Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

When it comes to the topic of clown cars, we’d say Dr. Fauci gets a limo version all to himself…

Yesterday he uttered the following incoherent babble, saying the recent surge in new cases is because the Virus Patrol didn’t go far enough in throwing 50 million Americans out of work:

‘We did not shut down entirely,’ Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said. ‘We need to draw back a few yards and say, “OK, we can’t stay shut down forever.” …You’ve got to shut down but then you’ve got to gradually open.’

Got that?

What does this pretentious old windbag think – that the blooming, buzzing mass of a $21 trillion economy can be calibrated up and down by the week via some magical dimmer switch?

Never mind because he was then on to this preposterous comparison:

Fauci also said he expects the public to compare the Covid-19 pandemic to the 1918 pandemic flu, which killed around 50 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Well, it so happens that the US death rate from the Spanish Flu was 655 per 100,000 persons (675,000 deaths in a population of 103 million). That’s obviously orders of magnitude larger than the 39 per 100,000 deaths to date from the Covid.

In fact, the impact of the Spanish Flu was not only 17X greater in terms of the overall mortality rate, but it was also a true Grim Reaper in the sense that it struck across the entire age spectrum of the population (dark blue bars).

It actually started in the giant domestic military training compounds stood up by Woodrow Wilson to join a European war that was none of America’s business, but the virus did kill tens of thousands of 18-30 year-old draftees in their own barracks long before they got to the killing fields of France.

By contrast, as we now surely understand, and you would think Fauci would, too, the Covid (light blue bars) is primarily a harvester of elderly persons already struggling with life-threatening respiratory, heart, vascular, renal and diabetic illnesses.

Accordingly, among the 191 million Americans under the age of 45 years, there have been only 1.5 WITH-Covid deaths per 100,000, while for the elderly, the opposite is true. Nearly 70,000 or more than 60 percent of all WITH-Covid death have been among the 75 years and older population, resulting in mortality rates as follows:

• 85 years & Over: 581 per 100,000 persons;
• 75-84 years: 200 per 100,000 persons;

Now, you don’t need to take a single class in epidemiology to understand a core truth: That is, when nearly 60 percent of the population under 45 years accounts for only 2.5 percent of the reported WITH-Covid deaths and has a rounding error mortality rate, while the 6.5 percent of the population 75 years and older accounts for 60 percent of the deaths—you don’t fight the disease with a one-size-fits all strategy of generic lockdowns, quarantines, and social regimentation.

And surely you don’t shutdown the schools, gyms, bars, restaurants, movies, ball games, concerts, beaches, theme parks etc. because the vulnerable elderly don’t patronize these venues in appreciable numbers anyway, and could easily be warned to stay strictly away.

The key point, however, is that this whole unspeakable Lockdown Folly does not remotely stem from the “science”, as the MSM supporters of Fauci claim.

It’s just a hair-brained experiment in social control that happened because the Donald was too weak, ill-informed, distracted, and innumerate to send Fauci and his camarilla of doctors and vaccine-peddlers packing when the mid-March guidelines were first issued by the CDC.

Yes, the Donald’s political enemies in the ranks of big city mayors and Blue State governors have feasted upon the chum Fauci & Co have persistently tossed into the fetid waters of national politics, but that doesn’t let Trump off the hook.

If the truth be told, this is the Trump Lockdown Folly and ranks among the greatest blunders ever committed by a US President. That’s because even at this late date nearly four months into the resulting economic disaster:

• there is no evidence that asymptomatic persons are transmitters of the virus,
• there is powerful statistical evidence that 95 percent of the population can cope with the disease and recover if they do become infected.

Yet, the twin pillars of Fauci’s hare-brained social regimentation scheme assumes they very opposite: Namely, that healthy Americans must be put under house arrest because they are silent spreaders and killers of their fellow citizens; and that the disease is so virulent that its #1 enemy—the powerful immune system of every healthy American—cannot be trusted to do its job if the virus is permitted to follow its natural course of contagion and eventual herd immunity.

As to the silent spreaders trope, here is how the very head of WHO’s COVID-19 Task Force, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, recently explained that transmission of the virus from asymptomatic patients appears to be very rare:

It still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual.”

For crying out loud. That knocks the very rationale for stay-at-home orders to hundreds of millions of healthy citizens into a cocked hat.

In a constitutional democracy, where the liberties and properties of citizens are protected by law, you need overwhelming proof of an existential threat to society before ordering mass house arrests. But in this instance, the head of the WHO task force–the agency that fomented the whole coronavirus hysteria in the first place–has said quite unequivocally: No cigar!

In a word, Dr. Fauci is peddling dangerous humbug under the banner of pseudo-science, and should have been shut-up and forced into retirement long ago. The unfortunate truth, however, is that the Donald is too chicken to use the Fake “your fired” tool that made him a short-lived TV star, if not a successful businessman.

His defenders, of course, mumble that his hands are tied because Fauci is a member of the legally protected Senior Executive Service (SES). That’s Jimmy Carter’s gift to insubordinate bureaucracy, which your editor happily voted against back in the day—but the excuse is poppycock.

Under Federal law, Fauci can be fired if he is found to have engaged in—

misconduct, neglect of duty, malfeasance, or failure to accept a direct reassignment or to accompany a position in a transfer of function”, is or to be “less than successful [in his] executive performance.

If not “malfeasance”, what would you call the absolute savaging of the livelihoods and life’s work of tens of millions of American workers and small businessmen for no good reason of state, which have resulted from Fauci’s idiotic pronouncements and guidelines?

The thing is, after four months Fauci’s blatherings and instructions to state and local authorities have fomented an outright public Hysteria of biblical proportions.

It is not just that officialdom has closed restaurants and gyms via unconstitutional “takings” of their owners’ properties. By now, Fauci’s Virus Patrol and its megaphones and misanthropes in the MSM have rendered large portions of the American public fearful about leaving their own homes.

And, needless to say, they have also given the Donald’s legions of rabid political enemies license to stage malign theatrics in the name of Covid-fighting that would be unthinkable under any other circumstances.

For instance, it has now been announced that the school districts of Los Angeles and San Diego, which collectively serve nearly one million students, will not have in-person teaching to start the school year.

But if you are conversant with any facts at all, you can only sputter: WTF!

There are nine million school age children in California, and not a single WITH-Covid death has occurred among them.

That’s right. There have been 27,400 positive tests among these nine million kids, but all of them, positively all of them, have been either asymptomatic or mildly ill—as children are wont to become—and have recovered.

Yet here is where America’s growing fleet of clown cars comes in. It seems that the politicization has gone so far off the deep end that the LA teachers union–35,000 strong—is now taking the schools hostage for their own parochial ends.

They recently proclaimed that no schools should open in LA until there is a Charter School freeze; the police are defunded; Medicare-for-all is adopted by the US Congress; new state taxes on the wealthy are enacted; and there is a Federal bailout of the LA school district.

You can’t make this stuff up. And while they were taking the children hostage in the name of Covid-fighting, they also insisted that the already dysfunctional schools of LA become completely pointless:

The union outlined numerous major provisions it says will be necessary to reopen schools again, including sequestering students in small groups throughout the school day, providing students with masks and other forms of protective equipment, and re-designing school layouts in order to facilitate ‘social distancing.’

Of course, the latest outbursts of this kind of mindless social destruction has been fueled by the absolute mendacity of the Virus Patrol and its MSM megaphones with respect to the so-called outbreak of new cases in the Sun Belt states.

But the whole brouhaha is a crock. There is no public health crisis in the so-called hot spots, as the up-to-date chart below makes abundantly clear.

Yes, the 42-day trend of “new cases” has risen sharply in tandem with far more testing, and repeat testing of the same individuals—outcomes that were inherent in re-opening plans, which required employers to have their employees tested as a condition of operating.

But, alas, the death count trend in these 50 counties has not risen at all – except for the last few days when a lot of “catch-up” data for earlier fatalities was thrown into the data hoppers by some of the counties involved.

That hasn’t stopped the Covid-Howlers from proclaiming a phony medical crisis in Texas and elsewhere, with the same old tropes about overflowing hospitals and strained ICU capacity in places like Houston.

But as the eagle-eyed maven of the corona-data, Alex Berenson, tweeted this AM, it’s just a big fat lie. While CNN may have managed to find one or two crowded facilities in the whole of the Houston-Harris county region of some 5 million souls, there are actually still more than 2,500 empty hospital beds in the area.

Here’s the thing. The Virus Patrol has switched from the death count to the “case” count because the latter is not at the 3,000 per day predicted by the CDC in early May, and ballyhooed by the NYT and MSM as the leading edge of a horrid “second wave” coming down the pike.

In fact, during July to date (thru the 14th), the daily WITH-Covid death count has averaged 613, or only one-fifth of the projected June-July-August surge; and even that level is suspect, given the growing evidence that many local jurisdictions are doing retrospective death audits to pad their case counts.

In any event, the readily available state-by-state data tells you all you need to know. This so-called Sun Belt wave of cases is, indeed, the equivalent of the normal flu.

In the case of Florida, for instance, during the first 14 days of July, there have been 139,195 new cases reported, but only 4,322 new hospitalizations. So that means only 3.1 percent of this ballyhooed surge of cases was sick enough to even require hospitalization.

Needless to say, that’s not a crisis; it’s just one more part of the indictment against Fauci and his gang of malpracticing doctors. They have put the anti-Trump press into a rabid feeding frenzy, and that coverage, in turn, has caused the American public to head back into their Covid holes.

As it happened, three of the nation’s largest banks reported their totally confected earnings for Q2 this AM, but the one thing that stood out as meaningful was a collective $28 billion provision for future loan losses. That is, they see the massive wave of defaults set in motion by Fauci’s misbegotten Lockdown Nation strategy, and are getting prepared for the worst.

Meanwhile, the Fed’s lunatic $3 trillion injection of liquidity into the canyons of Wall Street since the Lockdown Nation incepted in mid-March continues to do its mischief, fueling a stock market bubble that gets more ludicrous (and dangerous) by the day.

We noted yesterday that during the Monday’s great reversal on the stock market that Tesla had gained a “GM” ($38 billion) in the morning spike, but lost a “BMW” ($42 billion) in the afternoon.

A timely piece by Bloomberg this AM helps explain how this kind of madness actually happened:

Almost 40,000 Robinhood accounts added shares of the automaker during a single fourhour span on Monday, according to website Robintrack.net, which compiles data on the investing platform that’s much beloved by day trading millennials.

The frenzy in interest means that as of the end of Monday’s trading session, there are now roughly 457,000 users on the Robinhood app that hold shares of the company in some form. That makes it the 10th-most popular stock on the platform, ahead of even Amazon.com Inc., which is held by 358,000 users.

The one-day return may not have turned out so well. Tesla was up as much as 16 percent at one point before paring gains through the day and finishing 3 percent lower. It was a rare losing day for the high flying stock, which has surged 56 percent over the past 10 days.

So how did these mindless gamblers reason about a company that has never, ever made a four-quarter profit, and which reported Q2 volumes well below last year, in coming to a peak valuation of $325 billion Monday morning?

Well, a sell-side analyst explained both that question, and the large fleet of clown cars now cruising up and down Wall Street about as well as could be expected. Said this master of the crystal ball:

‘At the current price, Tesla’s stock reflects an expectation of 2030 volume of 5 million units, which is more than ten times what the company appears on track to achieve this year,’ Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said.

Why, you don’t say!

Then again, projecting EV car sales in the year 2030 is probably as good a use for Wall Street’s clown car riders as any other.

Certainly, it would not dawn on them to ask whether a stock market held up by the Terrific Ten, and especially the FAANGs and Microsoft, has anything at all to do with the dire state of the US economy.

It seems these trading sardines make up a quarter of the S&P 500 index by value, but just 8 percent of its composite revenues and a mere 1 percent of jobs in the American workforce.

So, yes, the Acela Corridor has the clown cars coming and going – even as the stock bubble which will take down this whole fantasy reaches its historic asymptote, as we will essay further in Part 3.

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, et al

We bring to the attention of our readers details concerning the Leaked Report of Germany’s Ministry of Interior.

What is at stake is a 93 page report entitled “Analysis of Crisis Management” drafted by a scientific panel appointed by the Interior Ministry composed of medical experts from several German universities.

The report was an initiative of the Interior ministry’s Unit KM4, a department responsible for the “Protection of critical infrastructures”.

This is also where the German official turned whistleblower, Stephen Kohn, worked, and from where he leaked it to the media.

The authors of the report issued a joint press release on May 11th, berating the government for ignoring expert advise, and asking for the interior minister to officially comment upon the experts joint statement.”…

The German government officially scorned the 93 page report, claiming it was an unauthorized opinion of one government employee with possible involvement of “third parties” outside the government.

On May 11, 2020, the ten German scientists and physicians (undersigned) who were involved in the 93 page report published a press release in response to the government:

See text in German:

““Don’t ignore expertise”: [German] Scientists criticize [German Ministry of Interior] BMI for handling corona paper,” deutsch.rt.com, May 13, 2020

Joint Press Release by the external experts on the 93 page Corona study of the Federal Ministry of the Interior

English translation

May 11, 2020

“We, with astonishment, the doctors and scientists involved in the preparation of the aforementioned corona study take cognizance of the press release of the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) from May 10 [which states the following]:

“BMI employees disseminate private opinion on corona crisis management –elaboration was carried out outside of responsibility and without a mandate and authorization.”

The Ministry writes in this press release:

“To the best of our knowledge, the drafting has also involved third parties outside the BMI.”

We assume that the third parties [mentioned by the BMI] are we, the undersigned

.

Our comments on this are as follows:

We assume that the BMI has a great interest in ensuring that its specialists, who are entrusted with the extremely important task of recognizing critical developments and averting damage to Germany through timely warnings, act both on a specific order and on their own initiative. The relevant employee of the BMI contacted us when preparing the risk analysis to assess the medical collateral damage caused by the “corona measures.”

Supported by responsibility, we support the committed BMI staff in examining this essential question to the best of their knowledge and belief, in addition to our actual professional activity. Renowned colleagues, all of them excellent representatives of their field, gave factual statements on specific questions based on the expertise requested. This resulted in a first comprehensive assessment of the medical damage that has already occurred and the threat of it, including expected deaths.

The BMI employee made an assessment based on our work and forwarded the result to the responsible bodies. You can find the relevant document in the attachment to this press release. There is no question that this can only be the beginning of an even more extensive examination due to the short time.But in our opinion, our analysis offers a good starting point for the BMI and the interior ministries of the federal states to carefully weigh the possible benefits of the protective measures against the damage they cause. In our opinion, the addressed civil servants would have to initiate an immediate reassessment of the protective measures based on this paper, for which we also offer our advice.

