~30,000 in USA killed by ventilators in Apr. 2020

An Estimated 30,000 Americans Were Killed by Ventilators & Iatrogenesis in April 2020 | Substack - Michael P Senger, The New Normal:

October 5, 2022- "To date, we still don’t have especially good studies on the actual causes of excess deaths by state and country when the world first went into lockdown in spring 2020. For political reasons, these deaths were all generally been lumped together as 'Covid deaths,' but this coding was appallingly sloppy. According to the World Health Organization’s [WHO] initial coding guidance, if a decedent had either tested positive ... using a PCR test ... or been in contact with anyone who had within several weeks prior to their death, then the death should be classified as a 'Covid death'....

"Thus, this article reexamines data from the US CDC on all-cause excess deaths by state during peak lockdown in April 2020 using the information we now know to determine what actually caused them. This examination concludes that, contrary to popular belief, there was no uniquely deadly strain or variant emanating out of New York in spring 2020; this is clear from the fact that several states close to New York such as Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine experienced little to no excess deaths during that time period. On the contrary, over 30,000 Americans appear to have been killed by mechanical ventilators or other forms of medical iatrogenesis throughout April 2020, primarily in the area around New York.

"This result is not altogether surprising, as subsequent studies revealed a 97.2% mortality rate among those over age 65 who were put on mechanical ventilators in accordance with the initial guidance from the WHO — as opposed to a 26.6% mortality rate among those over age 65 who weren’t put on mechanical ventilators — before a grassroots campaign put a stop to the practice by the beginning of May 2020. As one doctor later told the Wall Street Journal, 'We were intubating sick patients very early. Not for the patients’ benefit, but in order to control the epidemic'…... 

"The ... area around New York experienced a particular hysteria for the use of mechanical ventilators in spring 2020 to an extent that other states did not.... [W]e can get a sense for the level of this hysteria from the hundreds of headlines advocating mechanical ventilators that sprung up around that time. "For example, Google yields hundreds of results for the query 'New York mechanical ventilators 2020.' A sample of the hundreds of headlines are ones such as: 'NY may need 24,000 more ventilators to fight COVID-19. Here’s how it could get them,' 'Which coronavirus patients will get life-saving ventilators? Guidelines show how hospitals in NYC, US will decide,' 'New York City Needs 400 Ventilators by Sunday, de Blasio Says,' 'Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces 1,000 Ventilators Donated to New York State,' 'A New York hospital is treating two patients on a device intended for one.” Likewise, Google yields hundreds of results for the query 'New Jersey mechanical ventilators 2020'.... This phenomenon was not nearly as pronounced in other states.....

"Given we now know that patients over age 65 were more than 26 times as likely to survive if they were not placed on mechanical ventilators, it’s not hard to see how this hysteria for mechanical ventilators in the New York area accounted for the particularly high excess death rates in that region. Additionally, because the neighboring states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine experienced little to no excess deaths during this time period, the overuse of mechanical ventilators and other medical iatrogenesis in spring 2020 provides a far more robust explanation for the particularly high rates of excess deaths in the New York area than does a particularly deadly strain or variant.

"So just how many people were killed by the overuse of mechanical ventilators and other iatrogenesis in spring 2020?... [W]e can form a conservative estimate based on the data above by using the percentage of excess deaths in a comparable state that did not experience as much ventilator hysteria.... 

"Michigan also experienced a high percentage of excess deaths per capita in April 2020. Michigan is even colder than New York and New Jersey in terms of its climate, and its low-income urban centers are even more dense, both of which were primary factors correlating with excess deaths in spring 2020. Like New York and New Jersey, Michigan also had a strict lockdown at that time. However, Michigan did not experience nearly the same level of hysteria for mechanical ventilators as did the New York area, and Michigan’s rate of excess deaths, while high, was more in line with that of other states. Thus, we can assume that if New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts had not engaged in ventilator hysteria, then their percentages of excess deaths per capita would have been more similar to that of Michigan....

"By subtracting the number of excess deaths that each state would have experienced if their excess death rate had been the same as that of Michigan from the number of excess deaths they actually experienced each week, we can see that in total, during April 2020, approximately 17,289 deaths in New York City, 7,347 deaths in New Jersey, 803 deaths in Massachusetts, 788 deaths in Connecticut, and 3,725 deaths in New York outside New York City were attributable to the overuse of mechanical ventilators or other iatrogenesis. All told, this data indicates that some 30,000 patients in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts were killed by mechanical ventilators or other medical iatrogenesis in April 2020."

