In the past, European political leaders yielded to the orders of their
astrologers. Today, they refer to them identically to the statisticians of the
Imperial College. In the past, the latter have provided them as much
justification as they needed for their liberal hospital policy. Today, they
predict millions of deaths without any scientific rigour. Thierry Meyssan
reveals how these charlatans have taken control of the policies of the European
Union, the United Kingdom and certain states of the United States.
In
the early days of the Cold War, it was customary in the West to make fun of the
blindness of the Soviets who believed in the nonsense of Professor Trofim
Lyssenko. The First Secretary of the Party, Joseph Stalin, had banned the
teaching of genetics and used Lyssenko as a scientific justification for
Marxism, but he drew no practical consequences. Today the same mental illness has reached the West.
Professor Neil Fergusson assures that statistics can predict the behaviour of
living beings. This is stupid, yet many high-ranking political leaders believe
it. Unfortunately, unlike the Soviets, they draw political consequences that
ruin their countries.
The Creation of the European
Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
For
the past two decades, Western political leaders have been trying to use
statistical knowledge of epidemics to determine the right decisions to be made
in the event of danger. Following the SARS outbreak in 2003, the European Union
established the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDPC) in
2005. During the second half of 2008, this centre and the French rotating
presidency organised a colloquium to study the advisability of closing schools
to combat a flu epidemic and to determine when it should occur and when it
should stop. There was still no talk of widespread containment of the entire
population.
The
main contribution was made by Professor Neil Ferguson and Simon Cauchemez from
Imperial College London. It compared statistical data on school closures in
Hong Kong in 2003 and 2008, on the impact of the teachers’ strike in Israel in
2000, on the impact of zonal holidays in France from 1984 to 2006, on the
closure of schools infected with influenza in France in 1957, and on the impact
of Spanish influenza in some US cities and in Australia in 1918. And it pointed
out the inequalities and injustices associated with school closures in the UK
and the USA.
From that point on, the problem was turned
upside down. Experts had observed that school closures did not have a
significant impact on the final number of deaths, but only on the speed of the
spread of the disease. Their task was to provide a solution to the closure of
hospital beds that were not occupied on a day-to-day basis. Statistics were
no longer at the service of the health of Europeans, but of an ideology, that
of the liberal management of the state.
Bernard
Kouchner, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs who organized this symposium,
was the one who, when he was Minister of Health (1992-93, 1997-99, 2001-02),
began the reorganization of the French hospital system no longer according to
medical criteria, but according to a logic of profitability. In about fifteen
years, France has thus been able to make substantial savings by closing 15% of
its hospital beds; savings that are derisory compared to the current cost of
containment.
Professor Trofim Lyssenko claimed that, by applying Marxist
dialectics to the natural sciences, he had demonstrated that petty-bourgeois
genetic science was wrong. On this point, he said that just as the Party
generated a new man, it was possible to modify the genetics of plants according
to the organization of the fields. His nonsense became the official truth in
the USSR during the Stalinist period. Science and ideology are always a bad
combination.
Professor
Neil Ferguson’s Charlatanism
Professor
Ferguson is still the European reference for epidemic modelling. 
Yet it was he who, in 2001,
convinced Prime Minister Tony Blair to have 6 million cattle slaughtered to
stop the foot-and-mouth epidemic (a decision that cost 10 billion pounds and is
now considered an aberration).
In 2002, he calculated that
mad cow disease would kill about 50,000 British people and another 150,000 when
transmitted to sheep. There were actually 177.
In 2005, he predicted that
bird flu would kill 65,000 Britons. There were a total of 457.
Yet it was he who, in 2001,
convinced Prime Minister Tony Blair to have 6 million cattle slaughtered to
stop the foot-and-mouth epidemic (a decision that cost 10 billion pounds and is
now considered an aberration). In 2002, he calculated that
mad cow disease would kill about 50,000 British people and another 150,000 when
transmitted to sheep. There were actually 177. In 2005, he predicted that
bird flu would kill 65,000 Britons. There were a total of 457.
Regardless, he became an adviser to the
World Bank and many governments. It was he who sent a confidential note to
French President Emmanuel Macron on March 12 announcing half a million deaths
in France. In panic, the latter took the decision for generalized confinement
that same evening. It was also Professor Ferguson who publicly announced on
March 16 that, if nothing was done, there would be as many as 550,000 deaths in
the United Kingdom and as many as 1.2 million in the United States, forcing the
British government to review its policy.
Simon
Cauchemez, who was his right-hand man in 2009, now heads the modelling unit at
the Pasteur Institute. He is, of course, a member of the Scientific Committee
of the Élysée, where he proposed generalized confinement. This committee was
set up by the Director General of Health, Professor Jérôme Salomon, the
spiritual son and former technical advisor to Bernard Kouchner.
The Ferguson team’s seizure of power was
based on an intellectual swindle. Mathematical biology” (sic)
could justify the liberal management of health services.
Unfortunately,
while statistics can be used to evaluate the effects of this or that measure
after the fact, they cannot predict the behaviour of a living organism, a
virus. A virus seeks to spread, not to kill, which it unintentionally does when
the species in which it nests does not yet have appropriate antibodies. No
virus will eliminate any species, including humans, because if it killed them
all, it would disappear with them.
Incidentally,
extrapolating influenza measures to the Covid-19 epidemic is absurd: influenza
affects many children, not Covid-19, which in demographic terms only kills
elderly people or people with diabetes or high blood pressure. Children
infected with Covid-19 have a very low viral load, it is not even known to this
day whether they are contagious.
Professor Ferguson admitted on March 22
that he had carried out his calculations on the Covid-19 epidemic exclusively
with a 13-year-old database of influenza epidemics.
In
fact, one cannot help but notice the drift of this guru, who is no longer
content to justify liberal policies applied to public health, but has come to
advocate depriving entire peoples of their freedom. To hide the reality of this
drift, Professor Fergusson’s supporters distract the public’s attention by
proposing the use of surgical masks, which we have already explained are of no
use in the face of the epidemic [1].
The
Polemic with Professor Didier Raoult
These
explanations shed new light on the polemic that opposed the disciples of
Professor Neil Ferguson to those of Professor Didier Raoult [2]. Contrary to what has been said, this is
not a problem of methodology, but of finality.
Neil
Ferguson is a charlatan caught up in his swindle,
while Didier Raoult is a clinical doctor. The followers of the former need dead
people to believe in their religion, those of the latter care for their
patients.
The
problem we are facing is not a scientific debate, but a war of repeated errors
against the scientific approach. It is
astounding to hear members of the Scientific Council of the Élysée reproach
Professor Raoult for not conducting comparative studies with a control group.
In times of crisis, should a responsible doctor fail to treat some of his
patients and deliberately sacrifice them?
—
[1] “Panic
and Political Absurdity in the Face of the Pandemic” , by Thierry
Meyssan , Translation Roger Lagassé , Voltaire Network ,
7 April 2020.
[2] “Covid-19:
propaganda and manipulation” , by Thierry Meyssan , Translation Pete
Kimberley , Voltaire Network , 21 March
2020.
French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and
the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international
relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish
and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.
The articles on Voltaire Network may be freely reproduced provided
the source is cited, their integrity is respected and they are not used for
commercial purposes (license CC BY-NC-ND).
