The Covid story is not about a single public health event run by a few individuals. It is not a consequence of any one country’s internal politics. It is, I believe, a precautionary chapter in a much larger global saga.
Global Convergence and the Coronavirus Trigger Continue Reading
Outbreaks do occur and we should monitor and prepare for them. However, we have allowed the development of a system where outbreaks are almost all that matter. Perceptions of risk, and resultant funding, have become grossly disproportionate to reality. The perverse incentives driving this are obvious, as are the harms. The world will be increasingly unequal and impoverished, and sick, building on the outcomes of the Covid response. Fear promotes profit better than calmness and context. It is on us to remain calm and continually educate ourselves regarding context. No one will sell these to us.
Bird Flu, Fear, and Perverse Incentives Continue Reading
The ludicrous stupidity of vaccine passports for a rapidly mutating respiratory virus is patently clear for anyone with either awareness of the history of public health and epidemiology, or who is a primary care physician and understands the limits of vaccines – particularly for patients with complex chronic health conditions. Everyone is different. Everyone responds differently to both viruses and medication.
New Zealand’s International Travel Vaccination Certificate: A Ponzi Scheme? Continue Reading
Pandemics will happen. The world will benefit from an international health organization that can help coordinate rational responses, whilst also assisting in managing other public health priorities. The WHO risks making the latter worse by abandoning a robust evidence-based approach.
WHO’s New Pandemic Approach: Expediency over Evidence? Continue Reading
So long as it wants to remain on the EU market, Twitter cannot say no to the demands of the European Commission. The enforcement mechanism that renders the Code of Practice obligatory is the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA gives the European Commission power to impose fines of up to 6% percent of global turnover on platforms that it finds to be in violation of the Code: n.b. global turnover, not just turnover on the EU market!
The EU Files: What Elon Musk Is Not Telling You About Twitter Censorship Continue Reading
So, rather than arguing over the fine print in these pandemic agreements, we first must make an obvious and fundamental decision. Is the intent of all this to live longer, more equitably, and healthily? Or is it to grow the pharmaceutical sector of wealthy countries? We cannot do both, and we are currently set up to support Pharma. It will take a lot of unraveling, and rethink on conflict-of-interest rules, to make this a public health program. It probably comes down to who makes decisions, and whether they want an egalitarian society or a more traditional feudalistic and colonialist approach. This is the real question to be addressed in Geneva.
Pandemics: The Healthcare Dilemma of Our Time Continue Reading
One way or another, the ancient policy of “lockdown” in response to an outbreak thus came full circle. Having been thoroughly discredited as counterproductive by 20th-century epidemiological research, this medieval policy of lockdown (封锁) was kept alive in China
The Deeper History of ‘Social Distancing’ — the Western Term for Lockdown (封锁) Continue Reading
Lockdown skepticism was foresight. Thus the prevailing uncertainty and lack of knowledge doesn’t wash with the benefit of hindsight. Professing ignorance now cannot excuse the brutality and severity of pandemic measures.
Are Lockdown Zealots Incapable of Introspection? Continue Reading
We approach the third year and people have forgotten that all the harms of lockdowns were strongly warned about by many voices in many venues. In addition, the virus was much better understood back then and openly discussed. We knew for certain that the panic and fear were being wildly overblown.
What We Knew In the Early Days Continue Reading
The free world is stuck tallying the costs of its catastrophic foray into totalitarianism. Most of these costs were predicted well before the policies were ever implemented. Hundreds of millions have gone hungry. An entire generation of children has been abused and traumatized. Young people were robbed of some of their brightest years. Small businesses and those who depended on them lost their livelihoods. Trillions of dollars were transferred from the world’s poorest to its very richest.
We Need Truth and Justice Continue Reading
