Coronavirus Crisis: Main Thread

[alloneword]

Pantodemic. The show must go on.

[stickdog99]

LOL that all of the stuff below are concepts that I teach my students daily.

COVID, Politics and Psychology: The whole world has gone nuts, clinically-speaking, in this age of COVID. How and why?



The whole world has gone nuts, clinically-speaking, in this age of COVID. What was it that was going on inside people’s heads that has made almost everyone shut themselves up at home, wear germy rags over their mouths, keep their kids out of school, sanitise until their hands bleed, hoard toilet paper, queue for hours to take a meaningless test to see if they have the coronadoom, demand Novak Djokovic’s head on a pike, salivate at the prospect of booster upon booster of an experimental, liability-free, gene-therapy product from the corporate suits of Big Pharma and all the rest of the bizarre behaviour and superstitious ‘safety’ rituals we have had to endure for two years of unrelenting virus hysteria?

The What, When, Who and How of the Great COVID Panic will be pawed over by historians, political scientists and moral philosophers for decades to come, but the ‘Why’ of it all is the crux. Why did our COVID overlords do what they did? And why did so many of us go along with it all? To answer that, we need psychology, the science of human behaviour, to work out the ‘Why’ of it all and how to prevent such a destructive madness ever happening again.

Psychology classics from the research vaults

The 1951 Asch Conformity Experiments were conducted by the American social psychologist, Solomon Asch, to test the degree to which people would adjust their perceptions of reality based on the need to not stand out from the crowd, even when they know the crowd to be wrong.

When experimental subjects, alone in a room, were asked to estimate which of three different lines was closest in length to a comparison line, 99 per cent made the correct judgement, but when placed in a room with other subjects, all confederates of the experimenter and instructed to deliberately give the wrong answer, the experimental subjects could be persuaded to go with the peer flow and give the wrong answer. This happened just over a third (37 per cent) of the time, either because the subjects doubted their own eyes and thought they must be wrong (called ‘informational conformity’ by Asch) or because, even though they knew their perception was right, they nevertheless wanted to avoid group disapproval and social discomfort (‘normative conformity’).

Six decades later, and the majority view that we have been faced with a viral ‘destroyer of worlds’ holds social sway, including over many of those who have secret doubts about just how deadly the virus really is but who, for the sake of social harmony, go along with the majority view and pitch in with compliance to the ineffective and damaging lockdown/mask/vaxx-mandate theatrics. Asch showed that it is sometimes just easier for many people to live a popular lie than to go out on the lonely limb of truth.

In better (but often overlooked) news, however, Asch found that when his subjects were paired with another subject who was not in on the set-up, conformity in face of the objective evidence dropped from 37 per cent to just 5 per cent. When group unanimity is punctured by even one other reality-based human, the power of the group to enforce conformity is fatally compromised. This is basic social psychology – there is strength in numbers, for the COVID dissidents as much as for the COVID regime.

What we can take away from the Asch conformity experiments is that if everyone else is fearing viral Armageddon and seeking salvation through ‘social distancing’, they could just be wrong and you should trust your own senses, verify them by reading outside the permitted boundaries of thought and make connections with other people who still recognise truth when they see it.

So, stick to your guns – and dig out that old Kipling poem, ‘If’ with its opening lines:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you…

Don’t be afraid of what others might think of you for going against the COVID grain – follow Epictetus:

Who are these people whose admiration you seek? Aren’t they the ones you are used to describing as mad? Well, then, is that what you want – to be admired by lunatics?

Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Experiment

The 1961 Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority experiment shows that ordinary people can be persuaded into following unethical orders if they believe the commands are from a legitimate authority.

Milgram’s subjects were told they would be helping with research to see how learning can be affected by punishment (administering mild electric shocks of increasing strength) to a man (an actor simulating increasingly distressed protests) in another room whenever he gives a wrong answer to a learning task administered by the subject. A frighteningly large percentage (50 per cent – 65per cent) of subjects were found to obey authority (the white-coated experimenter in overall charge) all the way, even if this conflicted with the subject’s conscience.

Sixty years later, and the combined authorities of government, health officialdom, the medical profession and the lamestream media have found it child’s play to make people obey orders to stay home, stay apart, lose their jobs, wear masks everywhere, dob in rule-breakers, cheer on a militarised police and take an experimental drug that may harm you.

There was, however, one ray of hope from a very dark experiment: 35 per cent to 50 per cent of subjects will bail from the obedience experiment if it crosses an ethical line-in-the-sand.

One of the independently minded subjects, a Dutchman called Jan Rensaleer, put it this way after refusing to zap the actor ‘guinea pig’ with 255 volts:

I do have a choice. Why don’t I have a choice? I came here on my own free will. I thought I could help in a research project. But if I have to hurt somebody to do that, or if I was in his place, too, I wouldn’t stay there. I can’t continue. I’m very sorry. I think I’ve gone too far already, probably.

For COVID, that point may be a business bankruptcy, a school closure, a no-jab-no-job vaxx mandate, a discriminatory vaxx passport, the vaxxing of children, one booster mandate too many, or some other authoritarian aspect of medico-political tyranny. Lots of us do have our hill to die on in rebelling against silly and cruel rules.

Conditioning

In Classical Conditioning, as accidentally discovered by the Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, a dog will salivate at the ringing of a bell alone if the bell had on earlier occasions been rung in the presence of food. In Operant Conditioning, B.F. Skinner found that hungry rats who discover pressing a lever causes food to drop into a feeding tray will learn to press the lever to produce food; or, if touching the lever produces an electric shock, they will learn to avoid pressing it. Generations of amateur psychologists (parents and teachers in other words) have confirmed that behavior rewarded (positive reinforcement) will likely be repeated and behaviour punished will be less likely to be repeated (negative reinforcement).

Under COVID, we have been conditioned by a professional fear campaign to expect pandemic ‘restrictions’. The monomaniacal focus on ‘cases’, hospitalisations, ICU use and deaths (with or from COVID – who knows?), all of which are metrics utterly detached from any actual health crisis caused by this virus de jeur, is the ringing bell that, simply by association, conditions us, including the Expert Class of bell-ringers, to the learned response of going into lockdown or a mask mandate or border-shutting or booster-time. Getting jabbed is the behavioural lever to press for reward (being allowed to board the vaxxed-only cruiseship, or going to the library, or being allowed to buy shoes). Social exclusion and unemployment are the electric shocks for not getting jabbed.

Conditioning overlaps with the related psychological concept of habituation which is defined as the process of growing accustomed to a situation or stimulus following repeated exposure to the stimulus. One lockdown begets more of them. One unwanted jab begets a second, and a third. Complying with every absurd, illogical and authoritarian COVID ‘rule’ gets us used to ever more extensive loss of freedoms. What would have once been rejected as barmy and harmful and un-Australian (masking, suspending the economy, coerced medical experimentation, cancelling crowds at the footy) becomes normalised the more we are exposed to it.

The science going on with the whole behavioural angle to COVID restrictions is nothing to do with virology or immunology or public health but is all about the science of psychology – using fear to condition people to follow oppressive rules, which are a daily moving feast of illogicality and complexity, a deliberate psychological ploy to downgrade people to unthinking sheeple.

Stockholm Syndrome

People’s behaviour under the COVID regime calls to mind Stockholm Syndrome, the psychological condition in which hostages develop an empathetic bond with their captors. It got its name after four hostages who were taken during a bank robbery in Sweden in 1974 wound up developing positive feelings towards their captors to the extent of refusing to testify against them.

Today, the COVID captors who have stolen two years of our lives, who have stolen our liberty (to work, trade, travel, decide what goes into our body), are held in fond regard by dismayingly large percentages of the captive population who often reward them with landslide-election-winning majorities for ‘keeping us safe’ with their toxic kindness.

We should learn from Stockholm Syndrome not to get too chummy with our captors. Do not withhold your moral judgement from those who would do you harm even with the best of intentions.

‘Escalation of Commitment’

The psychological phenomenon of ‘escalation of commitment’ (comparable to what military strategists call ‘mission creep’ and what economists call the ‘sunk cost fallacy’) has manifested itself in the two-year journey from ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ to medical apartheid, the sacking of unjabbed workers and ‘national conversations’ about mandatory universal vaccination.

