H/t John Hilley at the other place.
You beat me to it! I was about to post the same link, with a short extract, and a short comment on the symmetry between John’s views and Rhis’s, in at least one respect, and a meta-comment to the effect that mutual attributions of irrationality need not render civil debate impossible.
I’ve never met a rational human being, and I cannot claim to be one myself. (Either rational, or very human, either!) So we needn’t get offended at being thought irrational. That’s one of the things humour is for.
I may attempt a slightly longer and better-organised comment later.
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This × 100
Oddly, uncharacteristically confused piece from John. I come back to my basic question: How does anyone - anyone at all - know for sure what the real facts are? Particularly all the blizzard of stats which are being blasted about.
How do we find, and verify, trustworthy sources of data? At the moment, I can’t think of anyone whom I take to be authentically authoritative, and also reliably honest, strictly, meticulously so. John is honest, of that I’ve no doubt. Maybe that’s why this piece seems so confused. Because, like everyone else, he hasn’t really got a thoroughly reliable picture of what’s truly happening. Quite a few of the attitudes which he lists as irrational and without evidence, I would guess to be neither of those things. But I don’t KNOW! Just using my (in-built, reason-AND-intuition-guided) gambler’s odds calculator…
At the moment, I think that that’s the only thing I have to go on. Sure there’s a real illness. It kills people. An excess number over average times? Maybe; I really don’t believe that that is already clear beyond doubt. It does seem that the death rate has come right down again, since early May, exactly as the Winter respiratory-illness waves usually do. (Hence the propaganda machine’s switch to casedemics.) What the excess-death number is, if any, isn’t clear.
I also doubt - note the cautious verb! - that there’s a single grand conspiracy going on. The words ‘piss-up’ and ‘brewery’ spring to mind. I do suspect - another cautious, provisional verb - that the Bellender Gatesoids have a pro-vaccine scam running, sniffing the chance of a simply enormous money rip-off, and the possibility of more power and status to he reaped as well. Quite obviously there’s a concerted lying-propaganda effort going on to trash the HCQ+ treatment, and the other already-proven cheap, unpatentable and effective treatments. But I doubt - ditto - that the vaccine scammers are in any sort of global control of the situation. No-one is, I’d say.
How the feck, with all the competing chancers up to their tricks, and with the general panic-driven confusion, does anyone tell what is hard fact? Could it be that John is making these uncharacteristically emphatic statements because he too, like so many, is suffering a touch of TDS? I really don’t know. But something seems - uncharacteristically - wrong-ringing in this piece of his.
I should just highlight one rejoinder that’s going around at the moment: “Do we really believe that thousands of doctors and nurses are faking the numbers? Why would they?” I’ve seen two Scots - John, and George Galloway - asking the same question in the past 24 hours. The answer being that quite a number of them have already come out saying that they’re being leaned on by authority to do just that, and many of them are - quite rationally - afraid for their careers and their income if they step out of line. A number are on record with precisely that concern. And one of the few things of which my calculator is reasonably sure already is that there has indeed been a widescale effort to inflate the numbers, for whatever reason. How successful; how much? Dunno, but it’s been tried…
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Jill Kirkwood, via Off-G, seems to me to put a savvier gloss on things (sorry, John; first time I’ve been less than 100% commendatory of any of your essays…); though again, I have to ask: how does she know, either? -
https://off-guardian.org/2020/09/01/facebook-censors-defense-of-unite-for-freedom-protest/
Bit of comedy satire might help too:
I have to say I largely agree with Rhis. I found the tone of John’s piece very divisive. Surely it can be accepted that people have legitimate concerns when freedoms threaten to vanish at the same time.
I usually find John is on the ball and makes his case well. Everyone’s Covid-19 reactions is a very broad subject though, and Covid-19 is new territory for everyone. Also there aren’t many facts (other than a lot of excess deaths) so extrapolating people’s rationality from what you yourself believe to be reliable facts doesn’t seem likely to me to be a very fruitful pursuit.
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John bewails the ‘abusing’ by one side, but doesn’t seem to realize how insulting his own statements are.
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His long list of alleged extreme claims have no context. Some are ridiculous, but some have a grain or more of truth, made to sound a bit silly by language (and the absence of context).
Generalising to general covid-denial in a supposed group widens the net so much I’m not sure there is actually anybody in it.
John does what he usually does, he seeks out the information on which to base his analysis, but the medical stuff I think is probably uncharted territory for him. It is after all a medical phenomenon and perhaps he thought major scientific/health public bodies would be reliable sources.
