Panic Pandemic – Why Are People Who Should Know Better Buying the Controlavirus Hype?

And spreading it?

 

Editor’s note: Good stuff from the Off Guardian. I agree, one of the more disappointing things about this hysteria has been seeing parts of the alt-media buy into it. And I’m not even talking about views on how bad the disease is. We can have an honest disagreement about that, that’s fine. But however much of a threat you think this virus is, should you really go from being a dissident one day to demanding government mandated-lockdowns of entire populations the next?

I think not, I think even if you think this is the worst thing since the Spanish Flu you should still retain a measure of skepticism as relates to government incentives, intentions, and competence. After all, if we are being that dramatic then the most recent event in human history to stack up a toll in the tens of millions was not the Spanish Flu but Mao’s (well-intentioned but horribly repressive) Great Leap Forward. Government action, repressive and arbitrary as it usually is, can be every bit as harmful to human flourishing as a plague, and has the stubborn tendency to take a small problem and turn it into a far bigger one, with a far greater death toll (think the man-made famines such as 1932-33 USSR or 1943 British India).


The only certainty about the ‘novel’ virus is that a great deal of nonsense is being talked about it by people who really ought to know better, and a great deal of opportunism is being displayed.

From Netanyahu grabbing the chance to postpone his corruption trial to Hollywood starlets claiming they have ‘tested positive’ (surely not a sad and cynical attempt to up their profile), this bandwagon is seething and teeming with those trying to seize their moment of fame or get rich or stay out of jail or just join in the mayhem

It’s cool to be nCoV-positive now. Maybe that’s why such inordinate numbers of famous people are staking their claim to it.

ISIS are apparently a bit worried about nCoV also and is allegedly sending out travel advisories to its jihadists.

Yup, that’s a real thing, right there. Really happening. Definitely.

Meanwhile, the propaganda is relentless, and there’s a variety for all tastes.

If you like your fear porn vanilla you can read all the articles based on total speculation that tell you millions will die if we don’t demand martial law and vaccines. (Speaking of vaccines, the as-yet-untested Covid19 vaccine is going to mandatory in Denmark, and in the US the manufacturers will have legal immunity should it cause any ill-effects).

If you are of a more skeptical turn of mind well, how about nCoV as bio-weapon? Plenty of juicy stuff on that topic also.

And scientists and science journals are not immune. There’s no shortage of people with PhDs willing to talk nonsense with a sciencey spin in order to convince the more inquiring proles that the governments are correct to invoke emergency powers and get that untested vaccine cranking out asap.

Look at this beauty. Written by a team of MDs and other ‘experts’ and appearing in The Lancet, it is about the most naked example I have seen to date of pseudoscience being used to inflate the perception of nCoV as something other than what it is.

The purpose of the article is apparently to find some sort of barely rational reason for estimating the nCoV case fatality rate to be higher than it actually is by a factor of ten.

Here’s the ‘reasoning’ it offers:

However, these mortality rate estimates are based on the number of deaths relative to the number of confirmed cases of infection, which is not representative of the actual death rate; patients who die on any given day were infected much earlier, and thus the denominator of the mortality rate should be the total number of patients infected at the same time as those who died.

They actually suggest with a straight face (though they don’t say why) that in order to get a ‘real’ figure for case fatality we need to count deaths as a percentage only of those who became infected at the same time as those who died.

So, if on Day One of a hypothetical new disease, two people get it and one dies, this would be a 50% case fatality ratio.

Sure, no problem. Common sense and statistics agree with that.

But what if from Day Two to Day Ten inclusive 198 more people get it and none of them die?

Well, according to the normal method of assessing CFR that would be 200 cases, one death, and a CFR of 0.5%

But with this brilliant new method, it would still be a CFR of 50% – because we are only allowed to count the cases who got sick on the same day as the fatality. And only two people got sick that day, of whom 50% died.