Those with this psychological condition can’t bring themselves to cut and run from their futile ‘war against the virus’ because so much of themselves has been invested in their past actions that to simply skedaddle would be to admit that their objective (of ‘Zero COVID’, or ‘beating the virus’, or somehow deflecting a virus for the first time in humanity’s coexistence from its predetermined path) had been a bizarre politically-driven fantasy from the start and their panicky policy response both useless and damaging. Instead, they are forced to double- and triple-down on failed policies rather than admit to failure and the waste of the significant sacrifice already incurred for no benefit.

Sex Differences

Although the popular perception of COVID as a monster demographic cull is way off target, women have been found to be much more prone to exaggerate its deadliness. The opinion pollster, Kekst CNC, found that, in Europe in July 2020, the mean respondent estimate of the percentage of the total population believed to have been killed by the virus was 5 and 7 per cent whilst a stellar 9 per cent of all Americans (a staggering 30 million or so) were thought by the average American to have died because of COVID. These gross overestimates by the general public are some fifty to a hundred times higher than the actual death toll of 0.2 per cent of the total population (and substantially less than 0.2 per cent, given that official statistics methodologically inflate the real death toll by including the ‘died withs’ as well as ‘died froms’ in the COVID bodycount). Australia is truly off-the-wall hysterical — the average Australian believes the virus, if contracted, confers a 38 per cent death rate which is some 25,000 per cent higher than the actual overall Infection Fatality Rate of 0.15 per cent.

Whilst the perception and reality of the virus’ fatality rate are on different planets, the estimates by women and men are in different galaxies. The survey found that women in the UK, for example, on average, rated the COVID cull at a catastrophic 10 per cent of the total population, which was some three times higher than the mean estimate by British men.

Perhaps the sex difference in the perceived virulence of the virus is due to the more ‘caring’, ‘nurturing’ and ‘protective’ nature of women vis-à-vis men. Perhaps the psychological make-up of women sees them more likely to catastrophise and seek safety-first-ism.

Despite male Chief Health Officers in Australia being quite capable of calamitous overreaction (Victoria’s Brett Sutton must surely take the cake for that), having a woman as a CHO (as Queensland did, and as NSW and South Australia still do) may really be loading the dice against proportionality in response to the virus.

Personality Traits

Some personality traits seems to influence whether one is more likely to be a sceptic/opponent of orthodox COVIDpolicy or to be a supporter/conformist. These are:

‘Conscientiousness’

Otherwise known as ‘conformism’ and ‘agreeableness’ (the tendency of individuals to follow ‘socially prescribed norms’) have good explanatory power for predicting personal differences in adherence to lockdown and ‘social distancing’ guidelines. Conformists will be dutifully compliant, the norm-breakers much less so. Note, in passing, how the progressive-leaning discipline of psychology linguistically frames something with potentially negative connotations (conforming to authority and the herd) as a positive characteristic (‘conscientiousness’, ‘agreeableness’).

Neuroticism

People who score higher on ‘neuroticism’ tend to be more fearful of danger and disease and are easy prey for the panic-peddlers. The neurotics can be readily spotted ostentatiously wiping down supermarket trolley handles, sanitising everything in sight, waiting outside a store until customer numbers drop below the magic allowed limit, wearing their mask over mouth and nose all the time, religiously signing-in to shops, self-quarantining to the letter of the rules, and getting quite agitated about anyone in their vicinity who flouts peremptory ‘Stand There. Don’t Sit Here’ signage.

Extraversion

Extraverts are more sociable and outgoing and are therefore less likely to follow ‘social distancing’ guidelines including staying at home during lockdown, avoiding crowds, etc. Extraversion is associated with more (allegedly) risky health behaviors (like going to a pub, or shaking hands instead of elbow-bumping) and it also correlates with lower germaphobia. Introverts, by contrast, are more psychologically predisposed to comply with fear-driven adherence to ‘staying apart’.

Personality disorders

Homo Covidus has emerged during the ‘pandemic’ with such an extensive catalogue of defective personality disorders that a total product recall would be in order if this new species were a car. So much of Homo Covidus fits to a tee the Mayo Clinic definition of a personality disorder as a

type of mental disorder in which you have a rigid and unhealthy pattern of thinking, functioning and behaving. You may not realize that you have a personality disorder because your way of thinking and behaving seems natural to you. And you may blame others for the challenges you face.

Homo Covidus has a closed mind which holds unscientific and utterly dogmatic beliefs about COVID and its management whilst regarding their own self as completely normal in contrast to what they portray as the ‘COVID-denying’, ‘anti-vaxxing’ loonies with ‘far-right’ political tendencies who are responsible for keeping us in our COVID mess.

There are three main groups of personality disorder – and all are on full display in Homo Covidus.

Cluster A personality disorders

These are characterized by “odd, eccentric thinking or behaviour”: stand-up-mask-on/sit-down-mask-off at an eatery; footpath-swerving to avoid other people; vaccine passports to protect the protected from the unprotected (nope, still don’t know how that one works). There is “unjustified belief that others are trying to harm or deceive you (the non-maskers, the non-testers, the huggers, the jab-free, the purveyors of ‘misinformation’ from the fetid depths of the uncensored Internet). There is a profound level of “magical thinking” whereby the sufferer believes their thoughts and wishes can affect reality (the entire voodoo science of lockdowns and other placebo-like ‘restrictions’).

Cluster B personality disorders

These disorders are characterised by “dramatic, overly emotional or unpredictable thinking or behaviour”. This can be seen in our COVID decision-makers such as Mad Dog Michael Gunner, the Northern Territory Labor Chief Minister with his globally-trending, bug-eyed rant against the unvaxxed and against even the vaxxed who oppose vaccine mandates. Other noteworthy performances have been distressingly frequent by most state premiers and their CHOs when in front of the cameras to announce the latest strictures for the compliant and fatwas against the disobedient.

The clinical symptoms of Cluster B personality disorders include:

♦ ‘Antisocial personality disorder’ which, as the Commonwealth Department of Health elaborates on its website, “may cause a disregard for the law or for the rights of others, with a lack of remorse, including lying and stealing, aggression, violence or illegal behaviour”. I bet the then-Department Secretary, Jane Halton, who has been integral to the federal bureaucracy’s promotion of Covid-fear/vaxx-mania, had no idea that it would be her Prime Minister, every state Premier, every Territory Chief Minister and every CHO/CMO that would turn out to be the exemplars of the anti-democratic abusers of civil liberties whose people-hating craziness has ruined the lives of Australians so effectively.

♦ ‘Histrionic personality disorder’. People with this disorder are highly emotional and dramatic, and have an excessive need for attention and approval, as any COVID official at the press conference podium demonstrates. You would think these amateur hams are all NIDA graduates with their portentous tone, stern visages and melodramatic flourishes when lecturing us about their latest derangee Covid imposition or threat. To maintain faith in their pronouncements, best to forget the South Australian CMO’s advice that AFL footballs and pizza boxes represent potentially mortal threats.

♦ ‘Narcissistic personality disorder’. This is characterised by “persistent grandiosity, an excessive need for admiration and recognition, and a personal disdain and lack of empathy for other people”. A person with this disorder displays “arrogance and a distorted sense of personal superiority, and seeks to establish abusive power and control over others”. Hmmm …. inflated self-importance, disregard for others and grandiose proclamations about ‘keeping us all safe’ – I wonder who that might describe (pick a premier, any premier, or a CHO, any CHO). We really have been cursed with appalling health officials who can’t see how screwy they really are.

Cluster C personality disorders

Cluster C personality disorders are more common amongst the indoctrinated foot-soldiers of the COVID cult. These disorders are characterised by “anxious, fearful thinking or behaviour” and their manifestations include ‘avoidant personality disorder’ (the fear of other people, who are seen as dangerous virus vectors, especially the unvaxxed), ‘dependent personality disorder’ (waiting on every fresh instruction from wise health bureaucrats or media talking heads), and ‘obsessive-compulsive disorder’ or OCD, which could just as aptly be described as ‘Obsessive COVID Disorder’ what with all the fanaticism of ‘germ avoidance’ such as the miraculous, made-up rule of ‘1.5 metres apart’ and all the other pseudoscientific hygiene theatre, all of which is as useless as politicians who, privately, know the COVID mania not merely follows but gallops down the path of folly eyen as they publicly tug the forelock and urge all to submit.

