A Sham Investigation into the Origins of SARS-CoV-2: EcoHealth Alliance and the Lancet

EcoHealth Alliance's CEO Peter Daszac has joined with the Lancet to investigate the origin of SARS-CoV-2, as the major part of a Lancet Covid Commission.  But maybe the real reason for their investigation is to provide an acceptable origin narrative.  

As reported by GM Watch, 

"Daszak has promised to undertake the investigation “with an open mind”. But this is hard to imagine, given his previous dismissals of suggestions that SARS-CoV-2 could have leaked from a lab as “preposterous,” “baseless,” “crackpot,”“conspiracy theories,” and “pure baloney."

Maybe it's not so surprising that the Lancet would provide its imprimatur to a sham investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 being conducted by the CEO of EcoHealth Alliance.  EcoHealth Alliance, despite its crunchy green name, has been funded by the US defense department, and other federal agencies, to establish relationships with biodefense investigators throughout the word, and obtain the microorganisms they collect for use by other biodefense investigators.

If you are wondering what the difference is between biodefense and biowarfare research, well, there isn't any--at least, not since the moniker "gain of function" began being applied to biological defense research, so we could avoid using the terms biowarfare or offensive research, and thereby confuse the uninitiated public.

To be clear, "biodefense" researchers who perform "gain of function" research (which means gain of pathogenicity, such as giving a virus the ability to infect humans when it could only spread previously in bats, or gaining the ability to spread via air, or thwarting part of the immune system of humans, or producing a deadly toxin) are in truth biological warfare scientists.

EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) calls itself a public health organization with goals to enhance nature and biodiversity.  It throws fancy benefits and looks like plenty of other 501c3 nonprofits, on paper.  But EHA mixes a little conservation with a lot of surveillance and collection of dangerous pathogens.  EcoHealth's funding and projects make clear the organization is a Pentagon "cut-out," an intermediary whose role is to transfer and superficially disguise funding from US government agencies to biodefense and biowarfare projects in 31 countries, saving both the USG and the international projects from taxpayer scrutiny.  The Wuhan Institute of Virology's coronavirus research program under Dr. Zheng-li Shi received funds from, and had a longstanding relationship with, Peter Daszac and EHA.

The Lancet is (neck and neck with the NEJM) the most-read medical journal in the world.  Its brand is very valuable.  And yet, its owners and editors have not protected the brand as one would expect.  

Two examples:  The Lancet owner, Reed Elsevier, one of the world's major medical publishers, hosted an international arms fair in 2005:

Lancet criticises its owner for hosting international arms fair

The Lancet has criticised its owner and publisher, Reed Elsevier, for involvement in the global arms trade. Reed Elsevier owns the company Spearhead Exhibitions, which this week hosted the defence systems and equipment international (DSEi) exhibition, one of the largest military exhibitions in the world, in London.

Workers lift a dummy missile into place at this week's DSEi arms fair, which the Lancet said damaged Reed Elsevier's reputation

Second example:  The Lancet published a vastly influential paper on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine use in Covid-19 patients on May 22, which reported much higher death rates in patients treated with either drug than in other hospitalized Covid patients.  The paper led to the immediate suspension of many clinical trials and led to restrictions on the use of the drug in patients, in multiple countries. Reuters reported on the WHO urging the Indonesian Ministry of Health and a professional group of pulmonologists to stop the issuing of prescriptions of these drugs for Covid patients. Covid death rates rose in tandem, according to analyses published by France Soir.  Yet many scientists immediately saw many problems with this paper, including myself. The paper was retracted 13 days after publication, after the author who controlled the dataset refused to permit an audit. The Lancet editor, Richard Horton, later told the NY Times the paper was a fabrication.  But the Lancet has admitted no responsibility for publishing the paper.

How is it possible that such an experienced, respected medical journal could have missed so many red flags in this paper?  The most logical conclusion is that either the Lancet or Reed Elsevier were paid to publish it. No evidence has emerged to back up this hypothesis so far. 

The self-styled Lancet COVID-19 Commission sounds like a spinoff of the World Economic Forum's Great Reset, with a surprising focus beyond problems associated with Covid-19, to include restructuring public and private finances and taking on climate change:

Executive summary

The Lancet COVID-19 Commission was launched on July 9, 2020, to assist governments, civil society, and UN institutions in responding effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Commission aims to offer practical solutions to the four main global challenges posed by the pandemic: suppressing the pandemic by means of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions; overcoming humanitarian emergencies, including poverty, hunger, and mental distress, caused by the pandemic; restructuring public and private finances in the wake of the pandemic; and rebuilding the world economy in an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable way that is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement. Many creative solutions are already being implemented, and a key aim of the Commission is to accelerate their adoption worldwide.

