It's a Marathon, Man

This is a still taken from the movie Marathon Man in which Laurence Olivier promotes trust in dentists in the same way governments and Pfizer have promoted trust in vaccines.

Actually, those of us with more of a questioning and open mind, are seen as the baddies now, asking the question “Is it safe?” again and again and again. I think most of us would like to adopt Olivier’s style of questioning and apply it to governments, government health agencies, and board members of Pharma in order to get to the truth.

A while back I wrote a piece (not on SubStack), for my own benefit, listing some of the questions that worried me - it was a sort of “10+ Things I Hate About You” regarding the official response to covid. I did it because I was starting to lose track of all of the things that disturbed me - there were just too many. I thought I’d have another go here at writing a list again, from fresh.

This is not going to be a short piece.

What I found most alarming (apart from the implications that might lurk behind the answers to some of those questions) was the sheer number I could easily generate. I’m going to list the questions - and it’s not an exhaustive list - together with a small comment. I’m not going to try to answer them, or look for answers - at least not here. Whole chapters, even books, could probably be written on each one.

So, in no particular order:

1. Why so much panic?

Fairly early on in the pandemic it was pretty clear that this disease was going to turn out to be at the flu end of the spectrum in terms of overall mortality. Even the initial, more virulent, variants looked to be maybe about twice as bad as a severe flu - and that’s going off official government death stats.

2. What is the definition of a health “emergency”?

This is indicative of something that ran through everything - the almost complete lack of rigorous metrics. If a bad flu isn’t an emergency, but covid is a massive emergency requiring global shutdown, then where is the line between the two?

3. Why the obsession with sanitizing?

The notion that fomite (surface) transmission for a respiratory virus was ever going to be significant just baffled me. I suppose it is a theoretical possibility that one might catch covid from picking up a library book, or a supermarket trolley, but the risk was obviously at the “unmeasurable” level. The country I worked in had a nightly curfew which ran for weeks in which armies of people wearing hazmat suits sprayed the roads and pavements and public furniture overnight.

4. When did asymptomatic transmission become a thing?

The curious reversal of previously known science, something that also happened time and again, is concerning. Back in January 2020 Dr “Science” Fauci said that “in the history of respiratory viruses, asymptomatic transmission has never been a significant driver of infection”. It’s hard to see how asymptomatic transmission for a virus that initially attacks the nose and throat can be significant since symptoms are a reasonable proxy for viral load. Why have we never been able to get time off work for “asymptomatic flu”?

5. What changed in the science of masking?

There are papers written by mask researchers, prior to covid, where phrases like “it is known that mask wearing does not impact the transmission of a respiratory virus in a medical setting” can be seen. When a scientist writes something like this, without reference, it is indicative that what is written is an established fact and wholly uncontroversial.

6. Why were pandemic preparedness plans ditched?

Pretty much every country has some detailed disaster planning in place. An example might be, What do we do in the event of a terrorist attack on a major power station? They also have these for pandemics. The UK’s own pandemic preparedness plan considered the scenario of an outbreak of a novel, more deadly, coronavirus that killed over 300,000 people in 5 months. It explicitly did not recommend quarantine or masking. Yet, almost everywhere, governments just threw these plans in the garbage.

7. Why no cost-benefit analyses?

I’m not aware of any government undertaking a cost-benefit analysis of the proposed responses to covid. Lockdowns were an experimental “treatment” almost never-before used to attempt to control the outbreak of a respiratory virus. Even now, there have been no detailed cost-benefit analyses published in the UK.

8. Why the obsessive focus on covid?

Of course covid can be serious. For some. But people still die of other things. Are their serious conditions not worthy of our best efforts too? In the UK, for many months, the National Health Service became, for all practical purposes, the National Covid Service. In many respects it still is. The piper always gets paid - and those with cancer are going to pay very dearly (and some have already done so) - just to name one sector of the population with a very serious condition.

9. What was the end point?

There still isn’t any clear exit strategy from this. No clear metrics to say “it’s over - go back to normal”. Various mumblings about having to live with this are being made - but no real commitment to just getting on with life. Living with it appears to mean also living with all the restrictions.

