Western Hegemony's Collapse

The Taliban Go to Tianjin

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by Pepe Escobar via Asia Times

Nine Taliban representatives meet with Chinese officials in Tianjin. In the center are Taliban co-founder Mullah Baladar and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Photo: Chinese Foreign Ministry

So this is the way the Forever War in Afghanistan ends – if one could call it an ending. Rather, it’s an American repositioning.

Regardless, after two decades of death and destruction and untold trillions of dollars, we’re faced not with a bang – and not with a whimper, either – but rather with a pic of the Taliban in Tianjin, a nine-man delegation led by top political commissioner Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, solemnly posing side by side with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Lateral echoes of another Forever War – in Iraq – apply. First, there was the bang: the US not as “the new OPEC,” as per how the neo-con mantra had visualized it, but with the Americans not even getting the oil. Then came the whimper: “No more troops” after December 31, 2021 – except for the proverbial “contractor” army.

The Chinese received the Taliban on an official visit in order once again to propose a very straightforward quid pro quo: We recognize and support your political role in the process of Afghan reconstruction and in return you cut off any possible links with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, regarded by the UN as a terrorist organization and responsible for a slew of attacks in Xinjiang.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang explicitly said, “The Taliban in Afghanistan is a pivotal military and political force in the country, and will play an important role in the process of peace, reconciliation, and reconstruction there.”

This follows Wang’s remarks back in June, after a meeting with the foreign ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan, when he promised not only to “bring the Taliban back into the political mainstream” but also to host a serious intra-Afghan peace negotiation.

What’s implied since then is that the excruciatingly slow process in Doha is leading nowhere. Doha is being conducted by the extended troika – US, Russia, China, Pakistan – along with the irreconcilable adversaries, the Kabul government and the Taliban.

Mullah Baradar speaks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (right foreground) in Tianjin. Photo: Chinese Foreign Ministry

Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem stressed that the Tianjin meeting focused on political, economic and security issues, with the Taliban assuring Beijing that Afghan territory would not be exploited by third parties against the security interests of neighboring nations.

This means, in practice, no shelter for Uighur, Chechen and Uzbek jihadis and shady outfits of the ISIS-Khorasan variety.

Tianjin has been added as a sort of jewel in the crown to the current Taliban diplomatic offensive, which has already touched Tehran and Moscow.

What this means in practice is that the real power broker of a possible intra-Afghan deal is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), led by the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Russia and China are meticulously monitoring how the Taliban have been capturing several strategic districts in provinces from Badakhshan (Tajik majority) to Kandahar (Pashtun majority). Realpolitik dictates that the Taliban be accepted as serious interlocutors.

Pakistan, meanwhile, is working closer and closer within the SCO framework. Prime Minister Imran Khan could not be more adamant when addressing US public opinion: “Washington aimed for a military solution in Afghanistan, when there never was one,” he said.

“And people like me who kept saying that there’s no military solution, who know the history of Afghanistan, we were called – people like me were called anti-American,” he said. “I was called Taliban Khan.”

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan (R) meets with Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (2d from the window on the left side of the picture) and his delegation in Islamabad on December 18, 2020. Photo: AFP / Pakistan Prime Minister Office

We are all Taliban now

The fact is that “Taliban Khan,” “Taliban Wang” and “Taliban Lavrov” are all on the same page.

The SCO is working all-out to present a road map for a Kabul-Taliban political settlement in the next round of negotiations in August. As I have been chronicling it – see, for instance, here and here – it’s all about a comprehensive economic integration package, where the Belt and Road Initiative and its affiliated China-Pakistan Economic Corridor interacts with Russia’s Greater Eurasia Partnership and overall Central Asia-South Asia connectivity.

A stable Afghanistan is the missing link in what could be described as the future SCO economic corridor, which will integrate every Eurasian player from BRICS members India and Russia to all Central Asian ‘stans.

Both President Ashraf Ghani’s government in Kabul and the Taliban are on board. The devil, of course, is in the details of how to manage the internal power play in Afghanistan to make it happen.

The Taliban have done their crash course on geopolitics and geoeconomics. In Moscow, in early July, they had a detailed discussion with Kremlin envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov.

In parallel, even the former Afghan ambassador to China, Sultan Baheen – no Taliban himself – admitted that for the majority of Afghans, irrespective of ethnic background, Beijing is the preferred interlocutor and mediator in an evolving peace process.

So the Taliban seeking high-level discussions with the Russia-China strategic partnership is part of a carefully calculated political strategy. But that brings us to an extremely complex question: To which Taliban are we referring?

There’s no such thing as a “unified” Taliban. Most old-school top leaders live in Pakistan’s Balochistan. The new breed is way more volatile – and feels no political constraints. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement, with a little help from Western intel, might easily infiltrate some Taliban factions inside Afghanistan.

Very few in the West understand the dramatic psychological consequences for Afghans – whatever their ethnic, social or cultural backgrounds – of living essentially under a state of non-stop war for the past four decades: USSR occupation; intra-mujahideen fighting; Taliban against Northern Alliance; and US/NATO occupation.

In February 1980 Afghan refugees who have fled the area of Kabul in December 1979, are shown in the Aza Khel refugee camp near Peshawar in Pakistan. Photo: AFP / EPU

The last “normal” year in Afghan society was way back in 1978.

Andrei Kazantsev, a professor at the Higher School of Economics and director of the Center for Central Asia and Afghanistan Studies at the elite MGIMO in Moscow, is uniquely positioned to understand how things work on the ground.

He notes something I saw for myself numerous times; how wars in Afghanistan are a mix of weaponizing and negotiation:

There is a little fighting, a little talking, coalitions are formed, then there is fighting again; talking again.

Some have defected over, betrayed each other, fought for a while, and then returned. It’s a completely different culture of warfare and negotiation.

The Taliban will simultaneously negotiate with the government and continue their military offensives. These are just different tools of different wings of this movement.

I’m buying: how much?

The most important fact is that the Taliban are, de facto, a constellation of warlord militias. What this means is that Mullah Baradar in Tianjin does not speak for the whole movement. He would have to hold a shura with every major warlord and commander to sell them whatever political road map he agrees with Russia and China.

This is a huge problem as certain powerful Tajik or Uzbek commanders will prefer to align themselves with foreign sources, say Turkey or Iran, instead of whoever will be in power in Kabul.

The Chinese might find a detour around the problem by literally buying everyone and his neighbor. But that still wouldn’t guarantee stability.

What Russia-China are investing in with the Taliban is to extract iron-clad guarantees:

  • Don’t allow jihadis to cross Central Asian borders – especially Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan;
  • Fight ISIS-Khorasan head-on and don’t allow them sanctuary, as the Taliban did with al-Qaeda in the 1990s; and
  • Be done with opium poppy cultivation (you did give it up in the early 2000s) while fighting against drug trafficking.

An Afghan farmer harvests opium sap from a poppy field in Dara-l-Nur, District of Nangarhar province, in 2020. Photo: AFP / Wali Sabawoon / NurPhoto

No one really knows whether the Taliban political wing will be able to deliver. Yet Moscow, much more than Beijing, has been very clear: If the Taliban go soft on jihadi movements, they will feel the full wrath of the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

The SCO, for its part, has kept an Afghan contact group since 2005. Afghanistan is an SCO observer and may be accepted as a full member once there’s a political settlement.