The BMI clearly states in the press release that it will not take this [our] analysis into account. It is incomprehensible to us that the responsible Federal Ministry would like to ignore such an important assessment based on extensive technical expertise. Due to the seriousness of the situation, it must be a matter of dealing with the existing factual arguments–regardless of the history of its origin.

Therefore we ask:

Why did the BMI not support the employee’s request and why does the BMI not include the extensive analysis now available on the basis of high-quality external expertise in its assessment of the relationship between the benefits and harm of the corona protective measures?

The BMI continues in its press release:

“As a result of the risk of corona infection, the Federal Government has taken measures to protect the population. These are continuously weighed up within the Federal Government and coordinated regularly with the Prime Ministers of the federal states.”

We ask the BMI:

to tell us in a timely manner how exactly this weighing up is taking place. We ask you to prove this on the basis of data, facts and sources. We would like to compare this with our analysis. In view of the currently sometimes catastrophic patient care, we would be reassured if this analysis leads to a different assessment than ours, which we currently find difficult to imagine.

The BMI also writes that:

“The infection rate in Germany has so far been relatively low in international comparison. The measures taken are effective.”

In accordance with the international specialist literature, we [the undersigned] only partially share this statement regarding the effectiveness of the protective measures. We therefore ask the BMI for transparency:

*to disclose the sources according to which this determination is made.

Conclusion:

Overall, at the request of a courageous BMI employee, we have shown the varied and serious undesirable effects of corona protective measures in the medical field, and these are serious. The entire process gives us the impression that, after a certain difficult initial phase of the epidemic, the risks [of government mandates] have not been considered to the necessary extent and, in particular, not in a comprehensive risk assessment. With regard to the reporting on this process, we ask that you place the value of our analysis at the center and report appropriately on us, in office and in person, to the serious situation.

The disease COVID-19 triggered by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is serious for many people in the known risk groups. As with any serious infectious disease, it is important to find the best treatment for the patient and prevent infection routes. But therapeutic and preventive measures must never be more harmful than the disease itself. The aim must be to protect the risk groups without endangering medical care and the health of the general population, as is unfortunately the case right now. We in science and practice as well as many colleagues experience the consequential damage of the corona protective measures to our patients every day. We therefore ask the Federal Ministry of the Interior to comment on our press release and hope for a relevant discussion that will lead to the best possible solution for the entire population with regard to the measures.

by:

Prof. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, University Professor of Medical Microbiology (retired), University of Mainz

Dr. med. Gunter Frank, general practitioner, member of the permanent guidelines commission of the German Society for Family Medicine and General Medicine (DEGAM), Heidelberg

Prof. Dr. phil. Dr. rer. pole. Dipl.-Soz. Dr. Gunnar Heinsohn, Emeritus of Social Sciences at the University of Bremen

Prof. Dr. Stefan W. Hockertz, tpi consult GmbH, former director of the Institute for Experimental Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Hospital Eppendorf

Prof. Dr. Dr. rer. nat. (USA) Andreas S. Lübbe, Medical Director of the MZG-Westphalia, chief physician at the Cecilien-Klinik

Prof. Dr. Karina Reiss, Department of Dermatology and Allergology University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein

Prof. Dr. Peter Schirmacher, professor of pathology, Heidelberg, member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina

Prof. Dr. Andreas Sönnichsen, Deputy Curriculum Director of the Medical University of Vienna, Department of General Medicine and Family Medicine.

Dr. med. Til Uebel, resident general practitioner, specialist in general medicine, diabetology, emergency medicine, teaching physician at the Institute of General Medicine at the University of Würzburg, academic teaching practice at the University of Heidelberg

Prof. Dr. Dr. phil. Harald Walach, Prof. Medical University of Poznan, Dept. Pediatric Gastroenterology, visiting professor. University of Witten-Herdecke, Dept. Psychology- 4

The “Corona Hoax”, The Proliferation of Racial Riots. Towards a Military Lockdown?

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi and et al., Global Research, 2020

By Dr. Pascal Sacré
Global Research

Do you want the true answer, or do you want the answer given by propaganda, official government versions and the mainstream media?

I will give you the true, medical answer: the tests do not answer any of these questions, they are unreliable, they give overly simplistic answers that can be used by governments to make people believe what they want them to believe.

There are two main types of tests:

1. Molecular tests: RT-PCR
2. Serological tests: looking for antibodies in blood

RT-PCR [1]

In cells taken from the back of the nose, RT-PCR searches for fragments of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA, forms the corresponding DNA using the enzyme Reverse Transcriptase (RT) and amplifies (multiplies) the RNA-DNA fragments found using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique. By a complicated technique, therefore subject to many missteps, we are told that this test could quantify the viral load.

This test, the results of which can take 2 to 7 days, is supposed to prove that you are infected (RT-PCR +) or not (RT-PCR -) by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and that you are contagious or not contagious.

This is not the truth.

Yet it has guided all medical decisions around the world to categorize patients into COVID and NON-COVID, to isolate the former and confirm them as COVID-19.

The presence of a clinical picture composed of major signs (including cough, fever) and minor signs, with in some cases a chest CT scan, has led to the classification of symptomatic patients as either suspicious (awaiting RT-PCR result) or confirmed (positive RT-PCR and/or evocative chest CT scan), with minor, moderate and severe forms.

This theory based on quicksand proves that human beings always prefer a logical and reassuring lie, simplistic, to the more complex and frightening truth.

Many studies and articles by recognized experts in their field, including some from prestigious universities, have shown the unreliability of RT-PCR, which can give false positive or false negative results or are disrupted by a lot of elements at all stages of its technique [2].

Clinical pictures and images from chest scans are not specific and can be found in any broad viral or infectious disease [3].

SARS-CoV-2 is part of a family of many similar viruses, most of which are benign: cold viruses.

It is most likely that this specific virus has had time to circulate in a large part of the population before the end of March and containment measures.

These strict isolation measures did not destroy the virus or extinguish the pandemic. On the contrary, they destroyed the economy of many countries and many lives (unemployment, loneliness, poverty, depression, untreated diseases, anxiety, famine).

“Kerry Pollard, a microbiologist from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, performs a manual extraction of the coronavirus in the extraction laboratory of the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s Office of Laboratories on Friday, March 6, 2020 ”

Source: flickr.com

Serological tests to help COVID-19 propaganda? [4]

Serological tests are done using blood, 8 ml taken in a dry tube or a single drop in the case of rapid tests.

The biologist looks for the presence of antibodies (Ac) or immunoglobulins (Ig) specific to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

There are two main types of antibodies:

1. IgM: recent or ongoing infection, phase of contagion.
2. IgG: older infection, healing, more contagion

Some serological tests only detect IgG. Studies have shown that virtually all subjects with symptomatic COVID-19 produced detectable IgG antibodies as long as the blood sample was taken at least 3 weeks after the first symptoms [5].

There are several types of IgG.

S1/S2 IgG are neutralizing antibodies, protecting against the virus.

However, not all identified IgG antibodies are protective or neutralizing; in fact, the opposite is true with the phenomenon of facilitating infection via antibodies (ADE Antibody Dependent Enhancement, as in dengue fever). In this case, rather than blocking the key (Spike protein of the viral envelope) that allows the virus to enter the target cells (neutralizing antibodies), these facilitating antibodies promote the penetration of the virus into the target cells! [6-7]

Rapid tests, such as the one from BioLab Sciences [8] based in Scottsdale, Arizona (USA), allow rapid antibody detection within 10 minutes with a specificity of 98%. These are the claims of the laboratory. A drop of blood is enough, as in blood glucose tests with a fingertip prick.

There are several types of rapid tests, 12 tests approved by the FDA in the USA alone (as of June 1st), but also others in Malaysia, China or Europe.

A laboratory like the one in Scottsdale, Arizona, claims to be able to provide up to 9 million tests per week.

Interpretation of the quick-test results:

1. IgM positive alone: recent infection/contact (days), within the previous 4 weeks at most
2. IgM and IgG positive: infection/contact that occurred 4-8 weeks prior to the infection
3. IgG positive alone: infection/contact more than 8 weeks ago

Yes, so what?

What can we really conclude from this?

Let’s take a look at the theory of human immunity to better understand [9] :

The human immune defense is composed of two main lines.

1. Innate or natural immunity
2. Acquired or adaptive immunity

A. Innate immunity is not specific, it is very rapid, intervenes first in case of aggression and is often sufficient. It is not based on the production of antibodies. This means that antibodies are absolutely not essential to eliminate an infection. It also means that the absence of antibodies or a low level of antibodies in the blood does not rule out a viral infection that will have been managed by the exclusive innate immunity. This is even a sign of good immune health!

COVID-19 Testing: What Are We Doing? What Does “Positive” Test Really Mean?

B. Adaptive immunity is specific, it is slower, it is only activated when innate immunity is overwhelmed or insufficient, and it is based, but not only, on the production of antibodies.

Therefore, to sum up an individual’s immune defence to his or her antibody production is as false and simplistic as summing up a country’s defence to its special forces. Yet this pirouette is the main dogma of immunology, the sacred basis of vaccinology.

What does the orthodox immune theory say?

Positive test

It says that a positive serological test (the presence of sufficient SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus-specific antibodies in the blood) indicates recent (IgM-days/weeks) or past (IgG-weeks/month) infection.

It also says that a positive IgG test (a sufficient level in the blood) means that the person is protected against a new infection.

But it’s not that simple.

Remember AIDS (HIV infection or HIV). Before AIDS, any seroconversion was considered a good sign, reflecting the adaptive immune system’s response to an infection.

After AIDS, seroconversion (the presence of antibodies to HIV) became a bad sign, leading to the diagnosis of an active disease: HIV-positive [10].

Negative test

The orthodox theory says that a negative test (little or no IgG in the blood) means that the person has not become infected and is not protected.

However, that is not entirely true.

The absence of IgG antibodies (or a low serum level) does not mean that a person has not been infected because he or she may have relied solely on innate immunity (immunity without antibodies) or may have relied on other types of antibodies such as Immunoglobulin A (IgA) secreted locally in infected mucous membranes (nasopharyngeal mucosa).

The antibodies are secreted by activated B-lymphocytes during the late, adaptive and specific immune response. However, this adaptive immunity also relies on other cells that do not produce antibodies, such as T lymphocytes, which also constitute a very important antiviral and antimicrobial line of defence, not taken into account by blood serologies that only measure serum antibodies.

In addition, there is an important immunological concept, that of cross-immunity [11]. Yes, doctors should re-read their immunology courses!

The coronavirus family is a large family!

For the most part, these viruses are benign and cause colds every year. By dint of early childhood, true coronavirus immunity has developed, facilitating the innate immune response to SARS-CoV-2 so that in many people it may have been enough to shorten viral multiplication.

The adaptive (antibody-mediated) immune response in all of these people did not have time to come into play, so there were no antibodies.

This is not bad at all and means, on the contrary, that the previous colds prepared the person to react well to SARS-CoV-2 (effective cross-immunity).

In summary, a negative serology (insufficient antibodies to SARS-CoV-2) DOES NOT EXCLUDE being infected and DOES NOT EXCLUDE the existence of protective immunity to a severe form of COVID-19.

IgG serology alone will underestimate the true rate of cured infections and the true immunity of the population to SARS-CoV-2!

It would be more interesting to assay the entire coronavirus antibody pool, not just those specific to SARS-CoV-2.

Immunological hypothesis to explain severe forms of COVID-19:

Severe forms (intensive care, death) have mostly been observed in elderly patients (even very elderly, >/= 80 years old) and/or with one or more chronic diseases (obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease…).

These chronic Western pathologies (increasingly global and mainly linked to sweet diets associated with excessive sedentary lifestyle) have become so commonplace that they are now overly commonplace in hospitals. It has almost become “normal” to be fat, hypertensive, quickly out of breath, diabetic or inactive.

However, this is THE scourge of modern times, much more than the lack of vaccination!

All of these diseases and lifestyle habits severely depress the immune system [12].

a) Innate, natural immunity has been unable in these people to eliminate the virus or slow its multiplication.

b) Adaptive, specific immunity, which produces antibodies of several types, may have led to the secretion of ADE antibodies, facilitating viral invasion in tissues with specific receptors for these antibodies, leading to an excessive, exaggerated inflammatory reaction (Th2 immunological response) and more destruction than cure [13], especially in the lungs.

In this case, the very high levels of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 rather reflected a bad situation, synonymous with severe infection and deleterious immune reactions!

CONCLUSIONS

Both molecular tests of RT-PCR type (diagnosis, contagiousness) and serological tests with IgM-IgG antibodies (diagnosis, immunity) are unreliable.

They do not take into account the cross-immunity to other coronaviruses (very similar to SARS-CoV-2 but more numerous and benign) which has certainly been able to play a great role in the protection of a whole section of the population, especially the young and relatively healthy individuals (60 to 85% of people are able to eliminate coronaviruses using only their innate immune system, without developing antibodies for this).

Many people are and will be protected by this cross-immunity, provided by all the ambient coronaviruses that we have been breathing without any concern or hardly (common cold) for decades and without going through the specific antibody box.

Moreover, it is not because the antibodies in question disappear quickly [14] or decrease very strongly in the bloodstream that the individual no longer has immune protection.

There are many lines of protection (helper T cells, cytotoxic, regulatory, other molecules made by B cells, innate immunity…) and to reduce everything to antibodies alone to say that you are protected or not is profoundly dishonest, or stupid.

Immunity is not only based on antibodies, far from it [15]!

Patients with moderate COVID-19 showed low levels of serum IgA and IgG specific for the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein.

Patients with severe COVID showed high levels of specific serum IgA and IgG, the higher the severity of the disease [16].

While the orthodox immunological theory would say that the sicker you are, the more Ac you make to protect yourself, in reality the high level of Ac is partly responsible for the severity of the disease (ADE phenomenon).

The high level of antibodies, far from reflecting protection, reflects an inadequate (maladjusted) immune response leading to a Th2 (humoral and inflammatory) rather than a Th1 (cellular) immune response. And this is not good.

Why is it not good?

Because of the overall poor health status of patients with severe IDVOC (one or more severe co-morbidities, high age)!

The most important thing is good coordination between the innate and adaptive immune systems and this is based on good health (dietary, physical, mental).

Low antibody levels may simply mean that your innate immune system has been effective and has been sufficient to protect you. That’s good!

Anything can be made to say at the tests, including serological (antibody) tests, and it all depends on the intention, benevolent and honest OR malevolent and dishonest, of those who will tell you what they want you to believe.

P.S. my advice as a doctor:

Strengthen your immunity by a healthy (balanced) diet, moderate, varied and regular physical activity and daily mental hygiene (meditation, self-hypnosis, sophrology, breathing, walking in nature without masks).

And if you and your children have colds, that’s fine.

