From April 2020 through at least the end of 2021, Americans died from non-Covid causes at an average annual rate 97,000 in excess of previous trends. Hypertension and heart disease deaths combined were elevated 32,000. Diabetes or obesity, drug-induced causes, and alcohol-induced causes were each elevated 12,000 to 15,000 above previous (upward) trends. Drug deaths especially followed an alarming trend, only to significantly exceed it during the pandemic to reach 108,000 for calendar year 2021. Homicide and motor-vehicle fatalities combined were elevated almost 10,000. Various other causes combined to add 18,000. While Covid deaths overwhelmingly afflict senior citizens, absolute numbers of non-Covid excess deaths are similar for each of the 18-44, 45-64, and over-65 age groups, with essentially no aggregate excess deaths of children. Mortality from all causes during the pandemic was elevated 26 percent for working-age adults (18-64), as compared to 18 percent for the elderly. Other data on drug addictions, non-fatal shootings, weight gain, and cancer screenings point to a historic, yet largely unacknowledged, health emergency.
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A series of aggressive restrictive measures around the world were adopted in 2020-2022 to attempt to prevent SARS-CoV-2 from spreading. However, it has become increasingly clear that an important negative side-effect of the most aggressive (lockdown) response strategies may involve a steep increase in poverty, hunger, and inequalities. Several economic, educational and health
repercussions have not only fallen disproportionately on children, students, and young workers, but also and especially so on low-income families, ethnic minorities, and women, exacerbating existing inequalities. For several groups with pre-existing inequalities (gender, socio-economic and racial), the inequality gaps widened. Educational and financial security decreased, while domestic violence surged. Dysfunctional families were forced to spend more time with each other, and there has been growing unemployment and loss of purpose in life. This has led to a vicious cycle of rising inequalities and health issues. In the current narrative and scoping review, we describe macro-dynamics that are taking place as a result of aggressive public health policies and psychological tactics to influence public behavior, such as mass formation and crowd behavior. Coupled with the effect of inequalities, we describe how these factors can interact towards aggravating ripple effects. In light of evidence regarding the health, economic and social costs, that likely far outweigh potential benefits, the authors suggest that, first, where applicable, aggressive lockdown policies should be reversed and their re-adoption in the future should be avoided. If measures are needed,
these should be non-disruptive. Second, it is important to assess dispassionately the damage done by aggressive measures and offer ways to alleviate the burden and long-term effects. Third, the structures in place that have led to counterproductive policies, should be assessed and ways should be sought to optimize decision-making, such as counteracting groupthink and increasing the
level of reflexivity. Finally, a package of scalable positive psychology interventions is suggested to counteract the damage done and improve future proespects for humanity.
In his interview with Fareed Zakaria on 92nd Street Y, Bill Gates admits:
“We didn’t understand that it’s a fairly low fatality rate and that it’s a disease mainly of the elderly…”
Bill Gates with Fareed Zakaria: How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, 23m55s
Most believed that COVID was a real illness, with a defined risk profile. Most were not opposed to vaccination as medical practice in itself, but did express doubts about the rapid development, deployment and side effect profiles of the current COVID vaccines. Many participants were not personally affected by the lockdown measures, but some recounted ostracism from activities due to their choices around masking and vaccination.
The main challenge for most was managing relationships with others that had a differing view of the situation, e.g. friends and family. As a result of the past two years, participants reported increased scepticism and a greater suspicion towards the state, medical profession and vaccination as a medical practice. Some reported increased mistrust in other members of the public, borne out of a sense of disbelief at the ease with which they viewed most people as acquiescing to a state of affairs that participants regarded as highly abnormal.
IS the UK now at the forefront of eugenics? Are the Covid-19 gene-therapy/altering vaccines the gateway to public acceptance of this? And has the pandemic provided cover for a takeover, not by scientific experts, but dangerous eugenicist nerds?
The Government’s head gene-gnome, Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance, recently spoke to Genomics England (a company owned by the Department of Health to provide ‘whole genome sequencing diagnostics’) on the potential future uses of genomics beyond the fields of healthcare and medicine.