The key problem inside the SCO will be to harmonize the clashing interests of India and Pakistan inside Afghanistan.

Once again, that will be up to the “superpowers” – the Russia-China strategic partnership. And once again, that will be at the heart of arguably the top geopolitical riddle of the Raging Twenties : how to finally pacify the “graveyard of empires.”

Western Hegemony's Collapse

America’s ‘Great Retreat’ is Well Underway

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by Stephen Bryen via AsiaTimes
Sailors assigned to the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island clear out of the way of a Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II in preparation for takeoff from the flight deck of the ship. Photo: US Marine Corps / Patrick Crosley

Why would the US Department of Justice drop five cases against Chinese researchers including Dr Juan Tang, a cancer researcher who allegedly lied on her visa application after photos of her were found wearing a Chinese military uniform?

Part of the answer is that Tang’s case was dropped to facilitate Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman’s high-level visit this week to China, where she was treated hostilely by her Chinese hosts.

The five cases are just part of a bigger picture which can best be termed as “The Great Retreat.” In many areas, the US is lowering its profile and backing away from its commitments.

For example, the US has pulled its only aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, from the Pacific ostensibly to cover the retreat from Afghanistan. But whether the Ronald Reagan carrier will return to Japan in the future isn’t altogether clear.

As the need for an aircraft carrier while the US pulls out of landlocked Afghanistan is questionable, the result is that the US is leaving the Pacific devoid of carrier coverage, which appears to contravene the US policy of protecting its regional allies and partners in the region.

In Guam, the US has moved its big bombers including the B-1 and B-52 back to the continental United States (CONUS in Penatgonese) and is using the Guam base mostly as a forward depot where it can try and cycle in bombers on an as-needed basis. The real problem: Guam is increasingly threatened by Chinese missiles.

Military vehicles carrying YJ-18 anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles drive past Tiananmen Square during the military parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, in Beijing, China. Photo: AFP via Sputnik / Anna Ratkoglo

Meanwhile, the B-1 “Bone” strategic bombers, which have played an important tactical role in Afghanistan, are now mostly grounded with problems ranging from fuel delivery issues to failing aerostructures. Less than 10 B-1s are currently flyable.

There are only 21 B-2 stealth bombers in the entire US inventory, but most if not all of these would be on standby for a nuclear mission. This leaves the lumbering B-52 as the main US long-range bomber that can be used on conventional missions.

Unfortunately, the B-52 is an easy target and can only operate with standoff weapons, removing its main advantage which is the ability to deliver heavy bomb loads on targets.

The US has also pulled its air defense systems, including the Patriot and THAAD from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, making clear its displeasure with those countries and underscoring its effort to conciliate Iran.

Of course, the decision to leave Afghanistan was taken without adequate coordination with Afghan authorities. US troops and contractors left Bagram Air Base in the middle of the night unannounced, and never formally turned the base over to the Afghan army. The base was immediately looted.

A helmet among the destroyed trailer trucks and electronics sold for the price of iron at a bazzar outside Bagram Air Base in a district north of Kabul, Afghanistan, May 19, 2021. Photo: AFP via Anadolu Agency / Haroon Sabawoon

Along with Afghanistan, President Biden is preparing to take US troops out of Iraq. Already the US Embassy in the Green Zone in Baghdad is subject to regular rocket attacks.

The US has the C-RAM gun system in place, but its effectiveness against rockets is poor. It won’t be long before the embassy will be indefensible.

Meanwhile, the US Defense Department has released information about yet another war game apparently focused on the “battle for Taiwan.” But the Pentagon thinks that US forces in support of Taiwan would be “swiftly and thoroughly dominated.”

The latest wargame only reaffirms results in earlier wargames run by Rand Corporation, the US Marines and a number of think tanks. But the difference is that now the Pentagon has come to the realization (if it hadn’t known before) that its warfighting methods no longer can work in peer-to-peer or peer-to near-peer conflicts.

Making matters worse, US air defense systems remain a shambles and probably are ineffective in any war scenario.

The US relies on three main systems: tactically on Patriot PAC 3, strategically on AEGIS (at sea and ground-based) and THAAD. The fourth system, the Ground Based Interceptor (GBI) is at the moment a nearly dead letter, despite huge costs, because it needs a new interceptor missile.

And Northcom assesses that North Korea could overwhelm and knock out the GBI as early as 2025, if not sooner, and potentially attack the United States. GBI is based in Greely, Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California.

A THAAD interceptor is test-launched in Kodiak, Alaska, on July 11, 2017. Photo: Leah Garton / Missile Defense Agency / Handout via ReutersA THAAD interceptor is test-launched in Kodiak, Alaska, on July 11, 2017. Photo: Leah Garton / Missile Defense Agency / Handout

In the latest test of AEGIS against two short/intermediate-range ballistic missile targets, only one of the targets was hit. That test, on July 24, 2021, took place off of Hawaii.

The AEGIS system was installed on the USS Ralph Johnson (DDG-114) and used the AEGIS interceptor missile, SM-6 Dual II. The ship fired four missiles against two targets and hit only one.

This was an improvement over a previous test last May where a single target was not intercepted. AEGIS is regarded as perhaps the best US system for short and intermediate-range terminal ballistic missile defense and is the backbone of Japan’s sea-based interceptors.

In missile defense, it is generally understood that firing two missiles at a target should yield a 95% probability of a hit. The latest AEGIS test only achieved 50%.

Concern over missile defenses is matched by the increasing vulnerability of US weapons platforms and bases. While the US has bases in Japan including on Okinawa, and further away in South Korea and Guam, all of them would be exposed to massive Chinese missile attacks.

In addition, US aircraft carriers, even if available, will have to locate hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from a war front such as Taiwan, rendering them less than useful for launching and supporting fighter aircraft. Most US carriers do not support the F-35.

The latest wargame also suggests that the US could not maintain networked communications, meaning that they could be disrupted by the enemy.

An F-35B Lightning II set for take off aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island (LHD 8) in support of Northern Edge 2021. Photo: US Navy / Ethan Jaymes Morrow

A key US wartime advantage is the ability to mass firepower on high-value targets using networked systems to find the target, direct the nearest interceptor to the target, and knock it out. Networked communications is an important US force multiplier and key to US battle dominance.

Not included in the wargame released information is the distinct possibility that the Pentagon does not have high confidence in the usefulness or survivability of the semi-stealthy F-35.

The F-35 is mainly a tactical air superiority platform that carries only a limited number of bombs because it must carry them internally. It has somewhat limited range and it will have to potentially compete in a conflict scenario with increasingly better Chinese aircraft (Su-35, J-20) equipped with beyond visual range (BVD) air-to-air missiles and advanced AESA radars.

The Navy’s surface ships are primarily useful for anti-air missions and for challenging China’s surface ships. There is some progress in anti-ship missiles, especially the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) which can be used by aircraft including the F-18, B-1B and F-35 and on surface ships.

It has a range of 300 miles and is regarded as stealthy. Unlike the Russian Tsirkon (Zircon) hypersonic missile, which flies at 5,000 mph or 8,047 kph and fits in existing ship launch tubes, the LRASM (when it is deployed) is subsonic.