Dr Pascal Sacré

Translation from French by Maya, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Featured Image: pixabay.com

Note to readers: please click on the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your mailing lists. Publish this article on your blog site, web forums, etc.

Notes :

[1] Tutoriel prélèvement nasopharyngé : Un geste technique, essentiel à la fiabilité du test COVID-19

[2] Les tests: talon d’Achille du château de cartes COVID-19, mondialisation.ca, 28 mai 2020

[3] Utilité du CT-scan thoracique pour le diagnostic et le triage des patients suspects de COVID-19, Swiss Medical Journal RMS 2020, Vol. 16, 955-957. The role of CT in the management of suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients remains uncertain.

[4] Place des tests sérologiques dans la stratégie de prise en charge de la maladie COVID-19

[5] Le Journal du Médecin, 4 juin 2020, n° 2632

[6] Anticorps facilitants et pathogénèse du COVID 19, Swiss Medical Journal 25 April 2020. This article highlights the complexity of the immune response. Complexity that prompts us to reflect on the meaning of the presence of antibodies: can a positive serology over time say that there is immunity? Moreover, as can be suspected in some severe cases, the immune response could play a role in the pathogenesis of the disease.

[7] Molecular Mechanism for Antibody-Dependent Enhancement of Coronavirus Entry

[8] Rapid serological tests : RAPID RESULT COVID-19 TEST KITS

[9] Immunologie approfondie

[10] LE DIAGNOSTIC DE L’INFECTION PAR LE VIH, Diagnosis is made through a blood test that detects the presence of anti-HIV antibodies as early as three weeks after contamination.

[11] Immunité croisée entre les coronavirus des rhumes et SARS-CoV-2

[12] SARS-CoV-2 specific antibody responses in COVID-19 patients

[13] Antibodies to coronaviruses are higher in older compared with younger adults and binding antibodies are more sensitive than neutralizing antibodies in identifying coronavirus‐associated illnesses

[14] Coronavirus : les anticorps ne resteraient que deux à trois mois dans le sang

[15] Les anticorps ne sont PAS nécessaires pour la protection contre certains virus, article source en anglais : Antibodies are not required for immunity against some viruses

[16] Systemic and mucosal antibody secretion specific to SARS-CoV-2 during mild versus severe COVID-19

Pascal Sacré graduated in medicine in Belgium in 1995. He started a specialization in anesthesia and intensive care in 1997, completed in 2002 and completed a specialization in critical care in 2003. He has been working in a hospital environment since then, in intensive care, with a 2.5 year stay in a centre for burn victims (Queen Astrid Military Hospital HMRA in Brussels) between 2009 and 2011. Since 2011, he has been working in a medical-surgical intensive care centre in Charleroi, Belgium. He is trained in hypnotherapy in a medical environment since 2014 and as such, he is responsible for stress management training for the staff of his hospital. He has been collaborating with the Centre for Research on Globalization since 2009.

The original source of this article is Mondialisation.ca
Copyright © Dr. Pascal Sacré, Mondialisation.ca, 2020

The censorship continues?

…

Beware of certain vaccines?

Swiss Policy Research
On the development of the pandemic

In most Western countries, the peak of coronavirus infections was already reached in March or April and often before the lockdown. The peak of deaths in most Western countries was in April. Since then, hospitalizations and deaths have been declining in most Western countries (see graphs below).

This development also applies to countries without a lockdown, such as Sweden, Belarus and Japan. Cumulative annual mortality in most western countries continues to be in the range of a mild (e.g. CH, AT, DE) to strong (e.g. USA, UK) influenza season.

After the end of the lockdowns, the number of corona tests in the low-risk general population has increased strongly in many countries, for example in connection with people returning to work and school.

This led to a certain increase in positive test results in some countries or regions, which was portrayed by many media and authorities as an allegedly dangerous increase in “case numbers” and sometimes led to new restrictions, even if the rate of positive tests remained very low.

“Case numbers” are, however, a misleading figure that cannot be equated with sick or infected people. A positive test can, for example, be due to non-infectious virus fragments, an asymptomatic infection, a repeated test, or a false-positive result.

Moreover, counting alleged “case numbers” is not meaningful simply because antibody tests and immunological tests have long shown that the new coronavirus is up to fifty times more widespread than assumed on the basis of daily PCR tests.

Rather, the decisive figures are the number of sick people, hospitalisations and deaths. It should be noted, however, that many hospitals are now back to normal operation and all patients, including asymptomatic patients, are additionally tested for the coronavirus. Therefore, what matters is the number of actual Covid patients in hospitals and ICUs.

In the case of Sweden, for example, the WHO had to withdraw the classification as a “risk country” after it became clear that the apparent increase in “cases” was due to an increase in testing. In fact, hospitalisations and deaths in Sweden have been declining since April.

Some countries have already been in a state of below-average mortalitysince May. The reason for this is that the median age of corona deaths was often higher than the average life expectancy, as up to 80% of deathsoccurred in nursing homes.

In countries and regions where the spread of the coronavirus has so far been greatly reduced, it is nevertheless entirely possible that there will be a renewed increase in Covid patients. In these cases, early and effective treatment is important (see below).

Global Covid-19 mortality is currently – despite the significantly older population nowadays – a whole order of magnitude below the flu pandemics of 1957 (Asian flu) and 1968 (Hong Kong flu) and in the range ofthe rather mild “swine flu pandemic” of 2009.

The following charts illustrate the discrepancy between “cases”, patients and deaths.

Charts: “Cases”, deaths, and mortality in different countries

On the lethality of Covid-19

Most antibody studies have shown a population-based Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of 0.1% to 0.3%. The US health authority CDC published in May a still cautious “best estimate” of 0.26% (based on 35% asymptomatic cases).

At the end of May, however, an immunological study by the University of Zurich was published, which for the first time showed that the usual antibody tests that measure antibodies in the blood (IgG and IgM) can detect at most about one fifth of all coronavirus infections.

The reason for this is that in most people the new coronavirus is already neutralised by antibodies on the mucous membrane (IgA) or by cellular immunity (T cells) and no symptoms or only mild symptoms develop.

This means that the new coronavirus is probably much more widespread than previously assumed and the lethality per infection is around five times lower than previously estimated. The real lethality could therefore be significantly below 0.1% and thus in the range of influenza.

At the same time, the Swiss study may explain why children usually develop no symptoms (due to frequent contact with previous corona cold viruses), and why even hotspots such as New York City found an antibody prevalence (IgG/IgM) of at most 20% – as this already corresponds to herd immunity.

The Swiss study has in the meantime been confirmed by several more studies:

1. A Swedish study showed that people with mild or asymptomatic disease often neutralized the virus with T-cells without the need to produce antibodies. Overall, T-cell immunity was about twice as common as antibody immunity.
2. A large Spanish antibody study published in Lancet showed that less than 20% of symptomatic people and about 2% of asymptomatic people had IgG antibodies.
3. A German study (preprint) showed that 81% of the people who had not yet had contact with the new corona virus already had cross-reactive T-cells and thus a certain background immunity (due to contact with previous corona cold viruses).
4. A Chinese study in the journal Nature showed that in 40% of asymptomatic persons and in 12.9% of symptomatic persons no IgG antibodies are detectable after the recovery phase.
5. Another Chinese study with almost 25,000 clinic employees in Wuhan showed that at most one fifth of the presumably infected employees had IgG antibodies (press article).
6. A small French study (preprint) showed that six of eight infected family members of Covid patients developed a temporary T-cell immunity without antibodies.

Video interview: Swedish Doctor: T-cell immunity and the truth about Covid-19 in Sweden

In this context, a US study in the journal Science Translational Medicine, using various indicators, concluded that the lethality of Covid-19 was much lower than originally assumed, but that its spread in some hotspots was up to 80 times faster than suspected, which would explain the rapid but short-duration increase in patients.

A study in the Austrian ski resort of Ischgl, one of the first European “corona hotspots”, found antibodies in 42% of the population. 85% of the infections went “unnoticed” (i.e. very mild), about 50% of the infections went completely without (noticeable) symptoms.

The high antibody value of 42% in Ischgl was due to the fact that Ischgl also tested for IgA antibodies in the blood (instead of only IgM/IgG). Additional tests for mucosal IgA and for T-cells would undoubtedly have shown even higher immunity levels close to herd immunity.

With only two deaths (both of them men over 80 years of age with preconditions), the population-based covid lethality (IFR) in the “hotspot” Ischgl is significantly below 0.1%.

Due to its rather low lethality, Covid-19 falls at most into level 2 of the five-level pandemic plan developed by US health authorities. For this level, only the “voluntary isolation of sick people” is to be applied, while further measures such as face masks, school closings, distance rules, contact tracing, vaccinations and lockdowns of entire societies are not recommended.

The new immunological results also mean that “immunity passports” and mass vaccinations are unlikely to work and are therefore not a useful strategy.

Some media continue to speak of allegedly much higher Covid lethality levels. However, these media refer to outdated simulation models, confuse mortality and lethality, or CFR and IFR, or “raw IFR” and population-based IFR. More about these errors here.

In July, an antibody prevalence of allegedly up to 70% was reported in some New York City districts. However, this is not a population-based figure, but rather antibodies in people who had visited an urgent care center.

The following graph shows the actual development of corona deaths in Sweden (no lockdown, no face mask obligation) compared to the forecasts of Imperial College London (orange: no measures; grey: moderate measures). Swedish annual all-cause mortality actually is in the range of a medium flu wave and 3.6% lower than in previous years.

Corona deaths in Sweden: ICL prediction versus reality (HTY/FOHM)

On the health risks of Covid-19

Why is the new coronavirus harmless for many people, but very dangerous for some people? The reason has to to with special features of the virus and the human immune system.

Many people, including almost all children, can neutralise the new corona virus with an existing immunity (due to contact with previous corona cold viruses) or through antibodies on the mucous membranes (IgA), without it causing much damage.

However, if this does not succeed, the virus can penetrate the organism. There the virus can cause complications in the lung (pneumonia), the blood vessels (thromboses, embolisms), and other organs due to its efficient use of the human ACE2 cell receptor.

If in this case the immune system reacts too weakly (in older people) or too strongly (in some younger people), the course of the disease can become critical.

It has also been confirmed that the symptoms or complications of serious Covid-19 disease can last for weeks or even months in some cases.

Therefore, the new coronavirus should not be underestimated and earlyand effective treatment is absolutely crucial for patients at risk.

In the longer term, the new coronavirus could develop into a typical cold virus, similar to the coronavirus NL63, which also uses the ACE2 cell receptor and nowadays affects primarily young children and nursing patients, causing upper and lower respiratory tract infections.

On the treatment of Covid-19

Note: Patients are asked to consult a doctor.

Several studies have now confirmed what some front-line physicians have been saying since March: Early treatment of Covid patients with zinc and the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is indeed effective. US doctors have reported a reduction in hospitalisation rates of up to 84% and a stabilisation of the health condition often within a few hours.

Zinc has antiviral properties, HCQ supports zinc absorption and has additional antiviral properties. These drugs are supplemented by doctors if necessary with an antibiotic (to prevent a bacterial superinfection) and a blood thinner (to prevent infection-related thromboses and embolisms).

The alleged or actual negative results with HCQ in some studies were based, according to the current state of knowledge, on delayed use(intensive care patients), excessive doses (up to 2400mg per day), manipulated data sets, or ignored contraindications (e.g., favism or heart problems).

Sadly, the WHO, many media and some authorities may have caused considerable and unnecessary damage to public health in recent months through their negative stance, which may have been politically motivated or influenced by pharmaceutical interests.

French professor of medicine Jaouad Zemmouri, for example, estimates that Europe could have avoided up to 78% of Covid deaths by adopting a consistent HCQ treatment strategy.

HCQ contraindications such as favism or heart problems need to be considered, but the recent Ford Medical Center study achieved a reduction in hospital deaths of around 50% even with 56% African-American patients (who more often have favism).

However, the crucial point in the treatment of high-risk patients is early intervention as soon as the first typical symptoms develop and even without a PCR test in order to prevent progression of the disease and avoid intensive care hospitalization.

Most countries did the exact opposite: after the infection wave in March, they imposed a lockdown, so that infected and frightened people were locked up in their homes without treatment and often waited until they developed severe respiratory distress and had to be taken directly to the intensive care unit, where they were often sedated and intubated and were likely to die.

It is conceivable that a zinc HCQ combination protocol, which is simple, safe and inexpensive, could make more complex drugs, vaccinations and measures largely obsolete.

More recently, a case study from France showed that in four of the first five patients treated with the much more expensive drug Remdesivir from the pharmaceutical company Gilead, treatment had to be discontinued due to liver issues and kidney failure.

Read more: On the treatment of Covid-19

On the effectiveness of masks

Various countries have introduced or are currently discussing the introduction of mandatory masks in public transport, in shopping malls, or generally in public.

Due to the lower-than-expected lethality of Covid-19 and the available treatment options, this discussion might become obsolete. The original argument regarding a reduction of hospitalizations (“flatten the curve”) is also no longer relevant, as the hospitalization rate was and is about twenty times lower than initially assumed.

Nevertheless, the question of the effectiveness of masks can be asked. In the case of influenza epidemics, the answer is already clear from a scientific point of view: masks in everyday life have no or very little effect. If used improperly, they can even increase the risk of infection.

Ironically, the best and most recent example of this is the often-mentioned Japan: Despite its ubiquitous masks, Japan experienced its most recent strong flu wave – with around five million people falling ill – just one year ago, in January and February 2019.

However, unlike SARS corona viruses, influenza viruses are transmitted also by children. Indeed, Japan had to close around ten thousand schools in 2019 due to acute outbreaks of the flu.

With the SARS 1 virus of 2002 and 2003, there is some evidence that medicalmasks can provide partial protection against infection. But SARS-1 spread almost exclusively in hospitals, i.e. in a professional environment, and hardly to the general public at large.

In contrast, a study from 2015 showed that the cloth masks in use today are permeable to 97% of viral particles due to their pore size and can further increase the risk of infection by storing moisture.

Some studies recently argued that everyday masks are nevertheless effective in the case of the new coronavirus and could at least prevent the infection of other people. However, these studies suffer from poor methodology and sometimes show the opposite of what they claim.

Typically, these studies ignore the effect of other simultaneous measures, the natural development of infection numbers, changes in test activity, or they compare countries with very different conditions.

