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I thought I had added a link, but it seems I did not – maybe a simple paste may prove more successful?
Was the Pentagon and CIA Behind the COVID-19 Pandemic?, by Jeremy Kuzmarov (Covert Action Magazine, 27 Feb 2023)
I don’t wish to embarrass you any more than I need to Fat Jon, but the simple truth is that it was an ineffective, though extremely unpleasant to catch, virus.
With ‘Hancockgate’ and his WattsApps, on every media outlet you can shake a needle at, I can only suggest you get out a bit more often than you do.What urgently needs to be fathomed out, is how such high levels of hysteria could be spread within society, by our completely incompetent governments over such an inconsequential illness.
When I happened to comment on the main blog at the time of “Partygate” and “Beergate” my indifference to those stories, and that like most other sensible people all I was doing, on a daily basis, was looking for ways to duck and dive around the stupid government dictats, I was labelled, selfish, inconsiderate and likened to a fifth horseman of the Apocalypse.
Now here I am, vindicated, being very humble in my smugness…_
Two elderly people known personally to me died of COVID-19. A friend of mine lost six friends to it, five of them elderly but one in his forties. Another friend’s elderly mother was killed by it. An ex-girlfriend working in a care home saw twenty residents die of it over the course of a month. She caught it herself; when she got back to work the care home chef had been killed by it, he had been in his early sixties.
All of these people died during the mortality peaks, which are clearly visible as sharp spikes in the national mortality rate, ie. in the statistics of deaths from all causes. Something had to be causing those peaks, so SARS-CoV-2 cannot (‘truth’fully) be described as ‘ineffective’.
Yes, the Westminster government’s measures were incompetent; grossly negligent, resulting in England suffering one of the highest death rates in the world and trashing the NHS. Instead of trying to scare the public the government should have taken appropriate measures, such as China, New Zealand and Australia did; covid was controllable.
Unfortunately, sensationalism is the normal mode for the ‘news’ media, so there’s nothing unusual to report on that matter.
Fat John, you have far less to be ’embarrassed’ about than DiggerUK. The article is a mixture of well-documented fact, wild speculation and sensationalism, with two blatant lies thrown in by the EcoHealth Alliance. It is late, so for now I shall expound upon only the first of those lies:
– “analysis of published genomic data and other documents from the grantee demonstrate that the naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far distant from SARS-CoV-2…”
Actually, SARS-CoV-2 bears over 97% genetic similarity to a bat virus collected by Wuhan Institute of Virology called RATG-13; it is the second-closest naturally occurring match found so far – the second closest, but by less than 1%.
DiggerUK, since you’ve been trolling Fat John, “I can only suggest” that you try to cultivate your empathy, as concern for others might help you maintain a wider social circle.
97% genetic similarity sounds like a hugely persuasive number but……………….
The human genome shares 60% similarity with fruit flies, 98% with gorillas and 99% with chimp and bonobo monkeys. Is it surprising that coronaviruses share genomic similarity with other coronaviruses? It gets more complex when you begin to consider protein coding genes which are a (relatively) small percentage of the whole genome versus the remainder of a genome which has a role in gene expression. It’s much more nuanced than just looking at the “headline” 97% figure.The latest releases by the US Energy Department and CIA seem to be more about raising anti-China sentiment than a genuine attempt to shed light on the issue. Release your data publically or GTFO.
My own view is still that the zoonotic origin is the most likely but still unproven. Until that pathway has been demonstrated and its intermediate host identified (or an alternative suitably plausible pathway) it’s going to remain unproven. That’s not to say that an accidental lab leak isn’t also plausible and should remain under active consideration. I personally think a deliberate leak is much less likely, and if it was such, they made a right mess of it.
Honestly, I don’t think people really care about covid anymore and I don’t think the vaccine is the commodity it was. Shares in Pfizer and Moderna (and others) have fallen considerably since 2021 highs.
@Clark,
The number of deaths ‘from’ or ‘of’ Covid is unknown. The statistics of ‘within 28 days’ don’t really tell us anything, they simply exaggerate to meet a political response. Remember, initially they wanted to report deaths within 6(?) months.Like it or not, elderly people die, it’s just what happens to us all eventually. ‘Underlying’ health conditions, particularly chest problems, are amongst the major cause of deaths in the elderly. Any infection could mean the difference between living and dying, Covid is just one of them.