That’s it for today’s installment. Tomorrow, in Part II, we’ll take a look at, among other things, the difference between authoritarians of the Left and Right. Stay tuned.

[stickdog99]

https://dailysceptic.org/why-werent-the ... scientist/

Why Weren’t These Vaccines Put Through the Proper Safety Trials For Gene Technology, Asks a Former Pharmaceutical Research Scientist

...

So it was that in 1980 I transitioned into pharmaceutical development and became Director of Safety Evaluation of the newly named Beecham Pharmaceuticals. This grand title – again reflecting the emphasis on safety – at ground level meant managing the toxicology and metabolism/pharmacokinetic departments for a decade. Though a raft of safety studies had been agreed to try to guarantee safety, how was it possible to trust the industry to do these studies in strict accordance with the Government regulatory guidelines? Thus, the implementation of formal inspections by the Government regulatory authorities to monitor Good Laboratory Practice (GLP), Good Clinical Practice (GCP) and Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP). No stone would be unturned during these inspections, and I recall now the many sleepless nights mentally wrestling with the inspectorate from the USA Federal Drug Agency and the U.K. Safety of Medicines Department – now called the MHRA (Medicines Health Regulatory Authority). However, it must be said that though there was most certainly, and rightly, an adversarial atmosphere, there was always a recognition that the joint goal was to provide effective medicines that were safe.

With this background, we come to December 2020, when, under emergency measures, ‘vaccines’ still in the experimental phase of development were rolled out with much fanfare to immunise the vulnerable population against the new viral disease of COVID-19. The disease, caused by a coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2, had and was still wreaking havoc across the globe – originating in China in late 2019. So, in a matter of weeks and months rather than years and decades, a new drug was being administered to healthy – albeit elderly and or infirm – human beings, to protect (immunise) them should they ever become infected with the virus. If this was something of a surprise, there was also the knowledge that previous attempts to discover effective and safe vaccines against earlier strains of this type of virus, namely SARS-1 and MERS, had failed. Furthermore, historically, coronaviruses in general had not proven to be amenable to conventional vaccine technology.

What then was the explanation for this amazing breakthrough at just the very time it was needed? And it was needed big-time, because an unprecedented strategy of locking up the whole population had been taken by public health and governments all around the world, rather surprisingly, all at about the same time, to deal with the pandemic. The only way out was to vaccinate the whole population – not just the old and infirm as we were first told – with a vaccine that was going to be – had to be – very safe and effective. The answer to their prayers was gene technology. Mention gene technology in former times in connection with growing crops more efficiently and eating the food derived from these crops you would have received a bloody nose from the natural food activists. Why not now? Were we told? Were we asleep? Were we all in awe of the hyperbole of Boris et al surrounding the brilliance of British – notably Oxford University – research? Just let’s call it a vaccine – everyone knows how safe they are. Conflating brand new and untried technology with safe and reliable traditional concepts – no problem!

But there is a problem. The old concepts of dead or attenuated viruses as vaccines – classical vaccine technology – we have had decades of experience both in their biology and manufacture. Annually the general population are offered ‘flu vaccines – few are concerned about their safety, and rightly. Not too much concern either as to their efficacy, but who cares if they are safe. Surely these new ‘vaccines’ can be considered in a similar manner? No, I am afraid not. These new gene-based ‘vaccines’ are working in a completely novel way – nothing remotely resembling that of traditional vaccines. Given that pharmaceutical companies work competitively it was also somewhat of a surprise they took the same approach of targeting what has been termed the ‘spike protein’ of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This protein is nasty – sometimes being referred to as a ‘pathogenic protein’ – and is recognised as causing many of the awful pathologies associated with the disease of COVID-19. Logically you would inactivate or at least attenuate this nasty spike protein and develop a vaccine around the attenuated virus. But that’s not what was done.

These ‘vaccines’ do not contain any of the offending virus at all but rather the gene sequence that causes the nasty spike protein to be made in the body. We have little idea how much of this nasty protein is produced or for how long it lasts after an injection of the gene sequence. Furthermore, stimulating the body’s own complex biological systems to produce the spike protein will mean that the amount of protein produced will vary from person to person. The idea is that the spike protein produced by the gene encoding it elicits a response by our immune system to produce antibodies directed against the spike. When the wild virus comes along and infects us the antibodies recognise the spike protein and attack it thus preventing its nasty effects. And it does, though as we have since learnt this approach isn’t very good at preventing infection or stopping its transmission. Are we perhaps clutching at straws too in claiming that these ‘vaccines’ are preventing serious disease and death? Have we not learnt anything over the past two years in treating Covid symptoms with conventional therapeutic drugs? It is now known the beneficial effects on antibody production wane after a few weeks and months and there is a need for booster injections – how many per annum? Consequently, they surely cannot be anything like the scientific and medical success that is being claimed by the politicians and the mainstream media. A fantastic rollout maybe, but of a second-rate ‘vaccine’. Back to the drawing board chaps. The Pfizer CEO promises a new ‘vaccine’ tackling the Omicron variant in March. Sounds good but too late and pointless.

Now to the important question as to safety of this new class of ‘vaccines’, which are still in their experimental phase of development. The experiment will in fact not finish until 2023. If the ‘vaccines’ are of limited efficacy their safety profile must be as near perfect as any medicine can be since they are being given to healthy people who might become infected. Based on the strategy outlined above you would predict that the spike protein being produced by the gene-based ‘vaccine’ as having a toxicology profile not dissimilar to what is seen when infected by the virus. And indeed, that’s just what the data tell us.

The side-effect reporting systems in the USA and U.K. show unequivocally that these “vaccines” are an order of magnitude greater of adverse effects than conventional vaccines. Qualitatively the side effect profile is consistent with what we might expect from our knowledge of the biological (pharmacology and toxicology) properties of the spike protein. To claim that the side effects are rare and mild is highly misleading. They are indeed what one might expect to see in sensitive patients. Then there is the crucial question of what we cannot possibly know at this point – that is of their long-term safety. Again, there are good scientific reasons why these injections might interfere with other vital body systems. It is not good enough to dismiss them as theoretical scaremongering. It is down to the manufacturer and regulatory authorities to address these issues experimentally and to demonstrate there are no reasons to be concerned. In my view, all the regulatory authorities around the world, including our own MHRA, have failed the general public who would expect that they question every aspect of the safety of medicines, especially when it comes down to the assessment of medicines designed not to treat disease but to prevent disease in otherwise healthy people. When it comes to safety it is surely unacceptable to hide behind ’emergency powers’ of Government and indemnifying the manufacturer from causing harm. To all intents and purposes, it looks like a collusion of the Government regulators and the pharmaceutical industry – far removed from the gamekeeper-poacher relationship that I described earlier. Any legal action bought by the public against the MHRA and other regulatory bodies for negligence in conducting their statutory duties would surely be hard to deny.

It seems to me that the regulatory authorities may have considered this new class of medicine as a vaccine and followed the toxicology guidelines for conventional vaccines. But as discussed above, they are not vaccines in the conventional sense. They are injections of a laboratory synthesised gene sequence – what in previous decades we would have called a new chemical entity (NCE). Furthermore, they are being given, not as a single dose, but because of their limited efficacy as repeated injections – called boosters. On the hoof, it seems, it is decided that extra doses must be given. How can this possibly be unless supported by the appropriate safety studies? And how convenient for the worldwide authorities regulating the approval of new medicines that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the USA modified the definitions of vaccine and vaccination – to allow for the new “ways in which vaccines can be administered” – to embrace this new technology that would be previously classed as an NCE. Sorry, but simply changing the definition of the term vaccine to fit the properties of these novel injections doesn’t obviate the need to conduct the appropriate studies by which their safety can properly be assessed. That is why I use the term vaccine in quotation marks or simply describe them as injections.

So how would I design a package of studies to assess the safety of these novel ‘vaccines’?

Here is a list of preclinical toxicology studies that in my view should have been performed before regulatory authorities gave their approval to the licensing of these novel therapies under the Government emergency powers:

Acute toxicity assessment in rodents and possibly pigs to assess the local and intramuscular irritancy. The pig is a very good model for assessing human muscle irritancy.

