THE USE OF KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

In A Time Of Universal Deceit, Telling The Truth Becomes A Revolutionary Act. (Orwell)

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I WILL TELL YOU ONE THING FOR SURE. ONCE YOU GET TO THE POINT WHERE YOU ARE ACTUALLY DOING THINGS FOR TRUTH'S SAKE, THEN NOBODY CAN EVER TOUCH YOU AGAIN BECAUSE YOU ARE HARMONIZING WITH A GREATER POWER. (George Harrison)

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Sunday, October 25, 2020

COVID: From Confusion to Clarity



This document, compiled by a biologist living on Hawaii island, provides a list of references on publications about COVID, to empower community leaders to act with knowledge and discernment. Below is a summary of key points made in those articles and studies. References are listed after the summary. The references cited herein are intended to be representative, not comprehensive. 

Outline

1. Risks of COVID are vastly overstated
2. Renowned doctors and epidemiologists criticize the COVID panic
3. SARS-CoV-2 has not been isolated, and RT-PCR tests are not appropriate diagnostic tools
4. “Flattening the curve” was unjustified
5. Lockdowns are entirely ineffective
6. Lockdowns are extremely harmful
7. Lockdowns were based on politics, not science
8. Mask-wearing is ineffective and harmful
9. The COVID computer models were extremely inaccurate
10. Media sources distorted and exaggerated information
11. The public substantially overestimate their risks from COVID
12. Nocebo effect: Fear as a cause of COVID symptoms
13. Non-viral causes of “COVID” symptoms
14. Effective treatments exist
15. Lockdowns have been legally challenged (US)

Summary

• Scientific evidence and statistics clearly demonstrate that masking, social distancing, and lockdowns are completely ineffective at decreasing infection and mortality and have dire adverse effects – severe psychological deterioration (especially in children), high suicide rates, economic collapse and destruction of small businesses, unprecedented expansion of government oppression, censorship, and enforced homogenity of thought.

• Lockdowns were initially justified by the claimed need to “flatten the curve” to prevent overloading of ICU ventilator capacity, but ICUs were not overloaded. Ventilators were largely inappropriate and caused extreme levels of unnecessary deaths compared to milder treatments. The justification for the lockdowns has since shifted to “reducing new cases”, with no regard for the actual danger they represent, or harmful effects of these measures.

• Unlimited lockdowns and compulsory masking mandates which bypass existing legal structures are historically unprecedented. To avoid cognitive dissonance, the general public assumes that the threat of COVID must be proportional to the extreme nature of these measures.

• Implementation of lockdowns was motivated by political posturing and misinformation, not evidence and public health. The word “science” has been taken to mean “government mandate”, and has been used to slander and suppress evidence-based narratives. The general public has neither the means nor the motivation to evaluate the scientific evidence, and must accept the declarations of non-scientist politicians and politicized scientists, whose voices are amplified by media outlets.

• Media outlets manipulated and distorted information to support a narrative of fear, dependency, and self-righteousness. As a result, polls show that people enormously overestimate their risk of dying from COVID.

• Numerous top experts (medical doctors, professors) have publicly spoken out against the dominant COVID narratives and the government responses to it. Even by conservative estimates, lockdowns caused more deaths than were attributed to COVID.

• COVID RT-PCR tests do not actually test against viral isolates, and despite their widespread use are not diagnostic tests, but laboratory tools for amplifying DNA fragments. Many scientists have severely criticized their use.

• COVID is, at most, a minor threat to the world population – and at least, a statistical abstraction. Unprecedented and politically influenced rules for recording COVID-positive deaths artificially inflated death rates. More than half of COVID deaths occurred in nursing homes, and nearly all COVID deaths occurred in people with several other major comorbidities. Healthy people are not at risk. The age distribution of COVID deaths is the same as the normal age distribution of deaths; most COVID deaths occurred in people over 65 years old.

• Actual causes of respiratory death in “COVID hotspots”, most significantly air pollution, have been extensively recorded in the scientific literature but are completely absent from media narratives and political consideration.

• Safe and highly effective treatments, including natural non-pharmaceutical interventions which have been published in scientific journals, have not been widely utilized.

• The “pandemic” is a combination of pre-existing conditions relabeled as COVID, recent increases in environmental causes of respiratory disease, excess deaths due to inappropriate treatments, and fear and expectation producing or intensifying the actual symptoms of “COVID”.

