We Surrender: Moon of Mao Drops Hydrogen Gaslighting Bomb, Vaporizes Fact-Based Opposition to COVID Doomsday Cult
He put skeptic experts in quotation marks. Wow, we admit we were wrong now
It is a sad day my friends. Virus hysteria skeptics lie destroyed and defeated after Moon of Alabama delivers a devastating blow to our arguments. Here is the painful, brilliant blow in all its stunning effectiveness:
On two Coronavirus pieces on other websites:
- Sweden Is Right. The Economy Should be Left Open – Mike Whitney, UNZ
The piece debunks itself when it quotes a Swedish epidemiologist who says:
“The truth is that we have a policy similar to that of other countries,” says Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, “Like everyone, we are trying to slow down the rate of infection … The differences derive from a different tradition and from a different culture that prevail in Sweden. We prefer voluntary measures, and there is a high level of trust here between the population and the authorities, so we are able to avoid coercive restrictions”
Sweden can do without orders of social distancing because its people will socially distance voluntarily when asked. That works because “there is a high level of trust here between the population and the authorities”.
That does not hold for the community of Somali people and other immigrants in Sweden more of whom are dying than in any other group.
Now project such a voluntary attempt onto the U.S. public where there is little, if any, trust between the population and the authorities. It simply would not work and one would soon have a runaway epidemic with all its bad consequences. Whitney’s conclusion that we should all do like Sweden is thus not justified.
Wow. Whitney lays out a carefully constructed 1900-words argument, but which supposedly “debunks itself” by the inclusion of 16 words by someone else.
But read Moon of Alabama’s argument carefully, it isn’t even arguing that Sweden’s approach is wrong for Sweden (at this point that argument would be untenable). It merely says it would lead to a “runaway epidemic” everywhere else where there is “little, if any, trust between the population and the authorities.”
That’s very interesting because when Mao of Alabama was writing his alarmist March pieces calling for the iron boot to come down on Europe (Coronavirus – The Hidden Cases – Why We Must Shut Everything Down And Do It Now, Coronavirus – A Lockdown Is Not Enough) he did not pause to make an exception for countries such as Sweden where there is a high degree of trust between authorities and the public that he now finds such a gamechanger.
In fact, there were no qualifications in his calls for anti-virus measures whatsoever. He was empathic that the more Draconian the measures the better:
Yascha Mounk follows my argument and gives a reasonable advice on what we can do to make this as pandemic as survivable as possible. Shut everything down that can be shut down. Increase social distance as much as possible. Avoid all live social contacts wherever possible. Do it NOW!
He was equally clear that anything short of following his recommendations to the letter would spell disaster as health care systems became overwhelmed:
Not shutting everything down guarantees that our health care systems will get overwhelmed. This will increase the death rate of the disease.
But the inescapable empirical reality is that Sweden did not follow Comrade Alabama’s calls for something even beyond a lockdown (“A Lockdown Is Not Enough“), but has not been hit by the catastrophic consequences he predicted for any Europeans who did not do so. Its case load remains manageable and its health care system is coping.
It is equally the case that Whitney’s piece does not in fact “debunk itself” by the inclusion of the Tegnell quote. As Comrade Moon surely knows including a quotation does not mean the author signs under its every word. Zooming in on 16 words which aren’t even Whitney’s as evidence he “debunked” himself is disingenuous.
Tegnell has his own reasons for focusing on similarities rather than differences of the Swedish and non-Swedish approaches. He’s not looking to make enemies or pick needless fights. Saying both approaches do many of the same things, except the Swedish one is voluntary, is one way of defending himself without polarizing the situation further and painting a target on himself.
It might also be an appealing argument for Comrade Moon to run to now that his doomsayer predictions have failed to come true in Sweden. But the truth is that, regardless of what the tactically non-confrontational Tegnell chooses to emphasize, there are very substantial differences between what is still permitted and takes place in Sweden compared to the rest of Europe and with none of the consequences MOA predicted. The gap between the reality of Swedish daily life compared to the Chinese-style crackdown MOA called for is even greater, again with none of the consequences it was so sure of.
In fact, MOA explicitly trashed Sweden’s herd immunity strategy at the time also considered by the UK and the Netherlands as “clearly lunatic”:
Mitigation was the way Boris Johnson had planned to go because he wanted to achieve ‘herd immunity’ for all of Britain. That is something that can only be done through vaccinations. The idea was clearly lunatic. The study says that such a ‘mitigation’ would have resulted in “hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems (most notably intensive care units) being overwhelmed many times over.”
