INTRODUCTION

The aim of “Covid Heretic” is to provide a resource page for those seeking reliable sources on the subject of viral transmission and lockdowns during an information crisis. At present, the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” are being deployed to undermine and silence legitimate opposition to democratically unconstitutional policies. Surely, if a republic (or even a constitutional monarchy as exists in the UK, Canada and Australia) wishes to rescind or indefinitely suspend all basic civil and human rights, while at once shutting down entire economies, there must be irrefutable evidence that such actions are proportionate responses to a truly imminent threat. One hopes that such would be the standard. Unfortunately, in the case of COVID-19, such a standard has not been met. This page provides links to reliable, scientific evidence and careful data analysis to educate citizens on subjects that prior to 2020 were not essential knowledge, but that since have become necessary areas of inquiry to any citizen who wishes to hold an informed opinion.

WHAT IS A PANDEMIC?

The first subject of research is the definition of “pandemic.” What does it take to declare an emergency of the kind that requires extreme socio-economic intervention? One would expect the criteria to include both high transmissibility (i.e. rapid spread) and high impact on health and mortality. In other words, to declare a state of emergency, anyone would suppose that the disease in question must be dangerous. It is surprising to discover that the WHO removed the danger element from their definition following the “Swine Flu Panic of 2009.”

“The Elusive Definition of Pandemic Influenza.” Dr. Peter Doshi.  Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2011; 89:532-538.
https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-086173/en/
In this paper, Peter Doshi (Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy) examines the repercussions of the WHO’s decision in 2009 to change the definition of “pandemic influenza” from one in which “enormous numbers of deaths and illness” occur to one that defines a pandemic as simply a new “virus [that] appears against which the human population has no immunity.” The catastrophic repercussions of this definitional change are being felt today as virtually the whole world is locked down indefinitely due to SARS-CoV-2 which, while it is in fact a novel strain of coronavirus, has luckily been similar to seasonal influenza in terms of infection fatality rates.

“Why the WHO Faked a Pandemic.” Michael Fumento. Forbes: Feb 5 2010.
https://evidencenotfear.com/why-the-who-faked-a-pandemic-forbes/
This article was removed from the Forbes website in mid-October 2020, more than ten years after its initial publication, for reasons that should become obvious. The author provides further evidence for the observations made by Dr. Doshi in the previous paper: that the “pandemic declaration” the WHO had made about the swine flu in 2009 reflects “sheer dishonesty motivated not by medical concerns but political ones.” Removing the high mortality criterion from its definition of a “pandemic” enabled the WHO to coerce nations around the world to spend huge sums of money developing vaccines and making other costly preparations. The scheme failed, of course, when it became irrefutable that the swine flu was “a third to a tenth” as deadly as the seasonal flu, which prompted epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, former chairman of the WHO’s health committee, to declare in late 2009 that the swine flu was a “false pandemic” and “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.” That is, until Covid-19 arrived...

“Reconstruction of a Mass Hysteria: The Swine Flu Panic of 2009.”  Der Spiegel staff. Der Spiegel: Dec 3 2010.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/reconstruction-of-a-mass-hysteria-the-swine-flu-panic-of-2009-a-682613.html
This article recounts how in 2009 the WHO, the pharmaceutical industry, governments around the world, and the mainstream media fomented worldwide mass hysteria over what turned out to be a “false pandemic” of H1N1 Swine Flu. In a chain of events eerily reminiscent of the global response to SARS-CoV-2, the WHO declared the swine flu a pandemic in mid-June 2009, though by then only 144 people had died with it worldwide, most of them elderly and with at least two co-morbidities. Not only that, but just a month earlier, the WHO had changed its definition of “pandemic” from an infectious disease with high transmissibility and high mortality to one that was simply a new virus. Why did the WHO suddenly change its long-standing definition of a “pandemic”? “"We wanted to overestimate rather than underestimate the situation," says [Keiji] Fukuda,” at the time an influenza specialist at the WHO. But why? The pharmaceutical industry, one of the WHO’s main funders, successfully pressured the WHO to raise the danger status of the virus to “phase 6”—the “pandemic” phase—not for the sake of public health, but for profit:
“Everything hung on this decision [of the WHO to declare phase 6]. At stake was nothing less than a move to supply large segments of the world's population with flu vaccine. Phase 6 acted as a switch that would allow bells on the industry's cash registers to ring, risk-free. That's because many pandemic vaccine contracts had already been signed. Germany, for example, signed an agreement with the British firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in 2007 to buy its pandemic vaccine—as soon as phase 6 was declared. This agreement could explain why Professor Roy Anderson, one key scientific advisor to the British government, declared the swine flu a pandemic on May 1. What he neglected to say was that GSK was paying him an annual salary of more than €130,000 ($177,000).”

