May 25, 2022 - 9:00am
A new inquiry by the charity Sense about Science, which aims to improve the use of science in public policy, claims that the Government’s top-down attitude to the Covid-19 pandemic may have hindered the public’s ability to respond, and even caused unnecessary harm.
The inquiry used testimony from expert witnesses combined with new population surveys to analyse the impact of the Government’s approach and communications during the pandemic. It found that, rather than empowering individuals to make sensible decisions based on risk and knowledge about the pandemic, the government instead chose to focus on simplistic slogans, such as ‘hands, face, space’ and stringent universal rules.
By focusing on such paternalistic messaging, the government at times misled the public, for example leading people to believe that their risk of infection was higher than it actually was (the inquiry notes this is particularly true of children and the young.) In an attempt to increase compliance with the rules — even after evidence showed a huge disparity in risk for different age groups — the Government continued to imply that Covid didn’t discriminate.
This meant that groups at lower risk, such as children, were subject to stringent, harmful restrictions, the impact of which could have been reduced or avoided. It also meant that resources weren’t adequately allocated to those who were most at risk. As such, there was a failure to consider the cost of different interventions, which should be standard practice for policy decisions.
Modelling scenarios, for example, did not consider the harm of school closures, and therefore failed to consider optimal strategies for keeping children in school. The Government failed to effectively communicate the rationale behind such policy decisions, instead simply issuing blanket decrees — something which harmed people’s ability to adequately judge risks. In the first few months of the pandemic, the inquiry found that 60% of policies were set out in press releases, rather than in policy documents, and around 90% provided no clear link to the available evidence behind policy decisions.
The findings of the report are hardly surprising. Since the early days of the pandemic, it has been apparent that, rather than following the standard public health approach of communication and empowerment, the government opted for paternalism and authoritarianism. Rather than equipping the population with the information and resources (including adequate sick pay) necessary to protect themselves from Covid, with particular focus on the vulnerable, the Government — cheered on by the Left — chose a path of restrictions, punishment and criminalisation for all.
As we begin the process of recovering from the pandemic, inquiries such as this one serve as a necessary reminder of how far from the normal path of science communication and public health the government strayed over the past two years.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeMany ordinary people pointed out these things from the very start. They were stupid, reactionary, not ‘experts’, irresponsible, tin-foil hat wearers, Covidiots and so on.
In a world that is increasingly ‘embracing’ it’s feminine side, would it not be more apt to say ‘maternalistic’ rather than ‘paternalistic’ ?
Women have, over the decades, become far more prominent in civil society and position of power and influence (I pass no judgment on their effectiveness, men might come off as distinctly second rate in comparison so it is maybe better we don’t look to closely). Should we be asking if this doesn’t, in any way, colour our responses to challenges ?
Yes and yes.
I completely agree with you. However, when I bring this up with the women closest to me I’m often met with furious rebuttals and accusations of bigotry which kind of prove my point.
A great observation. NZ’s Ardern is the embodiment of “maternalistic authoritarianism” which is often praised as being loving and well-meaning and compassionate, versus “paternalistic authoritarianism” which is automatically condemned as just oppressive. Arden got a lot of praise for her strict covid policies, but if Trump had done the same thing in the US (shutting borders and ordering harsh lockdowns and mask-wearing in every part of the US) you can bet he would have been labeled a paternalistic, racist autocrat.
Certainly, men and women tend to have different risk tolerances. But if you point this out you better be ready for the screeching.
Absolutely bullseye and well spotted. This coercive smothering is feminine energy run amok, not masculine.
For masculine, see Ukraine.
The most disturbing line in that chart is the bottom one.
How could 60% of the people still think that the counts of cases (from a PCR test run at a number of cycles that yield a 95% false positive rate), hospitalizations (here in the U.S., hospitals were paid to falsely inflate their Covid numbers) and deaths (people who died in accidents “with Covid” were counted as Covid deaths) were “about right?”
Too many people are still blind to the truth. I suspect they are concerned about Monkeypox.
“The inquiry used testimony from expert witnesses”
Can we stop right there
Thank you for that article. In Ireland we seemed to look at the UK and then double down on their restrictions.
