Berthe Morisot After luncheon 1881
Good observations from a gold dealer, of all people.
“So now everyone needs a booster every few months. With Big Pharma being both judge and jury plus benefiting from their own advice to the extent 100s of billions of dollars, how do we know the real truth?”
• Chaos And The Triumph Of Survival (Von Greyerz)
One of the most horrifying works of art is Bruegel’s “The Triumph of Death” painted in 1562. The painting depicts the end of life on earth. I sincerely hope that this is not what the world will literally look like in the next decade or two but metaphorically this is not an unlikely depiction of the chaos that could hit us all. The Black Death plague of the 14th century, which killed up to half of the world’s population, clearly had a major influence on the painter. The moral message is that when chaos hits, the destruction will affect everyone, rich and poor, young and old. No one will escape by power or devotion. The financial, economic and moral devastation which is about to hit the world will for more than 99.5% of the people come out of the blue like a flash from a clear sky.
For most people, coming events will thus be like the definition of the word CHAOS: “A state of total confusion and disorder”. CHAOS NUMBER 1: COVID Talking about disorder, just like the Black Death that inspired Bruegel’s painting, the world is now facing a global pandemic. But rather than the nearer 50% of global population that perished in the mid 1300s, today we are looking at total deaths from the current pandemic of 0.06% of the world population! And even that figure might be overestimated due to the classification rules applied. For that minuscule percentage the world has now been paralysed for the third year soon.
There are lockdowns, quarantines, compulsory vaccines with unlined boosters, covid passports, closed schools, closed offices, major industries like leisure haemorrhaging, airlines going bankrupt, shortages of labour, components, products, closed borders, and for the few people who dare to and can travel across borders, more bureaucracy, paperwork and tests than in a police state. At the same time money printing and credit creation have gone exponential. The politicians obviously blame the scientists for all the rules that they force upon the people. It is interesting that with almost 200 countries in the world, each country has different rules how to deal with covid. If all these rules were based on science, you would have thought that the rules would have been the same for all 200 countries.
Or could it be as many observers believe that the politicians use the pandemic to their own advantage. Or is it more likely that neither the scientists nor the politicians have got a clue how to deal with a disease that creates hardly any deaths in excess of normal deaths? In Sweden for example, there has been no lockdown, no quarantine, no closed shops, no mask requirement and industry has operated normally. Covid cases and deaths are at the lower range of the European average. Hmmm – so much for all these punishing rules in most countries. We were told that the vaccines would solve the problem but two shots haven’t so far as we were promised. So now everyone needs a booster every few months. With Big Pharma being both judge and jury plus benefiting from their own advice to the extent 100s of billions of dollars, how do we know the real truth?
As an example, I have a 19 year old vaccinated granddaughter who had Covid in August. Now she has got Covid for the second time, fortunately in the form of a normal cold. The government/scientist solution is clearly more vaccines at ever more frequent intervals. And still no one has properly tested the long term effects the vaccines have on our bodies. There just isn’t time for that!!? The consequences of these constant changing of rules and shutdowns will clearly have a devastating effect on an already very fragile world economy and financial system.
The Science is made up.
• Are Covid-19 Data Reliable? The Case Of The European Union (medRxiv)
Previous studies have used Benford’s distribution to assess whether there is misreporting of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Data inaccuracies provide false information to the media, undermine global response and hinder the preventive measures taken by countries worldwide. In this study, we analyze daily new cases and deaths from all the countries of the European Union and estimate the conformance to Benford’s distribution. For each country, two statistical tests and two measures of deviations are calculated to determine whether the reported statistics comply with the expected distribution. Four country-level developmental indexes are also included, the GDP per capita, health expenditures, the Universal Health Coverage index, and full vaccination rate.
Regression analysis is implemented to show whether the deviation from Benford’s distribution is affected by the aforementioned indexes. The findings indicate that only three countries were in line with the expected distribution, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania. For daily cases, Denmark, Greece, and Ireland, showed the greatest deviation from Benford’s distribution, and for deaths, Malta, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, and Luxemburg had the highest deviation from Benford’s law. Furthermore, it was found that the vaccination rate is positively associated with deviation from Benford’s distribution. These results suggest that overall official data provided by authorities are not confirming Benford’s law, yet this approach acts as a preliminary tool for data verification. More extensive studies should be made with a more thorough investigation of countries that showed the greatest deviation.
Back to the Middle Ages.