This chart, assembled by data engineer Ivor Cummins and taken from this video, illustrates the “casedemic” phenomenon (something we’ll look at in the context of Covid-19 in the section on PCR-tests) during the Swine Flu Panic of 2009. There were actual impacts of swine flu in Winter 2008/09, pictured on the left. However, at the end of that epidemic, a rapid PCR-test called FluChip was brought in and populations were tested on a mass scale during the summer. The media spread a lot of fear about the high number of positive tests, populations panicked . . . and yet nobody died. The testing was pushed into the fall, and the cases along with widespread hysteria continued to rise . . . but still nobody died. The Swine Flu never returned and eventually the testing stopped.

TRANSMISSION: HOW SARS-CoV-2 & INFLUENZA DO NOT SPREAD

It is common knowledge that any true science bases its conclusions on experimental evidence. It is however an article of faith among epidemiologists, virologists and the general public that certain diseases like Influenza and COVID are transmitted through human contact, including touching, hand shaking, embracing, breathing, coughing and sneezing. In fact, scientists have yet to determine how these spread. In the absence of this knowledge, it is natural that a society proceed according to custom. But custom is not science; often it’s superstition. Although scientific research has no answer for how these diseases spread, what is clear from experimentation is how these diseases do not spread.

“In the Grips of a Disease.” Elizabeth Gehrman. Harvard Medicine: Winter 2021.
https://hms.harvard.edu/magazine/pandemic/grip-disease
This article—among other things—tells the story of Milton Joseph Rosenau, a professor of preventive medicine and hygiene, who performed experiments in 1919, attempting to scientifically confirm the method of influenza transmission. Here’s a brief excerpt:
"The scientists gave each of the volunteers a very large quantity of a mixture of thirteen different strains of the Pfeiffer bacillus, some of them obtained recently from the lungs at necropsy. They also inoculated the men with specimens taken from the throats and noses of influenza patients and later with the patients’ blood. Still no symptoms, so next the volunteers shook hands with, talked with, and were coughed on by the actively ill. They remained healthy."
Other, more comprehensive, sources that relate the particulars of this experiment are available, and the reader is encouraged to seek them out. The original publication containing details of the experiments by Rosenau—“Experiments to Determine Mode of Spread of Influenza”—is to be found in the Journal of the American Medical Association 73, no. 5. August 2, 1919: 311-313.
“The volunteer was led up to the bedside of the patient. They shook hands, and by instructions, he got as close as he conveniently could, and they talked for five minutes. At the end of the five minutes, the patient breathed out as hard as he could, while the volunteer, muzzle to muzzle (in accordance with his instructions, about 2 inches between the two), received this expired breath, and at the same time was breathing in as the patient breathed out. This they repeated five times.”

Asymptomatic Spread? - FAKE NEWS
The source of the now discredited claim that the main danger of SARS-CoV-2 is asymptomatic spread is the following letter to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, published January 30, 2020 and signed by a list of doctors: “Transmission of 2019-nCoV Infection from an Asymptomatic Contact in Germany”:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2001468
On February 3, 2020, the following article appeared hoping to ease panic. The central claim of the above article in The New England Journal of Medicine—i.e. that patient zero in that study was asymptomatic was simply false. As you’ll note from the later added notice pinned to this article, the editors have seen fit to circle the wagons, claiming that somehow it doesn’t matter whether the person in question was or was not asymptomatic. Of course, no such article would have been written in the first place if not for this bit of misinformation. Together with the information above re Rosenau, the reader is invited to draw his own conclusions regarding asymptomatic spread.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-symptomatic-patient-transmitting-coronavirus-wrong
Perhaps the most important thing to note on the subject of asymptomatic spread is that it is one of the main pillars of the rationale of masking mandates and lockdowns.

“WHO Official: Asymptomatic spread of coronavirus ‘very rare.’” Peter Sullivan. The Hill: Aug 6 2020.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/who-official-asymptomatic-spread-of-coronavirus-very-rare/ar-BB15cBHW
This article quotes Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead for COVID-19: 
"We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They're following asymptomatic cases, they're following contacts, and they're not finding secondary transmission onward. It's very rare. Much of that is not published in the literature." 
In other words, there’s no evidence that asymptomatic people, defined as such because they tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 but show no symptoms of the Covid-19 disease, spread their infection to others.

“Transmission of SARS-CoV-2: implications for infection prevention precautions: Scientific Brief.” Bulletin of the World Health Organization: Jul 9 2020.
https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/transmission-of-sars-cov-2-implications-for-infection-prevention-precautions
As you read the above bulletin from the WHO about possible vectors of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, please bear in mind the papers previously cited in this section which demonstrate that person-to-person viral transmission—via touching, hand shaking, embracing, breathing, coughing and sneezing—does not spread infectious disease. Whether the infected person is asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic, or showing symptoms, there is no evidence that he can transmit the virus to another person through physical contact or aerosol droplets. In light of the lack of scientific evidence on this matter, note the vague, hypothetical language systematically deployed in the above WHO bulletin: “Current evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is predominantly spread from person-to-person…This section briefly describes possible modes of transmission for SARS-CoV-2, including contact, droplet, airborne, fomite, fecal-oral, bloodborne, mother-to-child, and animal-to-human transmission…Studies using viral culture of patient samples to assess the presence of infectious SARS-CoV-2 are currently limited…SARS-CoV-2 transmission appears to mainly be spread via droplets and close contact with infected symptomatic cases…Many unanswered questions about transmission of SARS-CoV-2 remain, and research seeking to answer those questions is ongoing and is encouraged.”