An overview:

1. A German study claimed that the introduction of compulsory masks in German cities had led to a decrease in infections. But the data does not support this: in some cities there was no change, in others a decrease, in others an increase in infections (see graph below). The city of Jena, presented as a model, simultaneously introduced the strictest quarantine rules in Germany, but the study did not mention this.
2. A study in the journal PNAS claimed that masks had led to a decrease in infections in three hotspots (including New York City). This did not take into account the natural decrease in infections and other measures. The study was so flawed that over 40 scientists recommended that the study be withdrawn.
3. A US study claimed that compulsory masks had led to a decrease in infections in 15 states. The study did not take into account that the incidence of infection was already declining in most states at that time. A comparison with other states was not made.
4. A Canadian study claimed that countries with compulsory masks had fewer deaths than countries without compulsory masks. But the study compared African, Latin American, Asian and Eastern European countries with very different infection rates and population structures.
5. A meta-study in the journal Lancet claimed that masks “could” lead to a reduction in the risk of infection, but the studies considered mainly hospitals (Sars-1) and the strength of the evidence was reported as “low”.

The medical benefit of compulsory masks therefore continues to remain questionable. In any case, a comparative study by the University of East Anglia came to the conclusion that compulsory masks had no measurable effect on the incidence of Covid infections or deaths.

It is also clear that widespread face masks couldn’t stop the initial outbreak in Wuhan.

Sweden showed that even without a lockdown, without compulsory masks and with one of the lowest intensive care bed capacities in Europe, hospitals need not be overburdened. In fact, Sweden’s annual all-cause mortality is in the range of previous flu seasons.

At any rate, authorities shouldn’t suggest to the population that compulsory masks reduce the risk of infection, for example in public transport, as there is no evidence of this. Whether with or without masks, there is an increased risk of infection in densely packed indoor areas.

Interestingly, the demand for a worldwide obligation to wear masks is led by a lobby group called “masks4all” (masks for all), which was founded by a “young leader” of the Davos forum.

Mandatory masks in German cities: no relevant impact. (IZA 2020)

The role of contact tracing

Numerous countries have introduced smartphone apps and special units for “contact tracing”. However, there is no evidence that these can make an epidemiologically relevant contribution.

In the case of tracing pioneer Iceland, the app has largely failed, in Norway it was stopped for data protection reasons, in India, Argentina, Singapore and other countries it became mandatory after all, in Israel contact tracing is operated directly by the secret service.

A WHO study on influenza pandemics in 2019 came to the conclusion that contact tracing is not useful from an epidemiological point of view and “is not recommended in any circumstances”. The typical area of application is rather sexually transmitted diseases or food poisoning.

Moreover, serious concerns about data protection and civil rights remain.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warned as early as March that governments could use the corona crisis as an occasion or pretext for expanding global surveillance and control, thus creating an “architecture of oppression”.

A whistleblower who had taken part in a training program for contact tracers in the US described it as “totalitarian” and a “danger to society”.

Swiss computer science professor Serge Vaudenay showed that the contact tracing protocols are by no means “decentralized” and “transparent”, because the actual functionality is implemented through a Google and Apple interface (GAEN) that is not “open source”.

This interface has now been integrated by Google and Apple into three billion mobile phones. According to Prof. Vaudenay, the interface may record and store all contacts, not just those that are medically “relevant”. A German IT expert, for his part, described tracing apps as a “Trojan horse”.

For more information on “contact tracing”, see the June update.

See also: Inside the NSA’s Secret Tool for Mapping Your Social Network(Wired)

“Contact Tracing” powered by Google und Apple

On the origin of the new coronavirus

In the June update it was shown that renowned virologists consider a laboratory origin of the new coronavirus to be “at least as plausible” as a natural origin. This is due to some genetic peculiarities of the virus in the area of receptor binding, which lead to particularly high transmissibility and infectivity in humans.

In the meantime, further evidence for this hypothesis has emerged. It was already known that the virus most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 was found in 2013 in southwest China. This bat corona virus was discovered by researchers from the Wuhan Virological Institute and is known as RaTG13.

However, researchers with access to Chinese papers have since found out that the Wuhan scientists did not reveal the whole story. In fact, RaTG13 was found in a former copper mine with a lot of bat feces after six miners fell ill with pneumonia during clean-up work. Three of the miners died.

According to the original Chinese papers, the medical assessment at the time was that these pneumonia cases were caused by a SARS-like virus. But the head of the Wuhan Laboratory strangely said in an interview with the Scientific American in April 2020 that the cause was allegedly a fungus. The institute didn’t disclose that RaTG13 came from that fateful mine, either.

The head of the US “Eco Health Alliance”, which worked together with the Wuhan Institute on virological “gain of function” research (which produces potentially pandemic viruses), claimed that RaTG13 was partially sequenced at the time and then put in a freezer and “not used again until 2020” (when it was compared to SARS-CoV-2).

However, virological database entries found in the meantime show that this is not true either: the virus – then known under the internal code 4991 – was already used for research purposes in the Wuhan laboratory in 2017 and 2018. Moreover, various Chinese virus databases have since been strangely deleted.

Virologists agree that SARS-CoV-2 cannot be a direct, natural successor to RaTG13 – the necessary mutations would take several decades at least, despite a 96 percent genetic match. However, it is theoretically possible that SARS-CoV-2 was generated, based on RaTG13, by virological “gain of function” research in a laboratory, or was itself present in the 2013 mine.

In this sense, it would be conceivable that SARS-CoV-2 could have escaped from the laboratory in Wuhan in September or October 2019 – during a laboratory inspection at that time or during preparations for it. Such laboratory accidents are unfortunately nothing unusual and have already occurred in the past in China, the US, Russia and other countries.

Read more: Seven year coronavirus trail from bat cave via Wuhan lab(Times, July 4, 2020)

Besides the Chinese aspect there is, however, also an American aspect.

It has long been known that US researchers at the University of North Carolina are world leaders in the analysis and synthesis of SARS-like, potentially pandemic viruses. Due to a temporary moratorium in the US, this research was partially transferred to China (i.e. Wuhan) a few years ago.

In April, the Bulgarian investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva published information and documents that show that the US Department of Defense, together with the US health authority CDC, was also conducting research on potentially pandemic SARS-like corona viruses.

This corona virus research was carried out in a Pentagon biological laboratory in Georgia (near Russia), among other places, and was also coordinated by the above-mentioned US “Eco Health Alliance”, which cooperated with the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, too. In this respect, the “Eco Health Alliance” may be seen as a military research service provider or contractor.

Thus, apart from its own SARS corona virus research, the US military must have been very familiar with Chinese research in Wuhan, due to its partnership with “Eco Health Alliance”.

Read more: Pentagon biolab discovered MERS and SARS-like coronaviruses in bats (DG)

US investigative journalist Whitney Webb already pointed out that the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security – which organized the well-known coronavirus pandemic exercise “Event 201” in October 2019 together with the Gates Foundation and the WEF Davos – had also organized the anthrax exercise “Dark Winter” in 2001.

This exercise took place a few months before the actual anthrax attacks in September 2001, whose origin could later be traced back to a Pentagon laboratory. Some of the participants of “Dark Winter” are also involved in the current management of the Corona pandemic.

Developments since the beginning of 2020 show that the new corona virus cannot be seen as a “bioweapon” in the strict sense of the term, as it is not deadly enough and not targeted enough. However, it may well – similar to “terrorists” and amplified by the media – cause fear and terror among the global population and be exploited politically.

In this context, it is noteworthy that vaccine investor and Event 201 cosponsor Bill Gates repeatedly spoke of seeing the current corona virus as “pandemic one”, while “pandemic two” would be a genuine bioterrorist attack for which one must be prepared against.

Nevertheless, besides a potential lab origin, a natural origin continues to be a realistic possibility, even though the “Wuhan wet market” hypothesis and more recently the pangolin hypothesis have already been ruled out by experts.

Lugar Center: A Pentagon biolab in Georgia that was researching bat coronaviruses (Photo: D. Gaytandzhieva)

(Last updated: July 11)

Derrick Broze, Guest

Waking Times

In mid-May US President Donald Trump announced that the US would be ending their financial support for the World Health Organization (WHO) and COVID-19 relief. The move was lambasted in the mainstream press as an out of touch politician pulling funding from a vital global health organization during the middle of a pandemic. To Trump’s supporters the decision was met with the typical cheering and celebrated as another Trump victory against the “globalists.” To understand what is actually going on we need to examine Donald Trump’s actions, not his tweets or media statements.

Let us start by looking at the funding provided by the US government to the WHO in previous years. The latest numbers from fiscal year 2018 (numbers are not available for 2019-20) show an estimated $281.6 million to the WHO from the US. The records indicate that after the US government, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, are the 2nd and 3rd top financiers of the WHO. The US defunding the WHO actually tightens the technocrats already firm grip on another global institution.

This means when Donald Trump stated the US will no longer fund the WHO, the Gates Foundation and GAVI stepped into the top financial role. Additionally, GAVI was founded by and largely funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. Either way, Bill Gates is the top donor and will continue to expand his influence and dominance of global health policy. As reported in Part 2 of my Bill Gates investigation, in 2010 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched the “Decade of Vaccines” and called for a “Global Vaccine Action Plan.” Since that time they have only grown their network and influence on WHO, GAVI and other organizations in order to shape public health policy in a way that reaps profits for the Gates themselves.

While Trump’s supporters viewed the US withdrawal from WHO financing as a win for nationalism or a black eye to the globalists, the truth is a bit more nuanced.In early June, the Trump administration declared support for GAVI to the tune of a $1.16 billion USD donation. Trump’s support for GAVI came via the first ever virtual Global Vaccine Summit. At this summit GAVI surpassed the goal of $7.4 billion, instead raising $8.8 billion USD and securing commitments from most major nations around the world. GAVI even received a $5 million dollar donation from the Rockefeller Foundation. GAVI stated that the funding will go to “routine immunization programs” and will also help the public-private partnership “play a major role in the rollout of a future Covid-19 vaccine.”

More than 25 heads of state and 50 leaders of international agencies, NGOs and private industry attended the fundraising event. Participants included Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, UN Secretary General António Guterres, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

UN Secretary Guterres stated that the vaccine would not be enough and instead called for “global solidarity…to ensure that every person everywhere gets access to the vaccine.” Guterres also noted that “our individual health depends on our collective health.”

Donald Trump, GAVI, and Bill GatesIt was at this Global Vaccine Summit where a pre-recorded message from Donald Trump was played. In his video statement Trump said UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked him to record a message.

During his short speech, Donald Trump stated, “It’s great to be partnering with you. We will work hard, we will work strong.” Trump also called COVID-19 “mean” and “nasty” and said it has shown “there are no borders, it doesn’t discriminate.”

Trump’s support for GAVI was echoed on the Twitter account for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). “USAID echo’s @Realdonaldtrump‘s words and is proud to be partnering with @Gavi by committing $1.16 billion to protect people through vaccines, because #VaccinesWork,“ the tweet reads. (It should be noted that USAID has also been accused of creating fake social media networks in an attempt to foment unrest in foreign nations.)It was actually USAID who first announced the pledge of US $1.16 billion in February. The Trump administration included that $1.16 commitment as part of the budget for Fiscal Years 2020-2023. The budget for Fiscal Year 2021 included $290 million for GAVI. Remember that the records from fiscal year 2018 show an estimated $281.6 million to the WHO from the US. The Trump administration’s announcement of an initial $290 million investment easily surpassed the US investment in the WHO. Over the next three years the US will give more than $800 million to GAVI for their vaccination programs.

Once again, this puts Bill Gates and his organizations at the top of the global health pyramid. So what did Mr. Gates have to say about the success of the Global Vaccine Summit?“

Since its inception GAVI has helped vaccinate more than three-quarters of a billion children … And now, it’s stepping up and saying it’s willing to deliver a Covid-19 vaccine as soon as one is available to end the pandemic as soon as possible,” he said at the Summit. “We must also renew our commitment to delivering every life-saving vaccine there is to every child on earth.”

The Trump administration’s support for the development of vaccines to fight COVID-19 is also visible in a more recent virtual event organized by Global Citizen and the European Commission. On June 27, Global Citizen hosted the “Global Goal: Unite for Our Future – The Concert” which was supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and Corporate Partners Citi, Procter & Gamble, SAP, Verizon and Vodafone. Once again, the funds raised at the event went to the Gates-founded GAVI.

During this event, Kelly Craft, United States Ambassador to the United Nations announced the US commitment of $545 million for GAVI towards COVID-19 relief efforts. “Together, we must work in an open, transparent, and supportive manner to build a safer, more resilient world. We must be the true multilateralist in the best sense of the word, working toward the common good,” Craft said.

At a May 2020 virtual summit, also organized by the European Commission, the Trump administration committed to giving another $775 million in emergency health, humanitarian, economic and development aid for governments, international organizations and charities fighting the pandemic. At this same event the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed $125 million. Either Way, Gates WinsTaken together – the May payment of $775 million; the early June announcement of $1.16 billion; and the late June gift of $545 million – these taxpayer funded investments will provide abundant resources for GAVI, and subsequently, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. These funds easily outweigh the paltry $281.6 million the US was giving to the WHO.

It is important to understand that the WHO is a part of the United Nations, which itself is an “intergovernmental organization” that is attempting to replace nation-states as we know them today in favor of global governance schemes. GAVI is a “public-private partnership” where governmental bodies and private organizations partner up to provide some sort of public service. Neither of these organizations has been elected by the free people of the nations in which they operate.

Despite this fact, the Trump administration is continuing to give billions to GAVI and in doing so, furthering Bill Gates’ goal to vaccinate 7 billion people. Trump may have pulled funds from the WHO, but that decision allows Gates to take full control of WHO policy and continue to use US taxpayer dollars to fund vaccine projects, including a rushed vaccine for COVID-19. This was likely the plan the whole time.

As we have clearly demonstrated in previous reports, Gates has an outsized influence on the COVID-19 recovery and global health in general. A 2015 report titled, Philanthropic Power and Development: Who shapes the agenda?, examines the influence of global philanthropy and provides examples of the undue influence Gates and others can wield. The report noted that researchers have been critical of GAVI for following a “Gates-approach” on global health challenges, “focusing on disease-specific vertical health interventions (through vaccines), instead of horizontal and holistic approaches (e.g., health system strengthening).” Further, in May 2019, Gavi CEO Seth Berkley referred to “anti-vaccine sentiment” as a disease that needs to be censored from the internet. Berkley’s statements are perfectly in line with Bill Gates’ vision and the larger agenda of eugenics. The public cannot be allowed to question the safety of vaccines — no matter how rushed they are.

This is why the Trump administration appointed a Big Pharma lackey to head “Operation Warp Speed,” Trump’s plan to fast track the development of vaccines for COVID-19. In May, Trump appointed Moncef Slaoui, a former executive with vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline, to serve in a volunteer position, assisted by Army Gen. Gustave Perna, the commander of United States Army Materiel Command. According to the Trump administration, Operation Warp Speed program is focusing on four vaccines, with the hopes of testing and producing 100 million doses by October 2020, 200 million by December, and 300 million doses by January. Slaoui has said he believes the goal of vaccines by January 2021 is a “credible goal.”Once again, Gates’ fingerprints are all over the situation. Slaoui himself has a long history with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, sitting on the boards of companies that are connected to the organization.It appears that despite the public pronouncements of divesting from the WHO or tweets about standing up to the globalists, the Trump administration continues to push the agenda to vaccinate every person on the planet.