Spot on. The problem was that PH experts got out of their lane in trying to design the actual responses instead of providing policy makers and the public with the tools and information to make cost effective decisions.
In some places the policy makers, who wanted to be re-elected, were happy to hide behind the public health experts and claim that they were merely following the science. This diverted anger about the authoritarian decisions from politicians to Dr. Fauchi in the US and his counterparts in other countries.
Taking a slightly different dimension, in the context of a well written article.
I do find journalists and non mathematicians so most of you are forgiven, have a naive belief that society can be modeled in novel circumstances and this just isn’t so. Modeling is a very useful boundary tool capable of projecting scenarios of interactions with different assumptions thus ideally giving upper and lower boundaries of possible outcomes but this presupposes we understand in detail if not definitively the way the real world thing being modeled works.
in a Covid like situation which is novel we do not understand the relationship of social interactions with policy or fear or any number of variables and so the models are at best A codified guess by people who may or may not have a clue let alone a credible academic background in one or all of the related and involved sciences, economics, psychologies etc.
in short to create models of worth takes considerable domain knowledge and doing models for the unknown is simply fooling the foolish. No doubt it has concomitant prestige and funding for the protagonists.
As Fauci would say: Dr. Fauci: “Heck, No, I Haven’t Been Vaccinated”
By Michael Baxter from REAL RAW NEWS
The Deep State’s primary Covid-19 vaccine peddler, Dr. Anthony Fauci, boasted to colleagues at the NIH that he has not taken and will not take the Covid jab, said a former NIH employee who claims Fauci personally fired him in June for “violating or considering to violate non-disclosure agreements” pertaining to vaccination protocols.
Our source, who wishes to remain anonymous at this time, told Real Raw News that he’d been wrongfully terminated—unjustifiably because he never signed non-disclosure paperwork on the Institute’s Covid-19 policies. And the reason he never signed said paperwork is that he had worked for NIH’s Division of AIDS, which was largely excluded from Covid-19 plandemic response meetings and vaccine development.
For ease of reading, RRN will refer to our source as Brian Stowers. RRN has vetted Stowers’ education and employment history, and we found no reason to believe he had a vendetta against Fauci or that he would engage in deception; his credentials seemed unimpeachable. As a Level 2 lab technician, his primary duty at the NIH was spinning blood through a centrifuge and passing results to his superiors. Nothing glamorous.
Although he had no exposure to Covid-19 data, he had been exposed to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s hubris and overbearing presence.
“At least once a week, Fauci made rounds through the departments. He liked to stick his nose in everyone’s business, belittle and ridicule people for no good reason. Anyway, on February 15, 2021, about two months after the FDA gave emergency use authorization to Pfizer’s vaccine, Fauci strolls into our department and tells us that we ought to encourage our friends and family to get vaccinated at the earliest possible date. But he tells us lab workers—there were about 9 in the lab at that moment—to delay getting vaccinated until, as he put it, ‘we see what happens,’” Stowers said.
A long, uncomfortable silence followed Fauci’s statement, our source added.
According to him, one lab worker asked Fauci why the vaccine was safe for friends and family but not for NIH employees.
“Fauci’s face turned red. He was clearly angered by the question. He started berating us, telling us we weren’t qualified to question his judgement. If we didn’t follow his guidance, we’d be jeopardizing the health of our friends and family, Fauci told us. He was on a tirade for like 5 minutes, and cussing like a sailor,” Stowers said.
Then Stowers asked Fauci, respectfully, whether he had been vaccinated.
“What kind of question is that? Not that it’s any business of yours, but, no, heck no, I haven’t been vaccinated. And I don’t plan to be, at least not for a long time, if at all…If I take the vaccine and get sick from it, then what? I’m too important here to take that risk. You all are, too—that’s why I’m telling you to wait. But you can be replaced; I’m irreplaceable. The administration needs me to helm this response,” Fauci reportedly said.
Four months later, unexpectedly, Stowers received a termination letter claiming he had violated the Institute’s confidentiality clause. The notice bore Fauci’s handwritten signature.
“I knew fighting would be pointless. I got 6-month’s severance package and figured that would be enough to hold me until I found new work, and I have,” Stowers said.
In closing, Stowers said Fauci never wore a mask inside NIH facilities, only when, in Fauci’s words, “outsiders and interlopers and media” were nearby.