Over the past two years, we have seen pensioners penalised for drinking cups of tea a bit too close to each other in their gardens, women fined for going for a walk in a reservoir slightly too far away from their homes, and we’ve seen more than 300 people charged by the police for being ‘potentially infectious’. Children were unable to visit their grandparents at care homes to share their last moments together. Families were separated from spending festive and religious periods together. I could go on. While the Government used the Public Health Act 1984 to implement many of the lockdown restrictions, the Coronavirus Act gave the Government similar extreme authoritarian powers.
From the very beginning of the pandemic, a public health emergency has been used to push through laws that bite at the very liberties we are so proud of here in the UK. I consistently warned against the risk to our civil liberties arising from the reams of guidance and regulations issued by the Government over the past two years and the powers in the Coronavirus Act.
Speaking this week on The Mail on Sunday’s Medical Minefield podcast, Prof Woolhouse said: ‘I think that lockdown will be viewed by history as a monumental mistake on a global scale, for a number of reasons.
‘The obvious one is the immense harm the lockdown, more than any other measure, did in terms of the economy, mental health and on the wellbeing of society.
…[A study published in Science in February 2021] also found something intriguing: lockdowns could, in a worst-case scenario, actually increase transmission of the virus by up to five per cent.
…As Dr Ali puts it: ‘Some people say lockdowns were beneficial, others that they were really terrible.‘The reality actually is much closer to the idea that it didn’t make much difference either way.’
For those who made painful sacrifices, that won’t be an easy truth to swallow.
When I sat down to write a piece reflecting on the second anniversary of the March 2020 lockdown, I initially thought it would be about what the past two years have taught us about law, civil liberties, and the state. Instead, I’d like to talk about the thing that has occupied my mind most ever since Boris’s famous press conference shortly before the “lockdown” was given legal effect: namely, the nihilism of modern life. This is illustrated perfectly by the way in which the interests of children were treated during the pandemic.
A detailed analysis of where almost £5bn of Covid business funding went is not possible due to gaps in data, a spending watchdog has found.
The Scottish government provided £4.4bn in grants and business rates relief between the start of the pandemic and October last year.
A further £375m was announced following the emergence of Omicron last winter.
The government said the speed and scale of the roll out helped to safeguard thousands of job and businesses.
But Audit Scotland was unable to determine where all the money ended up.
…Scottish Conservative finance spokeswoman Liz Smith acknowledged the speed with which the money had to be released but said the report highlighted a “shocking lack of data” meant “enormous sums of public money were paid out” but “we don’t properly know where it went”.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220317095443/https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-60770729
A senior epidemiologist who advised the government during the coronavirus pandemic claims he was told to “correct” his views after he criticised what he thought was an “implausible” graph shown at an official briefing.
Professor Mark Woolhouse has also apologised to his daughter, whose generation “has been so badly served by mine”, and believes that closing schools was “morally wrong”.
The Edinburgh University academic is deeply critical of the use of lockdown measures and says “plain common sense” was a “casualty of the crisis”.
Speaking to Sky News, Prof Woolhouse seemed concerned about a possible “big-brother” approach to the control of information about COVID.He says he was told to watch what he was saying following a briefing given by Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) Sir Patrick Vallance on 21 September 2020.
Scientists abandoned their objectivity, misled with alarming models and failed to appreciate the damage lockdown would cause, a government adviser has claimed in a damning indictment of Britain’s pandemic response.
In his memoir, The Year The World Went Mad, Prof Woolhouse claimed that lockdowns “had surprisingly little effect” and just “deferred the problem to another day, at great cost”.
He argued that Spi-M was set up to tackle the wrong disease, influenza, and that early models were based on flu dynamics, and so mistakenly thought schools were a major driver while underrepresenting the impact of shielding.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220305142940/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/05/britains-covid-experts-misled-alarming-models-abandoned-objectivity/
The latest data published by the UK Health Security Agency confirms fully vaccinated individuals in England are up to 3.2 times more likely to die of Covid-19 than unvaccinated individuals based on Covid-19 death-rates per 100,000 population.
920 applications were filed over death or injury, although strict official thresholds mean no payouts have been made
Sweden made the correct decision by avoiding a full Covid-19 lockdown and relying on their population’s common sense, a commission into the handling of the virus has claimed.
Despite praising keeping the country open, the commission said some restrictions should have been introduced earlier.
Swedish experts said repeated lockdowns in other European countries were neither ‘necessary’ nor ‘defensible’.