About the Author

Derrick Broze is an investigative journalist and liberty activist. He is the founder of the TheConsciousResistance.com. Follow him on Twitter. Derrick is the author of three books: The Conscious Resistance: Reflections on Anarchy and Spirituality and Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion, Vol. 1, Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion, Vol. 2 and Manifesto of the Free Humans. Derrick is available for interviews. Please contact Derrick@activistpost.com

This article (Your “Immunity Passport” Future Begins To Materialize As Airlines Call For Digital ID Tracking Systems) was originally featured at The Mind Unleashed and is reposted here with permission.

By Beda M Stadler
Global Research, July 08, 2020
Weltwoche 2 July 2020

“It was even more wrong to claim that the population would not already have some immunity against this virus.” The immune response to the virus is stronger than everyone thought

The original article was published in the Swiss magazine Weltwoche (World Week) on June 10th. The author, Beda M Stadler is the former director of the Institute for Immunology at the University of Bern, a biologist and professor emeritus. Stadler is an important medical professional in Switzerland, he also likes to use provoking language, which should not deter you from the extremely important points he makes.

This article is about Switzerland and it does not suggest that the situation is exactly the same globally.

I am advocating for local measures according to locale situations. And I advocate for looking at real data rather than abstract models. I also suggest to read to the end, because Stadler makes crucial points about testing for Sars-CoV-2.

Back to Reason, Medium, June 2, 2020

***

This is not an accusation, but a ruthless taking stock [of the current situation]. I could slap myself, because I looked at Sars-CoV2- way too long with panic. I am also somewhat annoyed with many of my immunology colleagues who so far have left the discussion about Covid-19 to virologists and epidemiologists. I feel it is time to criticise some of the main and completely wrong public statements about this virus.

Firstly, it was wrong to claim that this virus was novel.

Secondly, It was even more wrong to claim that the population would not already have some immunity against this virus.

Thirdly, it was the crowning of stupidity to claim that someone could have Covid-19 without any symptoms at all or even to pass the disease along without showing any symptoms whatsoever.

But let’s look at this one by one.

1. A new virus?

At the end of 2019 a coronavirus, which was considered novel, was detected in China. When the gene sequence, i.e. the blueprint of this virus, was identified and was given a similar name to the 2002 identified Sars, i.e. Sars-CoV-2, we should have already asked ourselves then how far [this virus] is related to other coronaviri, which can make human beings sick. But no, instead we discussed from which animal as part of a Chinese menu the virus might have sprung. In the meantime, however, many more people believe the Chinese were so stupid as to release this virus upon themselves in their own country. Now that we’re talking about developing a vaccine against the virus, we suddenly see studies which show that this so-called novel virus is very strongly related to Sars-1 as well as other beta-coronaviri which make us suffer every year in the form of a colds. Apart from the pure homologies in the sequence between the various coronaviri which can make people sick, [scientists] currently work on identifying a number of areas on the virus in the same way as human immune cells identify them. This is no longer about the genetic relationship, but about how our immune system sees this virus, i.e. which parts of other coronaviri could potentially be used in a vaccine.

So: Sars-Cov-2 isn’t all that new, but merely a seasonal cold virus that mutated and disappears in summer, as all cold viri do — which is what we’re observing globally right now. Flu viri mutate significantly more, by the way, and nobody would ever claim that a new flu virus strain was completely novel. Many veterinary doctors where therefore annoyed by this claim of novelty, as they have been vaccinating cats, dogs, pigs, and cows for years against coronaviri.

2. The fairy tale of no immunity

From the World Health Organisation (WHO) to every Facebook-virologist, everyone claimed this virus was particularly dangerous, because there was no immunity against it, because it was a novel virus.

Even Anthony Fauci, the most important advisor to the Trump administration noted at the beginning at every public appearance that the danger of the virus lay in the fact that there was no immunity against it.

Tony [Anthony Sauci] and I often sat next to each other at immunology seminars at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda in the US, because we worked in related fields back then. So for a while I was pretty uncritical of his statements, since he was a respectable colleague of mine.

The penny dropped only when I realised that the first commercially available antibody test [for Sars-CoV-2] was put together from an old antibody test that was meant to detect Sars-1.

This kind of test evaluates if there are antibodies in someone’s blood and if they came about through an early fight against the virus. [Scientists] even extracted antibodies from a Lama that would detect Sars-1, Sars-CoV-2, and even the Mers virus. It also became known that Sars-CoV-2 had a less significant impact in areas in China where Sars-1 had previously raged. This is clear evidence urgently suggesting that our immune system considers Sars-1 and Sars-Cov-2 at least partially identical and that one virus could probably protect us from the other.

Trump Regime Immunity Certificates for Mass Vaxxing and Population Control

That’s when I realised that the entire world simply claimed that there was no immunity, but in reality, nobody had a test ready to prove such a statement. That wasn’t science, but pure speculation based on a gut feeling that was then parroted by everyone. To this day there isn’t a single antibody test that can describe all possible immunological situations, such as: if someone is immune, since when, what the neutralising antibodies are targeting and how many structures exist on other coronaviri that can equally lead to immunity.

In mid-April work was published by the group of Andreas Thiel at the Charité Berlin. A paper with 30 authors, amongst them the virologist Christian Drosten. It showed that in 34 % of people in Berlin who had never been in contact with the Sars-CoV-2 virus showed nonetheless T-cell immunity against it (T-cell immunity is a different kind of immune reaction, see below). This means that our T-cells, i.e. white blood cells, detect common structures appearing on Sars-CoV-2 and regular cold viri and therefore combat both of them.

A study by John P A Ioannidis of Stanford University — according to the Einstein Foundation in Berlin one of the world’s ten most cited scientists — showed that immunity against Sars-Cov-2, measured in the form of antibodies, is much higher than previously thought. Ioannidis is certainly not a conspiracy theorist who just wants to swim against the stream; nontheless he is now being criticised, because the antibody tests used were not extremely precise. With that, his critics admit that they do not have such tests yet. And besides, John P A Ioannidis is such a scientific heavy-weight that all German virologists combined area a light-weight in comparison.

3. The failure of modellers

Epidemiologist also fell for the myth that there was no immunity in the population. They also didn’t want to believe that coronaviri were seasonal cold viri that would disappear in summer. Otherwise their curve models would have looked differently. When the initial worst case scenarios didn’t come true anywhere, some now still cling to models predicting a second wave. Let’s leave them their hopes — I’ve never seen a scientific branch that manoeuvred itself so much into the offside. I have also not yet understood why epidemiologists were so much more interested in the number of deaths, rather than in the numbers that could be saved.

4. Immunology of common sense

As an immunologist I trust a biological model, namely that of the human organism, which has built a tried and tested, adaptive immune system. At the end of February, driving home from the recording of [a Swiss political TV debate show], I mentioned to Daniel Koch [former head of the Swiss federal section “Communicable Diseases” of the Federal Office of Public Health] that I suspected there was a general immunity in the population against Sars-Cov-2. He argued against my view.

I later defended him anyway, when he said that children were not a driving factor in the spread of the pandemic. He suspected that children didn’t have a receptor for the virus, which is of course nonsense. Still, we had to admit that his observations were correct. But the fact that every scientist attacked him afterwards and asked for studies to prove his point, was somewhat ironic. Nobody asked for studies to prove that people in certain at-risk groups were dying. When the first statistics from China and later worldwide data showed the same trend, that is to say that almost no children under ten years old got sick, everyone should have made the argument that children clearly have to be immune. For every other disease that doesn’t afflict a certain group of people, we would come to the conclusion that that group is immune. When people are sadly dying in a retirement home, but in the same place other pensioners with the same risk factors are left entirely unharmed, we should also conclude that they were presumably immune.

But this common sense seems to have eluded many, let’s call them “immunity deniers” just for fun. This new breed of deniers had to observe that the majority of people who tested positive for this virus, i.e. the virus was present in their throats, did not get sick. The term “silent carriers” was conjured out of a hat and it was claimed that one could be sick without having symptoms. Wouldn’t that be something! If this principle from now on gets naturalised into the realm of medicine, health insurers would really have a problem, but also teachers whose students could now claim to have whatever disease to skip school, if at the end of the day one didn’t need symptoms anymore to be sick.

The next joke that some virologists shared was the claim that those who were sick without symptoms could still spread the virus to other people. The “healthy” sick would have so much of the virus in their throats that a normal conversation between two people would be enough for the “healthy one” to infect the other healthy one. At this point we have to dissect what is happening here: If a virus is growing anywhere in the body, also in the throat, it means that human cells decease. When [human] cells decease, the immune system is alerted immediately and an infection is caused. One of five cardinal symptoms of an infection is pain. It is understandable that those afflicted by Covid-19 might not remember that initial scratchy throat and then go on to claim that they didn’t have any symptoms just a few days ago. But for doctors and virologists to twist this into a story of “healthy” sick people, which stokes panic and was often given as a reason for stricter lockdown measures, just shows how bad the joke really is. At least the WHO didn’t accept the claim of asymptomatic infections and even challenges this claim on its website.

Here a succinct and brief summary, especially for the immunity deniers, of how humans are attacked by germs and how we react to them: If there are pathogenic viri in our environment, then all humans — whether immune or not — are attacked by this virus. If someone is immune, the battle with the virus begins. First we try to prevent the virus from binding to our own cells with the help of antibodies. This normally works only partially, not all are blocked and some viri will attach to the appropriate cells. That doesn’t need to lead to symptoms, but it’s also not a disease. Because the second guard of the immune system is now called into action. That’s the above mentioned T-cells, white blood cells, which can determine from the outside in which other cells the virus is now hiding to multiply. These cells, which are now incubating the virus, are searched throughout the entire body and killed by the T-cells until the last virus is dead.

So if we do a PCR corona test on an immune person, it is not a virus that is detected, but a small shattered part of the viral genome. The test comes back positive for as long as there are tiny shattered parts of the virus left. Correct: Even if the infectious viri are long dead, a corona test can come back positive, because the PCR method multiplies even a tiny fraction of the viral genetic material enough [to be detected]. That’s exactly what happened, when there was the global news, even shared by the WHO, that 200 Koreans who already went through Covid-19 were infected a second time and that there was therefore probably no immunity against this virus. The explanation of what really happened and an apology came only later, when it was clear that the immune Koreans were perfectly healthy and only had a short battle with the virus. The crux was that the virus debris registered with the overly sensitive test and therefore came back as “positive”. It is likely that a large number of the daily reported infection numbers are purely due to viral debris.

The PCR test with its extreme sensitivity was initially perfect to find out where the virus could be. But this test can not identify whether the virus is still alive, i.e. still infectous. Unfortunately, this also led some virologists to equate the strength of a test result with viral load, i.e. the amount of virus someone can breathe out. Luckily, our day care centres stayed open nontheless. Since German virologist missed that part, because, out of principle, they do not look at what other countries are doing, even if other countries’ case numbers are falling more rapidly.

5. The problem with corona immunity

What does this all mean in real life? The extremely long incubation time of two to 14 days — and reports of 22 to 27 days — should wake up any immunologist. As well as the claim that most patients would no longer secrete the virus after five days. Both [claims] in turn actually lead to the conclusion that there is — sort of in the background — a base immunity that contorts the events, compared to an expected cycle [of a viral infection] — i.e. leads to a long incubation period and quick immunity. This immunity also seems to be the problem for patients with a sever course of the disease. Our antibody titre, i.e. the accuracy of our defence system, is reduced the older we get. But also people with a bad diet or who are malnourished may have a weakened immune system, which is why this virus does not only reveal the medical problems of a country, but also social issues.

If an infected person does not have enough antibodies, i.e. a weak immune response, the virus slowly spreads out across the entire body. Now that there are not enough antibodies, there is only the second, supporting leg of our immune response left: The T-cells beginn to attack the virus-infested cells all over the body. This can lead to an exaggerated immune response, basically to a massive slaughter; this is called a Cytokine Storm. Very rarely this can also happen in small children, in that case called Kawasaki Syndrome. This very rare occurrence in children was also used in our country to stoke panic. It’s interesting, however, that this syndrome is very easily cured. The [affected] children get antibodies from healthy blood donors, i.e. people who went through coronavirus colds. This means that the hushed-up [supposedly non-existent] immunity in the population is in fact used therapeutically.

What now?

The virus is gone for now. It will probably come back in winter, but it won’t be a second wave, but just a cold. Those young and healthy people who currently walk around with a mask on their faces would be better off wearing a helmet instead, because the risk of something falling on their head is greater than that of getting a serious case of Covid-19.

If we observe a significant rise in infections in 14 days [after the Swiss relaxed the lockdown], we’d at least know that one of the measures was useful. Other than that I recommend reading John P A Ioannidis’ latest work in which he describes the global situation based on data on May 1st 2020: People below 65 years old make up only 0.6 to 2.6 % of all fatal Covid cases. To get on top of the pandemic, we need a strategy merely concentrating on the protection of at-risk people over 65. If that’s the opinion of a top expert, a second lockdown is simply a no-go.

On our way back to normal, it would be good for us citizens if a few scaremongers apologised. Such as doctors who wanted a triage of over 80 year old Covid patients in order to stop ventilating them. Also media that kept showing alarmist videos of Italian hospitals to illustrate a situation that as such didn’t exist. All politicians calling for “testing, testing, testing” without even knowing what the test actually measures. And the federal government for an app they’ll never get to work and will warn me if someone near me is positive, even if they’re not infectious.

In winter, when the flu and other colds make the rounds again, we can then go back to kissing each other a little less, and we should wash our hands even without a virus present. And people who’ll get sick nonetheless can then don their masks to show others what they have learned from this pandemic. And if we still haven’t learned to protect our at-risk groups, we’ll have to wait for a vaccine that will hopefully also be effective in at-risk people.

The original article was published in the Swiss magazine Weltwoche (World Week) on June 10th. The author, Dr. Beda M Stadler is the former director of the Institute for Immunology at the University of Bern, a biologist and professor emeritus.

Our thanks to Back to Reason, Medium, for having brought this important article to our attention

*

Note to readers: Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from OneWorld

The original source of this article is Weltwoche
Copyright © Beda M Stadler, Weltwoche, 2020

JB Handley via Off-Guardian

Credit: Shutterstock

Why did politicians ever lockdown society in the first place? Can we all agree that the stated purpose was to “flatten the curve” so our hospital system could handle the inevitable COVID-19 patients who needed care? At that point, at least, back in early March, people were behaving rationally. They accepted that you can’t eradicate a virus, so let’s postpone things enough to handle it.