A 14 day repeat-dose study in two animal species at three different dose levels of the active moiety i.e., the spike protein. The objective of these studies would be to achieve a no effect dose level and to identify those organs in the body that would be adversely affected at high doses. In other words, establish the potential target organs of toxicity in the clinical setting.

Pharmacology studies in appropriate animal species to establish any possible adverse effects on the normal functioning of the body vital organs. Emphasis being paid on the cardiovascular and blood systems as these had been clearly established as targets of the SARS-CoV-2 virus through the spike protein and its known attachment to angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors in exerting its pathological effects.

Pharmacokinetic studies to establish the distribution of the gene sequence to other parts of the body following intramuscular injection of the gene sequence and the concentrations of spike protein in the blood after intramuscular injection.

These would have been the minimum of studies carried out prior to any trials in humans. The data from these studies would determine whether there was a sufficient margin of difference between the dose giving rise to the beneficial immunogenic effect and that causing any adverse effects to justify proceeding with clinical trials. In other words, determine the ‘therapeutic ratio’. As discussed above, this ratio would need to be high considering the medicine would be given to healthy people not patients with disease, when the ratio can be much smaller. These early studies defining the general toxicity of the gene sequence/spike protein would be run concurrently with studies to examine possible adverse effects on genes and chromosomes and on reproductive systems, to examine the potential to adversely affect fertility and embryonic and post-natal development. Since what is being considered is a completely novel approach to stimulating the immune system – recognised in the change in definition of the word vaccine – a systematic study of the potential toxicity on the immune system should have also been carried out. It is not at all clear whether any studies in animals were conducted to examine the potential for carcinogenic, reproductive or immune function toxicities. If these studies have been done we need to know about them.

When any medicine is given approval, the regulatory authority is required to publish the SBA – the Summary of the Basis of Approval – in which all the studies leading to the approval are listed and the main findings from them summarised. An expert report summarising all this data must be prepared. However, under the emergency laws surrounding the pandemic, these new injections were not approved but licensed as experimental medicines so there is no transparency as to the regulatory toxicology studies conducted. All I know of is a pharmacokinetic study submitted to the Japanese regulatory authority in animals which showed that the injected gene sequence encoding for the spike protein was distributed quite widely and well beyond just the immune system at which it was targeted. Quite understandably this has led to more questions than answers with regard to the functional and possible pathogenic outcomes from the presence of the injected gene sequence in other organs such as the ovaries.

There is the possibility that this new class of medicines were classed by the regulatory authorities as conventional vaccines and didn’t undergo the preclinical testing (such as described above) required of new chemical entities. If so, this can only be classed as a huge error of judgement by the Government regulators. I can quite appreciate any legal challenge being made against them. Considering the precautionary principle that has characterised Government actions regarding non- pharmaceutical interventions, the contrast to their approach to this new gene technology is striking. At best, it might be characterised as cavalier, but more bluntly the phrase ‘fast and loose’ comes to mind. But of course, Governments were in a very deep hole and one growing deeper as they doubled-down on the precautionary principles of non-pharmaceutical interventions. Nothing now could be allowed to detract from the narrative of the brilliance of the British scientists in discovering these new medicine, nor the huge accolades heaped on the NHS and the Government for the logistics of rolling them out. But it must be recognised as being a huge gamble. Unfortunately, we will never know whether it is a gamble that has paid off. Considering what we know about the life-cycle of viruses generally and their well-established properties of greater contagion but weakening of their virulency over time as they mutate, it’s not clear to me how much of a real benefit these novel ‘vaccines’ have been. The clinical Phase 3 studies which began as randomised controlled trials have now been unblinded – there is now no control/placebo group. There will be no way of knowing from empirical data whether these ‘vaccines’ have been effective when the trials complete in 2023. And then again there seems to be no consideration being given to the collateral damage caused by the non-pharmaceutical or the side-effects caused by the ‘vaccines’. It’s not difficult to claim success when one chooses to consider just one side of the equation.

‘Get your booster today’ scream the full-page adverts. There was a time when advertising standards and the law forbade direct advertising of prescription medicines to the consumer – but we are now being told, without any semblance of any doubt or provision of the evidence, that “at least one hundred thousand lives have been saved by the vaccines”. Yet how was it that in the summer of 2020 deaths from or with COVID-19 fell to near zero? Such was the optimism that we were given financial encouragement to ‘eat out to help out’ and not a ‘vaccine’ in sight, let alone anyone injected. That’s not to say virologists had thought the virus had disappeared – respiratory viruses don’t and true to form this one didn’t either. There are fundamental principles of virology – this virus has a self-limiting life cycle, just like all others. That’s how they evolve and survive.

The recognised father of toxicology is the 16th century Swiss physician Paracelsus who famously said: “Solely the dose determines that a thing is not a poison.” He was of course referring to medicines.

No one can yet tell me what the dose is of the active moiety generated in the body by these gene-based ‘vaccines’. If we don’t know the dose, how can we possibly judge the efficacy and importantly the safety of these ‘vaccines’? Is not a degree of hesitancy by some people who are aware of these circumstances completely understandable? NHS frontline staff for example. This is especially so when we have known almost from the start of the pandemic that the risks of serious illness and death is highly stratified according to age and health status.

I have only been addressing the issue of assessing the safety of the gene-based injections which produces the active moiety – the spike protein. The formulation – particularly other constituents of the injection – and manufacture of these injections are other subjects outside my competence to discuss. However, it seems there are also real issues that need to be addressed in these areas. Where are the regulatory authorities in ensuring the principles of good manufacturing practice? The early Phase 2 clinical trials from Pfizer, which led to their emergency approval, have also been subject to very serious criticism. One is left wondering how well the principles of GMP, GCP and GLP have been followed and monitored by the independent regulators.

Overall, to the eye of a professional pharmaceutical drug development scientist, it all looks like the proverbial dog’s breakfast!

In 1990 I returned to the Research side – drug discovery. Biological sciences had undergone a revolution in the 1980s and molecular biology, genetics, proteomics, combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening were now poised to make a major impact on the drug discovery process. I was wary. More than once I expressed caution in ditching the old – basically medicinal chemistry and pharmacology – for these much-heralded new technologies. Have technology, will travel – but where to?

As far as new medicines were concerned, the great promise was not realised. Let’s use the technology judiciously and not as an end in itself. Big Pharma, recognising the shortfall of innovative new medicines and profitability, were busy rationalising their R&D organisations and looking to consolidate businesses through merger and acquisitions.

Perhaps this has driven Big Pharma to pursue a new more profitable model based on protecting the healthy rather than treating the sick? Enter the era of the gene-based ‘vaccines’. The new technologies have had a long and difficult gestation period with several stillbirths. But perhaps their time had come with the ‘unprecedented’ virus from the East. A declared worldwide health emergency demanded a technological response, and it was there in waiting. But have we been blinded and duped by technology and lost sight of the end game of providing safe and effective medicines? Was it a judicious use of the PCR, rapid antigen test technology and information APP technology to drive the test and trace fiasco? Was the gene technology ready to be used in a mass world-wide vaccination programme without a thorough examination of the potential problems of short- and long-term safety of this previously untested technology? In my view, technocracy has trumped the sound principles, established over decades and centuries, of basic medical practice, immunology, virology, pharmaceutical sciences and public health generally. In the process, political democracy, personal freedoms, free speech and choice have been dangerously sidelined and even censored.

[stickdog99]

https://metatron.substack.com/p/breaking-the-silence

Breaking the silence
Another courageous GP blows the whistle on COVID. Dr Dave Cartland MBChB GP BMedSci (Hons)

Dr Cartland shares his vast medical and scientific experience in his interpretation of events of the last two years and his anecdotal analyses confirm what we have been reporting for a very long time from the big data.

Shared with permission.

My name is Dr Dave Cartland, and I am 39 and a practicing GP in the UK down in sunny Cornwall. I qualified in 2014 as a GP, and prior to that worked my foundation years in the West Midland’s Foundation programme and GPVTS (Black country).

I qualified from Birmingham Medical school in 2008 as a graduate entry medic, completed a Biomedical science degree in 2004 with a large component of this reading in immunology, virology, microbiology and medical statistics.