The Russians successfully test-launched a Tsirkon missile from the frigate Admiral Gorshkov on July 19. The Tsirkon has a range of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) and can’t be detected on radar, according to the Russians.

Whether China will acquire the Russian missile or build their own is not known, but the Tsirkon significantly outperforms anything the US now has or will have in the next four or five years.

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52) transits the East China Sea. Photo: US Navy / Samuel Hardgrove

Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s proposed defense budget (roughly $716 billion) is 4% less than the 2020 Trump defense budget after galloping inflation is taken into account. The Biden administration is maintaining the US Navy at 296 ships, down from the Trump administration goal of 316 ships by 2026.

The Navy will get only one new Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer at a cost of $2 billion, not two as the Navy had planned. The proposed defense budget also cuts older US Air Force jets from the inventory, including some of the A-10 fleet (42 to be retired from a fleet of 367), and retiring 47 F-16 C/Ds, 48 F-15 C/Ds, 14 KC-10 and 19 KC-35s.

The US Marines’ expeditionary capability is also being terminated, leaving the Marines as some sort of adjunct to the US Navy. The Army’s budget is also being cut back compared to the other services, but yet it hopes to be able to overmatch potential opponents, mainly China, by 2035.

In essence, then, the current US posture is best defined as “The Great Retreat.” The US is pulling in its military horns, at least for the time being, leaving partners and allies, especially in the Middle East and East Asia, exposed and uncertain.

Under the circumstances, many current US allies and partners may thus seek accommodation with China or in the Middle East aligned instead with Russia and Iran.

Scamdemic - Corona Virus

Over 950 Comments by Doctors Maimed by the Covid Vaxx

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Read over 950 comments (as of July 30th, 2021) by doctors maimed by the Covid vaxx – on doctor’s only web site.

Medscape: How concerned are you about adverse events?

Scamdemic - Corona Virus

The CDC’s Hysterical Delta Flip-Flop Might Be Its Final Undoing

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Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via RealClearMarkets.com,

The crazy, convoluted, mixed up messaging from the CDC – it’s been this way from the beginning of the pandemic until now – has taken yet another turn. Now the CDC is recommending masks not just for the unvaccinated but for the vaccinated too. This is supposedly because of the discovery that the variant known as Delta is making an end-run around the vaccines, causing not only infections but infectious spread.

So we have an odd situation developing…

The layperson’s understanding of a vaccine is that it protects a person against infection, like measles or smallpox. In other words, you won’t get Covid, exactly as President Biden accidentally and apparently inaccurately said in a press conference last week.

That is apparently untrue in this case. That realization seemed to dawn on people only a few weeks ago, as reports from Israel revealed that half the new infections listed were with people who had been fully vaccinated.

I pity anyone who took a few weeks’ vacation from the news during this period. We went from believing that the whole point of the vaccines was to protect against infection to realizing that this was not the case. You can still get the bug. The point of the vaccines, we were newly told, is to protect against severe outcomes. Okay, that’s reasonable enough except that we know the demographics of severe outcomes, and hence the question presents itself: why is the policy priority near-universal vaccination?

None of this makes sense – if you are still looking for policies to make sense, which you probably gave up on long ago.

Now to the great mask conundrum.

In May, Anthony Fauci showed up to a Senate hearing fully vaccinated but wearing a mask. Rand Paul lit into him, claiming that this was absurd. Fauci, he said, was undermining confidence in the vaccines. We need to give people a reward for being vaccinated, he said. If you can’t even take off your mask, why bother?

I suspect that the CDC listened carefully to his point. Senator Paul might just be one guy but he is positioned to impact policy because he has unusual access to the public, and to Fauci himself. Fauci is otherwise only on friendly terms with media who listen and adore every pronouncement. Paul has access by virtue of Senate protocol and therefore can make a dent in what’s actually happening out there in CDC land.

The CDC had become very aware that vaccination rates had flattened. They figured it was worth a try. So in early May, the agency did a messaging turnaround. It announced that people who are vaccinated no longer need to wear a mask. Fauci dutifully went on all the talk shows and invited the vaccinated to enjoy their privileges. He even smiled when saying so!

That was an interesting day for me because many of my anti-lockdown friends celebrated that the 16 months of living hell had officially ended. They correctly predicted that everyone, including the unvaccinated would now take off their masks and life could go back to normal. They were correct for everyone except the poor children who, because there is no vaccine for them, became permanently marked as wild-born disease carriers even though they are not.

Hey, the CDC had to be consistent, even when the results were cray cray, and therefore did not exempt children.

Well, how did vaccination rates respond? Far from incentivizing people to get the jab, everyone took off their masks and dared authorities to ask for their papers. This is because after a year and months of egregious restrictions on freedom, people were fed up and looking for some means by which they could pretend to go back to normal. Vaccination rates stayed stuck for the reason that everyone who wanted a vaccine already got it, while the rest possess natural immunity, are wary of the medicine, or were more than willing to accept the risks of exposure.

Now the CDC had a problem. The great goal of a 70% rate among all people was elusive, and infuriating the pandemic planners who demanded this based on the pharmaceutical definition of herd immunity. They embraced that definition because, for some reason that remains inexplicable for everyone not working for vaccine manufacturers, natural immunity has been thoroughly dismissed as primitive and irrelevant. Talk about ignoring the science!

Then on July 22, the influential Washington Post published the following:

So the CDC needs to state, as it should have in May, that unless there is a way to distinguish between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, indoor mask requirements should be reinstated…. The Biden administration has done many things right during the pandemic, but it made a grave error with its premature return to normalcy. It must hit reset and issue new guidance that addresses the escalating infections, waning interest in vaccination and unknowns of the delta variant. If it doesn’t, we could well be on our way to another national surge — and one that was entirely foreseen and entirely preventable.

The CDC seems more easily led by op-eds in political newspapers than actual scientific papers on the topic, of which there are many thousands now. They want digestible, clear instructions on what they should be doing. This piece in the Washington Post provided exactly that. Thus did the CDC reverse itself yet again.

But in doing so, it needed some rationale. This is when the agency jumped on the excuse of how the Delta variant often evades the vaccines, so therefore even the vaccinated need masks. It’s not clear whether and to what extent the CDC realizes that it has just once again undermined public confidence in the vaccines! The horns of the dilemma are obvious to anyone who is watching this clown show unfold. If the CDC removes the mask guidance, people don’t get vaccinated; if they add it back in, people have another excuse to avoid the jab.

Masks in this case remain what they always were: a tool to prod the public into compliance with other mandates and dictates, purely a symbol of fear and its unrelenting trigger. And with fear comes obedience. Maybe.

The real problem, conclude many, is this bogus freedom of choice. This is why there is more constant talk about vaccine mandates, and why NPR gets breathless with excitement at every new directive – from the Department of Veterans Affairs, for example – of new mandates. What they are really pushing for is a society-wide mandate that would push the shot on everyone. Biden reportedly will impose this on the whole federal workforce.

