By Edda West
As more and more information pours in from around the world, what’s become crystal clear is that there are two conflicting narratives informing us about the ‘pandemic’. The dominant mainstream narrative wants us to believe that COVID-19 poses extreme health risks to individuals and all of society – that extreme measures are needed to stop the virus from proliferating – that the risk of death is very high and requires draconian measures to win this viral battle and that we must all wait patiently in isolation until a vaccine is developed before the lock down is lifted. Fear of COVID-19 apparently justifies the shut down of society and with it the economy we all depend on for survival.
Juxtaposed with this doomsday scenario is a growing alternate narrative that questions the validity of these draconian measures and challenges the dire straits projections of mainstream analysts. A more nuanced and balanced perspective is found in international data sets that compare hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 with those occurring in previous annual surges of seasonal respiratory illnesses, of which coronavirus is one of many respiratory viruses that circulate every year. The analyses of many skilled scientists reassures us that there is no evidence that warrants the lock down of society. The focus should be on tracking down and isolating contacts of those who test positive and are ill while offering effective and safe treatments to those needing medical care.
Searching for answers, investigative journalist, Rosemary Frei, MSc, molecular biology, delves into the many unanswered questions a growing segment of the population is asking. In this extensive report, she asks, Where’s the Evidence Supporting the Drastic Measures Against COVID-19?
In the March 26th broadcast of The Highwire, Del Bigtree; reviewed important international statistics which clearly show that the number of COVID-19 deaths are actually within the normal range of expected deaths that occur every year among the frail and elderly at risk from any of the seasonal respiratory pathogens that circulate through the winter months. Included in the broadcast are the impactful commentaries of top scientists and epidemiologists who disagree with the extreme ‘lock down’ measures and are challenging the medical establishment’s doomsday scenario. Their intelligent analysis of what is really happening is both enlightening and reassuring.
We can only imagine the devastating fall out our society will reap from the closure of all non-essential businesses, schools, travel and suspension of the entire economy for an indefinite period of time. The fear pundits say that isolation and lockdown should be imposed until a new coronavirus vaccine is developed. Human trials have already begun, bypassing the normal required early phases of animal testing to determine baseline risk/benefit and safety parameters prior to experimentation on humans.
Which begs the question, is the unprecedented level of fear and anxiety whipped up by the incessant media coverage of viral doom “laying the psychological groundwork for people to eagerly embrace ‘magic bullet’ medical solutions, no matter how experimental?” Is this how ‘they’ will usher in mandatory vaccination for everyone? Lyn Redwood and Mary Holland tackle this pressing question as they address the urgent need for effective therapies for sick patients by repurposing existing drugs, providing access to non-toxic treatments of IV vitamin C, as well as off label use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti malaria drug in use for decades.
Most concerning is that the medical system has no effective treatments for critically ill and dying patients, yet resists all non-mainstream treatments that have been proven to save lives over decades of use. Is it the case that our pharma captured medical system would rather let people die, than allow them to receive non-mainstream treatments that have been proven successful over many years and are currently saving lives in China and other places?
Often critically ill patients develop sepsis, a life threatening condition involving multiple organ failure. Dr. Paul Marik, a critical care physician is saving lives with his IV vitamin C protocol treatments. At the hospital where he works, Dr. Marik’s treatment protocol is “standard care for sepsis”, but few others are following; “unfortunately many hospitals are still dragging their heels waiting for more clinical trials to be completed.”
Another promising treatment is Dr. Vladimir Zelenko’s hydroxychloroquine protocol. In this interview he discusses his preliminary study of 699 patients he has successfully treated with hydroxychloroquine, zinc and antibiotics. “There have been ZERO deaths, ZERO intubations, and four hospitalizations.”
Our ‘pandemic times’ resources page also offers a selection of articles on alternative health perspectives on prevention and mitigation of infectious diseases.
The death rate has always been the most relevant measure of the seriousness of infectious diseases. The emerging numbers show us that there has not been an increase in expected hospitalizations and deaths that occur every year during flu season in areas beyond China and Italy where extreme air pollution has played a major role in the severity of the disease along with other factors.
There are dozens of ILI (influenza-like-illnesses) that cause flu-like symptoms, which for the old and medically fragile, pose a high risk. Approximately one quarter of the Italian population is elderly. Of those who contracted COVID-19, many also suffered one or more co-morbidities, which along with a crumbling health care system, and the way deaths are reported has been a major factor in the high death rate. Coronavirus is but one of many of respiratory viruses that can lead to the deaths of the infirm and the elderly.
