.
It’s a fair statement, however, if we were asking the hard questions right now people wouldn’t have to “rant” as you suggest. This requires more than ranting at this stage, it requires shouting at the top of your lungs to have an independent investigative body struck that digs in, asks the hard questions, leaves no stone unturned and and does the proper data analysis. This will never happen – all manner of perverse incentives are driving our institutions to the complete opposite side of real science now. We are so far beyond a rant now.
None of this answers the question, why so many deaths in the young? Obesity? 20 pounds (even 50 pounds) overweight in the young would not be significant. Social isolation? They were not behaving like curtain twitching pensioners and carried on seeing their mates. Screening? What healthy 20 and thirty somethings spend time getting health screens?
Two obvious problems with drawing this parallel: the excess deaths we are currently experiencing are *much* higher than those following the GFC. And a large proportion of the deaths are sudden cardiovascular issues, not problems arising from the delayed treatment of treatable cancers.
I would also take issue with your description of ‘ranty’ comments: people have been raising concerns about excess deaths for many, many months but have been persistently censored, down-played or ignored – and so have had to shout.
Yes indeed, the Lockdowns were not only harmful to physical health but the dire economic consequences are playing out now. We all know that one of the biggest factors in higher death rates is poverty which the lockdowns have caused in abundance. Professors and doctors who warned about the harmful consequences of lockdowns in the Great Barrington Declaration were suppressed and ridiculed. See the Twitter files.
Such a naive comment from someone sounding intelligent. This is your issue, you can’t see common sense! If it’s that obvious how can it be ignored. It’s people like you stopping us getting to the crux of the issue.
Given that the article gives several plausible candidates for excess mortality what makes you so sure that it’s solely the vaccines?
My feeling is that for many who vehemently opposed the lockdowns they want it to be the vaccines because that would give them a weapon with which to punish the those inflicted the Covid restrictions on them.
I can understand this. Personally I feel like I was robbed of two years of my life, time we will not get back, by the lockdowns but this doesn’t mean we should throw reason out the window and adopt a kind of monomania with regards to the vaccines.
We know the vaccines can cause myocarditis but we also haven’t seen an associated increase in death rates from those diagnosed with vaccine induced heart problems, nor has a mechanism for how they would go on to cause death been identified. Given that studies find much higher rates of myocarditis in Covid patients, if there was an increased death rate due long term damage to the heart, how could it be distinguished that this was due to the vaccine and not Covid?
I still feel that the most likely explanation will be a combination of a wide number of factors: Lack of health care during the pandemic, later diagnosis, social isolation worsening health conditions or increasing deaths of despair, increased waiting lists due to backlogs in the health care system, potential immune naivety from certain viruses not been encountered for the last two years, rebounds in accidents from high risk behaviour which were suppressed by lockdown, the possibility that a disproportionate number of the very vulnerable were highly sheltered by the lockdown and now their mortality rates are returning to normal.
When faced with this Gordian knot of potential causes, the temptation might be to say, it’s all down to the vaccines, and cut it but expedient answers rarely are the correct ones.
“My feeling is that for many who vehemently opposed the lockdowns they want it to be the vaccines because that would give them a weapon with which to punish the those inflicted the Covid restrictions on them.”
Surely such people would blame the lockdowns, if that’s what they opposed? I can speak as one myself: I opposed the lockdowns on the grounds of their potential human cost, and it looks as if I was right. Why would I need to blame the vaccines, even if I also believe that the vaccines may well have had serious side-effects outweighing their benefits for certain groups?
Whatever combination of vaccines, lockdowns, or any of the other interventions or their economic consequences it might be, it’s clear that political and other authorities across the world and in the UK threw a generation of young people and children under the bus in a desperate, blind moral panic to protect, or be seen to be protecting, the elderly and the “vulnerable”.
Why don’t they try and find the humility and courage to try and learn lessons from this catastrophe, instead of burying their heads in the sand or trying to find someone else to blame? Truth and reconciliation is desperately needed.
Well said. But they will not. They cannot for fear of criminal sanction . Everyone in authority is complicit in the NHS First catastrophe. Everyone. But our media/BBC – to its eternal shame a guilty lead propagandist party in inducing public hysteria – will protect themselves, all the craven political parties and the authoritarian health Industrial complex with censorship and lies. And our supposed protector – the law – remain silent and unused. Human rights?? Yeh right. Magna Carta did ut better. It is like living under communism. They speak one false truth after another. Covid. Net Zero. Climate Emergency. Equality mania. We know it is a State ideology and riddled with lies. But we cannot remove the unelected technocracy which holds the levers of real power. So are are mute frustrated disempowered. And they get away with it.
Well said. But they will not. They cannot for fear of criminal sanction . Everyone in authority is complicit in the NHS First catastrophe. Everyone. But our media/BBC – to its eternal shame a guilty lead propagandist party in inducing public hysteria – will protect themselves, all the craven political parties and the authoritarian health Industrial complex with censorship and lies. And our supposed protector – the law – remain silent and unused. Human rights?? Yeh right. Magna Carta did ut better. It is like living under communism. They speak one false truth after another. Covid. Net Zero. Climate Emergency. Equality mania. We know it is a State ideology and riddled with lies. But we cannot remove the unelected technocracy which holds the levers of real power. So are are mute frustrated disempowered. And they get away with it.
Because it was always known on some level, even if the if governments failed to quantify it, that lockdown would cause harms. However, it could be argued that lockdown was to protect the most vulnerable therefore can be justified as an act of solidarity, whether you agree with that or not.
The vaccines, whilst they reduced the rates of deaths and serious illness failed in the end to prevent transmission, meaning that the mass vaccination of the under 50’s has no such justification. If it was to emerge that as well turning out to have been unnecessary, they also caused harm, this would be far more damaging for authorities. That’s why I think vaccines are the preferred target.
I am far more outraged about the pointless loss of my freedom – and I had it pretty easy – than a vaccination programme which actually was not coerced in the UK.
Andrew this is inaccurate. There were many way in which the uptake was enforced. I could not travel to help my elderly father who was unwell and in need of urgent care as he lives – now lived – in another country if I did not take it. I have thus been coerced. Many would have lost their jobs.
As a person over 70 I had 2 emails 3texts and 2 phone calls trying to get me to be vaccinated. As a former biology teacher/lecturer I was aware that having contracted Covid (very mildly) before the vax was released I would have natural immunity. I was thrown out of my choir, my discussion group and slurred as an “anti-vaxxer” by many. Had I been less secure in my knowledge of immunology (and less bolshie) I would have submitted. 150,000 health care workers (mostly working class women)were sacked for refusing the vaccine (probably most had already got natural immunity from infection) and it was only when highly paid consultants in the NHS refused that the mandate was removed. One reason for the bed-blocking in hospitals at the moment……..
All this is coercion-not as bad as the USA (most congressmen have shares in Big Pharma) but coercion nonetheless.
I would never have submitted. Two reasons spring to mind:
A ‘safe and effective’ vaccine that the manufacturers insisted on being held unaccountable for.
No long-term effects of multiple mRNA jabs are known. Nor will be for some years yet. I thought I’d be fit enough to survive covid (true as it turned out) but didn’t think embracing an unknown was in my own interest.
I suppose a third (rather more latterly) would be the unfathomable drive to inject all those over 6 months of age, some of whom were at almost zero risk from covid.
All health workers are equal. It’s just that the consultants are much more equal than others. What did those consultants know that made them reluctant to get jabbed?
I would never have submitted. Two reasons spring to mind:
A ‘safe and effective’ vaccine that the manufacturers insisted on being held unaccountable for.
No long-term effects of multiple mRNA jabs are known. Nor will be for some years yet. I thought I’d be fit enough to survive covid (true as it turned out) but didn’t think embracing an unknown was in my own interest.
I suppose a third (rather more latterly) would be the unfathomable drive to inject all those over 6 months of age, some of whom were at almost zero risk from covid.
All health workers are equal. It’s just that the consultants are much more equal than others. What did those consultants know that made them reluctant to get jabbed?
There was coercion. If you wanted to preserve your freedom to travel, for example, you had to give into the coercion to get jabbed and show the certificate on demand.
I agree about the pointless loss of freedom. But as for: “… vaccination programme which actually was not coerced in the UK”. I did not get the vaccine and was not actually coerced in the sense of being forced to march to a vaccination centre. But I was certainly conscious of continual pressure from all sides. At the top, it was the repulsive Boris urging us to get jabbed. And the late Queen describing vaccine refusers as selfish. And the BBC ‘s ceaseless propaganda. At local level, it was the near horror from family and friends that I was unjabbed.
Andrew this is inaccurate. There were many way in which the uptake was enforced. I could not travel to help my elderly father who was unwell and in need of urgent care as he lives – now lived – in another country if I did not take it. I have thus been coerced. Many would have lost their jobs.
As a person over 70 I had 2 emails 3texts and 2 phone calls trying to get me to be vaccinated. As a former biology teacher/lecturer I was aware that having contracted Covid (very mildly) before the vax was released I would have natural immunity. I was thrown out of my choir, my discussion group and slurred as an “anti-vaxxer” by many. Had I been less secure in my knowledge of immunology (and less bolshie) I would have submitted. 150,000 health care workers (mostly working class women)were sacked for refusing the vaccine (probably most had already got natural immunity from infection) and it was only when highly paid consultants in the NHS refused that the mandate was removed. One reason for the bed-blocking in hospitals at the moment……..
All this is coercion-not as bad as the USA (most congressmen have shares in Big Pharma) but coercion nonetheless.
There was coercion. If you wanted to preserve your freedom to travel, for example, you had to give into the coercion to get jabbed and show the certificate on demand.
I agree about the pointless loss of freedom. But as for: “… vaccination programme which actually was not coerced in the UK”. I did not get the vaccine and was not actually coerced in the sense of being forced to march to a vaccination centre. But I was certainly conscious of continual pressure from all sides. At the top, it was the repulsive Boris urging us to get jabbed. And the late Queen describing vaccine refusers as selfish. And the BBC ‘s ceaseless propaganda. At local level, it was the near horror from family and friends that I was unjabbed.
Since they managed to kick all those elderly patients out of hospital (untested) and back to their care homes, the argument for protecting the most vulnerable looks rather weak. It would have been kinder to shoot the ‘bed blockers’.
Add to that all the weak and vulnerable elderly who were locked up to die alone and unvisited.
I am far more outraged about the pointless loss of my freedom – and I had it pretty easy – than a vaccination programme which actually was not coerced in the UK.
Since they managed to kick all those elderly patients out of hospital (untested) and back to their care homes, the argument for protecting the most vulnerable looks rather weak. It would have been kinder to shoot the ‘bed blockers’.
Add to that all the weak and vulnerable elderly who were locked up to die alone and unvisited.
I opposed both the lockdowns and the vaccines. Even if the vaccines were perfect the lockdowns were completely overdone especially for children. They achieved nothing in the end and people who tried to say so were suppressed on social media and in the press. For 2 years we were told that no sacrifice was too high if we could save just one 83 year old life. The drumbeat of alarm was beaten relentlessly. But suddenly there is a glaring lack of interest in excess deaths – including the very young. The media doesn’t talk about it at all. When young people literally stroke out live on TV – the response is a shrug. “Hey $@&$ happens – chill out.”
I remember the totally deranged comment from a guy interviewed on BBC radio in 2020. He declared that no price was too high to save one life from COVID… “a trillion pounds….” Which is about seven years expenditure on the whole of the NHS.
Which reminds me of the often repeated comment that the NHS is the nearest thing to a national religion in the UK. In our local Waterstones a few days ago, there was the history of 70 years of the NHS. It was in the religious books section between the Synod of 1559 and C S Lewis.
I remember the totally deranged comment from a guy interviewed on BBC radio in 2020. He declared that no price was too high to save one life from COVID… “a trillion pounds….” Which is about seven years expenditure on the whole of the NHS.
Which reminds me of the often repeated comment that the NHS is the nearest thing to a national religion in the UK. In our local Waterstones a few days ago, there was the history of 70 years of the NHS. It was in the religious books section between the Synod of 1559 and C S Lewis.
Too many people in my eyes aren’t able to do as you say unfortunately, they’re far too tribal. They didn’t like lockdowns (which I didn’t) therefore everything that was done in regards to Covid must have been wrong. We see the same in politics, where they believe everything one side says is right and the opposition always wrong when most of us know that’s nonsense
Everything that was done in regards to Covid *was* wrong.
But some people are just too cowardly to form an evidence-based opinion. They’d rather believe the garbage fed to them by the BBC and corrupt politicians.
Everything that was done in regards to Covid *was* wrong.
But some people are just too cowardly to form an evidence-based opinion. They’d rather believe the garbage fed to them by the BBC and corrupt politicians.
Whatever combination of vaccines, lockdowns, or any of the other interventions or their economic consequences it might be, it’s clear that political and other authorities across the world and in the UK threw a generation of young people and children under the bus in a desperate, blind moral panic to protect, or be seen to be protecting, the elderly and the “vulnerable”.
Why don’t they try and find the humility and courage to try and learn lessons from this catastrophe, instead of burying their heads in the sand or trying to find someone else to blame? Truth and reconciliation is desperately needed.
Because it was always known on some level, even if the if governments failed to quantify it, that lockdown would cause harms. However, it could be argued that lockdown was to protect the most vulnerable therefore can be justified as an act of solidarity, whether you agree with that or not.
The vaccines, whilst they reduced the rates of deaths and serious illness failed in the end to prevent transmission, meaning that the mass vaccination of the under 50’s has no such justification. If it was to emerge that as well turning out to have been unnecessary, they also caused harm, this would be far more damaging for authorities. That’s why I think vaccines are the preferred target.
I opposed both the lockdowns and the vaccines. Even if the vaccines were perfect the lockdowns were completely overdone especially for children. They achieved nothing in the end and people who tried to say so were suppressed on social media and in the press. For 2 years we were told that no sacrifice was too high if we could save just one 83 year old life. The drumbeat of alarm was beaten relentlessly. But suddenly there is a glaring lack of interest in excess deaths – including the very young. The media doesn’t talk about it at all. When young people literally stroke out live on TV – the response is a shrug. “Hey $@&$ happens – chill out.”
Too many people in my eyes aren’t able to do as you say unfortunately, they’re far too tribal. They didn’t like lockdowns (which I didn’t) therefore everything that was done in regards to Covid must have been wrong. We see the same in politics, where they believe everything one side says is right and the opposition always wrong when most of us know that’s nonsense
Just to correct you somewhat. (a) In young men age 18-50 the frequency of myocarditis post-vaccination vastly surpasses that post-covid. (b) from a purely biological perspective, covid, in the vast majority of cases, is not a systemic disease but limited to the respiratory tract so the spike protein does not circulate in the blood; in the case of vaccination, the spike protein (synthesized within cells from the mRNA or DNA for the AZ vaccine) circulates throughout the body and is found in virtually every organ. That’s a completely different situation.
As for the causes of excess deaths one has to look at the age group and demographic where you don’t expect people to die of cardiovascular disease. i.e. very few people less than 50 are going to be on statins, for example, so Whitty’s argument/proposal is just idiotic (Not to mention that statins have absolutely no effect on mortality for those who haven’t yet experienced a cardiovascular event, except in very rare cases of inherited hyperlipidemias.
The virus has also been shown to cause myocarditis, so seeing as almost the entire population would have had at least one of the strains by now woukd that not also explain the rise rather than just the vaccines?
Yes indeed, but only in very rare cases does a covid infection result in myocarditis. That’s because the infection has to systemic and general it isn’t. For the vaccine, it is always given systemically.
Yes indeed, but only in very rare cases does a covid infection result in myocarditis. That’s because the infection has to systemic and general it isn’t. For the vaccine, it is always given systemically.
Yes but it’s supported by many papers in the literature including the recent studies out of Switzerland and thailand. As Vinay Prassad has pointed out, you cannot just put everybody in the same pot and compare 85 year olds to 18-29 yr olds! probably a good idea to understand the medical literature.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this study.
It compares the incidence of myocarditis in those who had Covid BEFORE receiving the ‘vaccine’ with those who contracted Covid AFTER the shot, reporting a higher incidence of myocarditis in the former.
