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Everyone says we must follow Science. Nowhere do they
suggest OBJECTIVE science. Perhaps we should investigate
the funding before we accept the results?
A few days ago Johns Hopkins
published a study saying
corona is nbd. They then
deleted it. Read it here in its
entirety.
20 November, 2020
Johns Hopkins published this study on Sunday which posits that Covid is nowhere near the disaster we're being told it is. I would summarize it for you or offer pull-quotes but honestly you just have to read it yourself because it's mind-blowing. The original article is now deleted from the Johns Hopkins website ... for some reason. Luckily the internet is forever and it's available via the Wayback Machine. Here is the article in its entirety:
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According to new data, the U.S. currently ranks first in total COVID-19 cases, new cases per day and deaths. Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master's degree program at Hopkins, critically analyzed the effect of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in her webinar titled "COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data."
From mid-March to mid-September, U.S. total deaths have reached 1.7 million, of which 200,000, or 12% of total deaths, are COVID-19-related. Instead of looking directly at COVID-19 deaths, Briand focused on total deaths per age group and per cause of death in the U.S. and used this information to shed light on the effects of COVID-19.
She explained that the significance of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths can be fully understood only through comparison to the number of total deaths in the United States.
After retrieving data on the CDC website, Briand compiled a graph representing percentages of total deaths per age category from early February to early September, which includes the period from before COVID-19 was detected in the U.S. to after infection rates soared.
Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.
"The reason we have a higher number of reported COVID-19 deaths among older individuals than younger individuals is simply because every day in the U.S. older individuals die in higher numbers than younger individuals," Briand said.
Briand also noted that 50,000 to 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after COVID-19, indicating that this number of deaths was normal long before COVID-19 emerged. Therefore, according to Briand, not only has COVID-19 had no effect on the percentage of deaths of older people, but it has also not increased the total number of deaths.
These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people's assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.
This comes as a shock to many people. How is it that the data lie so far from our perception?
To answer that question, Briand shifted her focus to the deaths per causes ranging from 2014 to 2020. There is a sudden increase in deaths in 2020 due to COVID-19. This is no surprise because COVID-19 emerged in the U.S. in early 2020, and thus COVID-19-related deaths increased drastically afterward.
Analysis of deaths per cause in 2018 revealed that the pattern of seasonal increase in the total number of deaths is a result of the rise in deaths by all causes, with the top three being heart disease, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia.
"This is true every year. Every year in the U.S. when we observe the seasonal ups and downs, we have an increase of deaths due to all causes," Briand pointed out.
When Briand looked at the 2020 data during that seasonal period, COVID-19-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart diseases. This was highly unusual since heart disease has always prevailed as the leading cause of deaths. However, when taking a closer look at the death numbers, she noted something strange. As Briand compared the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to 2018, she noticed that instead of the expected drastic increase across all causes, there was a significant decrease in deaths due to heart disease. Even more surprising, as seen in the graph below, this sudden decline in deaths is observed for all other causes.
Graph depicts the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to 2018.
This trend is completely contrary to the pattern observed in all previous years. Interestingly, as depicted in the table below, the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19. This suggests, according to Briand, that the COVID-19 death toll is misleading. Briand believes that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be recategorized as being due to COVID-19.
Graph depicts the total decrease in deaths by various causes, including COVID-19.
The CDC classified all deaths that are related to COVID-19 simply as COVID-19 deaths. Even patients dying from other underlying diseases but are infected with COVID-19 count as COVID-19 deaths. This is likely the main explanation as to why COVID-19 deaths drastically increased while deaths by all other diseases experienced a significant decrease.
"All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary," Briand concluded.
In an interview with The News-Letter, Briand addressed the question of whether COVID-19 deaths can be called misleading since the infection might have exacerbated and even led to deaths by other underlying diseases.
"If [the COVID-19 death toll] was not misleading at all, what we should have observed is an increased number of heart attacks and increased COVID-19 numbers. But a decreased number of heart attacks and all the other death causes doesn't give us a choice but to point to some misclassification," Briand replied.
