Authored by Joseph Mercola via LewRockwell.com,

From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the clarion call has been to test, test and test some more. However, right from the start, serious questions arose about the tests being used to diagnose this infection, and questions have only multiplied since then.

Positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests have been used as the justification for keeping large portions of the world locked down for the better part of 2020.

This, despite the fact that PCR tests have proven remarkably unreliable with high false result rates, and aren’t designed to be used as a diagnostic tool in the first place as they cannot distinguish between inactive viruses and “live” or reproductive ones.

Dr. Mike Yeadon, former vice president and scientific director of Pfizer, has even gone on record stating that false positive results from unreliable PCR tests are being used to “manufacture a ‘second wave’ based on ‘new cases,’” when in fact a second wave is highly unlikely.

Understanding PCR Tests

Before his death, the inventor of the PCR test, Kary Mullis, repeatedly yet unsuccessfully stressed that this test should not be used as a diagnostic tool for the simple reason that it’s incapable of diagnosing disease.

A positive test does not actually mean that an active infection is present. As noted in a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and prevention publication on coronavirus and PCR testing dated July 13 2020:

• Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms.
• The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019-nCoV infection.
• This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.

So, what does the PCR test actually tell us? The PCR swab collects RNA from your nasal cavity. This RNA is then reverse transcribed into DNA. However, the genetic snippets are so small they must be amplified in order to become discernible. Each round of amplification is called a cycle.

Amplification over 35 cycles is considered unreliable and scientifically unjustified, yet Drosten tests and tests recommended by the World Health Organization are set to 45 cycles.

What this does is amplify any, even insignificant sequences of viral DNA that might be present to the point that the test reads “positive,” even if the viral load is extremely low or the virus is inactive. As a result of these excessive cycle thresholds, you end up with a far higher number of positive tests than you would otherwise.

We’ve also had problems with faulty and contaminated tests. As soon as the genetic sequence for SARS-CoV-2 became available in January 2020, German researchers quickly developed a PCR test for the virus.

In March 2020, The New York Times reported the initial test kits developed by the CDC had been found to be flawed. The Verge also reported that this flawed CDC test in turn became the basis for the WHO’s test, which the CDC ended up refusing to use.

PCR Tests Cannot Detect Infection

Perhaps most importantly of all, the PCR tests cannot distinguish between inactive viruses and “live” or reproductive ones.

What that means is that PCR tests cannot detect infection. Period. It cannot tell you whether you’re currently ill, whether you’ll develop symptoms in the near future, or whether you’re contagious.

The tests may pick up dead debris or inactive viral particles that pose no risk whatsoever to the patient and others. What’s more, the test can pick up the presence of other coronaviruses, so a positive result may simply indicate that you’ve recuperated from a common cold in the past.

An “infection” is when a virus penetrates into a cell and replicates. As the virus multiplies, symptoms set in. A person is only infectious if the virus is actually replicating. As long as the virus is inactive and not replicating, it’s completely harmless both to the host and others.

Chances are, if you have no symptoms, a positive test simply means it has detected inactive viral DNA in your body. This would also mean that you are not contagious and pose no risk to anyone.

For all of these reasons, a number of highly respected scientists around the world are now saying that what we have is not a COVID-19 pandemic but a PCR test pandemic. In his September 20, 2020, article5 “Lies, Damned Lies and Health Statistics — The Deadly Danger of False Positives,” Yeadon explains why basing our pandemic response on positive PCR tests is so problematic.

In short, it appears millions of people are simply being found to carry inactive viral DNA that pose no risk to anyone, yet these test results are being used by the global technocracy to implement a brand new economic and social system based on draconian surveillance and totalitarian controls.

Artificially Created Justifications for Totalitarian Controls

As reported by The Vaccine Reaction, September 29, 2020:

“The test’s threshold is so high that it detects people with the live virus as well as those with a few genetic fragments left over from a past infection that no longer poses a risk. It’s like finding a hair in a room after a person left it, says Michael Mina, MD, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90% of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The New York Times found…

‘We’ve been using one type of data for everything, and that is just plus or minus — that’s all,’ Dr. Mina said. ‘We’re using that for clinical diagnostics, for public health, for policy decision-making.’

