Facebook is all power with no transparency – and ministers are happy to silence Covid dissent - "When David Davis criticised lockdown in a House of Commons speech, YouTube took his video down. When The Spectator commissioned Oxford’s Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson, to write about the evidence behind masks, Facebook labelled it “false information”. Why? What aspect of what they wrote was false? Even now, Facebook refuses to explain. It is not regulated, so doesn’t need to. It has all the power, no transparency – and no accountability. This combination makes Facebook such a tempting target for government. A quiet word with here, a tweak of the algorithm there – and ministers can control the news agenda in a way no newspaper would ever allow. Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages show that politicians knew how to pressure Facebook: they’d just threaten regulation. And with Nick Clegg now occupying such a powerful position in Facebook, as Zuckerberg’s helper, they had an easy contact... The vaccine offered protection from serious Covid illness, but what if they didn’t really stop the spread? This would destroy the logic of vaccine passports that were being considered by the Government. But to have had that debate would risk being accused of being anti-vax. To publish any of the debate (as Facebook was doing) meant being accused of publishing anti-vax material and threatened with regulation or a fine. The brutal economics of social media means that Silicon Valley has no real incentive to protect free speech. Adverts embedded in daft, viral videos make money. News, by and large, does not: at least not for Facebook. So why should it put up much of a fight to protect news that isn’t even its own? This creates an incentive for Silicon Valley to play along, and even boast about doing so in adverts... we are, already, in a world where academics had better be careful what they say – and those deemed to be unhelpful may get caught in the crossfire. Cochrane, a group that runs the gold standard of systematic reviews of medical evidence, found its Instagram account “shadowbanned” for two weeks. When people tried to tag Cochrane on Instagram, a message would come up saying it had “posted material that goes against ‘false content’ guidelines”. Facebook, which owns Instagram, never said what this was. British Medical Journal articles have been challenged by Facebook’s thought police with labels like “independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people”. When it investigated the clinical trial research practices of one of the companies helping with the main Pfizer vaccine, it found the article subject to a “fact check” warning by Facebook. The BMJ says people who shared the story were warned by Facebook that they risked being penalised by having their posts moved lower in its ranking system. So we already have a system when vital critical work – medical journals investigating the integrity of the vaccine process – is penalised and discouraged. The brutal truth is that the commercial fortunes of magazines can depend on how widely they are shared on social media: it generates about a quarter of all visits to The Spectator website, for example, and I’d guess about the same proportion of our subscriptions. The commercial incentive for me as an editor is now clear. By all means, publish articles about Philip Schofield, Ukraine, the royals – but steer clear of anything taking a critical view of government public health policy. That way you risk being “downrated” by Facebook. Academics fear being marked down as “sceptics” so they have an incentive to avoid the areas that need investigation the most... In theory, politicians always say they want a free and vigorous press. In practice, they find it easier to promote their objectives if dissenting voices are silenced. The irony is that this heavy-handed approach backfires. If people suspect they’re not being told the whole truth, it undermines faith in the whole process."
Clearly scientific journals don't Trust the Science and are spreading dangerous misinformation
Meme - Diana Zicklin Berrent @dian...: "My husband took my kids to eat indoors at a restaurant tonight and..."
Anna Pakman @Annatated: "That would be an ex-husband to me"
"We're in the middle of getting divorced"
Pennie Pro-vax + Mask Reese @pennie_reese: "Good for you! That's abusive."
Meme - "R.I.P. Seatbelt Analogy
I thought people were definitely over the seatbelt analogy, but apparently it still lives and even thrives in some places. So let me put it to rest, once and for all:
Wearing seatbelts never has possible short term side effects like: blood clots, myocarditis, guillan barr, neurological issues, menstruation disorders and even death.
Wearing seatbelts doesn't cause potential unknown long term side effects.
If my seatbelt malfunctions is faulty I can hold the manufacturer liable.
I can take off a seatbelt at a click of a button.
The seatbelt manufacturer and agency that approved seatbelts, did not try to hide safety data for 75 years.