In other words, the effect of COVID-19 on deaths in the U.S. is considered problematic only when it increases the total number of deaths or the true death burden by a significant amount in addition to the expected deaths by other causes. Since the crude number of total deaths by all causes before and after COVID-19 has stayed the same, one can hardly say, in Briand's view, that COVID-19 deaths are concerning.
Briand also mentioned that more research and data are needed to truly decipher the effect of COVID-19 on deaths in the United States.
Throughout the talk, Briand constantly emphasized that although COVID-19 is a serious national and global problem, she also stressed that society should never lose focus of the bigger picture — death in general.
The death of a loved one, from COVID-19 or from other causes, is always tragic, Briand explained. Each life is equally important and we should be reminded that even during a global pandemic we should not forget about the tragic loss of lives from other causes.
According to Briand, the over-exaggeration of the COVID-19 death number may be due to the constant emphasis on COVID-19-related deaths and the habitual overlooking of deaths by other natural causes in society.
During an interview with The News-Letter after the event, Poorna Dharmasena, a master's candidate in Applied Economics, expressed his opinion about Briand's concluding remarks.
"At the end of the day, it's still a deadly virus. And over-exaggeration or not, to a certain degree, is irrelevant," Dharmasena said.
When asked whether the public should be informed about this exaggeration in death numbers, Dharmasena stated that people have a right to know the truth. However, COVID-19 should still continuously be treated as a deadly disease to safeguard the vulnerable population.
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Facebook and Twitter will certainly block this article within hours of its publication. Just like Johns Hopkins deleted it from its site. The question is ... why?
* * *
UPDATE: JHU tweeted that they deleted the article because it "was being used to support false and dangerous inaccuracies about the impact of the pandemic."
Importantly, they didn't say anything in the article was incorrect. So we're just memory-holing studies that don't align with the narrative? Got it.
Landmark legal ruling finds that Covid tests are not fit for purpose. So what do the MSM do? They ignore it
Earlier this month, Portuguese judges upheld a decision from a lower court that found the forced quarantine of four holidaymakers to be unlawful. The case centred on the reliability (or lack thereof) of Covid-19 PCR tests.
The verdict, delivered on November 11, followed an appeal against a writ of habeas corpus filed by four Germans against the Azores Regional Health Authority. This body had been appealing a ruling from a lower court which had found in favour of the tourists, who claimed that they were illegally confined to a hotel without their consent. The tourists were ordered to stay in the hotel over the summer after one of them tested positive for coronavirus in a PCR test - the other three were labelled close contacts and therefore made to quarantine as well.
Unreliable, with a strong chance of false positives
The deliberation of the Lisbon Appeal Court is comprehensive and fascinating. It ruled that the Azores Regional Health Authority had violated both Portuguese and international law by confining the Germans to the hotel. The judges also said that only a doctor can “diagnose” someone with a disease, and were critical of the fact that they were apparently never assessed by one.
They were also scathing about the reliability of the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, the most commonly used check for Covid.
The conclusion of their 34-page ruling included the following: “In view of current scientific evidence, this test shows itself to be unable to determine beyond reasonable doubt that such positivity corresponds, in fact, to the infection of a person by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
In the eyes of this court, then, a positive test does not correspond to a Covid case. The two most important reasons for this, said the judges, are that, “the test’s reliability depends on the number of cycles used’’ and that “the test’s reliability depends on the viral load present.’’ In other words, there are simply too many unknowns surrounding PCR testing.
Tested positive? There could be as little as a 3% chance it’s correct
This is not the first challenge to the credibility of PCR tests. Many people will be aware that their results have a lot to do with the number of amplifications that are performed, or the ‘cycle threshold.’ This number in most American and European labs is 35–40 cycles, but experts have claimed that even 35 cycles is far too many, and that a more reasonable protocol would call for 25–30 cycles. (Each cycle exponentially increases the amount of viral DNA in the sample).