Surely what is required is simply a comparison of the incidence of myocarditis in the UNVACCINATED with those who have received the ‘vaccine’, either before or after contracting Covid?
All along, I believed the forceful coercion, including the mandates, were a desperate bid to eliminate a most useful control group – the unvaccinated!
Yes but it’s supported by many papers in the literature including the recent studies out of Switzerland and thailand. As Vinay Prassad has pointed out, you cannot just put everybody in the same pot and compare 85 year olds to 18-29 yr olds! probably a good idea to understand the medical literature.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this study.
It compares the incidence of myocarditis in those who had Covid BEFORE receiving the ‘vaccine’ with those who contracted Covid AFTER the shot, reporting a higher incidence of myocarditis in the former.
Surely what is required is simply a comparison of the incidence of myocarditis in the UNVACCINATED with those who have received the ‘vaccine’, either before or after contracting Covid?
All along, I believed the forceful coercion, including the mandates, were a desperate bid to eliminate a most useful control group – the unvaccinated!
The virus has also been shown to cause myocarditis, so seeing as almost the entire population would have had at least one of the strains by now woukd that not also explain the rise rather than just the vaccines?
Obviously when faced with problems arising in complex systems, we grasp at simplistic solutions. The answer is unlikely to be simple – inconvenient as that may be for our need to understand. The problem the authors identify is a serious one – the vaccines have been prematurely ruled out as a cause of anything by our governments without anything near a sufficient level of study. And they are actively silencing and shaming anyone who wants to do those studies. The conspiracy theorizing around vaccines will only start to subside when the actual conspiracy to silence all criticism of the vaccines subsides.
You mean simplistic solutions like the contention that the entire global temperature is controlled by one variable – man made CO2? I can guarantee you that most people who believe fervently in vaccines – believe that simplistic story as well. I guess I am old fashioned and tend to believe in things that I have witnessed – like my child being vaccine injured – like the fact I don’t know anyone who has died from Covid who wasn’t old and sick – like the fact that I have had Covid three times despite being vaccinated. We have reached a certain intellectual nihilism where we literally don’t know who to believe anymore. I am as interested in hearing what a crackpot handing out flyers on a street corner has to say these days as I am in hearing what the head of the CDC is saying. They are both about equal in credibility – except one of them hasn’t already intentionally lied to the public to my knowledge.
Sometimes simple solutions are actually correct! We’ve known CO2 is a greenhouse gas for 150 years, (it’s why Venus is so much hotter than it ‘should’ be at its distance from the Sun), we know we are producing more and more of this gas, and we know world temperatures are rising. That doesn’t prove the case but makes a pretty strong ‘case to answer’. I’m rather mystified as to how anyone who has for example visited the Alps or any other mountain area with glaciers couldn’t be aware of the warning tendency. No one is saying that world climate is ‘controlled by one variable’, just that the one that has changed the most quickly happens to be man-made emissions of CO2.
None of that of course means that the world is going to end, humanity will become extinct or that current Net Zero policies are sensible (almost certainly not in my view). Bjorn Lomborg has a very balanced view
Don’t be discouraged by the downvotes! The science is there, I was teaching about “global warming “ from 1968 onwards but the fat controllers wouldn’t listen and didn’t act soon enough. Always follow the money!
Sorry the Science isn’t there. There’s a lot more to it than CO2, not to mention that the effect of CO2 saturates rather quickly. Interestingly, a recent study published in one of the Nature Journals noted that the temperature in the alps was much much higher in the middle ages than it is now (based on tree line level, bison grazing, etc…).
Sorry the Science isn’t there. There’s a lot more to it than CO2, not to mention that the effect of CO2 saturates rather quickly. Interestingly, a recent study published in one of the Nature Journals noted that the temperature in the alps was much much higher in the middle ages than it is now (based on tree line level, bison grazing, etc…).
Don’t be discouraged by the downvotes! The science is there, I was teaching about “global warming “ from 1968 onwards but the fat controllers wouldn’t listen and didn’t act soon enough. Always follow the money!
Sometimes simple solutions are actually correct! We’ve known CO2 is a greenhouse gas for 150 years, (it’s why Venus is so much hotter than it ‘should’ be at its distance from the Sun), we know we are producing more and more of this gas, and we know world temperatures are rising. That doesn’t prove the case but makes a pretty strong ‘case to answer’. I’m rather mystified as to how anyone who has for example visited the Alps or any other mountain area with glaciers couldn’t be aware of the warning tendency. No one is saying that world climate is ‘controlled by one variable’, just that the one that has changed the most quickly happens to be man-made emissions of CO2.
None of that of course means that the world is going to end, humanity will become extinct or that current Net Zero policies are sensible (almost certainly not in my view). Bjorn Lomborg has a very balanced view
You mean simplistic solutions like the contention that the entire global temperature is controlled by one variable – man made CO2? I can guarantee you that most people who believe fervently in vaccines – believe that simplistic story as well. I guess I am old fashioned and tend to believe in things that I have witnessed – like my child being vaccine injured – like the fact I don’t know anyone who has died from Covid who wasn’t old and sick – like the fact that I have had Covid three times despite being vaccinated. We have reached a certain intellectual nihilism where we literally don’t know who to believe anymore. I am as interested in hearing what a crackpot handing out flyers on a street corner has to say these days as I am in hearing what the head of the CDC is saying. They are both about equal in credibility – except one of them hasn’t already intentionally lied to the public to my knowledge.
The few studies I’ve seen seem to show that the vaccines increase the risk of myocarditis by an extra 10 people per million. By contrast catching Covid appears to show an increase of myocarditis by around 40 people per million.
Maybe you actually need to read more carefully. The best studies and data out of Israel, Thailand and Switzerland all indicate a rate of overt myocarditis in 18-29 yr old men of between 1 in 2000 to 1 in 10000, with a risk of sub-clinical myocarditis pegged at 1-2 orders of magnitude higher. You’ve got to read the literature a little more carefully and actually understand what you’re reading. You cannot lump 85 yr old women with 18-29 yr old men. That’s garbage science.
Maybe you actually need to read more carefully. The best studies and data out of Israel, Thailand and Switzerland all indicate a rate of overt myocarditis in 18-29 yr old men of between 1 in 2000 to 1 in 10000, with a risk of sub-clinical myocarditis pegged at 1-2 orders of magnitude higher. You’ve got to read the literature a little more carefully and actually understand what you’re reading. You cannot lump 85 yr old women with 18-29 yr old men. That’s garbage science.
Thanks for your measured comments Matthew, but those who ‘vehemently oppose lockdowns’ might be better placed to directly blame lockdowns!
I am personally far more outraged at having my liberty removed for no good reason – and I had it pretty easy – than a vaccination programme, though I tend to agree that was probably directed at far too great an age range (Denmark now doesn’t recommend vaccination below the age of 50).
The most important point is to get your fact right. It is absolutely not the case that the rate of myocarditis following covid is greater than that following vaccination. You have to look at the appropriate age group and you cannot mix up 80 yr old ladies with 18-30 yr old young men. The risk of myocarditis in your men between the ages of 15-50 post-vaccination is real and very well established now (and varies anywhere from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 5000 depending on the study). The risk of sub-clinical myocarditis is 10-100 fold higher in young men. This was found both in the studies out of Switzerland and Thailand.
The second key point is not to throw out straw men arguments. Death in the less than 30s, other than by car/motorbike accidents, is just very very rare. For sure, young people can die from sudden arrythmias but this is super super rare.
“My feeling is that for many who vehemently opposed the lockdowns they want it to be the vaccines because that would give them a weapon with which to punish the those inflicted the Covid restrictions on them.”
Surely such people would blame the lockdowns, if that’s what they opposed? I can speak as one myself: I opposed the lockdowns on the grounds of their potential human cost, and it looks as if I was right. Why would I need to blame the vaccines, even if I also believe that the vaccines may well have had serious side-effects outweighing their benefits for certain groups?
Just to correct you somewhat. (a) In young men age 18-50 the frequency of myocarditis post-vaccination vastly surpasses that post-covid. (b) from a purely biological perspective, covid, in the vast majority of cases, is not a systemic disease but limited to the respiratory tract so the spike protein does not circulate in the blood; in the case of vaccination, the spike protein (synthesized within cells from the mRNA or DNA for the AZ vaccine) circulates throughout the body and is found in virtually every organ. That’s a completely different situation.
As for the causes of excess deaths one has to look at the age group and demographic where you don’t expect people to die of cardiovascular disease. i.e. very few people less than 50 are going to be on statins, for example, so Whitty’s argument/proposal is just idiotic (Not to mention that statins have absolutely no effect on mortality for those who haven’t yet experienced a cardiovascular event, except in very rare cases of inherited hyperlipidemias.
Obviously when faced with problems arising in complex systems, we grasp at simplistic solutions. The answer is unlikely to be simple – inconvenient as that may be for our need to understand. The problem the authors identify is a serious one – the vaccines have been prematurely ruled out as a cause of anything by our governments without anything near a sufficient level of study. And they are actively silencing and shaming anyone who wants to do those studies. The conspiracy theorizing around vaccines will only start to subside when the actual conspiracy to silence all criticism of the vaccines subsides.
The few studies I’ve seen seem to show that the vaccines increase the risk of myocarditis by an extra 10 people per million. By contrast catching Covid appears to show an increase of myocarditis by around 40 people per million.
Thanks for your measured comments Matthew, but those who ‘vehemently oppose lockdowns’ might be better placed to directly blame lockdowns!
I am personally far more outraged at having my liberty removed for no good reason – and I had it pretty easy – than a vaccination programme, though I tend to agree that was probably directed at far too great an age range (Denmark now doesn’t recommend vaccination below the age of 50).
The most important point is to get your fact right. It is absolutely not the case that the rate of myocarditis following covid is greater than that following vaccination. You have to look at the appropriate age group and you cannot mix up 80 yr old ladies with 18-30 yr old young men. The risk of myocarditis in your men between the ages of 15-50 post-vaccination is real and very well established now (and varies anywhere from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 5000 depending on the study). The risk of sub-clinical myocarditis is 10-100 fold higher in young men. This was found both in the studies out of Switzerland and Thailand.
The second key point is not to throw out straw men arguments. Death in the less than 30s, other than by car/motorbike accidents, is just very very rare. For sure, young people can die from sudden arrythmias but this is super super rare.
At 72 years of age not taking the COVID vax and not buying into the governments masks,social distancing,lock downs,forced inoculations and all the other BS they were peddling at the time was the wisest choice I eve made in my life.I’m in excellent health and feel as good as when I was 40.I have been to far to many funerals of people younger than me by decades who have dropped dead for no good reason and most of them were fully vaxed and boosted! I’ll never trust our government ever again for as long as I live because if you do so its at your own peril.
You see, I find this hard to believe personally. I’m a few decades younger than yourself and presumably know a lot more people of that age group than a retired man would through friends, work and coming from a large family, and yet the only person in that age group that I know who has died in the last few years did so because of a car crash. It seems rather convenient that you know lots of vaxxed young people who have died unexpectedly when it just so happens to prove the point you’re trying to make about the vaccines.
You see, I find this hard to believe personally. I’m a few decades younger than yourself and presumably know a lot more people of that age group than a retired man would through friends, work and coming from a large family, and yet the only person in that age group that I know who has died in the last few years did so because of a car crash. It seems rather convenient that you know lots of vaxxed young people who have died unexpectedly when it just so happens to prove the point you’re trying to make about the vaccines.
I’m not quite sure why you are so outraged about vaccinations but don’t even mention the imprisonment of the population in own own homes for months on end. I’m actually far more outraged about that, and it is very likely to have adverse medical effects.
Please stop this misinformation and baseless conspiracy theories! Follow the science!
Its a well known fact, that the “vaccines” give 100% (!!) IMMUNITY!
That is, it gives legal immunity to the producers, so no risk (for them) AT ALL!
A totally safe product!
The data on age adjusted mortality rates for never vaxed and at least one vax are available from the ONS. The main graph (which shows all-cause mortality among the never vaxed was higher than than the vaxed over 2021 and 2022) and a list of the and the ways that data can be misued by anti-vaxers are at https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1549170827354062849
The latter part of this article is an odd mix of links to papers and conspiracist websites, and would be better with those sites removed. Google “HART leaks” if you want a laugh, but otherwise ignore Fenton, Yeadon and the rest.
In Africa, we had very little vaccine and minimal lockdown. Where it was tried, it was shambolic. There has been no mention or discussion of excess deaths.
For Herd (funded by a Tory supporting millionaire) to survive it has to pander to Covid-Vaccine sceptic commentators who often make unsubstantiated assertions. If interested read this very carefully with an open mind: ‘Covid-19: Study provides further evidence that mRNA vaccines are safe in pregnancy’ https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o2013
Just read that article and it has to be the stupidest commentary ever on an article in the Lancet aimed at showing that the vaccine is safe in pregnancy.For heaven sake, even ibuprofen or a glass of wine isn’t safe in pregnancy and should be avoided. Moreover, since the vaccine currently fails to prevent infection or transmission, one might very well ask why subject oneself to double the risk: the risk from the vaccine and the risk if one catches covid.
The truth of the matter is that during pregnancy you want to avoid taking any type of medication if at all possible. Of course, that may not be possible, but one should always proceed with great caution, especially during the 1st trimester.
Just read that article and it has to be the stupidest commentary ever on an article in the Lancet aimed at showing that the vaccine is safe in pregnancy.For heaven sake, even ibuprofen or a glass of wine isn’t safe in pregnancy and should be avoided. Moreover, since the vaccine currently fails to prevent infection or transmission, one might very well ask why subject oneself to double the risk: the risk from the vaccine and the risk if one catches covid.
The truth of the matter is that during pregnancy you want to avoid taking any type of medication if at all possible. Of course, that may not be possible, but one should always proceed with great caution, especially during the 1st trimester.
The unnecessary deaths caused by the political lies will always be the most disastrous outcome remembered by individuals. But the catastrophic loss of of credibility of governing institutions throughout the West may yet turn out to be the most far-reaching consequence.
I wonder what the next dozen elections in the West will produce. It’s hard to guess, currently. Personally I hope it will be the start of an overthrow of the WEF-based order.
Good article but slightly nutty ranting comments
There are parallels with excess mortality from the post global financial crisis (GFC) data.
When the pandemic started there was clear data on the costs of societal disruption – increased excess mortality in mental health, cardiovascular and cancer deaths post GFC.
Although it is not exactly the same as covid, the parallels are manifest:
Loss of employment, insurance, loss of social connectiveness, loss of health screening all equal increased risk of death.
Maybe we should learn from recent history rather than rant.
Given that the article gives several plausible candidates for excess mortality what makes you so sure that it’s solely the vaccines?
My feeling is that for many who vehemently opposed the lockdowns they want it to be the vaccines because that would give them a weapon with which to punish the those inflicted the Covid restrictions on them.
I can understand this. Personally I feel like I was robbed of two years of my life, time we will not get back, by the lockdowns but this doesn’t mean we should throw reason out the window and adopt a kind of monomania with regards to the vaccines.
We know the vaccines can cause myocarditis but we also haven’t seen an associated increase in death rates from those diagnosed with vaccine induced heart problems, nor has a mechanism for how they would go on to cause death been identified. Given that studies find much higher rates of myocarditis in Covid patients, if there was an increased death rate due long term damage to the heart, how could it be distinguished that this was due to the vaccine and not Covid?
I still feel that the most likely explanation will be a combination of a wide number of factors: Lack of health care during the pandemic, later diagnosis, social isolation worsening health conditions or increasing deaths of despair, increased waiting lists due to backlogs in the health care system, potential immune naivety from certain viruses not been encountered for the last two years, rebounds in accidents from high risk behaviour which were suppressed by lockdown, the possibility that a disproportionate number of the very vulnerable were highly sheltered by the lockdown and now their mortality rates are returning to normal.
When faced with this Gordian knot of potential causes, the temptation might be to say, it’s all down to the vaccines, and cut it but expedient answers rarely are the correct ones.