Read more: https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/an-estimated-30000-americans-were

Anti-lockdown governor scores big win in Florida

Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida known nationally for his opposition to Covid lockdowns and mandates, was re-elected this month with a 19-point margin of victory.

DeSantis Delivers in Huge Win for the Anti-Lockdown Cause | Brownstone Institute - Michael Senger:

November 11, 2022 - "'A huge re-election victory vindicates his pandemic policies,' writes the Wall Street Journal. 'With runaway win, DeSantis’s political career becomes supercharged,' writes the New York Times. 'Ron DeSantis is the new Republican Party leader,' declares Fox News. 'Florida’s governor turned his coronavirus policies into a parable of American freedom,' observes the Atlantic.

"As well they should. The self-perpetuating lockdowns, mandates, and state of emergency that were imposed across much of the world in response to Covid-19 were a totalitarian aberration incompatible with the values of constitutional democracy. Resisting those mandates wasn’t just a parable of American freedom — it was American freedom.

"Unlike some leaders such as South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, DeSantis didn’t initially see through the lockdowns. But he was one of the few political leaders to quickly and publicly recognize his error, vowing that Florida 'will never do any of these lockdowns again.' Where DeSantis really stands out, however, is in his wholehearted embrace, from that point forward, of the anti-lockdown movement in its entirety. 

"He’s consulted and hosted roundtable discussions with prominent anti-lockdown activists and scientists including Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and Dr. Sunetra Gupta, and appointed Dr. Joseph Ladapo, a strong opponent of Covid mandates, as his Surgeon General. DeSantis and his team became active within the anti-lockdown movement on social media, and he frequently voiced strong opposition to Covid mandates in his speeches, such as during his State of the State address:

Florida has become the escape hatch for those chafing under authoritarian, arbitrary and seemingly never-ending mandates and restrictions. Even today, across the nation we see students denied an education due to reckless, politically-motivated school closures, workers denied employment due to heavy-handed mandates and Americans denied freedoms due to a coercive biomedical apparatus.

These unprecedented policies have been as ineffective as they have been destructive. They are grounded more in blind adherence to Faucian declarations than they are in the constitutional traditions that are the foundation of free nations.

Florida is a free state. We reject the biomedical security state that curtails liberty, ruins livelihoods, and divides society. And we will protect the rights of individuals to live their lives free from the yoke of restrictions and mandates.

"DeSantis’s staunch support for the anti-lockdown cause may be explained, in no small part, by the fact that he remains one of the world’s only major political figures to publicly share his belief that the Chinese Communist Party played a key role in influencing the global response to Covid-19:

The [W]est did a lot of damage to itself by adopting some of these policies, which have proven to not work to stop the spread, but to be very economically destructive. I do think there was an information operation angle to this, where they really believed that if they could get these other countries to lock down, and they were willing to do some propaganda along the way, particularly in Europe, that ultimately would help China. And I think it has helped China.

"For this, DeSantis effectively became the face of the anti-lockdown movement in the United States. It was a bold political gamble ... and it drew the consternation of lockdown supporters, media and political elites across the country.

"But it paid off big. DeSantis won the race for reelection with a 19-point margin of victory—the widest victory margin in a Florida gubernatorial election since 2002. Even more telling, DeSantis’s odds to win the 2024 presidential election soared by more than 10 percentage points, making him the new frontrunner in the presidential race.

"The outsized significance of DeSantis’s victory isn’t so much in the victory itself, which was predicted, or even the margin of that victory. The real significance is that DeSantis outperformed by a wide margin at the same time the Republican Party underperformed across the rest of the country. This unique outperformance vindicates whatever DeSantis did differently [from] the rest of the GOP. And without a doubt, what DeSantis is best known for is his wholehearted embrace of the anti-lockdown movement."

https://brownstone.org/articles/desantis-delivers-win/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

U.S. CDC overhauls Covid-19 guidelines

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control have drastically revised their COVID19 guidelines, dropping quarantine, mass testing, and  "Test to stay" in schools, and no longer discriminating between vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans.

CDC ends recommendations for social distancing and quarantine for Covid-19 control, no longer recommends test-to-stay in school | CNN - Brenda Goodman & Elizabeth Cohen:

August 11, 2022- "The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] says the nation should move away from restrictive measures such as quarantines and social distancing and focus on reducing severe disease from Covid-19. In new guidelines released Thursday, the agency no longer recommends staying at least 6 feet away from other people to reduce the risk of exposure -- a shift from guidance that had been in place since the early days of the pandemic....

