—TAKEAWAY LESSONS FROM PANDEMIC 2020-21: A THREAD—

Below, a few basic lessons I have drawn, as a political philosopher and informed citizen who has made it my business to closely follow political, social, economic, clinical, & epidemiological aspects of the pandemic:

1/ Most mainstream journalists cannot be relied upon to critically uncover, & impartially convey, the facts surrounding a complex & unfolding crisis. If you watch RTE, BBC, or CNN, you are fed naively one-sided stories laced with fear-mongering, misleading use of statistics, etc.

2/ If you wish to inform yourself about a public crisis like this pandemic, you must find commentators who have limited access to mainstream media, good credentials, & arguments that consider a wide range of available evidence. You need to be pro-active about diversifying sources

3/ Reliance by govts upon advisory committees with a clearly one-sided take on the pandemic (eg suppression at all cost) has led to catastrophic outcomes. Govts must diversify their scientific sources & encourage ROBUST scientific debate among their advisors.

4/ Hyper-centralised management of public health is ineffective. Decision-making power must be decentralised so that it can adapt quickly to local conditions. Care homes were badly hurt by top-down mandates that were sluggishly responsive to evolving conditions on the ground.

5/ The trust-based model of public health was ditched in 2020. Govts have turned to a “command & coerce” approach, unleashing widespread distrust & resentment toward public authorities. More coercive health policies have not been shown to be more effective than less coercive ones

6/ Locking down healthy populations has had catastrophic repercussions on health & well-being with very small returns if any as a method of disease control. We must NEVER repeat this reckless experiment ever again.

https://t.co/bzsdKI3kae

7/ Future public health crises must be handled with efficient, targeted policies driven by detailed risk assessment. We knew from March 2020 which populations were most & least at risk, but most govts foolishly chose to treat EVERY social interaction as a high risk scenario.

8/ Public fear has been fed daily by media & politicians focusing on remote possibilities rather than probable outcomes. Public officials & journalists need to inform the public with facts & evidence, not feed their fears with IDLE SPECULATION about potential disasters.

9/ Many Western nations are now prepared to jettison basic civil liberties like freedom of movement & patient consent in the pursuit of an unrealistic “zero Covid” utopia. Widespread civil disobedience & protests may be the only effective antidote to these totalitarian tendencies

10/ This pandemic has offered us a poignant illustration of the dangers of highly centralised States. In a highly decentralised State local & municipal authorities could push back against civil rights violations & destructive stay-at-home orders imposed by national govts.

More from Category c19

$Pace \U0001f642$

Pace 🙂
@theotherphilipp

The genesis of a pandemic.

The #Corona crisis began with a panopticon of absurd events, improbable coincidences and outright lies.

Time for a review of the impossibilities.

A thread 🧵

1/ At the end of December 2019, Wenliang, an eye doctor from Wuhan, noticed an allegedly unusual incidence of pneumonia. It remains a mystery what is unusual about 44 patients in a city with over 8 million citizens during winter.

2/ On Jan. 5, WHO informs for the first time about a pneumonia of unknown cause, which it can clarify by 7 January. The virus is believed to be a close relative of SARS. A fish market allegedly is the origin. The #Zoonosis legend, unproven until today, is born.

3/ On Jan. 10, the first gene sequence of the virus today called #SARS-CoV2 appears at https://t.co/tqxKgyykBr, and on Jan. 12, 4 more sequences are published by @edwardcholmes in the GISAID (Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data)

4/ As early as January 13, just a single day later, WHO accepts Mr. #Drosten|s PCR testing protocol as gold

$Abir Ballan \U0001f60a$

Abir Ballan 😊
@abirballan

All you need to know about COVID19
FACTS NOT FEAR

Covid 19 is a disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. SARS-CoV-2 is one of 7 coronaviruses known to man. 1/n

The pandemic is real. Excess deaths were observed in many countries. Not all countries were affected in the same way due to pre-existing immunity, the health status of the population and demographics (the proportion of elderly in the population) 2/n
https://t.co/65elPq3gp5

COVID 19 presents a high risk for the very few and negligible risk for the many.

