Huge Brazilian Ivermectin Study

 

... shows it highly effective against COVID. 

British Data on Excess Deaths

 

Confirms what Germany is saying ...

A Scary Thought

 

The evidence is beginning to look damning: that the COVID vaccines were actually more dangerous, for most of us, than the virus itself.

This explains why many governments, including that of Canada, suddenly around last September became insistent that everyone must be vaccinated, and imposed vaccine mandates even on truckers  There was no medical case for this, even if the vaccines worked and were safe. All that was needed was to vaccinate the most vulnerable. It was an otherwise unnecessary violation of human rights.

I assume they knew by about September, if not before, that herd immunity was not possible through vaccination, that the vaccines did not prevent the virus's spread, and that the vaccines were riskier than advertised. Up to t his point, pushing the vaccine on everyone might have been an innocent mistake. The responsible thing to do then would have been to pull back on the vaccination program. But then they risked being held to account for all those who died unnecessarily due to the vaccine.

Rather than intake their lumps. the safer political path was to try to force everyone to vaccinate, to hide the terrible reality that people who were vaccinated were dying at a higher rate than people who were not vaccinated. This would also explain why Trudeau called a snap election in the middle of a pandemic, which the public saw as unnecessary. It was to get a solid mandate before the truth came out.

No wonder they react so badly to any mention of the Nuremberg Code. No wonder they resorted to the Emergency Act. No wonder they have suddenly gone so authoritarian. They figure if and when this hits the fan, they are in big trouble. They are like burglars doubling down by trying to kill the witnesses...

A frightening thought, but it does seem to explain the facts at a time when government actions otherwise seem bizarre.

A Journal of the Plague Year--Er, Decade

 

It's probably of little interest, but on my afternoon walk today, in this Toronto neighbourhood, absolutely nobody I passed was wearing a mask. One guy looked at me knowingly (I was not wearing a mask either) and said hi; as if we knew each other. A few weeks ago everyone would be wearing a mask.I think ordinary people are quietly expressing their feelings in this way. 

Hopeful News--or at Least, Hopeful Thought

 

While initial reports of the new Omicron variant of Covid were alarming, the news has more recently looked a little brighter. The South African doctor who first detected the strain says she has only seen mild cases. 

If Omicron is extremely contagious yet causes only mild symptoms, it may actually work like a vaccine, quickly inoculating large populations. 

Here’s hoping…

Ivermectin--or Something

 

We may be seeing the end of the virus...

A Journal of the Plague Year--Year 2

 

Out and about in downtown Toronto yesterday. In the Eaton Centre, the Food Court seating is cordoned off. To enter you must wear a mask, and show your vaccine passport and some form of ID. 

As I was sitting there with a friend, a group of perhaps five blonde women of varying ages walked past me, opened the cordon, walked out, then replaced the cordon. None of them were wearing masks. They did this right beside a group of five security guards and police, standing around talking to one another, presumably there to enforce the rules.

It seems obvious to me that this was a planned act of defiance. No doubt there were other places where they could have left the seating area that were not right beside a gaggle of security guards. It was anything but sneaky. It obviously did not affect anyone’s safety. It would have been little or no inconvenience for them to have just walked out by the designated exit; to leave, they would not have had to show anything.

One of the security guards challenged them. “Do you think you’re special? Do you think you don’t have to follow the rules like everyone else?”

I imagine this is what they had wanted. The women assembled in front of him. One of them responded, in a distinctly Eastern European accent: “we are doing this for you. You will thank us in two or three years. We are from a Communist country. We know how this is going to go. We are fighting for your freedom.”

The five stood there and took turns arguing with the security guard, remaining relatively calm. One turned to me and apologized for the disturbance.

I was impressed.

I hope they are wrong.

The Endless Pandemic

 

People are losing hope. In Canada, we are into a third wave of the pandemic, and each wave seems worse than the last. Friend Xerxes writes a column on “What if it never ends?”

It will end.

Even without any human intervention, all epidemics end. The Spanish flu managed four waves, but it ended, without a vaccine.

We are going to break this third wave by summer. We may be fighting variants for a few years, but at a lower level, with booster shots. 

See if I’m not right.

COVID and Divine Justice

 

Someone asks, “Why would a good and just God send COVID?”

It is a fair question. The moment you accept monotheism, everything is from God that is not from man.