- Specifically, even apart from the govt’s criminal handling of the spread of the virus, the pandemic has been exacerbated by the more capitalist western governments and Pharma who are opposing treatments for which there is substantial evidence of efficacy - like hydroxychloroquine/zinc, and ignoring Vitamin C, and vitamin D. In the case of HCQ anyone paying attention can see the fiddling of the evidence that is going on, with the cooperation of all of these reliable health bodies including the WHO.
Many of the severe sounding statements in John’s list make more sense if you realize that, up to about a month ago (might have changed since), two thirds of the deaths from the pandemic were coming from seven countries totalling 7% of the world’s population - and we live in the country with the worst death rate. If we lived outside this group of countries, the death rate would be much smaller. Indeed one Vitamin D researcher titled a paper to the effect that there were two pandemics. Context matters.
- " And we shouldn’t dismiss the more general distrust people feel towards governments and their consequent wariness of vaccination programmes."
John himself is diplomatic here - but ‘dismissing the general distrust in governments and their vaccination programmes’ is exactly what is done in John’s recommended ‘study’ by Tim Anderson - in which the part on vaccinations is actually a hit-piece, and one that is badly informed on vaccination matters. Tim Anderson’s claims are standard vaccine propaganda, and pretty basic stuff. For example, Andrew Wakefield did not allege a ‘proven link’; and it would be irrational to imagine that people are sceptical about all vaccines because of a paper twenty years ago featuring twelve patients.
Or, indeed, to believe that people asking legitimate questions about vaccines (or who are unwilling to sign away their rights) have a fixed position for all vaccines in all situations The creation of the mythical irrational mob of anti-vaxxers is one of a few straw men in John’s piece. Neither Andrew Wakefield, Robert Kennedy nor even the ‘star’ of Plandemic (mentioned in one of John;s extreme examples) Judy Mikovits are anti-vaccine.
The problem is the vaccine industry spins and tells lies and that has led to deserved mistrust. Tim Anderson doesn’t acknowledge any of this. He goes into vaccine industry financials - but there is no point in trying to show vaccines don’t make THAT much money, when the level of propaganda for covid-vaccines in the MSM (and science writing) is unprecedented. Also, there is (increasingly) compulsory vaccination in the US and it’s being openly discussed here. It makes appeal to govts for other reasons too, along with some of the other measures that some people express concern about.
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Re the satire - attempted - post above: Try this link instead:
I agree with the analysis of John’s article by Rhis and waltb. When he conflates “left’ Covid-19 denial looks little different to the unhinged nonsense peddled by the libertarian right, from Breitbert to David Icke” without giving any real evidence or even showing what he means by those labels, I give up.
The only thing I disagree with is the quote below, and only because its “cautious” and “provisional”.
For me, everything about the Gatesoid’s (h/t Rhis) behaviour for quite some years now says they are neck deep in the shite. Just a few points to make my case:
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Gates family history with father (and I think grandfather’s) involvement in planned parenthood, or to call a spade a spade, eugenics
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Gates long term investment in the CDC and GAVI
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My gut feel (and that of my wife whose instincts about people have never been wrong), is that every time he talks about vaccines or any related topic, he is lying through his back teeth
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His acceptance of a proven crook as the head of the WHO
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His active participation in Event 201
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His well publicised statement that if we (my paraphrase) vaccinate everyone, we can reduce the world population!!
You’re just too polite Rhis 
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Pat, see my post this morning on the ‘Covid misinformation and social-media content moderation’ topic. Apropos.
I think Gates fits well as one of the psychopathic gics with this particular gleam in his eye. As I’m sure you understand, I’m under no compulsion to be polite about such dyed-in-the-wool crooks. Just being intellectually cautions, because it’s a speculation rather than ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.
Thanks for the comments everyone an interesting discussion so far!
Personally, I found some of what JH posted useful to my own thinking- particularly the Cuban response, which has been excellent as far as I have been able to see. The disease never really got a foothold there, and their community based efforts to track and control the spread seem to have been very successful. In addition, they seem to have a variety of ways of treating the illness (including some home-grown ways) that look effective. I also agree that the shambolic handling of the crisis by BoJo and DomCum should be investigated in depth at some point, so that they deal with their share of the blame in everything that happened. And I don’t even know what to say about The orange Don in 'murica. These people and their culpability should not be forgotten in the search for the truth about covid.
I agree with @Evvy_dense that the overall tone of the piece is quite divisive, which is a shame. I am sure that it was not what JH was shooting for. The tactic of listing a range of “bonkers” beliefs that are espoused by some (many?) and then not actually dealing with any of them in the rest of the piece looks like he just listed them in order to laugh at them rather than engage with them. Take this very relevant question:
Why would Trump, Johnson, and the capitalist class they represent wish, or ‘conspire’, to crash their own capitalist economy, all in some devious plot to realise a ‘new authoritarianism’?
