It sounds like a welcome publication but my rapid reading through the article about it in Spectator seemed to indicate that nowhere in it does it address the question of exactly how dangerous is the virus? Perhaps they didn’t see that as within their remit and/or perhaps it is mentioned.
I see it as the missing ‘elephant in the room’. The government has everyone running away from what’s essentially a phantom.
‘essentially’. Not ‘exactly’. Of course it is an illness and it can kill if you’re weak enough for one reason or another.
But we have illnesses like that with us all the time and in varying degrees that vary according to season and year constantly.
And we, naturally, don’t feel obliged to act in this way. Thank god. We couldn’t.
The ‘phantom’ is that it is held to be such a dramatic evil that unprecedented measures must be taken that stamp all over all democratic rights and subject people to distinct harms and even which manifest as totally irrational absurdities.
Surely such a response would need to be justified by careful identification and categorisation of the menace? But no. There’s never a solid true statistic.
Commonly we’re presented with alarmist talk of ‘cases’ without what exactly a ‘case’ is ever being identified.
We’re presented with alarmist talk of ‘deaths’ without true cause of death ever being identified.
We’re presented with ‘IFR’ – Infection Fatality Rates’ – without either the definition of ‘infection’ or the definition of ‘fatality according to that infection’ ever clarified.
The same with ‘CFR’ – ‘case’ ‘fatality’ rates. And so on. The most obscure and loose and unscientific and irresponsible reporting one can imagine: and it comes as often as not from govt. sponsored channels!
Well there’s a word for that: propaganda indoctrination: brainwashing.
We’re presented with alarmist talk of all kinds all of which is met by sober scientists with facts and figures putting things back in their correct proportion – as, for instance, Dr John Ioannidis has been attempting to do from the earliest days of this thing – and those facts and figures are suppressed and ignored.
Alarmist ‘facts’ such as: ICU units at 90% capacity! When ICU units are often commonly at close to capacity, as are hospitals in days of dollars are king and ‘economic rationalism’ no administrator carries excess capacity.
But the politicians who instituted ‘reforms’ that forced hospitals and the system generally to slim its margins and reduce excess capacity are never held up as an alarming thing. No. the ‘alarm’ is that supposedly the virus has ’caused’ this.
Alarmist figures about American ‘excess deaths’ current right now. When in fact American deaths for 2020 were 1.12% higher than the previous year which is the lowest annual increase in 6 years.
With an actual death rate of 8.88 per 1000 which is a rate under 9.0 per 1000 which is where it has been since 1977.
The actual American yearly death rate has been rising since 2008. From 1977 it dropped below 9.0 and is still there but since 2008 it has been slowly rising with an annual increase of around 1.2 – 1.3. 1.2 being the lowest in 6 years.
Tell me I’m wrong. Look around. Are not the news channels filled to bursting with lurid screaming headlines about the total destruction being wrought on the USA by the virus??
But it is nonsense.
And a void, a dearth, of factual information. And what’s worse: no one apparently looking for it, calling for it, no governments actually searching, finding and using it. The public: dumb. Silent. Docile. Submissive. In home confinement and wearing muzzles when going abroad and constrained not to touch each other when outside. Having to check in at every office and shop. That is: confined, muzzled, tracked 24/7 and soon to be compulsorily injected. Like dogs. Pet dogs.
For what? A phantom. An undescribed, an undefined, an unfindable phantom.
Here’s a dry responsible compilation of studies and assessments on the harm being done:
CollateralGlobal.org (on collateral damage from lockdowns)
and here’s the declaration thousands of scientists endorsed that condemns what is happening:
gbdeclaration.org (The Great Barrington Declaration)
and here’s one of today’s publicly available data sets that sets out the figures I presented above:
and here’s a collection of publicly posted opinions, analyses, figures, fact and so on…