At 72 years of age not taking the COVID vax and not buying into the governments masks,social distancing,lock downs,forced inoculations and all the other BS they were peddling at the time was the wisest choice I eve made in my life.I’m in excellent health and feel as good as when I was 40.I have been to far to many funerals of people younger than me by decades who have dropped dead for no good reason and most of them were fully vaxed and boosted! I’ll never trust our government ever again for as long as I live because if you do so its at your own peril.
I’m not quite sure why you are so outraged about vaccinations but don’t even mention the imprisonment of the population in own own homes for months on end. I’m actually far more outraged about that, and it is very likely to have adverse medical effects.
Please stop this misinformation and baseless conspiracy theories! Follow the science!
Its a well known fact, that the “vaccines” give 100% (!!) IMMUNITY!
That is, it gives legal immunity to the producers, so no risk (for them) AT ALL!
A totally safe product!
The data on age adjusted mortality rates for never vaxed and at least one vax are available from the ONS. The main graph (which shows all-cause mortality among the never vaxed was higher than than the vaxed over 2021 and 2022) and a list of the and the ways that data can be misued by anti-vaxers are at https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1549170827354062849
The latter part of this article is an odd mix of links to papers and conspiracist websites, and would be better with those sites removed. Google “HART leaks” if you want a laugh, but otherwise ignore Fenton, Yeadon and the rest.
In Africa, we had very little vaccine and minimal lockdown. Where it was tried, it was shambolic. There has been no mention or discussion of excess deaths.
For Herd (funded by a Tory supporting millionaire) to survive it has to pander to Covid-Vaccine sceptic commentators who often make unsubstantiated assertions. If interested read this very carefully with an open mind: ‘Covid-19: Study provides further evidence that mRNA vaccines are safe in pregnancy’ https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o2013
Peter Johnson
1 year ago
It is the vaccines. Every single thing we have been told about Covid, the mandates and the vaccines has been a lie. 9 year olds don’t have strokes and heart attacks – or at least they didn’t before the vaccines. We are still being told they are safe for pregnant women – they were never tested on pregnant women. The mainstream press are pushing all kinds of nonsense – gardening elevates your risk of heart attacks, etc. Here is a question for you – are they having excess deaths in Africa? In Haiti? In Bangladesh? The other problem is of course that even if there was a genuine reason for this – I simply won’t believe it. I, and millions like me, simply don’t believe the physicians, university professors and other institutional ‘leaders’ anymore. Or the mainstream media. They have no credibility – or power to persuade.
Last edited 1 year ago by Peter Johnson
Albireo Double
1 year ago
I was supportive at the start of the first lockdown and the first vaccines. But I think that everything that happened after that was both wrong, and unforgivable.
The problem was that our political class along with others in the West did not dare to consider changing course. A “sunk cost – bet the farm” mentality took over and cowardice prevented any questioning of it. That is the “wrong” part.
Meanwhile governments harnessed every resource at their disposal (along with some that should not have been at their disposal) to terrorise the populations into belief, while they bankrupted whole countries as their “easier softer route” rather than being honest and rigorously questioning their advisors, the evidence, and their own actions. That is the “unforgivable” part.
It really is unforgivable, and authorities should remain unforgiven until they apologise fulsomely, wholly and personally, to their populations for the weakness, dishonesty and cowardice that they have shown, and the countless thousands or millions of deaths they have deliberately caused..
At one time the opposition opposed and different points of view were voiced in parliament but there is little difference now between the political parties and no politician wants to take a controversial stance which could be exploited by the press,causing aggro. Too fatiguing!
As a result, we have lost the benefits of being a democracy. Freedom of speech is curtailed and decisions are taken through the strength and publicity given to all sorts of pressure groups( which only have minority followings.
It is a sorry state of affairs and we are lucky to have Unherd where different viewpoints can be aired. Unfortunately they don’t reach the mainstream media.
Expecting a few brave people to speak out was our wish but that was rare. When did nearly all our leaders become so sensitive? Perhaps because we wouldn’t proclaim “Let them speak”. Too many of us allowed the press to attack. We accepted cancelling and mocking attacks. OTOH, our governments have become quite skilled at using PsyOp tools that we are ill trained to deal with. Our press needs to identify and call out the use of those tools so we might learn.
Expecting a few brave people to speak out was our wish but that was rare. When did nearly all our leaders become so sensitive? Perhaps because we wouldn’t proclaim “Let them speak”. Too many of us allowed the press to attack. We accepted cancelling and mocking attacks. OTOH, our governments have become quite skilled at using PsyOp tools that we are ill trained to deal with. Our press needs to identify and call out the use of those tools so we might learn.
I have not known one person who has died from Covid. What I have personally experienced in my community, three suicides, multiple overdoses, failed marriages, financial ruin, anxious and overwrought kids and teens, future potential decimated. I could go on and on. I feel fortunate that Covid took no one I know, but do I turn a blind eye to all the rest that was a direct consequence of our response and hence deliberate? And after all this, we still have no leads on where Covid came from? The person who doesn’t think something is seriously amiss here is not only drunk but willfully blind.
The government went ahead with a course of action involving lies deception and propagandising of the population knowing perfectly well from its own advisors that lives would be lost as a result of their actions.
The government went ahead with a course of action involving lies deception and propagandising of the population knowing perfectly well from its own advisors that lives would be lost as a result of their actions.
I have not known one person who has died from Covid. What I have personally experienced in my community, three suicides, multiple overdoses, failed marriages, financial ruin, anxious and overwrought kids and teens, future potential decimated. I could go on and on. I feel fortunate that Covid took no one I know, but do I turn a blind eye to all the rest that was a direct consequence of our response and hence deliberate? And after all this, we still have no leads on where Covid came from? The person who doesn’t think something is seriously amiss here is not only drunk but willfully blind.
Cowardice, above all, is what made this unfolding tragedy possible. Some medical experts, infected by the sensationalism of a looming pandemic, spun their doomsday scenarios to the media, drowning out more reasoned voices from the scientific realm. Any support for the concept of herd immunity became a dangerous place for both the experts, and more importantly, for politicians. They opted for Safetyism as the best route to avoid career damaging cries of “blood on your hands” from the media. Then, looking for kudos as they slid into the role of saviours, championed the cause of finding a vaccine to make the whole horror show go away. In pursuit of a fawning, hero-worshipping public, government oversight was waived to push an untested vaccine upon them, with the now unfolding tragedy a result.
Cowardice again, will preempt any official acknowledgement or atonement for bad decisions and governance.
At one time the opposition opposed and different points of view were voiced in parliament but there is little difference now between the political parties and no politician wants to take a controversial stance which could be exploited by the press,causing aggro. Too fatiguing!
As a result, we have lost the benefits of being a democracy. Freedom of speech is curtailed and decisions are taken through the strength and publicity given to all sorts of pressure groups( which only have minority followings.
It is a sorry state of affairs and we are lucky to have Unherd where different viewpoints can be aired. Unfortunately they don’t reach the mainstream media.
Cowardice, above all, is what made this unfolding tragedy possible. Some medical experts, infected by the sensationalism of a looming pandemic, spun their doomsday scenarios to the media, drowning out more reasoned voices from the scientific realm. Any support for the concept of herd immunity became a dangerous place for both the experts, and more importantly, for politicians. They opted for Safetyism as the best route to avoid career damaging cries of “blood on your hands” from the media. Then, looking for kudos as they slid into the role of saviours, championed the cause of finding a vaccine to make the whole horror show go away. In pursuit of a fawning, hero-worshipping public, government oversight was waived to push an untested vaccine upon them, with the now unfolding tragedy a result.
Cowardice again, will preempt any official acknowledgement or atonement for bad decisions and governance.
Albireo Double
1 year ago
I was supportive at the start of the first lockdown and the first vaccines. But I think that everything that happened after that was both wrong, and unforgivable.
The problem was that our political class along with others in the West did not dare to consider changing course. A “sunk cost – bet the farm” mentality took over and cowardice prevented any questioning of it. That is the “wrong” part.
Meanwhile governments harnessed every resource at their disposal (along with some that should not have been at their disposal) to terrorise the populations into belief, while they bankrupted whole countries as their “easier softer route” rather than being honest and rigorously questioning their advisors, the evidence, and their own actions. That is the “unforgivable” part.
It really is unforgivable, and authorities should remain unforgiven until they apologise fulsomely, wholly and personally, to their populations for the weakness, dishonesty and cowardice that they have shown, and the countless thousands or millions of deaths they have deliberately caused..
Last edited 1 year ago by Albireo Double
Elliott Bjorn
1 year ago
Hahahaa – these guys are beginning ‘THE GREAT BACKPEDALING’ they were so involved in the agenda which to any sane person was obviously 100% deceit, lies, corruption, betrayal – but now the evidence is overwhelming and so they begin the great Non-Mia Culpa. The great excuse that they pushed this horror because they thought it the right thing; they were told it was the right thing, the Nuremberg excuse……
The – ‘Yes, we have destroyed the global economy and education and health, and freedom, and education, and mental health, and pensions, and will cause Famines which will kill hundreds of millions with the economic Armageddon they created, and made the old die alone with strangers in space suits ignoring them’ – ‘But we meant well’, they will say. ‘They told us to do this‘ they will say…..
”a disproportionate number of those excess deaths were occurring in young people. This was the opposite of what you would expect in the receding phase of a pandemic —”
I knew the truth, I 100% expected this. I refused the Vax, refused the mask although it took great nerve and effort – I did it to make a statement – as I do with words here.
You people injected alien Genetic Material into yourself with NO trials. Well, some short ones which showed the vax was much more harmful than the covid – but hushed that bit up. But NO Long Trials! None! The vax (this is widely said – dr Malone et al) – the mRNA vax was developed as part of a Bio-Weapon system, and you put it in you!
The Nuremberg Trials made ‘Informed Consent’ a Human Right. NO ONE WAS ‘INFORMED’ on risks – this is a violation of Human Rights. Many were coerced – ALL were Lied to.
”Under the Nuremberg Code, responsibility for violations of informed consent rests upon individual doctors, government officials – and their aiders and abettors – each of who can be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. ‘‘
The guilty must get Justice as must the innocent harmed.
I must congratulate you on your persistent and vociferous opposition to this simply appalling scandal.
Under many ‘persona’, you have relentlessly exposed this nonsense from Day 1 (if not before!). Bravo!
A bit more forceful than I’d say but ultimately I don’t disagree.
I said at the start of this that there would be huge costs both measurable (resource scarcity, inflation, debt from furlough and bailouts etc) and non measurable (education, mental health and civil liberties etc). Nobody in government would cost it and barely anyone in the media would question them about it.
We’re now paying the piper and the media are attempting to gas light the sceptics by claiming no one ever thought any of this would happen.
It’s worth pointing out that if one looks at the original Pfizer and Moderna trials of their vaccines, there were in fact slightly more deaths in the vaccinated arm than the control arm! Unfortunately, the end-point for both trials was not hospitalization and death but symptomatic covid (at any level of severity including very very mild cases).
I’ve seen this stated on several occasions and maybe it’s just cognitive dissonance on my part, but how exactly does this happen without some major investigation by the regulatory bodies?
Granted, maybe those deaths were the result of a statistical anomaly with trialists being hit by buses but surely some major oversight would have been triggered?
Well unfortunately the regulators are under control of the regulated given that the regulators are paid by the regulators (at least in the case of the FDA but I believe the same is true in the UK) and there is a revolving door between regulators and regulated. On top of that, the people in power had too much invested in the vaccines, especially in the US (think Fauci and Collins) and were so excited by the vaccines at first that they simply could stand back and look objectively at what was really happening. Hard to go back on “safe and effective” when safety had never been demonstrated but more and more serious adverse events were being reported, and the efficacy of the vaccines and boosters were falling very rapidly and in short order.
Indeed – I was being a little rhetorical with that but some part of me just really finds this hard to believe.
However, something that has irritated me a lot during this two year period is how close this is to the 737 Air Max, which highlighted how little separation there was between the manufacturers, airlines and regulators. This has been memory holed quite quickly, but if we’re prepared to have such poor regulation of aviation, why exactly would expect pharmaceuticals to be any different?
Indeed – I was being a little rhetorical with that but some part of me just really finds this hard to believe.
However, something that has irritated me a lot during this two year period is how close this is to the 737 Air Max, which highlighted how little separation there was between the manufacturers, airlines and regulators. This has been memory holed quite quickly, but if we’re prepared to have such poor regulation of aviation, why exactly would expect pharmaceuticals to be any different?
Well unfortunately the regulators are under control of the regulated given that the regulators are paid by the regulators (at least in the case of the FDA but I believe the same is true in the UK) and there is a revolving door between regulators and regulated. On top of that, the people in power had too much invested in the vaccines, especially in the US (think Fauci and Collins) and were so excited by the vaccines at first that they simply could stand back and look objectively at what was really happening. Hard to go back on “safe and effective” when safety had never been demonstrated but more and more serious adverse events were being reported, and the efficacy of the vaccines and boosters were falling very rapidly and in short order.
I’ve seen this stated on several occasions and maybe it’s just cognitive dissonance on my part, but how exactly does this happen without some major investigation by the regulatory bodies?
Granted, maybe those deaths were the result of a statistical anomaly with trialists being hit by buses but surely some major oversight would have been triggered?
And just to rub salt into the wounds the Government have requested Moderna to build a factory here and supply 210 million vaccines. Then suddenly out of the blue they have decided not to give the vaccines to young people. I wonder what changed their minds? Andrew Bridgen perhaps?
You’re possibly too far gone to hear this, but you sound mental (caps, bold, italics). For your own health, spend less time on your Telegram groups reading about how the WEF has a secret plan to kill us all, and more time outside.
I must congratulate you on your persistent and vociferous opposition to this simply appalling scandal.
Under many ‘persona’, you have relentlessly exposed this nonsense from Day 1 (if not before!). Bravo!
A bit more forceful than I’d say but ultimately I don’t disagree.
I said at the start of this that there would be huge costs both measurable (resource scarcity, inflation, debt from furlough and bailouts etc) and non measurable (education, mental health and civil liberties etc). Nobody in government would cost it and barely anyone in the media would question them about it.
We’re now paying the piper and the media are attempting to gas light the sceptics by claiming no one ever thought any of this would happen.
It’s worth pointing out that if one looks at the original Pfizer and Moderna trials of their vaccines, there were in fact slightly more deaths in the vaccinated arm than the control arm! Unfortunately, the end-point for both trials was not hospitalization and death but symptomatic covid (at any level of severity including very very mild cases).
And just to rub salt into the wounds the Government have requested Moderna to build a factory here and supply 210 million vaccines. Then suddenly out of the blue they have decided not to give the vaccines to young people. I wonder what changed their minds? Andrew Bridgen perhaps?
You’re possibly too far gone to hear this, but you sound mental (caps, bold, italics). For your own health, spend less time on your Telegram groups reading about how the WEF has a secret plan to kill us all, and more time outside.
Elliott Bjorn
1 year ago
Hahahaa – these guys are beginning ‘THE GREAT BACKPEDALING’ they were so involved in the agenda which to any sane person was obviously 100% deceit, lies, corruption, betrayal – but now the evidence is overwhelming and so they begin the great Non-Mia Culpa. The great excuse that they pushed this horror because they thought it the right thing; they were told it was the right thing, the Nuremberg excuse……
The – ‘Yes, we have destroyed the global economy and education and health, and freedom, and education, and mental health, and pensions, and will cause Famines which will kill hundreds of millions with the economic Armageddon they created, and made the old die alone with strangers in space suits ignoring them’ – ‘But we meant well’, they will say. ‘They told us to do this‘ they will say…..
”a disproportionate number of those excess deaths were occurring in young people. This was the opposite of what you would expect in the receding phase of a pandemic —”
I knew the truth, I 100% expected this. I refused the Vax, refused the mask although it took great nerve and effort – I did it to make a statement – as I do with words here.
You people injected alien Genetic Material into yourself with NO trials. Well, some short ones which showed the vax was much more harmful than the covid – but hushed that bit up. But NO Long Trials! None! The vax (this is widely said – dr Malone et al) – the mRNA vax was developed as part of a Bio-Weapon system, and you put it in you!
The Nuremberg Trials made ‘Informed Consent’ a Human Right. NO ONE WAS ‘INFORMED’ on risks – this is a violation of Human Rights. Many were coerced – ALL were Lied to.