Yes. Why indeed? Asking the question, isn’t the same as answering it. Is it so obvious that the questions doesn’t need to be answered? It would have been great if JH had tried to dig into some of the arguments that people are proposing, and then show them to be crazy, or to have some merit.
That’s perhaps fair enough for some of those who doubt the mainstream covid story (perhaps), but it’s also a very convenient way of dismissing a large number of people who have legitimate concerns about the story that is being told, and the those who worry that this particular crisis (like every single crisis in history) is being framed in a particular way so as to benefit certain groups of people, rather than uncover the pure unvarnished truth.
Indeed if this crises was being framed from the perspective of the simple unvarnished truth, it would most likely be the first time ever. We shouldn’t be in too much of a rush to forget that element.
And then you have comments like this:
To think how so many are suffering in war zones, the imprisoned souls of Gaza being relentlessly bombed, the lives and homes being washed away by climate calamitous floods. And here some people are mounting insurrections over being asked to keep a temporary safe distance.
This quote in particular leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Especially when this statement includes people like veteran truth teller Vanessa Beeley, who risked her life in her efforts to expose the truth of the situation in Syria, and the false White Helmets narrative. Really, JH owes Vanessa an apology for such a low blow.
I won’t go on too much more, although there is more that could be said about it, but I will make just two more quick points:
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As has been said above, the scientific authorities have really dropped the ball on this subject. I started out in this as a firm supporter of the WHO and with a great deal of belief in the simple power of the scientific-method to determine the correct response to this crisis. My position has been quite shaken over the last few months, to the point that I am wondering whether science as it is done at the moment is fit-for-purpose in situations like this one. I say this with a great deal of sadness and frustration.
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Missing from the entire article is any attempt to address the question just how dangerous is this disease? One of the things that I am already starting to think about just from some of the posts by @Dimac on this site, is just how many people have had the disease (for example in India) and have just gone through it without any lasting problems? Answering this question is the basis of a judgement as to whether our collective response makes sense or not. I feel like this could at least have been considered.
Alright. This is long enough! Thanks for the comments - I hope that someone can invite John to come and have a read, and perhaps discuss some of the points raised here.
Stay well and healthy everyone!
PP
Morning @RhisiartGwilym!
I just wanted to make a quick comment on the 94% number that I am seeing around at the moment. From my perspective, this number is really not as relevant or shocking as the new alt-narrative is trying to make it.
So 94% of people who died had one or more comorbidities. So… what is the conclusion? Those people were still members of our communities, and they still died. It was still dangerous for them, and the toll is still horrific. They were people’s grandparents, uncles, aunts, mothers, fathers etc. Having a comorbidity doesn’t really lessen their death in any way.
As for the argument that they would have died anyway - they had the same comorbidity last year (presumably) and did not die. They might have had another 1,2,5,10,20 years of life left if it hadn’t been for Covid - who knows? Following this argument to its conclusion leads us to arguments like:
Oh, you have cancer? No point in trying to treat - you’re gonna die anyway. Today, next week or in 10 years makes no difference.
You get the point. The fact that it was Covid that tipped these people over the edge doesn’t mean that it’s not dangerous… it clearly is. A bucket-load of people have died, who didn’t need to die. And died quite horribly and alone.
The biggest take-away for me is the tragedy of the state of our public health, that so many people have comorbidities in our society. That is a tragedy. And the correlation of that number with poor communities, ethnic minority communities and other disadvantaged groups is a second tragedy.
The 94% is just an indictment of how much unnecessary suffering we are all putting up with in this grotesque corporate-capitalist system.
Cheers
PP
Right of course, PP: every death is a tragedy for those who loved the deceased. (Just facing exactly this grief myself right now.) But I think the point that’s being made about the 94% is all the gross distortion about the death toll of - actual - corvid; before it became no longer credible, as it sank away into noise levels; what time the propaganda whores all dutifully shifted to casedemic shrieking, and blabbering about ‘second spikes’.
I have a certain grim pleasure in seeing you doubt the probity of ‘science’ as it’s currently done, and as it’s so often distorted for vulgar gain. Welcome to the club! There’s no question in my mind that it’s been besmirched and abused, widely, for the basest of reasons.
But keep faith with the pure scientific method. That remains one of the greatest creations of human endeavour. The perfect complement to shamanic/magical intuitive methods of truth-finding…
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Hi brother
I guess that’s the core of the problem that I have with the 94% number. As far as I can see the death toll from Covid is 100% of the people who died as a result of catching Covid. That includes the 94% of people who had comorbidities.
Anything else looks like the same kind of tricksy accounting that governments use to decide who is really unemployed and who can be thrown out of that category by some fancy calculus.
