‘There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”’ Isaac Asimov.
“I would prefer to be honest, even against my own interests.” Professor Peter Duesberg – Molecular biologist discoverer of retroviruses like HIV. Dissenter from the orthodoxy that there is a singular viral cause of AIDS.
Does anyone else think it strange that the BBC constantly provided critics of the hypothesis of human-caused Climate Change, often people with no scientific background, in equal number to the scientists who supported the hypothesis, for ‘balance’, but are now incapable of providing a voice for the huge number of doctors and scientists criticising the current orthodoxy regarding SARS-CoV-2 Covid 19?
After all, both Climate Change and Covid are killing people and there is much less of a scientific probabilistic ‘consensus’ regarding the current management of Covid than there has been regarding Climate Change.
Kary Mullis, the man who created the PCR test stated that it should never be used as a diagnostic test to define ‘cases’ as it is over sensitive and can recognise the debris of dead retroviral material, remember that 8-10% of normal human DNA is originally derived from a retroviral source, as being part of the viral load. I.E. inert and completely safe viral material is found and can be misrepresented as if it were a dangerous active virus. Also, the PCR test can detect an active virus at such low loads that it would indicate that the immune system is dealing with, or even has dealt with, the virus perfectly adequately. That in either situation the individual is in no way a medical ‘case’. Yet despite this fact governments are using the PCR test in order to define cases! Why?
Emergent evidence seems to be indicating that the ‘vaccines’ have limited utility, certainly in preventing transmission and infection and that their effects are of limited duration with diminishing returns as the number of injections increases. I.E. the significant effect of the first inoculation seems to usually last a little more than six months, the second inoculation for three months or so and the third for six weeks or so (Clancy). It should be noted here that although there appears to be a protective effect from the most serious potential consequences of Covid, especially within this time frame, the ‘vaccines’ do not absolutely protect against hospitalisation (see Public Health Scotland, (PHS), data) as the majority of people now hospitalised with Covid have been vaccinated, the highest single group of hospitalised Covid patients being the double vaccinated. Also, there is now clear evidence that ‘natural immunity’ is superior to immunity via vaccination.
This being the case why is there such a push to vaccinate everyone, whether they are in a vulnerable category or not or have had Covid or not? Why? This being the case why was the unethical and probably illegal, at the very least it contravenes the Nuremberg Code, mandating of vaccines ever considered? Why?
To date under 18,000 otherwise fit and healthy British people have died from Covid and only Covid. This is a tragedy that has to be addressed and dealt with. Yet many have died with Covid and with Covid probably taking them over the edge. They were people with co-morbidities who were very vulnerable to Covid, or any other significant virus, and they are just as important and significant as anyone else.
Many of these people probably had low vitamin D levels according to internationally derived data, many had poor overall metabolic health and had diabetes, high blood pressure and chronic health problems indicative of a compromised or dysfunctional immune system.
What is happening is that the vaccines are being characterised as some kind of protective panacea, which there is no clear or definitive evidence of them actually being, whilst the causes of vulnerability are being entirely neglected. The key question of ‘why were some people so close to the edge that Covid pushed them over?’ is not being asked. Why?
The most recent research indicates that lockdowns were probably useless at best and possibly increased Covid infection rates whilst promoting a host of other health and social problems, from increasing deaths from non-Covid causes, increasing mental illness, increasing violence against women, primarily, and also the abuse of children. At the same time promoting fearful compliance in the population. The ‘Today’ programme reported on some of this research, on one scientific paper this morning (03/02/2022) although there is an AIER publication from December 2020 (yes that’s 2020, over 12 months ago) noting 35 scientific papers in publication regarding the ineffectiveness of lock-downs. Why are the media apparently so sluggish in drawing public attention to such factual/probabilistic research evidence? Why?
The Cochrane Collaboration have published at least two Cochrane Reviews indicating the relative uselessness of masks in terms of preventing infection. (Jefferson et al. 2020) Why has this not even been discussed in the media and why is this scientific information not being used to challenge proponents of masks? Why?