The fact is, we have done that, and so much more.

The headlines are filled with dire warnings of a “second wave” and trigger-happy Governors are rolling back regulations to try to stem the tide of new cases. But, is any of it actually true and should we all be worried? No, it’s not a second wave.

The COVID-19 virus is on its final legs, and while I have filled this post with graphs to prove everything I just said, this is really the only graph you need to see, it’s the CDC’s data, over time, of deaths from COVID-19 here in the U.S., and the trend line is unmistakable:

If virologists were driving policy about COVID-19 rather than public health officials, we’d all be Sweden right now, which means life would effectively be back to normal. The only thing our lockdowns have done at this point is prolong the agony a little bit, and encouraged Governors to make up more useless rules.

Sweden’s health minister understood that the only chance to beat COVID-19 was to get the Swedish population to a Herd Immunity Threshold against COVID-19, and that’s exactly what they have done, so let me start there.

The Herd Immunity Threshold (“HIT”) for COVID-19 is between 10-20%

This fact gets less press than any other. Most people understand the basic concept of herd immunity and the math behind it. In the early days, some public health officials speculated that COVID-19’s HIT was 70%. Obviously, the difference between a HIT of 70% and a HIT of 10-20% is dramatic, and the lower the HIT, the quicker a virus will burn out as it loses the ability to infect more people, which is exactly what COVID-19 is doing everywhere, including the U.S, which is why the death curve above looks the way it looks.

Scientists from Oxford, Virginia Tech, and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, all recently explained the HIT of COVID-19 in this paper:

We searched the literature for estimates of individual variation in propensity to acquire or transmit COVID-19 or other infectious diseases and overlaid the findings as vertical lines in Figure 3. Most CV estimates are comprised between 2 and 4, a range where naturally acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2 may place populations over the herd immunity threshold once as few as 10-20% of its individuals are immune.

Calculations from this study of data in Stockholm showed a HIT of 17%, and if you really love data check out this great essay by Brown Professor Dr. Andrew Bostom titled, COVID-19 ‘herd immunity’ without vaccination? Teaching modern vaccine dogma old tricks. I’m going to share his summary with you, because it’s so good:

Naturally acquired herd immunity to COVID-19 combined with earnest protection of the vulnerable elderly – especially nursing home and assisted living facility residents — is an eminently reasonable and practical alternative to the dubious panacea of mass compulsory vaccination against the virus.

This strategy was successfully implemented in Malmo, Sweden, which had few COVID-19 deaths by assiduously protecting its elder care homes, while “schools remained open, residents carried on drinking in bars and cafes, and the doors of hairdressers and gyms were open throughout.

One of the most vocal members of the scientific community discussing COVID-19’s HIT is Stanford’s Nobel-laureate Dr. Michael Levitt.

Back on May 4, he gave this great interview to the Stanford Daily where he advocated for Sweden’s approach of letting COVID-19 spread naturally through the community until you arrive at HIT. He stated:

If Sweden stops at about 5,000 or 6,000 deaths, we will know that they’ve reached herd immunity, and we didn’t need to do any kind of lockdown. My own feeling is that it will probably stop because of herd immunity. COVID is serious, it’s at least a serious flu. But it’s not going to destroy humanity as people thought.

Guess what? That’s exactly what happened. As of today, 7 weeks after his prediction, Sweden has 5,280 deaths. In this graph, you can see that deaths in Sweden PEAKED when the HIT was halfway to its peak (roughly 7.3%) and by the time the virus hit 14% it was nearly extinguished. (Shoutout to Gummi Bear on Twitter, a scientist who makes great graphs.)

How could Dr. Levitt have predicted the death range for Sweden so perfectly 7 weeks ago? Because he had a pretty solid idea of what the HIT would be. (If you’d like to further geek-out on HIT, check out: Why herd immunity to COVID-19 is reached much earlier than thought.)

I absolutely LOVE Dr. Levitt (and as a Stanford alum, so proud he is a Stanford professor), watch this incredible video from just yesterday, go to 10:59 and just listen to this remarkable man!! Thrilled with his brand-new paper, released today, Predicting the Trajectory of Any COVID19 Epidemic From the Best Straight Line.

By the way, as a quick aside, and something else the press won’t touch: COVID-19 is a coronavirus, and we have ALL been exposed to MANY coronaviruses during our lives on earth (like the common cold).

Guess what? Scientists are now showing evidence that up to 81% of us can mount a strong response to COVID-19 without ever having been exposed to it before:

Cross-reactive SARS-CoV-2 T-cell epitopes revealed preexisting T-cell responses in 81% of unexposed individuals, and validation of similarity to common cold human coronaviruses provided a functional basis for postulated heterologous immunity

This alone could explain WHY the HIT is so much lower for COVID-19 than some scientists thought originally, when the number being talked about was closer to 70%.

Many of us have always been immune!

If that’s not enough for you, a similar study from Sweden was just released and shows that “roughly twice as many people have developed T-cell immunity compared with those who we can detect antibodies in.”

(We kind of knew this from the data on the Diamond Princess when only 17% of the people on board tested positive, despite an ideal environment for mass spread, implying 83% of the people were somehow protected from the new virus.)

Quick Update: This article came out one day after I wrote mine, and validated everything I just said, except the author is wrong about COVID-19’s HIT, it’s 10-20%, not 60%, which is even better news:

However, it does provide a possible explanation for why the Covid-19 epidemic seems to have died away in many places once it had infected around 20 per cent of the local population (as judged by the presence of antibodies). If people are developing some kind of immunity to Covid-19 via their T cells then it could mean that a far higher percentage of the population has been exposed to Covid-19 than previously thought. Antibodies and T cells combined, it is conceivable that some places such as London or New York are already at or near the 60 per cent infection level required to achieve herd immunity.

Back to death rates over time. We actually have our own Sweden here in the U.S. It’s called New York City. In our case, we accidentally created a Sweden scenario, in that we took our medicine quickly, because:

1. New York locked down so late that they didn’t flatten anything
2. they have the highest population density in the U.S. in NYC
3. the public health officials and Governors there made the bone-headed decision to send COVID-positive nursing home residents back to their nursing home, accelerating deaths of the most vulnerable.

What’s their death curve look like today? In this case, I borrowed the graph from the NYC public health website:

Hmm…notice anything about the chart or its slope? The reason deaths from COVID-19 are dwindling down to nothing isn’t because Governor Cuomo is a policy genius (in fact, he likely created more unnecessary deaths than any other Governor with the nursing home decision), it’s because the virus—like every virus in the history of mankind—is running out of people to infect.

The virus has a HIT of 10-20% and 70% of people are likely naturally immune. Hosts are in short supply! That’s what viruses do, and wait until you see what New York’s likely HIT is today.

We can get a crude, but helpful proxy for whether or not a state (or region) has achieved their own Herd Immunity Threshold if we know the following things: the size of the population, the number of deaths from COVID-19, and COVID-19’s IFR, or Infection Fatality Rate.

In my first blog post late last month, LOCKDOWN LUNACY: the thinking person’s guide, I discussed Infection Fatality Rate in detail, so I am just going to give a very quick summary here.

Stanford’s Dr. John Ioannidis published a meta-analysis (because so many IFR studies have been done around the world in April and early May) where he analyzed TWELVE separate IFR studies and his conclusion lays out the likely IFR for COVID-19:

The infection fatality rate (IFR), the probability of dying for a person who is infected, is one of the most critical and most contested features of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The expected total mortality burden of COVID-19 is directly related to the IFR. Moreover, justification for various non-pharmacological public health interventions depends crucially on the IFR.

Some aggressive interventions that potentially induce also more pronounced collateral harms1 may be considered appropriate, if IFR is high. Conversely, the same measures may fall short of acceptable risk-benefit thresholds, if the IFR is low…Interestingly, despite their differences in design, execution, and analysis, most studies provide IFR point estimates that are within a relatively narrow range.

Seven of the 12 inferred IFRs are in the range 0.07 to 0.20 (corrected IFR of 0.06 to 0.16) which are similar to IFR values of seasonal influenza. Three values are modestly higher (corrected IFR of 0.25-0.40 in Gangelt, Geneva, and Wuhan) and two are modestly lower than this range (corrected IFR of 0.02-0.03 in Kobe and Oise).

The data on IFR has now been replicated so many times that our own Centers for Disease Control announced that their ‘best estimate’ showed an IFR below 0.3%.

In this article on the CDC’s new data, they also highlighted how the cascading declines in IFR has removed all the fears of doomsday:

That “best estimate” scenario also assumes that 35 percent of infections are asymptomatic, meaning the total number of infections is more than 50 percent larger than the number of symptomatic cases. It therefore implies that the IFR is between 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent.

By contrast, the projections that the CDC made in March, which predicted that as many as 1.7 million Americans could die from COVID-19 without intervention, assumed an IFR of 0.8 percent. Around the same time, researchers at Imperial College produced a worst-case scenario in which 2.2 million Americans died, based on an IFR of 0.9 percent.

In order to be as bullet-proof as possible, and because the IFR is an important part of the math I will do right now, I’ve decided to pick a simple and defensible number, the final number pegged by the CDC for COVID-19’s IFR: 0.26%

(As an aside, if we’d known this 3 months ago, no one in the public health world would have panicked. It’s a bad flu, and the rates for younger people are dramatically below 0.26% and approaching zero for children.)

Now that you understand COVID’s IFR and the likely HIT, it’s much easier to talk about the second wave, the data, and the implications. Here’s the deal:

Yes, certain states are having an uptick in three measurements: COVID-19 tests administered, positive COVID-19 tests, and hospitalizations. All three of these measurements are dubious. Hopefully, some of the rise in cases is REAL, because then the U.S. will arrive at Herd Immunity Threshold (“HIT”), which has been slightly delayed by lockdowns, sooner. Based on the “death curve” in the US, we are very close to being done.

Take population, COVID Deaths, and IFR to find HIT

C’mon stay with me! This math is basic, junior high level stuff. And, it’s going to give us the most important, but very crude, number we need to understand all this second wave nonsense: the approximate HIT already attained by state and by the United States.

If you know how many people have died from COVID-19 in any one region, you can quickly calculate how many people have had COVID-19 in that same region. All you do is divide deaths by the IFR. Let’s use NY as the example.

As of today, there have been 31,137 deaths from COVID-19. Take 31,137/.0026, you get 11,975,969 people infected with COVID-19. Take those 11 million people divided by New York’s population of 19.45 million, you get a HIT of…65%.

(Data geek comment: New York’s HIT is clearly OVER-stated, because total deaths drives HIT, and NY has a much higher rate of nursing home deaths due to bad policy.)

Huge disclaimer: This math is crude, but it’s also directionally accurate, and the comparisons BETWEEN states helps explain what’s going on. Importantly, the HIT required to snuff out the virus in any one region could be lower than Sweden’s number of 17%, for a million reasons, most notably better medical knowledge today than a few months ago about how to keep a vulnerable person alive.

Still, just look at this table I created using the math above:

Notice anything? New York is WELL PAST Herd Immunity Threshold (as is New Jersey), the southern states in the news are BELOW the implied HIT, while the U.S. overall is nearly there with 15%. This is why the death curve from the CDC (and NYC!) that I opened this blog post with looks the way it looks: we are basically done with the virus. Just like Sweden. Oh, and Italy:

Quick update: Mount Sinai doctors just released a study showing a seroprevalence study of a random sample of 5,000 New Yorkers, it states that “by the week ending April 19, the seroprevalence in the screening group reached 19.3%.”

If you take that 19.3% number, and consider what we just learned from Sweden — that half of people with immunity won’t show it with this test — and then consider how many more people have been exposed since April 28, it’s entirely plausible that NY is well past 40% or more people, which starts to look closer to the 65% number my math shows. Either way, let’s just keep it simple: New York, and especially NYC, are WELL PAST HIT of 10-20%, which explains why their death curve looks the way it looks.

Florida details

While HIT matters more than anything else in explaining the trajectory of the virus, and tells us that the U.S. is very close to being done with COVID-19, I wanted to take a closer look at one state, Florida, the current whipping boy of the press. They also have great data.

No one seems to be listening to the Governor, the health department, or the hospitals in Florida, who all seem to be saying the same thing, which is basically that everything is fine. On June 20, Florida’s department of health produced a presentation that explained how their testing had changed over time. Check out this slide:

So, as the state re-opened, they began to test everyone, “regardless of age and symptoms.” What do you think would happen when they did that? Obviously, more positives. So, here’s my first fact:

Fact #1: All of the “second wave” states have dramatically increased their testing. This alone causes cases to rise, and is the single biggest reason they have.

Still not convinced? Check out this eye-opener of a chart that shows per-capita testing in the U.S. versus other countries. Notice anything about June? Not only do we do MORE testing than any other country, but our testing spiked in June, right as all the headlines about more cases came out. Hmmm…

It’s not quite that simple. Yes, cases are up because more testing is being done. Cases have never, ever been a reliable indicator of ANYTHING. But, hospitalizations have been a reliable indicator. And, unexpectedly, there was an uptick in hospitalizations for COVID-19 beginning around June 6th in Florida, as you can see here:

The most obvious reason COVID-19 hospitalizations are going up is because of what’s happening in the hospital system. Patients are returning to the hospitals for elective surgery that were all delayed during the lockdown.

EVERY patient is screened for COVID-19. A patient who is undergoing elective knee surgery and tests positive for COVID-19 even though they are asymptomatic will be classified as “hospitalized with COVID-19.” This was explained in a recent NY Times article:

One-third of all patients admitted to the city’s [Miami] main public hospital over the past two weeks after going to the emergency room for car-crash injuries and other urgent problems have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Fact #2: Hospitalizations for COVID-19 are up slightly because of how COVID-19 positive patients are tracked. They will be in the number even if they didn’t go to the hospital BECAUSE of COVID-19

Still, there is something else going on. It’s not just more tests and the way hospitalizations are happening. Many states re-opened on May 1 and their trend lines were flat to down for weeks. It’s as if some super-spreader event happened in certain states towards late May/Early June.

It’s really clear that something unique is going on if you look at data from Minnesota, the state where George Floyd was tragically murdered, where positive cased are stratified by age:

As you can see, in Minnesota, the percentage of positive cases by people age 20-29 really spiked in mid to late June, which means infections likely happened in early June or late May. Yes, obviously, the densely-packed protests for racial equality and social justice—which I personally applaud—appear to have caused a REAL uptick in cases and hospitalizations.

See this article, Houston Protesters Begin to Fall Ill With Coronavirus After Marching for George Floyd. Just look at the median age of NEW cases in Florida for mid-June (used to be in the mid-60s):

Fact #3: A REAL rise in both cases and hospitalizations perfectly matches the timing of the nationwide protests which included many densely-packed crowds together for many hours and even days.

