July 31, 2021 - "Judges in the German capital have moved to ban a number of weekend demonstrations amid fears they will lead to a rise in coronavirus infections. Police expect protesters to travel to Berlin nonetheless.
"Berlin authorities have banned more than tens of thousands of anti-lockdown protesters demonstrating this weekend. Judges at the German capital's administrative court refused to authorize 13 demonstrations, some of which had been organized by the Querdenker (Lateral thinker) anti-lockdown movement. The ban was upheld by the Berlin-Brandeburg upper administrative court. Organizers said 22,500 people had registered to take part in one of the rallies.... A separate march planned for Sunday has also been forbidden. The 'For Peace, Freedom, Truth' rally had been expected to draw 3,500 people....
"The bans affect all protests 'whose participants regularly do not follow legal regulations, specifically to protect against infections,' said police spokesman Thilo Cablitz."
August 2, 2021 - "More than 600 people have been arrested after participating in protests against the German government’s coronavirus measures, officials have said. About 13 separate demonstrations took place around Berlin on Sunday, despite being banned by a court order and participants saying they would not follow safety rules.
"Most of the approximately 5,000 protesters – a fraction of the 22,500 expected before the ban was announced – failed to stick to social distancing rules or to wear medical masks, according to police. After participants did not heed orders to abide by hygiene rules, police used pepper spray and truncheons to break up the crowds. Water cannon and a tank similar to an armoured recovery vehicle were on hand but not needed, according to police.
"Police confirmed that a 49-year-old man, who had travelled from the Rhineland region with his son to participate, collapsed and later died after breaking through a barrier [and beind detained - gd].... Several police officers were also injured on Sunday....
"Organisers have complained that they are being treated differently from other political demonstrations, such as the Christopher Street Day parade that took place in Berlin last month, attracting 65,000 participants. Mask-wearing and physical distancing rules were often ignored at that event."
August 2, 2021 - "For the third consecutive Saturday, thousands of people marched to protest against the introduction of the government's Covid passport. Almost a quarter of a million people took to the streets in 180 demonstrations, according to the government. These numbers are disputed by the organisers, who claim they are wildly conservative. But whatever the exact figure, it was a phenomenal number of demonstrators for the final weekend of July. A fortnight ago, according to the government, approximately 114,000 marched; and last week it was 161,000. To break the 200,000 mark is an indication of how the protest movement is growing.
"The demonstrators come from all cross-sections of society, and are overwhelmingly passive. The march I witnessed in Paris on Saturday featured an impressive array of fancy dress, dozens of children, a lot of dancing, and scores of placards relaying various messages, none of which were complimentary to president Macron. What was also notable was the low-key police presence. I saw none of the riot squad, only the regular Paris police, some of whom chatted happily to the demonstrators as they filed past.... According to the Minister of the Interior there were 19 arrests at Saturday's nationwide protests, ten of which were in Paris....
"The coverage in the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times was ... reductive. 'Thousands of anti-vaxxers march through Paris,' was the headline in the former, while the latter went with: 'Far right and gilets jaunes find common cause in France's antivax carnival.' The rallies across France were indeed marked by a carnival atmosphere, but the majority of those in attendance were not from the far right or the Yellow Vest movement and nor were they opposed to the vaccine. A minority are – or they oppose the vaccination of children – but most gave up their Saturday to defend the principles of Liberté, égalité, fraternité.
"The French media made the same mistake when the protest movement began. Most have now toned down their hostile coverage, acknowledging that the principle motivation for demonstrators is opposition to the introduction of a Covid passport that they claim is discriminatory.... According to political analyst Vincent Tournier, anti-fascists and nationalists have joined forces to resist what he described as 'the inception of a form of privilege: in creating two categories of citizens, one calls into question the civic culture that's founded on a deep-rooted attachment to equality'....
