Exposing the fear mongering, propaganda and outright lies that are plaguing the world.
The coronavirus
misinformation that scientists, politicians and media have fed to the public
has been shocking. Take a tour through the bizarre, contradictory and downright
ludicrous myths that have done more damage than Covid.
Myth
1: Slowing the spread of the virus is a good idea
This is the fundamental
premise of the world’s ‘response’ to Covid, from which all else springs. But it
has never been established that we should be trying to slow the virus down, not
even from the blinkered point of view of just saving lives in the short term.
Slowing
the spread of the virus was initially sold to us as a way of protecting health
services: if everyone gets sick at once, the hospitals will fill to bursting
point and people will die on gurneys in car parks outside. Remember ‘flatten
the curve’? Since Covid infections are inevitable, spreading them out through
time will indirectly save
lives by ensuring that everyone who can be
saved by medical interventions – oxygen masks and ventilators – will be.
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A
noble idea, but as it happened, a misguided one. Most hospitals spent the
months of the outbreak as good as empty. All other medical
treatments were postponed in order to prepare for the onslaught of Covid
patients coughing their lungs up—an onslaught that never arrived. Even
intensive care units rarely reached full capacity, and it
quickly became apparent that for the people most at risk from Covid, ventilator
and intensive care treatment is unsuitable. Only a tiny minority of those who
have died actually died in intensive care—old people with many co-morbidities
are best kept in
ordinary wards.
So ‘flatten the curve’ was a
dead duck, but doesn’t it make sense to slow the spread of the virus anyway?
Well, only if you think that those who would die of Covid if they caught it can
evade the virus until a vaccine is developed. If vulnerable people who believe
that they have not caught the virus (they may be asymptomatic) want to wait for
a putative vaccine, then they should be more upfront about their intentions.
Because if they can’t, then there is no point to any of this.
In
addition, there is at least one theory why you could be doing someone a favour
by giving them the virus. Evolutionary theory tells us that as a respiratory
virus spreads, it loses potency. A successful virus is a mild one, which does
not kill its host before they can spread it. This is how herd immunity really
works in this context: it’s about the changes to the virus itself. In contrast,
when we locked down, the virus had nowhere to go. Instead of getting milder,
all of the most dangerous strains came together in the only places where sick
people gathered: nursing homes and hospitals. This is why I greeted news that
the virus was becoming more contagious with jubilation—it is better that the
virus spread freely, at least among the healthy.
Myth
2: Lockdowns slow the spread
But
let’s pretend for a while that it isn’t better. Because without the fundamental
assumption that spreading
= bad, the rest of the discussion is flipped on its head. ‘Spikes’
become cause for relief, not concern. Masks, if they work, would become
counter-productive. I am not claiming this as truth—only that it is at least as
likely as the classical model.
But if you can suspend your
disbelief for long enough to imagine that hindering the spread of the virus is
worthwhile, then you might be forgiven for assuming that lockdowns are the way
to do it. There is, however, no suggestion, let alone evidence, that lockdowns
would pose a problem for a wily virus.
If lockdowns played any part at all, we would expect to see a correlation
between the different forms of lockdowns enforced by various regions or
countries, and the shape of the death curves there. But we do not—the
correlation is zero. Belgium, the UK, New York: strict lockdowns; lots of
deaths. Sweden, Japan, Uruguay: light or no lockdowns; few deaths. You can
point to opposite examples, but that’s just the point—there is no consistency.
And before you try to explain away individual countries with hand waving about
‘different cultures’ or ‘better testing’, there is no correlation with any of
those things either.
Simply put, there is nothing
that can be easily pointed at to suggest that any measure taken by any
government in the world to block the virus has worked. Lockdowns may be the
biggest tools in the shed, but they are still faulty.
Myth
3: Contact tracing is the answer
Early
in the outbreak, there seemed to be a connection between those countries with
impressive track and trace capabilities, like Germany and South Korea, and their
ability to cope. Of course, the tracking and tracing itself could not have been
‘curing’ the population of Covid. No one knew why there seemed to be a positive
effect from comprehensive testing. Months later, still no one knows.