The American Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, (VAERS), is noted as only capturing up to 10% of all actual vaccine produced adverse events. This is a fact. VAERS has recorded over one million adverse events from the Covid vaccines including over 22,000 deaths in the USA. This is a fact. In the UK the UK Health Security Agency, (UKHSA), has recorded over 42,000 Covid vaccine adverse events. This is a fact. Why, is none of this apparently even open to discussion on UK mainstream media? Why is the BBC neglecting its duty to inform the public? Whose interests does this serve?
Pfizer’s own mRNA vaccine research was cut short, from the original inadequate six months to a mere three, when it showed that the vaccine appeared to produce a statistically insignificant actual effect on protecting people from Covid (this was misrepresented in the media) at the same time it was actually increasing deaths from all other causes (this was not brought to the attention of the media). Why does this fact seem to have never made it to the mainstream media, don’t they have researchers with relevant knowledge and skills?
When the podcast pundit Joe Rogan interviews dissenting scientists and doctors (Malone, McCullough) who have looked at the wider evidence base and have misgivings about the way Covid has been managed and want a balanced fact-based discussion regarding the evidence why is he being characterised and misrepresented as spreading ‘misinformation’? Why have mainstream media’s many instances of misinformation not been taken to task with the same rigour? Whose interests does this serve?
Since when was using disinterested scientific research and medical opinion to question other scientific research or medical opinion a crime? This is how science is supposed to work, via a dialectic based upon evidence in order to determine the highest probability as there is never a fixed and singular ultimate ‘truth’ in science. Why is ‘expert opinion’, which is merely opinion after all, being prioritised over research untainted by financial interests and over proper scientific refutation? Why?
Since when, in anywhere with pretensions to democracy, was it considered right to close down or cancel discussion, particularly informed discussion in order to create the illusion of a consensus when there is none? The real question being why is this being done, whose interests does this serve?
There is supposedly, and usually according to the right-wing and paradoxically authoritarian ‘libertarians’, an ever-shifting ‘woke’ perspective that seeks to cancel any dissent from its current narrative. This ‘woke’ perspective is largely based upon how some people ‘feel’ about something at the time and their preferred narrative at the time. Of course, the critics of ‘woke culture’ are really looking in the mirror and just do not like it when they are called on their ignorance and prejudice and are losing the power to impose the narrative that best serves their interests.
The supposedly ‘balanced’ debate on the BBC regarding Climate Change ranged a few dissenting scientists, sometimes without a truly relevant scientific background, and some entirely ignorant politicians with an entirely ideological perspective, against scientists who had spent their professional lives researching the climate and also scientists who had researched environmental degradation, ecological change, loss of diversity and extinction rates etc. as if their evidence was of the same weight, of exactly the same value. The BBC were rightly pulled up regarding this sleight-of-hand misrepresentation of the balance of probabilities.
No sensible person would argue that the same course should be taken with Covid however surely scientists and doctors of relatively equal knowledge and expertise but who differ could, and arguably should, be ranged against each other so that the public are fully informed and can make an informed decision, an informed choice? After all is this not an element of the BBC’s reason for existing? Why are the BBC, amongst the other media, presenting such a singularly biased perspective? Why?
Age-adjusted death rates per 100,000 were lower in 2020 than they were in 2008. This is just a fact derived from ONS data. This measure decreased from 2009 to 2019, but not exactly year on year, being particularly low in 2019 and this fact made the 5-year average unusually low, in terms of the last fifty years at least, for the 5 years before 2020. This too is just a fact. This being the case why were the public whipped up into a frenzy of fear regarding the supposedly particularly lethal effects of Covid 19 as a pandemic?
It should be noted that actual serious illness and mortality rates have been much lower than the initial modelling predictions, as was and is the case for AIDS as it happens.