You see the corrupt genius of it? It’s a statistical nonsense that crucially gives permission to any would-be stats compilers in the WHO or elsewhere to overestimate the CFR of this bug, or indeed any other subsequent alleged ‘killer’ virus.

If you doubt this is the point, then read the article. This is just what the authors do, having the total gall to claim the ‘real’ CFR for nCoV is anywhere up to 20%, based solely on this crazy new way of figuring out the stats.

Which will look great in future headlines, and help pave the way for public acceptance of a total fascist dictatorship.

If you ever doubted that corruption is now endemic and all our institutions – political, legal, medical – are stacked with yes-men and jobsworths or fools prepared to put their names to any junk proclamation that might get them a raise or save their professional skins, just think of this article. Written by alleged world-class ‘experts’, published in the Lancet, and nothing more than a word salad of contradictory nonsense and meaningless conclusions designed to promote a political and propagandist point.

It even at one point acknowledges the probability of many many subclinical or symptom-free carriers of this supposed virus. But while the authors satisfy some dormant scrap of conscience by alluding to it they don’t draw their readers’ attention to the concomitant fact this lowers the case fatality by quite a way. In fact they allow themselves to sort of imply the opposite, because that is the level on which such people work:

Notably, the full denominator remains unknown because asymptomatic cases or patients with very mild symptoms might not be tested and will not be identified.

This is just one example of the forest of disinformative, hysterical, fog-bound garbage being poured on our heads about this so-called pandemic. That this is part of a coordinated and massive attempt to instill worldwide fear and enact worldwide population-management methods is now undeniable.

What is nCoV19? I honestly do not know.

The more the fear porn ramps up, the less certain I become of any aspect of the narrative surrounding it. We are definitely all being discouraged from questioning its virulence, discouraged from referring to its official fatality and case numbers, which do not correlate with the level of fear we are being told is appropriate.There is certainly a massive and multifaceted attempt to fudge and inflate those numbers to bring them in line with the ‘response’.

This brings us back to our revelation that good old Wikipedia have been downgrading the CFR of the Spanish Flu. It’s hard not to see this as part of the same process.

The actual death rates just aren’t high enough. So talk them up, play pea and thimble games with the stats, and do some Memory-Holing so that the 1918 pandemic suddenly has a very similar CFR, allowing your tame media to make all the right comparisons in their op eds and editorials, pointing out how many millions died back then despite it only having a fatality ratio of 2.5%.

They seem aware of the discrepancy, and are making efforts to prevent people researching it. The WHO are warning people not to read “too much” about the disease in order to protect their mental health. In a write up on the reccomendations, the BBC says this:

There is a lot of misinformation swirling around – stay informed by sticking to trusted sources of information such as government and NHS websites

Whether this virus is as imaginary as some are saying, or entirely real, it’s being hyped to a point beyond any connection with reality, and not just in the media.

It’s a multi-pronged assault on our minds right now. Allegedly reliable and authoritative medical professionals are just as likely to talk propaganda at you as some government minister or media halfwit.

Even in the alt-media, many have stopped thinking and gone full deer-in-the-headlights, devoting their websites to recycling government talking points and urging those same governments to lock down their citizens.

How bizarre is it that outlets who were – just weeks ago – warning against trusting anything that comes out of the mouths of our ‘masters’, are now prepared to surrender entirely to official narratives and official ‘safe-keeping’ – and for a virus which, even if totally real, has killed about 7,000 people – or around 7% of the numbers who have died over the same time period – of the current flu.

Yes, that is a real statistic. Check it out.

And no, don’t tell me it’s “not a fair comparison” because the flu is ‘always’ here and nCoV is new. All you do by that is display your unthinking foolishness. Flu viruses are RNA viruses that mutate all the time – which is why you can catch ‘the flu’ over and over again; You’re catching a different strain, a ‘new’ variant. Just like nCoV it needs to travel by infection routes. And just like nCov it has to start small.

But unlike nCov it has already managed to kill around 100,000 people since Jan 1 this year. So let go of that particular piece of nonsense, ok?