Daszac's agenda is obvious:  to clear EcoHealth Alliance and its partner the Wuhan Institute of Virology of any responsibility for the Covid-19 pandemic, and maintain his organization's good name and funding. See this from the Telegraph:

The Lancet Commission notes in its mission statement that “the evidence to date supports the view that Sars-Cov-2 is a naturally occurring virus rather than the result of laboratory creation and release”.

But it adds that investigators should examine the ‘possibility of laboratory involvement” in “a scientific and objective way that is unhindered by geopolitical agendas and misinformation”.

It is hoped a full investigation will, if nothing else, rule out “baseless and uninformed allegations and conspiracy theories that are unbacked by evidence”.  

In fact, Daszac has managed to pivot the pandemic narrative in an extraordinary way.  He has made the rounds of major media, telling them that this and other  pandemics are the result of human incursions into nature, which, although it sounds logical, is unsupported by evidence. According to Daszac, human interactions with nature need to be managed better, and can be, with more funding and the help of his organization. Please, ignore the labs.  

GM Watch has more on the EHA funding:

Commenting on an attempt to compile a fuller picture of the funding EcoHealth Alliance has received from US government agencies, Ebright noted that it totalled $99.8 million “for federal contract awards, contract subawards, grant awards, and grant subawards to EcoHealth”. Most of this money, he said, came from US defence, homeland security and intelligence agencies.

In fact, according to their most recently available financial report, over 90% of EcoHealth Alliance’s funding ultimately derives in this way from US taxpayers. Incidentally, Daszak’s salary and other compensation amounted in that same year to just over $400,000.

So, I don't give credence to any putative investigation run by either the Lancet or Peter Daszac and his EcoHealth Alliance spooky biowarfare NGO.  Please do pay attention as this story develops, because Daszac is a master of narrative control, and it appears his storyline has melded with The Great Reset. The new narrative, which has been echoed by Tony Fauci and other influentials, is that the only way to prevent future pandemics is to restrict human activity in nature. I will write more on this subject in future.

UPDATE Nov. 18:  A February 2020 letter to the Lancet by 27 prominent scientists insisted that those considering anything but a natural origin for SARS-CoV-2 were conspiracy theorists who were jeopardizing public health.  US Right to Know has just discovered that the letter was written and organized by Peter Daszac.

UPDATE Nov. 21:  Peter Daszac coauthored an article in PLOS Pathogens in September that said, "The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the substantial public health, economic, and societal consequences of virus spillover from a wildlife reservoir." And he is going to investigate the pandemic's origin, yeah right.

The paper also claimed to be concerned about humans passing on SARS-CoV-2 to bats, in regions like North America where such infections are absent.  The authors suggest "strategically managing interactions between people and potentially susceptible or at risk species can decrease the probability of cross-species virus spillover."  No thanks, Peter, I don't want you strategically managing my potential interactions with anything.

Early Outpatient Treatment: An Essential Part of a COVID-19 Solution: Senate Hearing 11/19/20

 It seemed to be crickets for HCQ and effective widespread treatment of Covid, but -- very late in the day, a hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs will be held on using this effective, cheap and off-patent medicine to treat coronavirus infections. Not to treat the late, autoimmune stage when the virus is gone, but the early stage, when the disease is an eminently treatable infection.

Here is the hearing video

Early Outpatient Treatment: An Essential Part of a COVID-19 Solution

Full Committee Hearing

November 19, 2020 10:00 AM

Location: SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building and via Videoconference

WITNESSES

• Peter A. McCullough, M.D., M.P.H.

  Vice Chief of Internal Medicine

  Baylor University Medical Center
• Harvey Risch, M.D., PH.D.

  Professor of Epidemiology

  Yale University
• George C. Fareed, M.D.

  Medical Director and Family Medicine Specialist

  Pioneers Medical Center
• Ashish K. Jha, M.D., M.P.H.

  Dean of the School of Public Health

  Brown University

The coronavirus’s origins are still a mystery. We need a full investigation/ WaPo Editorial

The tide is turning.  The origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains in question.  And now the WaPo is supporting a full investigation, below. But don't expect much from pending investigations by the WHO or a group that has constituted itself as from the Lancet. The Lancet group's origin investigation is being led by Peter Daszac, PhD, whose NGO, EcoHealth Alliance, funded research at the Wuhan lab, and participated in the research. Not only that, Daszac has been quoted all over as saying that a lab origin is "pure baloney" and a conspiracy theory. 

