Downing Street Archives - The Automatic Earth

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• Novak Djokovic Faces Deportation From Australia After Court Verdict (G.)

• Life Insurer Refuses To Cover Vaccine Death (FWM)

• Mass General Expert: No Boosters. Normal Life. We Can Move on From Covid (TSN)

• Covid in the UK: Reported Cases At Lowest Level For A Month (BBC)

• Is The Pandemic Entering Its Endgame? (BBC)

• Dr. Peter McCullough: Official Covid ‘Narrative Has Crumbled’ (WND)

• Intracranial Infection Cases Up 60-Fold Since Vaccines Rolled Out (Kirsch)

• Denial of Natural Immunity in Vaccine Mandate ‘Unprecedented’ – Atlas (ET)

• The Lesson from the Downing Street Parties Is: The Rules Were Wrong (DS)

• Russia Is Right: The West Promised Not To Enlarge NATO (RT)

Bodily autonomy was always very important; until about a year ago, that is. Still, most people couldn’t define it to save their lives. So when Novak Djokovic appealed to it, they didn’t recognize it as their own basic right, and instead replaced it with Stockholm Sydrome. The captors set the captives against a common enemy to make them ignore the captors’ failures. And they all cheer the court’s decision, unaware of the damage they are doing to their own country. The captives believe they still are free people. Job well done.

The motivation for the decision is curious:

Immigration minister Hawke carefully avoids the real issues:

And the Guardian says:

“The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, backed the cancellation decision, arguing that Australians had “made many sacrifices during this pandemic, and they rightly expect the result of those sacrifices to be protected”.

What is the result of those sacrifices? Why, this. So let’s all be proud and stick together against the heretic:

What a coordinated attack looks like: 270 health workers turn against Joe Rogan and those he interviewed, and the media ignore their 16,000 colleagues who support them.

More coordination:

The healthiest man involved gets booted out. So it’s not about health.

• Novak Djokovic Faces Deportation From Australia After Court Verdict (G.)

Novak Djokovic will be deported from Australia ahead of the Australian Open after the full federal court dismissed the world No 1’s bid to restore his visa. On Sunday the court rejected a challenge to the decision of Australian immigration minister, Alex Hawke, to cancel the visa on the basis Djokovic’s presence in Australia might risk “civil unrest” as he is a “talisman of anti-vaccination sentiment”. Chief Justice James Allsop announced the court unanimously dismissed Djokovic’s application, with costs to be paid by the tennis star. Allsop explained the decision of the court did not reflect on “the merits or wisdom of the decision” but rather whether it was so irrational as to be unlawful. Full reasons will follow at a later date. The decision is a major setback for Djokovic’s quest to win a 10th Australian Open crown and a record 21st grand slam title.

Djokovic’s lawyers had argued Hawke’s decision was “illogical, irrational or unreasonable” and the minister based it on Djokovic’s public statements about vaccination without actually seeking his views. In fresh submissions overnight, Djokovic’s lawyers added that Hawke had failed to consider the impact on anti-vaccination sentiment if his visa were cancelled. In court on Sunday, the minister’s counsel, Stephen Lloyd, argued Australia “must not be bound to suffer the presence of an alien for fear of what might happen if they were removed”. Use of the ministerial power to cancel a visa comes with a three-year ban on re-entering Australia, except in compelling circumstances, such as compassionate or Australian national interest grounds.

“According to the company, an experimental vaccination resulting in death is like suicide..”

• Life Insurer Refuses To Cover Vaccine Death (FWM)

An explosive case is currently being hotly debated on social media: In France, a rich, older entrepreneur from Paris is said to have died as a result of a Corona injection. Previously, he had taken out multi-million dollar life insurance policies for the benefit of his children and grandchildren, according to a media report. Although vaccination is recognized as the cause of death by doctors and the insurance company, it has refused to pay out. The reason is because the side effects of the Corona jabs are known and published. They argue that the deceased took part in an experiment at his own risk. Covid-19 in itself is not classed as a “critical illness”.

The insurance company justified the refusal of payment to the family by stating that the use of experimental medication or treatments, including Corona injections, is expressly excluded from the insurance contract. The family’s subsequent lawsuit against the insurance company has been unsuccessful. The court allegedly justified its ruling as follows: “The side effects of the experimental vaccine are published and the deceased could not claim to have known nothing about it when he voluntarily took the vaccine. There is no law or mandate in France that compelled him to be vaccinated. Hence his death is essentially suicide.” Since suicide is not covered by the policy from the outset, the insurance refuses to budge.