Real Raw News
99.6% of Deaths in Vaccinated – 70% Boosted
Latest Health Canada Snapshot. Sheldon Yakiwchuk
May 5
Health Canada has just updated their COVID dashboard. 99.96% of the COVID deaths in the last 1 week period were Vaccinated. 70% BOOSTED!
Last Sunday, I decided to drill out some information for a share on Twitter and showed the colossal failure of vaccines, reporting by Health Canada and the Injuries caused by the vaccines.
You can check the thread out:
Sheldon Yakiwchuk @YakkStack
There are currently 8,607 Unreported Vaccinated COVID deaths in Canada. This is up from 7994 from last month – average 20/day COVID mortalities missing. Why isn’t Health Canada Reporting them? ?-Thread.
May 1st 2022
This was shared because of the last look at the figures for Canada, they showed that 81% of the COVID deaths in Canada were in the vaccinated population, where 55% were Boosted!
Yakk Stack
81% of COVID Deaths from the Last Week are in the Vaccinated Population – Canada Data
Read more
15 days ago · 20 likes · 10 comments · Sheldon Yakiwchuk
Because I watch this information more obsessively than I probably should, as soon as I refreshed my Health Canada Tab…I full on knew that the proverbial shit was hitting the fan in the numbers. You can visit the Health Canada information site: Link
If you want to actually keep historical tracking by PHAC or have a printable copy from the site, at the top right hand corner, click the PDF button and you’ll get a downloadable format.
So I can keep some consistency, instead of using the more colorful screen shots of the site, I’m going to use a snapshot of the data from the PDFs. At the top of this you will see the 2 dates we’re looking at, April 10th and April 17th, 2022.
And in checking out the bottom, highlighted in Red, you will see the Deaths. Column 1 is Unvaccinated, which shows that over the last week, the deaths increased from 9,511-9,512 or by 1 death, as in, there was only one unvaccinated COVID death over 7 days.
For some reason, the Cases not protected reduced by 1, from 783-782 ->(-1). 5 Deaths for the Partially Vaccinated, 63 for the Fully Vaccinated but the largest category of COVID death comes from the Boosted Population tipping in at 160 out of the 227 total deaths – 70%.
Where the rankings of all vaccinated deaths make up a total of 226/227 deaths working out to be – 99.95% of the total COVID Mortality on the week. Now for all of us, this should be pretty shocking info. For me, it’s a f*****g nightmare…reason being…I’ve now got to go through the AB Provincial site for this same time period and see if I can figure out where Doctor Deena lied about the numbers of deaths in the vaccinated vs unvaccinated communities. And this will be a challenge, may not even be able to be done.
Quick update and I will be doing a better dive.
Just wanted you all to have copy to spread this as fast and far as you can.
We need answers.
We need action.
We’re done with this!
Yakk Stack
You will get a much better idea of how the vaccines are affecting people on Steve Kirsch’s substack, if you want that information and on babies and baby births too
Another absolutely spot on article from Dr. Jones. It is clear the messaging hampered the response, as did the move to broad protection, legally inforced by restrictions on human rights. It was retransmitted and amplified by much of MSM, fake sage, and millions of social media activists, begging the question – how do we make them own the harm that was, is and will be done?
Might I respectfully point out that the “experts” could not have been experts, regarding Covid, because we have never had a pandemic, like this, in my past lifetime, now of 75 years – an expert is supposed to know all about a disease or thing like Covid, wheras, none of them did.
mRNA or RNA vaccines have never been used in humans before and those who agreed to having the vaccines (not me) are now laboratory animals in a grand experiment which will end in 2024, while, unfortunately, according to the US Supreme Court Law of 2013, now no longer human, but after vaccination “trans human” an alien species which has not been evident on Earth previously and because they are “no longer human” all human rights are lost, they now, presumably, have same rights a slave would have had, in America, prior to the US Civil War of 1861 – 1865 :
In the US, the Supreme Court has ruled that vaccinated people worldwide are products, patented goods, according to US law, no longer human. Through a modified DNA or RNA vaccination, the mRNA vaccination, the person ceases to be human and becomes the OWNER of the holder of the modified GEN vaccination patent, because they have their own genome and are no longer “human” (without natural people), but “trans-human”, so a category that does not exist in Human Rights. The quality of a natural person and all related rights are lost. This applies worldwide and patents are subject to US law.
