by Iain Davis
Throughout the pseudopandemic so called lockdown sceptics, who were simply people who questioned the information they were given, consistently highlighted Sweden as a comparison to harsher lockdown states. While Sweden didn't adopt the full blown economic shutdown favoured by other European states, it did employ some similar measures: a kind of Lockdown-Lite.
In one regard however, Sweden differed little from its more lockdown zealous European neighbours. Sweden placed its most vulnerable citizens, in poorly staffed, ill equipped, overcrowded care homes. The staffing crisis [46] in the Swedish care system was compounded when carers were told to self isolate [47], even without a positive test result, for a range of mild symptoms that could have been attributable to anything.
The pseudopandemic MSM used this, along with any other reason they could find, to allege Sweden's less draconian lockdown was the cause of the disaster [48] in their care homes. This was disinformation. It was a continuation of the long-standing problem of high seasonal flu mortality in Swedish care homes [49].
While they never missed an opportunity to attack Swedish public health policy, seemingly for no other reason than Swedish resistance to full lockdown measures, they did not report that Swedish care home deaths were in line with the European lockdown average. Across Europe 50% of all recorded COVID-19 deaths [50] were in care settings. Notably, Belarus has relatively few care homes.
Sweden did adopt some minor Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI's) but was far less oppressive than places like the UK, France and the US. Rather like Belarusians, the Swedes were trusted to take sensible precaution. Much of the Swedish COVID 19 mortality was a result of their calamitous care home policies. This was little different to the policies in harsher lockdown states.
In the end there was only a marginal difference between the outcomes in Sweden and other nations. However, despite its care home disaster, Sweden fared better than France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, The US and the UK. This was in keeping with prevailing epidemiological science: lockdowns do not limit the spread of viral respiratory diseases.
However, as we shall explore shortly, harsher lockdowns do cause additional excess mortality. One of the countries with the harshest lockdowns in the world was Belgium. The health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke stated that they had used lockdown measures as a psychological shock tactic [51] and claimed there was no other reason behind their decision to close small businesses.
The DPM in Belgium is currently 2,148. This is more than 7 times higher than lockdown free Belarus, nearly twice that of Sweden and more than 700 times worse than China.
Approximately 700 Belgian doctors, nearly 2,400 healthcare professionals and 18,000 concerned Belgian citizens signed an open letter to the Belgian authorities [52] demanding that they base their policies on "science, expertise, quality, impartiality, independence and transparency." Like the Great Barrington Declaration, this was either vehemently attacked or completely ignored by the Belgian MSM.
Pseudopandemic lockdown theory was centred upon the cardinal principle that so called asymptomatic carriers pose an infection risk. This is also the claimed justification driving the creation of the global biosecurity State. The theory ignores the fact that an asymptomatic person does not have COVID 19 (or any other disease). They could be presymptomatic (asymptomatic with a high viral load) but this is extremely unlikely.
Acceptance of this theory designates all of us as bio-hazards. As you can't know for certain that someone isn't "positive," everyone is a threat to everyone else. Therefore we must all be subject to constant State surveillance for our own community safety.
For the public to buy into the biosecurity state they must concede a key principle: no one can possibly be healthy.
People must believe, for the first time in human history, that although they have no symptoms, feel fine and would otherwise consider themselves well, they are ill. They are a health threat to their family, friends and anyone else unfortunate enough to encounter them in their imperceptibly diseased state.
In order to convince people of this lunacy, lockdown populations were bombarded with MSM stories [53] promoting the notion that healthy people are actually asymptomatic carriers. The BBC even used an image of someone coughing as an example of someone with no symptoms. Others such as CNN dubbed perfectly healthy people [54] "silent spreaders."
Once again, there was no scientific basis for this notion of asymptomatic spread. The WHO were aware of this. In April 2020 in situation report 73 [55] they wrote:
"Asymptomatic transmission refers to transmission of the virus from a person, who does not develop symptoms.. To date, there has been no documented asymptomatic transmission."