SO WHAT GIVES RISE TO THESE TYPES OF DISEASES?

“On the Epidemiology of Influenza.” John J. Cannell, PhD et al. Biomedical Central Virology Journal: Feb 25 2008.
https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29
This peer-reviewed scientific paper overturns the assumption of “settled science” that sick-to-well transmission of infectious diseases is the primary mode of contagion. Instead, a seasonal Vitamin D deficiency which depletes one's "innate immunity" is currently understood as the most significant vector of influenza infection. And since the epidemiologies of Influenza and coronavirus are roughly the same, we can deduce that there’s no reason to fear getting Covid-19 through person-to-person contact.

“Ep 104 - Vitamin D and Viral Special with Dr. David Grimes et al. - Vital Viewing!”  The Fat Emperor Podcast: Dec 28 2020.
https://odysee.com/@IvorCummins:f/ep104-vitamin-d-and-viral-special-with:e
In this episode of The Fat Emperor podcast, host Ivor Cummins interviews two eminent doctors and vitamin D specialists who explain how critical a high vitamin D level in the blood is to a healthy functioning immune system, going so far as to call vitamin D “our innate vaccine” against Covid-19.

"Effect of calcifediol treatment and best available therapy versus best available therapy on intensive care unit admission and mortality among patients hospitalized for COVID-19: A pilot randomized clinical study." Dr. Marta Entrenas Castillo et al. PubMed.gov: Oct 2020.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32871238/
In this randomized controlled trial study from October, 2020, involving 76 participants and conducted at Reina Sofia University Hospital in Cordoba, Spain, ICU treatment was substantially reduced for patients hospitalized for Covid-19 who were administered a form of Vitamin D. Here’s the conclusion:
"Our pilot study demonstrated that administration of a high dose of Calcifediol or 25-hydroxyvitamin D, a main metabolite of vitamin D endocrine system, significantly reduced the need for ICU treatment of patients requiring hospitalization due to proven COVID-19. Calcifediol seems to be able to reduce severity of the disease, but larger trials with groups properly matched will be required to show a definitive answer."

“Evidence Supports a Causal Role for Vitamin D Status in Global COVID-19 Outcomes.” Dr. Gareth Davies et al. medRxiv: Jun 13 2020.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.20087965v3
This report on new medical research offers an in-depth analysis of “global daily reports of fatalities and recoveries from 239 locations from 22nd Jan 2020 to 9th April 2020,” and draws the following conclusions:
"Our novel causal inference analysis of global data verifies that vitamin D status plays a key role in COVID-19 outcomes. The data set size, supporting historical, biomolecular, and emerging clinical research evidence altogether suggest that a very high level of confidence is justified. Vitamin D prophylaxis potentially offers a widely available, low-risk, highly-scalable, and cost-effective pandemic management strategy including the mitigation of local outbreaks and a second wave. Timely implementation of vitamin D supplementation programmes worldwide is critical with initial priority given to those who are at the highest risk, including the elderly, immobile, homebound, BAME and healthcare professionals. Population-wide vitamin D sufficiency could also prevent seasonal respiratory epidemics, decrease our dependence on pharmaceutical solutions, reduce hospitalisations, and thus greatly lower healthcare costs while significantly increasing quality of life."

HOW BAD IS THE PANDEMIC?

So the WHO diminished the terms of what constitutes a pandemic, and it turns out that scientific research on transmission tells us that asymptomatic spread is extremely rare, if at all a factor. Any controlled experiments involving human subjects in proximity fail to produce any statistically significant evidence that the disease is spread that way. (It is essential to differentiate the virus (SARS-CoV-2) and the disease (COVID-19), for although the virus may spread, the disease may not.) In short, we must set aside transmission and ask, How bad is it? Aren’t the hospitals overflowing? Let’s take a look at the data. But before we do that, it’s important to note how unreliable most of the available data has been, especially the official data promulgated by the WHO, governments around the world, and the mainstream media.

“John Ioannidis Warned COVID-19 Could Be a “Once-In-A-Century” Data Fiasco. He Was Right.” John Miltimore. Foundation for Economic Education: Jul 23 2020.
https://fee.org/articles/john-ioannidis-warned-covid-19-could-be-a-once-in-a-century-data-fiasco-he-was-right/
This paper illustrates a handful of some of the most unreliable methods of data collection during the Covid-19 crisis. To name two significant examples: in the USA, hospitals are incentivized to pressure physicians to include COVID-19 on death certificates and discharge papers even if the disease wasn’t necessarily the cause of death, because doing so increases Medicare payments to hospitals treating COVID-19 victims; what’s more, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in addition to other global public health bodies, has been “inflating its COVID testing numbers by including antibody tests,” perhaps to “bolster the testing numbers for political purposes.” As far back as March 17, 2020, Dr. John Ioannidis, the C.F. Rehnborg Chair in Disease Prevention at Stanford University, warned that making policy based on such insufficient or inaccurate data could turn out to be a “once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.”