The Department of Justice has paved the way by issuing an opinion that such mandates are perfectly in keeping with the law. More mayors are backing the idea. The public is warmed up day by day to accept what two years ago would have universally been considered an Orwellian nightmare of passports and papers for access to regular life. It’s completely unAmerican in every way, and wholly unnecessary. It is further proof that once disease panic gets underway, and governments use it to enhance their powers in shocking ways, it becomes extremely difficult to dial it back.

Remember when only the “conspiracy theorists” said that the real goal was a passport and eventually a China-style social credit score?

At this point, anything is possible. The Biden administration can’t even bring itself to lift Trump-era restrictions on flights from Europe, even though every strain circulating there has long been circulating here. The default motive of exposure avoidance has completely spun out of control, holding even basic freedoms in the balance. Today your human rights are wholly contingent on what the pandemic planners desire, whether it is stay-at-home orders, school closures, mask mandates, or compulsory jabs.

What ultimately may be our saving grace here are the furious parents who have just been told that they must once again strap a cloth on the kids’ faces this fall.

These poor kids have been messed with enough as it is.

Maybe this will be the last straw, the final discrediting of the CDC, and the moment at which the American people will demand that enough is way more than enough.

Scamdemic - Corona Virus

Let the debates Begin! ‘Dissidents’ and ‘Conspiracy Theorists’

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By Robert Bridge

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.

People protest against the covid-19 vaccine outside of the Raymond James Stadium prior to the Super Bowl match between Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Tampa, Florida. © AFP / CHANDAN KHANNA

It is common practice for patients to request a second opinion before submitting to any medical treatment. Yet in the age of Covid only one opinion appears to count at all. This approach flies in the face of sound science.

On Tuesday, the top headlines on the Drudge Report, a popular US news aggregate for trumpeting the liberal party line, captured the full spirit of the ‘new normal’, which the doomsayers fear is snowballing into nothing less than a totalitarian police state:

And so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Each passing day brings more of the same five-alarm articles about why people should get the jab, wear a mask, remain at home, even avoid casual conversation with their neighbors. At the same time, the media duly sugarcoats the grim prospect of a joyless bureaucratic future when a ‘vaccine passport’ will be required for performing the most mundane activities – shopping, traveling, attending a sporting event or concert – that we all took happily for granted in the ‘old normal’.

Conspicuous by their absence from the news headlines, however, is any sign of opposing voices to the official medical narrative. And that is no accident. Any doctor, activist or health organization that merely hints at an alternative method for tackling the pandemic is smacked down as a quack and dispatched to the sleek new version of Solzhenitsyn’s ‘gulag archipelago’. These are banishment from social media, news media and polite society. In a word, disappeared.

Considering that a tiny number of health officials are now dictating from their bully pulpits how the majority will be expected to conduct their lives from here to eternity, shouldn’t we, the masked taxpayers, demand a bit more bang for our buck? Before the citizens of any democracy are expected to be pricked, poked and probed for the rest of their lives, they should be demanding the greatest debate the free world has ever seen.

Yet this is precisely what the Covid totalitarians fail to grasp. By refusing to engage with the other side, they have become their very own worst enemies; censoring the views of ‘the dissenters’ only helps fuel conspiracy theories and ‘vaccine hesitancy’. We are not talking about ‘dissenters’ in the form of Alex Jones or David Icke, but rather the views of prominent medical doctors and scientists.

Just this weekend, for example, The New York Times ran with some sensational panic porn on its front page entitled, ‘The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online’. So, who is this ghastly villain leading the masses to slaughter? None other than Joseph Mercola, a Florida-based osteopathic physician, who has argued that Covid vaccines do not provide immunity or halt the spread of the disease, but rather “alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.” Mercola is by no means the first doctor to forward such off-script arguments. Yet, although the author of the piece, Sheera Frenkel, said that Mercola’s “assertions were easily disprovable,” she offered nothing by way of medical discussion to disprove his claims, nor was a link provided to Mercola’s original piece so people could read it for themselves.

Among Dr. Mercola’s apparent ‘hate’ crimes is his profiting from “a vast operation to push natural health cures,” which makes the man sound like a Colombian drug lord pushing broccoli sprouts on unsuspecting youngsters. In February, Mercola received a warning letter from the FDA for attempting to sell products like Liposomal Vitamin C and Liposomal Vitamin D3 as methods for treating and preventing coronavirus. Ah, good to see that the ‘war on drugs’ is finally nabbing some baddies. The New York Times also seemed particularly peeved with Mercola because “rather than directly stating online that vaccines don’t work, [his] posts often ask pointed questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted” [Gulp, he asked “pointed questions” and challenged other doctors! Clearly a madman!].

However, the most disturbing thing about the Times piece was that it linked to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), part of George Soros’ vast empire of action committees, which placed Mercola at the top spot among the so-called ‘Disinformation Dozen’, a group of shady individuals said to be responsible for “sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media.” While the messaging from these doctors and activists may (or may not be) wrongheaded, can it really fall into the ‘hate’ category?

Another individual who ranks in the ‘dirty dozen’ is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose organization Children’s Health Defense tackles a range of controversial subjects now affecting minors, including the passage of a law in the District of Columbia that allows children as young as 11 to be vaccinated without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Does that issue not deserve some discussion? Another story currentlyfeatured on its website reports that Pfizer and Moderna will increase the number of children in their Covid vaccine clinical trials after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told the vaccine makers “the size and scope of their pediatric studies…were inadequate to detect rare side effects,” including myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle. Oops!

Anyone who thinks these individuals are just a small fraction of dissenting voices in the great Covid ‘debate’ has probably never heard of the Great Barrington Declaration, a document citing “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.” The document has been signed by thousands of epidemiologists and public health scientists, as well as private citizens.

Authored by Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University; Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology; Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, and co-signed by 44 other prominent doctors, the declaration says in part that “[A]s immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.”

That is medical advice that is never reported by mainstream journalists except in a negative, condescending manner. Any medical opinion that discusses the possibility of natural immunity, herd immunity or other means of protection against the coronavirus aside from vaccines is shunned by the fourth estate, which is odd to say the least. The job of the media is not to declare allegiance to any one side of a debate, but rather to allow all of the voices be heard so that Joe Public and his government representatives can decide what is best for him.

In addition to being shoddy journalism, it is unethical medical practice not to consider other professional opinions when formulating a medical response that affects literally billions of lives around the planet, especially with mandatory vaccine passports on the horizon. People deserve to hear both sides of the Covid debate, not just the side that repeats the talking points of the pharmaceutical industrial complex.

Cultural/Ideological Divide

No, Men Don’t Create More Climate Emissions

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By Peter Lloyd, journalist and author based in London. Follow him on Twitter @Suffragentleman

Once again, gender warriors in Sweden and politically motivated hacks are spreading feminist lies, blaming men for climate change because they ‘spend more on food and cars’. This nonsense is worse than any greenhouse gas.

Is there anything that isn’t men’s fault? In the addled minds of hateful feminists, we are to blame for everything that’s imperfect in society – and deserve no credit for anything that’s good.

It’s been this way since the 1960s, when crazed gender activists first started banging on about ‘patriarchy’ and applying bizarre critical theories to age-old relationships between the sexes.

Predictably, this sparked a war against masculinity, which has raged on ever since and was perhaps first defined when Valerie Solanas – founder of the Society for Cutting Up Men – shot Andy Warhol.