That leaves suppression as the only way to go. Cut the epidemic down as much as possible and test, test, test to find each and every new case. Cutting the epidemic down requires a two months shutdown and all the above listed additional measures.
In reality, Sweden has fared no worse than many of the “suppression” countries, and better than quite a few.
But in fact, even the most Draconian European governments shied away from the full list of oppressive measures MOA screamed it was absolutely necessary to unleash on us to avoid doom. These included “mandatory isolation” of suspected cases “in sport arenas”, breaking “the family chain”, and cellphone tracing:
There must be a mandatory isolation of people who are probably infected but do not show symptoms as well as separate isolation of suspected and detected cases with ‘mild’ symptoms.
Telling a probably infected person to shelter with their family, as is now done in the U.S. and the U.K, will only kill more people. 75%-80% of the cases in China got infected through direct family contact. The family chain must be broken to effectively stop the epidemic.
Probably infected persons, i.e. those who had contact with another infected person, should be put under quarantine in sport arenas or exposition facilities to be supervised by medics.
Contact tracing teams must ask each of them with whom they met over the last days and then check on those persons. This requires lots of people and resources but China has show that it is doable. Tracing cellphones may be useful to help with this. Community monitoring may be a viable alternative.
Additional hospital capacity must be built. There must be hospitals exclusively for Covid-19 cases and others for people with different medical problems.
But even as European governments started lockdowns MOA screamed that would still not be enough as the shutdowns had come too late. MOA promised that Britain’s ICU capacity would be exceeded by at least several times:
Even with a shutdown the situation for Britain’s National Health Service is likely to become catastrophic. The red line in the graphic below is the actual critical case capacity the NHS has. There are some 10 critical care beds per 100.000 people. All prediction variants show that it will be exceed several times. Johnson’s ‘do nothing’ strategy would have required 180 critical care beds per 100,000 people. Even with all measures that will now be taken there will likely be a need for several more critical care beds for each one that currently exists.
“You may live” and “you must die” decisions will have to be made as there is not enough capacity in place.
Needless to say, none of this has come to pass. Critical care beds are not even yet at capacity (April 14):
Across England, 3,228 patients were in critical care beds — representing 78 per cent of the total of 4,122 critical care beds which were available in February. More have since been opened, but it is not known how many.
In London 1,127 patients were in critical care according to the dashboard report at the weekend, a number which has grown rapidly in recent weeks. It is understood there are currently about 1,550 critical care beds available in London, up from 1,041 in February.
Comrade Moon continues his devastating debunking of the hysteria skeptics:
—
- 8 MORE Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic – Off-Guardian
The piece was posted on April 17. One of the ‘experts’ it quotes is Dr. John Oxford, “an English virologist and Professor at Queen Mary, University of London.” Here is the quote as posted on Off-Guardian:
Personally, I view this Covid outbreak as akin to a bad winter influenza epidemic. In this case we have had 8000 deaths this last year in the ‘at risk’ groups viz over 65% people with heart disease etc. I do not feel this current Covid will exceed this number. We are suffering from a media epidemic!– “A VIEW FROM THE HVIVO / OPEN ORPHAN #ORPH LABORATORY”, blog post on Novus Communications website, March 31st 2020
Two remarks:
a. On April 17, when Off-Guardian posted the piece, the United Kingdom already had 14.607 deaths from Covid-19. Those were 6.600 more than the total number Dr. John Oxford predicted. If the real numbers, which are still increasing, are already 80+% higher than the expert’s guestimate should one really use that expert to claim that the ‘coronavirus panic’ is unjustified?
b. Dr. Oxford made his claim in a “blog post on Novus Communications website”. Novus Comes is a public relations agency which provides “financial social media & digital communications for small caps”. The company is paid by its clients to talk up certain sectors of the stock market. Should one really use paid PR posts on a PR company’s website to judge if some ‘panic’ about an epidemic is justified?
Off Guardian has a series of articles where they highlight the many credentialed experts they’ve found who are pushing back against the hysteria. It’s obviously done to fight back the claim of the doomsayers that “scientific consensus” is on their side. So far they ran:
- 12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic
- 10 MORE Experts Criticising the Coronavirus Panic
- 8 MORE Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic
So then MOA takes issue with the inclusion of one of those, with objections so feeble it’s almost not worth addressing them. But anyway here it goes:
- Covid-19 deaths are tallied in a way that is not true of any other respiratory infection thus the 14,500 COVID-19-positive deaths are not comparable to 8,000 ILI excess deaths.
- Yes, even exceeding last year’s flu deaths by 80% would not justify panic or the measures imposed.
- And no, where an argument appeared is beside the point, you argue the argument (if you can) not the paper it was printed on.