• Door-to-door Covid Jab Teams To Be Sent To Homes Of Unvaccinated Britons (DM)
Door-to-door teams armed with Covid jabs will be sent to the homes of unvaccinated Britons in plans being considered by Ministers to reach the estimated five million people yet to be inoculated. Discussions between the Department of Health, NHS England and No 10 over the past week have looked at a nationwide drive to send vaccine teams to areas with low uptake rates as a crucial way to avoid lockdown and other restrictions. It is also seen as a way to get jabs to rural areas or households where people cannot easily get to a vaccination centre. One Cabinet Minister last night backed the plan, saying: ‘I think anything that encourages the vaccine-hesitant is sensible,’ before warning: ‘The mood in the country is hardening against people who refuse to be vaccinated.’
‘I am all in favour of free choice but there comes a point when you cannot lock up 90 per cent of the country who are vaccinated for the ten per cent who refuse to be.’ Doctors have said up to 90 per cent of Covid patients in intensive care units are unvaccinated. The vaccination drive continued throughout Christmas Day. NHS England said thousands of first, second and booster jabs were given yesterday. Meanwhile more than 220,000 first doses of the vaccine were administered in the week to 21 December, up by 46 per cent compared to the previous week. First dose uptake in 18-24 year-olds rose by 85 per cent in the same period, and 71 per cent in 25 to 30-year-olds. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the rise in first dose uptake was ‘excellent’, as discussions were ongoing on how to reach more of the unjabbed.
Door-to-door jabs visits are already being trialled in one area of Ipswich, which led to an extra 150 people getting their first, second or booster jab in a weekend. Downing Street sources said the aim is to expand this to the rest of the country and try to reach the estimated five milllion unvaccinated. Dan Poulter, the Tory MP and NHS hospital doctor who has been doing shifts in London hospitals, welcomed the plan. He said: ‘In parts of London where there’s very low vaccine uptake, you’re bound to get a good uptake in jabs if you’re knocking on doors. ‘I think that would have a very positive effect in getting vaccination rates higher.’
“The closest historical approximation to this monstrosity is the Catholic Church during the Spanish inquisition..”
• On “Science” and Controversy (Malone)
Good science (and good public health policy) requires conflict. There is no one “Science”. No single “truth”. Quality science is like a song sung by a choir. A solo scientist is usually better described as a philosopher or priest. Any individual claiming to embody “Science” or scientific truth is (by definition) no longer a practitioner of the intellectual discipline of modern science. The scientific process requires constant external challenge and criticism to reach a working approximation of truth. Such (typically autocratic, paternalistic) people lose the ability to maintain objectivity and typically transition to functioning as an enforcer of their version of reality. These people often resort to a form of crude binary thought – their version of the truth versus all alternatives. In contrast, the modern scientific practitioner approaches the effort to draw truth out of the unknown as something closer to mathematical calculus, a process of serial approximation which gradually approaches an asymptote hypothesized to be scientific truth.
Enter the trusted news initiative.[..] This intellectual obscenity purports to be able to discern and enforce scientific “truth” by defining truth as that which established public health bureaucracies (and singularly autocratic public health “leaders”) say it is. The trusted news initiative aggressively employs both globally coordinated media and the tools of modern big technology to censor, demean, de-platform, delegitimize and de-license all others who seek to document, advance or discuss alternative versions of officially endorsed reality. The trusted news initiative has functionally morphed into Orwell’s predicted ministry of truth. Backed by the combined power of national and international governmental structures, massive transnational investment funds the likes of which the world has never seen before, and the commercial assets (Big Pharma, Big Media, Big Tech) over which the funds exert horizontally integrated control through access to investment capital and structural leadership ties.
This is the most intrinsically anti-science global organization ever implemented in the history of modern man. The closest historical approximation to this monstrosity is the Catholic Church during the Spanish inquisition. When this history of this pandemic is written, the combined effect of the Trusted News Initiative and autocratic national and international public health leaders will be documented as being responsible for massive excess human suffering and loss of life due to suppression of the discussion and dissent which is critical for the modern scientific process to accurately discern evolving truth and inform effective public policy decisions. This must stop, before yet more avoidable, unnecessary suffering and loss of life accrues.
“Two million cases a day, thousands of deaths a day — that is virtually all we heard in relation to Omicron.”