But ‘yes’ or ‘no’ isn’t good enough, he added. It’s the amount of virus that should dictate the infected patient’s next steps. ‘It’s really irresponsible, I think, to forgo the recognition that this is a quantitative issue,’ Dr. Mina said.”

Again, medical experts agree any cycle threshold over 35 cycles makes the test too sensitive, as at that point it starts picking up harmless inactive DNA fragments. Mina believes a more reasonable cutoff would be 30 or less.

According to The New York Times, the CDC’s own calculations show it’s extremely unlikely to detect live viruses in samples that have gone through more than 33 cycles, and research published in April 2020 concluded patients with positive PCR tests that had a cycle threshold above 33 were not contagious and could safely be discharged from the hospital or home isolation.

Importantly, when officials at the New York state laboratory, the Wadsworth Center, reanalyzed testing data at The Times’ request, they found that changing the threshold from 40 cycles to 35 cycles eliminated about 43% of the positive results. Limiting it to 30 cycles eliminated a whopping 63%. The Vaccine Reaction adds:

“In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90% of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles, Dr. Mina said. ‘I would say that none of those people should be contact-traced, not one,’ he said.

‘I’m really shocked that it could be that high — the proportion of people with high CT value results,’ said Ashish Jha, MD, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. ‘Boy, does it really change the way we need to be thinking about testing’…

In late August, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first rapid coronavirus test that doesn’t need any special computer equipment. Made by Abbot Laboratories, the 15-minute test [BinaxNOW] will sell for U.S. $5 but still requires a nasal swab to be taken by a health worker.

The Abbot test is the fourth rapid point-of-care test that looks for the presence of antigens rather than the virus’s genetic code as the PCR molecular tests do.“

Massive Waste of Resources

As noted by Dr. Tom Jefferson and professor Carl Henegan in an October 31, 2020, article in the Daily Mail,16 mass PCR testing has been a massive waste or resources, as it doesn’t provide us with the information we actually need to know — who’s infectious, how far is the virus spreading and how fast does it spread?

Instead, it has led to economic devastation from business shutdowns and isolating noninfectious people in their homes for weeks and months on end. Jefferson and Henegan claim they shared their pandemic response plan with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson over a month ago, and just presented it to him again. “We urge him to pay attention and embrace it,” they write, adding:

“There are only two things about which we can be certain: first, that lockdowns do not work in the long term… The idea that a month of economic hardship will permit some sort of ‘reset’, allowing us a brighter future, is a myth. What, when it ends, do we think will happen? Meanwhile, ever-increasing restrictions will destroy lives and livelihoods.

The second certainty is this: that we need to find a way out of the mess that does no more damage than the virus itself… Our strategy would be to tackle the four key failings.”

These four areas are:

1. Addressing the problems in the government’s mass testing program
2. Addressing “the blight of confused and contradictory statistics”
3. Protect and isolate the vulnerable — primarily the elderly, but also hospitalized patients in general and staff — while allowing the rest to maintain “some semblance of normal life”
4. Inform the public about the true and quantifiable costs of lockdown that “kill people just as surely as COVID-19”

“If we do these things, there is real hope that we can learn to live with the virus. That, after all, was supposed to be the plan,” Jefferson and Henegan note. With regard to testing, the pair call “for a national program of testing quality control to ensure that results are accurate, precise and consistent.”

Importantly, we must not rely on positive/negative readings alone. The results must be assessed in relation to other factors, such as the age of the subject and whether they are symptomatic, to determine who actually poses an infectious risk. You can review the full details of their proposed plan at the end of their Daily Mail article.

