“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit. –– Warren Buffett
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” –– Top Google engineers
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. –– James Hansen (The Godfather of AGW alarmism / former NASA climate chief)
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Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Contributor for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and resides in Bengaluru, India. He received his M.Sc in Environmental Science from the University of East Anglia (UEA), England. His first hand experience of the controversy within the climate fraternity came when he was a graduate student at UEA, which also houses the Climatic Research Unit – the heart of the Climategate scandal in 2009. (Climategate: Emails leaked from personal accounts of alarmist climate scientists revealed their attempts to deliberately exaggerate the warming rate in the 20th century).
His subsequent journey in understanding the reality of the climatic system made him espouse the position of climate realism, a position that views climate in terms of the real-world climate measurements (that shows no signs of dangerous increase) and not through the lenses of faulty forecasts that predict a climate apocalypse. He advocates for the use of fossil fuels in developing countries, the very same energy sources that lifted the Western society out of poverty in the last two centuries.
In this exclusive op-ed written for Climatism blog, Vijay illustrates the brazen hypocrisy of the climate-obsessed Western mainstream media, vilifying conservative leaders such as Australia’s PM Scott Morrison for supporting fossil fuels and coal, while remaining silent on – ‘green’ energy darling of the Left – Angela Merkel’s ramping up of coal-fired power stations in order to negate the disastrous economic and environmental fallout from her countries disastrous 500 billion Euro (failed) Energiewende experiment.
From a perspective of humanity, Vijay highlights the deadly importance of utilising cheap, reliable fossil fuels in order to lift billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty by allowing an estimated 1.3 billion of them to experience actual electricity. According to the Washington Post, “around the world, 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity. More than 600 million are in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than 300 million are in India alone.”
As well, Vijay recognises the undeniable need for advanced societies to maintain their use of cheap, reliable and clean fossil fuel technologies, such as HELE, in order to maintain economic wealth, keep the lights on, as well to maintain environmental health. After all, the greatest threat to the environment is not affluence, it is poverty. The border between Haiti and Dominican Republic, a fine example. See : UN Carbon Regime Would Devastate Humanity And The Environment
As a stage when the Paris agreement conveners are looking up to Germany to represent itself as a leader in emission reduction, the opening up of coal plants comes across as a slap in the face of the agreement between Berlin and Paris.
When a nation like Germany, touted as the global leader in ‘clean’ energy, can open up new coal plants, why can’t economies like Australia do the same?
Why are the left and the greenies branding Australia as a “fossil badboy”? Are only leftists and developed European nations entitled to reliable and affordable power from fossil fuels?
Germany Chancellor and Fossil Hypocrisy
Germany is a leading economy, not just in Europe, but in the world. But that status is under threat as the country’s political leadership is struggling with its obsession for “clean” energy and the increasing pressure to provide energy access at an affordable rate.
Though being touted as the global leader in renewable energy, the country failed miserably in fulfilling its emission reduction targets during recent years and made headlines across the globe for its failure. Despite setting aside $580 billion in expenses to transform its energy systems away from fossil, the country could not achieve its own emission reduction targets.
This year, the country’s premier Merkel went a step further to upgrade her dismal record in keeping promises and embraced fossil fuels.
Surprisingly, the chancellor did not go through the same treatment that some of her counterparts in other parts of the world are going through for embracing fossil fuels!
Mocking Australia’s Coal Embrace is Heights of Hypocrisy
In contrast to the treatment Merkel enjoys in the global mainstream media, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been the subject of ridicule for his open embrace of fossil fuels, especially coal.
The global mainstream media’s treatment of the Australian PM is nothing but blatant hypocrisy! While leaders like Angela Merkel are allowed to use fossils, those like Morrison are ridiculed for doing the same.
In fact, the hypocrisy becomes more intense when considers the total CO2 emissions from different countries so far! Australia is ranked 16th but Germany is ranked 6th. China, who are currently being praised for their announcement of carbon neutrality target, stands number one in the ranking for total CO2 emissions.
Make no mistake, CO2 emission is not a bad thing! But the fact that the leftist’s mainstream media chose to blacklist few political leaders while allow others to run scot-free exposes their hypocrisy.
Media Morphing the Importance of Australian Coal as Evil
Moreover, the leftists seldom care about the lives of millions in Asia who directly depend on Australian coal. Though countries like India and China have abundant coal reserves, they still depend on Australian coal to meet domestic energy needs.
In addition to fueling their energy plants, Australian coal—which is a cleaner form of black anthracite coal—is the preferred fuel in their steel plants. Australian coal production increase is partly induced by the soaring export demands from developing nations like India and China, and even developed economies like Japan.
In 2019, Australia’s total coal export was valued at $64 billion, with Japan alone buying $17 billion worth of coal. China bought coal worth $13.7 billion and India $10.5 billion. Ironically, the host of Paris agreement, France, took in $0.6 billion worth of coal from Australia in 2019.
In fact, the energy sectors of these coal import countries are highly sensitive to disruptions in supply of Australian coal. This was evident recently when a ban on import of Australian coal—due to the on-going political tensions between China and Australia—plunged thousands of homes into darkness in China.
Institute of Public Affairs in India estimates that Australian coal could help 82 million Indians access electricity. In a nation where hundreds of millions are yet to experience uninterrupted power supply, Australian coal supply could be vital.
And it is not just the foreign economies that benefit from Australian coal. Coal is mined in every state in Australia and it is one of the country’s economic lifeline. In 2019, It was responsible for 56% of the nation’s electricity requirements.