Earlier this year, data from three US states – New York, Nevada and Massachusetts – showed that when the amount of the virus found in a person was taken into account, up to 90 percent of people who tested positive could actually have been negative, as they may have been carrying only tiny amounts of the virus.
The Portuguese judges cited a study conducted by “some of the leading European and world specialists,” which was published by Oxford Academic at the end of September. It showed that if someone tested positive for Covid at a cycle threshold of 35 or higher, the chances of that person actually being infected is less than three percent, and that “the probability of… receiving a false positive is 97% or higher.”
While the judges in this case admitted that the cycle threshold used in Portuguese labs was unknown, they took this as further proof that the detention of the tourists was unlawful. The implication was that the results could not be trusted. Because of this uncertainty, they stated that there was "no way this court would ever be able to determine" whether the tourist who tested positive was indeed a carrier of the virus, or whether the others had been exposed to it.
Sshhh – don’t tell anyone
It is a sad indictment of our mainstream media that such a landmark ruling, of such obvious and pressing international importance, has been roundly ignored. If one were making (flimsy) excuses for them, one could say that the case escaped the notice of most science editors because it has been published in Portuguese. But there is a full English translation of the appeal, and alternative media managed to pick it up.
And it isn’t as if Portugal is some remote, mysterious nation where news is unreliable or whose judges are suspect – this is a western EU country with a large population and a similar legal system to many other parts of Europe. And it is not the only country whose institutions are clashing with received wisdom on Covid. Finland’s national health authority has disputed the WHO’s recommendation to test as many people as possible for coronavirus, saying it would be a waste of taxpayer’s money, while poorer South East Asian countries are holding off on ordering vaccines, citing an improper use of finite resources.
Testing, especially PCR testing, is the basis for the entire house of cards of Covid restrictions that are wreaking havoc worldwide. From testing comes case numbers. From case numbers come the ‘R number,’ the rate at which a carrier infects others. From the ‘dreaded’ R number comes the lockdowns and the restrictions, such as England’s new and baffling tiered restrictions that come into force next week.
The daily barrage of statistics is familiar to us all by this point, but as time goes on the evidence that something may be deeply amiss with the whole foundation of our reaction to this pandemic – the testing regime – continues to mount.
We saw this article on GreenMedInfo and thought it made some interesting points and provided links to study/research that is in opposition to what is being promoted in the mainstream media that we thought was worthy of sharing for an interesting topic of discussion. It reads as follows:
A study of 6,000 Danes was set to reveal whether wearing a face mask actually reduces the risk of COVID-19. The only problem is leading medical journals are refusing to publish the data, and the study's lead author hinted it's because they're not "brave enough" to do it.
Does a mask work? It's a question recently posed by the Danish newspaper Berlingske,[i] and one that would seem to demand an answer from scientists and public health officials alike. Yet, despite mask mandates existing in 34 U.S. states and the District of Columbia,[ii] there's shockingly little hard data about whether or not they slow the spread of infectious disease.
Researchers from Denmark wanted to change that, conducting what may be the only randomized trial[iii] to determine if masks actually protect against COVID-19,[iv] but multiple medical journals have refused to publish the findings.
Thomas Benfield, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen and one of the study's lead authors,[v] was asked when it would be published. Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson published Benfield's emailed response on Twitter, which is simply: "As soon as a journal is brave enough …"[vi]
What Does the Danish Mask Study Reveal?
Speaking to Nature in October 2020, Benfield said his team wasn't yet ready to share the study's results.[vii] In truth, three medical journals -- The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association -- have refused to publish the study, leading to speculation that it reveals a message that goes against the status quo.