"[B]oth the grassroots left and right believe they have been abandoned by their political masters, few of whom have kicked up a fuss at the imposition of the passport. The muteness of most Unions has also been noted. As a consequence there is a perception among the people of a growing ideological chasm between themselves and a privileged elite....
"Macron's Covid passport is currently being scrutinised by the constitutional council, which has the power to order the government to make changes. It will announce its ruling on Thursday. If the council raises no objections, the passport will be implemented in its entirety on 9 August. Macron insists it's all in a good cause, but more and more of his people disagree."
July 22, 2021 - "More than 100,000 people flooded streets in France over the weekend and multiple COVID vaccination centers were vandalized as opposition grew to the government’s most recent pandemic strategy. In President Emmanuel Macron’s latest incarnation of lockdowns, government officials have decreed that unvaccinated individuals will no longer be allowed to enter cafes, restaurants, theaters, public transportation and more....
"France ... is ... one of many countries around the world imposing new restrictions as fears grow over a new variant of COVID-19. Australia’s recent restrictions have placed half the country under strict lockdown — even though a record 82,000 tests had identified just 111 new coronavirus cases — while restaurants in Portugal are struggling to survive amid newly imposed restrictions.
"One country not making much news is Sweden.
"Sweden, of course, was maligned in 2020 for foregoing a strict lockdown. The Guardian called its approach 'a catastrophe' in the making, while CBS News said Sweden had become 'an example of how not to handle COVID-19.' Despite these criticisms, Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the pandemic continues today. In contrast to its European neighbors, Sweden is welcoming tourists. Businesses and schools are open with almost no restrictions. And as far as masks are concerned, not only is there no mandate in place, Swedish health officials are not even recommending them.
"What are the results of Sweden’s much-derided laissez-faire policy? Data show the 7-day rolling average for COVID deaths yesterday was zero (see below). As in nada. And it’s been at zero for about a week now.
"Even a year ago, it was clear the hyperbolic claims about 'the Swedish catastrophe'were false.... But a year later the evidence is overwhelming that Sweden got the pandemic mostly right. Sweden’s overall mortality rate in 2020 was lower than most of Europe and its economy suffered far less. Meanwhile, today Sweden is freer and healthier than virtually any other country in Europe. As much of the world remains gripped in fear and nations devise new restrictions to curtail basic freedoms, Sweden remains a vital and shining reminder that there is a better way."
June 19, 2021 - "Early last year, ... the lockdown lobby relied on argument by intimidation. They know about viruses. You do not. They know about public health. You do not. They have precise and complex models. You do not. They have university appointments and positions of power. You do not. People who would normally favor the primacy of liberty, property, and law fell silent, as if intellectually outgunned. The public, lacking knowledge too, acquiesced to lockdowns. The politicians panicked, throwing out everything they thought they knew about good governance....
"Thus did I embark on a long journey to learn about the history of pandemics, the cell biology of viruses and their interaction with the human population, the relationship between pandemics and the eventual endemic equilibrium, herd immunity and vaccinations, and all of the other features of infectious disease that have become so heavily debated this year.... I’ve lost count of the number of books I’ve read, including even medical school textbooks on viruses (what a slog!) as well as countless papers, in addition to probably one hundred hours of lectures online....
"I just finished one book that stands out, and that I wish I had read a year and a half ago. It’s brilliant, erudite, precise, evocative to the point of being visionary, and capable of completely shifting one’s view toward pathogens and the social order. It is a work of genius.... The author is the legendary Oxford University theoretical epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, one of the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration. The title of the book I find rather regrettable because it sounds coldly clinical rather than literary: Pandemics: Our Fears and the Facts.... Dr. Gupta, I suspect, wrote this book to familiarize readers with the normalcy of pathogens, and to explain why it is not likely that an entirely new and deadly disease will arrive to wipe out large swaths of the human race....
