Every cloud has a silver lining. Discovering Professor John Ioannidis would have to be one of the best silver linings of the Covid pandemic response. The Inaugural Lecture of the European University of Cyprus Public Health Lecture Series features a presentation by Ioannidis.
Described as a paragon of evidence based medicine and meta-research, famous for his article “Why most published research findings are false“, Ioannidis starts this lecture with his quintessential humour, stating “… suggested that I talk about evidence based public health. And my first reaction to that, well, that’s a great title. Maybe the lecture could last less than a minute. I could tell people, evidence based public health is dead. We should all go home. And this is over“.
Ten months ago Tanzanian President John Magufuli made headlines when he dismissed Covid-19 PCR tests supplied to Tanzania from China as faulty. Absent from public life since late February, this week his death was announced amidst rumours and speculation. For example, Gates funding of media reporting that he needed reining in only a month ago, for “endangering lives”.
In May 2020 after asking security services to check the quality of the PCR tests received from China, Magufuli made a public speech claiming that specimens supplied from a goat and a paw paw returned positive results. He suggested that this confirmed some people being told they had Covid-19 based on positive test results were in fact, not infected. Mainstream media labelled him a “Covid denying populist”. Yet Kary Mullis who created PCR testing and Christian Drosten who now faces legal proceedings for his nefarious SARS-CoV-2 PCR test are both on record, explaining why PCR is unreliable as a diagnostic tool.
Whose lives was Magufuli allegedy endangering with his so-called conspiracies? Tanzania’s “case” numbers have been, as with most of Africa, negligible, and they are reported to have had 21 deaths in people who tested PCR positive to SARS-CoV-2. According to current “public health” narrative, they must have locked down much more efficiently than Europe and will remain unsafe until they can be mass vaccinated along with the rest of the globe. As their Vice President transitions into the role of President, with elections still four years away, will Covid-19 epidemiology in Tanzania change? Certainly, it would seem, their Covid-19 vaccination rollout is no longer at risk of being questioned or challenged.
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