Not only that, but Daszac already has the answer to Covid-19: it is the fault of us humans and our interactions with nature.  It seems he self-selected to lead an investigation to protect his origin narrative (and protect the labs he funds) and he probably funded the Lancet medical journal to lend its name to his investigation.  Many scientists are understandably upset about Daszac investigating himself.

AFTER SO much death and illness, a mystery from the first days of the novel coronavirus has yet to be solved. We still don’t understand its origins or how it became a global killer. The answers lie in China, and quite possibly beyond. The world needs a credible, impartial investigation to better prepare for future pandemics...

David A. Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist, writes in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “the ‘origin story’ is missing many key details,” including a recent detailed evolutionary history of the virus, identity of its most recent ancestors and “surprisingly, the place, time, and mechanism of transmission of the first human infection...”

“Preventing the next pandemic,” wrote Dr. Relman, “depends on understanding the origins of this one.”

HCQ: The Biggest Blunder Public Health Has Ever Made/Joel Hirschorn, Op-Ed News

Thanks to Joel Hirschorn at OpEd News for this quick, clear summary of the data on hydroxychloroquine:

The attack on the current pandemic can pursue four possible approaches. But because of the incredible power of one man, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government is using only three of them: contagion control (curbing virus spreading through masks, social distancing, and lockdowns), hospital treatments and vaccines. What is missing?

It is early home/outpatient treatment as soon as a person gets COVID-19 symptoms or a positive test result. Early means within the first few days. A lot of evidence shows that 70 to 80 percent of covid deaths could have been prevented and still can for those still dying every day. That means for the over 240,000 deaths already in the US probably over 180,000 could have been prevented.

Do we have an effective home/outpatient treatment? Yes. And it has been proven effective on thousands of Americans because of a relatively small number of physicians willing to go against what the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration have done. NIH has specifically said there is no approved home/outpatient treatment despite all the evidence that several doctors have created and used protocols that really work to keep people safe, healthy and out of hospital. And the FDA has explicitly made it very difficult to get and use a key medicine used in most of the proven protocols, namely hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).

One immediate rational question is: Why would the constantly esteemed Fauci intentionally ignore home/outpatient treatment when over 240,000 Americans have already died from covid and more every day? Why does Fauci favor letting covid victims wait until they get so sick they must be hospitalized. And why is this happening despite all the attempts at contagion control not working effectively, and infringing on personal freedoms and harming the economy?

One answer is that Fauci has always had a very close relationship with drug companies. Many billions of dollars for hospital medicines and vaccines are the logical answer. All the home/outpatient treatments use cheap generic medicines and vitamin supplements. Always follow the money.

How can you learn the facts about the home/outpatient treatments? There are three very good websites offering information from doctors.

First, the best and most useful one is by Americas Front Line Doctors. You can find detailed information on what the protocols consist of and on what states have done to block use of HCQ. Even more useful is that you can find a doctor in your state that can help you get what you need for using a protocol. There is also a White Paper by Dr. Simone Gold who some time ago concluded: "What we do know is that 70,000-100,000 excess American lives have been lost due to lack of access to HCQ."

Second, is the website by the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons. Here you can find the excellent "A Guide to Home-Based COVID Treatment" embraces early use of a HCQ cocktail. It makes this key point: "Zinc is critical. It helps block the virus from multiplying. Hydroxychloroquine is the carrier taking zinc INTO the cells to do its job."

Third, is https://covexit.com/ where you can access a number of presentations by the leading doctors using and promoting early home/outpatient treatment for covid.

But you may still be skeptical. Do these protocols using HCQ really work? There is a mountain of evidence. Here is just a small sampling.

In those countries with wide early use of HCQ the death rate is 71 percent lower than in those nations, like the US, where its use has been limited by government. Some 600,000 people have been saved worldwide. The data imply a saving of way over 150,000 US lives, a figure that will increase as the number of deaths, sadly, keeps increasing without using home/outpatient use of HCQ.

Recently Dr. Harvey Risch said: "Many or most of the 220,000 deaths in the United States to date could have been prevented by widespread HCQ use that the FDA blocked. It is the FDA that is responsible for these deaths, not the president." But Fauci is the power behind the throne, dictating FDA actions.