"'The current conditions of this pandemic are very different from those of the last two years,' Greta Massetti, who leads the Field Epidemiology and Prevention Branch at the CDC, said Thursday. 'High levels of population immunity due to vaccination and previous infection and the many available tools to protect the general population, and protect people at higher risk, allow us to focus on protecting people from serious illness from Covid-19.'

"The new CDC guidelines say contact tracing, another hallmark during the pandemic, should be limited to hospitals and certain high-risk group-living situations such as nursing homes, and the guidelines de-emphasize the use of regular testing to screen for Covid-19.... The new guidance also does not advise quarantining people who've been exposed to Covid-19 but are not infected.... 

"The changes are an acknowledgment that SARS-CoV-2 may be with us for the long haul. They aim to help people live their lives around Covid-19 with minimal disruptions to work and school. They are also more risk-based, advising people who are at higher risk for severe illness to take more personal precautions than others. 'I think they just overall come into alignment with what people are doing anyway,' says Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California at San Francisco.... He sees it as a move by the CDC to try to regain the public's trust. A recent survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center shows that most Americans (54%) are no longer masking indoors, and about 4 in 10 say they've fully returned to their pre-pandemic routines -- up from 16% in January.... 

"The agency also puts more emphasis on improving ventilation. Aerosol scientists have long complained that the 6-foot social distancing guidance was arbitrary and unhelpful because the virus that causes Covid-19 can float through the air for greater distances.... In addition to vaccination, the CDC urges additional measures for people with suppressed immune function, including the use of Evusheld, a kind of passive immunity that's given before a person gets sick. It's especially helpful for people who can't mount an immune response, and experts say it has been underutilized in this country....

"The agency removed the recommendation that kids in different classrooms avoid mixing, a practice known as cohorting. It also removed advice that kids who are contacts of someone who tested positive for Covid-19 take regular tests – and test negative – to remain in the classroom, which was known as test-to-stay.... Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation's largest teachers unions, said the new guidelines were welcome news for schools."
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/11/health/cdc-covid-guidance-update/index.html

CDC Quietly Ends Differentiation on Covid Vaccination Status | Brownstone Institute - Michael Senger: 

August 12, 2002 - Today, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly ended its policy of differentiating within COVID-19 prevention guidance between those who have received Covid vaccines and those who have not.... As explained by the CDC’s Greta Massetti, lead author of the new guidance: "Both prior infection and vaccination confer some protection against severe illness, and so it really makes the most sense to not differentiate with our guidance or our recommendations based on vaccination status at this time.'"
Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/cdc-quietly-ends-differentiation-on-covid-vaccination-status/

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (3)

China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign | The Tablet - Michael P. Senger: 

September 15, 2020 - "Xi Jinping has frequently stressed global cooperation to fight COVID-19. In turn, the world has started to look more like China. Localities introduced tip lines to report lockdown violations and countries unveiled new fleets of surveillance drones; Chinese company DJI donated drones to 22 U.S. states to help enforce social distancing rules. 

"Speaking through official channels, the CCP has avoided literally telling other governments to 'lock down.' Rather, the CCP has shamed governments for not locking down and relentlessly advertised its 'pandemic response' (which, of course, means lockdowns). In March, Chinese state media bought numerous Facebook ads extolling China’s pandemic response; all of them ran without Facebook’s required political disclaimer. On July 7, FBI Director Christopher Wray disclosed that the CCP specifically approached local politicians to endorse its pandemic response....

"For decades, the CCP has co-opted scientists through its unparalleled overseas influence network, the United Front Work Department, which expanded dramatically under Xi. In June, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that 189 of its grantees had received undisclosed funding from foreign governments. In 93% of cases, including that of Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard’s chemistry department, the undisclosed funding came from China. Likewise, the National Science Foundation, a smaller organization, reported 16–20 cases of undisclosed foreign financial ties; all but two were with China....

"In a May interview for China Central Television, Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the esteemed medical journal The Lancet, emphatically praised China’s lockdowns, saying: 'It was not only the right thing to do, but it also showed other countries how they should respond in the face of such an acute threat. So, I think we have a great deal to thank China for …' The fact that Chinese state media so widely shared a particularly credulous New Yorker article by Peter Hessler about China’s coronavirus response did not escape China expert Geremie Barmé, who cautioned its author that it reminded him of 'another American journalist, a man who reported from another authoritarian country nearly a century ago … Walter Duranty'....