Estimates indicate that the Australian economy has been strongly supported by 9,100 million tonnes of black coal and about 2,300 million tonnes of brown coal since the 1700s. Mining and resources have been a key contributor to Australia’s economic growth, according to 2019 National Accounts data by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Instead of broadcasting actual benefit of superior grade Australian coal in Asia Pacific, the liberal mainstream media has branded Australia’s coal sector as evil and cast Prime Minister Morrison as the villain in their anti-fossil propaganda drama. To rub salt on the wound, they’ve cast climate hypocrites in Europe as climate saviors.
If the CO2 emissions are the real concern—to the climate alarmists—then they must actually promote Australian coal and clean coal technology like the HELE supercritical coal technology that emit 30 percent less CO2.
Rather, the failure of support for high grade Australian coal and the HELE technology has revealed the alarmist’s and left’s unwillingness to the rising cost of energy prices from renewables or the huge financial burden non-fossil technologies are having on the economies and the industries which act as their backbone.
Author: Vijay Jayaraj is an environmental researcher and commentator on climate and energy issues globally. He graduated with a Master’s in Environmental Science from the University of East Anglia, which was home to the infamous Climategate scandal.
Sweden’s Success is Kryptonite for Lockdown and Mask Advocates Their long term strategy is working | The Mass Illusion
“The impact of Covid on the people below 50 is smaller than that of flu and the impact on really young people is zero for all practical purposes. Focus on urinating in the correct room which is a task adequate for your intelligence.”
– Luboš Motl (Former Harvard Professor)
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely
exercised for the good of its victims
may be the most oppressive.”
– C. S. Lewis
***
AS the indolent, Western mainstream media continues to regurgitate its Big government slogan – “we’re all in this together” – in a pathetic and patronising attempt to soften the blow against forced unemployment, stay-at-home Lockdown and mandatory mask-wearing, Sweden has come out the other end with its economy intact and its citizens as free as they were before, global Fauciism.
THE most important takeout of the Swedish ‘experiment’ is one of freedom. The Swedish government put trust, not in Big-government policies, but rather in her people, her voters. The Swedish government refused to muzzle and subjugate its citizenry. Actual, democracy-in-action.
SUCH freedoms allowed to its people highlight a critical moment of distinction for the neo-Marxist, political fashionistas who cite Sweden as a “great example of socialism”. No. Sweden employs ‘socialism’ through various economic levers and social principles. It does-not-forgo the most basic and inalienable right of its citizenry – freedom to be.
THE stark difference between actual democratic freedom and AOC-fashionable-socialism-faux-freedom, cast in brilliant light by the very stance that Sweden has taken in response to the COVID-19 ‘pandemic’.
BELOW are two fantastic reads on Sweden’s commendable and measured response to CV19. The first from a front-line Swedish Doctor. The second, from Swedish blogger, Jordan Schachtel.
This is a reblog of the post at Sebastian Rushworth M.D. Health and medical information grounded in science. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Ok, I want to preface this article by stating that it is entirely anecdotal and based on my experience working as a doctor in the emergency room of one of the big hospitals in Stockholm, Sweden, and of living as a citizen in Sweden. As many people know, Sweden is perhaps the country that has taken the most relaxed attitude of any towards the covid pandemic. Unlike other countries, Sweden never went in to complete lockdown. Non-essential businesses have remained open, people have continued to go to cafés and restaurants, children have remained in school, and very few people have bothered with face masks in public.
Covid hit Stockholm like a storm in mid-March. One day I was seeing people with appendicitis and kidney stones, the usual things you see in the emergency room. The next day all those patients were gone and the only thing coming in to the hospital was covid.Practically everyone who was tested had covid, regardless of what the presenting symptom was. People came in with a nose bleed and they had covid. They came in with stomach pain and they had covid.
Then, after a few months, all the covid patients disappeared. It is now four months since the start of the pandemic, and I haven’t seen a single covid patient in over a month. When I do test someone because they have a cough or a fever, the test invariably comes back negative. At the peak three months back, a hundred people were dying a day of covid in Sweden, a country with a population of ten million. We are now down to around five peopledying per day in the whole country, and that number continues to drop. Since people generally die around three weeks after infection, that means virtually no-one is getting infected any more. If we assume around 0.5 percent of those infected die (which I think is very generous, more on that later), then that means that three weeks back 1,000 people were getting infected per day in the whole country, which works out to a daily risk per person of getting infected of 1 in 10,000, which is miniscule. And remember, the risk of dying is at the very most 1 in 200 if you actually do get infected. And that was three weeks ago.
Basically, covid is in all practical senses over and done with in Sweden. After four months.
In total covid has killed under 6,000 people in a country of ten million. A country with an annual death rate of around 100,000 people. Considering that 70% of those who have died of covid are over 80 years old, quite a few of those 6,000 would have died this year anyway.That makes covid a mere blip in terms of its effect on mortality.
That is why it is nonsensical to compare covid to other major pandemics, like the 1918 pandemic that killed tens of millions of people. Covid will never even come close to those numbers. And yet many countries have shut down their entire economies, stopped children going to school, and made large portions of their population unemployed in order to deal with this disease.
The media have been proclaiming that only a small percentage of the population have antibodies, and therefore it is impossible that herd immunity has developed. Well, if herd immunity hasn’t developed, where are all the sick people? Why has the rate of infection dropped so precipitously? Considering that most people in Sweden are leading their lives normally now, not socially distancing, not wearing masks, there should still be high rates of infection.