“The court recognizes the classification of the insurer who, in view of the announced side effects, including death, legally regards participation in the phase three experiment, whose proven harmlessness is not given, as voluntarily taking a fatal risk that is not covered by the contract and legally recognized as suicide. The family has appealed. However, the insurer’s defense is recognized as well-founded and contractually justified, as this publicly known fatal risk is legally considered suicide, since the customer has been notified and has agreed to voluntarily take the risk of death without being obliged or compelled to do so.”

[..] The refusal to pay for a vaccine-related death may not be surprising since globally the life insurance industry has been hit with reported claims of $5,5 billion in the first nine months of 2021 versus $3,5 billion for the whole of 2020, according to insurance broker Howden. Dutch insurer Aegon, with two-thirds of its business in the US, said its American claims in the third quarter were $111 million, up from $31 million a year earlier.

“We won’t need a booster for omicron because they wouldn’t be able to develop one before it’s completely gone..”

• Mass General Expert: No Boosters. Normal Life. We Can Move on From Covid (TSN)

The director of global infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital is predicting what was unthinkable less than a month ago: The end of the pandemic. Dr. Edward Ryan made stunning and encouraging comments on the Omicron variant that give hope for a return to normalcy. Among these: Omicron will make boosters unnecessary. The covid virus will join the ranks of the “common cold.” And the latest wave will enter “clean up mode” shortly. “We are fighting the last war with COVID and should be pivoting back to normal life,” the summary of Dr. Ryan’s comments states. “Spring/Summer will be really nice!” Dr. Ryan is professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

He also directs the Tropical and Geographic Medicine Center and Travelers’ Advice and Immunization Center, which is supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His comments come from an undated summary of a conference call with Ryan that was shared last weekend among doctors and provided to me. In response to a request for comment, Massachusetts General Hospital issued a statement acknowledging that Dr. Ryan’s remarks had been shared “from an individual’s personal notes.” “These notes lack context, details, and nuance,” the statement said, noting they fail to reflect “the role that vaccines play in mitigating severe disease or death,” or to note that at-risk people should “continue to take extra precautions.” Significantly, the statement did not take issue with the accuracy of the conference call summary, which I had forwarded to both Ryan and media officials. Ryan did not respond to requests for comment.

Assessing the situation in the Boston region, Ryan said that close to 100 percent of cases were Omicron. “Delta is almost completely gone from New England,” the notes said, meaning, significantly, that a more deadly variant has been displaced by a far milder one. “This surge will peak [in New England] sometime between 1/10 and 1/21 and then begin a quick downhill journey of two to four weeks,” the summary of the call stated. Perhaps the most surprising, and potentially controversial, statement from the call notes pertained to Ryan’s take on boosters for Omicron. “We won’t need a booster for omicron because they wouldn’t be able to develop one before it’s completely gone and we’re all going to get it which will give us the immunity we need to get through it,” the summary states.

As predicted long ago.

• Covid in the UK: Reported Cases At Lowest Level For A Month (BBC)

The UK has reported another 81,713 coronavirus cases, the lowest daily level seen since 15 December. The apparent ebbing of the Omicron wave comes as some experts claim the end of the pandemic is in sight for the UK. However, the number of deaths within 28 days of a test remains high, with 1,843 over the past seven days – a 45% rise from the previous week. The number of hospital patients with Covid has dropped – though the most recent figures date from Monday. The 15,698 admitted in the seven days to 10 January represented a slight week-on-week fall.

Prof Julian Hiscox, chairman in infection and global health at the University of Liverpool, told the BBC that we are heading towards a new phase of the pandemic where the virus has a lesser impact on daily life. “We’re almost there, it is now the beginning of the end, at least in the UK. I think life in 2022 will be almost back to before the pandemic,” he said. Daily reported cases and deaths are often lower at the weekend, but reported infections have been falling steadily since the new year. However, confirmed cases are still significantly higher than the peaks of previous waves during the pandemic, following the arrival in November of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

[..] From this week, people without symptoms in England no longer need a lab-processed PCR test to confirm a positive lateral flow. People are still asked to report the results of their lateral flow tests. There were 287 deaths within 28 days of a positive test reported on Saturday. The lag between infection and death may partly explain why deaths remain high despite the fall in cases.

Say what?

“It seems like it’s taken a long time, but only a year ago we started vaccinating and we’re already an awful lot freer because of that.”