Seatbelt manufacturers have not been convicted and haven't paid the largest criminal fines in history for fraud, malpractice, bribery etc"
Wuhan scientists 'were mixing viruses to create mutant strains' before Covid outbreak
Secretive government Covid unit broke own rules by flagging opinions as disinformation - "A secretive unit that has been monitoring lockdown critics broke the government’s own rules... the Counter-Disinformation Unit collected social media posts that were critical of government Covid policies, including the decision to close schools and the debate over the mass vaccination of children. It can now be revealed that this unit ignored official Cabinet Office guidance created for civil servants and communications professionals when it classified legitimate opinions as disinformation... social media posts where people expressed concerns about government Covid policies were monitored by the secretive unit... Molly Kingsley, a former lawyer and journalist who founded the children’s campaign group UsForThem, was one of the people who posted opinions critical of government policy and later discovered some of her posts were collected in reports sent to the CDU. She said: “This is very sinister. It shows that they were materially extending the remit of what they were meant to be doing and weren’t following the guidelines. “It becomes state censorship or at the very least, flagging opinions which are unpalatable for the government. This is not what is supposed to happen in a free democracy. “The opinions I and others expressed were about ethics and morality, almost like conscientious objections. Who did they think they were to be flagging that?” One legitimate opinion that was marked for the CDU’s attention was a tweet from journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer raising concerns about the collateral damage lockdowns can cause... An academic with expertise in vaccines had his opinion filed under disinformation. The tweet in question was written by Dr Alexandre de Figueiredo, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and statistics lead on the Vaccine Confidence Project, who said: “People who think we should be mass vaccinating children against Covid-19 poorly understand at least one of the following: (a) risk, especially absolute risk, (b) ethics, (c) natural immunity, (d) vaccine confidence (e) long Covid”. Another message that was tagged as disinformation in a report for the unit was a tweet outlining the views of a civil liberties campaigner on government plans to introduce proof of immunisation against Covid. TalkTV tweeted: “Silkie Carlo, Big Brother Watch director, tells Julia that people ‘have been beaten down into submission’ over vaccine passports and warns: ‘What’s being proposed is a vision of checkpoint Britain’.”... the minister previously in charge of the CDU before she went on maternity leave tried to have the unit shut down because she felt it had strayed far beyond its original brief. Science, innovation and technology minister Michelle Donelan was uncomfortable that the unit was flagging social media posts by British citizens that were neither disinformation nor misinformation... David Davis, the former Conservative Cabinet minister whose comments were logged by the unit, called for the CDU to be shut down and for a parliamentary committee to investigate... the BBC was accused of acting as “the broadcast arm of the government” during the pandemic, with journalists claiming they were mocked if they tried to give a voice to anyone critical of lockdown. The broadcaster attended government meetings where so-called misinformation was discussed."
Trust the Science! Trust the Government!
This farcical inquiry must not shy away from lockdown’s hard truths - "My mother’s recent absence on holiday provided the perfect opportunity to embark on a seemingly impossible task – clearing out the Augean stables of a hoarder’s study. Amid editions of The Spectator dating back to the Iraq War and a copy of Ace Magazine with Pete Sampras on the cover, I discovered a stash of Cold War-era “Protect and Survive” pamphlets. We are used to the paraphernalia of “fears past” in our lives. Think of all those ghost signs to wartime air-raid shelters in our cities or even the abiding flim-flam of the Covid-19 pandemic; gratuitous hand-wash dispensers in public places, faded instructions to maintain social distance on pavements. For most of us, these seem equally outmoded; indeed, you’d think someone was odd if they insisted on sleeping in an Anderson Shelter every night, just in case the Luftwaffe were up to their old tricks again. But not so the official Covid inquiry, which is reportedly requesting that hearing attendees take lateral flow tests – more than a year after the Government scrapped free testing and mandatory self-isolation. A small thing, perhaps, but the implications are obvious. In asserting that Covid remains a far more serious threat than virtually any other public body currently believes it to be, the inquiry betrayed a subtle bias before the hearings had even begun. This development epitomises concerns about the inquiry’s scope, focus and direction. The idea that the biggest suppression of individual and corporate freedom in living memory represents a case of “too little too late” has become a widespread mantra in public health thinking and public discourse. Certainly, the