Therefore, The Secular Heretic has made an effort to find reliable data furnished by independent quantitative data analysts, those not affiliated with the mainstream media, with governments or the pharmaceutical industry, or with universities funded by governments or Big Pharma. Much of the data presented below has been compiled and interpreted by data engineer Ivor Cummins, one of the most credible, sensible, independent voices out there on the Covid-19 crisis. Host of The Fat Emperor podcast, Cummins completed a Biochemical Engineering degree in 1990, and has spent the last thirty years in corporate technical positions, leading teams engaged in complex problem-solving activity. Since 2012 Cummins has been researching the root causes of modern chronic disease, with a particular focus on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, and he shares his research insights at public speaking engagements around the world. His book, Eat Rich, Live Long: Mastering the Low-Carb & Keto Spectrum for Weight Loss and Longevity (Victory Belt Publishing, 2018), was co-written with Dr. Jeffry Gerber.

Mortality Rates (Covid-19 v. All-Cause)

According to Worldometers, the current population of Canada is 37.9 million people, and 23,059 “Covid deaths” (as of Apr 4 2021) have been recorded. Compare that to the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918/20, which killed about 55,000 Canadians at a time when our population was about 8.5 million.

Further, according to the graph pictured above from Macrotrends, the all-cause mortality rate in Canada has not increased substantially in the last 35 years. If you click on the site here and scroll the icon across the graph, you will see that since 1986, the all-cause mortality rate has hovered between 7-7.8 deaths per 1000 people. Covid-19 has not significantly affected Canada’s death rate compared to previous viral epidemics and seasonal illnesses. In fact, the annual percentage change in Canada’s death rate was higher during the 2017/18 influenza epidemic (+1.090-1.070%) than during the current Covid-19 “pandemic” (+0.580-0.590%).

Note that the above graph provided by Ivor Cummins (but sourced from www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se) focuses on Sweden. COVID-19 is insignificant in the greater context of almost 200 years. There are spikes in mortality, as you can see, during the flu epidemics of 1976, 1988, and 1993, for example, but the mortality rates in those years were higher than for Covid-19 in 2020. Please keep in mind, too, that Sweden never locked down its healthy population as most other countries have, and yet their mortality rates are comparable, as we’ll see in more detail as we look at other graphs. Note as well that the dramatically high mortality rate during the Spanish flu in 1918 is exponentially higher than that of Covid-19, so the comparison between the two made by public health officials and the media is utterly false.

“The Last Word on Sweden Viral Issue - Understanding the Reality!”  The Fat Emperor Podcast: Nov 26 2020.
https://odysee.com/@alltheworldsastage:0/The-Last-Word-on-Sweden-Understanding-the-Facts-Covid-19-Coronavirus-Lockdowns-Masks-Quarantine:9
Here’s the episode in which the above graph on nearly 200 years of Swedish mortality rates appears. Remember that Sweden didn’t lock down as most of the rest of the world did, yet as you’ll see in this episode, Cummins presents a series of graphs showing that compared to other countries that implemented strict lockdown measures, Sweden has similar numbers pertaining to Covid-19 mortality rates . . . not to mention all-cause mortality, excess deaths, ICU bed capacity, and hospitalization rates!

These graphs, courtesy of Ivor Cummins, show mortality rates from 2014-2020 in Sweden, Great Britain, Finland, and Norway. As you can see, in Finland and Norway, mortality rates during the Covid crisis in 2020 were on a par with rates in previous years. As for Sweden and Great Britain, the spike in mortality during Covid-19 is understandable due to the less than expected deaths in previous years—ie. the troughs that precede the spikes on the right side of the graphs. During those trough years a lot of sick and elderly had gathered up who would have been very frail and vulnerable when Covid-19 arrived.

Excess Mortality

Note that this chart by Ivor Cummins focuses on cumulative excess mortality for those aged 65 and older in 26 European countries. We see that the excess deaths putatively caused by the Covid-19 “pandemic“ in the 2019/20 winter season—at 185,000 deaths per 360 million population—is not substantially higher than the excess death rate (140,000 deaths per 360 million population) during the influenza epidemic of 2017/18. Further, though all the data has not yet been tabulated regarding the 2020/21 winter resurgence (or “second wave”) of Covid-19, it is clear that the excess death rate is nowhere near as high as it was in winter 2019/20.