• Is The Pandemic Entering Its Endgame? (BBC)

Who hasn’t let out an exasperated “Is the pandemic finished yet?” or a “When can I just get on with my life?” over the past two years? I know I have. The answer to those questions could be… very soon. There is growing confidence that Omicron could be hurtling the UK into the pandemic endgame. But what comes next? There will be no snap of the fingers to make the virus disappear. Instead, the new buzzword we’ll have to get used to is “endemic” – which means that Covid is, without doubt, here to stay. So, is a new Covid-era truly imminent and what will that actually mean for our lives? “We’re almost there, it is now the beginning of the end, at least in the UK,” Prof Julian Hiscox, chairman in infection and global health at the University of Liverpool, tells me. “I think life in 2022 will be almost back to before the pandemic.”

What’s changing is our immunity. The new coronavirus first emerged two years ago in Wuhan, China, and we were vulnerable. It was a completely new virus that our immune systems had not experienced before and we had no drugs or vaccines to help. The result was like taking a flamethrower into a fireworks factory. Covid spread explosively around the world – but that fire cannot burn at such high intensity forever. There were two options – either we would extinguish Covid, as we did with Ebola in West Africa, or it would die down but be with us for the long term. It would join the swarm of endemic diseases – such as common colds, HIV, measles, malaria and tuberculosis – that are always there. For many, this was the inevitable fate of a virus that spreads through the air before you even know you’re sick.

“Endemicity was written into this virus,” says Dr Elisabetta Groppelli, a virologist at St George’s, University of London. “I am very optimistic,” she says. “We’ll soon be in a situation where the virus is circulating, we will take care of people at risk, but for anybody else we accept they will catch it – and your average person will be fine.” Epidemiologists, who study the spread of diseases, would consider a disease endemic when levels are consistent and predictable – unlike the “boom and bust” waves so far in the pandemic. But Prof Azra Ghani, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, says other people are using it to mean Covid is still around, but that we no longer need to restrict our lives. She thinks we’ll get there “rapidly”, adding: “It seems like it’s taken a long time, but only a year ago we started vaccinating and we’re already an awful lot freer because of that.”

“The vaccines should be pulled off the market. They clearly are not solving the problem.”

• Dr. Peter McCullough: Official Covid ‘Narrative Has Crumbled’ (WND)

Dr. Peter McCullough – a renowned cardiologist and highly published medical scientist whose confrontation of the government’s COVID-19 policies has drawn more than 40 million views on Joe Rogan’s podcast – told WND in a video interview Thursday night the official pandemic narrative that has been fiercely guarded by establishment media and social-media censors is “completely crumbling.” That narrative, he said, included “false statements regarding asymptomatic spread, reliance on lockdown and masks – which obviously didn’t work – the suppression of early treatment, the mass promotion of vaccines that failed.” “And now here we are, almost in complete free fall,” McCullough said, referring to the record number of COVID-19 cases as officials acknowledge the vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission.

McCullough noted that in California, with the more contagious but much milder omicron variant now dominant, health care workers who tested positive for COVID-19 and had symptoms were told to go back to work. “With that, I think that’s it. I think that’s the end. The narrative has crumbled. People don’t want these vaccines,” McCullough said. “The vaccines should be pulled off the market. They clearly are not solving the problem.” The focus, he said, should be on “treating high-risk patients who develop symptoms” with some of the early treatments that he and other physicians around the world have found to be effective, including ivermectin and a new drug granted emergency use authorization by the FDA, Paxlovid.

McCullough cited a study from Denmark and data from the U.K.’s health agency showing that the vaccines have zero effectiveness against omicron. “That’s not misinformation,” he said. “I’m just quoting the data. All of this can be looked up. Fact-checkers can look at it. I know I’ll never have any problems with allegations of misinformation, because I just quote the data.” President Biden clearly had McCullough in mind when on Thursday he urged social media companies and media outlets to “please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that’s on your shows. It has to stop.” McCullough pointed out his work has been relied upon by courts across the nation, including the U.S. Supreme Court, and he has testified to the U.S. Senate and will be back there later this month. “I think America knows who is giving them the straight story.”

“..she said she operated in 5 kids like this in the past month! We see normally one a year.”