• Constantly reading, hearing about, and internalizing the dominant disempowering fear-based narrative has been demonstrated to produce the actual expected symptoms of the disease through the nocebo effect.

• Dispelling the fear and questioning the narrative actually saves lives, while masking, social distancing, and lockdowns do not, and contribute to the deterioration of physical, psychological, and economic health.

• If we are to actually promote health and regeneration in our communities and the world, we must promote narratives that are based in evidence and wisdom, and focus on creative solutions that address all of the interconnected challenges we face today.

References

1. Risks of COVID are vastly overstated

• ** Wodarg, Bhakdi & Ionnadis calculated true Infection Fatality Rates (IFR) from COVID to be 0.01% - much less than seasonal flu. The widely-repeated WHO statistic of 3.4% was inappropriately based on Case Fatality Rates (CFR), which do not reflect disease risk.


• **September 10: CDC reports updated Infection Fatality Rates (IFR) of 0.003% for ages 0-19, 0.02% for ages 20-49, 0.5% for ages 50-65, and 5.4% for ages 65+.


• Head of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergency Program estimates that 750 million people have been infected by SARS-CoV-2 – for a worst-case-scenario Infection Fatality Rate of 0.13%, similar to seasonal flu. The true Infection Fatality Rate is much lower.


• October 1: An estimated 1/3 or more of Kenya’s population have been infected, for an Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of 0.005%


• Study: “Population-level COVID-19 mortality risk for non-elderly individuals overall and for nonelderly individuals without underlying diseases in pandemic epicenters”. “People <65 years old without underlying predisposing conditions accounted for only 0.7-2.6% of all COVID-19 deaths.“


• September 2: CDC reports that 94% of deaths labeled COVID deaths had additional disease conditions; each COVID-positive or COVID-presumed death had an average of 2.6 additional co-morbidities.


• Anthony Fauci in January 2020: “In all the history of respiratory viruses of any type asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person. Even if there is a rare symptomatic transmission that may transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers.”


• Swedish study: 91% of COVID deaths had “extensive comorbidities”; remaining 9% had “moderate comorbidities”; COVID judged as direct cause of death in only 15% of COVID-positive deaths.


• In Canada, 78% of COVID deaths were nursing home residents, while 79% of deaths from all causes were nursing home residents.


• In Europe, half of COVID deaths were nursing home residents.


• UK deputy chief medical officer: COVID deaths are “COVID-associated” deaths, not deaths due to COVID.


• In many countries, any hospitalizations that ever tested positive for COVID (even prior to hospitalization) have been counted as “COVID hospitalizations”


• NYC funeral directors: “They’re putting everything as COVID-19, so they’re padding the numbers… If you don’t have a private doctor and you weren’t under any medical care, they’re automatically putting down on the death certificate COVID-19.” 


2. Renowned doctors and epidemiologists criticize the panic

• 12 experts questioning the coronavirus panic


• 10 more experts questioning the coronavirus panic


• 8 more experts questioning the coronavirus panic


• ANOTHER 10 experts questioning the coronavirus panic


• Open letter from Belgian doctors: “After the initial panic surrounding covid-19, the objective facts now show a completely different picture – there is no medical justification for any emergency policy anymore. The current crisis management has become totally disproportionate and causes more damage than it does any good.”


• There is no “second wave”, only healthy people testing positive, says director of University of Oxford’s Center for Evidence-Based Medicine


• “We are infectious disease experts. It's time to lift the COVID-19 lockdowns.”


• UK government scientific adviser: “Lockdown was a panic measure and I believe history will say trying to control Covid-19 through lockdown was a monumental mistake on a global scale… It was always a temporary measure that simply delayed the stage of the epidemic we see now.... “I believe the harm lockdown is doing to our education, health care access, and broader aspects of our economy and society will turn out to be at least as great as the harm done by Covid-19.”


• European political leaders & World Health Organization warn against reinstating lockdowns


3. SARS-CoV-2 has not been isolated, and RT-PCR tests are not appropriate diagnostic tools

• SARS-CoV-2 has not been isolated and purified.


• SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests do not test against actual viral isolates; according to the FDA, “no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV are currently available”. The tests use selected sequences of RNA which are assumed to be viral. The FDA also states that “This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.”


• Instruction manuals for COVID PCR tests themselves state that they are not intended to be used as diagnostic tests.