But more than that, if in an archive of 30 names you’re going to nibble with the inclusion of just one…at that point why even bother?
But do not worry as Comrade Moon has a final zinger with which to blow away the other 29 experts Off Guardian discovered:
As for the other ‘experts’ Off-Guardian quoted. Yes, there ar some doctors who do have a different opinion than most of their colleagues. But that does not make them right.
Wow! Just because they have an opinion “that does not make them right”. Wow! Did you hear that people? Isn’t that an argument worthy of Socrates! Checkmate Off Guardian! Didn’t you know that just because there are people who have a different opinion it “does not make them right”? I bet you never thought of that until now.
And as a final relish on this deliciously devastating debunking of the Covid doom nayseyers (that would be us) Comrade Alabama puts Off Guardian’s ‘experts’ in scare quotes. Wow. So brilliant. Because you know, someone like Ioannidis isn’t really, really an expert. Not like Imperial College. Not like Comrade Moon.
Actually MOA’s writing, as informative as it remains even now, has always suffered from the fatal weakness of overconfidence. Almost no substantial MOA post can go without bold predictions for the future. But being confident of something that can not possibly be known is a sure sign of hubris.
Except until now, that flaw did not lead it to add its voice to the campaign against your freedom and mine, and against sustenance for millions of people. But now it does.
It might be different if he were actually an Alabamian. I bailed on that site long ago.
Now I am curious what the German thinks of the Nazis.
There is a season time for everything.Now,it is WAR SEASON with NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM in 2033! A time to destroy the U SAtanic zionist synagogue of snakes and lizzards with vampire faces- the zionist AshkeNazis!!!
Thought MOA was top notch until the site removed my posts for disagreeing on this issue. I no longer frequent nor recommend his site.
It would appear that Moonbat of Albammy is controlled op. Wonder how the site will deal with this new study. https://governmentslaves.news/2020/04/21/fauci-birx-are-finished-this-new-study-just-demolished-their-bill-gates-lies/
I discovered your site recently and it is now one of my favorites, which was the case with MOA, until his Covid posts. Good to see you take him on. Looks as though others see it the same way. Good article.
Never more and again lockdown.
If you do not like it: DIE!
?
it is not possible to understand the meaning of your comment, are you trying to say us sceptics should die if we dont like tyranny or the opposite? https://media3.giphy.com/media/3oriNPN16zMJQGNOmc/giphy.gif
ohmygot, people become left, which is dumb, you think too much and you shouldn’t , it helps
but i like to think about 12 impossible things before breakfast. https://media1.giphy.com/media/J2q8zK4HgrT5C/giphy.gif
https://media3.giphy.com/media/1fm9a68tbJPVGmeidp/giphy.gif
You are not wrong i think, MoA have taken a stance that i can never agree with. Why he went overboard is a question i want an answer to tbh. His earlier writing on geopolitics was often spot on, i have read MoA since 2016 and he surprised me when he suddenly started to say we need tyranny to save us.
Many of his observations were spot-on, but unfortunately, the authoritarianism was always present. It could manifest, for example, in his completely uncritical view of the Syrian government, something that seemed excusable at the time because Damascus needed some positive PR and because this balanced out the completely deranged MSM propaganda coverage which demonised the Syrian state from the beginning. However, those individuals that align themselves wholly with one geopolitical power bloc tend to be not-so-good when it comes to tolerating dissent from that bloc or understanding the reasons for that dissent. So, like the Saker, he is a man of the State, and his intolerance of divergent views on his website give you an indication of how he would be as a ruler.
MoA is the most comical of all alt-media censors. He censors everything. I can only say that maybe he is somehow forced to do this. we don’t really know what happens behind the scenes.
“He censors everything”.
No, that would be the Saker.
I assure you that he censors everything. At least with Saker one out of five comments used to get through. But now, as you say, Saker censors everything too.
The Saker’s blog is moderated and has very clear guidelines as to what will be censored. He has his point of view but in my experience entertains *virtually* all dissent as long as it stays polite and more or less on topic (*virtually* because he has no patience with the LGBTA agenda and does not give it space at his site). Having experienced the current mayhem at MoA I have come to appreciate a clearly moderated blog.
That is very different from MoA, where most of the commenters insult others with expletives and other putdowns and as for content and who gets censored, things seems to have become very murky. I am not a longtime MoA reader, so my observations are relatively shallow in depth (ha ha). I do read what longtime MoA readers say. And, I have noticed a big change there since the advent of the Corona madness.