Lockdown Dangers Have Been Kept Out of Public Discussion

Jefferson and Henegan aren’t the only ones highlighting the fact that the global lockdown strategy is causing more harm and destruction than the virus itself. In a June 16, 2020 article in The Federalist, James Lucas, a New York City attorney, wrote:18

“If we’re going to allow models and modelers to dictate the entire nature of our society, one would hope that the models are as complete as possible. Yet the epidemiological models that have so transformed our world are seriously incomplete, and therefore fundamentally inadequate.

Any medical therapy is supposed to be tested for both efficacy and safety. There have been several studies examining the effectiveness of the lockdowns in combating the spread of the COVID-19 virus, with mixed conclusions.

So far, however, none of these studies or models have analyzed the safety side of the lockdown therapy. In response to questions from physician Sens. Rand Paul and Bill Cassidy, Dr. Anthony Fauci admits this side of the equation has not been accounted for in the models now driving our world.

As noted in an open letter recently signed by more than 600 health-care professionals, the public health costs from the lockdowns — described as a ‘mass casualty incident’ are real and growing.

These models are estimations based on existing research. The constantly changing projections of coronavirus deaths are extrapolations from research on previous epidemics. Yet modelers have no excuse for leaving evaluations of the lockdowns’ massive costs to public health out of their models.”

The Hidden Costs of Lockdowns

How does the “lockdown therapy” affect public safety? In his article, Lucas highlights the following:

Increased chronic disease rates due to unemployment, poverty and putting non-COVID medical care on hold — Research23 by the Veterans Administration has shown delaying cancer treatment for just one month led to a 20% increase in mortality. Another study found each one-month delay in breast cancer diagnosis increased mortality by 10%

Increased rates of mental health problems due to unemployment and isolation

Increased mortality rates from suicide — In one study, being unemployed was associated with a twofold to threefold higher relative risk of suicide. A more recent study estimates “deaths of despair” linked to lockdowns may be around 75,000 in the U.S.

Reduced collective life span — Extended unemployment is also associated with shorter, unhealthier lives. Hannes Schwandt, a health economics researcher at Northwestern University, estimates an extended economic shutdown could shorten the lifespan of 6.4 million Americans entering the job market by an average of about two years. Lucas notes:

“If epidemiologists don’t care to take account of this toll, another profession must. A study28 just released by a group of South African actuaries estimates that the net reduction in lifespan from increased unemployment and poverty due to a national lockdown will exceed the increased lifespan due to lives saved from COVID-19 by the lockdown by a factor of 30 to 1.

In other words, each year of additional life attributable to isolating potential coronavirus victims in the lockdown comes at a cost of 30 years lost due to the negative public health effects of a lockdown…”

Lack of education is also associated with significantly shorter life spans and poorer health. High school drop-outs die on average nine years sooner than college graduates, and school closings disproportionally affect poorer students.

Who Pays the Most?

As noted by Lucas, in addition to calculating the overall costs on society, modelers must also determine “on whom those costs fall,” because the costs are not borne equally by all. The consequences of the lockdowns disproportionally affect those who are already the most vulnerable — financially and health wise — such as those living near the poverty line, the chronically ill, people with mental illness and minorities in general.

“Contrary to the PR slogan, we are NOT all in this together,” Lucas writes. “We need less insipid pro-lockdown propaganda extolling the virtues of the ‘essential’ workers, and more serious analysis of the enormous public health toll the lockdowns are imposing on them. Otherwise, we may come to see the era of coronavirus as simply the time where pro-lockdown elites sacrificed the working class31 to protect themselves.”

A Pandemic of Fearmongering

An October 28, 2020, article featured by the Ron Paul Institute points out that:

“Ever since the alleged pandemic erupted this past March the mainstream media has spewed a non-stop stream of misinformation that appears to be laser focused on generating maximum fear among the citizenry.

But the facts and the science simply don’t support the grave picture painted of a deadly virus sweeping the land. Yes, we do have a pandemic, but it’ a pandemic of ginned up pseudo-science masquerading as unbiased fact.”