“Important: High Level View of Viral Epidemic Mortality - and Key Patterns.” The Fat Emperor Podcast: Feb 3 2021.
https://odysee.com/@IvorCummins:f/important-high-level-view-of-viral:0
In this episode, Cummins explains excess mortality data coming from Euromomo, the database covering 27 European countries. First, he shows that for the 15-44 age group, with the exception of the UK there is no significant spike in mortality during the initial Covid epidemic in winter 2019/20, and even less so during the winter resurgence 2020/21. The same goes for the 45-64 age group: except for the UK (and Spain during the “first wave” and Portugal during the “second wave”), there has been no noteworthy increase in excess deaths. As for the 65+ age group, there were spikes in mortality in Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and the UK. In other words, nine European countries experienced notable increases in excess deaths in their 65+ population; but 18 European countries did not.

"Provisional death counts and excess mortality,  January to December 2020." Statistics Canada: Mar 10 2021.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/210310/dq210310c-eng.htm
Canada’s national statistical agency states in its above report that from January to mid-December 2020, there were excess deaths in the country when compared to previous years, but those deaths were due increasingly to what it calls “indirect consequences of the pandemic [such as] delayed medical procedures [and] increased substance use” because of lockdowns:
"[T]he number of excess deaths has been higher than the number of deaths due to COVID-19, and these deaths are affecting younger populations, suggesting that other factors, including possible indirect impacts of the pandemic, are now at play." 

SO WHY DID WE HAVE TO FLATTEN THE CURVE?

Weren’t the hospitals overwhelmed, or at least the ICUs? Haven’t they been all along? Why else would we be going through these lockdowns? If the mortality rates of this pandemic are nothing to sneeze at, then how can the hospitals be full? In fact, official statements from public health officials across Canada, as well as reports from mainstream Canadian newspapers, paint a misleading picture when they say that hospitals across Canada are “full” because for most of the past year, hospital bed capacity has been reduced by two-thirds to curtail the risk of spread; in other words, if a hospital has 300 available beds—three per room, let’s say—it is only allowed to assign one patient per room, so that the hospital is designated as “full” when one hundred beds are filled, though two hundred potential beds remain empty. There have also been reports of entire hospitals being shut down due to “outbreaks” and patients being transferred to other hospitals. Why didn’t the government build field hospitals in the summer to prepare for what they repeatedly said was going to be a catastrophic resurgence of the virus in Winter 2020/21?

Having interviewed doctors and nurses in hospitals in Windsor-Essex County in southwestern Ontario—one of Canada’s so-called “Covid hotspots”—The Secular Heretic has learned that at the height of the “first wave” in winter 2019/20, hospital beds and ICU beds were nearly full and did sometimes exceed capacity which, however, was the normal state of affairs long before Covid arrived. In fact, nearly filled or over-filled hospital beds, nursing staff shortages, and waiting lists have been the norm since radical changes to Medicare and the Canada Health Act were implemented in the 1980s. The Covid-19 “pandemic” hasn’t significantly changed what had already been a crisis in our health care system for over thirty years. It’s difficult, however, to get factual data on this issue, for reasons which should be obvious, and doctors and hospital workers are intimidated into not speaking honestly on the issue lest they be publicly vilified so their professional reputations are destroyed, and they lose their jobs. What’s more, a March 15, 2021 article in The Suburban (Montreal, Quebec) has this to say on the issue of hospital bed and ICU bed capacity in Quebec:

Though vaccinations are underway and according to government statistics 296,143 (3.48% of the total Quebec population) have tested positive for the virus since the start of the outbreak in the province, [Quebec Premier Francois] Legault insists that the health care system is overwhelmed, though The Suburban visited multiple hospitals in the city and spoke to ICU designated staff, doctors, nurses and hospital administrators who shared the common viewpoint that there have been no exceptional surges since last April but that the medical system was and is overwhelmed more and more each year regardless of COVID-19 and that the novel virus has highlighted the already existing weaknesses of a broken system.

Hospital Beds & Hospitalization Rates

The above graph, sourced from OurWorldinData, compares the Covid-19 hospitalization numbers of nine countries, including Canada. If you link to the graph here and drag your icon across it, you will see that since March 1, 2020, the highest number of Covid-19 patients in hospitals across Canada was 4,868 on January 13, 2021. That’s less than 5000 Canadians hospitalized nationwide in a country with nearly 38 million people. Similarly, by dragging your icon across this graph showing the number of Covid-19 patients in ICU in the same countries, including Canada, since March 1, 2020, you will see that Canadian hospital ICU bed capacity cumulatively peaked on January 16, 2021, when there were 886 Canadians in intensive care for Covid-19.

WORSE WITHOUT LOCKDOWNS?