In total contrast, the modelling for Climate Change has always underestimated the actual rate of change and the severity of the impacts of change resulting from human-caused Climate Change, with the seas, according to recent research, having passed the ‘point of no return’ in 2014. A fact apparently largely unheralded in the media, just a mention of this existence-threatening fact in a by-line in the Guardian yesterday! The effects of ingested micro-plastic particles on human health are both under-researched and under-reported but from the research already extant looks potentially devastating. The effects of female sex hormones in our drinking water and in the environment, only partly but, even so, significantly from women using ‘the pill’ is similarly almost a taboo topic as even to research it might be characterised as repression in another guise. Similarly, the effects of ‘modern’ intensive farming methods tend to be hidden with the government now pursuing deals with countries with lower protective measures, regarding the effects on human health, of the means they employ to produce food. Whose interests does this serve, certainly not UK farmers?
Why are the public not being whipped up into a frenzy of behaviour modifying fear by the media regarding this factual, scientific evidence that is, in reality, about a much greater threat to human existence than Covid. After all it is a matter of fact that the world’s human population increased from 2019 to 2022. Covid, unlike Climate Change, pollution and environmental degradation is not an existential threat. Whose interests does this misplacing of what should be the real cause of concern serve?
Covid is following the pattern identified in Farr’s graph regarding the London cholera epidemic of 1849. This pattern has possibly been ‘temporally displaced’ to create several ‘waves’ rather than one via the lockdowns or, more probably, each ‘wave’ is variant specific (AIER 2020). I.E. the Covid virus is doing what any new virus does. We have known this since 1849 at least and you might have thought that science and governments would have come up with a useful plan to deal with it by now that does not generate socio-economic and further health disasters, apparently not. Why are the mainstream media not taking the government and the scientists to task for this dereliction of its duty to protect the public? Whose interests have this dereliction served? Certainly not the interests of the majority.
Heaven forbid that science should do what it ought to do and challenge preferred narratives and fixed orthodoxies in speaking ‘truth to power’.
Admittedly there is an overly sensitive form of ‘cancel culture’ from ‘the bottom’, from people who have been demeaned, abused, manipulated and particularly exploited in a culture that has racist, misogynistic, class-biased/hierarchical roots and an economic system entirely based upon extractive exploitation, from the environment down to the individual worker. This over-sensitive need to redress wrongs and seek compensating power is understandable and, arguably, even excusable to an extent although it remains a problem regarding ‘free speech’.
However, the worst of ‘cancel culture, comes from ‘the top’, from those with wealth and power, those who largely – one way or another – control the media and seek to ‘cancel’, ‘de-platform’ any dissenting evidence, no matter how factual or scientifically rigorous the evidence is. Also to destroy anybody attempting to draw public attention to any factual evidence that might possibly undermine their wealth and power. Furthermore the rich and powerful seem determined to undermine and destroy anything that might question the system that creates their wealth and power or propose any possible alternative way of organising the economy and society. (A recent English Minister of Education suggested that books questioning the current capitalist model and suggesting alternatives should be banned from schools.) They are the true sources of misinformation as they seek to confuse and obfuscate via lies or partial ‘truths’ that they elevate to the level of inviolable truth as a matter of faith. Implying that science can be fixed at one point in support of one elite. This too is a lie that is totally anti-science.
There is no need to ask the question ‘why’, just look at the vast increase in differentials in wealth since the 1980’s with fewer and fewer owning more and more of the world’s wealth and having more and more power and control of the narrative in real terms. A shift creating an increasingly authoritarian global elite who really seem to believe that any rules should be only applied to others and not to them. Oborne’s ‘The Assault on Truth’ is arguably identifying just one little tip of the iceberg and from a partial perspective.
Last night’s ‘Moral Maze’ (02/02/2022) swiftly moved from Joe Rogan, who, in relation to Covid at least, tends to recruit and question dissenting relative ‘heavyweights’ around their understanding of the science and the wider objective evidence and/or their medical experience. Instead, the panel elected to choose ‘experts’ and then discuss freedom of speech and ‘cancel culture’ in relation to people’s subjective feelings regarding race, gender and with particular reference to a book regarding the expression of the author’s feelings regarding her experience. Safe ground for the factually ignorant as it was really all about matters of subjectively informed opinion and expression. This had little or no relevance to Rogan’s input into the Covid debate and yet the conclusions of some of the panel derided Rogan in assuming equivalence. Exactly demonstrating Asimov’s point. Without reference to well-informed people, the orthodox narrative in relation to Covid was indirectly maintained. What is the BBC playing at? Whose interests does it really serve?