Frontline doctor Brian Tyson said that he has cured over 1,900 patients, and has said that between 75 and 80 percent of the over 200,000 deaths thus far could have been prevented by using HCQ!

Dr. Zev Zelenko a pioneer in using a HCQ cocktail, including zinc, that cut hospitalizations by 84 percent, started a petition in October, naming Fauci and other government officials who blocked HCQ use in March, noting: "Over 160,000 people were hospitalized and died unnecessarily. Let's make life saving treatment available and end the pandemic. Let's bring these criminals to justice."

For early use of HCQ, 171 studies have shown a median 64 percent reduction in negative virus impacts, hospitalizations or deaths. Early treatment studies show 100 percent effectiveness.

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Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better /FORBES: World Economic Forum Leadership Strategy

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/

Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city - or should I say, "our city." I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes.

It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much.

First communication became digitized and free to everyone...

Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me... 

How to Soften Up the Public for the Covid-19 Vaccines--Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Brochure

https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/pubs_archive/pubs-pdfs/2020/200709-The-Publics-Role-in-COVID-19-Vaccination.pdf

An interesting cast of characters signed off on these guidelines for convincing the public to accept entirely new, questionable vaccines. The group includes Drs. Greg Poland, who led the fight to impose universal flu vaccine recommendations (and many state mandates) and Luciana Borio, a physician, fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Vice President at In-Q-Tel, the CIA's "venture capital" firm. 

Of course, the group's first admonishment is to give people like themselves money to study the most effective forms of manipulation.

But, until then, they still offer lots of good ideas for how to manipulate the public to be vaccinated.  They know it won't be easy.  I have excerpted a variety of their "gems" below:

Conceived as a biotechnology and logistics challenge, COVID-19 vaccination is equally complex in terms of human factors. “If we build it, they will come” is a naïve presupposition about humans and vaccines. In 2010, for instance, many Americans rejected the H1N1 influenza pandemic vaccine because of perceived safety concerns—despite the fact that the vaccine involved only a strain change (ie, it was not a new technology) and the vaccine had been fully tested before release. (Fully? It missed the eventual 1300 + narcolepsy cases--Nass).  

In contrast to the H1N1 pandemic flu vaccine, SARS-CoV-2 vaccines will be novel products, and when they are initially offered to the public, safety data may be limited to tens of thousands of vaccinated individuals, rather than larger numbers in which more rare adverse effects could be detected. In addition, the H1N1 vaccine amplified health disparities as well as feelings of racial bias. In Los Angeles, for example, distrust in the government resulting from prior experimentation on Black men and women led Black faith-based leaders, radio personalities, and other community leaders to advise local Black community members to avoid vaccination...

There is a risk that projections about vaccine development are overly optimistic and may set up unrealistic public expectations and mistrust around vaccine safety and availability...

Emphasis on the unprecedented speed with which vaccines are being developed has inadvertently prompted safety concerns...

Underestimation of COVID-19’s risk, fostered by an inconsistent government response, dampens public willingness to implement protective measures...

Temper expectations of a vaccine as a “quick fix...”

Early on, seek the counsel and input of communities who have historic reluctance toward novel vaccines and understandable fears of being “experimented on...”

In advance of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine rollout, federal health agencies should develop a coordinated national strategy to promote vaccination, employing human-centered design to develop interventions that help a broad network of champions communicate effectively with the public about risks, benefits, allocation and targeting, and availability...

The CDC, with the support of Congress, should fund state and local health departments, via the Public Health Emergency Preparedness grants, to form partnerships with grassroots-level organizations and stakeholders to promote vaccination...

OWS, HHS, CDC, and state and local health officials should develop operational systems that involve nontraditional civilian partners and instill public confidence that vaccine distribution is evenhanded. Involving civil rights groups and health advocacy organizations, including the NAACP, the National Urban League, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Disability Rights Network, the American Association of Retired Persons, the National Immigration Project, Unidos, Partnership with Native Americans, the Rural Community Assistance Partnership, the National Rural Health Association, Doctors Without Borders, and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, can bolster the equitable delivery of vaccines and instill public trust in the vaccination process...  (This is probably a list of organizations that CDC has already bought off, so pay attention to pronouncements from these organizations--Nass.)