With the foregoing in mind, we may surmise that lockdowns were unnecessary, and clearly destructive economically, socially and psychologically. However, since the world—under the aegis of the WHO—took the trouble to conduct this globalist experiment, it is of interest to the curious whether lockdowns minimized the impact of COVID-19. Surely, common sense would lead one to trust that if you isolated individuals and families, the virus would have nowhere to go and would be starved out. In fact, this is the argument deployed by reasonable folk everywhere. Isn’t it obvious after all? The answer is no, not scientifically speaking . . . scientifically speaking, it isn’t obvious at all. It is conventional and customary to regard a viral disease in this manner, but as we saw in the section on transmission, custom is not science. However transmission is working, the question remains whether lockdowns can minimize viral impact, and the answer, as you will see is no. It may delay impact, but it cannot stop it. COVID-19 is a “self-limiting disease.” What is that? Keep reading.

Note in the above bulletin from the WHO that up until the Covid crisis emerged in early 2020, based on the culmination of decades of scientific data, the WHO did not recommend stay-at-home orders or quarantining exposed individuals to reduce the risk of transmission, because there was no scientific evidence that such lockdown measures reduced the spread of the virus once it had substantially come into the population. Instead, the WHO recommended letting the virus run its course until the population had achieved natural “herd immunity,” at which point the virus would die out.

The above WHO bulletins show that in the space of five months—from June 9 to November 13, 2020, the WHO changed its definition of what constitutes “herd immunity,” excluding the well-documented phenomenon of natural immunity developed through previous infection. Now the focus is exclusively on vaccination, and on “protecting people from a virus, not exposing them to it” via lockdown measures. The WHO has overturned anti-quarantine and pro-natural immunity guidelines that constitute the logic of nearly a century of Western medical science, and Big Pharma stands to profit handsomely from the WHO’s reversal.

Self-Limiting Diseases & the Gompertz Curve

“Exponential Growth Is Terrifying.” Dr. Michael Levitt: May 14 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCgPf1SuPNY&list=PLstiHTWcxU0KAj3q-MrpxKZeJh4aHcq2i&index=1
“Curve Fitting for Understanding.” Dr. Michael Levitt: May 14 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw2ZTaiN97k&list=PLstiHTWcxU0KAj3q-MrpxKZeJh4aHcq2i&index=2
“COVID-19 Never Grows Exponentially.” Dr. Michael Levitt: May 14 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aHrx68IT7o
In the three short vlogs featured above, Dr. Michael Levitt, professor of structural biology at Stanford University Medical School and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, explains how data is assembled to mark the trajectory of an epidemic disease such as Covid-19, specifically how data is plotted on a curve on a graph. Contrary to the fear mongering news coming from governments and mainstream media, SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious diseases never grow exponentially in a population, be it localized or on a global scale. Instead, viruses spread through a population according to the Gompertz Function, named after Benjamin Gompertz (1779-1865). The Gompertz Curve illustrates how the growth of an epidemic is slowest at the start and end of a given time period. By using the Gompertz Curve to show the rate of growth of coronavirus cases in South Korea and New Zealand during the “first wave” of Winter 2019/20, Dr. Levitt illustrates the following findings: 
“From the very first confirmed case the rate of growth of Covid-19 confirmed cases is not constant. Instead the ‘constant’ exponential growth rate is decreasing rapidly. Although the growth rate is very rapid at first, it is decreasing at an exponential rate.” 
Dr. Levitt’s insights match well with the fact that Covid-19, like other infectious diseases, is a “self-limiting illness”: it spreads through a population, kills the vulnerable, and expires. No amount or severity of lockdown can change that. It may delay the rate of spread, but the virus will run its course through the population eventually, one way or another. Excessive human intervention in managing epidemic diseases causes no good and does much harm.

“The end of exponential growth: The decline in the spread of coronavirus.” Dr. Isaac Ben-Israel. The Times of Israel: Apr 19 2020.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-end-of-exponential-growth-the-decline-in-the-spread-of-coronavirus/
This study by Professor Isaac Ben-Israel, Israeli military scientist and chairman of the Israeli Space Agency, uses data from dozens of countries around the world to demonstrate with a series of graphs how the trajectory of the coronavirus—in countries with strict lockdowns as much in those that didn’t lock down—follows the Gompertz Curve described by Dr. Michael Levitt:
"It turns out that a similar pattern—rapid increase in infections that reaches a peak in the sixth week and declines from the eighth week—is common to all countries in which the disease was discovered, regardless of their response policies: some imposed a severe and immediate lockdown that included not only “social distancing” and banning crowding, but also shutout of economy (like Israel); some “ignored” the infection and continued almost a normal life (such as Taiwan, Korea or Sweden), and some initially adopted a lenient policy but soon reversed to a complete lockdown (such as Italy or the State of New York). Nonetheless, the data shows similar time constants amongst all these countries in regard to the initial rapid growth and the decline of the disease."