To date, the management of the ‘Covid Pandemic’ has been wonderful for profits. Any evidence regarding alternatives to the current management model has either been buried or discredited, sometimes by research set up to fail and which carried the risk of killing people. Do not believe me read ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’ by Robert F. Kennedy Junior, ‘Pseudo Pandemic New Normal Technocracy’ by Iain Davis and even ‘Covid 19 and the Global Predators’ by Doctor Peter Breggin. If you cannot be bothered to read then look up Doctor Peter McCullough, if he has not been ‘cancelled’ for quoting inconvenient evidence and facts, as well as for his opinions, some of which I disagree with.
For the pharmaceutical industry, Covid has been business as usual on steroids, with public fear and a manufactured desperation, being the best ‘performance-enhancing drug’ possible. Normal safeguards have been thrown to the winds, adverse effect reporting minimised, misrepresented or just hidden if possible. (Look at the American Food and Drugs Administration, (FDA), taking just 100 days to make a decision to release the Pfizer vaccine whilst stating, originally, that it would take 75 years to release the data on which they based that decision due to photocopying problems! Corruption is hardly the applicable word!) This is turbo-charged profit-focused neo-liberal capitalism at its unfettered best.
It is obvious why the major long-term threat of Climate Change/environmental degradation is being brushed under the carpet, with the reality being ‘all talk and no action’, whilst the relatively minor threat of Covid 19 is being exaggerated and any discussion being suppressed in an attempt at ‘all action and no talk’.
Dealing with the environmental crisis will cost money and require a fundamental change from the environmentally and socially irresponsible form of capitalism that we have now, and accept as somehow ‘natural’ in an absurd piece of manipulated delusion. It means growing up, taking responsibility and changing the way we live, realistically quite radically. Who in the ‘developed world’ really wants that?
Exploiting the ‘disaster capitalism’ possibilities of the Covid pandemic makes the rich richer, as has been proved. The wealth of the ‘globalised’ pharmaceutical corporations, at the least, and the billionaires have increased massively, inequalities have accelerated. It has been wonderful for ‘crony capitalism’, passing public money to your mates for relatively useless PPE or other products, the biggest UK goldmine being ‘Test and Trace’, no wonder some people were having parties! Great times!
The two worst things, socio-politically speaking, have been:
Firstly the attacks of the ignorant, or partially informed, upon the ‘non-believers’ who have looked at the wider evidence base and question the narrative, and worse, act accordingly. Sometimes the ‘true believers’ are acting merely on the ‘say so’ of ‘experts’ with vested interests in the ‘narrative’, a narrative including the erroneous idea of a rigidly fixed ‘science’ of absolutes rather than probabilities.
Admittedly some of the ‘non-believers’ also have not bothered to look at the evidence and are acting on their feelings too. Feelings that fundamentally orbit around the idea that, as long as they can afford it, they should be able to do exactly what they want, especially if other people have to deal with the consequences. I consider this attitude as intolerable, but that is merely an opinion.
However, it usually appears that it is as if the ‘true believers’ consider it is unacceptable for other people to have free will and freedom of choice, indeed any form of sovereignty over their own body and responsibility for their own health. With no cognisance of the actual evidence (see ‘Pseudo Pandemic’ for starters) people exercising choice in the context of ‘informed consent’ and in line with the Nuremberg Code have been accused of selfish irresponsibility. Including by people completely invested in the individualistic selfish irresponsibility of contemporary consumer capitalism. Obviously, such people are completely blind to their own hypocrisy when their perception is of an immediate threat to themselves, or even to their perception of how (other) people ‘ought’ to be. Is this an acceptable position for people to take in regard to other people?
