#covid

Covid-19: Appeals Court finds mandatory confinement based on PCR test unlawful

Posted on by hk80u

The statement

‘Lisbon Court of Appeal 11 Nov 20 ruling finds PCR non-test is not a reliable test for anything least of all COVID-19.’

The source

Funnily enough I found this via a link in a blog comment relating to the Johns Hopkins University censorship episode reported on here earlier.

The link takes you to an English translation of a judgment of the Lisbon Court of Appeal (in Portuguese) :  http://www.dgsi.pt/jtrl.nsf/33182fc732316039802565fa00497eec/79d6ba338dcbe5e28025861f003e7b30

The Habeas Corpus case relates to four individuals who were mandatorily confined after one of them tested positive for Covid-19.  They sought relief against the relevant regional health authority.


My take on it

The translation has its challenges, but I have gleaned a few points:

  • ‘A diagnosis is a medical act, the sole responsibility of a doctor.’
  • ‘The prescription of auxiliary diagnostic methods (as is the case of tests for the detection of viral infection), as well as the diagnosis of the existence of a disease, in relation to any and all people, is a matter that cannot be carried out by Law, Resolution, Decree, Regulation or any other normative way, as these are acts that our legal system reserves to the exclusive competence of a doctor, being sure that, in advising his patient, he should always try to obtain their informed consent.’
  • Any diagnosis or any act of health surveillance performed without prior medical observation of the patients and without the intervention of an enrolled physician (who proceeded to assess their signs and symptoms, as well as the tests that they deemed appropriate to their condition), violates Regulations and Statutes.
  • Any person or entity that issues an order, the content of which leads to deprivation of physical, ambulatory, freedom of others (whatever the nomenclature this order assumes: confinement, isolation, quarantine, prophylactic protection, health surveillance, etc.), that does not fit the legal provisions, namely in the provisions of article 27 of the Constitution of the Republic of Portugal, he will be proceeding to an illegal detention.
  • ‘The RT-PCR test is, in itself, unable to determine, beyond reasonable doubt, that positivity corresponds, in fact, to the infection of a person by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, for several reasons.’
  • ‘The legislative turmoil generated around the containment of the spread of COVID-19 had – and will continue to have – in its raison d’être the protection of public health, but this turmoil can never harm the right to freedom and security and, ultimately, the absolute right to human dignity.’

Covid-19: ‘Relatively no effect on deaths in the United States’

Posted on by hk80u

The statement

‘Johns Hopkins published this study on Sunday which posits that Covid is nowhere near the disaster we’re being told it is. I would summarize it for you or offer pull-quotes but honestly you just have to read it yourself because it’s mind-blowing. The original article is now deleted from the Johns Hopkins website … for some reason. Luckily the internet is forever and it’s available via the Wayback Machine.’

Following are just  two paragraphs from that article:

‘According to new data, the U.S. currently ranks first in total COVID-19 cases, new cases per day and deaths. Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Hopkins, critically analyzed the effect of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in her webinar titled “COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data.”

…..

These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.’



The source

Doc Holliday, writing about Professor Genevieve Briand (https://notthebee.com/article/a-few-days-ago-johns-hopkins-published-a-study-saying-corona-is-nbd-they-then-deleted-it-read-it-here-in-its-entirety)

Dr Genevieve Briand is Assistant Director for the Master’s in Applied Economics program at Johns Hopkins University. 

On 22 November 2020 the Johns Hopkins News-Letter reported on a webinar presented by Briand entitled ‘COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data.’

Four days later the News-Letter removed the article from its website.  The reasoning?

‘It was brought to our attention that our coverage of Genevieve Briand’s presentation ‘COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data’ has been used to support dangerous inaccuracies that minimize the impact of the pandemic.  We decided on Nov. 26 to retract this article to stop the spread of misinformation, as we noted on social media. However, it is our responsibility as journalists to provide a historical record. We have chosen to take down the article from our website, but it is available here as a PDF.’


My take on it

I agree with ‘Doc Holliday’ that the article is well worth reading.  This is precisely the sort of analysis that we need in order to restore some perspective to the discussion. 

Universities are supposed to be seats of learning, and discovery, and debate.  This censorial behaviour does not honour that purpose.  What it does do is protect and enshrine the status quo, and serve vested interests.

Is it coincidental that JHU hosted ‘Event 201, A Global Pandemic Exercise’, in October 2019?  The participants in that simulation exercise openly discussed the challenge of keeping public commentators ‘on message’.  Strategies include social media becoming active participants that can ‘flood the zone’ in order to displace discordant information.  (And we have certainly witnessed that.) 

But who gets to decide what is accurate?  Clearly not ourselves, if that option is being taken out of our hands.

Covid-19: “The virus is not new, and neither is the disease.”

Posted on by hk80u

The statement

“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.

I believe there is a case for a T-shirt that says

I am positive

I have Corona virus.

And on the back?

Free hug.

“The PCR test cannot be used to diagnose anything.”

Posted on by hk80u

The statement

”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.

(And No, I am not a doctor.)