”Under the Nuremberg Code, responsibility for violations of informed consent rests upon individual doctors, government officials – and their aiders and abettors – each of who can be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. ‘‘
The guilty must get Justice as must the innocent harmed.
John Riordan
1 year ago
I usually love being right, but on the matter of me predicting in mid-2020 that the lockdown response to Covid19 would in time be revealed as the worst policy mistake in peacetime history, I can declare that there’s no fun in it at all now that we can see the human cost in the numbers. What’s so infuriating is that I didn’t come up with that idea myself, I read the views of lots of prominent experts in public health, virology, infectious diseases etc and decided what I believed and what I did not believe on that basis, like lots of other people.
My point is that this prediction wasn’t the preserve of some lunatic fringe of extreme attitudes, but was available to anyone in need of expert advice: the government’s own pre-existing pandemic plan was based upon rejectiing lockdown as an effective strategy, for God’s sake.
I just hope that this talk of Covid amnesties is shot down soon, because the truth is that alternatives to the chosen course of action were not merely ignored by decision makers but actively maligned, sidelined and condemned. Nobody involved has any right to expect to get away with this.
‘the government’s own pre-existing pandemic plan was based upon rejecting lockdown as an effective strategy, for God’s sake.’
This is the key point. We just took established plans and consensus and threw it on the fire. That is the core of it – everything followed from there. Why that happened is for conjecture, but perhaps I can make an addition to your good post?
What got me most was the extent of ‘me too.’ As soon as China started and Italy imported lockdowns then everyone else was bounced into it. It was the same with vaccines. Once one government started doing something on vaccines then the pressure was on everyone else to follow. So even if there were plans in place they just got swept away in a grisly mix of media (mainstream and social) hysteria, governments bouncing off each other and whole populations being battered into submission. Initial reports were that the UK was only going to vaccinate the vulnerable – that lasted exactly one 24 hour news channel cycle. I’m actually a bit surprised that social and mainstream media has been mentioned so little in comments on this article.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s not just politicians to blame. Scientists seemed to think that a self publication on Twitter was the gold standard of scientific endeavour and all started bouncing off each other too. There is (or was) a reason scientific debate isn’t played out on a tacky social media company’s service. Journos sat there lapping up the drama and indeed producing it. Several gave the impression they rather liked having the opportunity to control people. We the public sat there collecting furlough cheques as though they were all consequence free.
You are exactly right. None of the pre covid plans were fringe views. They were all there published and those plans were in place for a reason. The failure was unbelievable.
My daughter works for a city council. They had pandemic plans in early 2020. They had to be thrown out because all their careful planning assumed no lockdown.
My daughter works for a city council. They had pandemic plans in early 2020. They had to be thrown out because all their careful planning assumed no lockdown.
‘the government’s own pre-existing pandemic plan was based upon rejecting lockdown as an effective strategy, for God’s sake.’
This is the key point. We just took established plans and consensus and threw it on the fire. That is the core of it – everything followed from there. Why that happened is for conjecture, but perhaps I can make an addition to your good post?
What got me most was the extent of ‘me too.’ As soon as China started and Italy imported lockdowns then everyone else was bounced into it. It was the same with vaccines. Once one government started doing something on vaccines then the pressure was on everyone else to follow. So even if there were plans in place they just got swept away in a grisly mix of media (mainstream and social) hysteria, governments bouncing off each other and whole populations being battered into submission. Initial reports were that the UK was only going to vaccinate the vulnerable – that lasted exactly one 24 hour news channel cycle. I’m actually a bit surprised that social and mainstream media has been mentioned so little in comments on this article.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s not just politicians to blame. Scientists seemed to think that a self publication on Twitter was the gold standard of scientific endeavour and all started bouncing off each other too. There is (or was) a reason scientific debate isn’t played out on a tacky social media company’s service. Journos sat there lapping up the drama and indeed producing it. Several gave the impression they rather liked having the opportunity to control people. We the public sat there collecting furlough cheques as though they were all consequence free.
You are exactly right. None of the pre covid plans were fringe views. They were all there published and those plans were in place for a reason. The failure was unbelievable.
John Riordan
1 year ago
I usually love being right, but on the matter of me predicting in mid-2020 that the lockdown response to Covid19 would in time be revealed as the worst policy mistake in peacetime history, I can declare that there’s no fun in it at all now that we can see the human cost in the numbers. What’s so infuriating is that I didn’t come up with that idea myself, I read the views of lots of prominent experts in public health, virology, infectious diseases etc and decided what I believed and what I did not believe on that basis, like lots of other people.
My point is that this prediction wasn’t the preserve of some lunatic fringe of extreme attitudes, but was available to anyone in need of expert advice: the government’s own pre-existing pandemic plan was based upon rejectiing lockdown as an effective strategy, for God’s sake.
I just hope that this talk of Covid amnesties is shot down soon, because the truth is that alternatives to the chosen course of action were not merely ignored by decision makers but actively maligned, sidelined and condemned. Nobody involved has any right to expect to get away with this.
Last edited 1 year ago by John Riordan
ben arnulfssen
1 year ago
Note the first post in this column, which essentially posits that virtually any observed phenomenon or statistic is a previously unknown symptom or consequence of covid.
Ever heard of Occam’s razor?
There is SO MUCH posturing and intellectual contortions going on, so let’s try something much simpler; what established medical research indicated that submitting people to years of fear, stress, arbitrary confinement and lack of social interaction WOULD NOT cause serious long-term consequences in and of themselves?
What established medical research suggested that a total disruption of treatment for a range of well-known medical problems, from cancer to TB tabloid pressure, WOULD NOT cause severe long-term consequences?
What established medical research indicated that tried and tested protocols for drug testing could be discarded or ignored?
What experimental medical research when tested on humans WOULD NOT cause serious long-term consequences in and of themselves?
What experimental medical research that led to a total disruption of the natural immune system WOULD NOT cause severe long-term consequences?
What established medical research indicated that tried and tested protocols for drug testing could be discarded or ignored?
Not hard, is it?
What experimental medical research when tested on humans WOULD NOT cause serious long-term consequences in and of themselves?
What experimental medical research that led to a total disruption of the natural immune system WOULD NOT cause severe long-term consequences?
What established medical research indicated that tried and tested protocols for drug testing could be discarded or ignored?
Not hard, is it?
ben arnulfssen
1 year ago
Note the first post in this column, which essentially posits that virtually any observed phenomenon or statistic is a previously unknown symptom or consequence of covid.
Ever heard of Occam’s razor?
There is SO MUCH posturing and intellectual contortions going on, so let’s try something much simpler; what established medical research indicated that submitting people to years of fear, stress, arbitrary confinement and lack of social interaction WOULD NOT cause serious long-term consequences in and of themselves?
What established medical research suggested that a total disruption of treatment for a range of well-known medical problems, from cancer to TB tabloid pressure, WOULD NOT cause severe long-term consequences?
What established medical research indicated that tried and tested protocols for drug testing could be discarded or ignored?
Not hard, is it?
Tim Smith
1 year ago
The question of the impact of the vaccines could be answered by a study comparing the excess deaths among the vaccinated and unvaccinated (controlling for other variables such as age).
The fact that there seems no appetite to make this data available, or to undertake such a study, suggests to me that there is a strong suspicion among those in power that the vaccines are a contributory factor. But it’s an answer that would be too politically damaging, as well as damaging to trust in health professionals. So they will try to ensure it is never definitively answered.
And the cover up will end up doing more to erode trust than anything else.
Tim Smith
1 year ago
The question of the impact of the vaccines could be answered by a study comparing the excess deaths among the vaccinated and unvaccinated (controlling for other variables such as age).
The fact that there seems no appetite to make this data available, or to undertake such a study, suggests to me that there is a strong suspicion among those in power that the vaccines are a contributory factor. But it’s an answer that would be too politically damaging, as well as damaging to trust in health professionals. So they will try to ensure it is never definitively answered.
And the cover up will end up doing more to erode trust than anything else.
Ben M
1 year ago
Also the vaccine was meant to stay at the injection site -it didn’t. Unlike traditional vaccines there was no dosing factor – everyone got the same amount. It was not meant to cross the blood -brain barrier but the vaccine has a phospholipid coating and is attracted to organs which have a large concentration of fats eg brain and ovaries (hence rise in menstrual problems).
See Dr John Campbell, Dr Mobeen Syed, Dr Drew and a multiple of other front line doctors and cardiologists who have spoken out and been cancelled.
Ben M
1 year ago
Also the vaccine was meant to stay at the injection site -it didn’t. Unlike traditional vaccines there was no dosing factor – everyone got the same amount. It was not meant to cross the blood -brain barrier but the vaccine has a phospholipid coating and is attracted to organs which have a large concentration of fats eg brain and ovaries (hence rise in menstrual problems).
See Dr John Campbell, Dr Mobeen Syed, Dr Drew and a multiple of other front line doctors and cardiologists who have spoken out and been cancelled.
Ben M
1 year ago
By the way I was at the Truth be Told rally (vaccine bereaved and injured – that includes me)outside the BBC last Saturday. Not reported on the MSM anywhere.
Ben M
1 year ago
By the way I was at the Truth be Told rally (vaccine bereaved and injured – that includes me)outside the BBC last Saturday. Not reported on the MSM anywhere.
Come on if we’re going to include links, include them all. His poor science has been debunked. Now if folks are going to be lazy, see something on YouTube (the modern bloke down the pub says it’s true) and not think ‘well I’ll read round a bit more before I come to my own conclusion’ we are going to be played repeatedly.
Yeah I’ve just watched three videos and made my mind up. Obviously.
Heres a couple of medical journal type articles.
Quote:
The vaccine was associated with an excess risk of myocarditis (1 to 5 events per 100,000 persons). The risk of this potentially serious adverse event and of many other serious adverse events was substantially increased after SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Source: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2110475
Quote:
We found increased risks of myocarditis associated with the first dose of ChAdOx1 and BNT162b2 vaccines and the first and second doses of the mRNA-1273 vaccine over the 1–28 days postvaccination period, and after a SARS-CoV-2 positive test
The first quote you’ve included states that whilst vaccinations can cause myocarditis, Covid also causes it and other serious complications, at a substantially higher rate, though it does not specify the numbers.
This is an argument against your position.
With regards to why the UK and other countries are now limiting the vaccine. It’s expensive and eats up health care capacity vaccinating large numbers.
The first rollout attempted to see if the vaccine could eliminate Covid from the population, either through a permanent or a sufficiently long suppression of transmission. As it turned out, transmission was not suppressed for long enough for the elimination of Covid from the population. This being the case, vaccines are now being distributed on the same risk assessment criteria as all other vaccines, i.e. only to those who see the largest risk reduction under the cost benefit analysis.
Main Edition
US
FR
It is the vaccines. Every single thing we have been told about Covid, the mandates and the vaccines has been a lie. 9 year olds don’t have strokes and heart attacks – or at least they didn’t before the vaccines. We are still being told they are safe for pregnant women – they were never tested on pregnant women. The mainstream press are pushing all kinds of nonsense – gardening elevates your risk of heart attacks, etc. Here is a question for you – are they having excess deaths in Africa? In Haiti? In Bangladesh? The other problem is of course that even if there was a genuine reason for this – I simply won’t believe it. I, and millions like me, simply don’t believe the physicians, university professors and other institutional ‘leaders’ anymore. Or the mainstream media. They have no credibility – or power to persuade.
Good post.
The unnecessary deaths caused by the political lies will always be the most disastrous outcome remembered by individuals. But the catastrophic loss of of credibility of governing institutions throughout the West may yet turn out to be the most far-reaching consequence.
I wonder what the next dozen elections in the West will produce. It’s hard to guess, currently. Personally I hope it will be the start of an overthrow of the WEF-based order.
Good article but slightly nutty ranting comments
There are parallels with excess mortality from the post global financial crisis (GFC) data.
When the pandemic started there was clear data on the costs of societal disruption – increased excess mortality in mental health, cardiovascular and cancer deaths post GFC.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/economic-downturn-excess-cancer-deaths-atun/
Although it is not exactly the same as covid, the parallels are manifest:
Loss of employment, insurance, loss of social connectiveness, loss of health screening all equal increased risk of death.
Maybe we should learn from recent history rather than rant.
Would you like to address any of the issues raised by the people you criticise, or just call them names?
The prominence of the ad hominem always gives away the weakness of the position. It also reveals the author to be uninterested in a fair and civil argument – the strategy is that the target (and onlookers harbouring sceptical thoughts) will stay quiet for fear of humiliation and social rejection. These anti-rational techniques have been embraced to devastating effect in the mainstream and its disappointing to see them here on a site that exists largely to try to counteract these toxins. But once all debates have collapsed into name calling, where does that leave a society with real problems to solve? When we resort to schoolyard techniques to sort out our problems, don’t be surprised that our once-enlightened society begins to resemble “Lord of the Flies”.
No.
The problem has not been one of “toxic debate”. There has *been* no “debate” because of totalitarian neo-Marxist propaganda and censorship.
I ddn’t know the Conservative Government was neo-Markist. We now know thanks to Big Brother Watch that his Govenermnt was up to some pretty unscrupulous surveillance during the Pandemic under the 77th Brigade.Not everything can be blamed on left wing politics.
I ddn’t know the Conservative Government was neo-Markist. We now know thanks to Big Brother Watch that his Govenermnt was up to some pretty unscrupulous surveillance during the Pandemic under the 77th Brigade.Not everything can be blamed on left wing politics.
What we have here are a lot of very angry (myself included) people expressing their anger at the whole lying covid-management debacle, and their anger at realizing that the societal institutions can no longer be believed or trusted in. When you have been brought up to trust these institutions—with fairly good reason—and then find they no longer can be believed, it is a bitter pill to swallow. Perhaps contributing to excess deaths.
No.
The problem has not been one of “toxic debate”. There has *been* no “debate” because of totalitarian neo-Marxist propaganda and censorship.
What we have here are a lot of very angry (myself included) people expressing their anger at the whole lying covid-management debacle, and their anger at realizing that the societal institutions can no longer be believed or trusted in. When you have been brought up to trust these institutions—with fairly good reason—and then find they no longer can be believed, it is a bitter pill to swallow. Perhaps contributing to excess deaths.
The prominence of the ad hominem always gives away the weakness of the position. It also reveals the author to be uninterested in a fair and civil argument – the strategy is that the target (and onlookers harbouring sceptical thoughts) will stay quiet for fear of humiliation and social rejection. These anti-rational techniques have been embraced to devastating effect in the mainstream and its disappointing to see them here on a site that exists largely to try to counteract these toxins. But once all debates have collapsed into name calling, where does that leave a society with real problems to solve? When we resort to schoolyard techniques to sort out our problems, don’t be surprised that our once-enlightened society begins to resemble “Lord of the Flies”.
Excellent comment. Expect many downvotes.
A comment only those jabbed and boosted could make or applaud.
That’s because you are wrong and weak
A comment only those jabbed and boosted could make or applaud.
That’s because you are wrong and weak
I think your comparison has some validity in the US. But very little in the UK.
It’s a fair statement, however, if we were asking the hard questions right now people wouldn’t have to “rant” as you suggest. This requires more than ranting at this stage, it requires shouting at the top of your lungs to have an independent investigative body struck that digs in, asks the hard questions, leaves no stone unturned and and does the proper data analysis. This will never happen – all manner of perverse incentives are driving our institutions to the complete opposite side of real science now. We are so far beyond a rant now.
None of this answers the question, why so many deaths in the young? Obesity? 20 pounds (even 50 pounds) overweight in the young would not be significant. Social isolation? They were not behaving like curtain twitching pensioners and carried on seeing their mates. Screening? What healthy 20 and thirty somethings spend time getting health screens?
And the 9 year olds having strokes?
Two obvious problems with drawing this parallel: the excess deaths we are currently experiencing are *much* higher than those following the GFC. And a large proportion of the deaths are sudden cardiovascular issues, not problems arising from the delayed treatment of treatable cancers.
I would also take issue with your description of ‘ranty’ comments: people have been raising concerns about excess deaths for many, many months but have been persistently censored, down-played or ignored – and so have had to shout.