“Making Sense of Mortality with Joel Smalley – MBA, Quantitative Analyst.” Pandemic Podcast: Feb 24 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWTaEtkZiA4&list=WL&index=16
In this episode of the Pandemic Podcast, British quantitative analyst Joel Smalley uses a series of graphs assembled with raw data from the UK government Coronavirus website to illustrate with painstaking detail how the pattern of transmission of the virus through the British population, during both the Winter 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons, followed the Gompertz curve. By referring to Covid-19 as a “self-limiting event,” Smalley means that the actual trajectory of the virus itself through the two winter seasons had its own natural curve, and it would have naturally followed that pattern whether the UK had done hard lockdown or not, which is precisely what we’ve seen in comparative data analyses of countries with more and less stringent lockdown restrictions:
"The [Gompertz] model theoretically was based on the notion that [transmission of SARS-CoV-2] was decreasing exponentially in terms of growth from day one."

Lockdowns & Collateral Damage

Note that the above graph from Ivor Cummins clearly shows that lockdowns had no effect on slowing the rate of excess all-cause deaths in all ages in England from January 1, 2020 to December 21, 2020. Both “Lockdown 1” and “Lockdown 2” are shown to have failed to stop the excess death rate from rising; and “Lockdown 3” was implemented when the death rate was already falling.

“Published Papers and Data on Lockdown Weak Efficacy - and Lockdown Huge Harms.” The Fat Emperor.
https://thefatemperor.com/published-papers-and-data-on-lockdown-weak-efficacy-and-lockdown-huge-harms/
This absolutely indispensable resource page assembled by Ivor Cummins provides links to more than 47 scientific papers (and growing) showing that “lockdown ideology is destroying our societal health, selling the lie of saving lives. Lockdowns cost net suffering and lives—by a huge margin.” The harms, for example, to children from closing in-person schooling are dramatic, including poor learning, school dropouts, social isolation, and suicidal ideation, most of which are far worse for lower income groups. The majority of cancers haven’t been detected due to missed screenings. That health disaster adds to missed critical surgeries, delayed presentations of pediatric illnesses, heart attack and stroke patients too afraid to call emergency services, and others. What’s more, there have been massive increases in depression, anxiety symptoms, and suicidal ideation, particularly among young adults, not to mention drug overdoses and suicides. Domestic abuse and child abuse have been skyrocketing due to the isolation and specifically to loss of jobs. This unemployment catastrophe from lockdowns has increased mortality rates and is correlated to a drop in overall life expectancy over the next several years.

“The Great Barrington Declaration”
https://gbdeclaration.org/
The Great Barrington Declaration is a document created by a team of infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists who “have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts” of COVID-19 lockdown policies, and propose a far more sensible, effective policy. As of April 2, 2020, the declaration has been signed by 41,890 medical practitioners, 13,796 medical and public health scientists, and 764,075 concerned citizens. Co-authored by Dr. Martin Kulldorf (Harvard), Dr. Sunetra Gupta (Oxford), and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford), the declaration proposes to replace lockdowns with a more reasonable, less restrictive approach called “Focused Protection”:
"The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection."

“Ep78 Stanford Professor and Nobel Prize Winner Explains this Viral Lockdown - Fully!” The Fat Emperor Podcast: May 19 2020.
https://odysee.com/@IvorCummins:f/ep78-stanford-professor-and-nobel-prize:d
In Episode 78 of the Fat Emperor podcast, Ivor Cummins interviews Dr. Michael Levitt, professor of structural biology at Stanford University and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Dr. Levitt provides a sobering, data-driven analysis of why lockdowns don’t reduce spread and in fact cause considerable long-term social and economic harms. He and Cummins discuss, for example, how lockdowns reduce cancer diagnoses, delay medical screenings, increase the number of fatal heart attacks because people are afraid to go to the hospital even though they’re half-empty, exacerbate psychological problems including anxiety and depression, increase the rate of alcohol and drug abuse.

“Florida Wins the Lockdown Science War - Hands Down - no problemo!!!” The Fat Emperor Podcast: Feb 18 2021.
https://odysee.com/@IvorCummins:f/florida-wins-the-lockdown-science-war:9
Ivor Cummins uses data from RationalGround.com to show that in terms of Covid-19 management, Florida has outperformed the hard lockdown states, namely New York and California, even though Florida has a higher elderly population than those two states; and in late September it dropped the lockdowns, mask mandates, and opened schools and businesses. In fact, since then Florida has outperformed New York and California—as well as the entire U.S. national average!—in the following metrics: a lower increase in per capita mortality from 2019 to 2020; deaths per 100,000 for seniors 65+; daily new Covid-19 cases per million people; and hospitalizations per million people.

“How Finland and Norway Proved Sweden’s Approach to Covid-19 Works.”  John Miltimore. Foundation for Economic Education: Nov 13 2020.
https://fee.org/articles/how-finland-and-norway-proved-sweden-s-approach-to-covid-19-works/
This article provides a fascinating case study of disinformation from the pro-lockdown mainstream media lying about the success of Sweden’s no lockdown strategy: 
"[T]he Swedes have found themselves attacked. The New York Times has described Sweden’s policy as a “cautionary tale,” while other media outlets have used it as an illustration of how not to handle the coronavirus. Critics of Sweden’s policy point out that although Sweden has experienced fewer deaths than many European nations, it has suffered more than its Nordic neighbors, Finland and Norway. This is true, but it needs to be contextualized. Norway and Finland have some of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in the world, with 54 deaths per one million citizens and 66 per million respectively. This is well below the median in Europe (240 per million) and Sweden’s rate (605 per million). What these critics fail to realize is that both Finland and Norway have had less restrictive policies than Sweden for the bulk of the pandemic—not more lockdowns."