The reason we test for antibodies is because it is easy and cheap. Antibodies are in fact not the body’s main defence against virus infections. T-cells are. But T-cells are harder to measure than antibodies, so we don’t really do it clinically. It is quite possible to have T-cells that are specific for covid and thereby make you immune to the disease, without having any antibodies. Personally, I think this is what has happened. Everybody who works in the emergency room where I work has had the antibody test. Very few actually have antibodies. This is in spite of being exposed to huge numbers of infected people, including at the beginning of the pandemic, before we realized how widespread covid was, when no-one was wearing protective equipment.
I am not denying that covid is awful for the people who do get really sick or for the families of the people who die, just as it is awful for the families of people who die of cancer, or influenza, or an opioid overdose.
But the size of the response in most of the world (not including Sweden) has been totally disproportionate to the size of the threat.
Sweden ripped the metaphorical band-aid off quickly and got the epidemic over and done with in a short amount of time, while the rest of the world has chosen to try to peel the band-aid off slowly. At present that means Sweden has one of the highest total death rates in the world. But covid is over in Sweden. People have gone back to their normal lives and barely anyone is getting infected any more. I am willing to bet that the countries that have shut down completely will see rates spike when they open up. If that is the case, then there won’t have been any point in shutting down in the first place, because all those countries are going to end up with the same number of dead at the end of the day anyway. Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available. That could take years. No country is willing to wait that long.
Covid has at present killed less than 6000 in Sweden. It is very unlikely that the number of dead will go above 7,000. An average influenza year in Sweden, 700 people die of influenza. Does that mean covid is ten times worse than influenza? No, because influenza has been around for centuries while covid is completely new. In an average influenza year most people already have some level of immunity because they’ve been infected with a similar strain previously, or because they’re vaccinated. So it is quite possible, in fact likely, that the case fatality rate for covid is the same as for influenza, or only slightly higher, and the entire difference we have seen is due to the complete lack of any immunity in the population at the start of this pandemic.
This conclusion makes sense of the Swedish fatality numbers – if we’ve reached a point where there is hardly any active infection going on any more in Sweden in spite of the fact that there is barely any social distancing happening then that means at least 50% of the population has been infected already and have developed immunity, which is five million people. This number is perfectly reasonable if we assume a reproductive number for the virus of two: If each person infects two new, with a five day period between being infected and infecting others, and you start out with just one infected person in the country, then you will reach a point where several million are infected in just four months.
If only 6000 are dead out of five million infected, that works out to a case fatality rate of 0.12 percent, roughly the same as regular old influenza, which no-one is the least bit frightened of, and for which we don’t shut down our societies.
Here in the United States, we have become inundated with tales of COVID-19 doom and gloom. In America, the mainstream narrative is rife with hopelessness. We are told that there is simply no way to stop this virus without repetitive lockdowns, healthy quarantine, even of asymptomatic individuals, and universal mask mandates. And even with all of those extreme policy measures put in place, the politicians and public health officials tell us that we will have to wait for a vaccine for the country to even think about our “new normal” following the COVID-19 pandemic.
There’s one country that they don’t seem to want to talk about – Sweden. And for good reason. Sweden debunks the hysteria. Sweden shows how unnecessary all of the interventions to “fight” the virus are. Sweden shows us that a rational, evidence-based approach to the pandemic is now thriving.
In Sweden, there’s no masks, no lockdown, no vaccine, and most importantly, no problem.
Life has largely returned to normal in Sweden, and it all happened without the economy-destroying non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) demanded by the “public health expert” class, who guaranteed that chaos would come to every country that disobeyed their commands to hit the self-destruct button for their nations.
The Swedish government has provided its advanced metrics on the COVID-19 pandemic to the public, and the data includes the ever-important statistics on actual day of death, and other useful information. I ran the numbers month by month so you can get a very clear picture of Sweden’s downward trend.
In August, Sweden has registered just one death (!) with/from the coronavirus. Yes, you read that correctly. One death so far.
For the month of July, Sweden reported 226 deaths. They’ve accounted for 805 June deaths, 1646 in May, and 2572 in April. The deaths attributed to COVID-19 went from about a 50% reduction to falling off of a cliff.
The story is the same in the hospitals. COVID-19 is hardly registering as a blip on the radar. Sweden has reported just 4 new COVID-19 patients in their ICUs in August. The month of July saw only 52 COVID-19 patients in ICUs.
It doesn’t take a math whiz to come to the conclusion that the epidemic appears to have been wrapped up in Sweden for months. It’s unclear whether this is a result of having achieved the herd immunity threshold, or if the seasonality of the virus is providing indefinite relief. But it’s become absolutely clear that Sweden’s long term pandemic strategy is working.
Sweden did not do everything perfectly. Stockholm, like much of the West, failed to protect its nursing home population. The majority of the COVID-19 deaths in Sweden have come from the senior care population, with the average age of death (82) being the same as the average lifespan in the country. But remember, people in nursing homes are not mobile. They live in their own ecosystems and are not particularly impacted by COVID-19 policies. It was Sweden’s general population that was supposed to be plagued by their open society model to respond to the virus. We were told that the hospitals would be overrun, and that bodies of all ages would be dropping in the streets. This dystopian pandemia projection never came to fruition. Even during the worst months of the pandemic, Sweden’s general population never pressed their healthcare system. The same is true in the United States, but for whatever reason, many U.S. officials and “public health experts” have pushed the idea that everyone is equally impacted, which could not be further from the truth.