One can only assume Mr Dale is an investor in Big Pharma or directly or indirectly a paid beneficiary of their ‘largesse’.
Yes indeed, the Lockdowns were not only harmful to physical health but the dire economic consequences are playing out now. We all know that one of the biggest factors in higher death rates is poverty which the lockdowns have caused in abundance. Professors and doctors who warned about the harmful consequences of lockdowns in the Great Barrington Declaration were suppressed and ridiculed. See the Twitter files.
Such a naive comment from someone sounding intelligent. This is your issue, you can’t see common sense! If it’s that obvious how can it be ignored. It’s people like you stopping us getting to the crux of the issue.
Would you like to address any of the issues raised by the people you criticise, or just call them names?
Excellent comment. Expect many downvotes.
I think your comparison has some validity in the US. But very little in the UK.
It’s a fair statement, however, if we were asking the hard questions right now people wouldn’t have to “rant” as you suggest. This requires more than ranting at this stage, it requires shouting at the top of your lungs to have an independent investigative body struck that digs in, asks the hard questions, leaves no stone unturned and and does the proper data analysis. This will never happen – all manner of perverse incentives are driving our institutions to the complete opposite side of real science now. We are so far beyond a rant now.
None of this answers the question, why so many deaths in the young? Obesity? 20 pounds (even 50 pounds) overweight in the young would not be significant. Social isolation? They were not behaving like curtain twitching pensioners and carried on seeing their mates. Screening? What healthy 20 and thirty somethings spend time getting health screens?
And the 9 year olds having strokes?
Two obvious problems with drawing this parallel: the excess deaths we are currently experiencing are *much* higher than those following the GFC. And a large proportion of the deaths are sudden cardiovascular issues, not problems arising from the delayed treatment of treatable cancers.
I would also take issue with your description of ‘ranty’ comments: people have been raising concerns about excess deaths for many, many months but have been persistently censored, down-played or ignored – and so have had to shout.
One can only assume Mr Dale is an investor in Big Pharma or directly or indirectly a paid beneficiary of their ‘largesse’.
Yes indeed, the Lockdowns were not only harmful to physical health but the dire economic consequences are playing out now. We all know that one of the biggest factors in higher death rates is poverty which the lockdowns have caused in abundance. Professors and doctors who warned about the harmful consequences of lockdowns in the Great Barrington Declaration were suppressed and ridiculed. See the Twitter files.
Such a naive comment from someone sounding intelligent. This is your issue, you can’t see common sense! If it’s that obvious how can it be ignored. It’s people like you stopping us getting to the crux of the issue.
Given that the article gives several plausible candidates for excess mortality what makes you so sure that it’s solely the vaccines?
My feeling is that for many who vehemently opposed the lockdowns they want it to be the vaccines because that would give them a weapon with which to punish the those inflicted the Covid restrictions on them.
I can understand this. Personally I feel like I was robbed of two years of my life, time we will not get back, by the lockdowns but this doesn’t mean we should throw reason out the window and adopt a kind of monomania with regards to the vaccines.
We know the vaccines can cause myocarditis but we also haven’t seen an associated increase in death rates from those diagnosed with vaccine induced heart problems, nor has a mechanism for how they would go on to cause death been identified. Given that studies find much higher rates of myocarditis in Covid patients, if there was an increased death rate due long term damage to the heart, how could it be distinguished that this was due to the vaccine and not Covid?
I still feel that the most likely explanation will be a combination of a wide number of factors: Lack of health care during the pandemic, later diagnosis, social isolation worsening health conditions or increasing deaths of despair, increased waiting lists due to backlogs in the health care system, potential immune naivety from certain viruses not been encountered for the last two years, rebounds in accidents from high risk behaviour which were suppressed by lockdown, the possibility that a disproportionate number of the very vulnerable were highly sheltered by the lockdown and now their mortality rates are returning to normal.
When faced with this Gordian knot of potential causes, the temptation might be to say, it’s all down to the vaccines, and cut it but expedient answers rarely are the correct ones.
“My feeling is that for many who vehemently opposed the lockdowns they want it to be the vaccines because that would give them a weapon with which to punish the those inflicted the Covid restrictions on them.”
Surely such people would blame the lockdowns, if that’s what they opposed? I can speak as one myself: I opposed the lockdowns on the grounds of their potential human cost, and it looks as if I was right. Why would I need to blame the vaccines, even if I also believe that the vaccines may well have had serious side-effects outweighing their benefits for certain groups?
Whatever combination of vaccines, lockdowns, or any of the other interventions or their economic consequences it might be, it’s clear that political and other authorities across the world and in the UK threw a generation of young people and children under the bus in a desperate, blind moral panic to protect, or be seen to be protecting, the elderly and the “vulnerable”.
Why don’t they try and find the humility and courage to try and learn lessons from this catastrophe, instead of burying their heads in the sand or trying to find someone else to blame? Truth and reconciliation is desperately needed.
Well said. But they will not. They cannot for fear of criminal sanction . Everyone in authority is complicit in the NHS First catastrophe. Everyone. But our media/BBC – to its eternal shame a guilty lead propagandist party in inducing public hysteria – will protect themselves, all the craven political parties and the authoritarian health Industrial complex with censorship and lies. And our supposed protector – the law – remain silent and unused. Human rights?? Yeh right. Magna Carta did ut better. It is like living under communism. They speak one false truth after another. Covid. Net Zero. Climate Emergency. Equality mania. We know it is a State ideology and riddled with lies. But we cannot remove the unelected technocracy which holds the levers of real power. So are are mute frustrated disempowered. And they get away with it.
Because the Blob doesn’t do humility and courage, or truth or reconciliation.
Well said. But they will not. They cannot for fear of criminal sanction . Everyone in authority is complicit in the NHS First catastrophe. Everyone. But our media/BBC – to its eternal shame a guilty lead propagandist party in inducing public hysteria – will protect themselves, all the craven political parties and the authoritarian health Industrial complex with censorship and lies. And our supposed protector – the law – remain silent and unused. Human rights?? Yeh right. Magna Carta did ut better. It is like living under communism. They speak one false truth after another. Covid. Net Zero. Climate Emergency. Equality mania. We know it is a State ideology and riddled with lies. But we cannot remove the unelected technocracy which holds the levers of real power. So are are mute frustrated disempowered. And they get away with it.
Because the Blob doesn’t do humility and courage, or truth or reconciliation.
Because it was always known on some level, even if the if governments failed to quantify it, that lockdown would cause harms. However, it could be argued that lockdown was to protect the most vulnerable therefore can be justified as an act of solidarity, whether you agree with that or not.
The vaccines, whilst they reduced the rates of deaths and serious illness failed in the end to prevent transmission, meaning that the mass vaccination of the under 50’s has no such justification. If it was to emerge that as well turning out to have been unnecessary, they also caused harm, this would be far more damaging for authorities. That’s why I think vaccines are the preferred target.
I am far more outraged about the pointless loss of my freedom – and I had it pretty easy – than a vaccination programme which actually was not coerced in the UK.
If you wanted to keep your job as the wage-earners in thousands of family had to do, you were coerced into having a vax.
Andrew this is inaccurate. There were many way in which the uptake was enforced. I could not travel to help my elderly father who was unwell and in need of urgent care as he lives – now lived – in another country if I did not take it. I have thus been coerced. Many would have lost their jobs.
As a person over 70 I had 2 emails 3texts and 2 phone calls trying to get me to be vaccinated. As a former biology teacher/lecturer I was aware that having contracted Covid (very mildly) before the vax was released I would have natural immunity. I was thrown out of my choir, my discussion group and slurred as an “anti-vaxxer” by many. Had I been less secure in my knowledge of immunology (and less bolshie) I would have submitted. 150,000 health care workers (mostly working class women)were sacked for refusing the vaccine (probably most had already got natural immunity from infection) and it was only when highly paid consultants in the NHS refused that the mandate was removed. One reason for the bed-blocking in hospitals at the moment……..
All this is coercion-not as bad as the USA (most congressmen have shares in Big Pharma) but coercion nonetheless.
I would never have submitted. Two reasons spring to mind:
A ‘safe and effective’ vaccine that the manufacturers insisted on being held unaccountable for.
No long-term effects of multiple mRNA jabs are known. Nor will be for some years yet. I thought I’d be fit enough to survive covid (true as it turned out) but didn’t think embracing an unknown was in my own interest.
I suppose a third (rather more latterly) would be the unfathomable drive to inject all those over 6 months of age, some of whom were at almost zero risk from covid.
“unfathomable drive”? As per the best advice in the history of journalism – follow the money. There’s no money in natural immunity.
“unfathomable drive”? As per the best advice in the history of journalism – follow the money. There’s no money in natural immunity.
All health workers are equal. It’s just that the consultants are much more equal than others. What did those consultants know that made them reluctant to get jabbed?
I would never have submitted. Two reasons spring to mind:
A ‘safe and effective’ vaccine that the manufacturers insisted on being held unaccountable for.
No long-term effects of multiple mRNA jabs are known. Nor will be for some years yet. I thought I’d be fit enough to survive covid (true as it turned out) but didn’t think embracing an unknown was in my own interest.
I suppose a third (rather more latterly) would be the unfathomable drive to inject all those over 6 months of age, some of whom were at almost zero risk from covid.
All health workers are equal. It’s just that the consultants are much more equal than others. What did those consultants know that made them reluctant to get jabbed?
There was coercion. If you wanted to preserve your freedom to travel, for example, you had to give into the coercion to get jabbed and show the certificate on demand.
I agree about the pointless loss of freedom. But as for: “… vaccination programme which actually was not coerced in the UK”. I did not get the vaccine and was not actually coerced in the sense of being forced to march to a vaccination centre. But I was certainly conscious of continual pressure from all sides. At the top, it was the repulsive Boris urging us to get jabbed. And the late Queen describing vaccine refusers as selfish. And the BBC ‘s ceaseless propaganda. At local level, it was the near horror from family and friends that I was unjabbed.
If you wanted to keep your job as the wage-earners in thousands of family had to do, you were coerced into having a vax.
Andrew this is inaccurate. There were many way in which the uptake was enforced. I could not travel to help my elderly father who was unwell and in need of urgent care as he lives – now lived – in another country if I did not take it. I have thus been coerced. Many would have lost their jobs.
As a person over 70 I had 2 emails 3texts and 2 phone calls trying to get me to be vaccinated. As a former biology teacher/lecturer I was aware that having contracted Covid (very mildly) before the vax was released I would have natural immunity. I was thrown out of my choir, my discussion group and slurred as an “anti-vaxxer” by many. Had I been less secure in my knowledge of immunology (and less bolshie) I would have submitted. 150,000 health care workers (mostly working class women)were sacked for refusing the vaccine (probably most had already got natural immunity from infection) and it was only when highly paid consultants in the NHS refused that the mandate was removed. One reason for the bed-blocking in hospitals at the moment……..
All this is coercion-not as bad as the USA (most congressmen have shares in Big Pharma) but coercion nonetheless.
There was coercion. If you wanted to preserve your freedom to travel, for example, you had to give into the coercion to get jabbed and show the certificate on demand.
I agree about the pointless loss of freedom. But as for: “… vaccination programme which actually was not coerced in the UK”. I did not get the vaccine and was not actually coerced in the sense of being forced to march to a vaccination centre. But I was certainly conscious of continual pressure from all sides. At the top, it was the repulsive Boris urging us to get jabbed. And the late Queen describing vaccine refusers as selfish. And the BBC ‘s ceaseless propaganda. At local level, it was the near horror from family and friends that I was unjabbed.
“The vaccines, whilst they reduced the rates of deaths and serious illness”
The evidence says otherwise, but don’t let that trouble you.
Since they managed to kick all those elderly patients out of hospital (untested) and back to their care homes, the argument for protecting the most vulnerable looks rather weak. It would have been kinder to shoot the ‘bed blockers’.
Add to that all the weak and vulnerable elderly who were locked up to die alone and unvisited.
I am far more outraged about the pointless loss of my freedom – and I had it pretty easy – than a vaccination programme which actually was not coerced in the UK.
“The vaccines, whilst they reduced the rates of deaths and serious illness”
The evidence says otherwise, but don’t let that trouble you.
Since they managed to kick all those elderly patients out of hospital (untested) and back to their care homes, the argument for protecting the most vulnerable looks rather weak. It would have been kinder to shoot the ‘bed blockers’.
Add to that all the weak and vulnerable elderly who were locked up to die alone and unvisited.
Speak for me, too. Sums up my position as well.
Aside from the creeping totalitarianism, I’ve not said much of anything regards to the vaccines.
I opposed both the lockdowns and the vaccines. Even if the vaccines were perfect the lockdowns were completely overdone especially for children. They achieved nothing in the end and people who tried to say so were suppressed on social media and in the press. For 2 years we were told that no sacrifice was too high if we could save just one 83 year old life. The drumbeat of alarm was beaten relentlessly. But suddenly there is a glaring lack of interest in excess deaths – including the very young. The media doesn’t talk about it at all. When young people literally stroke out live on TV – the response is a shrug. “Hey $@&$ happens – chill out.”
I remember the totally deranged comment from a guy interviewed on BBC radio in 2020. He declared that no price was too high to save one life from COVID… “a trillion pounds….” Which is about seven years expenditure on the whole of the NHS.
Which reminds me of the often repeated comment that the NHS is the nearest thing to a national religion in the UK. In our local Waterstones a few days ago, there was the history of 70 years of the NHS. It was in the religious books section between the Synod of 1559 and C S Lewis.
I remember the totally deranged comment from a guy interviewed on BBC radio in 2020. He declared that no price was too high to save one life from COVID… “a trillion pounds….” Which is about seven years expenditure on the whole of the NHS.
Which reminds me of the often repeated comment that the NHS is the nearest thing to a national religion in the UK. In our local Waterstones a few days ago, there was the history of 70 years of the NHS. It was in the religious books section between the Synod of 1559 and C S Lewis.
Too many people in my eyes aren’t able to do as you say unfortunately, they’re far too tribal. They didn’t like lockdowns (which I didn’t) therefore everything that was done in regards to Covid must have been wrong. We see the same in politics, where they believe everything one side says is right and the opposition always wrong when most of us know that’s nonsense
Everything that was done in regards to Covid *was* wrong.
But some people are just too cowardly to form an evidence-based opinion. They’d rather believe the garbage fed to them by the BBC and corrupt politicians.
Everything that was done in regards to Covid *was* wrong.
But some people are just too cowardly to form an evidence-based opinion. They’d rather believe the garbage fed to them by the BBC and corrupt politicians.
Whatever combination of vaccines, lockdowns, or any of the other interventions or their economic consequences it might be, it’s clear that political and other authorities across the world and in the UK threw a generation of young people and children under the bus in a desperate, blind moral panic to protect, or be seen to be protecting, the elderly and the “vulnerable”.
Why don’t they try and find the humility and courage to try and learn lessons from this catastrophe, instead of burying their heads in the sand or trying to find someone else to blame? Truth and reconciliation is desperately needed.
Because it was always known on some level, even if the if governments failed to quantify it, that lockdown would cause harms. However, it could be argued that lockdown was to protect the most vulnerable therefore can be justified as an act of solidarity, whether you agree with that or not.
The vaccines, whilst they reduced the rates of deaths and serious illness failed in the end to prevent transmission, meaning that the mass vaccination of the under 50’s has no such justification. If it was to emerge that as well turning out to have been unnecessary, they also caused harm, this would be far more damaging for authorities. That’s why I think vaccines are the preferred target.
Speak for me, too. Sums up my position as well.
Aside from the creeping totalitarianism, I’ve not said much of anything regards to the vaccines.
I opposed both the lockdowns and the vaccines. Even if the vaccines were perfect the lockdowns were completely overdone especially for children. They achieved nothing in the end and people who tried to say so were suppressed on social media and in the press. For 2 years we were told that no sacrifice was too high if we could save just one 83 year old life. The drumbeat of alarm was beaten relentlessly. But suddenly there is a glaring lack of interest in excess deaths – including the very young. The media doesn’t talk about it at all. When young people literally stroke out live on TV – the response is a shrug. “Hey $@&$ happens – chill out.”