fallout from Partygate suggested that lockdown was widely seen as fundamentally correct; it was only the personal conduct of politicians that was at fault. The inquiry must be willing to challenge such orthodoxies and question why sceptical voices were so often excluded from the debate. But given the make-up of witnesses, and its unfolding agenda, any serious reckoning looks unlikely. There are no obvious potential lockdown critics among the inquiry’s “core participants”, who are drawn mainly from Covid support networks, special-interest groups, trade unions, health and governmental authorities. An alarming 17 current and former members of the pro-lockdown pressure group Independent Sage have been asked to give evidence so far; apparently compared to only a couple of voices on the opposing side. As such, many burning questions may not even be asked. Questions such as why the UK’s previous pandemic planning, emphasising advice rather than coercive measures, was so quickly jettisoned in 2020. What of the lack of examination of the likely collateral costs of lockdown, and the manner in which Parliament was quickly shut down, and for months barely performed a rubber stamp role? What was the purpose of the UK’s lockdown strategy after the initial flattening of the curve? For much of 2020, many policy-makers knew that outdoor mixing wasn’t driving transmission. Why did they ban it? Will any attention be given to the media – especially the broadcast media – and their complicity in pushing for the suspension of liberties and creating a wider climate of sensationalism? Crucially, will the inquiry major on “lockdown theology” – debates about whether we locked down too late, or unlocked too soon – at the expense of broader questions like whether lockdown was worth it in the first place? And even if the inquiry were to conclude that indiscriminate lockdowns were damaging, and closing schools a grave mistake, would our policy response be any different should another Covid-like virus materialise over the next few years?... Its chair, Baroness Hallett, has promised to put bereaved families “at the heart of the inquiry”; as well as questions of social justice and racial inequality. Its aims appear big enough to encompass everything, and diffuse enough to be meaningless. “Brexit” has already been cited (but not, funnily enough, the Chinese Communist Party). If the inquiry simply morphs into an all purpose grievance-mill, or an exercise in apportioning blame, rather than focusing on the practical, then it does nobody any favours whatsoever... As in so many areas, Sweden took a different approach, appointing a Covid commission, presided over by a neutral figure, which wasn’t obliged to hear lawyers and witnesses. The Coronakommissionen’s final report was released before the UK’s terms of reference had even been announced. Its 1,700 pages lay out clear recommendations in a level-headed fashion. Though intensely critical of some aspects of Swedish pandemic policy, it strongly supported their overall strategy, concluding that its decision to rely primarily on the issuing of non-coercive advice had been “fundamentally correct”. Having so often failed to learn from Sweden during the pandemic, Britain appears doomed to repeat its mistake after it."
It is easier to continue on a politically expedient course than learn lessons
Meme - PoliticsJack @PoliticsJack270: "Get vaccinated, or be disenfranchised from society. The pleasantries are over. I don't care if we have to drag people from their homes - your severe mental derangement that would lead you to refuse vaccination affects ALL of us, our livelihoods. Enough is enough. pissed off"
LILLEY: Science Table projections off the mark once again | Toronto Sun - "Looking at the latest modelling from the Ontario Science Table, I have to wonder if the scientists were simply throwing darts at a giant chart to come up with their numbers."
From 2021. Trust the Science!
RNC Research on Twitter - "Biden monkeypox advisor Demetre Daskalakis says the Biden administration aims to "support peoples' joy as opposed to calling them 'risky'": "One person's idea of risk is another person's idea of a great festival or Friday night.""
〽️AR⚡️ on Twitter - "I guess taking a risk and my idea of a fun Friday night didn’t matter during covid huh? Hypocrites."
The Students Returned, but the Fallout From a Long Disruption Remained - The New York Times - "Like schools across the country, Liberty has seen the damaging effects of a two-year pandemic that abruptly ejected millions of students from classrooms and isolated them from their peers as they weathered a historic convergence of academic, health and societal crises. Teenagers arguably bore the social and emotional brunt of school disruptions. Nationally, the high school-age group has reported some of the most alarming mental health declines, evidenced by depression and suicide attempts. Adolescents have failed classes critical to their futures at higher rates than in previous years, affecting graduations and college prospects. And as elected leaders and public health officials scrambled to bring students back to school last winter and spring, the focus on having the youngest and most vulnerable students return to in-person instruction left many high school students to languish, with large numbers missing most or all of the 2020-21 academic year."