You speak in praise of China, Australia and New Zealand. I ask anybody to look at Sweden and how they responded.
I’d pick Sweden. They responded with a pandemic plan previously agreed to by many other countries, and stuck to it; despite most all of the other countries who had agreed to it abandoning those policies.
These plans were formulated and finalised after over ten years of international chinwagging, and all expenses paid, conferences.As the revelations in the Telegraph show, many followed the politics, not the science…_
DiggerUK:
– “Like it or not, elderly people die, it’s just what happens to us all eventually.”
Indeed. But it is not normal for huge numbers of elderly people to die in the same fortnight.
As I said DiggerUK, you should cultivate your empathy more. The manner of people’s death matters just as much and I would say more than the mere fact of their death; there’s more to a human life than one datum among the national statistics. Our society purports to be civilised, so we shouldn’t just leave people to die of whatever might happen to them, in whatever unpleasant way nature or circumstance inflicts upon them. We try to give them a dignified, compassionate death.
When COVID-19 kills, it does so in a very distressing manner over the course of days or weeks, It causes “shortness of breath”, ie. an experience of partial suffocation, lowering blood oxygen concentration which in turn causes progressive organ failure.
Of course, the suffering can be ameliorated, but only if the sufferer can be got into hospital. Covid causes about 2% to 3% of those infected to require hospitalisation…
I’ll continue when I have time.
ET, I agree with your points, but it matters more to me that DiggerUK’s narrative be countered, even though it is off-topic on this thread. It was and continues to be promoted by the economic right wing for their own misguided purposes, it is plausible but superficial, and (with apologies to DiggerUK, from whom it did not originate) it is profoundly anti-social.
DiggerUK, please reflect upon the points I have made so far, remembering that the position I’m outlining is as yet incomplete.
@Clark,
“Our society purports to be civilised”…. so civilised, that a son comforting his mother at his father’s funeral was chastised for hugging her!… so civilised that you couldn’t hold a dying person’s hand and comfort them!… so civilised, that grandparents and siblings could not cuddle a new-born child?At this moment it is very important for us to work on our empathy; remember, it was banned not so very long ago.
Seems like a some people regret the restrictions being lifted.._DiggerUK:
– “Seems like a some people regret the restrictions being lifted..”
I object to this sort of insinuation; it is trolling, it is inflammatory, but more importantly it gives other readers misleading impressions. Restrictions are no longer appropriate, but I was never in favour of Westminster’s late, bungled, and protracted lockdowns. Australia and New Zealand did restrictions properly, thereby protecting their populations, economies and health services.
My girlfriend came to stay with me over the second English lockdown. She is a tennis fan, and was watching the Australian Open from Melbourne. In the middle of a match play was stopped and an announcement came over the PA: “Immediate lockdown. Clear the court”. There was a little booing (a tiny minority), so the announcement continued; “The public must clear the court. Play will be suspended until the public leave”.
Later I asked my girlfriend what had happened. Five covid tests in Melbourne had shown positive that day, over the previous baseline of zero. Not five deaths, not five hospital admissions, just five positive tests. Melbourne was immediately locked down – just Melbourne, not the whole of Australia, nor even the Administrative Territory – and Melbourne was placed under travel restrictions.
But just one week later I noticed that I could hear the crowd again in the court. “What happened to that lockdown?” I asked. Trace and test had been performed until the trails found no further cases; fifty people had been placed in quarantine, and the lockdown lifted just five days after it had been imposed.
This was how to control covid. Trace and test cannot be effective when even just 5% of the population are infected, but lockdown at the first sign will facilitate effective trace and test. People and businesses can withstand short, effective lockdowns. Meanwhile, in Europe, we suffered three month, nationwide lockdowns that were invariably imposed too late, and were consequently a fraction as effective.
If you get an infestation of rats, you wipe them out. You don’t attempt to maintain the infestation at a “manageable level”. If a fire breaks out in your home, you extinguish it immediately. You don’t um and aah about getting the furniture wet, and propose a house meeting for tomorrow afternoon to discuss what you might do about it. Seconds count, so you act immediately and thoroughly. You don’t decide “oh the carpet’s getting soggy so we’ll leave it where it’s smouldering in the corners”; that’s a recipe for even more water damage when the fire picks up again.