Nine facts that can be backed up with data “paints a very different picture from the fear and dread being relentlessly drummed into the brains of unsuspecting citizens,” the article states. In addition to the fact that PCR testing is practically useless, for all the reasons already mentioned, these data-backed facts include:

1. A positive test is NOT a “case” — As explained by Dr. Lee Merritt in her August 2020 Doctors for Disaster Preparedness33 lecture, featured in “How Medical Technocracy Made the Plandemic Possible,” media and public health officials appear to have purposefully conflated “cases” or positive tests with the actual illness.

Medically speaking, a “case” refers to a sick person. It never ever referred to someone who had no symptoms of illness. Now all of a sudden, this well-established medical term, “case,” has been completely and arbitrarily redefined to mean someone who tested positive for the presence of viral RNA. As noted by Merritt, “That is not epidemiology. That’s fraud.”

2. According to the CDC34 and other research data,35 the COVID-19 survival rate is over 99%, and the vast majority of deaths occur in those over 70, which is close to normal life expectancy.

3. CDC analysis reveals 85% of patients testing positive for COVID-19 wore face masks “often” or “always” in the two weeks preceding their positive test. As noted in the Ron Paul article,36 “The only rational conclusion from this study is that cloth face masks offer little if any protection from Covid-19 infection.”

4. There are inexpensive, proven successful therapies for COVID-19 — Examples include various regimens involving hydroxychloroquine with zinc and antibiotics, quercetin-based protocols, the MATH+ protocol and nebulized hydrogen peroxide.

5. The death rate has not risen despite pandemic deaths — Data37,38 show the overall all-cause mortality has remained steady during 2020 and doesn’t veer from the norm. In other words, COVID-19 has not killed off more of the population than would have died in any given year anyway.

As noted in the Ron Paul article, “According to the CDC as of early May 2020 the total number of deaths in the US was 944,251 from January 1 — April 30th. This is actually slightly lower than the number of deaths during the same period in 2017 when 946,067 total deaths were reported.”

15,000 Doctors and Scientists Call for End to Lockdowns

All in all, there are many reasons to suspect that continued lockdowns, social distancing and mask mandates are completely unnecessary and will not significantly alter the course of this pandemic illness, or the final death count.

And, with regard to universal PCR testing where individuals are tested every two weeks or even more frequently, whether they have symptoms or not, this is clearly a pointless effort that yields useless data. It’s just a tool to spread fear, which in turn allows for the rapid implementation of the totalitarian control mechanisms required to pull off The Great Reset. Fortunately, more and more people are now starting to see through this plot.

About 45,000 scientists and doctors worldwide have already signed the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for the end to all lockdowns and implementation of a herd immunity approach to the pandemic, meaning governments should allow people who are not at significant risk of serious COVID-19 illness to go back to normal life, as the lockdown approach is having a devastating effect on public health — far worse than the virus itself. The declaration states:

“Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health…

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to coronavirus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this focused protection.”

The declaration points out that current lockdown policies will result in excess mortality in the future, primarily among younger people and the working class. As of November 5, 2020, The Great Barrington Declaration had been signed by 11,791 medical and public health scientists, 33,903 medical practitioners and 617,685 “concerned citizens.”

German trial lawyer Reiner Fuellmich follows up on his initial announcement of class-action lawsuits against perpetrators of what he calls the pandemic hoax. He summarizes the main charges that he says easily will be proved through the process of discovery and witness cross examination in court. He will prove that (1) Whatever is causing the symptoms attributed to COVID-19 causes no more hospitalization or death than the seasonal flu; (2) The commonly used PCR test is incapable of detecting COVID-19; and (3) The sole purpose of PCR testing is to generate large numbers false-positive results that can be called “cases” and which will frighten the population into passively accepting vaccines and a restructuring of society without question. Interviewed by Patrick Bet-David. 2020 November 13, 2020 –

See also Dr. Fuellmich’s presentation here: German Corona Investigative Committee.

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

We would by now have expected the narrative surrounding COVID19 to be simpler to understand, but it’s not. We may understand much more about the disease and everything that has to do with it, but we’re finding there is so much that has been left unsaid, not discussed, neglected.