But COVID may be from man. I think it is likely it escaped from the Wuhan Virology lab. It may even have been intended as a weapon, although its release was surely in error. It is mysterious how outbreaks seem to have been less severe in East Asian countries—almost as if there is some component sensitive to Chinese/Mongoloid and non-Chinese genetics.

But even if it is from God—it is just. We needed and deserved chastisement. Our nearly universal acceptance of abortion is about the same thing that led Yahweh in the Old Testament to wipe out the Canaanites, or the Romans to salt the ground of Carthage. They practiced child sacrifice. The collapse of the Aztecs, the Inca, might be accounted for in the same way: they practiced human sacrifice. They deserved to be taken down, and Yahweh did so, swiftly, through the Spanish. 

Aside from killing them outright, we have also ignored the welfare of the young in having women all work outside the home. We have ignored the need to pass on morals to our young. These are ample justification for destroying a culture. The entire point of a culture is to pass on moral guidance generation to generation. Our culture is therefore poisoned.

If this has not led to our own destruction—yet—it seems only because there is not some other culture ready to replace us. The Spanish, or the Hebrews, or the Romans, have not yet arrived on the scene. Who might they be?

Not the mainland Chinese, the CCP. If we are depraved, they are more depraved.

A Journal of the Plague Year

 

It is now more than a year.

Just as the vaccines seemed to bring hope of an end, new concerns. The AstraZeneca shot, hoped to be the workhorse, has been suspended in Canada for under-55s for fear of causing blood clots. New variants are spreading that are deadlier and more virulent than the original virus. People are speaking of a “Third Wave.” 

It seems possible that the virus will be able to mutate faster than vaccines can keep up. If, say, the UK and the US manage to vaccinate nearly everybody, new variants might still breed in other countries, enter the US/UK, and be resistant to the vaccines. New round of new vaccines, new round of virus mutations, and the battle goes on year after year.

And everyone seems at the breaking point with the lockdowns.

The COVID Stress Test

 

Ibn Khaldun

There is a theory, by Sir John Glubb, that empires last about 250 years, then collapse from having overreached themselves. 

The idea is not new. Ibn Khaldun suggested in the 14th century that regimes have a lifespan; ruling elites grow lax and self-indulgent over time. Then some new tribe thunders in from the desert.

This thesis has been raised by several voices recently, because American civic society seems to be breaking down. And because the USA is now in the 245th year of its official existence.

Perhaps. I’m old enough to remember when the USA was about to be replaced by the Soviet Union, or eclipsed economically by Japan. The USA is also arguably not an empire, certainly not for its entire existence. 

Any empire runs primarily on prestige. No empire could exist on mere power; human abilities are not distributed that unequally. Prestige builds on prestige; as prestige grows, its jurisdiction expands increasingly beyond what it can maintain without prestige. Eventually, the bubble bursts. 

The bubble perhaps burst for the British Empire with the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore in World War Two. The Warsaw Pact simply ran out of other people’s money. 

The current COVID-19 pandemic is like a stress test: for America, and for all nations, so that perhaps we can see who is decadent and who is not. It is probably too soon to draw firm conclusions—winners one month look like losers the next—but who is gaining prestige from the epidemic, and who is being revealed as less competent?

The case for the US, to begin with, is unclear. Their infection rate has been high, and may shoot higher as newer variants spread. The strain has led to rioting in the streets of many cities. Americans have certainly not pulled together. There have been problems with the vaccination rollout. On the other hand, the USA was first with effective vaccines. The US system has always been designed to be shambolic without breaking.

The UK situation is similar, based on a similar system. A higher infection rate than many countries; but they were almost as fast with a vaccine, and are faster in inoculating. Their vaccine is cheaper and easier to transport; they are set to produce it worldwide at cost. They are liable to benefit massively in earned international prestige. It all follows the typical British model: disorder at the start, but swiftly pulling things together through improvisation; losing every battle but the last.

Australia and New Zealand have done themselves credit so far by almost avoiding the pandemic in the first place; aided, no doubt, by their isolation.

Overall, the Anglosphere looks sound.

What about possible replacement powers?

China, of course, must lose prestige on a massive scale for being the source of the pandemic, and failing to do what was necessary to prevent its spread. They seem to have efficiently limited the virus internally, but by using brutal measures. They have hoarded necessary supplies. They have now developed a vaccine, but without proper testing; and indications are that it is not very effective.

Russia did well by shutting their border early, and have developed a vaccine. But it too has not undergone proper testing, and Russia apparently lacks the capacity to produce it in large quantities.

India will probably increase its prestige. The recorded rate of infection locally is relatively low. And India has most of the world’s actual vaccine production facilities. They are gearing up to produce the UK vaccine in bulk, and have at least one vaccine of their own in the works. They may be in a position to ship CARE packages abroad.

Brazil is doing notably poorly throughout the pandemic; so is Iran. Their initial responses to the virus were reckless, and their attempts to fight is seem riddled with corruption. So much for two other nations often cited as possible future powers.

The EC has also done poorly: things were terrible early in Italy and Spain, are now disastrous in Ireland and Portugal, the central commission has been slow to approve any vaccines, and France’s vaccine candidate seems to have failed its trials. Europe seems to have been suicidal since at least the 1920s. With the exception perhaps of the Nordic countries and the Central European nations that emerged from the Soviet Bloc. Denmark is doing notably well. Sweden may have chosen the wrong course early in not shutting down, but perhaps deserves admiration for trying something different, rather than going along with the crowd.

East Asia, outside mainland China, has also done well. Most notably, Taiwan has vastly increased its prestige. It was one of the first nations hit by the virus, and it effectively stopped it in its tracks. This is significant, because any prestige gained by Taiwan is in effect prestige subtracted from the regime in Beijing. This may bode well for China as a future superpower—but under new management.

South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia have also apparently reacted to the pandemic well at the outset. On the other hand, they do not seem to have been very aggressive in getting the vaccines; their record might look worse in the long term as a result.

Most impressive in the race to actually vaccinate, so far, have been Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. Each, individually, is too small to make many waves in the wider world. And the fall in the price of oil is not helpful for the region. On the other hand, the recent peace deals among these very nations suggest the possibility of a new Middle East, under their joint management, that might indeed rise to world power status.

Ibn Khaldun theorized that the new power should emerge from just beyond the fringes of the old, as the Arabs arose from the desert between to overwhelm both the Persian and the Eastern Roman Empire. Just as Rome emerged from the fringes of the Hellenic Empires left by Alexander.

Who might that be? Might a new alliance of CANZUK count as the fringe of the American Empire? Might a new alliance of the Middle East count as the fringe of old Europe? Might the fringes of China--ASEAN, Japan, Korea--become a separate power through alliance? Might Taiwan, as fringe, take over China? Might India be the fringe successor to the old British Empire?

The Threat from Danish Mink

 

There is a possibility they may spread coronavirus to a reservoir in nature.

Trudeau's Biggest Scandal

Brian Lilley, on the right, and Warren Kinsella, on the left, at last agree on something: Trudeau's government has seriously screwed up on the COVID vaccine.

Let's hope Kinsella is wrong in his prediction that Canadians will not get a vaccine for another six months.

 

A Journal of the Plague Year

 

The year 2020 is not getting any saner. Toronto is going back into lockdown for 28 days, which will wipe out the Christmas shopping season and probably assure that all the independent brick-and-mortar retailers go bankrupt. It is generally only during the Christmas season that they ever turn a profit, and that is gone now.

Winter kicked off yesterday, after an eerily warm fall, with a blizzard.

Today, also news that the Oxford-Astro-Zeneca vaccine is 70% effective, adding to the Moderna and Pfizer entries. We now seem poised for a mad race to get everybody vaccinated before everybody gets the virus and dies. Latest estimates are that we will all be living with this crisis for another year; still masking and distancing. Hope that is wrong, but the experience so far is that everything has taken much longer than predicted.

Things are wild on the US election front as well. Several states are set to certify their votes today; in the meantime, Sidney Powell has been fired from the Trump legal team. This looks grim for Trump because she was the one claiming she would “release the kraken.” If Trump is pulling away from her, it sounds as though there is no kraken.

Jordan Peterson, back from near-death due to tranquilizer addiction, has just announced a sequel to his Twelve Rules for Life. It is titled, ominously, Beyond Order.

We will long remember this year. But probably not fondly.

A Journal of the Plague Year

 

I say the concern with COVID, if not the pandemic itself, will be over by the end of September. 

Reasons for optimism are accumulating.

Most notably, the UAE actually seems to have an effective vaccine from China out and ready to roll. This vaccine completed stage 2 trials in July, so it has now plausibly completed stage 3. One hundred thousand people have been given the vaccine, and none have contracted COVID-19. No serious side effects reported.

So it looks as though the race is over, and China won. The numbers of new cases in China too have been absurdly small for some time—only 12 yesterday. Figures from China may not be reliable, but figures from the UAE probably are.