But that time has passed. When covid arrived in the UK in 2020, none of the population had ever encountered it before. None of the population had any resistance so it spread, literally, like wildfire. But now, almost everyone has had covid, and almost everyone has been vaccinated. Consequently, covid cannot spread nearly as fast as it initially did, so it has become merely another background circulating infection.
– – – – – – –
DiggerUK, please try to think more and repeat things you’ve read elsewhere less. I shouldn’t have to spend my time explaining things such as the above; you should be able to work them out for yourself. Covid makes about 2% to 3% of those infected ill enough to require hospitalisation. Please ask yourself: what response from the authorities would be appropriate if 2% of the population were to require hospital treatment all in the same month? You can’t possibly get 2% of the population into hospital, you can manage maybe about a tenth of that, so do you post security or troops around hospitals to send away those who seem to have covid? Shut down the hospitals entirely? Humanely euthanise all who look like they might die if they don’t receive treatment? Or just let chaos ensue, let the medical staff handle it as best they can, and let half a million or more suffer protracted, painful and distressing deaths that go on for a week or more, with no drugs or treatment even to alleviate the suffering? What a reward for a lifetime of work and paying one’s taxes! Remember, doing nothing is a choice nonetheless.
The death rate of covid is not a property of the virus. The death rate is the outcome of the interaction between the virus and society. If everyone who needs treatment can be given it, the death rate works out to about 0.5%. But how many of those 2% die if they can’t be treated due to the health services being overwhelmed? Are you really saying that a doubling or quadrupling of the death rate would have been better?
And I haven’t even mentioned the long-term damage yet. Over a million people in the UK have reported lingering or recurrent symptoms, and at the societal level, our health service is trashed, and staggering under the attrition. Try thinking less about your personal risk and start considering the effects upon society as a whole.
“Of or with covid”, “28 days”, “Sweden”. It’s amazing how these memes continue to circulate, despite their plausibility being entirely superficial. I guess some people just can’t be bothered to check facts and don’t enjoy thinking for themselves.
So far as I’m aware, “of or with” has never been applied to anything but covid.
You don’t have to look at the “28 day” figures; you can see the death rate go through the roof in the deaths from all causes (as I’d already pointed out). Nonetheless, the covid tests predicted the peaks in hospital admissions and deaths, by about one week and two weeks respectively. And in any case, the UK used two different measures to gauge covid mortality, and each followed the other pretty damn closely.
And Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, the darling of those who’d trivialise covid or deny it altogether, and all because its constitution prevented its government from imposing lockdowns. Firstly, per head of population, Sweden did worse than its Scandinavian neighbours by large factors. And despite having “no lockdown”, many restrictions were imposed, and travel metrics of population mobility (from public transport and mobile phone data, for instance) show that the public treated the health department’s “voluntary recommendations” as if they were mandatory – Sweden was under lockdown in all but name.
Please stop misleading readers with such tired, long refuted nonsense.
@Clark,….. “Please stop misleading readers with such tired, long refuted nonsense.”
OK, I promise. I’ll shut up and leave them to make their own comments and do their own research.As to empathy, I have learned much from this personal account of Bell Mooney in the Daily Mail. It is a piece on the death of her father from over two years ago.
I will add that the claimed figures for Covid deaths in the article of 120,000, have reached nearly 220,000 now. The figures will no longer be announced from the end of this month…. It will be like this all never happened…_(Two clicks will stop the cookies)
“Do their own research”, as in, decide to what extent the death rate of a suspiciously infectious and never seen before illness has been either over or underestimated, by reading a single, partial case history: a Daily Mail’s agony aunt’s emotive account of the death of her father, which is medically ambiguous, and references contrarian retired pathologist John Lee, who had absolutely nothing to do with the case, but has written several anti-lockdown pieces, also for the Daily Mail. Sure; doesn’t look the slightest bit dodgy to me :-/
Just don’t read any expert statisticians directly. They have technical skills and link to their data sources, so they’re not to be trusted, eh?
https://twitter.com/COVID19actuary