The discussion has been stuck in an All Else Being Equal (Ceteris Paribus) mode, but all things do not remain equal. It’s not even as if you get rid of the disease, all your problems go away. Not only do various COVID measures inflict huge damage on economies, on people’s jobs and incomes, they also cause entire new sets of health problems.

Epidemiologists and virologists are not equipped for such massive problems. They may be able to say the odd wise word in their field -and even that will be 90% rear-view mirror stuff, because they must compare what they see to what happened in the past-, but the disease doesn’t only affect their field. It affects many fields they have no knowledge of.

Their ideas are then taken on board by economists, not exactly the most scientific of sciences, and off go the government policies. But that was 6-7 months ago, and we learned so much since, right? By now we have involved for instance mental health experts on a large scale, right? Yeah, sure.

The point is, you can’t force lockdowns, masks etc. onto people, without looking at what the consequences of that will be. Because all things do not remain equal for 6-7 months.

A nice example comes from a July 2020 study published in the Lancet, which indicates that “..the number of smokers in a population was correlated with a 3% decrease in covid deaths.. Wow, that’s great. Let’s get everybody smoking, said … nobody. But if your sole focus is COVID19, and for many governments it is, why not? That’s of course because smoking is one thing people recognize as “bad”. But how about other things, that are not?

That same Lancet study, as interpreted by a Sebastian Rushworth MD, also says there is no proof that lockdowns work:

Does Lockdown Prevent COVID Deaths?

The factors that most strongly predicted the number of people who died of covid in a country were rate of obesity, average age, and level of income disparity. Each percentage point increase in the rate of obesity resulted in a 12% increase in covid deaths. Each additional average year of age in the population increased covid deaths by 10% . On the opposite end of the spectrum, each point in the direction of greater equality on the gini-coefficient (a scale used to determine how evenly resources are distributed across a population) resulted in a 12% decrease in covid deaths. All these results were statistically significant.

Another factor that had an effect that was significant, but more weakly so, was smoking. Each percentage point increase in the number of smokers in a population was correlated with a 3% decrease in covid deaths. Ok, let’s get to the most important thing, which the authors seem to have tried to hide, because they make so little mention of it. Lockdown and covid deaths. The authors found no correlation whatsoever between severity of lockdown and number of covid deaths. And they didn’t find any correlation between border closures and covid deaths either. And there was no correlation between mass testing and covid deaths either, for that matter. Basically, nothing that various world governments have done to combat covid seems to have had any effect whatsoever on the number of deaths.

Which is intriguing, because countries like France, Belgium, Netherlands appear to have had spectacular success with their recent new lockdowns.

Problem is, you can’t lock down countries and people forever. And if the coronavirus has become endemic in the population, the “success” would seem to be inevitably short-lived. In the Netherlands just now, numbers were announced that already are 15% or so up from the 24 hours before. What if a lockdown is not the answer, or not anymore at least? I don’t have the impression that there is a Plan B.

But it would appear to be useful to by now stop throwing all “cases” on one heap, and find a better definition, for instance “positive PCR tests”. Or even “positive PCR tests that require medical attention.” And you will also have to define much better who requires that attention, and who dies. If you’re talking, say 90%, only about people who are either very old and/or have severe underlying conditions, maybe a general lockdown is not your thing.

Maybe you should aim to protect these vulnerable groups, and leave the rest alone. Maybe obese people, who are very much at risk, should be locked down, but not their fit and slimmer neighbors. Maybe you should ban food that causes obesity and diabetes, maybe you should hand out Vitamin D to everybody. Maybe you should simply accept that some people are going to die of the disease.