Too many people in my eyes aren’t able to do as you say unfortunately, they’re far too tribal. They didn’t like lockdowns (which I didn’t) therefore everything that was done in regards to Covid must have been wrong. We see the same in politics, where they believe everything one side says is right and the opposition always wrong when most of us know that’s nonsense
Just to correct you somewhat. (a) In young men age 18-50 the frequency of myocarditis post-vaccination vastly surpasses that post-covid. (b) from a purely biological perspective, covid, in the vast majority of cases, is not a systemic disease but limited to the respiratory tract so the spike protein does not circulate in the blood; in the case of vaccination, the spike protein (synthesized within cells from the mRNA or DNA for the AZ vaccine) circulates throughout the body and is found in virtually every organ. That’s a completely different situation.
As for the causes of excess deaths one has to look at the age group and demographic where you don’t expect people to die of cardiovascular disease. i.e. very few people less than 50 are going to be on statins, for example, so Whitty’s argument/proposal is just idiotic (Not to mention that statins have absolutely no effect on mortality for those who haven’t yet experienced a cardiovascular event, except in very rare cases of inherited hyperlipidemias.
The virus has also been shown to cause myocarditis, so seeing as almost the entire population would have had at least one of the strains by now woukd that not also explain the rise rather than just the vaccines?
Yes indeed, but only in very rare cases does a covid infection result in myocarditis. That’s because the infection has to systemic and general it isn’t. For the vaccine, it is always given systemically.
Totally correct, but that doesn’t fit with the conspiracy.
Nope! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9025013/
Nope. Why no excess deaths in Africa and India where the vast majority of the population got Covid and herd immunity eventually kicked in?
Yes indeed, but only in very rare cases does a covid infection result in myocarditis. That’s because the infection has to systemic and general it isn’t. For the vaccine, it is always given systemically.
Totally correct, but that doesn’t fit with the conspiracy.
Nope! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9025013/
Nope. Why no excess deaths in Africa and India where the vast majority of the population got Covid and herd immunity eventually kicked in?
Your initial strong assertion isn’t supported by this article:
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-poses-higher-risk-for-myocarditis-than-vaccines#:~:text=Myocarditis%20is%20the%20inflammation%20of,keeps%20the%20heart%20pumping%20normally.
Yes but it’s supported by many papers in the literature including the recent studies out of Switzerland and thailand. As Vinay Prassad has pointed out, you cannot just put everybody in the same pot and compare 85 year olds to 18-29 yr olds! probably a good idea to understand the medical literature.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this study.
It compares the incidence of myocarditis in those who had Covid BEFORE receiving the ‘vaccine’ with those who contracted Covid AFTER the shot, reporting a higher incidence of myocarditis in the former.
Surely what is required is simply a comparison of the incidence of myocarditis in the UNVACCINATED with those who have received the ‘vaccine’, either before or after contracting Covid?
All along, I believed the forceful coercion, including the mandates, were a desperate bid to eliminate a most useful control group – the unvaccinated!
We have a control group – Africa!
We dont have a control group in Africa as coronovirus infections (non SARS) are quite common so there may well be a natural cross-over immunisation.
We dont have a control group in Africa as coronovirus infections (non SARS) are quite common so there may well be a natural cross-over immunisation.
We have a control group – Africa!
Yes but it’s supported by many papers in the literature including the recent studies out of Switzerland and thailand. As Vinay Prassad has pointed out, you cannot just put everybody in the same pot and compare 85 year olds to 18-29 yr olds! probably a good idea to understand the medical literature.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this study.
It compares the incidence of myocarditis in those who had Covid BEFORE receiving the ‘vaccine’ with those who contracted Covid AFTER the shot, reporting a higher incidence of myocarditis in the former.
Surely what is required is simply a comparison of the incidence of myocarditis in the UNVACCINATED with those who have received the ‘vaccine’, either before or after contracting Covid?
All along, I believed the forceful coercion, including the mandates, were a desperate bid to eliminate a most useful control group – the unvaccinated!
“Next slide, please”.
The virus has also been shown to cause myocarditis, so seeing as almost the entire population would have had at least one of the strains by now woukd that not also explain the rise rather than just the vaccines?
Your initial strong assertion isn’t supported by this article:
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-poses-higher-risk-for-myocarditis-than-vaccines#:~:text=Myocarditis%20is%20the%20inflammation%20of,keeps%20the%20heart%20pumping%20normally.
“Next slide, please”.
Obviously when faced with problems arising in complex systems, we grasp at simplistic solutions. The answer is unlikely to be simple – inconvenient as that may be for our need to understand. The problem the authors identify is a serious one – the vaccines have been prematurely ruled out as a cause of anything by our governments without anything near a sufficient level of study. And they are actively silencing and shaming anyone who wants to do those studies. The conspiracy theorizing around vaccines will only start to subside when the actual conspiracy to silence all criticism of the vaccines subsides.
You mean simplistic solutions like the contention that the entire global temperature is controlled by one variable – man made CO2? I can guarantee you that most people who believe fervently in vaccines – believe that simplistic story as well. I guess I am old fashioned and tend to believe in things that I have witnessed – like my child being vaccine injured – like the fact I don’t know anyone who has died from Covid who wasn’t old and sick – like the fact that I have had Covid three times despite being vaccinated. We have reached a certain intellectual nihilism where we literally don’t know who to believe anymore. I am as interested in hearing what a crackpot handing out flyers on a street corner has to say these days as I am in hearing what the head of the CDC is saying. They are both about equal in credibility – except one of them hasn’t already intentionally lied to the public to my knowledge.
Sometimes simple solutions are actually correct! We’ve known CO2 is a greenhouse gas for 150 years, (it’s why Venus is so much hotter than it ‘should’ be at its distance from the Sun), we know we are producing more and more of this gas, and we know world temperatures are rising. That doesn’t prove the case but makes a pretty strong ‘case to answer’. I’m rather mystified as to how anyone who has for example visited the Alps or any other mountain area with glaciers couldn’t be aware of the warning tendency. No one is saying that world climate is ‘controlled by one variable’, just that the one that has changed the most quickly happens to be man-made emissions of CO2.
None of that of course means that the world is going to end, humanity will become extinct or that current Net Zero policies are sensible (almost certainly not in my view). Bjorn Lomborg has a very balanced view
Clown. You’re seriously comparing the Earth’s atmosphere to Venus?
https://johnsullivan.substack.com/p/the-dummies-guide-to-uk-net-zero
Don’t be discouraged by the downvotes! The science is there, I was teaching about “global warming “ from 1968 onwards but the fat controllers wouldn’t listen and didn’t act soon enough. Always follow the money!
Sorry the Science isn’t there. There’s a lot more to it than CO2, not to mention that the effect of CO2 saturates rather quickly. Interestingly, a recent study published in one of the Nature Journals noted that the temperature in the alps was much much higher in the middle ages than it is now (based on tree line level, bison grazing, etc…).
Sorry the Science isn’t there. There’s a lot more to it than CO2, not to mention that the effect of CO2 saturates rather quickly. Interestingly, a recent study published in one of the Nature Journals noted that the temperature in the alps was much much higher in the middle ages than it is now (based on tree line level, bison grazing, etc…).
Clown. You’re seriously comparing the Earth’s atmosphere to Venus?
https://johnsullivan.substack.com/p/the-dummies-guide-to-uk-net-zero
Don’t be discouraged by the downvotes! The science is there, I was teaching about “global warming “ from 1968 onwards but the fat controllers wouldn’t listen and didn’t act soon enough. Always follow the money!
Sometimes simple solutions are actually correct! We’ve known CO2 is a greenhouse gas for 150 years, (it’s why Venus is so much hotter than it ‘should’ be at its distance from the Sun), we know we are producing more and more of this gas, and we know world temperatures are rising. That doesn’t prove the case but makes a pretty strong ‘case to answer’. I’m rather mystified as to how anyone who has for example visited the Alps or any other mountain area with glaciers couldn’t be aware of the warning tendency. No one is saying that world climate is ‘controlled by one variable’, just that the one that has changed the most quickly happens to be man-made emissions of CO2.
None of that of course means that the world is going to end, humanity will become extinct or that current Net Zero policies are sensible (almost certainly not in my view). Bjorn Lomborg has a very balanced view
You mean simplistic solutions like the contention that the entire global temperature is controlled by one variable – man made CO2? I can guarantee you that most people who believe fervently in vaccines – believe that simplistic story as well. I guess I am old fashioned and tend to believe in things that I have witnessed – like my child being vaccine injured – like the fact I don’t know anyone who has died from Covid who wasn’t old and sick – like the fact that I have had Covid three times despite being vaccinated. We have reached a certain intellectual nihilism where we literally don’t know who to believe anymore. I am as interested in hearing what a crackpot handing out flyers on a street corner has to say these days as I am in hearing what the head of the CDC is saying. They are both about equal in credibility – except one of them hasn’t already intentionally lied to the public to my knowledge.
The few studies I’ve seen seem to show that the vaccines increase the risk of myocarditis by an extra 10 people per million. By contrast catching Covid appears to show an increase of myocarditis by around 40 people per million.
Maybe you actually need to read more carefully. The best studies and data out of Israel, Thailand and Switzerland all indicate a rate of overt myocarditis in 18-29 yr old men of between 1 in 2000 to 1 in 10000, with a risk of sub-clinical myocarditis pegged at 1-2 orders of magnitude higher. You’ve got to read the literature a little more carefully and actually understand what you’re reading. You cannot lump 85 yr old women with 18-29 yr old men. That’s garbage science.
Maybe you actually need to read more carefully. The best studies and data out of Israel, Thailand and Switzerland all indicate a rate of overt myocarditis in 18-29 yr old men of between 1 in 2000 to 1 in 10000, with a risk of sub-clinical myocarditis pegged at 1-2 orders of magnitude higher. You’ve got to read the literature a little more carefully and actually understand what you’re reading. You cannot lump 85 yr old women with 18-29 yr old men. That’s garbage science.
Thanks for your measured comments Matthew, but those who ‘vehemently oppose lockdowns’ might be better placed to directly blame lockdowns!
I am personally far more outraged at having my liberty removed for no good reason – and I had it pretty easy – than a vaccination programme, though I tend to agree that was probably directed at far too great an age range (Denmark now doesn’t recommend vaccination below the age of 50).
Ostrich.
The most important point is to get your fact right. It is absolutely not the case that the rate of myocarditis following covid is greater than that following vaccination. You have to look at the appropriate age group and you cannot mix up 80 yr old ladies with 18-30 yr old young men. The risk of myocarditis in your men between the ages of 15-50 post-vaccination is real and very well established now (and varies anywhere from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 5000 depending on the study). The risk of sub-clinical myocarditis is 10-100 fold higher in young men. This was found both in the studies out of Switzerland and Thailand.
The second key point is not to throw out straw men arguments. Death in the less than 30s, other than by car/motorbike accidents, is just very very rare. For sure, young people can die from sudden arrythmias but this is super super rare.
“My feeling is that for many who vehemently opposed the lockdowns they want it to be the vaccines because that would give them a weapon with which to punish the those inflicted the Covid restrictions on them.”
Surely such people would blame the lockdowns, if that’s what they opposed? I can speak as one myself: I opposed the lockdowns on the grounds of their potential human cost, and it looks as if I was right. Why would I need to blame the vaccines, even if I also believe that the vaccines may well have had serious side-effects outweighing their benefits for certain groups?
Just to correct you somewhat. (a) In young men age 18-50 the frequency of myocarditis post-vaccination vastly surpasses that post-covid. (b) from a purely biological perspective, covid, in the vast majority of cases, is not a systemic disease but limited to the respiratory tract so the spike protein does not circulate in the blood; in the case of vaccination, the spike protein (synthesized within cells from the mRNA or DNA for the AZ vaccine) circulates throughout the body and is found in virtually every organ. That’s a completely different situation.
As for the causes of excess deaths one has to look at the age group and demographic where you don’t expect people to die of cardiovascular disease. i.e. very few people less than 50 are going to be on statins, for example, so Whitty’s argument/proposal is just idiotic (Not to mention that statins have absolutely no effect on mortality for those who haven’t yet experienced a cardiovascular event, except in very rare cases of inherited hyperlipidemias.
Obviously when faced with problems arising in complex systems, we grasp at simplistic solutions. The answer is unlikely to be simple – inconvenient as that may be for our need to understand. The problem the authors identify is a serious one – the vaccines have been prematurely ruled out as a cause of anything by our governments without anything near a sufficient level of study. And they are actively silencing and shaming anyone who wants to do those studies. The conspiracy theorizing around vaccines will only start to subside when the actual conspiracy to silence all criticism of the vaccines subsides.
The few studies I’ve seen seem to show that the vaccines increase the risk of myocarditis by an extra 10 people per million. By contrast catching Covid appears to show an increase of myocarditis by around 40 people per million.
Thanks for your measured comments Matthew, but those who ‘vehemently oppose lockdowns’ might be better placed to directly blame lockdowns!
I am personally far more outraged at having my liberty removed for no good reason – and I had it pretty easy – than a vaccination programme, though I tend to agree that was probably directed at far too great an age range (Denmark now doesn’t recommend vaccination below the age of 50).
Ostrich.
The most important point is to get your fact right. It is absolutely not the case that the rate of myocarditis following covid is greater than that following vaccination. You have to look at the appropriate age group and you cannot mix up 80 yr old ladies with 18-30 yr old young men. The risk of myocarditis in your men between the ages of 15-50 post-vaccination is real and very well established now (and varies anywhere from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 5000 depending on the study). The risk of sub-clinical myocarditis is 10-100 fold higher in young men. This was found both in the studies out of Switzerland and Thailand.
The second key point is not to throw out straw men arguments. Death in the less than 30s, other than by car/motorbike accidents, is just very very rare. For sure, young people can die from sudden arrythmias but this is super super rare.
Folks seem so certain it’s the vaccine yet there is no evidence. Maybe it’s just ingrained bias?
You’re right, there’s no evidence.
At least, not if you squeeze your eyes tight shut and stick your fingers in your ears.
Maybe you should read the article again
Maybe you should read the article again
You’re right, there’s no evidence.
At least, not if you squeeze your eyes tight shut and stick your fingers in your ears.
At 72 years of age not taking the COVID vax and not buying into the governments masks,social distancing,lock downs,forced inoculations and all the other BS they were peddling at the time was the wisest choice I eve made in my life.I’m in excellent health and feel as good as when I was 40.I have been to far to many funerals of people younger than me by decades who have dropped dead for no good reason and most of them were fully vaxed and boosted! I’ll never trust our government ever again for as long as I live because if you do so its at your own peril.
You see, I find this hard to believe personally. I’m a few decades younger than yourself and presumably know a lot more people of that age group than a retired man would through friends, work and coming from a large family, and yet the only person in that age group that I know who has died in the last few years did so because of a car crash. It seems rather convenient that you know lots of vaxxed young people who have died unexpectedly when it just so happens to prove the point you’re trying to make about the vaccines.
You see, I find this hard to believe personally. I’m a few decades younger than yourself and presumably know a lot more people of that age group than a retired man would through friends, work and coming from a large family, and yet the only person in that age group that I know who has died in the last few years did so because of a car crash. It seems rather convenient that you know lots of vaxxed young people who have died unexpectedly when it just so happens to prove the point you’re trying to make about the vaccines.
I’m not quite sure why you are so outraged about vaccinations but don’t even mention the imprisonment of the population in own own homes for months on end. I’m actually far more outraged about that, and it is very likely to have adverse medical effects.
Please stop this misinformation and baseless conspiracy theories! Follow the science!
Its a well known fact, that the “vaccines” give 100% (!!) IMMUNITY!
That is, it gives legal immunity to the producers, so no risk (for them) AT ALL!
A totally safe product!
The data on age adjusted mortality rates for never vaxed and at least one vax are available from the ONS. The main graph (which shows all-cause mortality among the never vaxed was higher than than the vaxed over 2021 and 2022) and a list of the and the ways that data can be misued by anti-vaxers are at https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1549170827354062849
The latter part of this article is an odd mix of links to papers and conspiracist websites, and would be better with those sites removed. Google “HART leaks” if you want a laugh, but otherwise ignore Fenton, Yeadon and the rest.