One other point, re Ort, “Without going into a lot of speculation, my impression is that they are
much more strongly inclined to trust “global health authorities”,
Absolutely, and this *may* be why this approach to a power grab of some kind or a major misdirection operation (vis-a-vis financial shenanigans) is so effective. People are majorly scared by the declaration of a pandemic, they are easily guilt-tripped into supporting draconian measures if they will “save even one life, it could be yours or your grandmother’s”—even becoming little napoleon enforcers themselves, ready to call the police on offenders— and they accept the diktats of “health authorities.”
As for the pronouncements of the idiot savant Bill Gates, he has no qualifications as a public health or public policy guru, yet he is quoted all the time. To me this itself is enough to get me running in the opposite direction. I would rather take my chances with the virus and my own immune system than with a Big Pharma vaccine-mit-Chip!
im not having that problem @ the Saker, MoA on the other hand i have given up and stopped reading.
His authoritarianism is a step in the wrong direction for me, i already live in a nanny state where the government believes it self to be benign and caring..
It is much more than a step. I think the credibility is destroyed. Once you stop people from posting data everything is gone.
i was trying to be polite, it seems to me he is either under pressure to tow the line or controlled opposition.. I dont know which is more likely yet, but i hope his writings after this idiotic tyranny have lifted will make the answer clearer. Now i only check out his headlines and see if there is any sensible links in the comment section..
I agree. He may be forced to do what he is doing.
Pushing mandatory vaccination (certainly the method that will be leveraged for population reduction) i now realise that MoA is a far more dangerous fascist than i had ever previously suspected.
Or someone else who has commandeered the blog. We don’t really know. Anyhow, finally I got banned from Unz also.
Sorry to hear that, glib. At least now the lines are clear. We know who is with the global elites and who is with the people when it really counts. Maybe in another 30 years time Unz, Sleboda, MoA, and the rest will all realise they were wrong and write some moving mea culpa. But it won’t matter in the slightest.
I noticed that Unz has descended into criude insults now. Hoax people, he says, are “stupid and innumerate” and not worth having on his site.
I think there’s a time-limit for many social and political activists, i.e. a chrononological age when their critical faculties begin to fail them and they really should reitire, but do not have the self-awareness to do so.
Outstanding response.
I second your emotion.
I used to regularly visit and occasionally comment at MOA. I thought, or hoped, that proprietor Bernhard’s default technocratic perspective and the traditional German reverence for Ordnung had combined to trigger an uncharacteristically authoritarian-submissive, even reactionary, response to the pandemic. In this mode, he seems to have narrowed or flattened his focus; he relies first on “scientific authority”, which amounts to accepting official, nominally reliable information and statistical analysis.
This initial deference to official, mass-media promulgated “authoritative” sources triggers a circular, self-sealing mindset– a form of groupthink. That is, once one relies on official “maps” to race off in a particular direction, there’s an increasing tendency to disparage, dismiss, and reject subsequent information that your map doesn’t seem to match the territory.
Then, he does the culturally-normative German thing of coping with and “solving” a problem by developing a rigidly rational set of rules based on this official “map”. The next thing you know, he’s arguing that everyone should be tested, and those testing positive should be separated from their families and housed in unused sports stadiums for the duration! WTF?
I know that B. has demonstrated some capacity to modify his views, but so far he seems to have boxed himself into a corner. He even approvingly published a TDS-saturated screed denouncing Trump’s handling of the plandemic. Of course, a cadre of B.’s wonkiest, sycophantic regulars “have his back” in the comments threads, and gang-tackle the diminishing commenters who either directly question B.’s perspective, or attempt to introduce material that undermines his “Huhn Wenig” analysis. Sigh.
Yep. In some ways, I suspect, “b” is like the conformist, linear thinking techies like Fauci. Like Fauci, he seems to be able to empathize with people affected by wars, etc., but obviously doesn’t understand how average working people live from day to day – their practical problems, relationships, what forms security for them and their family and friends, what gives them pleasure and keeps them sane, the need for physical contact between people….. He doesn’t have a goddamn clue.