Whatever else you do, maybe you should prepare for the risk that the virus is endemic, and it’s here to stay. And then take it from there. Because, for one thing, it’s not all that obvious, it’s all still riddled with misconceptions. Renowned medical site medrxiv.org has this:

Association Between Living With Children And Outcomes From COVID-19

Close contact with children may provide cross-reactive immunity to SARs-CoV-2 due to more frequent prior coryzal infections from seasonal coronaviruses. Alternatively, close contact with children may increase risk of SARs-CoV-2 infection. We investigated whether risk of infection with SARs-CoV-2 and severe outcomes differed between adults living with and without children.

This is the first population-based study to investigate whether the risk of recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe outcomes from COVID-19 differ between adults living in households with and without school-aged children during the UK pandemic. Our findings show that for adults living with children there is no evidence of an increased risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes although there may be a slightly increased risk of recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection for working-age adults living with children aged 12 to 18 years.

Working-age adults living with children 0 to 11 years have a lower risk of death from COVID-19 compared to adults living without children, with the effect size being comparable to their lower risk of death from any cause. We observed no consistent changes in risk of recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe outcomes from COVID-19 comparing periods before and after school closure. [..] Our results demonstrate no evidence of serious harms from COVID-19 to adults in close contact with children, compared to those living in households without children. This has implications for determining the benefit-harm balance of children attending school in the COVID-19 pandemic.

And yesterday we had this from Reuters:

“Anxiety, depression and insomnia were most common among recovered COVID-19 patients…and the researchers also found significantly higher risks of dementia…”

One of the Automatic Earth’s in-house doctors, Doc Robinson, rightly said qualifying insomnia as a mental illness is a very broad stroke. Whereas my attention was drawn to this line:

“.. people with a pre-existing mental illness were 65% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19..”

How does that work? Why would you be 65% more likely to catch COVID, or be diagnosed with it, if you’re already depressed? Depressed people are more likely to attend Trump rallies? Or Biden celebrations?

One In Five COVID19 Patients Develop Mental Illness Within 90 Days

Many COVID-19 survivors are likely to be at greater risk of developing mental illness, psychiatrists said on Monday, after a large study found 20% of those infected with the coronavirus are diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within 90 days. Anxiety, depression and insomnia were most common among recovered COVID-19 patients in the study who developed mental health problems, and the researchers also found significantly higher risks of dementia, a brain impairment condition. “People have been worried that COVID-19 survivors will be at greater risk of mental health problems, and our findings … show this to be likely,” said Paul Harrison, a professor of psychiatry at Britain’s Oxford University.

[..] The study also found that people with a pre-existing mental illness were 65% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those without. Mental health specialists not directly involved with the study said its findings add to growing evidence that COVID-19 can affect the brain and mind, increasing the risk of a range of psychiatric illnesses. “This is likely due to a combination of the psychological stressors associated with this particular pandemic and the physical effects of the illness,” said Michael Bloomfield, a consultant psychiatrist at University College London.

As I said two days ago:

“Just lovely! If you catch COVID, you get mental health issues. And if you go into lockdown so you don’t catch COVID….you also get mental health issues.”

Children Regressing And Struggling Mentally In Lockdown

Children hardest hit by Covid-19 measures have regressed during the pandemic, with some who were potty-trained pre-lockdown reverting to nappies and dummies, and others forgetting basic numbers or how to use a knife and fork, according to the schools watchdog Ofsted. Older children have lost physical fitness as well as reading and writing skills, and some are showing signs of mental distress, which can be seen in an increase in eating disorders and self-harm, according to Ofsted’s chief inspector, Amanda Spielman.

[…]

The findings, based on 900 visits to schools and social care settings by Ofsted inspectors since schools fully reopened in September, paint a worrying picture of the impact of the pandemic on children at every stage of the education system in England. While children with good support structures have coped well, those whose parents were unable to work flexibly and have therefore been less available to help have lost out most. Children with special educational needs and disabilities have been “seriously affected” across all age groups, both in their care and education, losing vital support including speech and language services.

Lockdowns are based on pretending we can make time stand still. That, like in one of those slick videos, everything else stops moving while you can walk around it. All Else Being Equal. It never is, not for 6-7 months. And that the first lockdown didn’t work, at least not for long, should perhaps be a lesson. Maybe you should look for answers elsewhere. Because the damage just goes on, economically, psychologically, physically.