10. Why did certain phrases occur so early on?

It was only a few weeks into the pandemic that we heard politicians in the UK talking about “build back better” and “the new normal”. How did they know? This virus was marketed as “novel and unprecedented”, but not so novel and unknown, apparently, that they knew an entire re-structuring of society and approach to health was (allegedly) going to be necessary.

11. Why the propaganda?

There has been an insane amount of money spent in the UK on propaganda to keep people in a state of fear. Whilst the population of the UK was relentlessly battered with “look them in the eyes and tell them you did all that you could” messaging - messaging designed to guilt you into compliance with regulations - the politicians were having parties at Downing Street.

12. Why downplay natural and infection-acquired immunity?

Throughout this, the role of natural immunity has been almost completely ignored. Kids have very strong innate defences against the virus. Most adults will also suffer symptoms not significantly worse than a flu, at worst. Not pleasant, for sure, but also not life-threatening for most. Every covid-recovered person is a blessing - a genuine brick in the wall of protection.

13. Why downplay promising early treatment?

There are several re-purposed drugs, as part of an overall treatment protocol that have demonstrated efficacy in the prevention of serious symptoms. These have almost universally been dismissed and vilified (calling ivermectin “horse paste”, for example). Whilst I accept the data is not universally clear it is, in my view, strongly indicative of a beneficial effect. Yet we’ve had an entirely fraudulent paper published in the Lancet purporting to show that treatment with HCQ was dangerous. We’ve had one scientist publicly admit that he was leaned on to give a negative verdict on ivermectin (he was previously positive). And these are just two examples.

14. Why was vaccination seen as the only way out?

The vaccines were promoted, quite early on, as the only way out. That hasn’t worked out too well has it? But quite apart from that there has been a massive investment in developing the vaccines but a comparatively tiny investment in research on treating those who are actually ill. All the investment has gone on those who might get ill, rather than on those who actually ARE ill.

15. Why cripple doctors’ ability to try different treatments?

Doctors have been vigorously prevented, upon threat of losing their licence, of doing anything other than the “officially” recommended treatment. This treatment usually consists of : don’t bother me until your lungs are fucked.

16. Why were things like remdesivir approved but not other treatments?

The expensive anti-viral drug remdesivir managed to get approval on the flimsiest of evidence. Yet other inexpensive drugs have been routinely dismissed, despite having massively more evidence in their favour. Expensive, inexpensive? Darn it - I think I might have partially answered my own question.

17. Why focus on treatment only when things were most serious?

This is really important. Someone who is chronically ill with covid is generating a massive viral load. The virus has got out of control and the body is going immune response crazy in an attempt to sort it out. In terms of transmission prevention it is critical to try to manage the viral load early on. Obviously it’s best for the patient too.

18. Why deaths within 28 days?

The utterly bizarre instruction to categorize any death within 28 days of a positive test as a “covid” death remains one of the most incomprehensible things to me (from a science perspective). Getting possibly the most inaccurate and corrupted statistics in the face of a “novel and unprecedented” pandemic is precisely the opposite of what you should be doing.

19. Why mass testing of asymptomatic people?

In another reversal of previously-understood science people have been encouraged to test themselves - sometimes more than once a week. This, again, is exactly the opposite of what you should be doing. Mass testing of asymptomatic individuals is essentially statistically illiterate and gives essentially meaningless results.

20. Why such a high cycle threshold for the PCR?

It is clear that the cycle at which the virus is detected is a reasonable proxy for viral load. By setting the cycle threshold at a high value you are essentially guaranteeing that a high proportion of your results will come back positive for people who pose no risk to others.

21. Why no meaningful indication of false positive rate?

The PCR test when positive has been used to indicate a “case”. This can include positives for dead viral fragments and positives for those who are dealing with the virus (no clinical signs of infection) and pose no threat to others - and this is especially true when running high cycle thresholds. Yet the false positive rate for a “case” here is going to be larger (discussed here) - but I don’t think we know what that is properly.

22. Why change the medical meaning of a “case”?

Before covid a case, in medical terms, would usually be someone who presented with symptoms which can then be confirmed with a test. Of course there are viruses (such as HIV) where there are no symptoms and diagnosis is only through testing. But HIV is a rarity. In the majority of situations a patient would present with symptoms, a diagnosis made, and the diagnosis confirmed (if necessary) with testing.