From 2021
Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be. - The New York Times - "The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles; the fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load, in the sample. The greater the viral load, the more likely the patient is to be contagious. This number of amplification cycles needed to find the virus, called the cycle threshold, is never included in the results sent to doctors and coronavirus patients, although it could tell them how infectious the patients are. In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus... Editors’ Picks In Barcelona, City of Mega-Festivals, Small Venues Struggle How Much Can I Express Myself Through My Work Wardrobe? Let Kids Get Bored. It’s Good for Them. One solution would be to adjust the cycle threshold used now to decide that a patient is infected. Most tests set the limit at 40, a few at 37. This means that you are positive for the coronavirus if the test process required up to 40 cycles, or 37, to detect the virus. Tests with thresholds so high may detect not just live virus but also genetic fragments, leftovers from infection that pose no particular risk — akin to finding a hair in a room long after a person has left, Dr. Mina said. Any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive, agreed Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California, Riverside. “I’m shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive,” she said... Highly sensitive PCR tests seemed like the best option for tracking the coronavirus at the start of the pandemic. But for the outbreaks raging now, he said, what’s needed are coronavirus tests that are fast, cheap and abundant enough to frequently test everyone who needs it — even if the tests are less sensitive. “It might not catch every last one of the transmitting people, but it sure will catch the most transmissible people, including the superspreaders,” Dr. Mina said. “That alone would drive epidemics practically to zero.”"
From 2020. Of course, people who talked about this were called conspiracy theorists and covid deniers
Lockdown ‘damaged a generation’, says former chief medical officer - "Lockdown “damaged a generation” of children, the country’s former top doctor has told the Covid inquiry. Prof Dame Sally Davies, who was chief medical officer for England from 2011 to 2019, before Prof Sir Chris Whitty, helped the Government plan for a future pandemic. She admitted to the official inquiry that “no one thought about lockdown”. Dame Sally said she was upset by the impact of Covid and lockdown policies on children and young people, despite being in favour of the first national shutdown. Now the master at Trinity College, Cambridge, she said she had seen the damage done to children and that it had been awful “watching young people struggle”. It comes as a new study, published in The Lancet, suggested that lockdown fuelled a “staggering rise” in eating disorders among teenage girls, with cases surging by 42 per cent... The inquiry also heard evidence from George Osborne, the former chancellor, who suggested that the West copied the idea of lockdowns from China. Dame Sally is one of the first former government officials to criticise lockdown, amid allegations that the long-awaited inquiry is “limiting outside voices” on the policy’s negative effects. She also told the inquiry that the Government would have benefitted from weighing up the wider impact of measures and listening to “a second group of experts” advising on social and economic impacts. She held back tears as she apologised to bereaved families for the failings... Dame Sally, who was also the chief scientific adviser for the Department of Health between 2004 and 2016, apologised that plans to prepare for a pandemic had not examined the impact on civil liberties."
Doesn't she know that you should Trust the Experts and Trust the Science? Heartless woman who just wants grandma to die!
Meme - Tim Young @TimRunsHisMouth: "Big shout out to the last people still hanging in there saving my life by wearing masks alone in your cars."
I love our new national hobby of spying on and judging each other
From 2020. When you need someone to blame
Un vaccin, une pipe : un sex-club de Genève offre une fellation aux personnes vaccinées - "Se faire vacciner, c'est tromper ? Une maison close, qui se définit sur son site comme "le plus grand club érotique de Genève", propose aux vaccinés une fellation gratuite. Il faut avoir reçu ses deux doses dans les 3 derniers jours... Le club Delicious ne semble proposer des prestations qu'à destination de clients dotés de pénis. Comme le rapporte le média suisse Watson, il avait fait parler de lui en 2018 en proposant le "café pipe". Le principe ? Un café à 80 francs suisses (environ 76 euros) à savourer en même temps qu'une fellation."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Teacher: 'This is the year I've seen the most tears, it’s the year I've seen the most panic'. - "'I've seen several students this year get halfway through an essay and then freeze because they think it's wrong and unfortunately this year we've done our absolute best and the students have done their absolute best but it is an imperfect year. It really is'"
From 2022
China Deliberately Engineered Coronavirus As "Bioweapon": Wuhan Researcher - "A researcher in Wuhan has claimed that China deliberately engineered coronavirus as a "bioweapon". The explosive claim was made by Chao Shan... Mr Chao said he and his colleagues were tasked with identifying the most effective strain for spreading among various species, including humans... Ms Chao was given four strains of coronavirus by his superior in Nanjing City in 2019 to test which one of them was the most virulent and transmissible... several of his colleagues went missing during the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan. Later, one of them revealed that they were sent to hotels where athletes from various countries were staying to "check the health or hygiene conditions". Since checking hygiene doesn't require virologists, Chao Shan suspected that they were sent there to spread the virus."