Amazingly, the premeditated attack, which took place in New York on June 3, 1968, didn’t kill him. He survived his wounds, despite the bullet ripping through his stomach, liver, spleen, esophagus and both lungs.

He was briefly declared dead at the scene, but then revived by paramedics and rushed to hospital, where he spent several weeks in intensive care.

Discharged after two months, he was then forced to wear a corset for the rest of his life in order to keep his organs in place. He eventually died 19 years later – in part from complications of his appalling injuries.

In other words, feminism didn’t kill Andy Warhol immediately, but instead, it killed him slowly, over a long period of time.

Now, some 50 years later, the same thing is happening again – but, this time, it’s the male psyche that’s being targeted. And, instead of ballistics, they’re using political propaganda, which they hope will destabilize masculinity, spark a cultural coup and allow women to inherit the Earth.

I appreciate that sounds like a crazed conspiracy theory, but the evidence is everywhere.

Don’t believe me? Go and see for yourself. Open any newspaper, magazine or website and see the psychological warfare and the mind games. The encouragement to surrender our will and self-respect will be obvious.

The latest example of this is the ludicrous and sexist claim that men cause more climate emissions than women.

According to so-called experts from Sweden, we spend more on petrol, eat more meat and go on greater numbers of long-haul trips.

Whatever the claims, it’s merely the foregone conclusion of the latest ‘study’ by research company Ecoloop, which – surprise, surprise – is run by feminists with an agenda.

Adding to this is the fact that, because of the gendered life expectancy gap, there are far more women alive than men. This means that more women are discarding crap into landfills, more women are failing to recycle and more women are consuming fossil fuel energy, such as gas and electricity.

Given that humans – not animals – are plundering Earth’s resources, and women are the majority of humans on Earth, perhaps the blame lies with them, not us.

Then again, if the planet does get destroyed and we all die, it won’t be all bad: at least we won’t have to listen to man-hating feminists and their endless attempts to shoot us down.

You know, just like Andy Warhol.

Scamdemic - Corona Virus

Fully Vaccinated and Dead

1 Comment

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

80 fully vaccinated Mass. residents have died from COVID-19 as breakthrough cases surpass 5,000

Excerpts:

Eighty fully vaccinated Massachusetts residents have died from COVID-19 and the number of breakthrough cases reported across the state has surpassed 5,000, new public health data shows.

As of July 17, 716 more fully vaccinated residents had tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the number of breakthrough cases statewide to 5,166, numbers released by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health indicate. There were 4,450 breakthrough cases reported last week.

Fifty-seven fully vaccinated residents were hospitalized and later died from the virus, while 23 others who were vaccinated died without going to the hospital.

A total of 272 fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized after becoming infected. (Source.)

27 fully vaccinated people have died in Tennessee, health department says

Excerpts:

The Tennessee Department of Health reports 27 fully vaccinated people have died from COVID-19.

These are among the state’s more than 1,000 “breakthrough” cases. These are cases in which fully vaccinated people have contracted the virus.

Data is sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). TDH Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey said Friday more than two dozen deaths since May 1 and 195 hospitalizations are among breakthrough cases. Including dates before May 1, there have been more than 1,000 breakthrough COVID-19 cases, the state reports. (Source.)

Fully Vaccinated New Orleans Woman Dies of COVID Aged 33

(Can we really believe these cases are “rare”??)

Excerpts:

A 33-year-old woman who was fully vaccinated against COVID-19 has died from the virus in a rare “breakthrough” case.

Angelle Mosley, from New Orleans, Louisiana, passed away on Sunday after falling ill on Thursday.

She had been convinced that she didn’t have COVID-19, according to her mother, because she had been fully vaccinated and wasn’t experiencing some of the key symptoms of the virus, such as loss of taste and smell.

“She said ‘I know I do not have COVID. I still can smell and taste. And I am vaccinated.’ But when she got to the hospital, [it] turns out she had it,” Tara Mosley told WDSU News. (Source.)

In California, a doctor reported to Katy Grimes of the California Globe that hospitals are being instructed to NOT test those who are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 when they are admitted, which would obviously skew the numbers.

A physician contacted the Globe and said testing protocol from Scripps is indicating that they aren’t testing the vaccinated in the hospitals – they are only testing the unvaccinated for COVID (see below), despite the many COVID breakthrough cases reported.

The physician asked, “I wonder if this is the new testing protocol state wide?”

The physician contacted another hospital and reported to the Globe:

“They HAVE NOT been testing the vaccinated for COVID routinely like they have the unvaccinated, but they JUST changed their policy to begin doing this.” Unbelievable! So all this BS in the newspapers has been spewing about the vaccinated NOT having COVID BECAUSE THEY DON’T TEST FOR IT!” (Source.)

The “pandemic of the unvaccinated” is a complete lie. If there is any “pandemic” today, it is among the hundreds of thousands of people who took one of the COVID-19 shots and are now dead or suffering terrible injuries, primarily from blood clots.

This is the sad condition of the United States today where truth is discarded and deceitful propaganda is funded by the billionaire corporate Globalists to be distributed to the corrupt media and politicians with the sole purpose of getting as many U.S. citizens injected with their COVID-19 shots as possible, trying to reach 70% of the population as “fully vaccinated.”

They will do whatever is necessary to achieve their goals, including writing narratives that are full of lies and manipulating diagnostic tests.

Those resisting their lies and their efforts to achieve these goals are the unvaccinated who are on to their schemes, and stand in their way.

And that is exactly where we need to remain.

Scamdemic - Corona Virus

A Deceptive Construction – Why We Must Question COVID Mortality Statistics

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by IAIN DAVIS

First published on Sunday, 28th March 2021

According to the UK Government, as of 27 March 2021, 126,515 people have died as a result of contracting Covid-19, and an additional 21,610 people have died with COVID-19 on their death certificates.

The government alleges, therefore, that a total of 148,125 people in the UK have died as a result of COVID-19. As we shall see, this claim is not credible.

Justifiable Policy?

Claims about mortality have been used by both the government and the mainstream media to justify the policy response.

The pace of change driven by that policy response has been astonishing. With Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s recent announcement of the creation of the UK Health Security Agency and its commitment to take “action to mitigate infectious diseases and other hazards to health before they materialise,” it is clear the government’s new (ab)normal is here to stay.

There is clearly an agenda; one entirely founded upon the idea that COVID-19 presents a significant threat. The primary evidence offered to substantiate this claim is suggested COVID-19 mortality.

Age Standardised Mortality

Just like nearly every other mortality cause, COVID-19 risks increase proportionately with age. Statistics for those of working age show a population mortality risk of between 0.0166% and 0.0046%, depending upon who you believe. The COVID-19 risk to the working age population is statistically insignificant. For the under 18’s it is statistically zero.

Mortality risk disproportionately impacts men. In 2018 the average age of deathfor men was approximately 80, and 83 for women in England and Wales.

The average age of COVID-19 death is just over 82. When we look at standard mortality distribution, there is no observable impact from COVID-19.

UK all cause mortality doesn’t suggest any need to panic either.