It’s generally accepted now that about 80% of people if infected with COVID-19 will get a very mild illness and recovery uneventfully. Four of every five infected people will have mild symptoms, perhaps so mild as to not be noticeable. 15 percent of people infected with coronavirus have more serious symptoms, and 5% develop life-threatening illness, experts say in this article.
Senior voices in the health establishment disagree with the hysteria
Two former provincial Chief Medical Officers of Health have publicly voiced concerns about the draconian measures taken by the federal and provincial governments. As senior members of the health establishment, they conclude that the extreme panic over the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths is unwarranted.
Dr. Richard Schabas was Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health for 10 years and was chief of staff at York Central Hospital during the SARS crisis in 2003. He said the lockdown is unsustainable and that,
“the number of deaths was comparable to an average influenza season. That’s not nothing, but it’s not catastrophic, either, and it isn’t likely to overwhelm a competent health-care system. Not even close.” Quarantine belongs back in the Middle Ages. Save your masks for robbing banks. Stay calm and carry on. Let’s not make our attempted cures worse than the disease.”
In this earlier article, Dr. Schabas discusses why quarantine failed in the 2003 Toronto SARS outbreak. Quarantine was found to be both ‘inefficient and ineffective’.
From his study of SARS Schabas concluded,
“In the unlikely event of another SARS outbreak in Canada, public health officials should quarantine no one. Instead, they should identify and observe close contacts of cases, ie, people with a ‘reasonable suspicion’ of SARS. These close contacts should be isolated if, and only if, they develop symptoms consistent with the current recommendations of the World Health Organization.”
Dr. Schabas also stated that the“vast majority” of cases are mild or asymptomatic and that there are many more unreported cases, possibly up to 2 million, because many have no symptoms and testing capability has been limited.
Dr. Joel Kettner is professor of Community Health Sciences and Surgery at Manitoba University, former Chief Public Health Officer for Manitoba province and Medical Director of the International Centre for Infectious Diseases. As reported on this site; https://tinyurl.com/uxqg5ls Dr. Kettner was abruptly cut off by CBC’s Cross Country Checkup when he called in to offer a cautionary view,
“I have never seen anything like this, anything anywhere near like this. I’m not talking about the pandemic, because I’ve seen 30 of them, one every year. It is called influenza. And other respiratory illness viruses, we don’t always know what they are. But I’ve never seen this reaction, and I’m trying to understand why.”
The lockdown of Canadians is based on data that may be inaccurate. Researchers at ‘Our World in Data’ recently announced they had stopped relying on World Health Organization data for their models because of errors in the WHO dataset. They also discuss why it is very difficult to estimate the true risk of death from COVID-19 because of the differences between the “case fatality rate”, the “crude mortality rate”, and the “infection fatality rate”. There is still much to sort out they say as COVID-19 runs its course.
Twelve renowned medical experts have added their concerns to the growing chorus of voices challenging the ‘official’ covid narrative: Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, a microbiologist and one of the most cited research scientists in Germany says,
“ [The government’s anti-COVID19 measures] are grotesque, absurd and very dangerous……The life expectancy of millions is being shortened. The horrifying impact on the world economy threatens the existence of countless people. The consequences on medical care are profound. Already services to patients in need are reduced, operations cancelled, practices empty, hospital personnel dwindling. All this will impact profoundly on our whole society. All these measures are leading to self-destruction and collective suicide based on nothing but a spook.”
What has become glaringly obvious is that the dire straits threat to the entire population is an extreme exaggeration. Serious concerns about the reliability of the PCR tests to accurately determine infection rates has contributed to the confusion. In some cases people tested negative “up to six times” even though they were infected with the virus. False-negative test results are a big problem as patients who are infected are told they don’t have a condition, get turned away from hospitals, are refused medical care and continue to infect others in their community as discussed in this article.
What is so unsettling is that those pushing the panic button have high prominence politically in the medical system, while those offering rational and factually correct information are marginalized or censored. Going on the presumption that everyone is potentially infected or a silent carrier of the infection, governments have responded with panic rather than with measured reason.
The Public Health Agency of Canada provides daily updates on COVID-19 cases and deaths occurring across the country. And the University of Saskatchewan’s excellent COVID-19 Tracker provides ongoing data updates for every province.