I proudly qualified with first class honours and went on to publish work in Angiogenesis as part of the Birmingham angiogenesis research group in 2005. I am a married father of 4 awesome children who are my life and have two faiths… Jesus Christ and Aston Villa FC.

Anyway, enough about me. Why did I become a Dr I hear you cry? I became a doctor to help my patients, to be their advocate, to help them in their biology, psychology and social circumstances.

I will always remember exactly the moment of my graduation when we recited the Hippocratic oath. Part of this powerful oath is a vow. A vow to ‘Primum non nocere’- first do no harm.

I hope my patients would agree that I am a caring, decent GP. I enjoy my job and the role I have to play in patients’ lives and can safely say this vow has formed the basis of my medical career thus far.

To not recognise, notify or publicise concerns of harm would be contrary to mine and my colleagues’ oath taken at qualification. I am writing this as a commentary and as a personal reflective piece, some of it opinion other from anecdotes others statistical and government data, but am equally happy for it to be shared.

When the COVID pandemic hit the UK, the confusion, fear and medical uncertainty was palpable by colleagues and patients alike. I want to say from the outset that I am by no means a covid-denier, I have seen many people debilitated acutely and chronically with this horrific disease.

I gladly rolled up my sleeve despite reservations about the speed of the development and lack of prospective safety data but to ‘do my bit’ in the face of unknown aspect of a pandemic. What sort of person let alone Dr would I be if I didn’t step forward to help ‘protect the vulnerable’ and of course my own health. I took my first Pfizer jab on 13/1/21 in complete good faith of the science and public health underpinning its roll out, trusting as all patients do the integrity and reassurance of the government and its scientific advisors.

On the 7th of January, 6 days prior I lost my best friend to the pandemic.

At this time, only very short-term vaccine safety data was starting to filter through and obviously medium- and long-term safety data for the Jab was absent, but with the clear and present danger of the disease, a clear weight in the balance for taking it. All seemed logical to this point.

Something that struck me from the very beginning was that (thank God) death and seriously unwell patients at least in my capacity as a GP (and am aware that I don’t see that particular tip of the iceberg), for me never hit the heights of what I was expecting or that was being projected from the various modelling data that was being shared at the time.

‘Nightingale hospital-gate’ as I will call it never took off, and mortality wasn’t as high as the fear levels had perhaps suggested which was great news. This wasn’t just an independent observation. Now as previously mentioned ITU’s and A+Es were full of covid-related morbidity and mortality, however as time went on slowly but surely some things started to seem odd and not make sense to my pre-pandemic experience of medical practices…

Firstly, and very early on, death certification changed, and all the safeguarding related to a second ‘part 2’ Doctor verifying events around death to come to agreement about what we call the medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD), was over-ruled very early on.

This was partly understandable on the face of it given the swathes of deaths that were expected some of the ‘paperwork’ would understandably need streamlining. Over time I started to see patients’ death certificates coming through in patients that were generally severely unwell with multiple comorbidities as MCCD 1 (a) COVID-19, the main cause of death felt by the dr or coroner.

When looking into specifics and looking at the notes I was seeing when they had been admitted to hospital, they had clearly ‘entered the building’ having been unwell with other things… cancer related issues, end stage COPD exacerbations or renal failure, broken bones, strokes, heart issues, a barn door case of urosepsis died in resus.

On entry to the mortuary marked down as 1 a) COVID 19. Out of hospital deaths followed suit. All it seemed to take was the mere mention of ‘cough’ by a relative elicited by the Part 1 Dr (a common symptom around the time of anyone’s death) the MCCD would be confirmed-COVID-19! This was happening with alarming regularity in personal experience. Something odd was happening and didn’t sit right!

The next irregularity seemed to be around testing and the early use of statistics. I won’t mention too much detail here but the testing for COVID 19 was using PCR (the results of which have formed the mainstay of covid surveillance and shielding protocols throughout). With some prior knowledge of this from my science background and an early statement from the inventor of PCR Kary Mullis himself stating that this was not a technology purposed for diagnostics of viral infections.

To use such technology, in knowledge of this, to gather ‘cases’ just seemed very unscientific. PCR is used to amplify a small sample of genetic material and to increase its ‘visibility’, in order to genetically sequence that small initial sample with common practical application in things like forensics.

We had technology to isolate the virus, electron microscopy among other things but not a mention. It is commonly accepted that when using PCR, you have to set a cycle number of amplification. The agreed limit to get a good amplification and reducing false positive ‘signal’ is 20-25 depending which data you look at. To go over and above this cycle threshold yields very high percentage of false detection.

Multiple FOI requests have been returned from many of the testing labs stating that 40-45 cycles have been used as standard throughout the pandemic. Consider this in simple terms as a game of Chinese whispers, in the amplification process translation errors commonly occur in the decoding process and an early error will pass through to the next and subsequent cycles.

Just like Chinese whispers the initial message after 45 people may be very different to the original word in the game/PCR sample compared to 25. Again, warning signals. Essentially if you turn the cycle number up high enough everyone will have a positive result whether true or false positive. This again defied basic science but was still used despite these very well-known limitations.

Furthermore, the medical statistics being used were and are still vague such as ‘death within 28 days of a positive covid test’, about as nebulous as you can get for such key figures important in a worldwide pandemic seemed to be being purposefully blurred.

Let me expand here briefly, surely just report people who have a case definition of what the viruses’ physical symptoms were (again ever changing) and a positive test = a case. Someone feverish with cough and short of breath with a covid positive test prior to their passing was of course likely a death FROM COVID-19; It wasn’t seemingly that ‘simple’. It certainly didn’t seem good medicine to report a person in intensive care for example that has died of a PE secondary to his elective Total hip replacement and passing away from this as COVID 19 due to asymptomatic positive screening, this just didn’t add up!

For medics even now simplified data is hard to find, with guidance ever changing almost weekly and finding straightforward data e.g., how many of those 150,000 recently surpassed deaths were actually FROM …not WITH COVID-19 seem impossible to lay hands on. Surely for such an inherently important statistic, clarity should be paramount particularly in order to counsel our patients and risk assess for ourselves as independent practitioner.

Again, recent FOI reports I am being made aware of state in one example 2 of the 97 reported covid deaths fulfilled the disease definition and positive test criteria among others! Alarming stuff!

Back to personal experience, the time came for Jab 2 with the ‘friendly warning’ that mandate was coming for NHS staff and after careful consideration and using evidence-based approach myself and my wife reluctantly agreed on 26/5/21. I will say that at that time the data wasn’t as black and white as prior to Jab 1 but for the greater good and all that!

Questions on mine and my patients mind were… Why do I need this again so soon… does this not show the jab isn’t working?… jab one made me quite unwell for a number of days with some very strange symptoms what if this happens again?… and what if jab 2 doesn’t stem the tide surely not a third?… and just around that time a few early signals of a wide selection of ‘Jab reactions’ were starting to find their way to my attention through patient contacts… more on this later.

What makes a case:

I briefly touched on this above but wanted to expand. It sounds very basic to say this but to have a medical condition or to be called a ‘case’ one must satisfy a basic criterion… you must have symptoms and the presence/evidence of the disease like a scan or a test.

For example: dysuria and frequency plus E. coli in the urine = UTI (see Koch’s postulates), headache/neurology plus cerebral mass = brain cancer, abdominal swelling and baby in-utero… You get the gist.

However, in the case of COVID-19 people were being told something I have never heard before in my career. You can be a ‘case’, a dangerous ‘threat to your gran’ without even having a symptom. A dangerous spreader of the virus without so much as a sneeze. The hallowed ‘asymptomatic carriage’ (AC).

From my very basic virology knowledge and in view of alarming data re false positives as above all was a little confusing. Asymptomatic disease is true in other areas of biology for example bacteria and some protozoa can be asymptomatic. Sorry to freak you out but your hands are probably covered in Staph Aureus (a natural ‘commensal’ bacteria that colonises skin), and likely coliforms (a medical word for bowel organisms)- despite how much hand gel you are using. They are single independently alive unicellular organisms that reproduce asexually.

Viruses on the other hand are a little more complex. By definition, they are obligate intracellular parasites. They can not live very long at all outside of a human cell as they are fully dependent on human cellular machinery (nucleus, ribosomes and various enzymes) that they borrow to allow to reproduce.