• Intracranial Infection Cases Up 60-Fold Since Vaccines Rolled Out (Kirsch)

I got the message below from one of my followers. It’s an anecdote, but it is not an isolated incident as you’ll agree from reading the comments. A 60-fold increase in intracranial infections (5/month vs. 1 per year). Nobody can figure out why. Only started happening after the vaccines rolled out. You won’t hear of this since the surgeons aren’t going to speak out since they’ll lose their license (as noted in the message). That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

Steve, I got this message from my neurosurgeon friend… “I just took care of an 11-year-old African American cheerleader (she is a “flyer” which means she is the person who is lifted up into the air during a stunt; they are usually very strong and have excellent balance while in the air) in amazing health who had a headache. She got worse and mother brought her to my hospital. She was in a coma and had a brain abscess. I had to put a tube in her head to save her life. Pure pus from her head…. And MRI showed a brain abscess as well as sinusitis, and she had a tooth infection.” So I called my friend (the anti-Vax NS) and said WTF: she said she operated in 5 kids like this in the past month! We see normally one a year. We both said at the same time, “Masks!”

So I wrote to another ped NS friend in the Midwest and this is what he just sent me: “Yes, it is raining intracranial infections here. We just did one and have done 10-12 since October. This is weird as it’s the wrong season for them. We get them in spring and only a sprinkling of them. ENT is having a similar issue with severe sinusitis’s in kiddies. We asked ID and they just shrug their shoulders”. [Ed note: ID is short for infectious disease ] Steve, I asked my neurosurgeon friend to call you as she is still pro vaccine despite what she is seeing with her own eyes, but she is afraid that she could jeopardize her license. The other NS recently got fired for not getting the jab, so maybe she would speak with you. Thank you.

The vaccination status of the patients wasn’t known (since we all know that the COVID vaccines never cause any bad effects, the physicians didn’t bother to ask such irrelevant questions). According to my neurologist, the most likely cause is the vaccine, but masks could also be implicated (sinus infection that goes to the brain). She gave it 60:40 odds, where 60% it is the vaccine, 40% it is masks. Then I asked her about the COVID test swabs they stick up your nose and she said, “YES, that is a huge possibility.”

“..unprecedented in modern history..”

The same issue as Djokovic and bodily autonomy.

• Denial of Natural Immunity in Vaccine Mandate ‘Unprecedented’ – Atlas (ET)

Denying natural immunity in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service (CMS) vaccine mandates is “unprecedented in modern history,” a prominent public health expert said. Dr. Scott Atlas, a former White House COVID-19 Task Force adviser during the Trump administration, made the remarks after the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decide to uphold the CMS vaccine mandates in a Thursday ruling. He told The Epoch Times that the ruling is “another serious denial of scientific fact” specifically mentioning the denial of natural immunity in CMS vaccine mandates. “Our continued denial of superior protection in recovered individuals, with or without vaccination, compared to vaccinated individuals who’ve never had the infection,” he said.

“The denial of that is simply unprecedented in modern history, proven fact and decades of fundamental immunology are somehow denied.” “If we are a society where the leaders repeatedly deny the fact, I’m very concerned about the future of such a society,” he added. The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration’s private business vaccine mandate imposed by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Meanwhile, America’s highest court decided to uphold the CMS vaccine mandate covering 10.4 million health care workers at 76,000 medical facilities. In the 5–4 ruling in the CMS vaccine mandate, John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh joined the Democrat-nominated trio of justices, while Clarence Thomas offered a dissent that was joined by Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett.

The majority of the court stated that the vaccine mandate “falls within the authorities that Congress has conferred upon” the Health and Human Service Secretary (HHS) Xavier Becerra. CMS is part of the HHS. The ruling also disagrees with the dozens of red states who said that CMS failed to consider the benefits of natural immunity. “Given the rule-making record, it cannot be maintained that the Secretary failed to ‘examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for’ his decisions to require vaccination of employees with ‘natural immunity’ from prior COVID-19 illness,” read the majority opinion.

The queen will have to fire Boris.

• The Lesson from the Downing Street Parties Is: The Rules Were Wrong (DS)

With Labour now ten points ahead following fresh allegations of partying at No. 10, the Prime Minister’s job hangs in the balance. While joe public was living life under lockdown, complete with hefty fines for rule-breakers, Boris and chums were living it up in the Downing Street garden. The Prime Minister has said he “implicitly believed it was a work event”. Yet the leaked invitation email told attendees to “bring your own booze!”. This means either that the Prime Minister’s lying about what he “implicitly believed”, that he’s incapable of distinguishing work events and social events (hint: booze goes with the latter), or that he considers drinking at work to be perfectly fine.