Dramatic shift away from doomsday predictions
The British government’s recent seismic shift away from allowing COVID-19 to run its course in the UK, to lock down its entire population has now been called into question. Epidemiological modeling by Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College of London, predicted 2.2 million deaths in the US and 500,000 in the UK if no immediate action was taken to slow transmission of the virus. Other scientists have now determined that model was highly flawed.
While Ferguson’s flawed modeling triggered lockdown policies in the UK, it has also had international repercussions that ramped up the fear factor in Canada and the US, resulting in lock down policies in both countries. Ferguson has now backed down on his death toll claims, modifying them to 20,000 which translates to a 96% reduction in projected deaths.
The UK’s Dr. John Lee, retired professor of pathology speaking to The Spectator said that while the British government attempted to,
“act responsibly based on the scientific advice given, governments must remember that rushed science is almost always bad science. We have decided on policies of extraordinary magnitude without concrete evidence of excess harm already occurring, and without proper scrutiny of the science used to justify them.”
Thanks to Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta who criticized Ferguson’s model saying, “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,”
Professor Gupta’s modeling study suggests that the virus was spreading invisibly at least a month earlier than suspected. She estimates that up to half the UK population had already been infected by COVID-19 and that fewer than 1 in 1000 who are infected are so ill they need hospitalization, leaving the vast majority with mild cases or symptom-free. The Oxford report continues:
“The modelling brings back into focus ‘herd immunity’, the idea that the virus will stop spreading when enough people have become resistant to it because they have already been infected.”
While health officials and governments are loath to talk about natural herd immunity, apparently, that is exactly what is happening. The Oxford modeling results indicate that as the virus quietly spread through the population, people were acquiring, “substantial herd immunity through the unrecognized spread of COVID-19 over more than two months.”
This means that with so many people infected in the UK, the US, Canada and elsewhere, Professor Gupta’s new modeling brings the focus back to naturally acquired ‘herd immunity’, enabling the virus to stop spreading when enough people have become resistant following recovery from the illness.
What’s needed now says Professor Gupta is to “immediately begin large-scale serological surveys (antibody testing) to assess the stage of the epidemic we are in now”. She and her team along with other researchers plan on starting antibody testing on the general UK population using specialized ‘neutralization’ assays that provide reliable data on protective immunity. News from Germany says they plan to issue thousands of coronavirus ‘immunity certificates’ so they can leave the lockdown early. Iceland is another country not engaging in lockdown, but instead, doing widespread testing.
This is good news for a fearful public who has no idea how long lock down and self-isolation will continue. It certainly feels like there’s a palpable shift in the doomsday rhetoric as researchers re-analyze data, new antibody testing is implemented and the realization spreads that many people have already acquired natural immunity to covid.
It is now widely accepted and understood that the vast majority of healthy people under the age of 65 who contract the virus will recover uneventfully. There are varying degrees of the severity of illness, but the vast majority of healthy people will survive and will develop natural immunity that will protect them if/when coronavirus returns in the future.
With this in mind, New York state governor, Andrew Cuomo thinks quarantining everyone is not a good public health strategy. He wants to see a test created that
“will identify coronavirus antibodies in a healthy person who has self-recovered so that they can not only be cleared for work, but so their plasma of antibodies can be used to treat a sick person and build an immunity to the virus in them.”
He thinks such a strategy is the ‘smartest way forward’. Currently, an antibody test is being developed at Mt. Sinai Hospital. If the test works, it will enable health officials to rule out people who are neither sick or at risk of becoming sick and allow them to resume their lives.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is America’s # 1 front man for managing the ‘pandemic’. The continued lock down of the American population is at his urging, as is the fast tracking of a vaccine and refusal to allow hydroxychloroquine treatments in critically ill patients. Has Fauci just confessed that he’s wrong in his assessment of COVID-19 danger? In this March 26th article published in the NEJM, he states
“If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”
As with any infectious disease that our immune systems have no experience with, most people who are fundamentally healthy will survive, while those whose health and immune systems are already compromised will be at increased risk. In the end, those who get the disease and survive will contribute to a large pool of naturally immune people and will help strengthen the overall health of society.
In living memory, human society has never collectively experienced such extreme police state measures based on highly flawed and questionable data. We can only hope that the intelligent and honest voices of experienced and knowledgeable scientists will prevail.