A single virus enters the human cell, takes over the genetic machinery, and causes programmed cell death ‘apoptosis’ of the cell. Having ruptured the host cell and bursting with an exponential number of virion’s compared to the initial individual invading virus those new viruses go on to then infect a multitude of neighbouring cells and before you know it innumerable viruses.

Cell damage left in the wake of this and the consequent immune response to fight this vicious attack. Part of what makes you feel unwell from having a virus is the immune system response aside from the effect of cell damage by the virus. Cytokines, inflammation and pyrogens storm the body to gain control before a critical mass of virus can take hold. As only males of the world know this is particularly present in the seasonal illness known as man-flu, the consequent myalgia, rigors nausea malaise and near-death experience of man-flu is in part due to this.

I will summarise it this way… and apologies for the lecture on virology… if you have a virus particularly a SARS type respiratory tract virus, you KNOW you have a virus whether it’s a sniffle, aches, pain but still not asymptomatic carriage.

Incidentally the way pandemics become endemic is by exactly the mechanism we see being displayed in Omicron data. As previously mentioned, viruses are parasites and have no interest in killing their host. That wouldn’t make much sense from a survival plan perspective.

Viruses learn to become symbiotic with their host. The perfect storm… spread like wildfire/high transmission and low pathogenicity/harm to the host, survival of species. The misuse of this medical ‘phenomenon’ of AC and not acknowledging the fact of what is happening now with Omicron being a much milder disease is in my medical opinion misleading the public.

A virus pandemic will always eventually become endemic, fact. The AC fallacy use has driven fear into our society as we mask up, avoid others, keep our 2 metres and decide not to visit our elderly relatives is implausible. Aside from that, the collateral harm from all the psychological physical and social/economic harm is a ludicrous idea in the face of such a lie.

To ‘LOCK DOWN’ is inconceivable and unprecedented as evidenced by having never been used as a management strategy for pandemics ever in humanity.

Talking of collateral damage and just while we are on the subject of harm from such an erroneous medical ‘fact’ and subsequent policy. When does the harm to patients for such damage become an important denominator? From fear of seeing the GP, delayed cancer diagnosis, bottle-necking of NHS services/inflation of waiting lists, palpable mental health distress, social issues such as poverty and loneliness the list is endless? Surely to allow all of this as a trade-off, the threat needs to be ‘bubonically’ high, and the risk of treatment low to allow such measures to become acceptable.

Silence is deafening

Over the last few months something has become startlingly apparent in regard to the latest data from Omicron which didn’t seem to correlate with previous waves. I will say that from the outset, hence my discomfort with current policy in particular the Mandate of a medical treatment for staff.

It came about after I was asked to consider the booster (in English a third dose in 6 months of something I had twice in the recent past that gave me side effects and something I and probably no other Dr can say they have experienced before in their medical practice. A tri-6 monthly jab with speculation of even more… Flu Jab annually, Hep B jab lifelong, the ten yearly tetanus et al… something didn’t feel right. To take one (again) for the team or not?

The answer to this dilemma was simple. The ‘vaccine’ needed to confer both personal benefits i.e., if I take it my risk of being ill and even death would/should be reduced, likewise in the interest of being a good citizen and medic of the world that it would also reduce my ability to catch and likewise transmit to my relatives and patients (aside from evolving safety data which will discuss later).

I took a short look at the data from my own surgery (admittedly low numbers to try to spot a trend). We receive positive results as a batch each week and one of our ANP’s contacts them all to see how they are. At this point I will say that most of the positive results displayed mild flu like coryzal symptoms, evidence for me that we were dealing with a different beast in Omicron which was really great news.

I counted 102 ’cases’ of positives in the first two weeks results and traced their vaccine status… positive… treble vaccinated…positive treble vaccinated… positive treble vaccinated.

A pattern was apparent… Long story short in that 2 weeks 94.1 percent of the patients n= 96 of 102 were treble or double jabbed (mostly treble) and just the 2% n=2 unvaccinated.

I decided to repeat this the next week and this time 100% of the 38 patients were double or treble jabbed zero unvaccinated. This seemed odd and quite contrary to what I expected but had put some data to the gut feeling of what I was hearing of in clinic.

I decided at this time to see what was happening nationally using UK and Scotland gov.uk surveillance figures and was startled to find similar findings.

In one study initially looking at just positive cases in UK and over 100,000 dataset showed 89.7 percent positive results over a three-week period treble vaccinated v 3.7 % unvaccinated. Even in the knowledge that the lower proportion of unvaccinated as percentage of total population these percentages were too far apart.

A recent Scottish data set (weeks 1 and 2 of 2022) despite showing reduced outcomes in three different outcome categories the ratio of unvaccinated 28% to vaccinated 72% total Scottish populous. Roughly speaking, outcomes of the parameters of 1) positive test 2) admission to hospital and 3) death was seen to be represented by 80% of the total numbers in treble vaccinated status whereas only 20% were unvaccinated in proportion.

Why were people vaccinated for a disease and go on to die in a ratio of 4:1 from the disease they were trebly protected from!! Alarm bells ringing… again.

At this time, I committed time to fully researching whether the risks of a jab were proportionate to the risk of the disease. Networking with other medical professionals constrained by fear to not report observations or whistle blow, the sharing of papers, research data and individuals’ clinical concerns and anecdotal observations were forming a clear pattern and hypothesis.

Study after study, data set after data set seemed to come to the conclusion that the vaccinated group seemed to be at higher risks of catching covid despite full vaccination status and in the above data higher admission rates and death…

The decision was becoming clearer as to whether to take the jab #3. At this point I concluded the Jab wasn’t in any way reducing my chances of catching or spreading the virus in some cases increasing their risk (Will avoid commenting on Antibody dependent enhancement- ADE in this article here but coherent with this principle).

I was at this time being told that nasal carriage of the virus was much higher in the unvaccinated, but again this wasn’t bearing out in the cohort studies that I was seeing published. So, my conclusion was the Jab wasn’t (in my humble opinion) in anyone else’s interest so that only left the conference of personal safety from becoming seriously ill and its obvious major repercussions when it comes down to rationale to mandate a medical treatment.

This will be discussed later when I discuss medical ethics around consent and lack thereof briefly.

Signals of harm:

Alongside phenomena discussed above, I was starting to see flickers of what I am calling ‘signals of harm’. At this time, I felt slightly isolated professionally as no one would seemingly enter deep debate on the subject, offer alternative explanations for data, evidence of safety, all at the same time as hearing from the government that the vaccine was ‘absolutely safe’ in children and pregnant women under the guise of adverts with the headline ‘the best way to protect yourself from Omicron is to be treble vaccinated’.

This didn’t seem true to me.

Bit more virology while we’re here… I saw an advert that could only be described as propaganda and misinformation on the TV where a family were all mixing inside the house and small black particles of virus were pouring passively from all of the family members mouths into each other’s faces in a bid to promote space and window opening.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Respiratory viruses such as SARS-COV 19 are spread not by asymptomatic carriers as previously covered. I may be speculating here but I personally feel asymptomatic ‘carriers’ are mislabelled false positives as previously discussed. Respiratory tract viruses are known to spread by aerosol generation i.e., ‘coughs and sneezes’ spread diseases.

None of this was science as I know it!

I just was not seeing the degree of harm from the disease borne out in gov.uk covid surveillance data despite high case numbers and certainly had not had sight of safety data to support such a statement to the degree of justifying jabbing 5–11-year-old children and pregnant females and their unborn.

We all know as clinicians that prescribing in pregnancy is riddled with lack of safety data and manufacturers often sit on the fence with recommendations of erring on the side of caution and avoid unless benefits far outweigh risks.

To accept a medical treatment of any description you have to weigh the benefit v risk of the treatment v the disease. I recalled at this time at the beginning of the pandemic that they were showing personal stories of individual patients who had succumbed to the disease and remember saying that a lot of these folk seem to be generally overweight.

Recent plethora of data sets show that multiple comorbidities go hand in hand with high-risk of death or serious adverse outcome in addition to age and immunosuppression. Despite rolling the Jab out to anyone in the world over 5 this didn’t seem to take into account the individual’s personal risk. I.e., the smoking 80 year-old diabetic vs the fit, well 20 year-old sportsman have completely different risk profiles for becoming unwell from COVID. Why was this not being extrapolated and we were jabbing people with a treatment they simply DO NOT NEED or at very least offering negligible benefit as you went up through the age groups?