• The “E gene” used in the COVID PCR assays is not specific to the putative SARS-CoV-2; these assays react to to all Asian viruses




• RT-PCR testing is non-specific and was originally intended for research, not diagnosis


• Paper: “how likely is a second wave”? by former Chief Scientific Officer of Pfizer: nearly all positive PCR tests are false positives; apparent “second wave” in some countries is due to increased testing.


• New York Times: at least 70% of positive coronavirus tests are likely false positives


• Different PCR tests (there are at least 33) give different results for the same samples


4. “Flattening the curve” was unjustified

• Lockdowns were justified by the need to slow the rate of COVID infections requiring hospitalizations, so as not to exceed the capacity of ventilators in Intensive Care Units.

• Ventilators have a wide range of risks and long-term adverse effects, and most patients put on ventilators die. Ventilators inevitably damage the lungs, and require sedation and IV


• COVID mortality rates decreased as use of ventilators decreased:


• Ventilator overuse was due to fear of spreading virus, not successful patient outcomes


• Medicare pays hospitals 3x as much for patients who are put on ventilators.


• Hospitals were not full, but were much emptier than normal, and as a result, in some cases staff were laid off due to underutilization.



5. Lockdowns are entirely ineffective

• Sharp spike in excess mortality corresponds with government and institutional actions, and does not resemble infectious disease trends.


• Study: “Risk-benefit and cost-utility analysis for COVID-19 lockdown in Belgium: the impact on mental health and wellbeing”. Compared to Sweden (no lockdown, similar demographics) Belgian lockdown increased COVID deaths, non-COVID deaths, and psychological morbidity.


• Nicaragua did not instute lockdowns, curfews, or orders to mask and social distance – and had much lower COVID death rates than all other countries in central america. Life has continued almost completely unchanged.


• Argentina’s lockdown, the longest running and one of the most severe, failed to decrease covid-positive cases and deaths, while obliterating culture and economy


• Sweden, which had no lockdown, no masking, no social distancing mandates, had an infection fatality rate of less than 0.06%, and did not collapse its economy


• In US states, lockdowns did not produce the expected drop in cases.


• In Europe, strict lockdowns did not correlate with decreased mortality.


• Most people in the UK support strict lockdown measures; however, the majority do not actually follow those measures themselves.


6. Lockdowns are extremely harmful

• Even with very conservative estimates, US lockdown lead to more additional deaths than coronavirus


• Social isolation leads to decreased lifespan and increased susceptibility to disease


• 4.5 trillion in US government debt added in 2020


• Between 3/18 and 5/19, wealth of US billionaires increased by $434 billion


• CDC: over 25% of US young adults considered suicide during the pandemic. Over half are experiencing depression and anxiety.


• “A year’s worth of suicide attempts in 4 weeks”


• Months-long lockdown, masking, social distancing, and constant fear produces extreme psychological trauma in children


• Quarantine frequently results in post-traumatic stress disorder


7. Lockdowns were based on politics, not science

• Scientific study: Explaining the homogeneous diffusion of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions across heterogeneous countries. “Our findings show that, in times of severe crisis, governments follow the lead of others and base their decisions on what other countries do.” 80% of developed countries went into lockdown within 2 weeks of each other.


• Sweden’s top infectious disease expert says that lockdowns “not based on science”


•Politicians and public figures are invested in their response to COVID; once committed, they need to “stay the course” regardless of consequences in order to protect their reputations.


8. Mask-wearing is ineffective

• Numerous scientific studies have repeatedly shown that masking does not reduce risk of infection, and may actually increase it:


• Paper: “Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review”


• UK Deputy Chief Medical Officer says masks may actually increase infection risk:


• In Kansas, the 90 counties without mask requirements had lower infection rates than the 15 counties with mask requirements; Kansas health department tried to cover up the data.


• Study: 81% of health care workers who wear masks were found to develop mask-induced headaches.


9. The COVID computer models were extremely inaccurate

• Neil Ferguson’s computer model, referred to as the ICR model, predicted hundreds of thousands of deaths. It was the stated justification for the UK and US lockdowns, and as a result many of the other lockdowns around the world. It is now seen to have been highly unrealistic and inaccurate, based on false assumptions.


• UK and US lockdowns (and others) based on Neil Ferguson’s computer model, was never intended to last only 3 weeks, as initially claimed – models always assumed a 5+ month lockdown.


• Imperial College London model predicted 66,800 deaths in Belarus (which had no lockdown). The accepted death count is 813.