Utilize nontraditional vaccination sites like schools, pharmacies, workplaces, grocery stores, health departments, mass vaccination clinics, faith centers, barber shops, senior centers, dental offices, home visits, and others... (They have already figured out that family physicians are likely to warn their patients about rapidly rolled out, novel vaccines with inadequate safety testing--so the plan is to bypass physicians as much as possible during the vaccine rollout--Nass.) 

Identifying a network of trusted spokespeople will be essential for an effective communication campaign around future COVID-19 vaccines. To motivate people to take protective actions like vaccination requires that they hear a salient and specific message repeatedly, delivered by multiple trusted messengers and via diverse media channels. Effective public health and safety communication involves a repetitive streaming of personally compelling information...

Herd immunity, novel vaccines, Pharma incentives and media spin

The US is again suffering from a lot of Covid cases, and we are on a steep upward trajectory.  While some are definitely due to false positive tests, which are extremely common, there are still a lot of cases.  Using the numbers from CovidTracking (which I noticed the NYT was also using) it appears that 8.8% of staffed hospital beds in the US are now filled with Covid patients... although, since all admissions are screened for Covid, they may be hospitalized for a different primary diagnosis. I have seen no discussion of the diagnoses/comorbidities in the 65,000 Americans currently hospitalized with Covid.

The NYT's map of hotspots illustrates that areas that saw lots of Covid cases in the spring or summer (NYC, NJ, Boston, much of the South) are seeing relatively fewer new cases now. This presumably reflects the fact that these areas have fewer people susceptible to the virus. 

Peter Doshi in the BMJ reviewed half a dozen studies, not just in the US, that indicated 20-50% of the people studied had pre-existing T cell immunity to Covid 19--before Covid appeared--by studying stored blood samples.  Current thinking is that prior exposure to one or more of the 4 coronaviruses that cause the common cold induces some protection to SARS-CoV-2, for an unknown period of time.  Other evidence, reviewed in the blog of the NIH director, Francis Collins, notes that in people who were exposed to SARS (the first SARS) 17 years ago, T cell protection is still present, 17 years later. Collins further notes, 

"All six previously known coronaviruses spark production of both antibodies and memory T cells. In addition, studies of immunity to SARS-CoV-1 have shown that T cells stick around for many years longer than acquired antibodies.... It’s still not clear if this [SARS-2] acquired immunity stems from previous infection with coronaviruses that cause the common cold or perhaps from exposure to other as-yet unknown coronaviruses."

Doshi reminds us that while it was initially assumed that the 2009 swine flu was so novel there was no preexisting immunity, that turned out not to be the case. And an article in last week's Science magazine showed that children and adolescents were more likely than adults to have protective antibodies from prior exposures to "common cold" coronavirus, possibly explaining their resistance to symptomatic infection. 

I'm suggesting that although there are probably few areas of the US with sufficient levels of immunity to stop all transmission, there is sufficient "herd" immunity now to keep cases from exploding in areas that previously exploded.  Time will tell if I am correct. 

Strangely, the media are pretty quiet about the case numbers today, with many more cases and hospitalizations than there were in the summer, when the media discussion was deafening. 

Could it be that all these cases are at odds with the plan to vaccinate everyone with novel vaccines?  If we achieve high levels of immunity due to disease exposure, the experimental vaccines may look a lot less inviting.

The WHO suggested that 20x as many cases have probably occurred as those we know about, worldwide.  The US has had over 10 million known cases, and cases are rising rapidly.  If the US had had ten times as many cases as were diagnosed, there would be 100 million Americans with partial or complete immunity from exposure.  If an additional 20% of us had pre-existing immunity, then half of the country would already be immune. 

If my odds are 50% that I am already immune to Covid-19, why would I accept a vaccine that is known to make me feel like I had a bad hangover, and might cause other side effects longterm?  I am not impressed that the vaccines are only being asked to demonstrate efficacy against mild disease in the clinical trials, and it is still uncertain whether a vaccinated, exposed person is prevented from spreading the infection.

We have been told that even after being vaccinated, we will still have to wear masks.  I think I'd prefer to take my chances with the disease, knowing that zinc, vitamin D, vitamin C and early hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin almost guarantee me a mild case. 

Not to mention that there continues to be concern that novel vaccines might prime us in such a way that makes a case of Covid worse, causing even more autoimmunity.  This happen with a measles vaccine and an RSV vaccine back in the 1960s.  Neither vaccine gave recipients immunity; instead each caused severe disease when recipients were exposed to the virus the vaccines were intended to protect against. This happened more recently when experimental coronavirus vaccines were used in animal experiments. 