23. Why such arbitrary and obviously contradictory (and stupid) rules?

There are many examples of such clearly ridiculous and arbitrary rules that have been imposed in response to covid. They make no sense from any conceivable health perspective. Allowing people to shop in large supermarkets, but preventing them from sitting on a beach, alone? Very few of these rules have actually made sense from any health, or science, perspective. And even the most supposedly “intuitive” ones like masks and lockdowns have not demonstrated any efficacy when real-world data is properly examined.

24. Why such continued reliance on clearly flawed models?

I can’t think of a single “official” model-generated prediction about covid that has been correct. I’m sure there must have been one or two by now, but the vast majority have been wrong Not just a little bit wrong in most cases, but spectacularly wrong. Yet governments seem to still be heavily reliant on this modelling. Why? Why can’t the modellers actually get it right? Might there be something just a teensy-weensy bit shit with what they’re doing?

25. Why not debate instead of just smear?

I get that they might believe that bad information during a health crisis might make things worse. But haven’t they heard of the Streisand effect? Deliberate attempts to smear, instead of debate, tend to be counter-productive. It might work for a while, but people eventually cotton on to the fact that one side presents data, calm analyses, and reasoned argument and the other just shouts “you’re a big smelly poopy pants”

26. Why the censorship?

This might be the most chilling one of all for me. There have been very deliberate attempts to censor and suppress any opinion or data that runs counter to the official narrative on covid. I can’t stress enough how dangerous this road we’re walking on is. If your opponent’s arguments and data are bogus, censorship is not the answer.

27. Why should it take 55 years to release the vaccine trial data?

In a sort of reverse-censorship the FDA tried to get a legal ruling that they should be allowed 55 years to fully release the data on the vaccine trials submitted to them by Pharma. I can think of no legitimate innocent reason for this.

28. Why vaccine passports?

The vaccine passports have obviously failed. Even if you thought they were a good idea (in terms of disease management) they have failed - and failed spectacularly. It’s not even debateable. Yet governments across the world are still pushing for these odious things. They are clearly a tool of punishment and coercion and only peripherally related to health (if you believe more vaccinated equals better health outcomes - and the data is far from being definitive on that).

29. Why vaccinate in the middle of a pandemic with leaky vaccines?

Stuff evolves. Can’t stop it happening. Stress an environment and the things in that environment will adapt to find a way round the stressors or die out. Things that can replicate very quickly (like viruses) with large populations (billions of viruses replicating in a person in which the disease has taken hold) will be able to take advantage of beneficial mutations that can thrive in the new, stressed, environment. If you vaccinate with a vaccine that does not effectively stop (or severely limit) replication you’re going to have many wonderful breeding grounds for new versions of the virus that do well in the presence of the vaccine. Where the hell do they think antibiotic-resistant bacteria come from? From those people who don’t take antibiotics?

30. Why vaccinate kids?

It’s not even remotely controversial to say that kids are at a miniscule risk from either death or serious complications from covid. Yet there is a very strong pressure being applied to get kids vaccinated. It’s obviously not for their benefit. Even if vaccines did prevent infection and re-transmission (which they clearly don’t do very well at all) we shouldn’t be using kids as a shield for adults - and especially not when the safety profile of the vaccine is so abominable.

31. Why require kids to mask?

It has been well-established, both in studies and real-world data (eg Sweden) that (a) kids are not significant vectors for covid transmission and (b) masking in schools has no effect. But a lot of focus, right now is on making kids wear masks in schools. If ever there was a case for “more harm than good” it is with masking kids.

32. Why require kids to test?

Closely overlapping with the previous question, this one also makes very little sense. In Sweden the schools have been pretty much open throughout, masks in school have not been required, and yet they haven’t had teachers dying in droves - or anyone else, for that matter. How did they pull off this astonishing feat?

33. Why force kids into online teaching?

Online teaching is dreadful. And it’s dreadful despite the very best efforts of the teachers. My colleagues and I all made Herculean efforts to make online teaching effective at the university where I worked. It was a spectacular failure. A whole bunch of studies on school age kids show similar disastrous results.