Not convinced? Check out this great graph that overlays the timing of the protests, lockdowns, social mobility, and hospitalizations using data for the entire US. Note there is a time delay between exposure and hospitalizations (between 8 and 15 days), and look at when the yellow hospitalization line goes up.

However, the good news about all of this is that there has been no impact on the number of COVID-19 patients in ICUs, which is consistent with the fact that we know younger patients are less impacted by COVID-19, check out this chart:

Fact #4: Despite a small uptick in hospitalizations, the number of COVID-19 patients in the ICU continues to decline.

IT’S DEATHS, NOT CASES

You’ve been hearing about a handful of states with rising cases, here they are on a chart, cases are clearly rising:

But for those states, what about deaths? They appear to be going the other way:

And, finally, perhaps the most important slide, using Florida as the example, there is NO correlation between more tests, more positive tests, and DEATHS (red line in the graph).

The fact that these three measures are not linear means Florida has a low and stable death rate, and the recent uptick in positive cases—which happens to be perfectly timed to the nationwide protests—means nothing:

Fact #5: There is NO correlation in Florida —the state taking the most heat in the press about a second wave — between positive tests and deaths.

Of course, anyone who has been paying attention to the data could have told you that, because the national data on COVID-19 deaths is looking more and more like Sweden’s, as we already discussed. Today, our national HIT is roughly 15%, which means we are almost done, no matter what any Governor does.

I’ve seen discussion about how the protests caused an uptick in infections amongst younger people. Some in opposition to that fairly obvious reality point to New York, which also had densely-packed protests but has NOT seen an uptick in hospitalizations—how do you explain that? By now, you know the answer: New York’s HIT is already 65%!

Notably, in the math I used, Florida only had a Herd Immunity Threshold number of 6%, well below the target of 17%. So, yes, they MAY WELL have to endure a few more deaths before they achieve HIT. But, it’s highly likely that 1) it won’t need to be as high as 17% because the people being infected are much younger (where death rate is much lower) and 2) that it will happen in the next few weeks, and policy will have nothing to do with whether it happens or not. Either way, because we know the national number is 15%, the virus is almost gone, no matter what anyone says or does, and all you need to do to verify that is look at the CDC’s death curve.

A FINAL THOUGHT ABOUT FLORIDA

John Thomas Littell, MD is a family physician in Florida. I was going to publish an excerpt from his Letter to the Editor of the Orlando Medical News, but it’s so good and so wide-ranging, I want you to read the whole thing, and then we can wrap this up:

Several times a day, on every possible news outlet, we are bombarded with updates as to the new number of “cases” of COVID-19 in the U.S. and elsewhere. News analysts then use these numbers to justify criticisms of those who dare to reject the CDC’s recommendations with regards to mask wearing and social distancing.

It is imperative that all Americans – and especially those in the medical profession – understand the actual definition of a “case” of COVID -19 so as to make informed decisions as to how to live our lives.

Older Americans remember all too well the dread they experienced when a family member was diagnosed with a “case” of scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough (pertussis), or polio. During my career in family medicine, including several years as an Army physician, I have cared for patients with chickenpox, shingles, Lyme disease as well as measles, tuberculosis, malaria, and AIDS. The “case definition” established for all of these diseases by the CDC requires the presence of signs and symptoms of that disease.

In other words, each case involved a SICK patient. Laboratory studies may be performed to “confirm” a diagnosis, but are not sufficient in the absence of clinical symptoms.

Having now been privileged to care for sick patients with COVID-19, both in and out of the hospital setting, I am happy to see the number of these sick patients dwindle almost to zero in my community – while the “case numbers” for COVID-19 continue to go up. Why is that?

In marked contrast to measles, shingles, and other infectious disease, “cases” of COVID-19 do NOT require the presence of ANY symptoms whatsoever. Health departments are encouraging everyone and anyone to come in for testing, and each positive test is reported as yet another “new” case of COVID-19!

On April 5, 2020, a small number of state epidemiologists (Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) Technical Supplement: Interim-20-ID-01) came up with a “surveillance” case definition for COVID-19.

At the time, there was uncertainty as to whether or not completely asymptomatic persons could transmit COVID-19 sufficiently enough to infect and cause disease in others. (This notion has never been proven and, in fact, has recently been discounted – cfr “ A Study on the Infectivity of Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Carriers, Ming Fao et al, Respir Med, 2020 Aug – available online through PubMed 2020 May 13, as well as recent reports from the WHO itself).

The CSTF thereby justified the unconventional case definition for COVID-19, adding “CSTE realizes that field investigations will involve evaluations of persons with no symptoms and these individuals will need to be counted as cases.”

Hence, anyone who has a positive PCR test (the nasal swab, PCR test for COVID Antigen or Nucleic Acid) or serological test (blood test for antibodies –IgG and/or IgM) would be classified as a “case” – even in the absence of symptoms.

In our hospitals at this time, there are hundreds of former nursing home residents sitting in “COVID” units who are in their usual state of good health, banned from returning to their former nursing home residences simply because they have TESTED Positive for COVID-19 during mass testing programs in the nursing homes.

The presence of a positive lab test for COVID-19 in a person who has never been sick is actually GOOD news for that person and for the rest of us. The positive test indicates that this person has likely mounted an adequate immune response to a small dose of COVID-19 to whom he or she was exposed – naturally (hence, no need for a vaccine vs. COVID-19).

It is important as well to understand that the presence of lab testing is not the ONLY criterion that the CDC used to established a diagnosis of COVID-19. The presence of only 1 or 2 flu-like symptoms (fever, chills, cough, sore throat, shortness of breath) – in the absence of another proven cause (e.g., influenza, bacterial pneumonia) is SUFFICIENT to give a diagnosis of COVID-19 – as long as the patient also meets certain “epidemiological linkage” criteria as follows:

“In a person with clinically compatible symptoms, [a “case” will be reported if that person had] one or more of the following exposures in the 14 days before onset of symptoms: travel to or residence in an area with sustained, ongoing community transmission of SARS-CoV-2; close contact (10 minutes or longer, within a 6 foot distance) with a person diagnosed with COVID-19; or member of a risk cohort as defined by public health authorities during an outbreak.” Note that the definition of a “risk cohort” includes age > 70 or living in a nursing home or similar facility.

So, in essence, any person with an influenza- like illness (ILI) could be considered a “case” of COVID-19, even WITHOUT confirmatory lab testing. The CDC has even advised to consider any deaths from pneumonia or ILI as “Covid-related” deaths – unless the physician or medical examiner establishes another infectious agent as the cause of illness.

Now perhaps you see why the increasing number of cases, and even deaths, due to COVID-19 is fraught with misinterpretation and is NOT in any way a measure of the ACTUAL morbidity and mortality FROM COVID-19. My patients who insist upon wearing masks, gloves and social distancing are citing these misleading statistics as justification for their decisions (and, of course, that they are following the “CDC guidelines”). I simply advise them, “COVID-19 is NOT in the atmosphere around us; it resides in the respiratory tracts of infected individuals and can only be transmitted to others by sick, infected persons after prolonged contact with others”.

So you may ask – why are we continuing to report increasing numbers of cases of COVID as though it were BAD news for America? Rather than as GOOD news, i.e, that the thousands of healthy Americans testing positive (also known as “asymptomatic”) are indicative of the presence of herd immunity – protecting themselves and many of us from potential future assaults by variants of COVID?

Why did we as a society stop sending our children to schools and camps and sports activities? Why did we stop going to work and church and public parks and beaches? Why did we insist that healthy persons “stay at home” – rather than observing the evidence-based, medically prudent method of identifying those who were sick and isolating them from the rest of the population – advising the sick to “stay at home” and allowing the rest of society to function normally? And, while we witnessed the gatherings of protestors in recent days with little concerns for COVID-19 spread among these asymptomatic persons, most certainly many are hoping that the increasing “case” numbers for COVID-19 will discourage folks from coming to any more rallies for certain candidates for political office.

Fear is a powerful weapon. FDR famously broadcast to Americans in 1933 that “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself”. I would argue that we have to fear those who would have us remain fearful and servile and willing to surrender basic freedoms without justification.

John Thomas Littell, MD, is a board-certified family physician. After earning his MD from George Washington University, he served in the US Army, receiving the Meritorious Service Medal for his work in quality improvement, and also served with the National Health Service Corps in Montana.

During his eighteen years in Kissimmee, FL, Dr Littell has served on the faculty of the UCF School of Medicine, President of the County Medical Society, and Chief of Staff at the Florida Hospital. He currently resides with his wife, Kathleen, and family in Ocala, Florida, where he remains very active as a family physician with practices both in Kissimmee and Ocala.

Dr. Littell brings up many more issues than I have chosen to address in this post, because I already wrote about them in my previous blog post on May 30.

Wasn’t this supposed to be about hospitals?

The only reason ever given for locking down in the first place was space availability in hospitals. Here’s what Florida said about their hospitals last week:

And here’s what doctors in Houston, Texas said last week:

Hospital CEO’s including, Dr. Marc Boom with Houston Methodist, Dr. David L. Callender with Memorial Hermann Health System, Dr. Doug Lawson with St. Luke’s Health, and Mark A. Wallace with Texas Children’s Hospital, held a zoom conference, June 25, out of concern, “that recent news coverage has unnecessarily alarmed the Houston community about hospital capacity during this COVID-19 surge.” The two key major takeaways from today’s discussion: The Houston health care system has the resources and capacity necessary to treat patients with COVID-19 and otherwise…

Sigh. So why is the press making such a big deal out of the “second wave”? I don’t do politics, but if I did I would probably mention that here.

What are Governors doing?

In a quick word: nothing helpful. I think this guy summarizes how I feel:

Seriously, though, the rollbacks of openings are simply ridiculous, and simply compounding a terrible idea, and delaying the inevitable process within each region of achieving a proper Herd Immunity Threshold. If you want to get angry about lockdowns all over again, like I did in my article in May, just read this: The lockdown is causing so many deaths. Here’s an excerpt:

How many people aged 15 or under have died of Covid-19? Four. The chance of dying from a lightning strike is one in 700,000. The chance of dying of Covid-19 in that age group is one in 3.5million. And we locked them all down. Even among the 15- to 44-year-olds, the death rate is very low and the vast majority of deaths have been people who had significant underlying health conditions. We locked them down as well. We locked down the population that had virtually zero risk of getting any serious problems from the disease, and then spread it wildly among the highly vulnerable age group. If you had written a plan for making a complete bollocks of things you would have come up with this one.

In Conclusion

Dr. Michael Levitt and Sweden have been right all along. The only way through COVID-19 is by achieving the modest (10-20%) Herd Immunity Threshold required to have the virus snuff itself out. The sooner politicians—and the press—start talking about HIT and stop talking about new confirmed cases, the better off we will all be. Either way, it’s likely weeks, not months, before the data of new daily deaths will be so low that the press will have to find something new to scare everyone. It’s over.

A quick note:

Haters of this article will post articles about Sweden saying their approach has been a failure. They will point to recent press about Sweden having higher rates of COVID-19 positive tests lately — Sweden has pushed back strongly — so here’a chart for the haters, it shows positive cases in Sweden, tracked against deaths. There’s no correlation.

For my truly committed readers who made it this far:

The death rate is a fact; anything beyond this is an inference.”
William Farr (1807 – 1883)

William Farr, creator of Farr’s law, knew this over 100 years ago. Viruses rise and fall at roughly the same slopes. It’s predictable, and COVID-19 is no different, which is why, after looking at all these death curves, it’s not very hard to declare that the pandemic is over.

Oxford’s center for Evidence Based Medicine has a wonderful explanation of Farr’s law, and it’s well worth a read. Some of my favorite quotes:

Farr shows us that once peak infection has been reached then it will roughly follow the same symmetrical pattern on the downward slope […] In the midst of a pandemic, it is easy to forget Farr’s Law, and think the number infected will just keep rising, it will not. Just as quick as measures were introduced to prevent the spread of infection we need to recognise the point at which to open up society and also the special measures due to ‘density’ that require special considerations.”

Once peak deaths have been reached we should be working on the assumption that the infection has already started falling in the same progressive steps. Using deaths as the proxy for falling infections facilitates the planning of the next steps for reopening those societies that are in lockdown.”

A reader just sent me this chart from the CDC. If you don’t think the COVID-19 virus has run its course according to Farr’s Law, I can’t help you!

JB Handley is the best-selling author of How to End the Autism Epidemic. He graduated with honors from Stanford University, and currently serves as a Managing member of Bochi Investments, a private investment firm. 

Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest WhatsApp vKontakte

Flu like symptoms are not a disease but an inevitable detox that improves health; inevitable for those with lymphatic stagnation. It is like calling sleep a disease.

Daniel Harris

I cleaned up of the transcript provided. All the bracketed notes were in the original transcription. Looks pretty clean to me, wanted to post it asap.

Interview of Dr. Stoyan Alexov, president of the Bulgarian Pathology Association, by Dr. Stoycho Katsarov, chair of the Centre of protection of citizens’ rights, regarding the European Society of Pathology, May 8, 2020, webinar titled COVID-19: Unprecedented Challenges in Pathology Departments Across Europe

Dr. Katsarov: I’m talking to Dr. Stoian Alexov, who is the president of the Bulgarian Pathology Association. He participated in an international webinar on the topic of the coronavirus infection and the point of view of pathologists from different countries in Europe. Based on that webinar, what are the main conclusions you come up with?

Dr. Alexov: The topic of webinar was to share between the pathologists in European countries what’s happening in their countries, and from the perspective of pathologists what we should do to stop the so-called pandemic. Do we really have accurate information? Are we talking about a pandemic or infection? Is the virus really killing people? If so, how exactly is it killing people and what mechanical type of process is going? How are the different organs and systems in the human body impacted by the coronavirus? The good thing is that the webinar was organized by the European Society of Pathology, and in the webinar were multiple participants from Italy, Spain, Germany, Sweden. Many questions were asked. And the main question was, what is happening with the coronavirus infection not pandemic. I want to accentuate that: it’s an infection, not a pandemic. Because what we hear, many of the facts that are given, the main thing the people are really afraid of is to die, but we the pathologists, we meet with dead people all the time. The main conclusion was that the autopsies that were conducted in Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Sweden do not conclude that the virus is deadly.

Dr. Katsarov: What are the specifics of the clinical picture from the histology of the coronavirus that makes it different from the seasonal flus and other respiratory diseases?