When millions of people are vaccinated close together, as soon as a vaccine is given regulatory approval, they don't benefit from seeing how earlier recipients fared.  Even though there have been many thousands of experimental subjects in vaccine trials, there have been only a few weeks or months in which to observe them for adverse effects.  And because the vaccine manufacturers are not liable for damages, unless they conceal evidence of side effects, the manufacturers are incentivized to speed the vaccines' evaluation, and learn as little as possible about their side effects. 

The media were surprisingly willing to discuss possible vaccine side effects, as long as the Warp Speed vaccines were Trump's project.  I expect to see a 180 degree shift in their approach, as soon as the election is definitively called.  Watch for it.

Current status of Covid in the US--hospitalizations, deaths, and quirky stats from NY

Deaths/day over the past week:  992.  

Hospitalizations related to Covid are at an all-time high at 61,964--Nov 10 was the first time the hospitalization peak in April was surpassed.

Understanding who is dying is not easy.  New York state, where Governor Cuomo was one of 6 governors to demand nursing homes take back Covid-infected patients, claims only 25% of Covid-related deaths occurred in people residing in nursing homes or similar settings, while New Hampshire reports that 81% of deaths occurred in such residents.  Cuomo, who may face legal action over his decision, would benefit by reports of low death rates in this group.

Here are updated death rates/day, averaged over the first week of each month since the start of the pandemic, in the US.

March              3           (daily average February 29-March 7)

April.         1376           (daily average March 31-April 7)

May            1823          (daily average April 30-May 7)

June              788          (daily average May 3-June 7)

July               525          (daily average June 30-July 7)

August        1056          (daily average July 31-August 7)

September     817         (daily average Aug. 31-Sept. 7)

October         666          (daily average Sept. 30-Oct. 7)

November     989         (daily avg Oct. 31-Nov. 7)

data from Covidtracking

US military: 59K cases and 9 deaths (and only 1 active duty death)/ UK government Statistics Authority criticizes govt/prime minister for false use of statistics

While we cannot rely on the Covid statistics that are being provided, still, new numbers for cases and deaths in military servicemembers were released yesterday that are worth a mention.  

Total cumulative diagnosed cases in active and reserve servicemembers "nears 59,000."  Yet only nine servicemembers have died:  3 National Guard, 5 Reservists and 1 on active duty.  Is the military using effective treatments?  I couldn't find out online; does anyone know?

Hospitalizations:  755. Only 1.3% required hospitalization.  

The "mortality rate among military personnel is currently 0.017%" or less than one death per 6000 diagnosed cases.

-----------------

From the Daily Mail, verbatim:

Statistics watchdog scolds Number 10 for lack of transparency over Covid-19 data used to justify second lockdown

• The UK Statistics Authority slammed the use of unsupported data 
• It warned of public trust falling apart if statistics are not used properly
• It comes amid accusations the Government used dodgy data for the lockdown 
• A graph showed 4,000 deaths per day in December if no action was taken
• But the model has since been shown to be out of date and inaccurate  

Sir Patrick Vallance, No10's Chief Scientific Adviser, suggested there could be a shocking 4,000 deaths per day by December 20 if nothing was done using a now-infamous graph. The scenario was based on the assumption that there would be 1,000 per day by the start of November. Real numbers of people dying are significantly lower

How Could It Be Possible? Spending $25 Billion on Covid tests/tracing bought lots of tests, but are any accurate? Spending $Billions on drugs bought us worthless remdesivir, suppressing cheap alternatives... and the article I wished I could have written

How could it be possible that so much of the Covid pandemic narrative:  its bat origin (untouched by any lab); the story that human incursions into nature cause our pandemics and must be stopped; the saga in which effective medications are suppressed and useless ones are promoted; the way that cases are diagnosed; and the value of non-pharmaceutical interventions like masks--might be false, based on fake science, fake statistics, and lying public health officials?

How could it be possible?  Chris Martenson wrote the article I wanted to write, and explains how he (and I) came to fall down the rabbit hole, and gradually came to accept a totally different narrative than the mainstream media and government officials have proclaimed.  What happened to us is simple:  

He writes, 

Please read Martenson's complete article.  I understand that this is too much of a leap for many people to make, but if you have read this far, keep watching what is happening and note the inconsistencies and contradictions.  