"With computer viruses, the way to deal with them is to block them.... One exposure could mean data loss, identity theft, and even machine death. Despite what Bill Gates seems to believe, our bodies are not the same. Exposure to milder forms of germs works to protect us against more severe forms. The cell memory of our body is trained through experience, not by blocking all bugs but by incorporating the capacity to fight them off into our biology. This is the essence of how vaccines work, but more than that, it is how our whole immune system works. Pursuing an agenda of zero-pathogenic exposure is the road to disaster and death. We did not evolve that way and we cannot live this way. Indeed we will die if we take the route.
"I hesitate to put any words in Professor Gupta’s mouth but I will try to summarize the one major lesson of this book. Pathogens will always be with us, their forms always changing, and thus the best protection we have against severe outcomes from those that threaten us is immunities built by exposure to milder forms of them. She explores this idea in great depth, applies it to past pandemics, and examines the implications for the future....
"The applications of this general principle are wide. Why was the Spanish flu so virulent against young people while mainly sparing old people? She speculates that there had been a whole generation of young people who had lacked exposure to influenzas. The records indicate that for the 20 years prior, there had been no major flu outbreaks, so when this one hit following the Great War, it was particularly cruel against those with naive immune systems, most of whom were between 20 and 40 years old. By contrast, the elderly had been exposed to a flu earlier in their lives that imbued them with natural immunity from this more deadly one.
"Does this mean that with every new pathogen we can and must expect widespread death before its harms are minimized? Not at all. With most pathogens, there is a negative correlation between severity and prevalence. Viruses with unimpressive performance kill their host quickly and thereby do not spread – Ebola is the classic case here....
"However, widespread death isn’t necessary before the pathogen population collapses and dies — there will come a point in the natural course of every epidemic when a non-immune host will become very hard to find, and most infections will have been cleared before they’ve had a chance to transmit. This is because the density of susceptible hosts will have fallen, either because they are now immune or dead. And so the epidemic will start to diminish and will eventually burn itself out. Once the disease has run its course, the host population can start to recover and attempt to return to its original density. In time, the proportion of susceptible individuals in a population becomes high enough for the disease to make a comeback, but — unless a disease does not revisit a population for a very long time — the second epidemic will always be smaller, and the third time, smaller still. This is because much of the population will still be immune each time another epidemic occurs. Eventually, an equilibrium is reached where the infectious agent kills a constant number of individuals every year, which is a very small proportion of what it could achieve in ‘virgin soil’. At this stage, the disease is said to be ‘endemic’ rather than epidemic.
"To be sure, the reaching of this endemic equilibrium does not mean that the virus is no longer a threat. When a virus encounters a generation or a tribe or a territory where immune memory is unprepared, it can indeed be wicked once again. The struggle between us and the bugs is unending but our bodies have well equipped us with huge advantages, so long as we are wise about its biological management."
July 28, 2021 -"Canada’s pandemic response, particularly in Ontario, has been defined by strict lockdowns — often at a level of severity well beyond anything seen in the rest of the developed world. It will take years to fully assess the societal costs of social distancing, from learning loss in schools to a rise in famine conditions caused by disruptions to global trade. Below is a rough accounting of the price Canada has paid thus far.
"In March 2020 ... the country’s federal debt stood at $721.4 billion. Only one year later, the Department of Finance was pegging the debt load at $1.2 trillion.... And that’s just federal spending. COVID-19 has also blown out the debt of every other conceivable public institution in the country. In the three post-pandemic years, Ontario is set to run up as much debt as the prior 10 years combined.... Dozens of Canadian post-secondary institutions are posting multi-million dollar deficits, often for the first time. Newfoundland and Labrador’s already-shaky financial situation has been thrust onto the brink of bankruptcy.... For now, all this unprecedented borrowing has not overly compromised Canada’s federal credit rating, but the consequences will begin to show in future budgets as the cost of servicing debt becomes our single greatest public expense....