10 reasons we KNOW that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Lab - "1. The “suicide” of the Wuhan lab collaborator, Dr. Yusen
A key Chinese scientist who collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Dr. Zhou Yusen, filed for a patent for a COVID vaccine on February 24, 2020, according to documents obtained by The Australian. The early timing of his filing raises concerns that the unnamed vaccine was in development months before the COVID-19 pandemic became public. Yet less than three months after filing his patent, Dr. Zhou Yusen died under mysterious circumstances. The Chinese media said he died from “falling off the roof” of the Wuhan lab.
2. Wuhan lab workers were the first COVID patients
In an April 2020 interview, I told Fox News that an infected Wuhan lab worker was most likely patient zero of the pandemic. The National Institutes of Health called it a conspiracy theory and Facebook and Google censored it, calling it misinformation. New evidence published this month confirms that what I said was true and identifies the first infected lab workers by name.
3. The lab had a detailed plan
One year before the emergence of COVID-19, scientists at the Wuhan lab submitted a detailed research plan to the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency to create a Frankenstein coronavirus.
4. China destroyed all records from the lab
5. Top virologists had told Dr. Anthony Fauci that it came from a lab
Dr. Robert Garry of Tulane University specifically told Dr. Fauci, “I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature . . . Of course, in the lab it would be easy to generate the perfect 12 base insert that you wanted.”
6. Fauci was Orchestrator of the Natural Origin Theory
7. China arrested the first doctors who treated COVID
Li contracted COVID and died. He was a healthy appearing 34-year-old — a risk profile close to zero. It’s also curious that there were conflicting reports about his death on Chinese State TV. Dr. Ai Fen, a close friend of Li, carried his torch and continued to warn people. She was the director of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital. She also posted warnings and was later reprimanded by the authorities. She gave a pleasant interview to a Chinese magazine and then went missing for a few weeks.
8. A lab leak caused the 1977 flu Chinese epidemic
9. The lab is 5 miles from the world epicenter
10. Wuhan lab conditions were abysmal"
Former US National Intelligence director John Ratcliffe, who had access to all intelligence during the rise of COVID-19, has said “My informed assessment as a person with as much access as anyone to our government’s intelligence . . . has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense.” The facts are clear. But downplaying them has become a political badge for many Democrats"
Meme - "He is top doctor of ISRAEL , MD , just go thru his tweet"
"Omicron is literally the vaccine that vaccine companies could not make. It is attenuated. Almost no hospitalizations. No critical patients. No oxygenation. No intubation. Everyone will be exposed and will get it. Mass herd immunity. Totally replaces Delta. Within 8-12 weeks the world will be vaccinated. Why the panic??? It could've been a lot worse. Show gratitude to nature for finally eliminating a man-made lab leaked nasty virus! We are blessed."
Omicron nothing but a 'seasonal cold virus', claims US-based doctor - "Terming Omicron variant as nothing more than a "seasonal cold virus", a US-based cardiologist has warned against "overreaction and over-reach" by government agencies, saying their actions are causing panic and providing misinformation. In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Afshine Emrani, Medical Director at Los Angeles Heart Specialists, suggested that the countries should not test for Omicron, and instead, focus their resources on providing "psychological and financial assistance" to people. Emrani, who has over 26 thousand followers on Twitter and have been posting updates on pandemic since the emergence of the virus, claimed that Omicron is "literally" the vaccine that vaccine companies could not make. He added that within "8-12 weeks the world will be vaccinated" due to the spread of the virus... "The biggest threat in my opinion remains in over-reaction and over-reach by government agencies, causing panic, providing misinformation, leading to closures that hurt those most vulnerable among us""
From Dec 2021. Too bad this didn't stop the hysteria
Britain’s two-tier police state - "The news stories in the immediate aftermath were of ‘violent’ protesters arrested by police. But those headlines can’t have been written by journalists who were actually there. The truth is, this was largely a peaceful protest with families, children and the elderly present. There were good-humoured placards and even a protester dressed as Santa with some children as elves, whose sign read, ‘All I want for Christmas is freedom’... What makes all this worse is that the style of policing contrasted so heavily with how the Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion protests were policed. Police took the knee for BLM and sometimes didn’t even bother to do anything about XR’s stunts. Anti-lockdown protests, on the other hand, provoke excessive force. There seems to be a strategy of making lots of arrests to create a politicised media story. We have two-tier policing in London."
From 2020. Only leftist-sanctioned protests are okay