Here is a lighter version of what Martenson is saying, in an opinion piece in the October 30 Wall Street Journal written by Holman Jenkins, Jr.  It is titled, "The Other Media Blackout:  How can Americans use good sense about an epidemic about which they are fed false information?"  His final sentence is, "We battle the virus, while being fed a colossally distorted picture of the epidemic and its progress by an incompetent and sociopathic press."

See how so much of what is written about Covid does not make any sense, and reassess what you hear, as often as you can.  Try to put the pieces together.

Today I received three news items that were so jarring to the Covid story we are meant to believe, so incongruous, that I had to mention them.

-----------------------------

First, we have been told that only 25-50% of cases may be asymptomatic.  Fauci said this recently, and it has been a standard belief since the start of the pandemic.  (I happen to think it is way too low.  But anyway...)

Second, we have been told there are 2 tests that can be used to diagnose a current Covid case:  the PCR test and the rapid antigen test.  Using these tests, massive numbers of Americans have been diagnosed with Covid-19, up to 150,000 per day.  Cases have been rising rapidly, and as a result harsher lockdown measures are being enforced in some states and some countries.

Third, we assume that government officials want to reduce cases, that they impose quarantines and restrictions to protect us, and that they respond sensibly to the results of Covid tests.

Here are the news articles:

1.  75 prisoners at 2 Maine prisons, and 9 staff, have been diagnosed with Covid using rapid antigen tests.  The vast majority of prisoners were asymptomatic, and a few had mild symptoms. 

2.  "FDA warns about false positive results from COVID-19 (rapid) antigen tests."  Reuters reported that after false positive tests in nursing homes, FDA wanted to remind us that we can't trust these tests.

3.  New Jersey state Senator Michael Testa released a leaked document from the NJ Department of Corrections, which directs correctional staff to release and transport Covid positive prisoners to train and bus stations on November 4.  Staff are directed to wear full PPE while transporting prisoners.  

----------------------------

So, are the prisoners positive or negative?  If negative, or noncontagious, why are staff donning PPE?  If positive, why are officials releasing them to public transportation? Is the goal to cause more cases?

Are the tests false positives?  Or are most "cases" asymptomatic?

Why are we using tests that FDA warns us may be inaccurate?  Does any of this make sense?

There are only 3 types of tests commercially available in the US:  the rapid antigen, the PCR (a.k.a. molecular test) and the antibody test. There are dozens of different PCR and antibody tests in use. (Remember, when there were no tests available by March, the FDA decided to "Let 1,000 flowers bloom" and allowed anyone with a test to make it publicly available, without any FDA review beyond company-supplied data.  This is slowly changing, but complete FDA approvals have been derailed by the goal to make over a million tests available, daily.)

The antibody test is intended to tell you if you have previously had Covid.  None are very accurate.  FDA does not know how accurate they are, nor how they compare with each other. See my previous posts on the huge problems with PCR and antibody tests.  All were approved by FDA under emergency use authorizations, and have not undergone standard screening and approval.  

Congress approved $25 BILLION DOLLARS for Covid testing and tracing, so we are doing lots of tests and plenty of tracing.  We have shortages of reagents, shortages of other test materials, the tests are non-reproducible... but a lot of money was made available for testing, so, we are testing.

Has it helped reduce cases?  Has it prevented spread?  Who knows.  There is no way to tell.  We cannot compare it to the past, because we were testing very few people then.  We can't compare regions, because so many different companies' tests are being performed, even within one lab. 

The purpose of testing was to identify and isolate cases, and track and trace contacts, preventing spread.  But if cases are asymptomatic, but can still spread the virus, the theory falls apart.  Aggressive testing and tracing has not worked out well in Germany, which has a much more developed tracing system than the US. 

Dr. Fauci has admitted that many PCR tests may be using cycle thresholds (35 and above) that are only testing for "dead nucleotides"--his words, not mine--indicating the tests neither identify infection nor contagiousness.

Addendum:  the Nov. 5 NY Times tells us how terrible the correspondence is between the results of PCR tests and rapid antigen tests.

Addendum:  on Nov. 6 NPR provides bits of the story regarding how CDC distributed defective PCR tests to public health labs across the US throughout February. NPR's piece is titled, CDC Report: Officials Knew Coronavirus Test Was Flawed But Released It Anyway. NPR omits any discussion of why CDC and FDA enforced regulatory roadblocks that prevented non-governmental labs from making any other, accurate Covid tests available in the US during January and February.

According to Keith Jerome, head of virology at the University of Washington, “The great strength the US has always had, not just in virology, is that we’ve always had a wide variety of people and groups working on any given problem. When we decided all coronavirus testing had to be done by a single entity, even one as outstanding as CDC, we basically gave away our greatest strength.”