• Covid Fearmongering Has Consequences Too (O’Neill)
The scaremongers have overplayed their hand. Omicron could prove disastrous, they warned. They scoffed at the early indicators from South Africa suggesting it was milder than Delta. ‘MYTH BUSTER’, declared the Sun when Chris Whitty poured cold water on the idea that Omicron might be milder than Delta. ‘Deaths could hit 6,000 a day’, screamed the Guardian, turning Sage’s worst-case scenario into a chilling headline. The news was full of it: we’re doomed. Yet now it seems pretty clear that these fearful prophecies were way off. Just a week after we were being bombarded with these visions of the Biblical horrors Omicron would visit upon our nation, it’s being reported that this variant really is milder than the Delta one. This raises some really serious questions for the expert classes who are meant to be guiding us through this health crisis. Have they lost the plot? And now, will they lose the trust of the people?
The turnaround in recent days has been extraordinary. Last week, suggesting that Omicron might be milder was dangerous, it threatened to undermine the seriousness of the pandemic. Whitty became visibly frustrated whenever this possibility was raised. The Twitterati pooh-poohed any positive news coming from South Africa. (First South Africa was wrongly blamed for the Omicron variant, then its experts were implicitly defamed as untrustworthy amateurs when they said to the world: ‘Guys, you’re overreacting.’) Two million cases a day, thousands of deaths a day — that is virtually all we heard in relation to Omicron.
The front pages are starkly different today. ‘Official: Omicron 50% less severe’, says the Mail. ‘Omicron hospital risk is two thirds lower’, says the Telegraph. Even the Guardian’s no doubt distressed headline-writers have had to admit that their earlier vision of another nightmarish wave of disease whacking Brexit Britain might have been a tad overdone. ‘Risk of hospital stay is 40% lower with Omicron variant’, the front page says. These good news headlines — yes, doom-mongers, we are allowed to call it good news! — spring from new studies into Omicron’s virulence. Researchers at Imperial found a 40 per cent reduction in the risk of hospitalisation for Omicron in comparison with Delta. Edinburgh University went further — they reckon there is a 65 per cent lower risk of hospitalisation. A South African study says the risk is between 70 and 80 per cent lower.
“Is that the sound of normalcy I’m hearing out there?”
• Slouching Toward Endemicity (Tucker)
Is that the sound of normalcy I’m hearing out there? Ever more authors and sources admitting that the virus is a medical problem that cannot be addressed or solved through politicized “mitigation measures.” This is what I’m reading between the lines of such news stories as this one: Early in the pandemic, many people seized on the hope that Covid-19 could be stopped in its tracks and buried for good once vaccines rolled out. But hope for a zero-Covid country fizzled for most scientists long ago. That amounts to a gigantic change in outlook and a terrifying illustration of egregious failure. It’s a sign of exhaustion and the realization of the futility of the battle. In this US in any case (if not in many other countries). But it had to come eventually.
Consider that Covid cases in both New York and Florida have reached record levels, and at some point increases in deaths are likely to follow, though not as bad as prior seasons. With both states dealing with similar trends, there is no point in the exhausting game of finger pointing that’s been going on for so long.
The charts themselves are a picture of astonishing policy failure: not the failure to stop the virus but rather the belief and policy that imagined that doing so was possible at all. The virus is still here and still on a seasonal march, perhaps causing less damage than in the past but it really does raise the burning question: what precisely was accomplished by almost two years of massive compulsory upheaval? In the last several months, we’ve seen the hysterics and rhetoric dialed back a bit. It’s been a long time since I’ve read any published millenarian fantasies of beating this virus into submission or oblivion. We’ve come a long way since March 2020, when Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx talked Trump into announcing two weeks to flatten the curve. Trump actually went further that day and expressed his view that he would “defeat the virus,” “taking a tough stance” to “get rid of the virus.”
This is the hidden meaning behind the White House’s new line that “This is not March 2020.” What precisely makes it different? A major part of the difference is the growing realization that the attempt to use state measures to “get rid of” the virus or control its seasonality was completely delusional.
“Nature” deviating from science. The best thing we can do for these countries is to leave them alone.
• Researchers Fear Growing Covid Vaccine Hesitancy In Developing Nations (Nature)
COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has long been recognized as a problem in high- and middle-income nations. But in some of the world’s poorest countries, lack of access to vaccines has been a much bigger hurdle. Now researchers say that as doses are trickling in, resistance to getting vaccinated is also emerging as a major issue in those nations. Scientists fear that persistent pools of unvaccinated people around the world will present a greater risk for the emergence of new variants of concern, such as Omicron. “When you have a lot of community transmission, that’s where variants will emerge,” says Jeffrey Lazarus, a global health researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, Spain. Addressing people’s hesitancy is therefore crucial, to curb viral spread and to avert hospitalizations and deaths, he says.