"It’s difficult to put an exact figure on the number of businesses wiped out by COVID-19, but a running list of retail closures includes everything from the shuttering of 300 Canadian Starbucks locations to the mass-closure of Canadian Disney stores. In November, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business was estimating that 225,000 firms would not survive the pandemic.
"And the worst wave of business closures may be yet to come. Last month, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce projected that a disproportionately high rate of bankruptcies and business closures could extend well into 2022. Many businesses that were critically wounded by COVID-19 remain open by taking on debt or relying on government supports such as the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy....
"As of this writing, Canadian COVID-19 deaths stood at 26,550. Second only to the Spanish Flu, the toll makes COVID-19 our deadliest natural disaster. However, Canada’s average death rate (70.53 per 100,000) is roughly in league with Israel, which has often received praise for its handling of the pandemic....However, COVID-19 deaths have overshadowed a dramatic rise in fatalities in other areas, often as as a direct result of pandemic measures.
"Most notably, the opioid crisis has never been worse. Between April and December of 2020, 5,148 Canadians died of an overdose, a rise of 89 per cent over the same period in 2019. As Health Canada has theorized, border closures made the illicit drug supply more toxic, and social distance caused the curbing of medical services that had previously been instrumental in keeping many addicts alive.
"The months-long suspension of routine medical services is also expected to yield a rise in preventable cancer deaths that will be playing out for years after the official end of lockdowns. Modelling by Statistics Canada has estimated ... an extra 440 Canadians will die of colorectal cancer as a result of the more than 540,000 screenings missed during the pandemic. A November paper in the Journal of Medical Screening similarly estimated that just six months of missed mammograms could yield up to 250 additional breast cancer deaths in Canada. In Quebec, the province’s health ministry has estimated that up to 4,000 people have gone undiagnosed with cancer as a result of a sharp dropoff in mammograms, pap smears and colorectal cancer screens.
"One spot of good news, however, is that lockdowns haven’t inspired a spike in deaths in the one category where everybody assumed they would: suicides. Although the pandemic has played havoc with people’s mental health, the number of Canadians taking their own lives under lockdown has either remained stable or gone into decline."
July 21, 2021 - "From Los Angeles to Massachusetts, local officials across the country are pleading with Americans to once again wear masks inside as the delta variant rips through the U.S. Several counties across California and Nevada are now advising all residents to wear masks in public indoor settings — whether they are vaccinated or not. Local leaders in at least three more states have reinstated mask mandates, issued facial covering recommendations or threatened the return of strict public health limits for all residents....
"On Friday, seven counties in California’s Bay Area recommended using masks indoors, stopping short of a full mandate. The city of Berkeley, California, similarly called for the continued use of masks. Further south, Los Angeles County restored its mask mandate for public indoor places on Saturday. The county initially eliminated the mandate on Thursday....
"In Massachusetts, officials in Provincetown advised all individuals Monday to resume wearing masks indoors.... New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell authorized an indoor mask advisory on Wednesday.... And New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday that he wanted to avoid reinstating a mask mandate.... 'For the time being, I hope we don’t have to do that,' Murphy said. 'If we have to, we will.'"
July 29, 2021 - "The CDC on Tuesday advised all Americans, including people who are fully vaccinated, to mask up indoors in public places again, anywhere in the country that is seeing significant spread of COVID-19. In addition, the agency also wound back its guidance on face masks in schools, and is now advising all students and staff to wear masks during in-person learning, regardless of their vaccination status....
"Following the CDC announcement on Tuesday, Nevada quickly announced that it would once again require everyone in the state to wear face masks indoors in public. The House, too, announced that masks would be required for any work indoors on their side of the Capitol. And Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, D.C., announced Thursday that masks will be required indoors for everyone over the age of 2 by the start of the weekend....
"Boston, Washington, D.C., and Madison, Wisconsin, have all announced that they will require public-school students and staff to wear masks regardless of vaccination status. California is requiring face masks in schools, but deferring enforcement to local school officials. And in light of the CDC’s new guidelines, it’s now likely that many more state and local officials will follow suit, if they haven’t already."