It remains unclear why federal agencies restricted all US Covid testing to kits created by CDC, and refused to budge, knowing the tests didn't work, while the Coronavirus percolated through the US.

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You are being asked to trust the science.  And who am I to tell you, there isn't any?  

CDC invites infectious Covid patients to go vote, anyway.

But wear a mask, wash yor hands and socially distance.   

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/going-out/voting-tips.html

"Voters have the right to vote, regardless of whether they are sick or in quarantine.

Voters who are sick or in quarantine should take steps to protect poll workers and other voters. This includes wearing a mask, staying at least 6 feet away from others, and washing your hands or using hand sanitizer before and after voting. You should also let poll workers know that you are sick or in quarantine when you arrive at the polling location. Check with local authorities for any additional guidance."

Letting poll workers know will probably cause a bit of a stir, and maybe send some other prospective voters out the door.  Wonder why CDC felt the need to create this web page?

As Europe goes into lockdown again, how are we doing in the US?

Covid-linked deaths in the US,  March 1 - November 2.  
 

How many new cases is your state seeing permillion population?  My state, Maine, has fewer new cases (63 per million) than every state except Vermont and Hawaii, but harsher restriction were just imposed by the governor.

A commenter pointed out that medical staff are burned out.  They still have to fear that every patient and every surface, as well as the air they breathe, could pose a deadly danger to their other patients, staff and themselves.

If we had tests that measured T cell immunity using validated measures, we could determine who was already immune--and those healthcare personnel could relax, take off the PPE and stop worrying.  They could do their jobs in peace.  

But instead we have impossible to interpret, unreliable, irreproducible PCR tests and entirely worthless antibody tests, ten months into the worst pandemic in a century.  Whatever happened to modern medicine?  Brett Giroir, the testing Czar, where are you?

T-cell study adds to information on duration of COVID-19 immunity

Now Reuters discusses a study by the UK medical authorities showing T cell immunity exists in those who had asymptomatic or minor cases of Covid for at least 6 months, and echoes the fact that reinfection is very rare:

LONDON (Reuters) - A small but key UK study has found that “cellular immunity” to the pandemic SARS-CoV-2 virus is present after six months in people who had mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 - suggesting they might have some level of protection for at least that time.

FILE PHOTO: A 3D-printed coronavirus model is seen in front of a world map and the words "CoronaVirus Disease (Covid-19)" on display in this illustration taken March 25, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Scientists presenting the findings, from 100 non-hospitalised COVID-19 patients in Britain, said they were “reassuring” but did not mean people cannot in rare cases be infected twice with the disease.

“While our findings cause us to be cautiously optimistic about the strength and length of immunity generated after SARS-CoV-2 infection, this is just one piece of the puzzle,” said Paul Moss, a professor of haematology at Britain’s Birmingham University who co-led the study.

“There is still a lot for us learn before we have a full understanding of how immunity to COVID-19 works.”

Experts not directly involved with the study said its findings were important and would add to a growing body of knowledge about potential protective immunity to COVID-19.

The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed by other experts but was published online on bioRvix, analysed the blood of 100 patients six months after they had had either mild or asymptomatic COVID-19. It found that while some of the patients’ antibody levels had dropped, their T-cell response - another key part of the immune system - remained robust.

“(Our) early results show that T-cell responses may outlast the initial antibody response,” said Shame Ladhani, a consultant epidemiologist at Public Health England who co-led the work.

The study also found the size of T-cell response differed, and was considerably higher in people who had had symptomatic COVID-19 than those who had no symptoms when infected.

The researchers said this could be interpreted in two ways: It is possible that higher cellular immunity might give better protection against re-infection in people who had symptoms, or equally, that asymptomatic patients are better able to fight off the virus without the need to generate a large immune response.

“These results provide reassurance that, although the titre of antibody to SARS-CoV-2 can fall below detectable levels within a few months of infection, a degree of immunity to the virus may be maintained,” said Charles Bangham, chair of immunology at Imperial College London.

“This ... bodes well for the long term, in terms of both vaccine development and the possibility of long-term protection against re-infection,” said Eleanor Riley, an immunology and infectious disease professor at Edinburgh University. She stressed, however, that “we don’t yet know whether the people in this study are protected from re-infection.”

While more than 46 million people worldwide have been infected with COVID-19, confirmed cases of re-infection are so far very rare.