"The CCP has shaped scientific narratives by consistently promoting the falsehood that 'China controlled the virus'.... Of course ... China expelled journalists in March and its infection data is manifestly forged; U.S. intelligence has confirmed China’s data is intentionally misrepresented. Nonetheless, China’s fake numbers have been paramount in scientific discourse. By demanding elite publications repeat the Orwellian lie that 'China controlled the virus,' the CCP has normalized that lie for Western elites to repeat themselves, exploiting China’s fastidiously managed reputation and the fact that most Westerners do not yet know it as an untrustworthy, totalitarian state....

"Within China, the CCP has pretended to believe its own lies only at its own convenience, reserving the right to use COVID-19 as a pretext for unrelated authoritarian whims — demolishing retirement homes, detaining dissidents and reporters, expanding mass surveillance, canceling Hong Kong’s Tiananmen Square vigil and postponing its elections for one year. In Xinjiang, where over 1 million Uighurs are imprisoned, lockdowns have gone on since January and have involved widespread hunger, forced medication, acidic disinfectant sprays, shackled residents, screams of protest from balconies, crowded 'quarantine' cells, and outright disappearances.

"The most benign possible explanation for the CCP’s campaign for global lockdowns is that the party aggressively promoted the same lie internationally as domestically — that lockdowns worked. For party members, when Wuhan locked down it likely went without saying that the lockdown would 'eliminate' coronavirus; if Xi willed it to be true, then it must be so. This is the totalitarian pathology that George Orwell called 'double-think.' But the fact that authoritarian regimes always lie does not give them a right to spread deadly lies to the rest of the world, especially by clandestine means.

"And then there’s the possibility that by shutting down the world, Xi Jinping, who vaulted through the ranks of the party, quotes ancient Chinese scholars, has mastered debts and derivatives, studies complexity science, and envisions a socialist future with China at its center, knew exactly what he was doing."

Read more: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda

Also read:

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (1)

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (2)

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (2)

China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign | The Tablet - Michael P. Senger: 

September 15, 2020 - "On March 9, Italy, the first major European country to sign onto Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, took the WHO’s advice and became the first country outside China to lock down. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte had long advocated closer ties with China. Chinese experts arrived in Italy on March 12 and two days later advised a tighter lockdown.... On March 19, they repeated that Italy’s lockdown was 'not strict enough,' saying: 'Here in Milan, the hardest hit area by COVID-19, there isn't a very strict lockdown ... We need every citizen to be involved in the fight of COVID-19 and follow this policy.' Italy was simultaneously bombarded with Chinese disinformation. From March 11 to 23, roughly 46% of tweets with the hashtag #forzaCinaeItalia (Go China, go Italy) and 37% of those with the hashtag #grazieCina (thank you China) came from bots.

"While analysts typically focus on finding as many inauthentic accounts as possible, the purpose of the following discussion is different — using simple investigatory methods to evince the intent behind Beijing’s disinformation, which appears to be far more insidious than analysts have recognized. Social media and analytics companies generally only detect obvious automated activity, while fake, personally managed accounts can be created with ease. This works out well for the CCP, which has always preferred the human touch.

"On March 12, Twitter user @manisha_kataki posted a video showing Chinese workers disinfecting streets, apparently admiring China’s strategy: 'At this rate, China will be back in action very soon, may be much faster than the world expects.' As The New York Times’ Paul Mozur noted, this tweet was not shocking, funny, or newsworthy, yet it was shared hundreds of thousands of times. This caught the attention of Israeli company Next Dim, which flagged the activity as likely state-sponsored.... Twitter responded to Mozur’s article by deleting 170,000 accounts, but at the time of this writing many of the suspect accounts are still active, and a search for hundreds of similar examples can be easily repeated with one click.... 

"As more countries shut down, some suspicious online activity took a darker turn. When South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem famously refused to issue a statewide lockdown, suspicious accounts began filling her Twitter feed with abuse and graphic language to pressure her to do so. Upon closer examination, two of the accounts hurl similar abuse at governors thousands of miles apart.... When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, the first governor to end his state’s lockdown, honored late Rep. John Lewis, his Twitter feed was stormed with conspicuous, vulgar language that often invoked his anti-lockdown stance.

"Sweden’s skepticism toward the CCP predates COVID-19. In January, Beijing threatened Swedish trade ties over an award given to Gui Minhai, a Swedish publisher detained in China. Sweden did not back down and later refused to follow China’s lockdown model, opting for a herd immunity strategy. Thus, Sweden became a prime target of a Chinese campaign portraying it as weak against the COVID threat. In the words of China’s state-run Global Times:

Chinese analysts and netizens doubt herd immunity and called it a violation of human rights, citing high mortality in the country compared to other Northern European countries. “So-called human rights, democracy, freedom are heading in the wrong direction in Sweden, and countries that are extremely irresponsible do not deserve to be China's friend …”

"Initially, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also opted for herd immunity. But on March 13, suspicious accounts began storming his Twitter feed and likening his plan to genocide. This language almost never appears in Johnson’s feed before March 12, and several of the accounts were hardly active before then. Britain locked down on March 23."