I’m not pretending I have the answers. I do have questions though. While the situation reminds me of Sisyphus, forced by Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. Every time he nears the top of the hill, the boulder rolls back down.

We need to find a balance between the threat of COVID19 and the threat of everything else, very much including those things that are caused by our approach to COVID.

via RT

Three airline trade groups are calling for the adoption of digital health passports like the World Economic Forum- and Rockefeller-backed CommonPass in place of the quarantines and border closures that have slashed their profits.

Oneworld, Star Alliance, and SkyTeam – three of the largest global airline groups which together represent 60 percent of the world’s passenger air capacity – issued a statement praising smartphone-based health pre-clearance apps like CommonPass on Wednesday, urging governments to mothball the “blunt instrument” of quarantines and lockdowns and adopt intrusive digital health technology instead.

The airlines cited recent testing of CommonPass, which purports to offer a trusted international standard for documenting a passenger’s compliance with Covid-19 health regulations, as well as a recent report from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in their plea for governments to reopen closed borders and roll back mandatory-on-arrival quarantines for travelers who’ve installed the app.

“A robust protocol for testing will…demonstrate that air travel is not a material cause for infections and will pave the way for a framework of trust to be established between nations,” Star Alliance CEO Jeffrey Goh said in a joint statement published by the three groups on Wednesday.

CommonPass – the only app cited by name in the statement – aims to allow travelers to bypass many countries’ mandatory quarantine period by certifying they are healthy before they board the plane using internationally agreed-upon testing measures. Once a vaccine against the novel coronavirus is available, the app will also certify that a traveler has received it. Inbound travel to countries that require new arrivals to quarantine for two weeks dropped almost as much as travel into countries with closed borders, according to statistics from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) collected between January and May.

Airline CEOs appear to have pinned their hopes on the idea that world-travelers are so stir-crazy after travel bans extending up to 10 months that they will gladly jump through this latest Orwellian hoop in exchange for a chance to take to the skies once more. “With extensive travel restrictions creating much uncertainty for customers, testing can play a role in enabling the safe restart of travel,” OneWorld CEO Rob Gurney said in the joint statement, suggesting a “consistent, scalable and cost effective” standard would “provide clarity and confidence to customers, airlines and other stakeholders.”

CommonPass was launched in July by the Commons Project, the World Economic Forum, and the Rockefeller Foundation in partnership with “350 public and private sector leaders from 52 countries,” according to its website, which gives precious little information about its origins other than that it was founded with Rockefeller Foundation money. The project’s stated aim is to “help rebuild international cooperation” as countries move toward reopening their borders in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many countries remain entirely or partially closed, and international travel has dwindled to a trickle, placing 190 million livelihoods in jeopardy and costing the world economy a whopping $5.5 billion, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

While CommonPass limits its scope to passport and health information, the idea – a trusted international standard for sharing what would otherwise be private information – closely resembles the WEF’s Known Traveler Digital Identity program, which predates Covid-19. An all-purpose digital ID, KTDI combines CommonPass’ record of travel and health status with financial data, social relationships, and perhaps most disturbingly, behavioral information. While the WEF has not explicitly acknowledged the overlap between CommonPass and KTDI, it has admitted it is “currently piloting components of the KTDI concept in a real-life, cross-border context” and “engaging with international organizations” including two global airline standards bodies.

Last month’s CommonPass trial tracked volunteers from London’s Heathrow airport to the US’ Newark Liberty airport. London also has unveiled a pre-departure testing site that allows passengers flying to Hong Kong and Italy to undergo rapid Covid-19 testing before checking in. However, rapid diagnostic tests have been shown to be even less accurate than the “gold standard” PCR test, which experts have acknowledged is much too sensitive to correctly distinguish between asymptomatic cases capable of spreading the virus and individuals who are neither symptomatic nor contagious.