Secondly, there was Ian Duncan Smith’s assertion, in an interview, that he had no opinion regarding morality as this was entirely the province of religion and had nothing to do with politics. The implications of this are chilling. Outside of the religious sphere then the ideas of honesty, justice, truth, lies, right, wrong, criminality, duty, decency, and standards have no meaning, all that really matters is achieving your aims. Implicit in this is that you should not be censured in any way for anything you do if it achieves your aims. In this context all that matters is success. Did you profit in some way? Your personal ‘ends’, therefore, justify any ‘means’, justify anything you do.
Of course, it is exactly this kind of behaviour by the pharmaceutical corporations, (along with various governments seeking their own forms of ‘profit’), that is being criticised by Kennedy, Davis and Breggin listed above. Apparently, according to IDS, outside of religion this is the only logical way for a sensible person to behave, it is pragmatic and profitable. Therefore it is to be expected of the pharmaceutical corporations as they are almost entirely motivated by making profits, otherwise, they would not often charge thousands of dollars for patented medications whose research has been largely funded by the public via universities and costs a few dollars to produce. We can also expect such behaviour from self-interested academics whose careers, research grants and sometimes personal wealth, largely depends on the largesse of the pharmaceutical corporations. Nothing to see here, business as usual – see the books ‘Bad Pharma’ by Doctor Ben Goldacre and ‘Let Them Eat Prozac’ by Professor David Healy.
Only, for some magical reason and against the clear advice of IDS, this one time no one advocating or producing vaccines is motivated by anything other than noble sentiments surely? Any evidence indicating or even proving otherwise must be suppressed or somehow excused.
Even if the pharmaceutical corporations are doing the worst imaginable then the pragmatic person will buy shares in ‘Big Pharma’ and possibly a funeral directors. After all, profit is the thing, pragmatism the only sensible course and the only commandment worth considering is the 11th!
Forget about Covid deaths and what preventable, socio-economic/public health, factors made most of the people who died particularly vulnerable to being taken over the edge by Covid, ignore the increase in deaths from all other causes, at least some of which may have resulted from the vaccines themselves, forget about the people in fuel poverty and having to use food banks whilst the super-rich spend millions on just one of their homes. Forget about doing anything about Climate Change and your child being poisoned by pollutants in the environment including human faeces in our rivers and on our beaches. You never know it might all work out, or not, but if the worst is to happen after you are dead why should you care?
Are you personally alright and have enough food. If so everything is acceptable, as long as it does not directly affect you, Pastor Niemöller. Go on, just do as you are told and fit in, you keep your head down.
Is this level of cynical moral bankruptcy what we should aspire to in the UK today? In my mind, the only totally decisive argument for Scottish independence is to try to get as far away as possible from this cynicism and the socio-economic model and tendency to a wholly mercenary perspective that creates it, as identified in the book ‘The Erosion of Character’ published at the end of the 1980’s as I remember.
To date, sad to say, the SNP/Green combination provide little behavioural evidence for this kind of change. They have, in effect, selected their preferred ‘experts’ and not actively supported questioning or dissenting voices. This is so they can have a simple message and attempt to outmanoeuvre the execrable Johnson and co. while staying on-side with the mainstream media and the mainstream informed public.
The government has gone along with lockdowns, vaccine mandates for some workers, the useless vaccine passports and all the rest in an authoritarian lurch and with little or no convincing much less decisive science to underpin it. At the same time allowing the pharmaceutical corporations to be without liability for any negative effects of their drugs, with the government (I.E. public money, your money) taking a limited ‘vaccines liability’ that makes a person’s life worth £200,000 at the most. Also not, as far as I am aware, really drawing public attention to the fact that despite the mythology around ‘devolved powers’ the Westminster government had negotiated the demonstration of its rights over the bodies of Scottish citizens in its rush to be seen to obtain vaccines, any vaccine at all even ones with no long-term safety data.