34. Why the continual U-Turns?

There have been many policy changes, maybe not U-Turns as such, but promises to ease off on the gas, shortly followed by a gleeful stamping down on the accelerator pedal. I’ll mention just one that is particularly important. We were told that once the vulnerable had been vaccinated we could lift all restrictions. This was eminently sensible. Once you’ve reduced your threat level to below that of flu, there is absolutely no reason not to go back to normal (completely back to normal). However, the vaccine juggernaut just kept on accelerating - everyone over 50, everyone over 40, . . . , kids as young as 5. There’s no sign that the great clubfoot of vaccine mania has been lifted off the gas yet.

35. Why continue with restrictions when they clearly haven’t worked?

It was obvious from very early on that the various NPI’s were not effective. It’s just blisteringly obvious now with Omicron. There seems to be some weird global obsession with repeating stuff that obviously hasn’t worked.

36. Why ignore vaccine side effects?

The massive rise in reported deaths and side-effects due to the covid vaccines is astonishing. I’m sure you’ve all seen the charts by now. How this can be blithely dismissed is simply beyond my comprehension. In the UK (pre-covid) we have about 8 reported deaths a year, on average, in adults due to every single vaccine administered in the UK. The whole lot combined. In just one year we’ve had something like 1900 reports of death due to the covid vaccine. This is clearly not “coincidence” - and it’s baffling to me how any serious scientist can make that claim.

37. How did we manage to create so many “successful” vaccines in such a short time?

The mRNA vaccines are a really cute idea from a sort of ghee-whizz isn’t this cool geeky perspective. That does not make it a really cute idea in practice on humans. It’s a bit curious that they’ve worked on this vaccine technology for decades, and failed, but within the space of a few short months we had success with the covid version. Decades of trying to find vaccines for coronaviruses and in a very short space of time we now have quite a number of (allegedly) successful vaccines? Hmmm. Colour me sceptical.

38. Why was the obviously more likely lab-leak hypothesis ignored and attacked?

It was always going to be the mother of all coincidences that the virus first emerged in a place where there was a level 4 bio-security lab doing research on the potential of bat coronaviruses to infect humans and cause a dangerous pandemic - and for the gain of function research employed to have been found in the genome of the new virus that, miraculously, emerged in the same location. I mean, what are the odds of that happening eh? Far more likely it was some animal thousands of miles away who infected some other animal who then made the arduous trek to Wuhan.

39. Why is the advice after vaccination to “avoid the unvaccinated”?

I’ve had lots of vaccinations (none for covid though). Never, after vaccination, have I ever been told that I should “avoid the unvaccinated”. But this is exactly the advice given after receiving the covid vaccine. What gives? Am I the only person in the world who thinks this is just odd?

40. Why little mention of NNTV?

There has been little, if any, mention of a very critical parameter from official or media sources. This parameter is the number needed to vaccinate (NNTV). So we would talk of the NNTV to save one life, or to prevent one hospitalization, for example. This is not some arbitrary parameter cooked up by “anti-vaxxers” in the wake of covid, but a very important part of establishing the overall safety and necessity of any particular vaccine.

41. Why no emphasis on the age-stratified risk profile?

It hasn’t been kept a secret - but it hasn’t been emphasised. Many people completely over-estimate their risk of death from covid. Massively so. So many comments from people on Twitter bear the implicit stamp of terror that their kids are going to die from covid. The messaging has always been to promote fear instead of the more accurate if you’re in good shape and under 70 this disease is not deadly for the vast, vast majority of you. Don’t panic.

42. Is the coordination of messaging just an accident?

There has been a near-universal apparent co-ordination of messaging across the world. The same talking points appear simultaneously all over the place. It could be accidental. It could be just that this is the “rational” response to a changing situation. But it sure doesn’t look that way. Stories about dying people (miraculously talking whilst intubated and in a medically induced coma) gasping their last words “I wish I’d taken the vaccine” popped up at the same time all over the place. Just recently there has been a whole slew of messages on Twitter, saying the same sort of things (essentially, “get the vax”), beginning with “I’m an X” - where X is something like doctor, or nurse, or some other medical specialist. Once again - colour me sceptical.

Well we’ve reached the magic number 42. The answer to life, the universe, and everything. I could go on - but it’s been enough of a marathon already.

I find lists like this useful - I hope you do too. Maybe some of the questions have good responses, maybe not - but I look at this list and wonder in amazement that there are so many. I can’t look at this list too long and think “it’s all just panic-driven incompetence and flailing about”. I hope I’m wrong.

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