THE TROUBLE WITH CASES

If (a) the pandemic is not especially severe compared to previous flu seasons, and if (b) the ICUs aren’t more overwhelmed than usual, and if (c) lockdowns aren’t curtailing infection rates, then why is the media continually bombarding us with information about cases? The argument of course is that high numbers of cases are a harbinger of skyrocketing mortality rates. As we know from the section above on COVID-19 as a self-limiting disease, this argument is false. It is being deployed however as the primary rationale for lockdowns. Cases are rising, therefore we must lock down. Originally, the idea was to “flatten the curve” so as not to overwhelm ICUs, and this is still the underlying principle. As we have seen however none of the data support this strategy.

More importantly, regarding testing itself, until 2020, it had been standard medical practice to apply tests only to sick patients for the sole purpose of helping to confirm a diagnosis. The testing of healthy individuals (or the perception of all persons as patients) was considered malpractice because testing can yield false results, and mass testing of healthy individuals will inevitably yield very high rates of false and misleading results. In short, the idea of testing the healthy is a completely new way of conducting medical work, and one that stands in direct opposition to at least a century of medical practice.

Worse, the PCR test (the one that is being used to the exclusion of all other tests) was never designed to be used as an independent diagnostic, so one cannot claim that a change in the technology led to a change in the policy. And worse still, the PCR tests must be run at a cycling threshold (CT) that if surpassed yields extremely erroneous and misleading results. Most labs are running these PCR tests at cycle thresholds beyond the range of accuracy, and policies have not been adequately put in place to change this situation and demand that labs attach a notice to their tests declaring the CT.

PCR-Tests

These graphs from this Ivor Cummins video show that in Germany and Switzerland—as in most of the rest of the world—when the “first wave” of Covid-19 ended in May 2020, deaths and hospitalizations decreased substantially while positive PCR-tests continued to rise. Most of the positive “cases” were either asymptomatic or false positives. And yet this “casedemic” was used as a pretext to justify ongoing lockdowns . . . which is happening again now during this “second wave” . . . and we might add now during the “third wave” despite our having solid data on which to base public policy.

“The Truth About PCR-Tests.” Dr. Sam Bailey Podcast: Jan 12 2021.
https://odysee.com/@EMF-ECOLOGY-HEALTH:c/The-Truth-About-PCR-Tests---Dr.-Sam-Bailey:9
In this episode Dr. Sam Bailey details why the PCR-test—the test being used worldwide to determine if someone has been infected with SARS-CoV-2—is not a legitimate clinical diagnostic tool and thus unable to actually determine if you’ve been infected with the virus. In fact, the inventor of the test, Dr. Kary Mullis, has warned that the PCR-test “doesn’t tell you that you are sick. These tests cannot detect free, infectious viruses at all.” Dr. Bailey explains:
"When a biological specimen is taken from a living host with a nasal swab, it contains all sorts of things, including genetic material from any number of microorganisms. Humans are covered in billions of microorganisms, most of them living in symbiosis with us, meaning they don’t cause any harm or disease. Most of them have nothing to do with illness, so the mere apparent detection of their presence [on the PCR-test] doesn’t mean you’re sick. As Kary Mullis pointed out, a PCR-test does not detect an infectious agent. This is because it is an indirect test that only detects genetic fragments of organisms. Your body may have encountered a potential pathogen that your immune system rapidly destroyed but the test still detects remaining fragments."
As Dr. Bailey illustrates, this is one of the many reasons why the PCR-test has up to a 96% false positive rate. In other words, the current Covid-19 crisis is a “casedemic” and not a “pandemic”: an enormous number of people who’ve tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 didn’t actually have the virus. Remember that skyrocketing case numbers has been one the main drivers for justifying lockdowns!

“The Trouble With PCR-Tests.” Swiss Policy Research: Oct 2020.
https://swprs.org/the-trouble-with-pcr-tests/
This valuable resource page offers a trove of information about the manifold problems surrounding the PCR-test: large-scale test kit contamination; testing site or lab contamination, which has led to countless false positives; the PCR-test can react to other coronaviruses; the test can detect non-infectious virus fragments weeks after an active infection, or from an infection of a contact person; the test can detect viable virus in quantities too small to be infectious; and the list goes on. In fact, there are so many issues concerning the validity of the PCR-test that on January 21, 2021, the WHO had to finally admit that the way the test has been administered worldwide up to now has been producing far too many false positives:
"WHO guidance ‘Diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2’ states that careful interpretation of weak positive results is needed. The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load. Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology. WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases."