alicespringstomind

Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University is one of the world’s ten most cited scientists across all disciplines. He and Oxford University’s Professor Sunetra Gupta are recognised as the world’s most renowned Infectious Diseases Epidemiologists. They have both faced a vicious backlash over the past 18 months, for daring to speak on their area of expertise. What they have to say (which might be summarised as keeping immune systems away from germs is a bad idea, and protecting the vulnerable works best) has gone against the agenda behind the catastrophic 2020-2021 pandemic response. This agenda has unfortunately appealed to the general public as it seems intuitively correct to keep safe, via strongly promoted messages about “protecting yourself and others” via distancing and staying home et al.

We are now seeing the results of this in epidemic levels of infectious disease amongst vulnerable populations who are no longer surrounded by the herd immunity that would normally offer protection. One example of many being high rates of hospitalisations for RSV in New Zealand and Australia‘s infant populations. Quite likely also the Brazilian infant population, although this is being promoted thanks to PCR testing as a focused diagnostic tool in low resource settings, as paediatric Covid. Perhaps Brazil’s children have different physiology to children everywhere else, but that seems highly unlikely.

As another example of lockdown harms, Ioannidis suggests that the number of Tuberculosis deaths globally will likely double as a direct result of our new pandemic policies, contradicting decades of evidence, in his presentation to the University of Salzburg on 26 June 2021. Ioannidis makes a deliberate point at the beginning of every one of his presentations since the pandemic began, to state that he has no conflicts of interest. Perhaps the most interesting part of this 1h45m presentation, is his discussion on the infection fatality rate for Covid-19 and how it varies across populations in different locations. He also talks about the damage caused by Groupthink which has taken over, and the role of selective reporting across media outlets.

Covid-19 has “astonishingly strong risk stratification“. The difference between low risk (children) and high risk (elderly and frail, particularly those in nursing homes) is 10,000-fold. He is a captivating speaker so my transcripts don’t do him any justice but I particularly liked these points:

• “In my life as an Epidemiologist I have worked with risk factors of 1.03. Suddenly, we have risk factors of 10,000 and we don’t know what to do with that? It seems completely ludicrous“.
• “I believe that masks work. Well, why don’t we do a randomised trial to see if masks work? We did one. Some people in Denmark did one. And they got death threats because they found that masks didn’t work!”.
• “In countries of low and middle income, 8.6 million deaths per year are attributed to poor health care or non-use of health care. So now we have these dysfunctional care systems that suddenly are asked to deal with an extra problem, where we are shifting all the attention [to Covid-19] … “
• “9 million people die every year from starvation, including 3.1 million young children. So now we ask countries that have this problem. To lockdown! … And we think we are saving lives …“
• “Vaccines are an amazing achievement. I don’t share anti-vaccine concerns. However I do share concerns to look very carefully for adverse events. This is a new technology, these are new vaccines, this is an emergency authorisation rather than full licensing”.
• “Relatively few countries so far have benefited. Most of the waves had declined steadily by the time vaccines were introduced. However, they could be a key modifier for future epidemic waves“.
• “Adoption of harmful, pro-contagion public health measures, for example blind lockdowns. I hope we avoid them“.

By this new public health approach which has zero evidence to support it’s effect on Covid-19 and multiple points of evidence that it causes catastrophe to society. Lockdown.

PANDA have attracted many incredible minds and souls. One New York based medic who joined yesterday said “I am not an activist but not to play an active role in this global catastrophe seems like negligence“. One of Panda’s consultant experts is Marc Girardot, who assisted me in collecting and interpreting the best evidence for our published article about asymptomatic transmission. Marc wrote the below excellent piece, published on Monday. Quality writing following quality public health, inaccessible via mainstream “news” where all you get is promotion of miasmatic belief systems promoting panic.

Natural immunity vs Covid-19 vaccine-induced immunity

Bringing back evidence based public health : it’s hard to fathom this as a fight that has to happen. The levels of harm that have to happen until this war is won are distressing.