“This virus was termed a new virus, and Covid-19 was termed a new disease. But in fact neither the virus is really new, nor is the disease really new, because the Corona viruses have been with us since man … since the beginning of mankind. These are viruses that co-exist with us, and so every year, and every few months, a virus will change a little bit, because they mutate all the time. They have to mutate, otherwise they can’t keep on (you know) going back and forth between you and me and animals and whatever you want. So it’s a completely normal thing that these viruses which are the most successful viruses in the world – together with the flu viruses, by the way – because they manage to keep the host alive. They don’t kill the host. They don’t want to kill us. They want to come and visit me, and then they want to go and visit the next guy (you know). And in order to be able to do this they change very little, all the time, so that when they come back next year they come and visit me again. Otherwise my immune system would not allow their entry at all. You see this is something that people don’t really understand. So when we started reading up to see what’s going on we realised that no-one knew about this.”
The source
Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi, former head of the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany); and co-author of Corona, False Alarm?: Facts and Figures. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnpnBYgGARE )
My take on it
If you relied on the mainstream media you would struggle to take in what Dr Bhakdi is saying.
Which is precisely what he has been motivated to say it, and to write about it.
Most of us have heard something about gut health, and about ‘good’ and ‘bad bacteria’. But if you relied on the mainstream media you would probably not know that each of us also has over 300 trillion viruses on board, broadly categorised into six groups and 22 Families, of which Corona viruses are one. Those viruses are collectively called our virome. It would be fair to say that this field of scientific endeavour is in its infancy, as to characterisation, and behaviour, and function, and in its understanding of the virome’s dynamic interaction with our own cells and with the other fellow travellers in this walking zoo of ours – bacteria, fungi, archaea, exosomes and other extra-cellular vesicles – our human biome.
However you choose to explain it, we are indeed ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’.
Professor Bhakdi is a subject matter expert. His knowledge is in conflict with mainstream health policy and medical practice in this matter.
As always, you have your choice of experts. You get to choose who you believe, and what you believe.
”Then the PCR test came out, and became the Gold Standard for diagnosing Covid-19. Now anyone who has studied infectious diseases knows that the PCR test cannot be used to diagnose anything. A PCR test is a lab test that may be used to support a diagnosis. So if you think someone is ill, has fever, is coughing, and is short of breath, then it’s quite legitimate to do a PCR test to try to find the gene of that virus that you are looking for; and if you find it – or parts of the gene, because the PCR test only looks at parts of the virus genome, very small parts – then it’s OK. Then you say, ‘Alright, this would confirm the clinical diagnosis.’ But a real doctor doesn’t go around testing people with a test that has never been put on the market for use to diagnose a disease.
There’s something fishy going on. The way of diagnosing this disease Covid-19 is at variance with everything that anyone learns in infectious diseases. You are using a lab test to abase a very serious diagnosis. All right?
….. it’s criminal to say that these are Covid-19 cases.”
The source:
Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi, former head of the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany); and co-author of Corona, False Alarm?: Facts and Figures. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnpnBYgGARE )
My take on it:
At the core of the malfeasance around Covid-19 lies a faulty KPI: ‘cases’.
The number of ‘cases’ relies in turn on a faulty diagnostic test: the PCR test.
We are driving ourselves down the wrong road, and over the cliff. To quote Professor Gigi Foster, “We have stabbed our economy in the belly.”
What is our objective in all this? What are we trying to achieve?
If we are trying to save lives, then Deaths is a relevant parameter.
Deaths from all causes is a fairly safe statistic.*
If we are focusing in on fatalities caused by Covid-19, the statistics need careful attention:
is it proven that Covid-19 is present? (If a primary diagnosis has been made based on the presenting symptoms, then the PCR test provides some secondary support; I ignore for now the false positives and other limitations of such testing, or the failure thus far to validate the virus itself via Koch’s Postulates;)
is it clear that Covid-19 was causative, rather than just associative? Was Covid-19 the only or primary cause of death, or were co-morbidities present? (this is the attribution issue;)
if co-morbidities were present, are these reflected appropriately in the death certificate? (The evidence suggests that in deaths attributed to Covid-19, multiple co-morbidities are the norm; but do the death certificates reflect that?)
in some domains there are reported to be financial incentives to classify patients as Covid-19-affected (and to use respirators);
health regulations may encourage specific attribution of sickness or death to Covid-19 ‘if in doubt’.
One way to reduce these real or suspected influences is to elevate the analysis to a higher classification of disease, eg ‘All respiratory illnesses’. If Covid-19 really was so impactful, we would expect it to show up as an incremental influence.
*Some months ago, and for precisely this reason, Dr Andrew Kaufman examined the CDC data on all-cause mortality in the United States, year to date, and compared it with the two preceding years. He reported a 2% drop for the current year.
This week brought an update to that exercise, worthy of a separate post:
“If you examine the actual deaths in the USA during 2020 as compared to previous years, you’ll notice something interesting. In 2018, there were 2,839,000 deaths. In 2019, there were 2,855,000 deaths. And through November 22, 2020 there have been 2,533,214 deaths. If we extrapolate the deaths at year’s end, we get 2,818,000 deaths in the USA, which is 37K fewer deaths than last year!”
The bogeyman that was used to kick this whole thing off, is revealed for what it always was.
But the policy response will only change when the KPI does.
The advent of Covid-19 did not require a new definition of ‘case’. It is already established medical practice, as set out by eg the CDC:
Before counting cases, the epidemiologist must decide what to count, that is, what to call a case. For that, the epidemiologist uses a case definition. A case definition is a set of standard criteria for classifying whether a person has a particular disease, syndrome, or other health condition.