Scientists report that hesitancy might now be contributing to the slow uptake of vaccines in some nations where large proportions of the populations remain unvaccinated. These include South Africa — one of the nations where Omicron was first detected — Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Papua New Guinea and Nepal. “We have more hesitant people in the global south than we ever thought we did,” says Rupali Limaye, a behavioural scientist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. Although in many countries, limited supply is still the main problem, say researchers.
Until late October, the problem in many African nations “was that we just didn’t have enough doses”, says Salim Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) in Durban. “But we now have adequate amounts of vaccines in most countries,” he says. According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, just 64% of the vaccines supplied to the continent have so far been administered. In South Africa, for example, the number of doses administered each week has fallen to less than one-quarter of doses given at the peak of the vaccination drive in September. This is despite only 44% of adults having been vaccinated with at least one dose.
The calls on social media for more doses from Western countries are perplexing, says Espoir Malembaka, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who is based in Bukavu, DRC. Four types of vaccine are now available in eastern DRC, “but we don’t see people really in a rush to get the vaccine”, except for travellers getting ready to board flights, says Malembaka. He believes that the problem is not access to, but mistrust of, the vaccines. Researchers say that countries might be struggling to get vaccines into arms for many reasons — some of which have nothing to with hesitancy — including poorly funded health-care systems, the fact that doses are often close to their expiry dates and logistical issues getting vaccines to remote regions. But people’s delay or refusal to get vaccinated is also part of the puzzle.
Vaccinated and immunized would appear to be very different things.
• US Navy Warship Pauses Deployment After COVID-19 Outbreak, 100% Immunized (ET)
A U.S. Navy warship has paused its deployment to South America due to a COVID-19 outbreak among its “100 percent immunized” crew, the Navy announced on Christmas Eve. “USS Milwaukee (LCS 5), a Freedom variant littoral combat ship, remains in port as some Sailors test positive for COVID-19,” the U.S. 4th Fleet said in a statement. “The crew is 100 percent immunized and all COVID-19 positive Sailors are isolated on board and away from other crew members. A portion of those infected have exhibited mild symptoms. The vaccine continues to demonstrate effectiveness against serious illness.” The ship currently remains in port at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, located at the southeastern end of Cuba.
It had departed Dec. 14 from Mayport, Florida, and was heading into the U.S. 4th Fleet area of operations to support Joint Interagency Task Force South’s mission, which includes counter-illicit drug trafficking missions in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The U.S. 4th Fleet’s statement did not quantify the number of those infected, nor how many among them are exhibiting mild symptoms. The specific COVID-19 variant has yet to be determined. The ship is following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for contact tracing and testing. COVID-19 cases have recently increased drastically across the United States amid the spread of the contagious Omicron variant. The ship is also “following an aggressive mitigation strategy” in accordance with Navy and CDC guidelines.
Censorship continues unabated. Steve Kirsch, Richard Werner…
• LinkedIn Has Banned Me For Life For Making 3 Truthful Comments (Kirsch)
Christmas came early for me. LinkedIn has determined that three of my posts were so egregious that I should be banned for life from LinkedIn. It’s now as if I never existed. LinkedIn is the sole judge, jury, and executioner of what constitutes “misleading or inaccurate” information and whether you violate their user agreement. They can terminate you at any time, for any reason. You have no recourse. Because I made 3 truthful, accurate statements that some people at LinkedIn considered to be misleading or inaccurate, my account (built up over nearly 20 years) is now permanently deleted. They could have simply restricted my ability to post. Instead, they chose to expunge my entire identity so nobody will ever know I existed. Wow. Instead of simply restricting my ability to post, they basically wiped out my entire identity so nobody can even see who I am anymore or what I accomplished.
My resume is gone. My awards are gone. Nobody can even find out I ever existed. I didn’t even get a chance to copy my profile before they wiped me out. All my contacts are gone. The record of my 7 companies I started: gone. No one will be able to lookup my history there anymore. It’s like burning books in the library. Wikipedia did the same thing to me. They removed the mention that I received a National Caring Award as retribution for speaking out about vaccine safety. This can happen to you if you too disagree with mainstream thought. America today is about conformity with mainstream thought. If you disagree, you lose your job, lose your ability to communicate, and they remove any record of your existence. I’m now lifetime banned on Medium, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The reason I am not yet banned on Facebook is because I never post there.