For this pandemic, the global public health expert class threw the pandemic playbook out the window, disregarding hundreds of years of proven science on herd immunity, in order to attempt to assert human control over a submicroscopic infectious particle. It hasn’t worked, to say the least. There is no evidence anywhere in the world that lockdowns or masks have *stopped* the spread of the virus. Sweden was one of the few places where cooler heads prevailed, and the scientists realized that attempts to stop the virus would be worse than the disease itself, in the form of economic and social ruin.
This is Sweden in the hight of the pandemic. They don’t have wall to wall media scaring the life out of citizens to justify their path! Relaxed & life as normal! pic.twitter.com/KhuRj0O2N6
Sweden’s experts settled on a strategy that was realistic, sustainable and science-based. The intention was never to “fight” the virus but to protect the old and vulnerable.
They have NO second wave and herd immunity. This is how Sweden is tracking for deaths per year 🧐 pic.twitter.com/vqnYJPC1GW
*Immediate disclaimer: saying something is a panic is not denying, minimising, or ignoring it. (Jamie)
MARCH 21, 2020
AS Australia enforces a further increase to its “social distancing” rules from one metre yesterday to 4 square metres today, and as the Australian Football League (AFL) kicks off its second game of the ‘go-ahead’ season, to an empty stadium, the stark reality of our new draconian way of Corona-life sets in.
MEANWHILE, as the Australian Prime Minister holds daily pressers, pulling every fiscal lever available to stimulate the economy in an effort to avoid the R word, it seems impossible that there will not be devastating and permanent damage done to the economy and society as tens of thousands of businesses become insolvent, raising welfare queues exponentially.
A grim reality that seems inevitable as large employers, including the hospitality sector and the 45 billion-dollar tourism industry literally grind to a halt.
ON Thursday, Australia’s national carrier Qantas laid off two-thirds of its entire workforce, totalling some 20,000 employees, as the airline grounded its entire international fleet and 60 per cent of its domestic fleet as a result of the unprecedented lack of demand for travel, tied with government-imposed travel restrictions.
UNEMPLOYMENT levels peaked at 25 per cent during the 1930’s Great Depression. It took 3 years from 1929 to reach that level.
IN the era of COVID19, the hospitality and tourism sectors, alone, makeup approximately 15 per cent (1,500,000 positions) of Australia’s total workforce. A great percentage of those jobs have quite possibly been eviscerated not within years, but within days.
IT seems untenable that even the most potent suite of economic stimulus measures can possibly prevent the current and future carnage of a solvency crisis unleashed by the enforced six-month, four square metre “social distancing” policy.
THE ultimate lever of a COVID vaccine would matter little, following months of trials and regulatory approvals.
WHILE we are bombarded hourly by the predictable mainstream media on how many new cases of COVID there are, how many deaths, and who is to blame, we are rarely exposed to the math or reality of the long-term economic damage that draconian policies will do to society, business and indeed the health system.
WHY is that? Does it detract from the COVID19 narrative of fear and panic, as real as it may be? Or, is it too risky or distressing to explore and be honest to the public about the consequences of such heavily weighted, health-based policy prescriptions? Are politicians afraid that doing too little will invite mainstream media contempt, or god forbid, social-media scorn?
A few brave scientists are publicly warning of the dangers of such draconian measures in relation to how little we know about COVID19, based on a total lack of reliable data.
THEY argue:
“How have we found out that the virus is dangerous?”
“In some people who die from viral respiratory pathogens, more than one virus is found upon autopsy and bacteria are often superimposed. A positive test for coronavirus does not mean necessarily that this virus is always primarily responsible for a patient’s demise.” – John P.A. IoannidisProfessor of medicine, epidemiology (Stanford University)
JOHN P.A. IOANNIDIS is professor of medicine, of epidemiology and population health, of biomedical data science, and of statistics at Stanford University and co-director of Stanford’s Meta-Research Innovation Center.
HE warns in this impassioned and must read op-ed that current COVID data indicates that we are severely overreacting to Coronavirus.
A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
ByJOHN P.A. IOANNIDIS / MARCH 17, 2020
A nurse holds swabs and a test tube to test people for Covid-19 at a drive-through station set up in the parking lot of the Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.PAUL SANCYA/AP
The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.
At a time when everyone needs better information, from disease modelers and governments to people quarantined or just social distancing, we lack reliable evidence on how many people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or who continue to become infected. Better information is needed to guide decisions and actions of monumental significance and to monitor their impact.
Draconian countermeasures have been adopted in many countries. If the pandemic dissipates — either on its own or because of these measures — short-term extreme social distancing and lockdowns may be bearable. How long, though, should measures like these be continued if the pandemic churns across the globe unabated? How can policymakers tell if they are doing more good than harm?
Vaccines or affordable treatments take many months (or even years) to develop and test properly. Given such timelines, the consequences of long-term lockdowns are entirely unknown.
The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population.
This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless. Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future.
The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.
Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%). It is also possible that some of the passengers who were infected might die later, and that tourists may have different frequencies of chronic diseases — a risk factor for worse outcomes with SARS-CoV-2 infection — than the general population. Adding these extra sources of uncertainty, reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population vary from 0.05% to 1%.
That huge range markedly affects how severe the pandemic is and what should be done. A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.
Could the Covid-19 case fatality rate be that low? No, some say, pointing to the high rate in elderly people. However, even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes. In fact, such “mild” coronaviruses infect tens of millions of people every year, and account for 3% to 11% of those hospitalized in the U.S. with lower respiratory infections each winter.
These “mild” coronaviruses may be implicated in several thousands of deaths every year worldwide, though the vast majority of them are not documented with precise testing. Instead, they are lost as noise among 60 million deaths from various causes every year.
Although successful surveillance systems have long existed for influenza, the disease is confirmed by a laboratory in a tiny minority of cases. In the U.S., for example, so far this season 1,073,976 specimens have been tested and 222,552 (20.7%) have tested positive for influenza. In the same period, the estimated number of influenza-like illnesses is between 36,000,000 and 51,000,000, with an estimated 22,000 to 55,000 flu deaths.
Note the uncertainty about influenza-like illness deaths: a 2.5-fold range, corresponding to tens of thousands of deaths. Every year, some of these deaths are due to influenza and some to other viruses, like common-cold coronaviruses.
In an autopsy series that tested for respiratory viruses in specimens from 57 elderly persons who died during the 2016 to 2017 influenza season, influenza viruses were detected in 18% of the specimens, while any kind of respiratory virus was found in 47%. In some people who die from viral respiratory pathogens, more than one virus is found upon autopsy and bacteria are often superimposed. A positive test for coronavirus does not mean necessarily that this virus is always primarily responsible for a patient’s demise.
WODARG’s thesis contends that SARS-CoV-2 is only one of many similar viruses which usually go undetected as part of an ordinary seasonal period of respiratory infections (casually called flu or cold), and that the worldwide activities to stop the pandemic are only a “hype” caused basically by selective perception of researchers.
DÉJÀ VU?
A segment of the video, which I transcribed, explains how Corona-panic has escalated by an unholy interaction between government and virologists.
THE formula is eerily similar to how ClimateChange™️ panic has successfully metastasised into its own global pandemic, care of the exact same vectors — politicians, science ‘experts’ and the mainstream media — working in unison.
DR Wodarg:
And all this was so significant that it lead to international consequences, politicians had to deal with it, had to take a stand.
Then the virologists came into play again.
The governments asked their own virologists and they confirmed that this virus is a thing to worry about and proposed to develop tests to help measure the virus – like China.
Something was woven around this. A network of information and opinions has been developed in certain expert groups. And politicians turned to these expert groups, who initially started all this. And they really absorbed this network, moved within it.
This lead to politicians who now are just resting on these arguments, while using these arguments to evaluate who has to be helped, to determine safety measures or what has to be permitted.
All these decisions have just been derived from these arguments. Which means that it’s now going to be very hard for critics to say “Stop. There is nothing going on.”
And this reminds me of this fairytale about the king without clothes on. And just a small child was able to say “Hey, he is naked!”. All the others in the courtyard – surrounding the government and asking the government advice, because they can’t know themselves – they all played along and joined the hype.
And like this, politicians are being courted by many scientists. Scientists who want to be important in politics because they need money for their institutions….
And what is missing at the moment is a rational way of looking at things. We should ask questions like
“How have you found out that the virus is dangerous?”
“How was it before?”
“Didn’t we have the same thing last year?”
“Is it even something new?”
That’s missing. And the king is naked.
*
CONCLUSION
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know, it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain
IS COVID19 merely another Coronavirus, one of many that mutates every year in order that we get sick, like every other virus including the flu does?
COVID19, the latest Corona variant is unfortunately with us now and here to stay. The genie is out of the bottle. We will all come into contact with it eventually and become immune by vaccine or by exposure.
VIRUSES are clever and will always be with us. They adapt and so should we, only smartly, not foolishly.
•••
UPDATE
FOR the many, including the mainstream media, who continue to cite Italy as the bell-weather of the Coronavirus “Crisis”, please note the following scientific study regarding flu-death incidents studied in a 3-season 4-season period from 2013/14 to 2016/17.
HOPEFULLY this death rate does not rise to the yearly average, based on the above ScienceDirect study, of 23,000 deaths. 17,000 Italian flu deaths per year.
***
UPDATE
CORRECTION:
STUDY is over a four-year period. Not over a 3-year period as I noted. My mistake. Apologies (Jamie)
FROM the study…
We estimated excess deaths of 7,027, 20,259, 15,801 and 24,981 attributable to influenza epidemics in the 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17, respectively, using the Goldstein index. The average annual mortality excess rate per 100,000 ranged from 11.6 to 41.2 with most of the influenza-associated deaths per year registered among the elderly. However children less than 5 years old also reported a relevant influenza attributable excess death rate in the 2014/15 and 2016/17 seasons (1.05/100,000 and 1.54/100,000 respectively). Investigating the impact of influenza on excess mortality in all ages in Italy during recent seasons (2013/14–2016/17 seasons) – ScienceDirect
***
UPDATE – Mainstream media not helping
The Media is just loving this #coronavirus pandemic. Watch them play crisis dress up with one reporter in a makeshift Halloween hazmat costume while their entire film crew does their Hollywood scene filming in normal attire. This propaganda is disgusting. pic.twitter.com/kAkdcIR00q
INTERESTING analysis and explanation by Prof Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to #Italy’s minister of health, as to the above average Case Fatality Rate (CFR) in Italy:
But Prof Ricciardi added that Italy’s death rate may also appear high because of how doctors record fatalities.
“The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.
“On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two or three,” he says.
Massive Centrelink (Welfare) queues stretching for blocks, with no “4 square metre” “social distancing” zone.
Chaos.
A NATION IN SHUTDOWN
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UPDATE – Mon 23/3/20 (11:46 AU)
Hundreds THOUSANDS queue outside Centrelink offices as coronavirus unemployment surges
The MyGov website has crashed as Australians try to access government services like Centrelink online. Photos showed queues outside some Centrelink offices stretching around the block this morning.
“The problem of SARS-CoV-2 is probably overestimated, as 2.6 million people die of respiratory infections each year compared with less than 4000 deaths for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of writing.”
A just published peer-reviewed paper in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents confirms the concerns I've expressed earlier today: The risk from Coranavirus (a.k.a. SARS-CoV-2) is likely overestimated:https://t.co/XgxifBewsT Hence, the economic shutdown is UNWARRANTED pic.twitter.com/zrBYlA2cOs
Prof. Dr. med. Sucharit Bhakdi. Infectious disease specialist. One of the most highly cited medical research scientists in Germany.
THE good Dr is not the best orator, but what he has to say about existing Corona viruses within the population, that lead to the normal death rate of respiratory victims, is highly informative.
“The life expectancy of millions is being shortened. The horrifying impact on world economy threatens the existence of countless people.”
This year’s coronavirus outbreak is clearly unprecedented in amount of attention received. Media have capitalized on curiosity, uncertainty and horror. A Google search with “coronavirus” yielded 3,550,000,000 results on March 3 and 9,440,000,000 results on March 14. Conversely, “influenza” attracted 30- to 60-fold less attention although this season it has caused so far about 100-fold more deaths globally than coronavirus.
Different coronaviruses actually infect millions of people every year, and they are common especially in the elderly and in hospitalized patients with respiratory illness in the winter.
*This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1111/eci.13222
IN striking resemblance to ClimateChange™️, it seems that experts who question the official narratives of the Mainstream media are not to be heard, by the herd …
“Below is our list of twelve medical experts whose opinions on the Coronavirus outbreak contradict the official narratives of the MSM, and the memes so prevalent on social media.” – Off-Guardian
”I want you to remember these people died WITH the #coronavirus and not FROM the coronavirus”
– (President Italian Civil Protection Service)
THIS would make the news in a functioning mainstream media, whose job is to report the ‘news’ in an unbiased way. Not, at all, to minimise or to ‘deny’ the seriousness of COVID19, rather to maintain cool heads when so much rides on clear and precise information that is essential to quell hysteria which inevitably leads policy makers to prescribe possibly even more deadly cures than the disease itself.
“The president of the Italian Civil Protection Service actually went out of his way to remind people of the nature of Italy’s fatality figures in a morning briefing on 20/03“
REPORT shows up to 88% of Italy’s alleged Covid19 deaths could be misattributed.
That messy back-and-forth has been on vivid display this week with the publication of a startling new report on the virus from a team at Imperial College in London. The report, which warned that an uncontrolled spread of the disease could cause as many as 510,000 deaths in Britain, triggered a sudden shift in the government’s comparatively relaxed response to the virus.
American officials said the report, which projected up to 2.2 million deaths in the United States from such a spread, also influenced the White House to strengthen its measures to isolate members of the public.
A remarkable turn from @neil_fergusonwho led the @imperialcollegeauthors who warned of 500,000 UK deaths – and who has now himself tested positive for COVID19.
HOW listening to one ‘expert’ from @imperialcollege coupled with mainstream media fear-mongering and fact-free hysteria, has paralysed the entire global economy, destroying billions of people’s lives and their livelihoods!
Big thread. The man who panicked the world is now running from his doomsday projections. Shut up and quarantine crowd MIA. No need to apologize to those of us who told you not to blindly trust 1 projection. Scrutinize a little more next time before you surrender your freedoms. https://t.co/EopJL2BhNB
IT turns out that Imperial College advises the U.K bureaucracy on ClimateChange™️ models and ‘science’ as well as advice for UK’s ClimateChange™️ and energy strategies and policies.
NO guessing which way their ‘advice’ leans!
@JordanSchachtel@thegwpfcom Exactly the same as for "Climate Change". UK govt and bureaucracy fund, consult & depend heavily on Imperial College/Grantham Institute for "science" and advice for UK's climate change & energy strategies & policies. https://t.co/eaz3W4rHjs
In one of the biggest shocks to the retail sector in a week where tens of thousands of jobs have been lost, the nation’s biggest department store has decided to close its stores.
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UPDATE – Fri 27/3/20 (22:35 AU)
Boris Johnson tests positive for coronavirus
ANOTHER timely indicator which reinforces the fact that we are all going to ‘get’ COVID19 at some point, either from direct exposure or by vaccine.
FROM my earlier “CONCLUSION”:
COVID19, the latest Corona variant is unfortunately with us now and here to stay. The genie is out of the bottle. We will all come into contact with it eventually and become immune by vaccine or by exposure.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
– H.L. Mencken
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.” – Bertrand Russell
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DAY by day, all around the globe, Global Warming Climate Change is being exposed as simply a moral issue for the wealthy urban elite.
BLUE collar workers and the silent majority are not buying into the relentless fear-mongering and warming hysteria driven by climate theory-obsessed politicians, propped up by a compliant mainstream media.
THE incessant propaganda and orchestrated alarmism has lead to the mad rush into costly UNreliables – wind and solar ‘energy’ – that are sending energy prices through the roof and jobs and industry to China or other countries who have not been driven to ‘green’ energy poverty by climate theory-obsessed politicians pushing draconian “Save The Planet” policies.
CAMPAIGNING on climate guarantees political death. Its latest victim, Bill Shorten, The Australian Labor Party and the Greens, who, last night, lost the “unlosable” election to incumbent conservative PM Scott Morrison.
CLIMATE CHANGE, CENTRAL TO THE ELECTION
THE mainstream media flagged “Climate change to be decisive issue in Australian election.” :
GLOBAL REJECTION OF DRACONIAN CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY & ‘GREEN’ ENERGY POVERTY
ALL around the globe, voters are increasingly showing their displeasure with costly unreliable-energy policies imposed by politicians in an inane effort to fight the purported “climate catastrophe”.
IN France in late 2018, protesters donning yellow vests took to the streets—and have stayed there ever since—in large part to protest scheduled increases in fuel taxes, electricity prices, and stricter vehicle emissions controls, which French President Emmanuel Macron claimed were necessary to meet the country’s greenhouse gas reduction commitments under the Paris climate agreement. After the first four weeks of protest, Macron’s government cancelled his climate action plan.
Ford Nation – Scrap The Carbon Tax Scam – Election Victory
IN 2018, in part as a backlash against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate policies, global warming skeptic Doug Ford was elected as premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province. Ford announced he would end energy taxes imposed by Ontario’s previous premier and would join Saskatchewan’s premier in a legal fight against Trudeau’s federal carbon dioxide tax.
IN Alberta, Canada, where the economy declined after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate policies took hold, voters on April 16 replaced Premier Rachel Notley and her New Democratic Party (NDP), which supports the federal climate policies, with the United Conservative Party, headed by newly elected Premier Jason Kenney, who vowed to scrap the province’s carbon tax and every other policy in NDP’s climate action plan. Among the other climate policies Kenny said he will reverse in an effort to revive the economy are NDP’s plans to accelerate the closure of the province’s coal power plants, and its plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions from the region’s oil sands. In addition, Kenny says he will challenge the federal government’s climate impositions in court and streamline regulations hampering Alberta’s critical oil and gas industry, including restrictions preventing pipeline construction imposed by NDP.
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NETHERLANDS – Forum for Democracy (FvD)
The naked populist: Thierry Baudet stuns the Netherlands | eNCA – said the government should stop funding programs to meet the country’s commitments to international climate change agreements, saying such efforts are driven by “climate-change hysteria.”
In mid-March, the Forum for Democracy (FvD), a fledgling political party just three years old, tied for the largest number of seats, 12, in the divided Dutch Senate in the 2019 elections. FvD takes a decidedly skeptical stance on climate change. On the campaign trail, Thierry Baudet, FvD’s leader, said the government should stop funding programs to meet the country’s commitments to international climate change agreements, saying such efforts are driven by “climate-change hysteria.”
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FINLAND – Finns Party
FINLAND : Finns Party
On April 14 in Finland, where climate change policies became the dominant issue in the election, support for climate skepticism surged. Whereas all the other parties proposed plans to raise energy prices and limit people’s energy use, the Finns Party, which made the fight against expensive climate policies the central part of its platform, gained the second-highest number of seats in the Parliament, just one seat behind the Social Democratic Party’s 40. The second-place finish was a big win for the Finns Party and its skeptical stance: just two months before the election, polls showed its support was below 10 percent.After the Finns Party made battling alarmist climate policies its main goal, its popularity soared. The New York Times credited the Finns Party’s electoral surge, in large part, to its expressed climate skepticism.
EVEN as daily headlines in the fake news / lamestream media become ever shriller, hyping climate fears based on projections made by unverified climate models, the public, especially the voting public, is becoming increasingly weary of the Chicken Little claims of impending climate doom. Voters in developed countries are saying “enough is enough” to high energy prices which punish the most vulnerable people in society and do nothing to regulate climate change.
TAKE NOTE, politicians and business groups – climate change alarmism, political correctness, class warfare and identity politics are the politics of division and are electoral and commercial poison.
“IN a brilliant strategic move, it was decided that the environmentalist movement was a new and promising vehicle for obtaining political influence and power.”
– Jennifer Marohasy PhD
Environment Minister Melissa Price has linked this week’s devastating bushfires in Victoria to climate change, saying there is “no doubt” of its impact on Australia
As Victorians in the state’s east survey the damage done to their properties by bushfires, the Environment Minister said Australians across the nation had suffered from the nation’s hottest summer on record.
“There’s no doubt that there’s many people who have suffered over this summer. We talk about the Victorian bushfires; (in) my home state of Western Australia we’ve also got fires there,” she told Sky News this morning.
“There’s no doubt that climate change is having an impact on us. There’s no denying that.”
Coalition figures, including former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, have been reluctant in the past to link climate change to recent natural disasters such as bushfires.
MEANWHILE, residents of Tonimbuk, a small rural community heaviest hit by Victoria’s weekend bushfires, believe dangerously high fuel loads on vacant crown land contributed to the ferocity of a blaze that left Country Fire Authority firefighters unable to defend some properties…
Residents of a small rural community heaviest hit by Victoria’s weekend bushfires believe dangerously high fuel loads on vacant crown land contributed to the ferocity of a blaze that left Country Fire Authority firefighters unable to defend some properties.
The quiet hamlet of Tonimbuk, about 90km east of Melbourne, felt the brunt of the fire crisis, with seven properties destroyed and 11,000ha burnt by a lightning-strike blaze that raced out of the Bunyip State Forest.
Andrew Clarke, the owner of the Jinks Creek Winery destroyed by the Bunyip fire, believes a bureaucratic blunder cost him his life’s work.
He said a planned burn-off in 60ha between his vineyard and the state park was not done because of concerns for local birdlife.
“If they’d been doing the burning off they should have been doing, our place might still be there,’’ he told The Australian.
“They told me birds were nesting. I told them: ‘If we don’t do a burn-off now, there’ll be no birds. There’ll be no goannas, no snakes, no wallabies. They’ll all be barbecued.’’
Another Tonimbuk resident, cartoonist Mark Knight, said some residents were left to defend their homes without assistance from the CFA. “We fought this fire for three days on our own,’’ he said. “Black Saturday they were all over us. They were fantastic. We didn’t see them this year.’’
Mark Knight with his sons Jack & Elliott, in Tonimbuk, managed to save their property after a bushfire engulfed the Bunyip state forest in Victoria. Picture: Stuart McEvoy.
THE Daily Telegraph’s climate ‘rationalist’ Miranda Devine with the brutal truth as to what is really fuelling 21st Century bushfires, overrun with ‘Green’ fodder…
On Tuesday, she linked the fires to climate change, claiming there is “no doubt” of its impact on Australia.
“There’s no doubt that there’s many people who have suffered over this summer. We talk about the Victorian bushfires … There’s no doubt that climate change is having an impact on us. There’s no denying that.”
Sorry, minister, it wasn’t climate change that caused the latest bushfires which have so far destroyed nine homes in Victoria, and it wasn’t climate change that killed almost 200 people in the Black Saturday fires ten years ago.
The real culprit is green ideology which opposes the necessary hazard reduction of fuel loads in national parks and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation around their homes.
The ongoing poor management of national parks and state forests in Victoria and green obstruction of fire mitigation strategies has led to dangerously high fuel loads over the past decade.
That means that when fires do inevitably break out they are so intense that they are devilishly difficult for firefighters to contain. As a federal parliamentary inquiry heard in 2003, if you quadruple the ground fuel, you get a 13-fold increase in the heat generated by a fire.
Locals know the truth. Andrew Clarke, owner of Jinks Creek Winery, which has been destroyed by a fire which raged out of the Bunyip State Forest, “begged” for fuel reduction burns to protect his property.
“I’ve been begging them [Forest Fire Management Victoria] for 20 years to burn off the state forest at the back of our place and still to this day it hasn’t happened,” he told the ABC’s Country Hour.
Clarke said a planned burn-off was called off because of concerns about nesting birds.
So how did that work out for the birds?
Just three weeks ago, Victoria’s former chief fire officer Ewan Waller warned that state forest fuel loads were reaching deadly, Black Saturday levels. No one paid any attention.
But you can bet Premier Daniel Andrews will hide behind the climate change furphy.
Parroting green lies suits politicians because then they can avoid blame for their own culpability.
The Black Saturday Bushfire Royal Commission criticised the Victorian government for its failure to reduce fuel loads in state forests. It recommended more than doubling the amount of hazard reduction burns.
Instead, in the last three years, alone, the Andrews government has slashed the amount of public land being hazard reduced by almost two thirds.
It’s a crime.
The wonder is that the Morrison government is helping him with his alibi.
MELBOURNE, Jan 13. – Nearly 40 bushfires were reported throughout Victoria today when the temperature in Melbourne rose to 105deg [41°C].
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So hot was the sand at West St. Kilda yesterday that life-savers, in a march past, broke formation for the first time in the history of Victorian life-saving clubs and had to resume the march along the water’s edge.
The secretary of the Royal Life Saving Society of Victoria (Mr. Pier dell) described yesterday as one of the worst he had known on Victorian beaches.
AUSTRALIAN politicians push a never-ending barrage of fact-free global warming climate change alarmism, fear and propaganda on the taxpayer in order to stoke fear and justify the spending of billions upon billions of their hard-earned money on fake fixes to a fake scam.
HOW many more billions of taxpayers hard-earned money will be spent on the greatest pseudoscientific scam ever perpetrated against mankind before our politicians learn how to google “TROVE“? Basic climate history, documenting events no different to today that completely trashes their costly, fake, political, man-made climate change scam costing the country and the planet an estimated $2,000,000,000,000 US (2 Trillion) per year, every year!
ENOUGH is enough. People’s livelihoods, their communities and economies are being ‘burned’ alive by gutless and superstitious politicians on a costly and dangerous crusade of “Save The Planet” hubris driven by politics, ideology and groupthink, pseudoscientific climate change dogma.
Climate Alarmism Is Threatening To Destroy Australia | CLIMATISM
PETA CREDLIN is an Australian political commentator and former public servant who served as chief of staff to Prime Minister Tony Abbott from September 2013 to September 2015. She was previously chief of staff to Abbott as Leader of the Opposition. Since 2016, she has been the host of Credlin and co-host of Jones & Co on Sky News Live. (wiki)
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CREDLIN remains a rare voice of sense and reason within the mainstream media on the issue of costly climate change alarmism. She brings an insiders understanding into the attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality that the control of “carbon dioxide” ergo, the control of energy precipitates.
Climate alarmism is threatening to destroy Australia
04/12/2018|7min
Sky News host Peta Credlin says Environment Minister Melissa Price should have her chequebook taken away before she represents Australia at the climate change conference in Poland.
Ms Credlin says the Environment Minister is unlikely to push back against the ‘climate alarmism that’s taken our energy prices from some of the world’s cheapest’ to the most expensive.
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