The ONS released data estimating a total of 607,173 deaths from all causes in England and Wales for 2020. Given demographic changes over time, the ONS use Age Standardised Mortality Rates (ASMR’s) to calculate relative death rates. The ASMR showed that 2020 was the worst year for mortality in the last decade.

ASMR’s were in continual decline throughout the post war period. That decline stopped abruptly in 2009 as the economic impact of the global financial crisis took its toll on public health. Thereafter it showed a marginal rise to 2019. Mortality in 2020 and 2021 should be seen in the context of a global financial crisis that dwarfs the credit crunch of 2008.

asmr.jpg?itok=FHOZHLi0

ASMR’s fluctuate annually and 2020 showed a significant increase above the 5 year average mortality rate. This was higher than most rises but by no means “unprecedented.” ASMR’s in England since 1938 show similar increases in 1947, 1949, 1951, 1958, 1963, 1970, 1972, 1976, 1985, 1993 and 2014.

Most of these spikes in ASMR’s were in the region of 35 to 45 points. For example, in 2014 the ASMR rose by 40.2, in 1993 by 38.4 and in 1985 by 46.3 points. It rose by 90.5 in 1947, by 83.5 in 1963, it went up by 104.9 in 1970 and in 1951 by 216.3. So the 2020 rise of 118.5 is by no means the worst.

The death toll in 1951 was attributed to the the influenza epidemic which struck some parts of the UK (most notably Liverpool) but left others relatively unscathed. To this day science has struggled to account for this.

2020 not only didn’t have the highest mortality rate in the post war period, it didn’t have the highest mortality rate in the 21st century either. 2020 ranked 9th, out of 20 consecutive years, for all cause mortality in England and Wales. It was the 11th least dangerous year in the last 50.

While there is no statistical evidence of an unprecedented global pandemic in England and Wales (nor in Scotland and Northern Ireland) this tells us little about how many deaths were genuinely attributable to COVID-19. Nor does it indicate at which point we should sacrifice our rights, freedoms, children’s educations and economy in the service of public health.

We certainly didn’t sacrifice them in 1947, 1963, 1970, nor even in 1951. Why was 2020 different?

PCR Does Not Mean COVID

For the purposes of this analysis, we will use the government’s higher claim of 148,000 deaths. The vast majority of these deaths were attributed based upon a positive RT-PCR test. The UK Coronavirus Act makes a clear distinction between the virus and the disease. It states:

Coronavirus means severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2); coronavirus disease means COVID-19 (the official designation of the disease which can be caused by coronavirus).

SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 are not the same thing. The detected presence of SARS-CoV-2 does not mean the person has or will develop COVID-19.

Therefore the attribution of mortality based solely upon a positive test result in no way proves the person died of COVID-19. The extent to which the disease caused or contributed towards a death is a precise medical assessment. The UK government created a death certification and registration process where this did not occur in an unknown number of cases. We need to know what that number is.

COVID-19 has a distinct presentation that requires careful diagnosis. The uniquesymptoms are severe hypoxemia (low blood oxygen levels), hypercapnia (elevated blood Co2 saturation) and unusually no corresponding loss of respiratory system compliance.

Measurement of gaseous exchange and fluid retention in the lungs appears normal, meanwhile the patient, in serious cases, struggles to breath. This is unlike other influenza like illnesses (ILI’s).

Yet the NHS describe a list of COVID-19 symptoms that could be attributable to any ILI. A high temperature, continuous cough and loss of taste and smell are associated with many. While this is public information, intended to guide our decision to seek medical advice or a test, the list of possible causes expands further given that the NHS state just one of these symptoms possibly indicates COVID-19.

Without precise symptomatic diagnosis, it is difficult to distinguish COVID-19 from a range of other respiratory illnesses. A study from the University of Toronto found:

The symptoms can vary, with some patients remaining asymptomatic, while others present with fever, cough, fatigue, and a host of other symptoms. The symptoms may be similar to patients with influenza or the common cold.

A Cochran Review meta analysis of available studies looked for a clear definition of COVID-19 symptoms. Published in June 2020, the reviewers noted:

The individual signs and symptoms included in this review appear to have very poor diagnostic properties … Based on currently available data, neither absence nor presence of signs or symptoms are accurate enough to rule in or rule out disease.

Even using advanced diagnostics, such as a computer tomography (CT) scan, won’t always provide a clear result. A study attempting to improve differential diagnosis using CT scans found:

Although typical and atypical CT image findings of COVID-19 are reported in current studies, the CT image features of COVID-19 overlap with those of viral pneumonia and other respiratory diseases. Hence, it is difficult to make an exclusive diagnosis.

Regardless of their SARS-CoV-2 test status, without a very accurate diagnosis of symptoms, suspected COVID-19 patients could be suffering from one among a range of ILI’s. Again, a positive test result does not mean the patient died from COVID-19, even if they had corresponding symptoms.

Notifications of Infectious Diseases

In England and Wales it is a legal requirement for all registered medical practitioners to notify their local health authority of any suspected cases of notifiable diseases. The list of Notifiable Infectious Diseases (NOIDS) includes COVID-19. This is not optional.

All diagnosing doctors must complete a NOIDS report upon making a diagnosis. Testing laboratories are also required to notify Public Health England (PHE) of positive tests for notifiable diseases.

According to the fact checker FullFact there were 18,152 COVID-19 notificationsmade by doctors in the whole of 2020.

Yet the government claim that there were 70,853 COVID-19 deaths, never mind cases, in England and Wales in the same year.

Fullfact offered an explanation for this apparent huge discrepancy:

People with Covid symptoms are advised to get a test, but not to visit their doctor, which may be part of the reason why doctors reported so few cases of the disease through NOIDS. Since Covid became widespread in the UK, and began to be monitored in other ways, it is also possible that doctors felt there was little need to continue notifying PHE about each case.

This is not credible. While it is true that people were told not to go to a doctor if they suspected they had COVID-19, a diagnosis by a doctor was still necessary at some point. Self diagnosis doesn’t usually afford access to hospital treatment. The suggestion by FullFact that doctors unilaterally decided not to bother with their statutory obligations is ridiculous.

What this massive difference between claimed cases, subsequent COVID-19 mortality and NOIDS indicates, is that Doctors were largely reliant upon laboratory testing to fulfil the duty to notify the authorities. This adds considerable weight to the notion that laboratory testing was the leading determinant in the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 diagnosis.

Until mid August 2020, a UK COVID-19 death was reported if the decedent had tested positive at any point during the preceding months. An individual may have have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in March, have died of cancer in August and subsequently have been recorded as a COVID-19 statistic.

The scientific rationale for this did not exist. Research conducted by scientists at Oxford University analysed the COVID-19 Hospitalisation in England Surveillance System (CHESS) and calculated the average time between infection (positive test) and mortality to be 26.8 days.

And so, in response to public and scientific pressure this approach changed to only recording a COVID-19 death within 28 days of a positive test. Still the UK government would not let go of its inflated number system, adding nothing but statistical confusion, they announced:

In England, a new weekly set of figures will also be published, showing the number of deaths that occur within 60 days of a positive test. Deaths that occur after 60 days will also be added to this figure if COVID-19 appears on the death certificate.

The August methodological change reduced claimed COVID-19 deaths by 5,377 in England alone. This didn’t make any difference to the number of people who had died from COVID-19, it just changed the number of people who had reportedly died from COVID-19.