Do no harm:

Initially the flicker of harm signal subsequently became a flame and most recently a fire!

My individual experience of seeing very odd post-vaccination reactions came ironically around the time of my second jab. In just one week, I saw a terrible case of a very fit gentleman who was suddenly unable to move his hands and feet and became swollen, a reactive arthritis, coming inexplicably on without any prior rheumatological history, 2 days after his vaccine.

A couple I did a home visit on came out with a most bizarre skin rash with large ulcers appearing widespread to the body the like of which I have never seen, again within a week of the jab and no prior history of skin problems.

While duty Dr I recall a bizarre conversation with a medical registrar who advised me that a patient needed to commence anticoagulation for a clot on his brain which was triggered by his sinus inflammation seen on the MRA scan… (The gentleman advised me he had never so much as sneezed in his life), he had his jab 4-5 days prior.

And then the worst, two 40y female patients within about a week of each other and each within close proximity of the jab (1-2 weeks). Both died without significant medical history, one I always remember as she had two young children of similar age to my own, MCCD VITT (vaccine induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia), catastrophic clotting to multiple systems leading to death.

The coroner had obviously attributed this to the jab.

Day after day I was seeing on social media comments from friends’ family and strangers making causal accusations towards the jab of a multitude of harms. Some serious harms too including new and permanent/progressive neurology/fits/collapses, dermatological presentations, menstrual changes, immunological, and simply not feeling ‘right’ the list went on and on.

This was just the start. I joined a group called NHS 100k in the wake of opposing the upcoming vaccine mandate and was again hit with a barrage of harmful episodes within close proximity to the event of a COVID jab.

This was seeming to be more than just coincidence purely by noted incidences.

I was reading and hearing on official media that reactions were extremely rare, but I was wondering how rare does rare have to be for it not to become common? Everyone seemed to know someone who had fallen foul. I looked on the yellow card reporting system and VAERs but the incidence of what I was seeing from experience didn’t match the data from these resources and seemed understated.

I saw an article today from MHRA data which showed huge increases in reaction to the covid jab across all manufacturers at unprecedented scale compared to any other previous Jab ever and consistent across all manufacturers.

I eventually wrote a post asking for people to contact me personally on social media and joined a telegram group ‘They say it’s rare’ (they also have a website). Scary amounts of people stepping forward with a full range of alleged reactions in proximity of a jab.

In the last 48h I have personally had over 200 DMs with personal stories of post-vaccine injury reaction and even deaths and the aforementioned group is just constantly posting these stories.

Going back to my signal of harm, there was an alarm sounding, and as per me writing this article was reminded of my Hippocratic Oath once again. The above may just be coincidental I am well aware, but my oath was to do no harm (Disclaimer at this point I can say that I have never jabbed a patient with the COVID vaccine).

Aside from this, more worrying observations from different arenas. As an avid football and sports fan, reports of footballers dropping like flies some live on TV and numerous tennis stars falling ill during games (whether vaccinated or not reports are sketchy), pilots dying in never-before-seen numbers, USA just reported an increase in life insurance claims by up to 40% in last 3 months. All-cause mortality in certain periods of time higher than ever before, funeral directors and doctors going public on unprecedented young folks ‘dropping dead’ and post-mortems of VTE causation, increased numbers of referrals for uterine cancer, the list goes on.

And not a word from the main stream media.

To claim anything negative is shutdown, Orwellian 1984 style. Nowhere on MSM is this potential for causality even whispered. If it’s all coincidence, then where is the debate, where are the scientists calling it out and debunking such ‘conspiracy theories’. There doesn’t seem to be any correlation to the footballer phenomenon other than a couple of ex pro’s stepping out on their private social media platforms.

Censorship gone crazy:

By now it has become clear, one mantra, one narrative: After locking us down, then paying for half of our meals, then discussing herd immunity followed by the rule of 5/2 metres/re-lockdown (nothing like consistency) they eventually found consensus.

Vaccine, Vaccine, Vaccine.

No discussion of potential harm, suppressed alternative treatments with some solid medical grounding e.g., Zinc/ivermectin/Vitamin D data with no apparent push to offer general advice on this as ‘COVID prophylaxis’ if you like.

To debate and seek evidence-based medicine or to offer alternative viewpoint or to even speak freely, a right that was fought hard for seem to have succumbed to censorship. For example, who better to speak about the mRNA technology being used than Dr Robert Malone the very experienced and humble scientist who had a huge role in its research and application in vaccine technology.

Not debated, simply deleted, platform removed for a concern from the ‘inventor’ that there are risks associated (to hugely understate his viewpoint) is a view I would clearly like to give credibility and time to and would wish to hear his voice.

Dr Mike Yeadon, Dr Peter McCullough and so many eminent and qualified doctors and scientists, all vastly qualified, published and relevant to the covid debate given their credentials, limited to back street media platforms and underground presentation of their opinion in opposition of the major narrative.

This is unprecedented in my career!

I myself have fell foul of the Facebook police on a number of occasions, having been sent a recent article by a colleague- with a very sensationalist headline- ‘Covid Vaccine Scientific Proof Lethal’ (Jan 2022) but aside from that it was essentially an article cataloguing published literature of case studies, small cohort studies, prospective studies showing evidence of harm, post-mortems and the like showing causal links to potential harm.

90-day warning from FB for the crime of one of the articles stating that the jab is being given under the emergency use authorisation. This is a fact that I fairly-well recognised to be TRUE… article removed no ability to appeal… none.

Similar slaps on wrist for posting government datasets and tables from UK and Scottish government data openly available to find, deleted for similar vague and unchallengeable reasons, just labelled as ‘spreading misinformation’. A quite strange phenomenon of censorship and in itself a warning of encroaching our free speech and what happens if you query the mainstream narrative.

Jab or not to Jab that is the question?

At this juncture I want to briefly discuss some of the ethical principles I would like to think come as standard across medical and nursing colleagues.

Valid consent involves speaking to a patient about the full benefit of a treatment but also to be open and honest about the risk, to enable to allow concordance. A mutual agreement between patient and Dr to enable a plan of action going forward.

For consent to be valid it must be fully informed. And even if I don’t agree with a patient, as long as they have capacity, they are equally allowed to disregard your treatment despite your advice i.e., a valid refusal of consent.

Current medical practice is sadly lacking in the above in two arenas:

The mandating of NHS staff to be vaccinated to remain in post. This is simply called ‘coercing’ and it not part of reaching the afore discussed consent to treatment. Coercion of an NHS member of staff to take a medical treatment against their will is simply and by anyone’s definition blackmail. From another perspective it is in breach of the Nuremberg code and law: Public health act 1984 45 (C)

There is severe lack when it comes to some of the ‘consenting’ I have witnessed in clinical practice. Every human has a right to their own bodily autonomy. To give someone a treatment they refuse or to force physically or emotionally is considered assault and battery in law. To disagree with bodily autonomy and valid consent goes against the good medical practice that the GMC encourages us to follow.

Regards point 1 above, as previously mentioned, age, comorbidity, role and personal choice should all come into the equation. If the vaccine as is proven seemingly the case by major swathes of data as to not reduce your ability to catch or spread the virus (i.e., reduce risk for others) and only confers (again open to debate) personal protection, then this is just unethical, unscientific and implausible in so many ways as to proceed.

The injustice and harm from this law and subsequent sacking faced is just simply not offset against the threat of the disease in its current state, particularly in view of safety question marks as well as efficacy of the vaccine itself another large area of debate.

Many cases in literature of swift waning of vaccine immunity (particularly Omicron interestingly) is well documented. Conversely, in recent studies, natural immunity reigns supreme. And how about the detrimental effect this has on stress levels, mental health, finance and morale or our friends and colleagues facing dismissal those self-same people who worked throughout facing this huge pandemic with such bravery?

Regards point 2, simply asking a patient if they know they are here for their second covid jab, a brief check on contraindications and… Stab… into the arm it goes… is NOT valid consent (I won’t mention the lack of drawing back on the syringe to check not in a blood vessel prior to administration used in all other IM injections).