Do the alt-media types backing these extreme quarantine and self-isolation notions think the anti-assembly laws, mandatory vaccines and other special powers will all just vanish once this crisis has subsided (because all pandemics eventually do go away)? Do they think the de facto martial law will be temporary?

Do they think we can just ask nice and everything will go back to the way it was? (assuming, of course, the entire system hasn’t morphed into the Hunger Games due to global financial meltdown and mass poverty, because we all basically signed off on closing down what remains of our economy.

Are they thinking at all, or just reacting?

The panic is now seeding itself and doing the propaganda work for those who set it off, and an obvious and very very alarming agenda is being rolled out right behind it.

It’s never been more important to stay alert, sceptical and objective. We’ll keep trying to do that – and you should all do the same.

Source: Off Guardian

20 Comments
  1. Ronnie&MargaretInDementia says

    It’s all just to distract from the collapse of the capitalist economy again. First the fear porn, then the collapse, which in fact has already happened, then blame the dreaded nCov for the demise of the economy. Massive bailouts which no one knows about or cares about because after being locked up for a month, eventually they’ll all be told they can walk free again in the streets. The relief of the bovine herds will be so orgiastic they wont care that their childrens futures have been sold off to the markets, hedge funders and banksters … again.
    I’m still of the feeling that this is the biggest psyop ever enforced on the planet. Right now whatever the statistical predictions the reality points to something quite, quite different.
    I await with baited breath especially the London statistics, where the population have for 3 weeks been allowed to roam free, (in fact nothing has been done in the UK since nCov started in China until this week) breathing all over each other on a tube network which moves 2 million people per day only being told to wash their hands. If London ends up as bad as China and Italy combined then there’s definitely something in this C19 malarkey, if not, its a psyop clean and clear.

  2. Sallie Ann says

    It’s designed to kill off the old farts….period. Some younger ones get it, too, but mainly to kill off the older folks.

  3. Tradisjonal Nordmann says

    Here is what is happening in a pix – they really do say a thousand words – or more…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/81b7c91e8fa13bf6bfa9c31494f3239074d18f9aa8d767363b390a7a3c3cfadd.jpg

  4. Godfree Roberts says

    Good video from a Swiss pulmonary specialist who supports this POV:
    https://youtu.be/p_AyuhbnPOI

    1. Jafar Karim says

      Is that a real recent photo of Wuhan? Look at that haze from pollution! Wouldn’t be surprised if a large portion of the people living there have respiratory illnesses already.

    2. stevek9 says

      This is reasonable, but has been overtaken by events in Italy. I am willing to accept that this may be nothing special, but I would like to see an explanation then of what is happening in Italy (and Iran). Are these special cases due to the culture? Do they have a more virulent strain? Is this a result of the particular response in these countries? Note: I do recognize that the median age for fatalities in Italy is 80, and that virtually no one under 40 has died in Italy, other than (at the time) 5 cases, where the patients had serious co-morbidity.

      1. Jafar Karim says

        https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/italian-government-study-99-their-coronavirus-fatalities-were-already-sick-half-dee

        Italian Government Study: 99% of their Coronavirus Fatalities Were Already Sick; Half Diagnosed with 3 or More Diseases

        Also, check for an outbreak of TB from migrants to Italy which occurred before this coronavirus news.

        Regarding Iran, looks like they were just playing it up for sympathy, a tactic to prevent a US attack amid their suffering from sanctions and firing some revenge missile attacks recently. They have been facing harsh action from the US for quite some time, and apparently it worked, inasmuch the US supposedly called off a military strike for humanitarian reasons.

      2. Al Carbone says

        remember that the media made tons of money with the Russia and impeachment hoax that were manufactured. now we have another one

        1. stevek9 says

          I’m well aware of those hoaxes. But that is not an answer to my question. What is going on in Italy? This is not ‘normal’, so what is the cause?