Berlingske, which is the oldest daily newspaper in Denmark, suggests this is so, stating (loosely translated), "The researchers behind a large and unique Danish study on the effect of wearing a mask even have great difficulty in getting their research results published. One of the participating professors in the study admits that the still secret research result can be perceived as 'controversial.'"[viii],[ix]
The study included 6,000 participants who were randomly assigned to wear a face mask or not for a 30-day period. Participants were confirmed to not have COVID-19 or symptoms of it at the start of the study, and they were required to spend more than three hours per day outside of the home with exposure to other people during the study period.[x]
Described as an "outstanding sample," the Berlingske article, which was written by Lars Henrik Aagaard, praised the study, noting, "The study and its size are unique in the world, and the purpose was once and for all to try to clarify the extent to which the use of masks in public space provides protection against corona infection."[xi]
While the results were originally expected to be published in August 2020, Benfield later said that his comment was taken "a bit out of context" and, "The article is being reviewed by a respected journal. We have decided not to publish data until the article has been accepted."[xii]
Study Co-Author Hints at Controversial Results
Aagaard interviewed another of the study's researchers, Christian Torp-Pedersen, a chief physician at North Zealand Hospital's research department, who similarly said, "We cannot start discussing what they (the medical journals) are dissatisfied with because, in that case, we must also explain what the study showed, and we do not want to discuss that until it is published."[xiii]
He then went on to say that he "might also have dared to go as far as Benfield," had he been asked why the results haven't been published, referring to his "brave enough" comment. Aagaard asks, "Does this mean that your research results may be perceived as controversial in the eyes of some?" to which Torp-Pedersen replies, "That's how I want to interpret it, too."
Aagaard then states, "Can one interpret a controversial research result in the sense that no significant effect of mask use is demonstrated in your study?" Torp-Pedersen says, "I think that's a very relevant question you are asking."[xiv]
Dr. Henning Bundgaard with Denmark's Rigshospitalet is another of the study's authors. In speaking with Bloomberg in July 2020 -- when he still expected the study's results to become public the next month -- he said, "All these countries recommending face masks haven't made their decisions based on new studies."[xv]
Denmark was one of the latest countries to institute a mask mandate, which took effect October 29, 2020, for all public indoor spaces.[xvi] In July, however, Bundgaard told Bloomberg he worried mask mandates may offer a "false sense of security" and make people "sloppy" when following other guidelines like handwashing, self-isolating if you're sick and social distancing. Also revealing is Bloomberg's last paragraph:
"Bundgaard's study on masks is due to be published next month. In the meantime, he says he hopes they don't become mandatory in Denmark."[xvii]
Masks have become a contentious topic in the U.S., dividing neighbors, colleagues and families over whether or not they slow the spread of infectious disease. The controversy continues to grow, particularly since public health officials have been giving conflicting information from the start,[xviii] and solid data, such as what may be revealed via the Danish study, is sorely lacking.
https://www.worldhealth.net/news/why-wont-anyone-publish-danish-mask-study/
Then there was this...
THE U.S.-CHINA EDUCATION REVIEW A & B, ostensibly a pair of monthly journals of education research, had dug up a conference presentation of mine about extracurricular science learning. They wanted me to send them a manuscript about that research, which they claimed they would publish a few weeks later if it met their editorial standards and passed a “rigorous” independent peer review involving at least two reviewers. Instead, I concocted seven pages of flapdoodle, including references — loosely following the plot of the TV series “Breaking Bad” — about the educational value of high school students driving into the desert and making drugs.
The paper was ridiculous. I claimed that New Mexico is part of the Galapagos Islands, that craniotomy is a legitimate means of assessing student learning, and that all my figures were made in Microsoft Paint. At one point, I lamented that our research team was unable to measure study participants’ “cloacal temperatures.” Any legitimate peer reviewer who bothered to read just the abstract would’ve tossed the paper in the garbage (or maybe called the police). That is, if they even got past the title page, which listed my coauthors as “Breaking Bad” lead characters Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.
True to their word, a few weeks after my submission, an editor let me know my article made it through peer review and was published. (It’s still online here despite my not having paid the $520 publishing fee.) I was floored.
Turns out the publisher is out of CHINA
Does it help to make sense of this?
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