In Africa, we had very little vaccine and minimal lockdown. Where it was tried, it was shambolic. There has been no mention or discussion of excess deaths.
For Herd (funded by a Tory supporting millionaire) to survive it has to pander to Covid-Vaccine sceptic commentators who often make unsubstantiated assertions. If interested read this very carefully with an open mind: ‘Covid-19: Study provides further evidence that mRNA vaccines are safe in pregnancy’
https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o2013
Just read that article and it has to be the stupidest commentary ever on an article in the Lancet aimed at showing that the vaccine is safe in pregnancy.For heaven sake, even ibuprofen or a glass of wine isn’t safe in pregnancy and should be avoided. Moreover, since the vaccine currently fails to prevent infection or transmission, one might very well ask why subject oneself to double the risk: the risk from the vaccine and the risk if one catches covid.
The truth of the matter is that during pregnancy you want to avoid taking any type of medication if at all possible. Of course, that may not be possible, but one should always proceed with great caution, especially during the 1st trimester.
Just read that article and it has to be the stupidest commentary ever on an article in the Lancet aimed at showing that the vaccine is safe in pregnancy.For heaven sake, even ibuprofen or a glass of wine isn’t safe in pregnancy and should be avoided. Moreover, since the vaccine currently fails to prevent infection or transmission, one might very well ask why subject oneself to double the risk: the risk from the vaccine and the risk if one catches covid.
The truth of the matter is that during pregnancy you want to avoid taking any type of medication if at all possible. Of course, that may not be possible, but one should always proceed with great caution, especially during the 1st trimester.
Good post.
The unnecessary deaths caused by the political lies will always be the most disastrous outcome remembered by individuals. But the catastrophic loss of of credibility of governing institutions throughout the West may yet turn out to be the most far-reaching consequence.
I wonder what the next dozen elections in the West will produce. It’s hard to guess, currently. Personally I hope it will be the start of an overthrow of the WEF-based order.
Good article but slightly nutty ranting comments
There are parallels with excess mortality from the post global financial crisis (GFC) data.
When the pandemic started there was clear data on the costs of societal disruption – increased excess mortality in mental health, cardiovascular and cancer deaths post GFC.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/economic-downturn-excess-cancer-deaths-atun/
Although it is not exactly the same as covid, the parallels are manifest:
Loss of employment, insurance, loss of social connectiveness, loss of health screening all equal increased risk of death.
Maybe we should learn from recent history rather than rant.
Given that the article gives several plausible candidates for excess mortality what makes you so sure that it’s solely the vaccines?
My feeling is that for many who vehemently opposed the lockdowns they want it to be the vaccines because that would give them a weapon with which to punish the those inflicted the Covid restrictions on them.
I can understand this. Personally I feel like I was robbed of two years of my life, time we will not get back, by the lockdowns but this doesn’t mean we should throw reason out the window and adopt a kind of monomania with regards to the vaccines.
We know the vaccines can cause myocarditis but we also haven’t seen an associated increase in death rates from those diagnosed with vaccine induced heart problems, nor has a mechanism for how they would go on to cause death been identified. Given that studies find much higher rates of myocarditis in Covid patients, if there was an increased death rate due long term damage to the heart, how could it be distinguished that this was due to the vaccine and not Covid?
I still feel that the most likely explanation will be a combination of a wide number of factors: Lack of health care during the pandemic, later diagnosis, social isolation worsening health conditions or increasing deaths of despair, increased waiting lists due to backlogs in the health care system, potential immune naivety from certain viruses not been encountered for the last two years, rebounds in accidents from high risk behaviour which were suppressed by lockdown, the possibility that a disproportionate number of the very vulnerable were highly sheltered by the lockdown and now their mortality rates are returning to normal.
When faced with this Gordian knot of potential causes, the temptation might be to say, it’s all down to the vaccines, and cut it but expedient answers rarely are the correct ones.
Folks seem so certain it’s the vaccine yet there is no evidence. Maybe it’s just ingrained bias?
At 72 years of age not taking the COVID vax and not buying into the governments masks,social distancing,lock downs,forced inoculations and all the other BS they were peddling at the time was the wisest choice I eve made in my life.I’m in excellent health and feel as good as when I was 40.I have been to far to many funerals of people younger than me by decades who have dropped dead for no good reason and most of them were fully vaxed and boosted! I’ll never trust our government ever again for as long as I live because if you do so its at your own peril.
I’m not quite sure why you are so outraged about vaccinations but don’t even mention the imprisonment of the population in own own homes for months on end. I’m actually far more outraged about that, and it is very likely to have adverse medical effects.
Please stop this misinformation and baseless conspiracy theories! Follow the science!
Its a well known fact, that the “vaccines” give 100% (!!) IMMUNITY!
That is, it gives legal immunity to the producers, so no risk (for them) AT ALL!
A totally safe product!
The data on age adjusted mortality rates for never vaxed and at least one vax are available from the ONS. The main graph (which shows all-cause mortality among the never vaxed was higher than than the vaxed over 2021 and 2022) and a list of the and the ways that data can be misued by anti-vaxers are at https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1549170827354062849
The latter part of this article is an odd mix of links to papers and conspiracist websites, and would be better with those sites removed. Google “HART leaks” if you want a laugh, but otherwise ignore Fenton, Yeadon and the rest.
In Africa, we had very little vaccine and minimal lockdown. Where it was tried, it was shambolic. There has been no mention or discussion of excess deaths.
For Herd (funded by a Tory supporting millionaire) to survive it has to pander to Covid-Vaccine sceptic commentators who often make unsubstantiated assertions. If interested read this very carefully with an open mind: ‘Covid-19: Study provides further evidence that mRNA vaccines are safe in pregnancy’
https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o2013
It is the vaccines. Every single thing we have been told about Covid, the mandates and the vaccines has been a lie. 9 year olds don’t have strokes and heart attacks – or at least they didn’t before the vaccines. We are still being told they are safe for pregnant women – they were never tested on pregnant women. The mainstream press are pushing all kinds of nonsense – gardening elevates your risk of heart attacks, etc. Here is a question for you – are they having excess deaths in Africa? In Haiti? In Bangladesh? The other problem is of course that even if there was a genuine reason for this – I simply won’t believe it. I, and millions like me, simply don’t believe the physicians, university professors and other institutional ‘leaders’ anymore. Or the mainstream media. They have no credibility – or power to persuade.
I was supportive at the start of the first lockdown and the first vaccines. But I think that everything that happened after that was both wrong, and unforgivable.
The problem was that our political class along with others in the West did not dare to consider changing course. A “sunk cost – bet the farm” mentality took over and cowardice prevented any questioning of it. That is the “wrong” part.
Meanwhile governments harnessed every resource at their disposal (along with some that should not have been at their disposal) to terrorise the populations into belief, while they bankrupted whole countries as their “easier softer route” rather than being honest and rigorously questioning their advisors, the evidence, and their own actions. That is the “unforgivable” part.
It really is unforgivable, and authorities should remain unforgiven until they apologise fulsomely, wholly and personally, to their populations for the weakness, dishonesty and cowardice that they have shown, and the countless thousands or millions of deaths they have deliberately caused..
We’ll, that’s not going to happen. I agree with you though.
At one time the opposition opposed and different points of view were voiced in parliament but there is little difference now between the political parties and no politician wants to take a controversial stance which could be exploited by the press,causing aggro. Too fatiguing!
As a result, we have lost the benefits of being a democracy. Freedom of speech is curtailed and decisions are taken through the strength and publicity given to all sorts of pressure groups( which only have minority followings.
It is a sorry state of affairs and we are lucky to have Unherd where different viewpoints can be aired. Unfortunately they don’t reach the mainstream media.
Expecting a few brave people to speak out was our wish but that was rare. When did nearly all our leaders become so sensitive? Perhaps because we wouldn’t proclaim “Let them speak”. Too many of us allowed the press to attack. We accepted cancelling and mocking attacks. OTOH, our governments have become quite skilled at using PsyOp tools that we are ill trained to deal with. Our press needs to identify and call out the use of those tools so we might learn.
Expecting a few brave people to speak out was our wish but that was rare. When did nearly all our leaders become so sensitive? Perhaps because we wouldn’t proclaim “Let them speak”. Too many of us allowed the press to attack. We accepted cancelling and mocking attacks. OTOH, our governments have become quite skilled at using PsyOp tools that we are ill trained to deal with. Our press needs to identify and call out the use of those tools so we might learn.
Deliberately caused? Baffling, this seems to be the ranting of a drunk in the street.
I have not known one person who has died from Covid. What I have personally experienced in my community, three suicides, multiple overdoses, failed marriages, financial ruin, anxious and overwrought kids and teens, future potential decimated. I could go on and on. I feel fortunate that Covid took no one I know, but do I turn a blind eye to all the rest that was a direct consequence of our response and hence deliberate? And after all this, we still have no leads on where Covid came from? The person who doesn’t think something is seriously amiss here is not only drunk but willfully blind.
You truly believe the government murdered thousands of people? Ok.
The government went ahead with a course of action involving lies deception and propagandising of the population knowing perfectly well from its own advisors that lives would be lost as a result of their actions.
So yes – deliberately killing…
The government went ahead with a course of action involving lies deception and propagandising of the population knowing perfectly well from its own advisors that lives would be lost as a result of their actions.
So yes – deliberately killing…
You truly believe the government murdered thousands of people? Ok.
I have not known one person who has died from Covid. What I have personally experienced in my community, three suicides, multiple overdoses, failed marriages, financial ruin, anxious and overwrought kids and teens, future potential decimated. I could go on and on. I feel fortunate that Covid took no one I know, but do I turn a blind eye to all the rest that was a direct consequence of our response and hence deliberate? And after all this, we still have no leads on where Covid came from? The person who doesn’t think something is seriously amiss here is not only drunk but willfully blind.
Cowardice, above all, is what made this unfolding tragedy possible. Some medical experts, infected by the sensationalism of a looming pandemic, spun their doomsday scenarios to the media, drowning out more reasoned voices from the scientific realm. Any support for the concept of herd immunity became a dangerous place for both the experts, and more importantly, for politicians. They opted for Safetyism as the best route to avoid career damaging cries of “blood on your hands” from the media. Then, looking for kudos as they slid into the role of saviours, championed the cause of finding a vaccine to make the whole horror show go away. In pursuit of a fawning, hero-worshipping public, government oversight was waived to push an untested vaccine upon them, with the now unfolding tragedy a result.
Cowardice again, will preempt any official acknowledgement or atonement for bad decisions and governance.
We’ll, that’s not going to happen. I agree with you though.
At one time the opposition opposed and different points of view were voiced in parliament but there is little difference now between the political parties and no politician wants to take a controversial stance which could be exploited by the press,causing aggro. Too fatiguing!
As a result, we have lost the benefits of being a democracy. Freedom of speech is curtailed and decisions are taken through the strength and publicity given to all sorts of pressure groups( which only have minority followings.
It is a sorry state of affairs and we are lucky to have Unherd where different viewpoints can be aired. Unfortunately they don’t reach the mainstream media.
Deliberately caused? Baffling, this seems to be the ranting of a drunk in the street.
Cowardice, above all, is what made this unfolding tragedy possible. Some medical experts, infected by the sensationalism of a looming pandemic, spun their doomsday scenarios to the media, drowning out more reasoned voices from the scientific realm. Any support for the concept of herd immunity became a dangerous place for both the experts, and more importantly, for politicians. They opted for Safetyism as the best route to avoid career damaging cries of “blood on your hands” from the media. Then, looking for kudos as they slid into the role of saviours, championed the cause of finding a vaccine to make the whole horror show go away. In pursuit of a fawning, hero-worshipping public, government oversight was waived to push an untested vaccine upon them, with the now unfolding tragedy a result.
Cowardice again, will preempt any official acknowledgement or atonement for bad decisions and governance.
I was supportive at the start of the first lockdown and the first vaccines. But I think that everything that happened after that was both wrong, and unforgivable.
The problem was that our political class along with others in the West did not dare to consider changing course. A “sunk cost – bet the farm” mentality took over and cowardice prevented any questioning of it. That is the “wrong” part.
Meanwhile governments harnessed every resource at their disposal (along with some that should not have been at their disposal) to terrorise the populations into belief, while they bankrupted whole countries as their “easier softer route” rather than being honest and rigorously questioning their advisors, the evidence, and their own actions. That is the “unforgivable” part.
It really is unforgivable, and authorities should remain unforgiven until they apologise fulsomely, wholly and personally, to their populations for the weakness, dishonesty and cowardice that they have shown, and the countless thousands or millions of deaths they have deliberately caused..
Hahahaa – these guys are beginning ‘THE GREAT BACKPEDALING’ they were so involved in the agenda which to any sane person was obviously 100% deceit, lies, corruption, betrayal – but now the evidence is overwhelming and so they begin the great Non-Mia Culpa. The great excuse that they pushed this horror because they thought it the right thing; they were told it was the right thing, the Nuremberg excuse……
The – ‘Yes, we have destroyed the global economy and education and health, and freedom, and education, and mental health, and pensions, and will cause Famines which will kill hundreds of millions with the economic Armageddon they created, and made the old die alone with strangers in space suits ignoring them’ – ‘But we meant well’, they will say. ‘They told us to do this‘ they will say…..
”a disproportionate number of those excess deaths were occurring in young people. This was the opposite of what you would expect in the receding phase of a pandemic —”
I knew the truth, I 100% expected this. I refused the Vax, refused the mask although it took great nerve and effort – I did it to make a statement – as I do with words here.
You people injected alien Genetic Material into yourself with NO trials. Well, some short ones which showed the vax was much more harmful than the covid – but hushed that bit up. But NO Long Trials! None! The vax (this is widely said – dr Malone et al) – the mRNA vax was developed as part of a Bio-Weapon system, and you put it in you!
The Nuremberg Trials made ‘Informed Consent’ a Human Right. NO ONE WAS ‘INFORMED’ on risks – this is a violation of Human Rights. Many were coerced – ALL were Lied to.
”Under the Nuremberg Code, responsibility for violations of informed consent rests upon individual doctors, government officials – and their aiders and abettors – each of who can be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. ‘‘
The guilty must get Justice as must the innocent harmed.
I must congratulate you on your persistent and vociferous opposition to this simply appalling scandal.
Under many ‘persona’, you have relentlessly exposed this nonsense from Day 1 (if not before!). Bravo!
A bit more forceful than I’d say but ultimately I don’t disagree.
I said at the start of this that there would be huge costs both measurable (resource scarcity, inflation, debt from furlough and bailouts etc) and non measurable (education, mental health and civil liberties etc). Nobody in government would cost it and barely anyone in the media would question them about it.
We’re now paying the piper and the media are attempting to gas light the sceptics by claiming no one ever thought any of this would happen.
It’s worth pointing out that if one looks at the original Pfizer and Moderna trials of their vaccines, there were in fact slightly more deaths in the vaccinated arm than the control arm! Unfortunately, the end-point for both trials was not hospitalization and death but symptomatic covid (at any level of severity including very very mild cases).
I’ve seen this stated on several occasions and maybe it’s just cognitive dissonance on my part, but how exactly does this happen without some major investigation by the regulatory bodies?
Granted, maybe those deaths were the result of a statistical anomaly with trialists being hit by buses but surely some major oversight would have been triggered?
Surely.
Dream on.
Well unfortunately the regulators are under control of the regulated given that the regulators are paid by the regulators (at least in the case of the FDA but I believe the same is true in the UK) and there is a revolving door between regulators and regulated. On top of that, the people in power had too much invested in the vaccines, especially in the US (think Fauci and Collins) and were so excited by the vaccines at first that they simply could stand back and look objectively at what was really happening. Hard to go back on “safe and effective” when safety had never been demonstrated but more and more serious adverse events were being reported, and the efficacy of the vaccines and boosters were falling very rapidly and in short order.
Indeed – I was being a little rhetorical with that but some part of me just really finds this hard to believe.
However, something that has irritated me a lot during this two year period is how close this is to the 737 Air Max, which highlighted how little separation there was between the manufacturers, airlines and regulators. This has been memory holed quite quickly, but if we’re prepared to have such poor regulation of aviation, why exactly would expect pharmaceuticals to be any different?
