by IAN MILLER
Pandemic restrictions were an unmitigated failure, and the evidence base against the politicians and “experts” who imposed them and demanded compliance continues to grow.
And it raises some substantial questions about holding those responsible accountable for their actions. Especially as mask mandates return in certain parts of the country, with hints of more on the way.
Recently a new government report from the United Kingdom was released to little fanfare, which not-so-surprisingly mirrors the fanfare resulting from the release of new data from the CDC itself, showing how vaccine efficacy has fallen to zero.
Finally, Rochelle Walensky did acknowledge publicly that the vaccines couldn’t stop transmission. However it was already far too late to matter.
But all along the agency has strongly stated that the mRNA shots were effective at preventing hospitalizations. Or at least that the latest booster was effective, tacitly acknowledging that the original 2-dose series has lost whatever impact it once had.
What The Evidence Says About NPI’s
The UK’s Health Security Agency (HSA) recently posted a lengthy examination on the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions at preventing or slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the country.
And at the risk of revealing a spoiler alert, it’s not good news for the COVID extremists determined to bring mask mandates back.
The goal of the examination was laid out succinctly; the UK’s HSA intended to use primary studies on NPIs within the community to see how successful or unsuccessful they were at reducing COVID infections.
The purpose of this rapid mapping review was to identify and categorise primary studies that reported on the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented in community settings to reduce the transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK.
Streamlined systematic methods were used, including literature searches (using sources such as Medline, Embase, and medRxiv) and use of systematic reviews as sources to identify relevant primary studies.
Unsurprisingly, they found that the evidence base on COVID interventions was exceptionally weak.
In fact, roughly 67 percent of the identified evidence was essentially useless.. In fact two-thirds of the evidence identified was modeling.
Two-thirds of the evidence identified was based on modeling studies (100 out of 151 studies).
There was a lack of experimental studies (2 out of 151 studies) and individual-level observational studies (22 out of 151 studies). Apart from test and release strategies for which 2 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) were identified, the body of evidence available on effectiveness of NPIs in the UK provides weak evidence in terms of study design, as it is mainly based on modelling studies, ecological studies, mixed-methods studies and qualitative studies.
This is a key learning point for future pandemic preparedness: there is a need to strengthen evaluation of interventions and build this into the design and implementation of public health interventions and government policies from the start of any future pandemic or other public health emergency.
Modeling, as we know, is functionally useless, given that it’s hopelessly prone to bias, incorrect assumptions and the ideological needs of its creators.
The two paragraphs which followed are equally as important.
Low quality evidence is not something that should be relied upon for decision making purposes, yet that’s exactly what the UK, US and many other countries did. Fauci, the CDC, and others embraced modeling as fact at the beginning of the pandemic. They then repeatedly referenced shoddy, poor quality work because it confirmed their biases throughout its duration, with unsurprising results.
And this government report concurs; stating simply and devastatingly, “there is a lack of strong evidence on the effectiveness of NPIs to reduce COVID-19 transmission, and for many NPIs the scientific consensus shifted over the course of the pandemic.”
Of course the scientific consensus shifted over the course of the pandemic because, as we learned, it became politically expedient for it to shift.
As their paragraphs on the available evidence show, there was little solid, high-quality data showing that NPI’s were having a significant impact on the spread of the virus, a reality that had been predicted by decades of pandemic planning.
But the consensus shifted towards NPIs and away from something approaching Sweden’s strategy or the Great Barrington Declaration, simply because Fauci, the CDC, and other “experts” demanded it shift to suit their ideological aims.
The few high-quality studies on say, masking, that were conducted during the pandemic showed that there was no benefit from mask wearing at an individual or population level. And that is why the Cochrane review came to its now infamous conclusion.
Instead of acknowledging that they were relying on poor quality evidence, the “experts” operated with an unjustified certainty that their interventions were based on following “The Science™.” At every turn, when criticized or questioned, they would default back to an appeal to authority; that the consensus in the scientific community unequivocally believed that the evidence showed that lockdowns, mandates, travel restrictions, and other NPIs were based on the best available information.
Last lines from this essay:
What we’ve learned is that people who exhibit NO SYMPTOMS are NOT contagious!
There’s no rational reason to force them to mask up.
What we’ve learned is that the gov’ts abandoned cheap treatments that worked in favor of CONTROL and expensive “treatments” that don’t work.
What we’ve learned is that many of the most compliant, sheep-like people are now either dead or chronically ill BECAUSE they followed gov’t dictats.
My poor neighbor, who infected my and my husband with omicron, has just undergone yet another surgery since her 4th jab.
She has been very ill for a long time, even catching covid yet again since we all had it when omicron was going around.
It’s hard to be mad at her for infecting me since she’s suffered so much more since then.
It’s easier to just feel sorry for her.
We took ivermectin and were all better in 3 days.
She followed doctor’s orders and has had mini-strokes, bad headaches, temporary paralysis, fatigue, sudden loss of balance, hair loss and now a 2nd surgery to try to repair clot-blocked vessels.
She’s only 43 and losing her nouns, a sign of senility or dementia.
the total inconvenient the violations of our Constitutional Eights at the hands or Liberal Democrats Biden and his Mad Doctor Fauci Mask Mandates six foot spaces dining outside on stormy winter days more proof that Liberal Democrats violate the U.S. Constitution all the time while the M.S. Media covers up for them all the time