Even on the conveyor belt of mass vaccination clinics this is just not good enough. People were presenting in good faith, for the greater good of humanity, accepting a treatment to the lay person which was unknowingly novel but ‘needs must’. They are completely unaware that in that small amount of fluid injected, lies mRNA material that encodes a virus’s genetic message in a variety of different transport media e.g liposome coat and is a novel and never before rolled out outside of clinical trial.

Neither were they aware that it is being used under an emergency use authorisation (EUA) like a ‘needs must’ legal waiver, neither do they know that the major producers of the vaccine have, before they ever stepped foot in the lab, took indemnity from prosecution for all current and future harm under the EUA running for many decades yet to come.

I could go on.

You may have noted, I haven’t in this article referred to the mRNA ‘vaccine’ as such, as prior to this pandemic mRNA as mentioned above had never been passed to being safe or effective for human use.

Play this back for a second… we are giving you a jab of fluid, a novel treatment, that will be absorbed into your human cell which, cutting out the detail of the biology, gets expressed by your human cell, using human cell machinery to transcribe that code into a protein which is how genes are expressed. A protein that is viral in origin and design. Not only that but a cytotoxic spike protein (as opposed to other areas of viral capsid) that will induce an immune response in a way never used before.

Previously vaccines were killed whole virus particles, live but attenuated, fragments of protein or their toxoid with all their retrospective relative safety data, in favour of an experiment.

I fully expect the same number of sleeves would not have been rolled up in knowledge of the above.

I have heard cries from my patients of ‘I only took the vaccine to… go back to work, to go on holiday next year, so I can go back out and socialise at the weekend… and tearjerkingly heard of a report of a child who gasped with relief after his jab that he could now go and play with his friends.

No coercion here.

Nothing in life is without risk, even common medicines like paracetamol have associated risk. Given the Jab’s roll out being a clinical trial (this remains the case) why was it not made clear from the outset about how to report adverse events. It is something that has only very recently been made public, regarding yellow card and their use in reporting of adverse effects to patients in the national media many months after the roll out of the ‘vaccine’.

This is just simply bad medical practice, however coincidental or frivolous it may turn out to be, surveillance of benefit is important, but surveillance of harm/risk should be in equal measure.

I have seen a multitude of blank faces and ‘what’s a yellow card’ when asked if they have reported their relative’s reaction to the government scheme. Even the ones who have, didn’t persevere due to complexity or time constraints.

On that subject I truly believe, and again data is becoming apparent on the vastness of this underreporting of post vaccination adverse events/death with blind eyes being turned left right and centre. There seems to be a carpet in every hospital and surgery that these incidences are swiftly debunked by the medic or swept straight under the aforementioned carpet.

Combine with an equally difficult to quantify overreporting of deaths (I have personally witnessed testimonies of over 50 dubious COVID 1a) MCCD. The difference between yellow card deaths post vaccine around 2,000 and the death toll of circa 150,000 would be much closer by this bearing true and with each passing percentage point, narrowing of the gap, the risk starts to unacceptably erode the benefit!

I see a huge hesitancy locally and nationally to audit data regarding harm, ease in dismissing strange happenings to anything but the Jab. Data should be at the tip of the finger re how many cases of myocarditis in different age groups seen after Pfizer/AZ/Moderna, how many strokes or cardiac sequelae… click, click, result.

Who is collating this data on safety, who is disseminating it?

Ethics

A final couple of miscellaneous points on the subject of ethics in clinical practice. Firstly, confidentiality is the cornerstone of medical practice, to speak outside of a clinical discussion outside the confines of the clinic room is a breaking of such confidentiality.

Patient’s medical history is private! This seems to have been ignored particularly in the media, and among colleagues ‘off with covid’ and/or ‘their vaccine status’. You only have to switch BBC TV or Sky Sports News to hear about the latest COVID positive actor, politician or sports player.

Do you ever remember switching on the TV and hearing about David Beckham’s orthopaedic history, but its ok to reveal Cristiano Ronaldo’s Covid status/shielding regime? Public figure or not, confidentiality is paramount in the profession but again fallen by the wayside.

Finally, the principle of treat patients according to their best interests and in particularly counsel and treat based on this principle are so important.

I will end here with this. I am constantly hearing of many colleagues who are ‘unwilling to have any more jabs’ and definitely won’t be vaccinating their children… which is absolutely fine of course.

However, to have this view on a treatment you aren’t willing to have for yourself or family but then proceed to jab 30 strangers’ children all afternoon.

The apathy is real.

Closing remarks:

It is human nature to not want to admit you are wrong. It is human nature to not get too proactively involved in something that doesn’t directly involve you. It is human nature to trust the government and scientists that stand before us.

But science changes, this pandemic changes. As scientists, medics and the general public, we hope, as best we can, to keep updated. But to censor, close down, refuse debate or critically appraise the data around evolving harm benefit profiling it’s just not science, it’s just not ethics or good medical practice.

If they mandate a vaccine (that they are already planning jab#4) and so on, for NHS staff without respect for valid consent, without respect for the refusal of that consent. This is particularly important in reference to the arena of a clinical trial with no medium- or long-term prospective safety data.

Certainly, data suggests uncertain/patchy benefit in terms of reducing transmission i.e. protecting patients and certainly from recent data equally sketchy on personal risk reduction, then what’s the point?

When do we say enough is enough?

When do we declare that the vaccine doesn’t work or isn’t worth the risk?

And when to we accept that mandate aside from unethical is tantamount to blackmail in view of this?!

The virus is now as good as endemic as per many media outlets reports, let us have our bodily autonomy back, our freedom back, let us snap out of this ‘mass formation’ psychology of fear and regain our common sense.

There is a lot to say for good old-fashioned herd.

What happened to the banging the saucepans for your NHS heroes?

What happened with the value of the tests to show you haven’t got the virus?

(Previous limitations discussed aside), PPE actually giving personal protection? And what about antibody tests?

As a member of NHS staff going to work to face patients, with positive antibodies proving prior immunity, daily negative tests, fit and well status and in PPE then my conclusion is that this member of staff is no more a risk to their patient than their fully vaccinated counterpart following the exact same measures!!!

Primum non nocere.

This pandemic has been unprecedented for our careers for all those currently in clinical practice but If we aren’t interested in this harm and preventing it, acknowledging it, discussing and debating it then we need to take a long look in our mirror before we next go on duty!

Thanks for reading.

Dr Dave Cartland

[stickdog99]

Sweden, Damn Sweden! Those bastard Swedes threw a big spanner in the machine and no amount of lying is going to hide the damage.

[stickdog99]

A New York IVF study - later removed from online - finds higher rates of pregnancy failure among Covid-vaccinated women.

[stickdog99]

[stickdog99]

Will any amount of data, discussion, and/or debate ever overcome the cognitive dissonance of those who have been so thoroughly conditioned to control their own fear of COVID-19 with the talismanic rituals of continual vaccination, masking, lockdowns, social distancing, hand washing, and disinfecting?

Will any amount of data, discussion, and/or debate ever overcome the cognitive dissonance of those who have been so thoroughly conditioned to express their heartfelt compassion for the victims of COVID-19 by continually performing the talismanic rituals of vaccination, masking, lockdowns, social distancing, hand washing, and disinfecting?

Just asking for some friends.

[MacCruiskeen]

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/public-health/2022/02/covid-politics-and-psychology/
[...]

Thurber, 1950s
https://arthur.io/img/art/000173452e2381276/james-thurber/perhaps-this-will-refresh-your-memory/large/james-thurber--perhaps-this-will-refresh-your-memory.jpg

[Harvey]

All most welcome, but if Bill Maher takes a position on anything it's most likely because

[stickdog99]

All most welcome, but if Bill Maher takes a position on anything it's most likely because

I watched this entire segment with my wife, and we were both gobsmacked to judge a Maher monologue commendable for all but one or two sentences.

[stickdog99]

https://jessicar.substack.com/p/the-bra ... l-criteria

[Harvey]

That could have been your cue to wonder what the angle is.

[alloneword]

I'm still reeling from the fact he (or his team) actually managed to reflect the reality of the situation in Wales on their 'Loosened or Removed Restrictions' map, rather than painting it the same colour as England.

[stickdog99]