Instead, you should read it, writes Kit Knightly here.

Excerpts:

Last week it was reported that the Australian state of Victoria may be considering “permanent” facemask mandates to achieve “zero-Covid”.

[. . .]

No, the only aspect of this development worth talking about is the “evidence” used to support the position – and trust me, the quotes are entirely justified.

The “study” which claims to demonstrate the benefits of permanent masking was published in the Medical Journal of Australia last week and titled “Consistent mask use and SARS‐CoV‐2 epidemiology: a simulation modelling study”.

[. . .]

Did they maybe average the results of multiple studies?

No, they used a phone survey.

One phone survey.

This phone survey, published last year and conducted in late 2021.

In this *ahem* “scientific study”, they had people randomly call up those who had recently been tested for “Covid”, ask them “did you wear a mask?” and then published the conclusion – “masks reduce transmission by 53%” – as if they meant something.

Interestingly, if you scroll down to the “affiliations” section you can see that one of the authors is a Pfizer grant recipient.

Rather more troublingly – and for some reason not mentioned as a conflict of interest – is that the whole study was produced by the California Board of Public Health.

California had already had a mask mandate in place for almost a year before this “study” was even started.

What we have here is not “science” it’s a computer model based on the results of a subjective phone survey conducted by a government agency with a vested interest. It is entirely meaningless, and yet is published in journals and cited by “experts”, perhaps even used as the basis of introducing new laws.

This is how “The Science^TM” works. And, although Covid has maybe opened many people’s eyes to this issue, it is far from unique to “Covid”. You are just as likely to find this kind of “research” published on any topic – especially those that serve a political purpose – and have been for years if not decades.

Stanford Professor of evidence-based medicine,  John Ioannidis wrote a paper called “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”, and that was back in 2005.

This has nothing to do with the “pandemic”, and everything to do with the difference between science and “The Science”. So let’s examine that distinction.

“Science” is an approach to the world. A rational method for gathering information, testing new ideas and forming evidence-based conclusions.

“The Science” is a self-sustaining industry of academics who need jobs and owe favours.

An ongoing quid pro quo relationship between the researchers – who want honors and knighthoods and tenure and book deals and research grants and to be the popular talking head explaining complex ideas to the multitudes on television – and the corporations, governments and “charitable foundations” who have all of those things in their gift.

This system doesn’t produce research intended to be read, it creates headlines for celebrities to tweet, links for “journalists” to embed, sources for other researchers to cite.

An illusion of solid substantiation that comes apart the moment you actually read the words, examine the methodology or analyse the data.

Self-reporting surveys, manipulated data, “modelling studies” that spit-out pre-ordained results. Affiliated-authors paid by the state or corporate interests to provide “evidence” that supports highly profitable or politically convenient assumptions.

This mask study is the perfect example of that.

Interlacing layers of nothing designed to create the impression of something.

That’s why they want you to trust it, rather than read it.

Article by Johnathan Cook.

Excerpt:

But why are these authorities so afraid?

The answer is simple. They suspect that any research will implicate them in those excess deaths. They are frightened – rightly or wrongly – that the narrative they constructed around the pandemic, and the powers they accrued to themselves, will unravel.

The reason they are in no hurry to find out why so many extra people are dying is because they fear that significant contributory factors are either the lockdown policies they imposed or the side-effects of the vaccines they championed – or both.

Again, I’m not saying that is what I think. I have no expertise to evaluate all the possible causes, including the ongoing erosion of socialised health care in much of the Western world and its transfer to yet more corporate profiteers – for which our governments are undoubtedly responsible.

But governments and medical regulators have access to the same data and graphs as Dr Manniche, showing a relentless and near-identical rise in excess deaths beginning in spring 2021 in Denmark, Norway and Finland, in the immediate wake of the mass vaccine rollout. Similar graphs are available for other Western states.

The inference that there is a connection between the vaccines and excess deaths may be wrong. But it is not a hypothesis they wish to test. The consequences are far too serious for them. They would rather enforce general ignorance, or perpetrate a deception on the public, than risk undermining their own authority – and the crucial levers they control both to sustain their privileges and to further concentrate their wealth.

There are some uncomfortable lessons here for us all.

The truth is Western governments – all of them – dare not test the evidentiary basis for their insistence on lockdowns and experimental vaccines as the only way out of the pandemic. They dare not do so in the full glare of public scrutiny for fear that the truth will not serve them, and more likely will damage them. So they cultivate public ignorance.

The truth is that the medical regulatory authorities were long ago captured by Big Pharma, and the revolving door it offers, leading to prestigious jobs and lucrative salaries in the industry. So they favour public ignorance too.

The truth is that the media will not hold the feet of governments or the medical establishment to the fire because, whatever the media claim, they are not in the business of enforcing real, systemic accountability. The billionaire-owned media corporations are embedded in the same model of corporate profit as Big Pharma. Indeed, the media’s own corporate profits depend on the advertising and sponsorship of drugs companies – fellow corporations – like Pfizer. So they benefit from public ignorance as well.

World of illusion

We live in a world not, as we are told and tell ourselves, of democratic accountability and transparency. Beyond formal, surface appearances, the system of political, economic and social control is designed to lack all but the most minimal checks and balances, institutional safeguards and oversight.

We live in a world of illusion, of elites that look out for their own, that develop ever more sophisticated technological tools to manipulate and deceive us, and that have progressively rigged the system to accrue to themselves ever more wealth and power.

We are not, as we like to imagine, informed citizens. The system cannot afford to provide us with the information we need to be informed – information that might reveal to us that we have been duped, that the rich steal from the poor to give to themselves, that our rulers have no clue how to fix the biggest problems facing us, aside from lining their pockets with more gold as the ship goes down.

As the last year has demonstrated, our elites had no more idea how to deal with the pandemic than they currently do with the climate crisis, or with the Ukraine war (without risking nuclear conflagration), or with rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence. Faced with the biggest challenges, they are like children – shouting “Follow the Science” or “Green New Deal” to distract the rest of us as they grab as many sweets as they can thrust into their pockets.

For these elites, Covid was a party – quite literally in the case of the British government – in which the biggest corporations not only profiteered but drove small businesses into the ground. Excess deaths are but a hangover, one that must be studiously ignored if the fiction of responsible, accountable, democratic government is to be maintained.

Our world has been carefully constructed to ensure we do not get to peek behind the curtain, to see the con-men at work. Unless we dispel this central illusion – that science, reason and compassion are the forces driving the West – the charlatans will take us with them over the edge of the cliff in their pursuit of suicidal “economic growth” and chimerical “progress”.

Article by Heneghan and Tom Jefferson.

Excerpt:

As it stands, there is simply no evidence-based case for face masks. It is possible masks may work in certain situations. But there is absolutely no certainty they work in all situations.

This matters. Mask mandates, no matter how localised, aren’t harmless measures. They affect social behaviour and help to reinforce a climate of fear. In this regard, they were indicative of the government’s mishandling of the pandemic, as it resorted to authoritarian behavioural interventions. Indeed, to ensure mask compliance, the government effectively prosecuted its own citizens [see link in original] for daring to breathe fresh air. In London alone, 4,000 people were issued with penalty notices of up to £200 for going maskless in 2022 alone.

Our hapless politicians followed the experts who claimed masks work with absolute certainty. And they ignored anyone who expressed doubts about the evidence. The result was a dubious policy that has caused plenty of damage.

Thankfully, it seems unlikely the public will be following Scottish healthcare workers and calling for the return of mask wearing. Although respiratory illnesses like Covid are always spreading, most people have decided against masking up again. As ever, there is profound wisdom in the crowd.