5 Filters

Why is the Left, even the radical left, silent about covid?

Covid
#13

Hi @rippon

Thanks for the reply. I’m still curious as to whether you think that germ theory is sham science. Or vaccinations for that matter. Personally I don’t think that we should be so quick to dismiss that, and again, I don’t feel this is a left/right issue. Cuba and Russia were quick to develop vaccines, and whatever other treatments they could to protect their citizens from Covid after all. Treatments and vaccines are presumably based on the germ theory of disease? Perhaps not - I’m not very knowledgeable about biology.

It is important because it cuts to the heart of what different people think about the various narratives at play, and is relevant as to whether someone will critique a narrative or not. I would separate out the fact of the spreading virus and its attendant illness, from the fact of the Government response to the virus and call those two separate discussions. I’m more inclined to frame discussion of the response to the virus in a left/right light than I am to frame the question of whether there is actually a virus at all.

I’m talking about eyewitness reports from hospitals around the world. Multiple doctors and nurses discussing unprecedented sickness and death tolls where they work (including some doctors and nurses I know personally), morgues overflowing, excess deaths for 2020 being off the charts in badly hit countries etc. etc. etc. Quite a lot when you look at it all.

In fact I would argue that we are in the opposite situation to that of the WMD in Iraq fabrication. In that case, try as they might, no one was able to find any evidence of WMD. In this case you’re tripping over evidence coming out of every country and city and hospital that has been hit.

Maybe. Or maybe they (like myself) have yet to see a single piece of evidence for a conspiracy that survives basic scrutiny. I am quite willing to believe in a global conspiracy - for example the nonsensical war on terror, or the various Russian hacking stories, but in those cases I see clear evidence of conspiracy.

Before we go into details on the list of your first-principle facts, I would ask what narrative you think these facts are supporting? Are you of the belief that there is no pandemic? Do you think that Covid is not a dangerous virus that is killing millions of people around the world?

I think we if separate out the question of whether there is, in fact, a virus causing widespread sickness and death, from the efforts various governments have made to supposedly tackle this issue, we might have quite an interesting discussion.

Cheers
PP

#14

I don’t have any significant science knowledge myself.

I’m not sure about ‘germ theory’; not sure whether ‘vaccines are sham science’ equates to ‘germ theory is sham science’; but, by now, I am totally (or near-totally) persuaded that vaccines are indeed sham science.

Maybe that equivalence does apply. Thomas Cowan, in his ‘Contagion Myth’, says (Chap1) this:

“He [Louis Pasteur] admitted that the whole effort to prove contagion was a failure, leading to his deathbed confession: “The germ is nothing; the terrain is everything.” In this case, terrain refers to the condition of the animal or person and whether the animal or person had been subject to poison.”

Certainly not a quick dismissal of vaccines on my part, but after having read material from these sources, for example:

  • ‘Plague of Corruption’
  • ‘Dissolving Illusions’
  • ‘Vaccines: Medical Fraud’
  • ‘Invisible Rainbow’
  • ‘Vaccines are Dangerous and Don’t Work’

And there are loads of doctors, scientists and websites that expose the nonsense/danger of vaccines.

This might be an appropriate analogy regarding the nonsense of vaccines …

The Japanese are amongst the healthiest (e.g. longevity) people on the planet. Yet hardly any of them go to the gym. The reason why is because large amounts of walking is an intrinsic part of their lifestyle. Now, a fitness entrepreneur, in partnership with some local councils, could establish a chain of hi-tech gyms to improve public health in Japan. Alternatively, councils could pursue the cheaper more natural path of investing more in parks and paths. If the new gym chain does attract any customers, then those customers might well see big improvements in their health. But the parks-and-paths investment route would be the more efficient, natural one.

Analogously, to combat a new virus, entrepreneurial big-pharma could invest in creating a new jab to boost people’s immunity. Alternatively, councils could clamp down on retailers selling processed food and industrialists polluting air and water, and they could invest in schemes (e.g. public education) that promote immunity-boosting healthy lifestyles (e.g. more parks and recreation, organic food). The jab might boost the immunity of some, but the healthy lifestyle investment route would be the more efficient, natural one.

You say there is tonnes of evidence of a covid pandemic. But in mainstream media, the only evidence presented is stats, which are entirely untrustworthy. It is particularly striking that no channel has aired any personal testimonies of patients themselves, or their relatives, talking about their agonising time before someone passes away. Such people would be imploring us to embrace masks-lockdowns-jabs because they don’t want anyone else to suffer what they have. The msm clearly wants us to believe in masks-lockdowns-jabs; with pandemic-level casualties, it should be easy for them to run such stories every week. Why are there no interviews from morgues? - which again would be gold for journalists wanting to persuade us of the seriousness of the threat.

Never mind morgues (very grim), why no weekly updates from doctors on the frontline? All we get is regular tedious ‘updates’ from the stooges in Downing Street.

4 Likes
#15

I’m late again! @rippon and @PontiusPrimate

I’m only going to comment on the left versus right discussion. So here goes. It’s my opinion, not based on any research, only personal experience and observation, that those on the “left”, are more likely to question. They are also more likely to deviate from the mainstream narrative, forge their own path, probably because of their questioning and perhaps critical thinking ability.

If I’m correct (and I’m not saying I am), then perhaps they should have, as I did right at the beginning, questioned how so many governments around the world did exactly the same thing at the same time? Then ask isn’t the WHO part of the UN and if so, why is it taking money from Kill Gates? And if one goes down that rabbit hole (which any decent journo should do), you get to things like-

  • Rockerfeller Lock Step Document
  • Event 201
  • Maybe even watch the David Icke interviews (as discredited as he may appear, his interviews on London Real showed him as intelligent, informed, and completely rational)
  • Or maybe even “follow the money”

But most of the “left” did not do anything like that. The left (again, my opinion) has been continuously emascualted since the days of Margaret Thatcher. First, weaken the Unions. Then weaken by co-opting the “left” politicians to organisations like The Friends of Israel :yawning_face:. Then weaken the Labour Party. And now what’s left of the “left”, still think the Guardian is a “left” newspaper, the Labour Party is our lifeline, Google has all the answers, and they have lost their ability to question the propoganda that the BBC spews every single day in more and more subtle ways. Not surprising they support the Covid narrative.

Not surprising to me that the “left” is absent in life changing events.

3 Likes
#16

Firstly, hello all. I’ve been lurking since you created this place, and lurked (still do occasionally) at TLN.

Some interesting posts here, but I’d like to stick to the original topic (if possible).

The silence is easily explained.

There is no left. Nor is there a right. It is top and bottom.

I first became aware of this because of Brexit. Brexit flipped everything up into the air. It didn’t make sense. So called leftwingers behaving incredibly entitled and selfish. Rightwingers thinking as a group.

The lockdown has given me plenty of time to mull over the realities.

We are all selfish. Every last one of us. Granted, it varies in scale, but I’ve never met anyone who endlessly puts others before themselves. How many times have you seen a Guardian comment whining about what they lost due to the referendum? They don’t even begin to contemplate what drove others (apart from simple put downs such as racism). Keeping up with the Jones’s is the game nearly all of us play.

Most people have bought the facade. Self preservation is kicking in, and like rats, they will climb on top of each other in an attempt to survive. To get to the top.

1 Like
#17

Welcome @LocalYokel - it’s nice to have you posting here! (I’ll have something more relevant to say after I’ve made some coffee…)

Cheers
PP

#18

Describes it pretty accurately, Pat. Just as we’re lumbered with an ex-Labour party now, attempting to usurp the votes of millions of de-facto disenfranchised Brits, so we have an ex-Left, which used at one time to be strongly founded on the interests and aspirations of the authentic working class, we common plebs, (hence ‘Labour’!) but which is now a sort of niche or hobby party for unigrad deserters of their plebeian forebears, and which is dedicated only to furthering the interests of the arriviste bourgeois technocrat class (and sod all those ghastly Red Wall proles!).

Since that pushes most of these nichers to be little more than tory-lite thinkers, the overt tory party is where they really belong. Ex-Labour, like the remnantary and largely irrelevant Libdems, are the mouldering residue in Paedominster of what used to be the Left. The sooner they vanish from politics - through natural starvation and withering - the sooner a proper counterbalancing mass party - such as Labour threatened to become under Corbyn - can come into being and start gathering support from that substantial part of the electorate who have no representation in Paedominster currently.

Clearly, too, it should be a party which inserts into its very founding constitution the commitment to destroying the execrable FPTP sham-democracy that we suffer now, to be replaced with proper PR. Not a cure-all, but a substantial step in the right direction. It is creeping into Britain slowly, through the partly-PR examples of the national parliaments of Cymru and Alba, and the local parliament of the raj-occupied territory of Eire. But of course, Paedominster, which, through the official Tory party, is essentially the political wing of the self-perpetuating, ever-ruling English-raj class, continues to arrogate to itself the bulk of the key, central powers of government - including, as it’s now conniving to do, the removal of even the boutique level of power that the Scottish parliament has under the present dispensation. (Cymru, of course, has even less than Scotland, the independence tendency is still small, and thus the Caerdydd parliament can be ignored safely - for the moment…)

Johnson’s keepers amongst the raj don’t like even the Scottish level of independent sovereignty amongst (what’s left of) their imperial provinces. Clearly, they’re scheming to use the current pandemic scam, amongst other ploys, to destroy as much as they can of it right now. Bozo, of course, in his idle, studiously amoral and incompetent way, is fully on board with anything he and his cabinet buddies think they can get away with in that matter.

The key takeaway idea is that the raj loathe the commons, and fear us, and are perennially determined to keep us bamboozled, divided and quiescent for ever - if we let them. This they have been doing for generations, here in Britain and in many other places. They continue to run the phantom of the previous English empire through the global criminal activities of the City, and this socio-politico-economic racketeering is still inflicted on Britain too, as a matter of course, to maintain raj power, anti-democratically and indefinitely.

1 Like
#19

Welcome @LocalYokel from another relative n00b. Endorse that absolutely, though I doubt I would have done 5 years ago. Clinging to that ‘Left’ identity seemed so crucial to my sense of Self.

Happily I have finally grasped that there is no enduring Self and therefore nothing to cling to. It reduces suffering… but this is very old news.

The pack of rats metaphor is very appropriate but at an individual level these highly intelligent little critters are capable of affection, empathy, and self-sacrifice. Our brethren in whining Grauniad-land are downright vicious. Punching firmly downward but careful with their pronouns…

1 Like
#20

PS: Welcome, Local Y!! :slight_smile:

#21

Welcome LocalYokel!

Interesting and thought provoking first post. No more lurking!

1 Like
#22

Loads of good points on this thread, and loads of evidence that what we once knew as the Left is a largely washed up, spent force…

I would add three further points that I think have a specific bearing on the covid business:

1 - in general the left have been fighting on the side of “the science” when if comes to climate change, pollution, environmentalism and many other health and social issues. It’s a very common thing to see left wingers siding with scientists against corporations, media and government. Think about how Media Lens have castigated media outlets about climate change or the war dead in Iraq etc. There is a strong tradition of leftists supporting scientists. Is it any wonder that (for better or worse) they stand with scientists like Sage or (the much better) Independent Sage?

2 - The left in general have a much stronger predilection to support collective rights over individual rights. What benefits the community as a whole tends to outweigh the drive for individual liberties. This strongly favours a community led response to a crisis like covid - including mask wearing, vaccinations and even lockdowns (if workers had been properly supported). The fight for individual liberties over community is the rallying cry of the right wing, hence the name throwing at - for example - the great Barrington people. In general I think the left are uncomfortable under the flag of individual rights. If something inconveniences me a little but ends up being better for society as a whole, I’m likely to accept it. That’s the theory anyway.

3 - There has been such a stigma attached to anything the smells like conspiracy theory, that many otherwise intelligent people will just close their eyes rather than deal with it. This is true of obvious conspiracies (9/11, the Iraq WMD etc). As @rippon said above, this might very well be playing a part.

To my mind, the most left wing approach to covid was put forward in March/April last year by Anthony Costello and Gabriel Scally. Had we followed their advice we would be living in a different world. Cuba is another example showing what a science based, left wing approach might look like, to my mind.

I’d prefer either of those approaches to the shit storm we’ve had in this country.

Cheers
PP

1 Like
The ONS numbers seem to demonstrate that there is no pandemic
#23

I agree with your three points on how the left often sees things, especially with your remark that the left often supports collective over individual rights. I think that plays a big role.
However, in 1. I would draw a big distinction between the science you mention re climate change, pollution and such, and “covid” science. The former have all on the whole been developed over many years, corroborated by different scientists at different times, challenged by others, until eventually a clear consensus emerges. (eg that climate change really is happening).

“Covid” science, on the other hand seems to be made up on the spur of the moment. Lockdowns and mass mask wearing are unprecedented. Standard procedure has been to isolate and treat the sick, not quarantine the healthy. It seems to have just become accepted fact (amongst MSM views) that lockdowns effectively stopped the virus last May/June and masks reduce transmission. That’s not science, and rather akin to the “Saddam had WMD” mantra.

Also, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, I find the complete abscence of concern for huge damage done to society by the measures rather baffling – especially from the left.

I agree with your If something inconveniences me a little but ends up being better for society as a whole, I’m likely to accept it. But none of the measures I’ve seen has in my view been better for society as a whole.

Anthony Costello from independent SAGE that you mention says in January 2021 "We should have a total clampdown now because we have no health service functioning. We’ve got to get on top of this pandemic and the longer we allow it to go transmitting as we are at the moment the quicker we’re going to get a resistant virus to a vaccine.” (see Covid-19: Data on vaccination rollout and its effects are vital to gauge progress, say scientists | The BMJ ). It’s as if (i) we’re dealing with the black death and (ii) there are no harmful consequences of a lockdown.

2 Likes
#24

Hi @Willem,

I’m not sure I agree that covid science is less solid than climate science. Virology, DNA sequencing, epidemiology for example, are all well established. That’s one reason why I know very few leftists who question whether there actually is a virus and whether it has been sequenced. Those sciences are very strong and the tendency of left leaning folk to follow established science will mean they just accept those things and move on. It’s interesting to me that there is a bit of an overlap between those who do question the science down to this level and those who also have a history of questioning climate science.

The data on two points - lockdowns and masks - are patchy at best, and I’m not sure that we can draw strong conclusions from them. There have been numerous reports on both subjects of varying quality and showing varying efficacy.

I would ask those who believe that lockdowns are completely ineffective, what caused the virus to accelerate or slow its spread? The only thing I know of that causes a virus to stop spreading is lack of available new hosts. If keeping people apart by locking down didn’t result in a lack of new hosts, then what did? I’ve not seen a good answer to that question.

Yes, and this has consistently been the primary advice of Indy SAGE for a year. Track, trace, isolate and support have been their mantra. Costello was the first person I heard making the case back in march last year.

Do you watch the Indy SAGE briefings every Friday? I’ve posted about them here a couple times. The concern about the damage that lockdowns do has been high on their agenda. Sadly they have no power to really affect change.

The Costello quote you cite doesn’t really bother me, as I know the greater context in which he views the usefulness of lockdowns etc. I know that he favours them as a temporary measure to get to a point where we can implement other more effective measures for controlling the spread. Both lockdowns and vaccines are seen as stepping stones to a more effective solution for managing the virus, and both are examined in a more holistic (although not perfect by any means) way. I also know that he and Indy SAGE are very concerned about the socio-economic and mental health effects of such measures on the whole of society, including ethnic minorities, disabled people and those with existing mental health issues. They view every lockdown as a failure of government policy. Had we followed their advice last year, I have no doubt that we would have had far fewer deaths, far fewer lockdowns and a much more freely moving society.

As I recall, we had no health service in Jan due to a horrendous covid spike. That spike was a measure of government failure in managing the virus, and was intolerable. I had no trouble then, or now, following the advice that Indy SAGE came up with.

Well, I can’t remember the last time a disease killed something like 150K people in this country in a year. And it could have undoubtedly been worse. Not the black death, but definitely very serious.

And Indy SAGE were about the only group in this country who did take seriously the effects of lockdown. Sadly almost no one was listening to them.

Cheers

EDIT: I talk a little bit more about my thoughts on Indy SAGE vs Great Barrington here if you’re interested.

#25

P, if this alleged virus really has been sequenced, why is no-one able to show chapter and verse of it’s genetic signature. Numerous apparently qualified commentators are insisting that no-one has actually isolated and purified the virus and tried its alleged pathogenicity experimentally. They all say that when you look in nitty gritty detail at all the publications claiming to have purified and sequenced the genetics, the assertions all evaporate, and in sober reality no-one can demonstrate conclusively that they’ve really done it.

I wouldn’t know. But I do know that there are appropriately-qualified people who are saying this most insistently, and reporting their own inability to find anywhere any true genetic information which hasn’t just been “made up” - a frequent comment - by computer modelling, which as we know as a commonplace always works on the GIGO principle.

Where are the purified (let alone Koch-proven) samples? Can anyone find a source anywhere at all? Apparently not.

That alone says loudly to me that we’re being subjected to a monstrous scam.

#26

Hi RG

I feel like we’ve had this discussion before…

I haven’t looked, but I’m sure more groups have done this successfully since then…

EDIT: Had a quick look. According to the Lancet Covid’s RNA has been sequenced thousands and thousands of times in countries across the globe.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00257-9/fulltext

here’s a database collating this data

https://covidcg.org/?tab=home

#27

@PontiusPrimate and @RhisiartGwilym

Thomas Cowan in several interviews linked on other threads here, refers to some work done by someone (I can’t remember who). Mr Anonomous wrote to all (or most of those) that allegedly had sequenced the virus. None of them had actually isolated it. And Cowan gives a great analogy of what isolation actually means. But for the avoidance of doubt, none of those who claimed to have sequenced the virus, had actually isolated it.

As a science numpty, it seems to me that if it has not been isolated, it cannot have been sequenced, correctly and accurately at least.

#28

PS: I know from the evidence of my lying 80-year-old eyes that the climate is changing. But I too am less than utterly convinced that all the predictions of why, and of how apocalyptically-bad it’s bound to get, are fully sound - rather than somewhat [sarky understatement! :slight_smile: ] GIGO-contaminated.

My guesstimate at the moment is: 1) Climate is always changing, both cyclically and originally. 2) It’s unreasonable to pretend that the current huge human-population overshoot, with our equally huge destabilising demands on the ecosphere, is having no effect at all. Of course it must be. And 3) any system as enormously-complex as the Earth’s total Gaia-sphere is still far, far beyond the capacity of any human enterprise to model and predict exactly; and probably always will be.

Ergo, yes climate is shifting. But we have no authoritative idea where it’s going to go, and how Mam Gaia’s multiple, complex and very imperfectly-understood control system is going to affect it all, with her long-established homeostasis strategies, and the immense inventiveness - and, on the microscopic scale, the swiftness - of her hyper-responsive evolutionary abilities. (Jim Lovelock opines that the bulk of Mam’s life is still carried on at the micro-organism level, and the disappearance of large multicellular creations is of little more than marginal import - however emotionally dreadful it may seem to us.)

We’re stuck with another - rather long-period - waitandsee, I’m afraid. Meanwhile, I’m highly resistant to panic and existential despair about it all (despite all the private grief about the disappearance of such glorious kindred as elephants and tigers). I leave that Chicken Little indulgence to the rabidly certain true believers. I think Mam will surprise us, and life will pick itself up from the damage being done right now, and get going with its inventive re-fecundation, yet again.