Since 2013, all people vaccinated with GM-modified mRNAs are legally trans-human and legally identified as trans-human and do not enjoy any human or other rights of a state, and this applies worldwide, because GEN-POINT technology patents are under US jurisdiction and law, where they were registered.” See link here: https://ambassadorlove.wordpress.com/2021/12/08/covid-19-patent-horrors/
You will probably be surprised at how easy it is to kill Coronavirus – before – it ever gets to be Covid and I have been doing this simple technique for over 28.5 years (longer than some of you have been alive) and I am never ill from viruses – in fact, I am never ill.
3 minutes from preparation to job done!
Everything else you have read, or heard, is totally irrelevant – how simple is that?
Covid Crusher: Mix one heaped teaspoon of Iodine table salt in a mug of warm clean water, cup a hand and sniff or snort the entire mugful up your nose, spitting out anything which comes down into your mouth. If sore, then you have a virus, so continue morning noon and night, or more often if you want, until the soreness goes away (2-3 minutes) then blow out your nose and flush away, washing your hands afterwards, until when you do my simple cure, you don’t have any soreness at all, when you flush – job done. Also swallow a couple of mouthfuls of salt water and if you have burning in your lungs, salt killing virus and pneumonia, there too.
My simple salt water cure, kills all Coronaviruses and viruses, as soon as you think you have an infection, or while self isolating, before the viruses mutate into the disease in your head and body, for which there is no cure – that is, after you have been out shopping, or mixing with people with potentially, Omicron or Delta viruses, or any other virus.
It washes behind the eyes, the brain bulb, brain stem (Long Covid), The Escutcheon Tubes to the inner ears and the top of the throat which is at a point roughly level with half way up your ears and not where your mouth is and down the back of your throat, when sore.
I have been doing this simple cure for over 28.5 years and I am and others, never sick from viruses and there is no reason why any of you should be either – when your only alternative are those vaccines!!
I do my simple preparation, after I have been out and about, or come into contact with people who have been vaccinated – it has kept me safe – and I hope it keeps me safe for the foreseeable future as Graphene Oxide is in the very air we breathe, outside, as well, but now from the vaccinated!!
Simply put, if the inside of your nose is dry and crusty, you are OK, if your nose is runny, you really need to do a salt water sniffle as quickly as possible and monitor the results, to see if further salt water sniffles are necessary, but later on in that evening – so far – I remain immune from potential Covid infections, doing just this.
No vaccines for me – ever – pass on my free cure and have those pass it on too
Richard
What concerns me most about the mRNA vaccines is that they do not stop reinfection from Coronaviruses which in turn cause Covid. You cannot catch Covid.
However, there are many reports on the severe injuries and deaths caused by mRNA vaccines, which are “Experimental Test Vaccines” released under Trump and Biden’s “Emergency Protocol”, but for your information, this is how they were developed: Dr Ugur Sahin, the COVID-19 vaccine he designed for Pfizer was designed in just few hours in a single day (on a computer) on January 25, 2020. No other vaccine in history has been created and manufactured so quickly. Previously, the fastest vaccine ever developed took more than four years. co-founder of BioNTech Not only that, Pfizer Chairman (((Albert Bourla))) hasn’t gotten around to having his shot, or Dr Ugur Sahin, last I knew. And it went from laboratory straight into human arms without any animal testing first – mRNA never used in humans ever before – doesn’t that strike you as odd?
Obviously, no virus was present, when this vaccine was made on a computer and a Covid infection, was not the basis of the vaccine creation, in the first place.
Documents by Pfizer Show BioNTech Paid FDA $2,875,842.00 “Drug User Fee” for COVID-19 Vaccine Approval
Vaccine Impact
If you know anyone who has been injured or died from the vaccines, or unexpectedly – please complete the enclosed form – it only takes a few minutes and post it on by email to Steve Kirsch: Covid Vaccine Impact Study: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd3HmNRK9E39XwYwxLa3ZCZgVrc_gQaBpWrTUWw26mEPX9QbQ/viewform