Worst the Scottish government has not merely gone along with the vilification of the people who have asserted their human right to refuse a medical treatment, or who have referred to the evidence in order to ask inconveniently difficult questions, but has actively promoted the divisive aggression of ‘moral one-upmanship’ via a ‘more in sorrow than in hate’ misrepresentation of the people who do not wish to be vaccinated or have their children vaccinated and by the government’s willful ignoring of the wider evidence base. Even keeping quiet and not acting fully on the data provided via the official channels of Public Health Scotland, (PHS), the Office of National Statistics, (ONS) and the UK Health Security Agency, (UKHSA), much less the wider evidence base!
It is no virtue to be ‘on message’ when the message comprises half-truths, partial-truths, in both senses of the word, and ‘spin’ as if they were the whole truth. Where the underlying thought behind the message is that the public are too stupid to understand the complexity of the issues involved and cannot be trusted to be sensible and are too selfish to do what is ‘right’ for themselves and their neighbours. This is a combination of condescension and cynicism that should be alien to a government that believes in democracy. At the least a democratic government should respect the ‘demos’.
This suggests a future government intolerant of informed dissent, as anything that challenges their narrative will apparently be both misrepresented as ‘misinformation’ and suppressed via a governmental ‘cancel culture’. There is a vast amount of literature and dissenting research regarding Covid 19 that is easily available and you might have thought that it would be simple good sense for any government not just to rely on ‘the usual suspects’ (an appropriate term for ‘Big Pharma’) but rather to commission investigation to summarise this research and thus get informed so as to truly ‘act on the science’, changing policy as the science actually changes. There is suggestive international evidence that if they had done so there might have been fewer deaths overall in Scotland from late 2019 to 2022. (N.B. UK compare Belarus, Kenya, compare Israel, high vaccinations, with Palestine, low vaccinations. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ .)
Now we will never know and the evidence that this might have been the case is unlikely to appear in any government report on the management of Covid in Scotland, certainly not in England. If it does the excuses will include, ‘a big scientist made us do it and ran away’ and ‘this is new research, we did not know this at the time’ – even though there were dissenting voices from the very beginning and clear illustrations from some other countries after the first lockdown and that most of the pharmaceutical corporations involved had an acknowledged track record for breaking the law, falsifying data, rigging research, marketing suspect drugs in order to maximise profits and that there was no evidence that they would not use panic over Covid 19 in order to do the same. (See both ‘Bad Pharma’ and ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’.)
Indeed the evidence was that the pharmaceutical corporations would definitely do the same as they always do, as their previous behaviour indicates that they share exactly the same belief structure as IDS. Any sensible government would prioritise looking in-depth for, and at, any evidence questioning ‘Big Pharma’s’ pronouncements regarding their research. Nor do any ‘investigative journalists’ in our much-vaunted fearless ‘free press’ and largely billionaire owned media seem particularly interested. Instead, they demonstrate an all too ready and lazy preference for acting as de facto advertising for the pharmaceutical corporations and slavishly following the government Covid narrative without question. At best referencing a conveniently limited section of ‘the science’ as if it was some all-encompassing eternally fixed edifice.
People who do stick their heads above the parapet, even in a limited and fairly mainstream way totally referencing methodologically sound science and government data rather than opinion, get sniped at usually by people who seem almost proud of their inability to look at scientific literature and investigate at depth. More evidence of our current gutless moral bankruptcy and the anti-intellectual preference for deeply felt ignorance and prejudice over knowledge, as Asimov noted about America.
In a democracy we need a government that has some expansive idealism, rather than a narrow ideology, and seeks to educate and promote the best in all of us, that values all its citizens and is aspirational regarding the potential of each citizen to contribute to the whole. We will be destroyed by any government that regards its citizens with condescendingly cynical eyes, from a manipulative, divisive, exploitative or even a paternalistic perspective.
Much as I believe in and wish for Scottish independence I cannot see how the way the Scottish government has managed the Covid 19 situation bodes particularly well. I hope that they will do better, as both the SNP and Green manifestos have their hearts in the right place, and that I will prove wrong in the long term. All the same, Saor Alba.
Mick Skelly MSc. MCSP.
lochofathousandwinds 