The infection fatality rate in different age groups:
<19 y, IFR= 0.003%
20-49 y: IFR= 0.02%
50-69 y: 0.5%
>70y, IFR=

Not everybody is susceptible to the virus. If reinfected, pre-existing immunity from related viruses gives protection from developing the disease or from developing serious symptoms.
4/n

“The evidence that a subset of people has a cross-reactive T cell repertoire through exposure to related coronaviruses is

$Robin Monotti MA FRSA \u2b50$

Robin Monotti MA FRSA ...
@robinmonotti

They are now saying my tweets are misleading. It's another lie. They are the ones who are misleading, and I will now prove it in this thread. They are lying about the safety of the vaccines:

"Why was vaccination with the COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca suspended?" Paul-Erlich Federal Institute for Vaccines & Biomedicines,

"A specific form of severe cerebral venous thrombosis associated with platelet deficiency (thrombocytopenia) and bleeding has been identified in seven cases (as of 15 March 2021) in temporal association with vaccination with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca."

"1. It is a very serious disease that is also difficult to treat. Of the seven affected individuals, three individuals had died."

"2. The affected individuals had ages ranging from about 20 to 50 years."

Alex Berenson
@AlexBerenson

1/ An excellent new paper from Denmark that tracks every vaccination given to nursing home residents there shows an 40% RISE in infections immediately after the first @pfizer dose and no efficacy at any point. Protection in this population after “full” vaccination is 64%...

2/ The researchers also tracked health-care workers, the other group in Denmark to receive the vaccine first. They actually had an even LARGER rise in infections immediately following dose 1, but overall higher protection at “full” vaccination (a week after dose 2) - 90%...

3/ This paper is the best yet (because it’s the least political). It is also in line with the Israeli and English data show once you wade through their spin. The takeaways are: The vaccine is much less effective in the people who need it most and DON’T DELAY THE SECOND SHOT...

4/ By the way, i#depending on how long the vaccine provides protection, its OVERALL effectiveness will be below whatever the peak figure is, maybe well below - you need a lot of good weeks to make up for that bolus at the beginning - but I don’t even want to go there.

5/ This paper also shows why the raw Israeli numbers are trash - if infections are declining overall (as they were in Israel and Denmark in February) looking at infections in the vaccinated population without adjusting for that trend markedly overestimates the vaccine effect.

$Milhouse Van Houten \U0001f600$

Milhouse Van Houten 😀...
@Milhouse_Van_Ho

Super thread on the gospel of Covidicus, who was sent down from covid heaven, Covidia, to make us more virtuous people.

Updated regularly.

"If a man is wearing a mask in the woods and there's no one around to see it, is he still virtuous?"

- Covidicus 4:35

"Tell a child to wear a mask and you deny him fresh air for a day.

Have a teacher force him to wear a mask and you deny him fresh air all day every day."

- Covidicus 6:57

"The path to righteousness is paved with double masks."

- Covidicus 3:14

"Two masks always make a right."

- Covidicus 7:12

Meet Yang Ruifu, CCP's biological weapons expert https://t.co/JjB9TLEO95 via @Gnews202064
Interesting expose of China's top bioweapons expert who oversaw fake pangolin research
Paper 1: https://t.co/TrXESKLYmJ
Paper 2:https://t.co/9LSJTNCn3l
Pangolinhttps://t.co/2FUAzWyOcv pic.twitter.com/I2QMXgnkBJ
— Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193 (@BillyBostickson) October 11, 2020

2. A jacobin capuchin dangling a flagellin pangolin on a javelin while playing a mandolin and strangling a mannequin on a paladin's palanquin, said Saladin
More to come tomorrow!

3. Yigang Tong
https://t.co/CYtqYorhzH
Archived: https://t.co/ncz5ruwE2W

4. YT Interview
Some bats & pangolins carry viruses related with SARS-CoV-2, found in SE Asia and in Yunnan, & the pangolins carrying SARS-CoV-2 related viruses were smuggled from SE Asia, so there is a possibility that SARS-CoV-2 were coming from