A case is about “classifying whether a person has a particular disease, syndrome, or other health condition.” A syndrome is a set of symptoms.
That classification first happens professionally when an individual becomes sufficiently ill to seek medical attention. That is when the primary statistic is generated, whether by the local doctor or by the outpatient clinic of a hospital.
The identification of some genetic material in somebody’s body fluids does not meet the definition of a case. It fails the test of medical best practice.
“The bottom line is simply this: There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians. It’s outrageous. This is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public. There is absolutely nothing that can be done to contain this virus, other than protecting older more vulnerable people. It should be thought of as nothing more than a bad flu season. This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS. It’s politics playing medicine, and that’s a very dangerous game. There is no action of any kind needed, other than what happened last year, when we felt unwell: we stayed home, we took chicken noodle soup, we didn’t visit Granny, and we decided when we would return to work. We didn’t need anyone to tell us.
Masks are utterly useless. There is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever. Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue-signalling. They are not even worn effectively most of the time. It’s utterly ridiculous seeing these unfortunate uneducated people – I am not saying that in a pejorative sense – seeing these people walking around like lemmings obeying without any knowledge base to put the mask on their face.
Social distancing is also useless because Covid is spread by aerosols, which travel 30 metres or so before landing.
And closures have had such terrible unintended consequences. Everywhere should be open tomorrow, as was stated in the Great Barrington Declaration that I circulated prior to this meeting.
And a word on testing. I do want to emphasise – I am in the business of testing for Covid – I do want to emphasise that positive test results do not – underlined in neon – mean a clinical infection. It’s simply driving public hysteria, and all testing should stop, unless you’re presenting to hospital with some respiratory problem.
All that should be done is to protect the vulnerable and to give them all in the nursing homes that are under your control – give them all three to five thousand international units of Vitamin D every day, which has been shown to radically reduce the likelihood of infection.
And I would remind you all that using the Province’s own statistics the risk of death under 65 in this Province is one in 300,000. One in 300,000. You’ve got to get a grip on this. The scale of the response that you are undertaking, with no evidence for it, is utterly ridiculous, given the consequences of acting in the way that you are proposing. All kinds of suicides, business closures, funerals, weddings etc etc. It’s simply outrageous. It’s just another bad flu, and you’ve got to get your minds around that. Let people make their own decisions. You should be totally out of the business of medicine. You have been led down the garden path by the Chief Medical Officer of Health of this Province. I am absolutely outraged that this has reached this level. It should all stop tomorrow.”
The source:
Dr Roger Hodkinson, former President of the Alberta Society of Laboratory Physicians, and current Executive Chairman of Bio-ID Diagnostic Inc, a private company commercializing patented technologies in DNA diagnostics, including the Covid test; addressing the Community and Public Services committee of Edmonton City Council on 13 November 2020 on the amendment to extend the temporary mandatory face coverings by-law. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LbD1rWkF-Q )
My take on it:
The genius is in the pretext.
On the pretext of a sufficiently large ‘near and present danger’, communicated consistently by those in authority, most of us will fall into line and do what we’re told, without thinking it through for ourselves. Fear kicks in, and the brain locks up. Survival mode.
Most of us.
But not all.
And of course fear is not the only motivation to comply with the mainstream narrative. Add ignorance, blind trust, social ostracism, relational conflict, economic loss (or gain), …
What gets in the way of our compliance?
One thing is our assessment of the message itself: Does it make sense, given what we know? We know more about some things than about others; so our competence to assess, and our confidence in that assessment, vary.
Another thing is our assessment of the information source, ie the messenger, or messengers. Are they competent? Are they credible? Are they trustworthy? What is their life philosophy? Does what they say, align with what we know ourselves? Does it align with our life philosophy?
Covid has spawned a plethora of claimed subject matter experts, in virology, immunology, epidemiology, nutrition, mathematics, economics, health policy, ethics and other fields. As always, the experts may agree or disagree, within a discipline or across disciplines, about most things or about a few.
In support of the credibility of his message, Dr Hodgkinson introduced himself as having relevant subject matter expertise.
Dr Hodgkinson also prefaced his remarks to the Edmonton City Council by describing them as ‘counter-narrative’. This says to the audience that he and they both know that a mainstream narrative exists; and that his views run contrary to that formed narrative. In other words he rejects what is being told to him by those in authority. But more than that: he sees the need to speak out against the damage being done by the reigning paradigm, and to present a better alternative.
At this point, many in the audience will switch off.
For a few there will be the silent, impassive acknowledgement that this ‘counter-narrative’ is true.
For a few it will be food for thought. They are still taking it in, still processing the information, mulling over the credentials, thinking it through.
For a few it will resonate, and encourage. They too are counter-narrative.
I was already persuaded, before ever I heard of Dr Hodgkinson, and before the Great Barrington Declaration was published, and before Andrew Mather explained the overlap between exponential curves and normal ones. So you can put me in the ‘resonating and encouraged’ category.
“Don’t confuse me with the facts. My mind’s made up.”
If that’s you, and you’re a masker, Tom’s charts won’t change anything.
If you’re open to the evidence, I think these charts are compelling. (The link provides more than a dozen. I have posted just two.)
And once you admit that maybe masks don’t ‘stop the spread’, you might give more thought to the negative effects of this misinformed and counterproductive policy.
Have we learned nothing from the Romanian orphans?