If someone got covid, got seriously ill as a result and then died, that person died of covid in my opinion. Regardless of what comorbidities they had. Another way of asking this question is would that person have died had they not caught covid? If the would still be alive, then they died of covid.
On the scientific method, yes - I am still a firm believer in the power of science. The problem that I have been dismayed to observe is that it doesn’t seem to work under pressure. It’s too easy for one group or another to hijack the process for whatever reason. There’s a reason that science progresses slowly. Pieces of the puzzle need to be examined, cross-referenced, confirmed by other groups. All this takes time and effort and is just not workable in the middle of a panic…
I don’t know what the answer to that is.
Cheers
PP
What is the background to this?
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Hi JackieL. If you go to www.corbett.com, there are several podcasts of which I think the most relevant one is called “Who is Bill Gates”.
James Corbett is an exceptionally dilligent researcher and presents information in a simple and clear fashion.
You seemed to link planned parenthood with eugenics, and the background of that is what I am wondering about.
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Hello Jackie! I think it was James Corbett who did a brief on what the early ‘planned parenthood’ movement in N America was trying to do. I seem to remember that it was clear from what James was showing that there was a considerable amount of population-manipulation purpose behind that early movement: lowering the black population, and lowering child-birth amongst ‘white trash’ and ‘mentally- and morally-subnormal’ denominated people. Large families only for the ‘right’ people; the prosperous ‘upper’ class WASPs, of course.
In Britain, Marie Stopes had a much more honest idea: giving all women, including post-pubertal teenage girls, all the sound knowledge that they need, together with the proper technical control of their own fertility, regardless of which class or ethnicity they occupied. These two quite different purposes have been confused together in a lot of the knee-jerk shouting about ‘eugenics’ in recent times.
Clearly the Stopes tendency - which now includes the ever-painful right to properly medically and culturally supported, and unstigmatised abortion - is honourable and worthy of unmixed support as an absolutely fundamental right of women, and also because it helps the demographic transition, and therefore the looming problem of global population-overshoot which we now face, whether we like it or not. And about that, something really has to be done - by someone.
My odds-on front-runner for the task is Mam Gaia’s natural - though sometimes grim by human standards - re-balancing processes; such as the wide spontaneous decline in fertility which we’re now observing. I make this calculation only because I see zero sign of us collectively taking overshoot seriously enough to start a global ‘Manhattan Project’ to deal with it humanely, in a civilised way.
Perhaps I could just jump in here, trying to catch up with all these thoughts, with a couple of points. One is that I’m a little inclined towards the Pat B end on Gates, but also on the oft forgotten Anthony Fauci, who not only is the “top advisor” to the WH but is also the developer of Remdesevir and approver of it, and beneficiary of its profits, as well as the possible joint developer of the virus itself in partnership with Zhi Shengli. To take ANYTHING he says as credible or unbiased is a mistake. It’s more a case of assuming that something else is true if he says it isn’t.
But the other thing is on “eugenics”. This is the tag which will get slapped on anyone who dares say the obvious, that when we get old and sick, at some point we will die, but only when some last thing tips us over the edge. Obviously some of these 80 or 90 year olds are dearly loved and die tragically “too young”, but some say themselves that they’d rather die now than drag on in an isolation prison, or that their diminution of abilities means they are resigned to death. Many others suffer dementia, which for some will be so advanced that carers and relatives will secretly hope they will be taken by the virus. In other cases, where some advanced condition exists, a nurse may administer Morphine finally knowing that it will ease the passage over the Styx.
Unfortunately we are too human to accept these realities of life and death, and too worried that people with lesser morals will take advantage of vulnerability and think of the money - which they will. And for the most part, one can’t even talk about this, or dare to be honest, provoking accusations of callousness and denial.
But I can say it here!
I meant to comment below on Tim Anderson’s contribution here. As it happened he had an article published on AHT just after one of mine, which contradicted mine on a number of points and gave me an uncomfortable feeling about him. An “et tu Brute” moment. I don’t know his science qualifications, but I didn’t find them credible. Perhaps it was on immunity, or perhaps on HCQ, or both. Or on lock downs. He supports Nasrallah as I do, and used his example of support for lock downs as indicative.
As it happens, and this is another topic we should be discussing, Tim Anderson is interviewed about the US vs the ICC in this China Plus news prog, saying all the write things about US exceptionalism.
http://chinaplus.cri.cn/podcast/detail/1/238504
But I only heard this because Tony Kevin sent the link to his interview, about 11 minutes in, to talk about Navalnychok. I think I should start a thread on this…
Tony has also just written about Belarus, which is intimately connected with Navalny. Lukashenko says that Germany and Poland were caught chatting about the operation.
Some history: