Failed pandemic narrative

Even with vaccines that work, booster shots only make sense for diseases in which re-exposure is so rare that immunity may wear off before a natural update is provided – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara 

Out of steam in South Africa

Omicron, the latest ‘scariant’ was announced with so much hullabaloo and fanfare. How depressing for the purveyors of pandemic alarm to find that it may already be running out of steam in South Africa in less than three weeks. Infections in the province of Gauteng, which have been surging from November, are already levelling off while seven-day positive tests in Tshwane, one of the early epicentres, are now relatively flat, as reported by the Telegraph. 

The paper goes on to point out that while there were large spikes after a computer update in recent days, experts have pointed out that the increases are far shallower once averaged by specimen date. Statisticians in South Africa have remarked that the far more important ‘case fatality rate’ (percentage of people who die from an infection) has plunged considerably since Omicron’s debut. In the Delta days around 3% of such infections purportedly resulted in death. That has now slumped to 0.5%, the lowest throughout the pandemic in South Africa and 10 times lower than in September last year! 

Unlike infection fatality rate, which is far lower, case fatality rate is picked up once patients arrive in a hospital when many are already severe. Therefore, there has been ample time for Omicron to be visible in the death data by now. If Delta levels had been maintained, there would have been roughly 200 deaths per day instead of 21 deaths per day of which eight are probably still with Delta. As per Peter Streicher of the University of Johannesburg, “Omicron is extremely mild, the rest of the world has nothing to fear.”

Even casting a glance at panicked Great Britain, as of 15 December, just 10 people had so far been admitted to hospital with Omicron, and there had been one death which the government was studiously avoiding providing any details of. To date, the government has not provided information whether the deceased was vaccinated, if they belonged to a vulnerable demographic or even if COVID was the leading cause of death. 

As Professor of Medicine and Consultant Oncologist Karol Sikora has queried, “Were they in hospital for COVID or were they there because they were run over by a bus?” As this is believed to be the first confirmed fatality in the world, it takes on more than local importance even though the fact that there is just this one, shows how desperately we are scraping the barrel for any scrap of anything that might incite alarm. 

Professor Sikora continues, “I suspect that it’s a death, which is unfortunate, but is due to something else and just happens to be COVID positive. That is why they are not making a big noise about them being vaccinated or not.” After all, the average age of death of COVID is 82.5 and a lot of 82-year-old people die in a year at any one time. 

None of this, of course, applied the brakes on the reckless and mindless impact the government hyper-reaction has inflicted on so much of the economy, particularly the hospitality and travel sector, with a venomous indifference that is difficult to properly characterise. Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who first sounded the alarm, says, “Because it doesn’t matter how many times we say it’s a mild disease, some people or some scientists don’t really want to believe us.” And so, we see why we must continue to challenge the secrecy, narrow mindedness, confusion and blatant propaganda which sadly has characterised too much of the Anglo-American ‘scientific’ response to the pandemic. 

Lies and nothing but lies

It has been said, ‘A half-truth is a whole lie.’ So, here’s the puzzle. ‘Vaccine’ escape is clearly taking place with Omicron, so the current batch of the ‘magical elixir,’ no matter how manically jabbed or how often you dose yourself, won’t do the trick. Pfizer, of course, is gearing up to have an ‘Omicron vaccine’ by the spring (for this utter dud of a variant, in lethality terms), and they’ve already confirmed (because, hey, why not?) that it will be a three dose ‘vaccine.’ However, while this is utterly predictable in a world run by clowns, what is less clear is why some studies indicate Omicron may be able to evade natural immunity from prior infection as well. 

To explain that, let’s say your immune system has developed natural immunity to the Wuhan strain (on which the current batch of ‘vaccines’ are likewise based). The Alpha variant is very similar, so your immune system readily recognises that and neutralises that. And while your immune system can detect family resemblances very avidly, if new variants drift significantly from the genetics of what you were exposed to, your adaptive response may be less efficient. This is called ‘immune escape.’ 

The only resolution for this is to periodically update our immune systems to recognise evolving changes to the virus. So, as with fast mutating viruses like influenza or coronaviruses, immune escape can happen quite quickly. With frequent re-exposure, we are able to navigate a rapidly evolving virus by updating our immune system before we lose our immunity from the previous infection. We then still have ‘cross reactive immunity,’ and thus the ‘update’ might be mild, or we might not get any symptoms at all. Therefore, think of the immune system as a self-improving mechanism needing frequent exercise to maintain and update its capacity to flummox an evolving enemy. 

Even with vaccines that work, booster shots only make sense for diseases in which re-exposure is so rare that immunity may wear off before a natural update is provided. There are over 200 respiratory viruses that cause colds and flus in more or less permanent circulation. Yet, we do not annually get sick with dozens and dozens of colds and flus. If our immune systems are in good fighting trim and not compromised by cancer, HIV, poor sleep, lack of exercise, vitamin C or D deficiencies, stress, depression, etc., any annual update will usually be fairly mild and some years asymptomatic. 

For every cold medicine taken, there are certainly dozens of viral encounters that we never even notice. So, for anyone infected by a previous COVID infection over the last year and a half, Omicron should not be more than a mild or asymptomatic update. Let us, in fact, cast our minds back to the Diamond Princess cruise ship which had we studied would have blown up the whole anti-scientific narrative that has held us hostage since. 

We learned that even with an elderly population that could hardly ‘jump ship,’ the overwhelming majority did not get sick, and we now know why. Between 90 to 99% of the population already had partial cross-reactive immunity to SARS-Cov-2 because of previous exposure to other coronaviruses. This should be the headline, the banner, the good news, the deliverance. Instead, it is sidelined, marginalised, camouflaged and concealed. 

If we interrupt regular exposure to any of the challenges that our immune systems need to engage, for example due to lockdowns, extreme social distancing, endless sanitising, we disempower our immune response. As someone wrote, “The key to living a healthy life is to not stop living a normal life.”

Most pandemics, especially respiratory ones, do not end by being displayed on dashboards. If we myopically expect them to, we will simply be in thrall to the next time another dashboard is flashed telling us to be terrified of something else, to again pull the plug on our existence, to hand over our rights, to dismantle our human interactions, bury our dreams and scamper away. Surely the real end of this madness will be the end of that possibility

RFK Jr.’s heroic testimony

You might try to pull yourself away from Google searches of vapid topics like ‘The 5 Signs You Might Have Omicron COVID.’ You will get truly edifying insights such as these portentous indicators: scratchy throat, fatigue, mild muscle aches, dry cough, night sweats. If your inner sceptic points out every common cold virus produces the same symptoms, stifle them quick. And if at night you also experience mild hunger, occasional thirst and tiredness, hurry to barricade your door and prophylactically seal yourself off. 

Having diverted yourself from such highbrow medical advice, you might delve into the extraordinary new book by RFK Jr. called ‘The Real Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.’ It is a luminous if blood chilling retelling of our entry into the current dark age, rife with scholarship and ablaze with moral courage. He accuses the political-intelligence-media-money-medical-corporate-pharmaceutical conspirators of perpetrating ‘the controlled demolition of American constitutional democracy.’

The central revelation is his claim that this is an intelligence-run operation with ‘spooks’ working with medical technocrats, billionaires, military, media and big pharma. So, Dr. Fauci, the Faust-like figure at the centre of this narrative, with a recurring role in the HIV/AIDS fraud, the AZT shakedown, illegal experiments on children which led to a multitude of deaths, is nevertheless portrayed as a powerful yet ultimately obedient underling in a systematic structure at war with human liberty. 

The fraudster Fauci is the highest paid federal employee, higher than the President. He controls 57% of global biomedical funding directly and indirectly via the NIH, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. Thereby he effectively controls scientists looking for research money. He has overseen for decades the regulatory capture of government health agencies by Big Pharma. 

The US CDC is actually a paramilitary organisation and spends virtually $ 5 billion of its $ 12 billion budget buying and selling vaccines and also owns 57 vaccine patents. Does anyone smell a conflict of interest here? This confederation has for years ‘manufactured’ false pandemics to promote novel vaccines, drugs and to stimulate pharmaceutical company profits. 45% of the FDA’s budget comes from the charmingly labelled ‘user fees’ from pharmaceutical companies. And Fauci has been zealously invested in gain of function experiments (engineering superbugs and earning CIA plaudits for potentially weaponising viruses, etc.).

RFK Jr.’s detailed expose shows us a latticework of corruption, corrosion, manipulation, profiteering, all smugly posing as public health. RFK Jr. outlines how the system gobbles up young contributors with promises of wealth and prestige if they will yoke their acumen to becoming what Hannah Arendt called ‘desk killers’. Tedious, specious rationalisations and the siren call of wealth and prestige serve to quell any queasy conscience. 

As RFK writes, “…some 250 years after America’s historic revolt against entrenched oligarchy and authoritarian rule, the American experiment with self-government was over. The oligarchy was restored, and these gentlemen and their spy masters had equipped the rising technocracy with new tools of control unimaginable to King George or any other tyrant.”

As Edward Curtin, reviewing the book writes, “The entire COVID-19 propaganda campaign culminating in its push to enforce multiple vaccines that are not vaccines and are based on fraudulent PCR tests, has been long in preparation and the intelligence agencies’ fingerprints are all over its planning.”

Kennedy outlines three of a dozen Germ Games staged by medical, military and intelligence planners in the run up to C-19, “Each of these Kafkaesque exercises became uncanny predictors of a dystopian age that pandemic planners dubbed the New Normal.” At the core of each of these are state-imposed medical strictures and introducing centralised autocratic governance. 

In all of these shamelessly explicit simulations, the global pandemic is used to justify the imposition of tyranny and coerced vaccination. The playbooks are completely at odds with all pandemic wisdom published and applied up to 2019 but come straight from the CIA’s touted psychological warfare manuals for how to shatter indigenous societies, obliterate traditional economics, dilute social bonds, undermine small businesses to remove resistance, foster chaos, interrupt supply chains, and make dependence on centralised control almost inevitable. 

Anyone reading this, any leaders in Asia, our leaders here in Sri Lanka, any of the countries who fought so valiantly for independence and have been crafting their own identities and destinies, need to find the wisdom and spine to resist this revolting example of pharma and financial elite led attempted ‘re-colonialisation’ of the world’s practices, liberties and autonomous choices. 

The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote prior to being executed in a German cell, “Against stupidity we have no defence, neither protest nor force can touch it. Reasoning is of no use. The facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved—indeed, the fool can counter by criticising them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions. So, the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel is completely satisfied. In fact, they can easily become dangerous because it does not take much to make them aggressive.”

He is pointing out that the problem here is not thinking ability but relinquishing our independence of mind. By mindlessly becoming tools, our stupidity, our banality, make us capable of evil in part by being incapable of seeing that it is evil. In reading this book we realise with this heroic man from a proud family of warriors for human causes that at such moments there are no safe havens. We all have to locate a measure of heroism in facing and seeking to turn back such exploitative darkness. 

How does it end?

How will we know this pandemic silliness is at an end? Here in Lanka, we are poised on an economic precipice. Does the way through require IMF penance, some kind of a swap deal with India premised on enlivening the 13th Amendment or something else? Writing in these pages, Lalith de Mel has proposed that tourism is the surest path back to foreign exchange vitality. He argues that grand plans and projects will not only take time but will also take a tallying of what goes in and what comes out and to whom. With tourism we leverage existing assets, perhaps need to revitalise the brand standing of our many hospitality experiences and cultural treasures, but all the money comes in and adds to Sri Lankan prosperity. 

But none of these approaches are tenable if the COVID bogey man continues to baffle us, destabilise us and provides lack of predictability to anyone traveling here, operating here or investing here. With no excess mortality even during the unvaccinated height of the pandemic, we must decide to stop shooting ourselves in not only one foot, but as the old saw goes, both feet to equalise the despair. So, a country which can face and grow through a bloody civil war can navigate what for the overwhelming majority of the population is statistically no more than a median influenza strain. 

So again, how does it end? You cannot imagine that global dashboards will one day flash zero infections and zero COVID deaths. We now know that the ‘vaccines’ don’t stop transmission or spread and their efficacy wanes. Most scholars describe the Spanish Flu as occurring across three waves, from 1918 to 1919 though some posit 1920 referring to a ‘fourth wave.’ Similarly, the mid-century Asian Flu is usually described as a two-wave event from 1957 to 1958 though there are mentions of the third wave extending to 1959. 

So, the notion that dashboards will inform us when a pandemic ends, is at odds with the historical evidence that substantial deaths from influenza and overall mortality will occur between or after pandemics. This makes it challenging to discern the deaths actually attributed to a pandemic, which is confounding as excess mortality is the classic metric to determine severity. 

Another approach is to consider the imposition or lifting of public health measures, but then until COVID such measures have been fleeting and much less intrusive. In the Spanish Flu the average age of death was 28 years, but even despite that and the 50 million deaths in a far less populous world, life remained essentially normal in part because there was no other option (no internet, food delivery apps or internet meetings, something true even today for so many workers deemed ‘essential’). The 1968 Hong Kong Flu was described at the height of the outbreak (December 1968) as ‘one of the worst in the nation’s history’ in the US. However, few school closures and businesses operated as usual. The world moved vibrantly forward scientifically and artistically in fact.

Ergo, historians have observed that pandemics do not conclude when disease transmission ends as almost all such outbreaks become endemic rather than disappearing. Instead, it is when the attention of the general public and the political and media judgement that helps shape that attention, moves on. So, the single most powerful action societies and individuals can take is to disconnect ourselves from the glare of the panic porn and the lights of the dashboard. With such a mildly lethal and highly treatable pathogen, essentially the pandemic is over when the panic is over. 

Even herd immunity, the stockpiling of natural immunity in large enough numbers to provide collective protection against spread or infection, will occur gradually and unevenly based on the lived experience of societies. This is more sociological than biological. These dashboards do not track mental health, educational impact, lack of small business viability, the denial of close social bonds. And by cloaking the searing, visceral collateral damage from our intemperate and largely unscientific containment practices, they may actually prevent a return to normal. 

Most pandemics, especially respiratory ones, do not end by being displayed on dashboards. If we myopically expect them to, we will simply be in thrall to the next time another dashboard is flashed telling us to be terrified of something else, to again pull the plug on our existence, to hand over our rights, to dismantle our human interactions, bury our dreams and scamper away. Surely the real end of this madness will be the end of that possibility. We would permanently return to trusting our wits, actual data and our immune systems more than the PR and Machiavellian mandates of agenda infested power blocs.

It has been an extraordinary period, humbling and chastening in terms of how fragile our legal, political and ethical protections actually are. Time to turn off our screens and decide that so many other issues, life at large, are worthy of our attention and passion. And the end of the melodrama will then take place naturally. No lights, no cameras, no pharmaceuticals to stir our elation, just a decisive commitment to take our civilisation once again forward.