          1. Al Carbone says

            are you inept at finding out yourself. Salvini says it was the invasion of non whites that brought in TB and the C-virus is tied in with it also lowered people resistance. 90% of the dead in Italy are 75-85 anyway

          2. Ronnie&MargaretInDementia says

            The cause is that northern Italy is a power house of cheap chinese labour for the high end fashion labels (tens of thousands of workers in factories) which has simply overwhelmed the run down health services ability to respond to respiratory need of the older population. For them it is turbo charged flu with inability to respond. Lot of people dying because they can’t be ventilated or looked after properly. Looks bad statistically but its no worse than recent flu season in US where 14000 people died during what was a very mild winter. Too many people not enough equipment. Some of those deaths were undoubtedly C19. Health services are so gutted from austerity measures from 2008 crash or because they’ve been sold off to private companies who don’t run services for people but for profit.

          3. Harry Kays says

            Italy’s population is not healthy in comparison with other countries . Their high average age , bad economy and worst of all diet are main reasons why this disease has killed so many in Italy . Korea , Japan , Austria , Germany etc. have a much higher culture of health or immunity . The same can be said for certain states in the US . Utah has few virus cases and even fewer deaths because they have the most citizens 50 and under in the United States , promote exercise on a daily basis and therefore have a much much higher immunity to disease .
            Idaho is similar with a lower average age . CDC or US government simply can’t apply a cookie authoritarian cutter model from very unhealthy cities such as LA , Chicago , New Orleans and especially NYC ( one of the unhealthiest cities on earth ! I know I’ve lived there . Exercise is a dirty word there and their diet? It’s disgusting Fattest cops on earth after Moscow )
            The virus while real is the 3rd biggest hype job in the history of the world after Hilter / Nazism and the biggest by far The Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

      3. Godfree Roberts says

        Events in Italy have taken an interesting turn, according to NPR:
        Other countries can learn important lessons from Italy, says Dr. Giuseppe Remuzzi, co-author of a recent paper in The Lancet about the country’s dire situation. The takeaways include how to swiftly convert a general hospital into a coronavirus care unit with specially trained doctors and nurses. “We had dermatologists, eye doctors, pathologists, learning how to assist a person with a ventilator,” Remuzzi says. Some question why Italy was caught off guard when the virus outbreak was revealed on Feb. 21. Remuzzi says he is now hearing information about it from general practitioners. “They remember having seen very strange pneumonia, very severe, particularly in old people in December and even November,” he says. “This means that the virus was circulating, at least in [the northern region of] Lombardy and before we were aware of this outbreak occurring in China.” He says it was impossible to combat something you didn’t know existed.

  5. Undecider says

    So we’re at about or close to 200K abortions, in the United States, as of the publication of this article? No panic?

    1. isaac says

      Hey what you tryna do, make sense or sompthin?

  6. thomas malthaus says
  7. Per says

    OffGuardian nailed it imho.

  8. stevek9 says

    I am really afraid … of this hysteria, not the virus. My current hope is that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine show some effectiveness. These are relatively cheap, available, and in the case of hydroxychloroquine with mild side-effects. Any positive results at all, and we could all start shouting ‘problem solved’. To give him credit, Trump had done what he could. He put the f*ing FDA on notice by announcing that chloroquine is ‘approved for prescription’, which is literally true. The indication is for malaria, but thankfully your physician can prescribe any approved drug, even if ‘off-label’. This is my main hope at present for calming this lunacy. Another helping factor, Bayer just offered to donate 3 millions doses to the US. That will also put pressure to not take the usual 10-20 years to get something ‘approved’ by the FDA.

    1. Ronnie&MargaretInDementia says

      Singapore had been using HIV retrovirals that have proved quite good for some people. Cubans have been using Inteferon. There is plenty going on in terms of drug applications just not a cure. Nowhere near enough people are being tested so the stats are pretty meaningless. 7billion people on the planet, 11000 dead, I’d say right now thats peanuts

  9. Mikhail Garchenko says

    EXCELLENT..! Many thanks for share it..!

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