But
that has not stopped western governments from pathetic attempts to emulate the
conformist East Asian societies with contact tracing apps and programmes.
Despite a not inconsiderable propaganda campaign, they have all failed miserably. This
is largely because not enough people even have any symptoms anymore, months
after the virus peaked.
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Trying to ramp up contact
tracing in August goes beyond locking the barn door after the horse has bolted.
This horse bolted so long ago that now herds of its descendants roam the
countryside. Meanwhile, the farmer ruins his homestead in order to pour his resources
into increasingly elaborate and expensive door locking contraptions.
Myth
4: BAME people are more at risk
For BAME, insert whatever
ethnic or other minority you have read is worst affected by the virus outbreak.
Of course, the virus is racist—everything else is. Factoids like this come from
dividing the sick or the dead into their Woke groupings and then comparing the
proportions to the population as a whole. And no doubt, BAME people are ‘over
represented’ in such statistics.
But the risk is at the
population level, and is almost entirely explained by mediating factors like
obesity, diabetes and other co-morbidities, more prevalent in some populations
than in others. If you are in your eighties, overweight and sickly, then you
should be worried about catching the virus regardless of your race. Similarly,
if you are fit and under 60 you are more likely to be struck by lightning than
killed by the virus, regardless of your race. There has been a suggestion, but
only a suggestion, that lower Vitamin D levels in black people could play a
part, but that is not behind the disparities.
This
basic statistical point makes ridiculous the notion that some professional
athletes were worried about returning to their sport. I actually feel sorry for
the likes of Troy Deeney (not
just because he’s been relegated with Watford) but because he has been
understandably frightened by poor scientific communication. As a healthy young
BAME man, there is no reason to suspect that he himself is at an increased
risk. But he has been persuaded that he is by a regime that distils power from
fear.
Myth
5: For schools to open, pubs must close
What
utter rot this is. The individual who came up with this false trade-off would
have a bright career in board game design, if they were not earning so much as
a public servant. This is simply a fabrication, and as such somewhat difficult
to disprove, rather like the existence of invisible fairies.
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You
could just, you know, leave the pubs open and then open the schools too? But I
suppose then there would be a ‘second wave’ in deaths two weeks later. You
know, like the second wave that was warned of in May. And then June. And then July.
Only in the past two weeks did the WHO finally give up the dream and change
its story to ‘One Big
Wave’, which doesn’t have the same ring to it. But the second wave fiction has
not yet been memory holed—it can be trotted out on demand to force through any
further assaults on our remaining freedoms.
All I can do is predict that a second wave in deaths will never
materialise, and every day since April I have been proven right. The establishment, in contrast,
makes wrong predictions again and again, and are never held to account.
They just change the prediction, and hope everyone forgets about what they said
a week ago. Don’t wear masks. Don’t go to work. Go to work, but don’t take
public transport. But if you do, wear a mask. Do not be fooled into thinking
that the confusion is incidental. It is part of the plan—confused people are
easier to control.
The
bigger the lie
It
may have been Joseph Goebbels who said: ‘’If
you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to
believe it.’’ It seems this is an evergreen statement; not only is
there no limit to the size of the lie, there seems to be no limit on the number
of lies either.
Hypotheses make predictions,
and if they are consistently proven right, eventually they become theory.
Einstein is heralded because he made predictions about black holes that are
only being proven true almost a century later. Many fine minds have put their
necks out to make predictions about the nature of this outbreak, despite slime
and slander from the cheerleaders of the elite. But when they are vindicated,
the cheerleaders just drown them out.
In
contrast, Neil Ferguson is rolled out again
and the second wavers just keep saying ‘wait another two weeks’. When will this
end? Never. Not until we have a complete rethink. Logic and reason have not
worked. It’s time for a new approach.
The
statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
By Peter Andrews, Irish science journalist and writer based in
London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the
University of Glasgow with a degree in genetics.
Copyright © Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/no_author/the-five-biggest-coronavirus-myths-busted/