• Neil Ferguson resigned after being caught breaking his own lockdown to visit his lover


• Study: “Forecasting for COVID-19 has failed”: “When major decisions (e.g. draconian lockdowns) are based on forecasts, the harms (in terms of health, economy, and society at large) and the asymmetry of risks need to be approached in a holistic fashion, considering the totality of the evidence.”


• World Health Organization “COVID envoy” predicted 150,000,000 deaths from bird flu in 2005 – an overestimate of over 1,000,000x.


• Death rates are substantially overestimated due to unprecedented and unjustified recording of any postitive-testing fatality as a COVID death regardless of comorbidities.


10. Media sources distorted and exaggerated information

• Study: Coronavirus disease 2019: The harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures


• News broadcats use unrelated and staged video clips and photographs.



• Leaked emails: Nashville Department of Health and mayor’s office covered up low case numbers from bars and restaurants to justify lockdown.

• https://fox17.com/news/local/covid-19-emails-from-nashville-mayors-office-show-disturbing-revelation
 
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the 2nd largest funding source for the World Health Organization (after the US government). Many pharmaceutical companies are also substantial funders.


• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent $250,000,000 in the first half of 2020 shaping the media narrative by funding journalism:


• COVID vaccine trials are not designed to evaluate if the vaccines can prevent severe illness or death.


11. The public substantially overestimate their risks from COVID

• 92% of US COVID-positive deaths were more than 55 years old, less than 1% were under 34 years old; but americans overestimate the relative fatality risk of young people by over 30x.


• Poll: Younger Americans estimate their risk of COVID fatality as even higher than do older americans, even though their risk is extremely small.


12. Nocebo effect: Fear as a cause of COVID symptoms

• The nocebo effect (meaning “will harm”) is the opposite of the placebo effect (meaning “will please”). Study participants receiving an inert drug commonly experience adverse effects, sometimes severe and life-threatening, entirely due to their expectation. Mental state influences all aspects of physiology, biochemistry, and health.



• Case report: Young adult who tested negative for COVID psycho-somatically induced COVID symptoms due to fear of the disease.


• Study: cancer patients given an inert drug (placebo) experienced a number of psychosomatic adverse effects, including cough and fatigue – two of the three characteristic symptoms of “COVID”


• Fear and obsession around COVID contributes to producing the expected symptoms


13. Non-viral causes of COVID symptoms

• Non-viral causes are scientifically demonstrated yet overlooked in public discourse – for example, Air pollution

• All of the “hotspots” of covid deaths are areas of extreme pollution; air pollution is extremely strongly correlated with covid-positive death rate, especially particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide levels



• Air pollution correlated with case fatality rate in china in the first SARS


• Decreased emissions due to lockdown did not substantially decrease high air pollution levels


14. Effective treatments exist: Vitamin D

• Review: Low Vitamin D Worsens COVID-19 Risk: “The data available so far is consistent with the possibility that a large fraction or even majority of severe cases (especially in the young) would not have been severe if vitamin D levels had been adequate.”


• Study: Low serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) levels in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 are associated with greater disease severity: results of a local audit of practice. “patients requiring ITU admission were more frequently vitamin D deficient than those managed on medical wards, despite being significantly younger”.


• Study: Calcitriol, the active form of vitamin D, is a promising candidate for COVID-19 prophylaxis’. “We show for the first time that the active form of Vitamin D, calcitriol, exhibits significant potent activity against SARS-CoV-2.”


• Spanish randomized controlled study: high-dose vitamin D treatment decreased COVID ICU admissions by 96%


• Chinese study: Vitamin D, magnesium, & vitamin B12 administration decreased need for oxygen therapy by 87%, ICU admission by 80%


• Iranian study: bromhexine treatment decreased COVID ICU admissions by 82%, intubations by 89%, and deaths by 100%


• Other successful treatments:


15. Lockdowns have been legally challenged (US)

• September 15: US federal judge rules lockdowns unconstitutional: “There is no question that this Country has faced, and will face, emergencies of every sort. .. The Constitution cannot accept the concept of a “new normal” where the basic liberties of the people can be subordinated to open-ended emergency mitigation measures.”


• September 29: Tennessee governor ends all restrictions on gatherings and businesses


• September 25: Florida governor ends all statewide COVID-related restrictions.


P.S. COVID is an acronym for CoronaVIrus Disease – however, as it is now being spoken as a word, its etymology is illuminating:

Co (from latin kom, “together”) + Vid (imperative form of latin videre, “see”) = Together, see!

May we see (the truth) together!

Thank you dear Ekahi Aloha Dale Michaels
 

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