A study conducted by Chinese researchers from the Wuhan University of Science and Technology [56] carried out screening on nearly 10 million Chinese citizens in Wuhan. This was an enormous study of people living in the epicentre of the COVID 19 outbreak.
Of the of the 9,865,404 participants without any previous history of COVID-19, a mere 300 were identified as being positive and asymptomatic. That means they had some of the viral RNA but no disease. They did not have COVID 19.
1,174 Close contacts of the asymptomatic positive cases were tracked and traced. Every one of those 1,174 people were tested for the presence of SARS-CoV-2.
None, not one, tested positive. Of the 300 identified "asymptomatic carriers," from a cohort of nearly 10 million people, there was not one single case of asymptomatic transmission. Science rarely encounters absolutes, yet on this occasion the scientists concluded:
"There was no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic positive persons to traced close contacts. There were no asymptomatic positive cases in 96.4% of the residential communities."
There were 34,424 study participants who had previously been diagnosed with COVID-19. Of these 107 (0.310%) subsequently tested positive again, but all of them were asymptomatic. All of the asymptomatic cases, with an age range between 10 and 89, had low viral loads. There was no reason or evidence to suggest they would infect anyone or redevelop symptoms of COVID 19.
Children and younger adults are not at risk from COVID 19 [57]. The Wuhan research team found no evidence that asymptomatic children posed any infection risk to either other children or adults. Similarly a French study found that asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 positive children presented no transmission risk [58].
The researchers from the Pasteur Institute looked at a cohort of SARS-CoV-2 infections surrounding six primary schools in the north Paris suburb of Crépis-en-Valois. 510 pupils and 42 teachers participated in the study.
Their infection rates were measured using serological (antibody) tests. The children with infections tended to come from households with higher SARS-CoV-2 rates. However there was no evidence that the children infected either other pupils or their teachers, suggesting they brought the infection into the schools from their homes.
Viral loads were found to be similar in both children and adults but the children were far less likely to develop symptoms, with more than 40% of them being asymptomatic and the rest having only negligible to mild symptoms. The French researchers concluded:
"In young children, SARS-CoV-2 infection was largely a- or pauci-symptomatic and there was no evidence of onward transmission from children in the school setting."
Again, the total lack of any evidence of asymptomatic transmission among children was notable. Not a single example of was identified.
During the first wave of the pseudopandemic in England and Wales, statistics from the Office of National Statistics [59] showed that the brief spike in all-cause mortality occurred almost exclusively in April. This was an unusual time of year for a respiratory illness to cause significant mortality. Age specific mortality, for those under 65, was 5 in 100,000. The risk to those of working age was barely discernible. For young people under 18 it was statistically zero.
A study conducted in the Republic of Ireland, published in May 2020, found no evidence of secondary transmission of COVID 1
9 from children attending school in Ireland [60]. In the early stages of the COVID 19 outbreak precautionary school closures were perhaps understandable. If COVID 19 acted like influenza there would have been a risk to the young.
Once the data was clear, the justification for school closures rapidly evaporated. Children faced no mortality risk, no notable risk of illness and there was no evidence they presented any transmission risk. There were no appreciable reasons for any school to remain closed.
A meta-analysis of studies looking at SARS-CoV-2 transmission in and between households, conducted by the Department of Biostatistics at Florida State University [61], also found extremely limited evidence of asymptomatic transmission among all age ranges. They considered 54 transmission studies collectively analysing 77,758 "cases."
From these they calculated the secondary attack rate (SAR). This is the likelihood of infection occurring within specific group under a defined set of circumstances. In this case households living in overcrowded conditions. The Florida researchers found the following:
"Estimated mean household secondary attack rate from symptomatic index cases (18.0%...) was significantly higher than from asymptomatic or presymptomatic index cases (0.7%...).... These findings are consistent with other household studies reporting asymptomatic index cases as having limited role in household transmission...The lack of substantial transmission from observed asymptomatic index cases is notable."
A 0.7% chance of asymptomatic transmission was negligible. This figure was for both asymptomatic (low viral load) and presymptomatic (higher viral load) infections combined. The scientists concluded:
"The findings of this study suggest that given that individuals with suspected or confirmed infections are being referred to isolate at home, households will continue to be a significant venue for transmission of SARS-CoV-2."
Incarcerating people in their own homes for prolonged periods was a counterproductive, dangerous policy. This was clearly understood prior to any lockdown responses to the pseudopandemic.
An analysis of 73 studies, collectively evaluating 5340 test subjects, ascertained that viable viral shedding (transmission of the virus in high enough load to infect someone else) was short lived among people with symptoms. The researchers stated [62]:
"Although SARS-CoV-2 RNA shedding in respiratory and stool samples can be prolonged, duration of viable virus is relatively short-lived. SARS-CoV-2 titres in the upper respiratory tract peak in the first week of illness."
There was no evidence during the pseudopandemic that testing asymptomatic people for COVID 19 served any practical public health purpose. There was never any reason to think people without symptoms were an infection risk to others. SAGE understood this and advised the State franchise accordingly [63]:
"Prioritising rapid testing of symptomatic people is likely to have a greater impact on identifying positive cases and reducing transmission than frequent testing of asymptomatic people in an outbreak area."
However the false narrative, alleging widespread asymptomatic transmission, was crucial for public acceptance of the new biosecurity state. The promoters of the pseudopandemic were extremely sensitive to anyone who cast any doubt upon it. During a June 2020 press briefing, Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead for the COVID-19 pandemic, made it abundantly clear that asymptomatic transmission was very rare [64]:
“We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They’re following asymptomatic cases, they’re following contacts, and they’re not finding secondary transmission … it’s very rare, and much of that is not published in the literature,”
Just one day later, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s emergencies program, back-pedalled swiftly claiming that Van Kerkhove’s statement was “misinterpreted.” Perhaps this illustrated the difference between the informed and the deceived influencer.
For her part, Dr. Van Kerkhove was clear about what she meant. She responded to the comments [65] of Dr Ryan by conceding that the "models" show asymptomatic spread but that real world data did not.
The pseudopandemic was based upon computer models, not empirical science. Real science observes, measures, analyses and interprets reality, computer models are best guesses. Their error margin is very high and they cannot be considered scientific proof of anything.
Predictions can only be proven in hindsight. For Neil Ferguson and his ICL team's epidemiological models, this has yet to happen.
To put the asymptomatic transmission fable into perspective we need look no further the UK State's own Chief Medical Advisor. Chris Witty "advised" the British people to pretend they had COVID 19.
In January 2021 UK State franchise desperation to convince people that asymptomatic transmission was real reached absurd heights. They launched a campaign instructing people to behave "as if" they had COVID 19. It was almost beyond comprehension that millions in the UK still could not see what was in front of their eyes. The Murdoch's Sky News network reported [66]:
"A major new public awareness campaign has been launched, urging people to behave like they are infected with coronavirus.....The campaign - made up of TV and radio adverts as well as a social media blitz - tells people to stay at home and 'act like you've got it'......Around one in three people infected with the virus do not have any symptoms and could therefore be passing it on without realising."
There was no evidence that anyone who was asymptomatic was passing it on without realising. This was nothing but propaganda.
In launching their COVID 19 amateur dramatics campaign, the UK State laid bare the reality: the pseudopandemic was a confidence trick. It was neither led by science nor any concern for the welfare of the people. It was a rather transparent public relations gambit to convince the population to accept a new normal form of governance.
It exploited concerns about a nasty respiratory infection to create a completely unwarranted atmosphere of terror. In reality there was no clear empirical evidence that asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 was even measurable, let alone significant. This fact obliterated the pseudopandemic delusion but the propaganda and disinformation convinced the people to believe in it. The ambitions of the core conspirators to consolidate global power, via the emerging biosecurity state, continued as planned.
Lockdowns did not provide any public health benefit and were based upon a determined effort to ignore and obfuscate real science. Unfortunately, that is the best we can say about these destructive policies. ICL's recommended suppression models, and the accompanying legislation, also provided the UK State franchise, like many others, with the opportunity not only to exercise ever more tyrannical population control and behaviour modification, but also to destroy society, the economy and maximise death and human suffering.
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