Dr. Alexov: I asked exactly the same question to Professor Moch [Dr. Holger Moch, professor of pathology at the University of Zurich] because he showed us histological pictures or maps of the people they did autopsies on, [as well as] electron microscopy of the lungs of the people who died, the analyses that they did [on those], which cannot be done in Bulgaria. He found the heliome [? heluidic ?] type of tissues in endothelial cells. Based on that, they were considering that the virus creates endotheliitis, and to the lead [?] of the lungs paths [?]. Endotheliitis is a disease which is the infection of the lung palodalim [?]. And also, what’s happening to the first and second level of evelocities[?] [in the lung]? I asked, is there a difference in the autopsy of a person who died from the coronavirus and of another person who died from the seasonal flu? And Dr. Moch answered that to this point from what he has seen in the autopsies there is no difference in the pathology of the person who died from coronavirus and someone who died from seasonal flu. [NOTE: DR. MOCH DIDN’T SAY THAT. HE SIMPLY SAID IT’S A GOOD QUESTION.] But there’s a big difference which is really important to know. The two doctors from Italy asked if there is a specific monoclonal antibody which we can use in our pathology work to prove that the coronavirus [is present]. Is there such an antibody that’s been isolated? [Dr. Moch answered that] such a monoclonal antibody hasn’t been isolated — they don’t know of the existence of such an antibody at the moment. The second question is, is there a different monoclonal antibody that we can use to diagnose a coronavirus infection when we do a biopsy? And for both questions they answered no, there is no such antibody that we can use to prove coronavirus is present in a biopsy or in autopsy tissue. In Bulgaria we’ve done three autopsies [on people whose deaths were attributed by COVID-19], [all conducted] by Dr. Nia Serbianova [spelling?][she’s the head of clinical pathology at Pirogov Hospital]. She asked the same question about this antibody to experts from Italy and Spain. They replied that there’s no such monoclonal antibodies. What all the pathologists said is that there’s no one who has died from the coronavirus. And I will repeat that: no one has died from the coronavirus. Most of the people… You would ask why, because if you were listening to me you’d say I’m crazy. I will explain why I’m not crazy. But I’m explaining this from the perspective of pathology. And as a professional working in pathology, we have certain procedures, protocols, which we apply to necropsy as well as to biopsy. Our protocol should list the first disease, second disease, third disease and reason for the death. When we say that the patient died because of the coronavirus, we mean that the coronavirus led to interstitial pneumonia, afterwards leading to the death of the person, with no other diseases in other organs and in other systems. But such facts haven’t been found; nobody has reported this. And because of that, I’m really concerned with the inadequate behaviour of the World Health Organization. For the first time in my practice I’ve been practising for 30 years as a doctor that the WHO is announcing a pandemic before it has facts to support this. They did not announce an epidemic but instead a pandemic. Pandemic means that people will die from the coronavirus. I don’t know why many governments and country leaders are saying that people are going to die from it. While us pathologists we aren’t scared by that because we meet with that every day — we work with dead bodies.

Dr. Katsarov: Are you saying that the information was presented in a manipulative way

Dr. Alexov: Yes, an absolutely manipulated way. Misrepresented. In many countries, the people who are pathologists and virologists work together in laboratories, so they talk to each other. And that’s why I’m telling you what the other people are saying. I’m not the only person to listen to; we should listen to people from the other countries as well. We need to listen to the people and the colleagues who work together with virologists, with biologists, and [listen to] what they think of that. And the people who died, did they die from the coronavirus, or with the coronavirus? The real term we use is that the people in Italy and France and in Spain are dying with the coronavirus — not from the coronavirus — on the top of their very poor clinical picture from their illness [i.e., they had serious comorbid disease(s)].

Dr. Katsarov: Can we do this comparison: If in Bulgaria we have 200,000-300,000 people who get sick from the seasonal flu every year — and if we know that some of them will die because of different reasons, can we just say they died from the seasonal flu?

Dr. Alexov: No, we can’t do that, because there’s a big difference between the seasonal flu and the coronavirus. No, in many cases the people who die from the seasonal flu also include young people. Which is the big difference. The difference from the coronavirus pandemic is we haven’t yet had young people dying. Which is a big difference. Because [with the seasonal flu] we can find one virus which can cause a young person to die with no other illness present. And it’s different than saying that somebody died from the coronavirus who has a [cardiac] infarct and with [two other diseases]. [One of] the people who died [from COVID] that we did an autopsy on was a 78-year-old with high blood pressure and an infarct from heart attack and he didn’t have a single body system working properly. And then we were saying that coronavirus infections are so difficult to be cured. In other words, the coronavirus infection is an infection that does not lead to death. And the flu can lead to death.

Dr. Katsarov: What I have in mind is if a person has a heart attack and a flu we can either say that he died from a heart attack or we can say he died from the flu; that’s what’s happening now with the coronavirus.

Dr. Alexov: Yes, exactly. At the moment it’s a total resistance of the pathologists in Europe, in China, as well as in Australia and in Canada [because] the pathologists have been pushed and pressured: if the patient has a coronavirus, the reason for the death is to be written that it’s nothing else but the coronavirus. That’s quite stressful for us, and for me in particular, because we have protocols and procedures which we need to use. Because when we do autopsies we take necropsy material from all the body systems, we put it in paraffin blocks, and in 100 years we can take a look at them again. And another pathologist 100 years from now is going to say, Hey, those pathologists didn’t know what they were doing! So we need to be really strict with our diagnoses, because they could be proven [or disprove], and they could be checked again later. In this case, now there is the WHO that doesn’t want us to do autopsies. I’m not clear why the WHO doesn’t want us to do autopsies when we need to prove what is the strength of the virus for this specific [?] of the virus. But I don’t know why the WHO doesn’t really want us to do autopsies; I assume they have the information that the virus is not deadly.

Dr. Katsarov: Is this the reason that in Bulgaria we’re not doing the autopsies?

Dr. Alexov: Yes. We’re required to follow the WHO. And I’m really sad that we need to follow those instructions without even thinking about them. But in Germany, France, Italy and England they’re starting to think that we shouldn’t follow the WHO so strictly, and when we’re writing the reason for death we should have the pathology [results to back that up] and we should follow the protocol. That’s because when we say something we need to be able to prove it. We have information from Spain, Italy and Germany: We didn’t find anybody that died from coronavirus. Did you find in your country? Then we start asking each other internationally, asking, Where is the problem? Who’s making that problem?

Dr. Katsarov: In the media, there’s information that the WHO is giving instructions to all the health organizations, and in this information the instructions are that every person who has a positive PCR test is to be counted [as having the coronavirus]. And if that person dies from something, it’s to be written that they died from the coronavirus. That’s a directive that came from the WHO, which proves what you’re saying. I don’t know if this had some specific goal. But even if the goal had a good rationale, the way it’s been done it’s a source of panic, it’s a source of stress, to the whole world. Because all the people, when they’re pronounced to have died because of the coronavirus, that changes the character of the infection, which is really scary; the people are afraid. And in reality there’s not such a high [death rate from it].

Dr. Alexov: I’d compare it with the flu infection that we had in January and February [2020], when young people died from the flu. It was quite aggressive this year, and we had kids who died from it, as well as people of working age. Versus now with coronavirus, there aren’t as many cases and definitely not as many deaths. My opinion about that, and I will sign under what I’m saying, is that the World Health Organization is creating worldwide chaos, with no real facts behind what they’re saying. In Bulgaria there aren’t many virologists and pathologists, and there isn’t much funding from the government. But [as] a pathologist, which is my personal specialty, I work with proofs — material proofs — and I’m asking the World Health Organization: where are your proofs? We had a problem in the 1990s, [so] there was a Professor Chugdar Gurgev [sp?] who developed a protocol in which if somebody died from AIDS, he did the autopsy and took different samples from different organs, so we could see exactly what was happening in the different systems and organs, and collect that data. We had a similar protocol for tuberculosis, which as you know is quite a dangerous infection. So we developed these protocols for tuberculosis as well. My pathologist colleagues from Italy and Germany, they’re attacking one of the instructions they call it like law from the World Health Organization, that [for the coronavirus] we need to follow a special directions for really dangerous infections. But we [already] have similar directives. And as I said we used that protocol from 1990 when we were collecting data for tuberculosis and collecting data for HIV. Those protocols began to be developed in 1919, after the Spanish flu, when 10-12% of the population died from it, and that was the population in the working age. And it took [decades] to develop those protocols. At the moment, we are talking about 70,000 people [worldwide] who have died [from the coronavirus] who are over the age of 70. And here I’m asking why we didn’t try to do the autopsies of those people to see exactly why they died. And why do we say it’s the coronavirus? Did they die from or did they with the coronavirus? There are also some different sources that were saying that in Italy the coronavirus led to the death of so many people because they were immunized with the H1N1 flu vaccine, which basically suppresses adults’ immune systems. And after that they were getting the coronavirus easily, because [as a result of the vaccine] their immune systems weren’t very strong. This could be cleared up maybe with autopsies, but at the moment it’s not clear.

Dr. Katsarov: So your opinion is that they need to do research and they need to take in[to account] the pathology?

Dr. Alexov: Yes, of course! We’re missing the main points. With the autopsies, we can take a lot of lung material. And we can take some of that material and do research on it, and we can keep about 80% for future research, if future research is needed. The paraffin that we put the material into from autopsies can stay [intact] for up to 300 years. So maybe after 20, 30 years, when we have a different but maybe similar pandemic — or epidemic, because I don’t believe it’s a pandemic — we can maybe compare the lung histological pictures between now and later. Because coronavirus infections, for the people who don’t know, exist in many people, but what we know from our Chinese colleagues, the Chinese pathologists, it’s from 2002, 2007, 2008, 2013, 2017 and 2018. And based on this pathology material we can see what the difference is with this pandemic. And again I won’t talk specifically about a pandemic, because I believe we don’t have the facts necessary to call it a pandemic. I think it’s not reasonable that the World Health Organization is still saying pandemic – it’s an epidemic. I haven’t seen such an advertisement for a virus [before].

Dr. Katsarov: I don’t know whether that is lack of professionalism, or there are different goals, but obviously there’s some controversy about the behaviour and the facts. I want to wrap up with [the observation that] there’s a whole concentration of attention, and a building up of this attention into a panic, which will really impact the people who don’t have the coronavirus but have got different chronic diseases, different people who need medical care, who are like other victims from the whole [healthcare] resources that are focused [instead] on the coronavirus. These people are afraid to go visit the doctor. [And] the health authorities don’t allow visits to GPs. I think this could be as serious a problem later on as the real coronavirus: the number of people who need a doctor’s attention and aren’t getting it could build up and become an even bigger problem. In other words, I think more people possibly will die from their chronic diseases in the near future, because the chronic diseases aren’t being taken of care of compared with the coronavirus.

Dr. Alexov: This is not 100%, his is 200%, you’re right. And I can say that’s for sure, because all of us who are working in oncology, we know that stress significantly suppresses the immune system, so I can really claim 200% that all the chronic diseases will be more severe and more acute per se. Specifically in situ carcinoma, over 50% of these are going to become invasive. So I will say that this epidemic isn’t so much an epidemic of the virus, but it’s an epidemic of giving people a lot of fear and stress. Because the people aren’t like me and other pathologists who understand that the coronavirus is nothing serious. The people are afraid of it.

Dr. Katsarov: How has your work changed because of the coronavirus?}

Dr Alexov: Our work is down by 90%. In some hospitals the work is down 50%, in some hospitals the work for the medical personnel is down to 10-15%.

Dr. Katsarov: I will just tell you now that your job as a pathologist is like the supreme court: you’re giving the cause of death after they die. Specifically for cancer — if it’s cancer or it’s not cancer. Same with biopsies, you’re the supreme court. For all the different tests, the people are waiting for the pathologists to say whether they have cancer or not. Specifically for cancer, same for the in-situ-mass biopsies and Pap tests: what’s the pathology. And if your job is 90% down, this means you’re not getting those tests from the people. This means the people don’t have their proper diagnosis. And this means that this disease is developing without being [diagnosed and treated].

Dr. Alexov: Exactly. Pathology includes cytology, histology, immunochemistry and molecular pathology. For example, when we tell a woman that they have to have a Pap test every three months and they haven’t done it for six months, if that patient had a risk of developing cancer, those six months could be crucial to the development. Which means that instead of spending $5 to test the problem and to start treating it early, the problem is getting worse and we’ll need to treat it later with hundreds of dollars. It’s a similar thing when we’re not doing autopsies for the coronavirus: it’s as if somebody goes to the supreme court and that person was shot ten times, but the supreme court says, Well, maybe out of those 10 times one time he shot himself, so we’ll consider it to be a suicide. I know about similar situations. A really, really interesting situation was a person in the U.S. who was in an accident on the street, he had brain damage and he was put on life support in the hospital for four days. He was positive on the PCR test for the coronavirus, so on his death certificate it said that he died from coronavirus. I don’t think that’s [proper] medicine. After the coronavirus [has subsided] there’ll be a lot of people who will have lost trust in the medical profession. We can’t measure that, but it’ll be a big problem. I want also to add about the pandemic that we need to have people’s trust. Because in my opinion the coronavirus infection isn’t that dangerous, and how are the people going to have trust in me doing cancer pathology, much of which is related to viruses as well? But nobody is talking about that, and nobody is… We have some patients who have lung cancer caused by a papillomavirus infection. And nobody has ever made a big deal about this. And we have many patients like this. [And also,] yearly about a million and a half people die [worldwide] from lung cancer due to smoking. If we compare that to the coronavirus, it would be like a pandemic and everybody [would be told to] stop smoking — let’s say a pandemic of smoking.

Dr. Katsarov: What you’re saying is that the reaction to this infection is disproportionate, and that this amount of panic isn’t necessary. And maybe another risk is that after a year or two there’ll be a really dangerous infection, but the people won’t trust us and won’t believe us if we’re saying that it’s really [dangerous].

Dr. Alexov: I was talking with some friends who are specialists in virology, and [they said that] if we have global warming, perhaps it would cause the spread from frozen areas of viruses that humankind has never seen before. And if those viruses become active/alive, we’d have to combat them, and we wouldn’t know how to do that. And if the people don’t believe us, if a similar type of infection happens [again], what are we going to do then? For example with ebola, which we’ve learned over the last few years is not really an infection that people are used to because it doesn’t infect many humans. We need to see exactly how the law will deal with immunization and that vaccine that we’re all talking about, because I’m certain it’s not possible to create a vaccine against COVID. I’m not sure what exactly Bill Gates is doing with his laboratories; is it really a vaccine he’s producing, or something else? [joking/laughs] But we need to leave this question to the internal agencies, FBI and … Okay, let’s stick to talking about medicine, and the conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories. We don’t know what we’re going to learn.

Dr. Katsarov: I want to say thank you for this conversation.

Dr. Alexov: I want to say again the last sentence, which is that no one has died from the coronavirus. The people are dying with coronavirus, not from [coronavirus]. There is no need for [either the term] pandemic or epidemic. Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Sweden — this is what my colleagues from all those countries said.