This wasn’t the only notable change to the data gathering process. Just before the significant spring spike in mortality, on the 30th March 2020, the MSM reported that the government had instructed the ONS to change the way they record COVID-19 deaths. Hitherto the ONS only reported a COVID-19 death if it was recorded as the direct or underlying cause. This was changed to recording “mentions” of COVID-19. A spokesperson for the ONS said:

It will be based on mentions of Covid-19 on death certificates. It will include suspected cases of Covid-19 where someone has not been tested positive for Covid-19.

The reporting of COVID-19 comorbidity rates was“paused” in July and has yet to resume. The final published ONS analysis that directly reported the number of pre-exiting conditions for deaths “with” COVID-19 mentioned on the death certificate, was released for the period ending 30 June 2020.

From this we learned that 91.1% of alleged COVID deaths had at least 1 serious additional comorbidity. The mean number of comorbidities for a those under 70 was 2.1 and for the vast majority over 70 it was 2.3.

It is preposterous to claim that a decedent who had cancer, pneumonia and had just had surgery, but tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 four weeks earlier, could reasonably be categorised as a COVID-19 death. Yet that is precisely what happened, and continues to happen to this day.

Covid-19 Cures the Flu

COVID-19 also cured influenza and other respiratory disease, such as adenovirus. Early January is always a period of notable influenza outbreaks, resultant hospital admissions and mortality. This is evident if we look at PHE’s Weekly Influenza Report for week 2 in any year prior to 2020.

In 2020, according to the newly combined PHE Weekly Influenza and COVID Report, there have been virtually no cases of influenza, treatment or related deaths.

The ONS note all the details on a death certificate. In their mortality roundup for the January to August 2020 period they stated:

Influenza and pneumonia was mentioned on more death certificates than COVID-19, however COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death in over three times as many deaths between January and August 2020.

How can flu and pneumonia possibly be on more death certificates than COVID-19 if, as the media and PHE allege, it has been wiped out? It seems the medical profession didn’t get the memo.

A Systemic Catch-22

A positive SARS-CoV-2 test appears to be the primary reason for attribution of mortality. Only the most fastidious diagnosis can differentiate between COVID-19 symptoms and other ILI’s. Is it credible to believe that flu and pneumonia are on more death certificates but that COVID-19 is deemed the cause of death on three times as many Medical Certificates of Cause of Death (MCCD’s)?

These are somewhat rhetorical questions. The reason why bizarre anomalies like this occurred is because recording COVID-19 as the cause of death was practically unavoidable.

The Coronavirus Act overhauled the MCCD and death registration processes. In addition, World Health Organisation Coding changes and guidance issued by the NHS and other medical authorities combined to create a systemic Catch-22.

In England and Wales an MCCD is completed online using the WHO’s recommended coding. The MCCD is split into sections. Part 1. a) “Disease or condition directly leading to death”; b) “Other disease or condition, if any, leading to (a)”; and c) “Other disease or condition, if any, leading to (b)”.

Part 2 records “Other significant conditions contributing to the death, but not related to the disease or condition causing it.” For example, a person may have died from heart failure caused by pneumonia but obesity, though not directly related to the immediate cause of death, could have contributed and would therefore be recorded in Part 2.

In the case of respiratory disease, the direct cause of death could be Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). This may be brought on by, for example, pneumonia which was caused by influenza. In this instance the direct cause of death would be recorded in Part 1. a) as ARDS, prompted by pneumonia in Part1. b), and the underlying cause would be set as influenza in Part 1. c).

The WHO Family of International Classifications (WHOFIC) Network Classification and Statistics Advisory Committee (CSAC) created new International Classification of Diseases codes (ICD-10 codes) for COVID-19. If the decedent had tested positive, or had been in contact with anyone else who had, a recorded COVID-19 death was practically a fait accompli.

A “confirmed case” was dependent solely upon a positive test result and was given the code U07.1. Observable symptoms were not necessary for U07.1 code to be recorded on a death certificate.

A suspected COVID-19 case was coded as U07.2. A decedent known to have had contact with a SARS-CoV-2 positive person who, while neither testing positive nor having any symptoms themselves, was deemed a suspected/probableCOVID-19 case and given the code U07.2.

Neither the U07.1 nor the U07.2 codes required any evidence that the decedent had COVID-19.

As the U07.1 code indicated a “confirmed case,” unless the decedent passed away from something obviously unrelated, such as head trauma, a SARS-CoV-2 positive test would almost automatically confirm COVID-19 as the underlyingcause of death.

The WHO clearly described this process in their International MCCD coding guidelines. They defined what death “due” to COVID-19 was:

A death due to COVID-19 is defined for surveillance purposes as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness, in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease (e.g. trauma). There should be no period of complete recovery from COVID-19 between illness and death. A death due to COVID-19 may not be attributed to another disease (e.g. cancer).

A clinically compatible illness could be any ILI. Even if the individual died from cancer, as long as they tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, or the Doctor suspected respiratory distress, the death would be registered as “due to” COVID-19. COVID-19 would again be the reported as the underlying cause.

Additional WHO guidance stated:

COVID-19 should be recorded on the medical certificate of cause of death for ALL decedents where the disease caused, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death. Although both categories, U07.1…and U07.2 ….are suitable for cause of death coding……it is recommended, for mortality purposes only, to code COVID-19 provisionally to U07.1 unless it is stated as probable or suspected.

If a doctor was uncertain and merely suspected a probable COVID-19 case, they were clearly advised to record it on the MCCD as a confirmed case (U07.1 and not U07.2). Again, ensuring it would be reported as the “underlying cause.”

The Office of National Statistics stated:

Deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) include those with an underlying cause, or any mention, of U07.1 (COVID-19, virus identified) or U07.2 (COVID-19, virus not identified) …

If the Doctor held firm and coded COVID-19 as U07.2 on Part 2 of the MCCD, the ONS (and the NRS and NISA) would still report it as a COVID-19 death.

In the Clear

The Coronavirus Act indemnified all NHS doctors against any claims of malpractice or negligence. It removed the need for a second medical opinion (Medical Examiner), it effectively ruled out both post-mortem examinations and jury-led coroner’s inquests, allowed virtually anyone to act as the qualified informant and facilitated rapid cremation.

In response to the Coronavirus Act and WHO IC10 coding, the NHS issued guidance to doctors for the completion of the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD). The COVID-19 death certification and registration process they produced beggars belief. Under the guidance, acting on their own without any corroborating opinion:

Any medical practitioner with GMC registration can sign the MCCD, even if they did not attend the deceased during their last illness.

Attend doesn’t mean examine either. Checking in with the decedent via Zoom is sufficient. Failing that, if the MCCD signing doctor has only seen the decedent after death, providing they have tested positive, a review of their notes is still sufficient to record a COVID-19 death. The NHS stated COVID-19 could be recorded wherever:

A medical practitioner has attended the deceased (including visual/video consultation) within 28 days before death, or viewed the body in person after death.