At this point, there have been so many reported parties at 10 Downing Street (including the Daily Mirror’s latest scoop) that it’s hard to keep track of them all. You wonder how Boris and chums ever got any work done. I mean, those sweeping lockdown rules didn’t write themselves. The public is rightly indignant at the hypocrisy of it all. And indeed, most of the media coverage has focused on this angle. How could Boris say one thing, while he was doing another? (Well, we already knew that his policy on cake is pro-having it and pro-eating it.) No. 10’s hypocrisy certainly should be condemned. But that’s not the most important lesson here. No, the most import lesson is: the rules were wrong. As Will Jones notes, if Boris ends up resigning, it should be for the absurd, draconian policies that made his behaviour hypocritical in the first place.

The very fact that Boris and chums were comfortable meeting up for “socially distanced drinks” at a time when the official guidance was “stay home, save lives” indicates they knew the rules were pointless. (Either that or they don’t actually care about saving lives.) Indeed, of all the various curbs and restrictions imposed over the past two years, stay-at-home orders may be the most egregious. For a start, they constitute a brazen violation of our civil liberties. Although an Englishman’s home is his castle, that doesn’t mean the Government has the right to besiege him there. Recall the scenes of ramblers being tracked across the countryside by drones, like something out of a Jason Bourne movie:

But on top of that, confining us in our homes serves no purpose, when transmission overwhelmingly occurs indoors. To claim the individual pictured above was posing any kind of threat to his fellow citizens is preposterous. Add the fact that staying inside means less exposure to sunlight, and you have a dog’s breakfast of a policy. Hypocrisy from politicians is one thing. But freedom-wrecking policies are quite another. As Philippe Lemoine notes, “by focusing on their hypocrisy, we encourage the notion that the rules themselves were okay”. They weren’t.

Too obvious to discuss.

• Russia Is Right: The West Promised Not To Enlarge NATO (RT)

With Russia challenging Western unilateralism in a way not seen since the end of the Soviet Union, two major issues keep coming to the fore. Both, it seems, are centered on America’s flagship military bloc, NATO. First, there is Moscow’s claim that there was a Western promise not to expand NATO beyond its Cold War area. Second, there is a Western claim that NATO cannot, let alone will not, put an end to admitting new member states. This is no mere rhetoric; these are crucial points. Russia’s insistence on a thorough review and comprehensive, bindingly codified reset of post-Cold War security relations with the West hinges on its claim that prior Western assurances were broken. Talk and informal promises, the Kremlin says, are not enough anymore because they have turned out to be unreliable.

On the other side of the quarrel, the West is rejecting a Russian key demand – to stop NATO expansion – by entrenching itself behind its claim that NATO simply must keep the door open to new members. Both claims can be verified. Let’s take a look at the facts. Moscow is right in its assertion that the West has broken its promises. Such pledges were made twice to Russia, as a matter of fact. In 1990, during the negotiations over the unification of West and East Germany, and then, again, in 1993, when NATO was extending its Partnership for Peace policy eastward. In both cases, the assurances were given by US secretaries of state, James Baker and Warren Christopher, respectively. And in both cases, they took it upon themselves to speak, in effect, for NATO as a whole.

Despite clear evidence, there are still Western publicists and even active politicians who deny or relativize these facts, such as, for instance, Cold War Re-Enactor and former American ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. Let’s address their objections. Regarding the 1993 promises, the case is extremely simple. As Angela Stent – a widely recognized American foreign policy expert and practitioner with no bias in Russia’s favor – has summarized it in 2019, two “US ambassadors… later admitted that Washington reneged on its promises” – of 1993, that is – “by subsequently offering membership to Central Europe.” Then-Russian president Boris “Yeltsin was correct in believing that explicit promises made… about NATO not enlarging for the foreseeable future were broken when the Clinton administration decided to offer membership,” – and not merely partnership, as Christopher had assured Yeltsin – “to Central Europe.”

The 1990 case is a little more complicated, but not much. There, too, the evidence for an explicit promise is clear. Here is the foremost American expert, Joshua Shifrinson – like Stent beyond any suspicion of favoring Russia – on the issue, writing in 2016: “In early February 1990, U.S. leaders made the Soviets an offer… Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation on Germany, [the] U.S. could make ‘iron-clad guarantees’ that NATO would not expand ‘one inch eastward.’… Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks. No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion.”

To be clear, Shifrinson, a careful scholar, has also explained that American negotiators and leaders started going back on this promise very quickly. But that makes zero difference to two facts: First, the promise was made, and timing suggests strongly that it mattered to Russia’s acquiescence to German unification on entirely Western terms. In other words: Moscow kept its part of the deal, the West did not. Second, even while rapidly backpedaling internally, American politicians continued to give Russia the – false – impression that its security interests would be considered. Put differently, the initial – and consequential – promise was not only broken; the deception was followed up with even more deception.