Don’t know whether hom sap as an Earth species will survive, though. But fairly convinced as I am of the reality of constant re-incarnation in pursuit of Big Mind’s high purpose - not necessarily as the same species every time - I find myself less than spiritually shattered by the prospect of our extinction. Life - and mind - seem bound to survive, in many places in this particular holodeck physical-material reality. And elsewhere… :slight_smile:

So yes - a measure of open-minded scepticism about climate apocalypse too, as also about the covid scam. Goes with the worldview… :slight_smile:

#29

Pat, one of the Mr. Anonymouses is Dr. Andrew Kaufman. He’s very adamant that in every single case where he’s been through the papers claiming purification and genetic mapping, exhaustive close inspection shows that the claims are baseless. No-one has a sample. No-one can give an actually-provable genetic sequence for SARS-COV2. He insists he’s followed these trails exhaustively, and found nothing. I don’t know whether that’s an accurate judgement. But I know qualified people are insisting on it. What to do, but remain undecided?

#30

Sure, Virology, DNA sequencing and so on are properly established as far as I can tell. That for me is not the issue. It’s what happens to the various statistics and bits of science that are interpreted by politicians and other scientists who then tell us what what measures must be taken. There is no scientific consensus with different virologists/epidemiologists saying different things. In much of Europe, “science” apparently says they need curfews, while restaurants remain open.

On the subject of trusting medical professionals, we should always bear in mind how badly wrong they can be – even without the help of politicians! Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t - The New York Times . These doctors truly believed there was a whooping cough epidemic in their medical centre, insisting on all sorts of measures, yet 8 months down the line find there was no whooping cough – it was just a cold going round.

Sure, lockdowns can slow its spread. I’ve not come across anyone who thinks they’re completely ineffective. Just that they’re not very effective and that they give rise to many new problems: when you relax the lockdown how are you going to cope?; how long does it need to stay (two weeks we were told initially); the horrendous consequences of lockdowns; the loss of basic human rights (eg going to visit your father). Bullet-proof vests may help reduce gun deaths but I wouldn’t advocate getting everyone to wear one.

I’ve had similar discussions with Dan about this. If you (or rather Indy SAGE) realises that this government will not (or more likely cannot) really do anything much about this damage, is it still better to have lockdowns? There would need to be some sort of cost-benefit analysis.

Well, maybe. Much of Europe is having very similar statistics. I’m also not convinced about the counting of covid deaths. When we look at overall deaths, 2020 doesn’t look out of place (unlike eg the asian/hong kong flu years in the 60/70s).

Cheers

Ah yes – just noticed that other thread. I’ll have a read.

#31

Thanks @Willem

I think you make some great points here. And I don’t disagree with you about how “the science” became a political bludgeon early on. The only point that I was making is that traditionally, left leaning people are more likely to accept whatever they think it’s the scientific consensus on any particular issue than right leaning folk are. Right wing people have a decades long suspicion of scientists and science, preferring to trust their own individual instincts, or maybe the Bible.

That is not to say that there even is a strong consensus on the best way to handle our situation. Indy SAGE have been very critical of the Govt Sage, for example.

But I think that there will naturally be less criticism of things that are seen as mainstream science (like the virus sequencing question) from the left then from the right - which was the question I was trying to answer.

Cheers
PP

PS

Ivor Cummins has said this many times. And, I believe, the good folks at UKC. And I’m sure you’ll find that view on this board if you ask folk

PPS: you’ve raised this point several times now

And I kept meaning to say what an important point that is and how it should be more widely referenced. Many thanks for bringing that to my attention

#32

Thanks Rhis. I think one of the ones quoted by Thomas Cowan (but can’t easily locate it), is Dr. Claus Köhnlein (joint author of the book Virus Mania). As I recall, Cowan said Köhnlein had written to numerous authors who alleged virus sequencing and none of them, NONE, had actually isolated the virus.