“gang-tackle the diminishing commenters”
I had started reading MoA and also commenting. but soon found that I was being censored. Since I speak German, I addressed B directly in a couple of comments, and found that, miraculously, I was soon reinstated. Soon, however, a commenter who was obviously a troll showed up and was attacking me stupidly. Seems he was “hired” to reinforce B’s or the mainstream narrative. Who knows who hired him. A regular commenter, a William Gruff (as in the Billy Goats Gruff, get it?), finally called this troll out. My comments supporting this callout of an obvious troll were suppressed. In other words, IMO Mr. MoA is currently *supporting* the presence of an obvious troll and sidelining one of his regular commenters. Something is going on for sure over there. A number of MoA visitors have openly wondered (on other blogs) whether Mr. MoA had perhaps gotten a “visit” of some kind from someone and got the hint which line to toe. The current campaign against Off-Guardian also leaves one scratching one’s head. Again, one can disagree without in effect undermining the credibililty of a site that should be viewed as an alternative news ally. Instead B is choosing to use a whole bunch of stupid rhetorical devices as very ably dissected in this article to discredit off-G and treat them like childish nincompoops. It is Bernhard who is now looking more like a nincompoop, but one with a new agenda. His, or someone else’s? Just a question. Not paranoia because—just look at the evidence.
MOA has failed so bad on this that it’s hard to believe it’s the same site I’ve gone to for over a decade. And it’s the most inexcusable failure he could have possibly had, promoting totalitarianism with the neoliberal war motto, “humanitarian intervention”. MOA’s failure was quite a bit more surprising to me than the Tulsi-turn, and for me the shock of the year..so far;)
I peeked at MOA earlier– you know, holding my hands in front of my face and peeping through my fingers– and see that B. is standing his ground.
When I checked out this Polly Boiko video today, I couldn’t help but think of it as B.’s wet dream:
Wow, that was just like he wrote it! Sooo many turncoats this year:(
Well, it’s only April. 😉
BTW, I stumbled upon this article/site by chance, led by a DISQUS “person of interest” I follow; I was wondering if I should post a link as a “reply” to one of your recent Fort Russ comments, because I knew you would appreciate it.
So thanks for saving me the trouble.
I’m not in any way making excuses for B. when I remark (again) that I’m surprised at how polarizing the threat of pestilence, aka the plandemic, is– far more than the (manufactured) threat of terrorism, fka the Global War on Terror.
Speaking of persons of interest, I’ve noticed a few of mine who seem to be bothered and put off by skeptical views of the plandemic. They seem aghast at the inclination to peek under the hood and kick the tires, so to speak, even if the skepticism is on a par with skeptical views and beliefs about, say, geopolitical crises, military adventures, financial skulduggery, etc.
Without going into a lot of speculation, my impression is that they are much more strongly inclined to trust “global health authorities”, are freaked out by the media “fear porn” focus on worst-case aspects, e.g. unburied bodies piling up. They also are moved by accounts of heroic health-care workers.
FWIW, I don’t doubt that the virus itself, casualties, heroic responders, etc. are real; these plandemic anti-skeptics (to coin a term) seem to reduce skeptics to caricatures of “truthers”, as if we’re absurdly claiming that “it’s all fake”, staged by crisis actors, etc. The real pandemic is virulent binary thinking, not to mention the ascendancy of authoritarian control freaks.
Very well said, Ort, I can’t agree more:)
You aren’t doing yourself any favours with the kind of screaming attention mongering headline that the likes of Russia Insider specialise in. It just makes it next to impossible to cite your articles and have them taken seriously. Especially if you start calling Moon of Alabama “Moon of Mao” you look like a kid throwing a tantrum. As someone who is on your side in the Great Big Coronavirus Hoax, my earnest request is, please stop it.
Articles published here are from a wide spectrum. Most are aggregated, obviously, and not original content. But I really don’t see the problem in personal opinion pieces like this. You’ll never have to cite an article like this as a “source” because not enough people even know who Moon of Alabama is. He is only known amongst the anti-interventionist crowd and Russia-followers, neither demographic having any significant influence in the politics of the Western world.
Here is a fascinating look at the real COVID-19 infection rate from a recent study by highly qualified researchers at Stanford University:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-actual-prevalence-of-covid-19.html
The initial calculations from this study suggests that the fatality rate of COVID-19 may be no worse than seasonal influenza.
I used to read MOA for Syria news. When the fear campaign started against the epidemic, I tried to argue for a while, but it was hopeless. Anyone that has contributed to this hysteria, is not my friend. I once gave them some money. I never will again, nor will I read anything at his website.
sad
Used to have a lot of respect for his geopolitics stuff and still do, but his corona pieces are drivel.
won’t be getting any comments/contributions or input from me anymore.
That’s rather sad, IMHO. A certain expert in biological diseases made a statement recently, that went something like this, ” No one knows what’s going on, no one knows anything about this virus, with the exception of China, who do know a little, but the rest of the World is totally ignorant, deaths, infection rates, treatments ect, are all arbitary, and no one will know the TRUTH, until it’s all over and the figures come in”. All the waffle going on is just pure speculation at this point in time, continually stoked by the MSM for their ratings.