Indeed – I was being a little rhetorical with that but some part of me just really finds this hard to believe.
However, something that has irritated me a lot during this two year period is how close this is to the 737 Air Max, which highlighted how little separation there was between the manufacturers, airlines and regulators. This has been memory holed quite quickly, but if we’re prepared to have such poor regulation of aviation, why exactly would expect pharmaceuticals to be any different?
Surely.
Dream on.
Well unfortunately the regulators are under control of the regulated given that the regulators are paid by the regulators (at least in the case of the FDA but I believe the same is true in the UK) and there is a revolving door between regulators and regulated. On top of that, the people in power had too much invested in the vaccines, especially in the US (think Fauci and Collins) and were so excited by the vaccines at first that they simply could stand back and look objectively at what was really happening. Hard to go back on “safe and effective” when safety had never been demonstrated but more and more serious adverse events were being reported, and the efficacy of the vaccines and boosters were falling very rapidly and in short order.
Weren’t both groups vaccinated in the end anyway,so no control group?
I’ve seen this stated on several occasions and maybe it’s just cognitive dissonance on my part, but how exactly does this happen without some major investigation by the regulatory bodies?
Granted, maybe those deaths were the result of a statistical anomaly with trialists being hit by buses but surely some major oversight would have been triggered?
Weren’t both groups vaccinated in the end anyway,so no control group?
And just to rub salt into the wounds the Government have requested Moderna to build a factory here and supply 210 million vaccines. Then suddenly out of the blue they have decided not to give the vaccines to young people. I wonder what changed their minds? Andrew Bridgen perhaps?
You’re possibly too far gone to hear this, but you sound mental (caps, bold, italics). For your own health, spend less time on your Telegram groups reading about how the WEF has a secret plan to kill us all, and more time outside.
I must congratulate you on your persistent and vociferous opposition to this simply appalling scandal.
Under many ‘persona’, you have relentlessly exposed this nonsense from Day 1 (if not before!). Bravo!
A bit more forceful than I’d say but ultimately I don’t disagree.
I said at the start of this that there would be huge costs both measurable (resource scarcity, inflation, debt from furlough and bailouts etc) and non measurable (education, mental health and civil liberties etc). Nobody in government would cost it and barely anyone in the media would question them about it.
We’re now paying the piper and the media are attempting to gas light the sceptics by claiming no one ever thought any of this would happen.
It’s worth pointing out that if one looks at the original Pfizer and Moderna trials of their vaccines, there were in fact slightly more deaths in the vaccinated arm than the control arm! Unfortunately, the end-point for both trials was not hospitalization and death but symptomatic covid (at any level of severity including very very mild cases).
And just to rub salt into the wounds the Government have requested Moderna to build a factory here and supply 210 million vaccines. Then suddenly out of the blue they have decided not to give the vaccines to young people. I wonder what changed their minds? Andrew Bridgen perhaps?
You’re possibly too far gone to hear this, but you sound mental (caps, bold, italics). For your own health, spend less time on your Telegram groups reading about how the WEF has a secret plan to kill us all, and more time outside.
Hahahaa – these guys are beginning ‘THE GREAT BACKPEDALING’ they were so involved in the agenda which to any sane person was obviously 100% deceit, lies, corruption, betrayal – but now the evidence is overwhelming and so they begin the great Non-Mia Culpa. The great excuse that they pushed this horror because they thought it the right thing; they were told it was the right thing, the Nuremberg excuse……
The – ‘Yes, we have destroyed the global economy and education and health, and freedom, and education, and mental health, and pensions, and will cause Famines which will kill hundreds of millions with the economic Armageddon they created, and made the old die alone with strangers in space suits ignoring them’ – ‘But we meant well’, they will say. ‘They told us to do this‘ they will say…..
”a disproportionate number of those excess deaths were occurring in young people. This was the opposite of what you would expect in the receding phase of a pandemic —”
I knew the truth, I 100% expected this. I refused the Vax, refused the mask although it took great nerve and effort – I did it to make a statement – as I do with words here.
You people injected alien Genetic Material into yourself with NO trials. Well, some short ones which showed the vax was much more harmful than the covid – but hushed that bit up. But NO Long Trials! None! The vax (this is widely said – dr Malone et al) – the mRNA vax was developed as part of a Bio-Weapon system, and you put it in you!
The Nuremberg Trials made ‘Informed Consent’ a Human Right. NO ONE WAS ‘INFORMED’ on risks – this is a violation of Human Rights. Many were coerced – ALL were Lied to.
”Under the Nuremberg Code, responsibility for violations of informed consent rests upon individual doctors, government officials – and their aiders and abettors – each of who can be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. ‘‘
The guilty must get Justice as must the innocent harmed.
I usually love being right, but on the matter of me predicting in mid-2020 that the lockdown response to Covid19 would in time be revealed as the worst policy mistake in peacetime history, I can declare that there’s no fun in it at all now that we can see the human cost in the numbers. What’s so infuriating is that I didn’t come up with that idea myself, I read the views of lots of prominent experts in public health, virology, infectious diseases etc and decided what I believed and what I did not believe on that basis, like lots of other people.
My point is that this prediction wasn’t the preserve of some lunatic fringe of extreme attitudes, but was available to anyone in need of expert advice: the government’s own pre-existing pandemic plan was based upon rejectiing lockdown as an effective strategy, for God’s sake.
I just hope that this talk of Covid amnesties is shot down soon, because the truth is that alternatives to the chosen course of action were not merely ignored by decision makers but actively maligned, sidelined and condemned. Nobody involved has any right to expect to get away with this.
The problem is “they” are still not ready for accept that the lockdown was a mistake
‘the government’s own pre-existing pandemic plan was based upon rejecting lockdown as an effective strategy, for God’s sake.’
This is the key point. We just took established plans and consensus and threw it on the fire. That is the core of it – everything followed from there. Why that happened is for conjecture, but perhaps I can make an addition to your good post?
What got me most was the extent of ‘me too.’ As soon as China started and Italy imported lockdowns then everyone else was bounced into it. It was the same with vaccines. Once one government started doing something on vaccines then the pressure was on everyone else to follow. So even if there were plans in place they just got swept away in a grisly mix of media (mainstream and social) hysteria, governments bouncing off each other and whole populations being battered into submission. Initial reports were that the UK was only going to vaccinate the vulnerable – that lasted exactly one 24 hour news channel cycle. I’m actually a bit surprised that social and mainstream media has been mentioned so little in comments on this article.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s not just politicians to blame. Scientists seemed to think that a self publication on Twitter was the gold standard of scientific endeavour and all started bouncing off each other too. There is (or was) a reason scientific debate isn’t played out on a tacky social media company’s service. Journos sat there lapping up the drama and indeed producing it. Several gave the impression they rather liked having the opportunity to control people. We the public sat there collecting furlough cheques as though they were all consequence free.
You are exactly right. None of the pre covid plans were fringe views. They were all there published and those plans were in place for a reason. The failure was unbelievable.
There *were* no sensible “plans” in place. Its a myth.
“Don’t lockdown” is not a plan.
https://johnsullivan.substack.com/p/pandemic-preparedness-in-the-uk
My daughter works for a city council. They had pandemic plans in early 2020. They had to be thrown out because all their careful planning assumed no lockdown.
“Careful planning” lol. Point me at this “plan” and I’ll comment.
In the meantime, read my link and say something *concrete* to add to the discussion, if you can.
“Careful planning” lol. Point me at this “plan” and I’ll comment.
In the meantime, read my link and say something *concrete* to add to the discussion, if you can.
Thanks for this link, John. A fascinating article that I wish I had seen two years ago!
Thank you. Much appreciated.
Thank you. Much appreciated.
My daughter works for a city council. They had pandemic plans in early 2020. They had to be thrown out because all their careful planning assumed no lockdown.
Thanks for this link, John. A fascinating article that I wish I had seen two years ago!
There *were* no sensible “plans” in place. Its a myth.
“Don’t lockdown” is not a plan.
https://johnsullivan.substack.com/p/pandemic-preparedness-in-the-uk
The problem is “they” are still not ready for accept that the lockdown was a mistake
‘the government’s own pre-existing pandemic plan was based upon rejecting lockdown as an effective strategy, for God’s sake.’
This is the key point. We just took established plans and consensus and threw it on the fire. That is the core of it – everything followed from there. Why that happened is for conjecture, but perhaps I can make an addition to your good post?
What got me most was the extent of ‘me too.’ As soon as China started and Italy imported lockdowns then everyone else was bounced into it. It was the same with vaccines. Once one government started doing something on vaccines then the pressure was on everyone else to follow. So even if there were plans in place they just got swept away in a grisly mix of media (mainstream and social) hysteria, governments bouncing off each other and whole populations being battered into submission. Initial reports were that the UK was only going to vaccinate the vulnerable – that lasted exactly one 24 hour news channel cycle. I’m actually a bit surprised that social and mainstream media has been mentioned so little in comments on this article.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s not just politicians to blame. Scientists seemed to think that a self publication on Twitter was the gold standard of scientific endeavour and all started bouncing off each other too. There is (or was) a reason scientific debate isn’t played out on a tacky social media company’s service. Journos sat there lapping up the drama and indeed producing it. Several gave the impression they rather liked having the opportunity to control people. We the public sat there collecting furlough cheques as though they were all consequence free.
You are exactly right. None of the pre covid plans were fringe views. They were all there published and those plans were in place for a reason. The failure was unbelievable.
I usually love being right, but on the matter of me predicting in mid-2020 that the lockdown response to Covid19 would in time be revealed as the worst policy mistake in peacetime history, I can declare that there’s no fun in it at all now that we can see the human cost in the numbers. What’s so infuriating is that I didn’t come up with that idea myself, I read the views of lots of prominent experts in public health, virology, infectious diseases etc and decided what I believed and what I did not believe on that basis, like lots of other people.
My point is that this prediction wasn’t the preserve of some lunatic fringe of extreme attitudes, but was available to anyone in need of expert advice: the government’s own pre-existing pandemic plan was based upon rejectiing lockdown as an effective strategy, for God’s sake.
I just hope that this talk of Covid amnesties is shot down soon, because the truth is that alternatives to the chosen course of action were not merely ignored by decision makers but actively maligned, sidelined and condemned. Nobody involved has any right to expect to get away with this.
Note the first post in this column, which essentially posits that virtually any observed phenomenon or statistic is a previously unknown symptom or consequence of covid.
Ever heard of Occam’s razor?
There is SO MUCH posturing and intellectual contortions going on, so let’s try something much simpler; what established medical research indicated that submitting people to years of fear, stress, arbitrary confinement and lack of social interaction WOULD NOT cause serious long-term consequences in and of themselves?
What established medical research suggested that a total disruption of treatment for a range of well-known medical problems, from cancer to TB tabloid pressure, WOULD NOT cause severe long-term consequences?
What established medical research indicated that tried and tested protocols for drug testing could be discarded or ignored?
Not hard, is it?
What experimental medical research when tested on humans WOULD NOT cause serious long-term consequences in and of themselves?
What experimental medical research that led to a total disruption of the natural immune system WOULD NOT cause severe long-term consequences?
What established medical research indicated that tried and tested protocols for drug testing could be discarded or ignored?
Not hard, is it?
What experimental medical research when tested on humans WOULD NOT cause serious long-term consequences in and of themselves?
What experimental medical research that led to a total disruption of the natural immune system WOULD NOT cause severe long-term consequences?
What established medical research indicated that tried and tested protocols for drug testing could be discarded or ignored?
Not hard, is it?
Note the first post in this column, which essentially posits that virtually any observed phenomenon or statistic is a previously unknown symptom or consequence of covid.
Ever heard of Occam’s razor?
There is SO MUCH posturing and intellectual contortions going on, so let’s try something much simpler; what established medical research indicated that submitting people to years of fear, stress, arbitrary confinement and lack of social interaction WOULD NOT cause serious long-term consequences in and of themselves?
What established medical research suggested that a total disruption of treatment for a range of well-known medical problems, from cancer to TB tabloid pressure, WOULD NOT cause severe long-term consequences?
What established medical research indicated that tried and tested protocols for drug testing could be discarded or ignored?
Not hard, is it?
The question of the impact of the vaccines could be answered by a study comparing the excess deaths among the vaccinated and unvaccinated (controlling for other variables such as age).
The fact that there seems no appetite to make this data available, or to undertake such a study, suggests to me that there is a strong suspicion among those in power that the vaccines are a contributory factor. But it’s an answer that would be too politically damaging, as well as damaging to trust in health professionals. So they will try to ensure it is never definitively answered.
And the cover up will end up doing more to erode trust than anything else.
The question of the impact of the vaccines could be answered by a study comparing the excess deaths among the vaccinated and unvaccinated (controlling for other variables such as age).
The fact that there seems no appetite to make this data available, or to undertake such a study, suggests to me that there is a strong suspicion among those in power that the vaccines are a contributory factor. But it’s an answer that would be too politically damaging, as well as damaging to trust in health professionals. So they will try to ensure it is never definitively answered.
And the cover up will end up doing more to erode trust than anything else.
Also the vaccine was meant to stay at the injection site -it didn’t. Unlike traditional vaccines there was no dosing factor – everyone got the same amount. It was not meant to cross the blood -brain barrier but the vaccine has a phospholipid coating and is attracted to organs which have a large concentration of fats eg brain and ovaries (hence rise in menstrual problems).
See Dr John Campbell, Dr Mobeen Syed, Dr Drew and a multiple of other front line doctors and cardiologists who have spoken out and been cancelled.
Also the vaccine was meant to stay at the injection site -it didn’t. Unlike traditional vaccines there was no dosing factor – everyone got the same amount. It was not meant to cross the blood -brain barrier but the vaccine has a phospholipid coating and is attracted to organs which have a large concentration of fats eg brain and ovaries (hence rise in menstrual problems).
See Dr John Campbell, Dr Mobeen Syed, Dr Drew and a multiple of other front line doctors and cardiologists who have spoken out and been cancelled.
By the way I was at the Truth be Told rally (vaccine bereaved and injured – that includes me)outside the BBC last Saturday. Not reported on the MSM anywhere.
By the way I was at the Truth be Told rally (vaccine bereaved and injured – that includes me)outside the BBC last Saturday. Not reported on the MSM anywhere.
Uk has limited the vax!!!!! Dr John Campbell – https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sidjKoHS6NE
He also has covered excess deaths:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ku2Fv7xnL1o
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=av4Ej6om0WI
Pfizer press release:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aSzar6T3zJw
Hats off to Dr Campbell.
YouTuber misinterprets Covid-19 vaccine evidence on children from Singapore – Full Fact
Come on if we’re going to include links, include them all. His poor science has been debunked. Now if folks are going to be lazy, see something on YouTube (the modern bloke down the pub says it’s true) and not think ‘well I’ll read round a bit more before I come to my own conclusion’ we are going to be played repeatedly.
Yeah I’ve just watched three videos and made my mind up. Obviously.
Heres a couple of medical journal type articles.
Quote:
The vaccine was associated with an excess risk of myocarditis (1 to 5 events per 100,000 persons). The risk of this potentially serious adverse event and of many other serious adverse events was substantially increased after SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Source:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2110475
Quote:
We found increased risks of myocarditis associated with the first dose of ChAdOx1 and BNT162b2 vaccines and the first and second doses of the mRNA-1273 vaccine over the 1–28 days postvaccination period, and after a SARS-CoV-2 positive test
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0
Short lunch break. Would you like more later?
Also John Campbell is a hero.
The first quote you’ve included states that whilst vaccinations can cause myocarditis, Covid also causes it and other serious complications, at a substantially higher rate, though it does not specify the numbers.
This is an argument against your position.
With regards to why the UK and other countries are now limiting the vaccine. It’s expensive and eats up health care capacity vaccinating large numbers.
The first rollout attempted to see if the vaccine could eliminate Covid from the population, either through a permanent or a sufficiently long suppression of transmission. As it turned out, transmission was not suppressed for long enough for the elimination of Covid from the population. This being the case, vaccines are now being distributed on the same risk assessment criteria as all other vaccines, i.e. only to those who see the largest risk reduction under the cost benefit analysis.