[..] Hi Steve,
Your account was restricted due to multiple violations of LinkedIn’s User Agreement and Professional Community Policies against sharing content that contains misleading or inaccurate information:
Post on 9/26/2021: Inconvenient truth: >150,000 excess deaths in VAERS. Jeffrey Morris REFUSES to debate my team in a video RECORDED call. He writes papers but is AFRAID to have them publicly challenged.
Post on 9/22/2021: I just sent this to Eric Topol: Eric, I’m a big vaccine skeptic. I think the vaccines have killed over xxx people. Would you like to debate? You can do the world a HUGE service by showing people how ridiculous my assertions are. You can bring down all my 20 experts at the same time in a 1 hour debate. You’d end vaccine hesitancy. [had to xxx to escape censorship from LinkedIn ]
Post on 9/20/2021: Nicki Minaj was telling the truth. All the authorities were wrong. The facts are all with Nicki. The authorities cited no evidence to support their position. But they are the authorities so we should believe them NO MATTER WHAT the science actually says, right? The authorities NEVER make mistakes. https://lnkd.in/gqYieZyX
New German Chancellor Olaf Scholz might play a positive part by refusing to be a puppet.
• German, Russian Envoys To Meet To Ease Political Tensions Over Ukraine (ZH)
With tensions over Ukraine spilling over and the western media now reporting that Russia is deploying mercenaries to East Ukraine in what is either a sharp escalation in “pre-kinetic” activity, or an acceleration in the false flag narrative, some hope for de-escalation emerged on Christmas Day when Reuters reported that according to a German government source, senior German and Russian government officials agreed to a rare in-person meeting next month in an effort to ease political tensions over Ukraine. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s foreign policy adviser Jens Ploetner and Russia’s Ukraine negotiator Dmitry Kozak agreed to meet after a lengthy phone conversation on Thursday.
The Reuters sources added that “Berlin doubts more than Washington whether Russia actually wants to attack Ukraine” and is keen to de-escalate tensions. While there has been no official comment from the German government, there have been a flurry of phone calls between western leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent months over Russia’s military build-up on the Ukrainian border and resulting fears of an invasion. Meanwhile,in-person meetings between senior Western and Russian government officials have been few and far between, though U.S. President Joe Biden held talks with President Putin in Geneva last June.
Since taking office this month, Scholz has emphasized the need for dialogue with Russia over its military build-up on the Ukrainian border while joining western allies in backing sanctions should Moscow invade. Germany has been accused by critics of being beholden to Putin because of its need for Russian gas, attacking construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between the countries, bypassing Ukraine. Berlin says Nordstream 2 is not political and would be only one of several pipelines transporting Russian gas to Europe. “The German side’s goal remains to achieve a swift reactivation of the Normandy format,” the German government source said, referring to multilateral talks between Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany.
This is just plain weird. The connection to Covid makes it even more so.
• ‘Don’t Weigh Me’ Cards Aim To Reduce Stress At The Doctor’s Office (CNN)
A body positivity website has created free “Don’t Weigh Me” cards for patients who find stepping on the scale at the doctor’s office stressful. The cards, created by California-based More-Love.org, are available for free to individuals, excluding the cost of postage. There is also the option for businesses to purchase the cards, at $35 per 100 cards. The cards read: “Please don’t weigh me unless it’s (really) medically necessary,” adding “If you really need my weight, please tell me why so that I can give you my informed consent,” as shown in photographs on More-Love.org: On the other side of the card is a list of reasons why it may not be medically necessary to weigh a patient. “Most health conditions can be addressed without knowing my weight,” is one reason, and “I pursue healthy behaviors regardless of my weight status” is another:
More-Love.org was founded in 2016 by Ginny Jones, according to its website, and describes itself as “an online resource that empowers parents to raise kids who are free from body hate, disordered eating, and eating disorders.” The group supports a “Health at Every Size” philosophy, based around the assumption that “the current practice of linking weight to health using BMI (body mass Iindex) standards is biased and unhelpful.”
#MerryChristmas pic.twitter.com/6HHLb3jmkG
— Τɥǝ Kraken ou Αǝʇɥǝɹ (@u_know_n0th1ng) December 25, 2021
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