So now the only problem is supply. It will take some time for this or another vaccine to get to a shoulder near you, but this must boost morale. If those most at risk are vaccinated first, it should make the death rates drop fast where it is deployed.

This puts pressure on the US and UK, where they are a month or two behind. The CEO of Pfizer says there is a better than even chance that their vaccine will be out of trial and ready to go by the end of October. Three other entries are moving at about the same pace. There are other efforts in China, India, Israel, perhaps elsewhere.

In the meantime, a new study suggests that, aside from preventing the spread of the virus to others, face masks ensure that, if you get the virus, you get a low dose. With this low initial dose, your chances of being symptomless go from 40% to 80%. In effect, this is a natural inoculation. And if the threshold is really only 20% or so, as some studies have now suggested, we may soon reach herd immunity.

And then there is Vitamin D. If everyone made sure their Vitamin-D levels were high, and wore masks everywhere, the chance of a serious infection gets vanishingly small. Even without hydroxychloroquine and zinc, which the authorities still unaccountably and criminally refuse to investigate.

A Journal of the Plague Year

New evidence from Germany is that the coronavirus is becoming less deadly. We have seen the death rate fall as the infection rate rises. We had thought this might have to do with more young people getting the virus. The German figures show this is not so: the death rate is falling quickly among older patients.

In other news, trials of the Oxford vaccine have resumed. The one patient who fell sick apparently had something unrelated to the vaccine.

What Trump Told Woodward

It flies through the air with the greatest of ease--
That coronavirus at which not to sneeze.

In 2016, Donald Trump was not my candidate. I thought his nomination by the Republicans was disastrous. I would never have supported Clinton, but would have preferred almost any other Republican.

Not the first time I’ve been wrong.

The reality is that he has done an unusually good job, by all visible indications. If any president deserved a second term, he does. The fact that the polls are still against him seems insane.

There is currently a scandal, it is true, about his supposed lying to the public about the COVID pandemic. And demands that Kayleigh McEnerny must also resign for saying that Trump did not lie. Because he told Bob Woodward on February 7 that the coronavirus spread by air and that it was more severe than flu. At the same time, and later, his public announcements were that the virus was “under control” and that Americans should "Just stay calm. It will go away."

I can’t see any lie here; except by the Democrats. If Trump “knew” that COVID was spread by air, and was worse than the flu, he can only have heard this from the experts. The experts at the same time were telling the public that COVID was under control, the risk was low, and they did not know whether it was spread by air. These same experts who advised Trump, or others like them, would have advised members of Congress. No members of Congress were warning the public as of February 7 that COVID was more serious than they realized, and was spread by air. China was saying at the same time that it was under control and probably was not spread by air. The WHO was still refusing to confirm airborne transmission as of July 8. The Centre for Disease Control would not confirm either that it was airborne or how deadly it was. Bob Woodward too obviously knew whatever Trump knew, having just been told by Trump; and he too told nobody.

They were all, of course, acting rationally and in everyone’s best interests. Nobody knew any of this for sure; it was speculation, although reasonable speculation. Everyone was trying to keep everyone calm. Trump was more honest than anyone: he actually publicly said, at the time, that his prime concern was to keep everyone calm. He was the most honest.

It is this that the corrupt elite cannot tolerate.

Trump is consistently a straight-talker. Those who oppose him seem to lie persistently and without compunction.

New Belgian Study

Suggests that hydroxychloroquine indeed does work.

Dr. Campbell is nonplussed by the fact that other studies finding hydroxychloroquine NOT to work used a non-standard dosage.

Why? Why did it take so long to get a study using the standard recommended dosage? Why did none of the studies use the combination first reported to work, hydroxychloroquine combined with zinc and azithromycin, administered early in the course of the disease?

I think Dr. Campbell hints at it without saying: the problem is that hydroxychloroquine is readily available and cheap. Drug companies can't make much money on it, and if it works, it reduces the market for any new proprietary treatment, like remdezavir, that they come up with.

In other news, a British study finds another possible treatment: an extract of eucalyptus readily found in insect repellants.

Even if it's a miracle cure, God knows how long it will take to get that approved...

The Final Lap

They are of course hedging their bets, but it looks from this news story as though the EU is betting on England's Oxford group being first out with an effective vaccine.

Meantime, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are putting in for early supplies of the Russian Sputnik V. This feels less significant. Given their cash reserves and small population, a bad bet it less risky for them.

A Torrent of Good News

... on COVID-19.