There are so many ways to characterise the post-covid nightmare we’re struggling to wake up from. In a previous piece I described us as living in the age of the weasel since covid bounced on to the scene like some ghastly spike-ridden ball of woe.
Sanity, calmness, rationality, proportionality, sense . . . none of these are words that immediately spring to mind when you look at the worldwide response to covid.
Not only have governments instituted the most ridiculous and absurd rulings and guidelines, but everyday, ordinary people have been at it too. The hikers, wandering alone in square miles of natural splendour . . . wearing masks. Perhaps that nearby rock had been touched yesterday by someone else, and is now radiating deadly covid virions - you can’t be too careful can you?
Or the people who, in panic, try to force themselves into a wall as you pass them in the street, because obviously in 2020 everyone in the world became a walking bio-weapon overnight.
After seeing far too many people open doors with their elbows I think we need to mandate those round handles you have to twist, and sit back and watch the fun.
I have some sympathy for these witless buffoons, but only some. They’ve been infected by a far more sinister virus than SARS-CoV-2 will ever be; they’ve been infected by a mind-virus wilfully and gleefully manufactured and distributed by governments and the media everywhere. The vaccine for this mind-virus, thankfully, is rather cheap, safe, and effective. All one has to do is to think.
These somewhat psychotic and irrational behaviours are, however, just symptoms of a wider problem. Because of the concealments, obfuscations and downright lies of our governments I think it right to characterize the post-covid era as living in the age of the weasel, but we’re also living through a period in which obsessive focus has become the norm.
A sign seen on the door to a GP’s surgery in the UK helpfully stated that “if you are ill, please stay at home”. It’s alright, doc, I’m not ill at all - I just popped in for a chat and a cuppa if that’s OK?
Our obsessive focus on covid has really messed with our perceptions. We’ve been banging our head repeatedly against the covid tree and don’t know how to stop. We’ve totally lost sight of all the other trees in the wood. As for seeing the wood itself - well, that’s going to take even more de-programming.
The ridiculous focus on covid19, as if it’s the only thing that matters, is not even slightly warranted. Remember Sweden? Yeah - the media have forgotten about it too. Reporting on Sweden essentially stopped when the data no longer seemed to support the “oh-my-God we’re all going to die and look at how much Sweden cocked-up” narrative.
Here’s mortality for Sweden up to 2020 expressed as a percentage of the population.
Sweden did have some very light restrictions, but critically it never locked down, never mandated masks, never closed businesses and except for a very brief period never closed schools (schools in which kids did not wear masks).
What happened to the virus? It doesn’t seem to have had much effect in Sweden. We were told that if we did not lock down, did not wear masks, and did not perform all manner of covid-safe ritual we would see runaway deaths, maybe up to half a million in the UK alone. Maybe they have a different virus in Sweden?
Here’s what a runaway “signal” looks like:
These graphs are what I would call “big picture” graphs - they allow you to take a step back and see something important. In the case of Sweden it’s that, no, really, deaths aren’t going to spiral out of control if you just keep calm and carry on. In the case of the vaccines it’s bloody hell, what’s going on here?
Here’s another one focusing on Scotland’s cumulative excess death during Summer for the last 43 years :
2021 is an absolutely massive outlier. What changed in 2021? I’ll leave that for you, dear reader, to speculate on.
The big picture approach, seeing the wood for the trees, is what tells us whether we need to do something drastic. It’s important at every level. Let’s take the vaccine trials themselves. The data from the Pharmaceutical companies own trials purported to show that the vaccines were something like 95% effective at protecting you from symptomatic covid. Of course, this figure was gleefully ejaculated everywhere. The less exciting figure, the figure that shows us what the wood looks like, showed only a modest absolute risk reduction of up to 0.7%
But it’s even worse than that. Sure, if you focus only on covid, the trial data seems to suggest this 95% efficacy. However, if you focus on all-cause morbidity you find that the people in the trial placebo group had better health outcomes, overall. And this is using only the Pharmaceutical companies own data. The covid tree tells us one thing, the picture we get from looking at the wood, all the trees, is somewhat different.
These are things you’ll never see in the media. It might be a good idea to ask yourself, why not? What you might see in the media are stories about how one COP26 delegate’s train was delayed because leaves and branches had blown onto the track, caused by climate change. I am not making this up. Honestly.
Those damnable trees, eh?