Scientists did not have accurate Covid case numbers, and were unsure of hospitalisation and death rates when they published models suggesting that more than 500,000 people could die if Britain took no action in the first wave of the pandemic, it has emerged.
On March 16 2020, Imperial College published its “Report 9” paper suggesting that failing to take action could overwhelm the NHS within weeks and result in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Before the paper, the UK coronavirus strategy was to flatten the peak rather than suppress the wave, but after the modelling was made public, the Government made a rapid u-turn, which eventually led to lockdown on March 23.
However SPI-M (Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling) minutes released to the Telegraph under a Freedom of Information request show that by March 16, modellers were still “uncertain” of case numbers “due to data limitations”.
The minutes show that members were waiting for comprehensive mortality data from Public Health England (PHE) and said that current best estimates for the infection fatality rate, hospitalisation rates, and the number of people needing intensive care were still uncertain.
They also believed that modelling only showed “proof of concept” that lockdowns could help, and warned that “further work would be required”.
“Following the science” became a mainstay mantra of the pandemic, frequently trotted-out to justify unpalatable policy decisions such as banning hugging or denying fathers the right to attend the birth of a child.
Yet as Britain’s epidemic begins to fade away, it is becoming increasingly clear that many influential scientists were ignored, ridiculed and shunned for expressing moderate views that the virus could be managed in a way which would cause far less collateral damage.
Instead, a narrow scientific “groupthink” emerged, which sought to cast those questioning draconian policies as unethical, immoral and fringe. That smokescreen is finally starting to dissipate.
Even here, in the Soviet-style behemoth that is “our NHS”, choice can no longer be taken for granted. There is a defiant reluctance among GPs to go back to seeing patients in person. Many hospital appointments are still online. Hopes that patients could start to enjoy the comforting old normal are dashed by an arrogant, unfeeling bureaucracy which puts its own health first.
“There are no immediate changes to IPC (infection, prevention and control) requirements,” says an ominous letter to clinical staff from NHS England. I am told that masks are so embedded in NHS behaviour that we will probably never again see a nurse’s smile.
Remaining restrictions on travel could be reviewed before Easter but some laws introduced during the pandemic will be made permanent, according to the Government’s plan for living with coronavirus.
The legal requirement to isolate is to be scrapped within days as the Prime Minister vowed to remove “all remaining domestic restrictions in law”.
The Government’s Living with Covid plan sets out its intention for other legal provisions to remain indefinitely, while others will be reviewed at a later date.
Published 11th February 2015
The leader of that party does what he wants, when he wants, and no one dares question him. Would a Prime Minister Trudeau arbitrarily whip the vote and outlaw certain moral questions? Could Prime Minister Trudeau be trusted to make decisions for the good of the country, not just for his personal self-worth? Would Trudeau call in the police to enforce his vision? Let’s hope we never have the opportunity to ask those questions.
It’s becoming clearer as the days of Trudeau’s Liberals wear on: if elected Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau would turn Canada into a dictatorship.
This is the man who admitted he “admires China’s basic dictatorship.” It wasn’t just a sarcastic comment – he seriously said that he admires the dictatorship because they can get things done quickly.
http://archive.today/2022.02.20-065132/https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/trudeau-dictator_b_6314494
In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), economic downturns can lead to increased child mortality by affecting dietary, environmental, and care-seeking factors. This study estimates the potential loss of life in children under five years old attributable to economic downturns in 2020. We used a multi-level, mixed effects model to estimate the relationship between gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and under-5 mortality rates (U5MRs) specific to each of 129 LMICs. Public data were retrieved from the World Bank World Development Indicators database and the United Nations World Populations Prospects estimates for the years 1990-2020. Country-specific regression coefficients on the relationship between child mortality and GDP were used to estimate the impact on U5MR of reductions in GDP per capita of 5%, 10%, and 15%. A 5% reduction in GDP per capita in 2020 was estimated to cause an additional 282,996 deaths in children under 5 in 2020. At 10% and 15%, recessions led to higher losses of under-5 lives, increasing to 585,802 and 911,026 additional deaths, respectively. Nearly half of all the potential under-5 lives lost in LMICs were estimated to occur in Sub-Saharan Africa. Because most of these deaths will likely be due to nutrition and environmental factors amenable to intervention, countries should ensure continued investments in food supplementation, growth monitoring, and comprehensive primary health care to mitigate potential burdens.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0263245