Read more: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda

Also read: 

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (1)

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (3) 

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (1)

China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign | The Tablet - Michael P. Senger: 

September 15, 2020 - "In Wuhan in late December, Dr. Li Wenliang warned his friends that a new SARS-like illness had begun spreading rapidly. Li’s message inadvertently went viral on Chinese social media, causing widespread panic and anger [within] the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]. On Jan. 7, Xi Jinping informed his inner circle that the situation in Wuhan would require their personal supervision. Two weeks later, Xi personally authorized the lockdown of Hubei province.... The World Health Organization [WHO]’s representative in China noted that 'trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science … The lockdown of 11 million people is unprecedented in public health history, so it is certainly not a recommendation the WHO has made.'

"The CCP confined 57 million Hubei residents to their homes. At the time, human rights observers expressed concerns. As one expert told The New York Times, 'the shutdown would almost certainly lead to human rights violations and would be patently unconstitutional in the United States.' Regardless, on Jan. 29, WHO Director Tedros Adhanom said he was 'very impressed and encouraged by the president [Xi Jinping]’s detailed knowledge of the outbreak' and the next day praised China for 'setting a new standard for outbreak response.' Yet only six days in, the lockdown — 'unprecedented in public health history' — had produced no results, so Tedros was praising human rights abuses with nothing to show for them.

"International COVID-19 hysteria began around Jan. 23, when 'leaked' videos from Wuhan began flooding international social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube — all of which are blocked in China — allegedly showing the horrors of Wuhan’s epidemic and the seriousness of its lockdown. Viral videos claimed to show residents spontaneously collapsing in the streets.... But in hindsight, this crisis theater is somewhat comical; in [one] infamous video, the 'spontaneously collapsing' man extends his arms to catch himself. Official Chinese accounts widely shared an image of a hospital wing supposedly constructed in one day, but which actually showed an apartment 600 miles away.... 

"In a viral tweet on Jan. 25, an epidemiologist with little background in infectious disease wrote, 'HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, the new coronavirus is a 3.8!!! How bad is that reproductive R0 value? It is thermonuclear pandemic level bad.' This was the first of a monthslong series of dubious, widely shared tweets by the previously unknown Eric Feigl-Ding, prompting a prominent Harvard colleague to denounce him as a 'charlatan.' 

"And then — success! Beginning in February, the CCP reported an exponential decline in coronavirus cases, until March 19 when they announced their lockdown had eliminated domestic cases entirely. In its Feb. 24 report, the WHO waxed rhapsodic about China’s triumph: 'China’s uncompromising and rigorous use of non-pharmaceutical measures to contain transmission of the COVID-19 virus in multiple settings provides vital lessons for the global response'....

"Scientists quickly began drafting plans in many languages to imitate China’s lockdowns. The New York Times immediately cited WHO’s report, forming a pro-lockdown stance it has clung to for months with surprisingly little introspection: 'China "took one of the most ancient strategies and rolled out one of the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease-containment efforts in history."'

"On Feb. 26, WHO’s Bruce Aylward of Canada — who later disconnected a live interview when asked to acknowledge Taiwan — put it bluntly: 'Copy China’s response to COVID-19.' In April, Canada’s parliament summoned Aylward for questioning, but the WHO has forbidden him from testifying.

"Within China, the CCP has long paid hundreds of thousands of social media propagandists and also pays for posts on an a la carte basis, totaling hundreds of millions of propaganda comments each year. More recently, these activities have gone global and escalated dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic. Social media companies have proven somewhat unserious about the gravity of the problem. When the State Department provided a sample of 250,000 accounts likely involved in coronavirus disinformation, Twitter refused to take action. These activities affect countries with little say in social media governance; a recent study found thousands of inauthentic accounts still promoting Serbian-Chinese friendship after Twitter deleted thousands of others. A former Facebook employee wrote 'I have blood on my hands' due to the company’s routinely discounting malicious political activity despite its 'disproportionate impact.'"

Read more: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda

Do You Know the Scientific History of Lockdowns? - video by Ivor Cummins

Also read:

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (2)

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (3)