March 22, 2021 - "‘Long Covid,” or post-Covid syndrome, is an emerging condition that has attracted great media attention — and now [U.S.] federal funding. The National Institutes of Health [NIH] last month announced a $1.15 billion initiative to research the 'prolonged health consequences' of Covid-19 infection. The topic deserves serious study. Some patients, particularly older ones with co-morbidities, do experience symptoms that outlast a coronavirus infection. But such symptoms can also be psychologically generated or caused by a physical illness unrelated to the prior infection. Long Covid is largely an invention of vocal patient activist groups....
"The concept of long Covid has a highly unorthodox origin: online surveys produced by Body Politic, which launched in 2018 and describes itself atop its website’s homepage as 'a queer feminist wellness collective merging the personal and the political.' In March 2020, the group’s co-founders created the Body Politic Covid-19 Support Group, and as part of their mission of 'cultivating patient led research,' the organization coordinated a series of online surveys on persistent symptoms. Based on the results of these, Body Politic produced the first report on long Covid in May.
"But many of the survey respondents who attributed their symptoms to the aftermath of a Covid-19 infection likely never had the virus in the first place. Of those who self-identified as having persistent symptoms attributed to Covid and responded to the first survey, not even a quarter had tested positive for the virus. Nearly half (47.8%) never had testing and 27.5% tested negative for Covid-19. Body Politic publicized the results of a larger, second survey in December 2020. Of the 3,762 respondents, a mere 600, or 15.9%, had tested positive for the virus at any time....
"This didn’t perturb NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, who has repeatedly supported the Body Politic Covid-19 Support Group’s patient-led research initiatives, promoting the surveys in a series of official blog posts. In the announcement of the NIH’s decision to commit $1.15 billion to long Covid research, Dr. Collins explicitly referred to the Body Politic research surveys.
This subjugation of scientific rigor to preconceived belief reflects a common dynamic encountered in clinical practice. Patients who struggle with chronic and vague symptoms often vehemently reject a physician’s diagnosis that suggests an underlying mental-health issue, in part because of the stigma around mental illness and the false belief that psychologically generated symptoms aren’t 'real.' By relinquishing the need for objective serological confirmation, and by claiming that long Covid can manifest in a mind-boggling 205 different symptoms, the Body Politic Covid-19 Support Group offered its readership exactly this attractive alternative, leading patients away from treatments that could actually ease their symptoms.
"Body Politic wasn’t the only patient advocacy group that drove the NIH funding commitment. Solve ME/CFS (which stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) was founded in 1987 by patients who felt their chronic and numerous medical complaints — including fatigue, “brain fog,” and an inability to exert themselves physically or mentally — were being dismissed by their physicians and neglected by the medical community.... In 2017, frustrated by the lack of mainstream recognition of their condition, Solve ME/CFS hired a lobbyist to pressure federal agencies to commit more funds to research. Then, in December 2020, likely sensing an intuitive link with the emerging idea of long Covid syndrome, this same organization spearheaded a letter — also signed by Body Politic — to congressional leaders urging more federal funding be dedicated to investigating long Covid....
"A central feature underlying many psychosomatic-symptom disorders is a fixed belief that one is ill and unlikely to recover. By drawing attention to and legitimizing the ever-present threat of long Covid, medical authorities will lead a large group of impressionable patients to believe that their Covid-19 symptoms have not resolved and that they are helpless victims of an unrelenting sickness.
"In the past century, the media has played a critical role in perpetuating psychogenic illnesses — chronic brucellosis in the 1940s, chronic Epstein Barr virus in the 1980s, and today (although scientifically debunked) chronic Lyme disease. It is therefore alarming to witness the recent proliferation of uncritical and sensational media stories about long Covid. The NIH’s decision is a victory for pseudoscience and will do more to harm than help patients."