In keeping with the WHO coding guidelines, there isn’t even any need for a positive test result. The NHS guidance added:

If before death the patient had symptoms typical of COVID-19 infection, but the test result has not been received, it would be satisfactory to give ‘COVID-19’ as the cause of death … In the circumstances of there being no swab, it is satisfactory to apply clinical judgement.

The NHS then created a system of remote death certification:

During periods of excess deaths due to COVID-19, healthcare providers are encouraged to redeploy medical practitioners whose role does not usually include direct patient care, such as some medical examiners, to provide indirect support by working as dedicated certifiers, completing MCCDs.

These dedicated certifiers, though medically qualified, are tasked with signing off COVID-19 MCCD’s. GP’s and hospital physicians gather reports, perhaps from a review of the deceased’s medical notes or a video conference with a care home provider, and pass that information to the dedicated COVID-19 certifierfor MCCD completion.

The NHS advised that no proof was required for the attribution of a COVID-19 death. They stated:

Without diagnostic proof, if appropriate and to avoid delay, medical practitioners can circle ‘2’ in the MCCD (information from post-mortem may be available later)

This suggestion that a post mortem may be available is implausible.

Additional guidance issued by the Royal College of Pathologists states:

If a death is believed to be due to confirmed COVID-19 infection, there is unlikely to be any need for a post-mortem examination to be conducted and the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death should be issued.

Bearing in mind that the WHO had instructed suspected U07.2 deaths to be coded as confirmed U07.1 deaths, the chance of anything other than confirmed COVID-19 death reaching a pathologist is extremely remote. Any MCCD signed “without diagnostic proof” would almost certainly be agreed by the pathologist without further scrutiny. The mere act of putting COVID-19 anywhere on the MCCD was enough to negate the need for a post mortem.

This new death certification system, specifically designed for COVID-19, has understandably caused confusion. The British Medical Association’s verification of death guidance advises that if no signing doctor has seen the decedent prior to completing the MCCD they should refer it to the coroner. However, this was only a policy recommendation not a legal requirement.

Contradicting this, the Chief Coroner advised:

COVID-19 is a naturally occurring disease and therefore is capable of being a natural cause of death … The aim of the system should be that every death from COVID-19 which does not in law require referral to the coroner should be dealt with via the MCCD process.

This means that even if a coroner receives a referral from a doctor, they will be highly likely to automatically approve the MCCD without further inquiry. Since a post mortem has already effectively been ruled out, there will be little point in the coroner investigating further.

NHS staff and carers who may have been uncomfortable with all this have been under no illusions. The use of draconian Hospital Trust gagging orders (non disclosure agreements) are widely reported. Carers who have spoken out have been sacked.

To finalise this unbelievable COVID-19 death registration system, the Coronavirus Act also withdrew the standard second opinion required prior to cremation. The need to complete Cremation form 5 was suspended for all COVID-19 deaths.

Alleged COVID-19 decedents can be cremated without any clear evidence that they ever had the disease, regardless of their family’s wishes, swiftly ending any chance of any investigation by sceptical family members.

What was the Cause of Death?

SAGE assessed the UK mean operational false positive rate (FPR) for RT-PCR to be 2.3% of all conducted tests. The government say they have conducted just over 118M tests of which 4.3M were positive. This includes an unknown number of multiple tests of the same individual. A mean FPR of 2.3% suggests 2.7M of those 4.3M positive tests were false positives. This equates to 62.7% of all positive test results.

As we have already discussed it is highly likely that laboratory testing was the primary determinant for a diagnosis of COVID-19. Therefore it is not unreasonable to surmise that at least 50% of claimed COVID-19 deaths were attributed on the basis of false positives. We can halve the claimed 148,000 to 74,000 COVID-19 deaths.

The 2020 ONS mortality data for England showed a reduction in deaths from a number of other causes.

Deaths from Ischaemic heart diseases were 1,450 below the 5 year average. Cerebrovascular disease was down by 2,276, malignant respiratory neoplasm by 1,537, chronic lower respiratory disease by 2,764 and influenza and pneumonia deaths were 7,313 below the 5 year average. An apparent reduction of 15,340 deaths from other causes.

It seems highly likely that these deaths were wrongly recorded as COVID-19.

As we have seen above, approximately 90% of supposed COVID-19 decedents had at least one other comorbidity. Using the Government’s 148,125 figure, we might claim, therefore that only something like 15,000 of these died of, rather than with.

Is this claim justifiable? Well, consider this:

The Department of Health and Social Care published a study of residents in care homes which purported to show the total number of confirmed cases. Among this number they claimed:

80.9% of residents who tested positive were asymptomatic.

A meta analysis by the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine found that asymptomatic rates among those who tested positive varied between 5% – 80%. If there are no symptoms, then the disease cannot have contributed towards a death.

Taking everything into account, from high rates of comorbidity, to low rates of symptomatic individuals, the impact of false positives on testing and a death certification regime heavily biased towards recording COVID-19 as the underlying cause, then it is reasonable to conclude that the total number of deaths from Covid-19 is not 148,000, nor 126,000, but much closer to 15,000.


Iain Davis

Author, blogger, researcher and short film maker who rants at in-this-together.com.

Scamdemic - Corona Virus

Pfizer Contract Acknowledges Vaccine’s Unknown Efficacy and Side Effects

2 Comments

Marko Marjanović 

 

The standard Pfizer-to-government vaccine contract has been out since January 2021:

There are many iffy parts but here’s the one that’s the most interesting:

“Purchaser further acknowledges that the long-term effects and efficacy of the Vaccine are not currently known and that there may be adverse effects of the Vaccine that are currently not known.”

Pfizer makes the governments explicitly acknowledge that long-term effects can not possibly be known at this time AS A CONDITION OF SELLING TO THEM. Yet governments take to the podium to say that vaccines are “safe and effective”. How can they possibly know? Are they clairvoyant? What do they know that even vaccine makers do not??

In the very contract they sign they agree that neither efficacy nor side-effects are presently known. But if you as a private individual point out this obvious truth you are crazy/stupid/evil.

Sorry, but I’d feel a lot stupider believing the crap the governments are selling but do not even themselves believe.

Those who are buying…well, that’s just the folks who actually are as stupid as the government believes they are.

Enjoy the politicians insult your intelligence and being right about it.

Scamdemic - Corona Virus

Philippines’ Children Banned Outside Homes 68 of the Last 70 Weeks

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via Anti-Empire

The COVID cult demands its pound of flesh. To appease the mind virus freaks children in the Philippines have been technically banned from exiting their doorway for 1 year and 4 months now. As soon as the ban was lifted earlier this month it was reintroduced again, courtesy of the “Delta” mind virus rebrand:

The Philippines sent millions of children back into lockdown on Friday (Jul 23) as hospitals prepared for a surge in coronavirus cases fuelled by the highly contagious Delta variant ravaging neighbouring countries.

…

It comes two weeks after the government lifted a ban on minors going outside that had been in place since March 2020 but often flouted.

Imagine how much damage this would have caused children if anyone actually paid any attention to it. (The ban was observed for the first 2 months then everyone got over it.)

An insane assault on children parading as concern for their wellbeing. Truly sickening stuff.

Imagine being 9-years old and not being able to go outside for 16 months and counting. Now imagine that while you’re living in Filipino slum conditions; in a tin-roofed shack with 10 other family members.