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Nov. 24, 2020 - Jim Fetzer
19:21
The Cult(ure) of Scientific Misdirection (What you Need to Know about CV in 20 minutes)
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So yes, I am using pretty inflammatory language, using the word cult, but it does seem to describe what we're dealing with.
The leaders are never wrong, evidence doesn't matter, people outside the cult are subhuman and selfish, to be shamed and ridiculed.
They have slogans, listen to the science!
Maybe that slogan is meant to be funny, because these are the least scientific people I have ever encountered in my life, They live in a hermetically sealed bubble, impervious to facts.
Massachusetts, my home state, recently, I don't live there anymore, for obvious reasons, recently saw a rise in so-called cases.
And so I saw somebody on Twitter lamenting that he and his fellow Massachusetts residents had dropped the ball.
All right, first of all, let's talk about cases versus deaths for a minute.
A case means you had a positive test.
Most people won't even notice they have this thing, okay?
Those are cases.
The line is cases.
The little blue bars are deaths.
Now, you may say, oh, Woods, that's not fair, because you know deaths lag by two weeks.
You've got to wait two weeks.
OK, that's why we shifted the deaths back two weeks, so that it would line up.
So we already factored that into the graph.
So when your smart aleck friend says, well, wait two weeks, we did.
We factored that into this graph.
And as you can see, there's no connection whatsoever.
So do not panic about so-called cases.
I don't know how it's possible, after month after month after month of this, that people still don't know that.
But secondly, notice that this person on Twitter cannot admit that the voodoo doesn't work.
It's always that the peasants didn't comply enough.
If you stupid people would just obey us already, this thing would go away.
Now, I understand why progressives go for that kind of thinking, because they have a superstitious belief in the powers of the state.
So if the state says it can wipe out a virus, who's to say it can't?
Secondly, it involves so-called experts dictating to the stupid rubes, and that's their preferred model of governance.
Thirdly, it allows them to ridicule the working class people they despise.
Why, if only these backward hicks would follow the science, we'd be out of this thing already.
But let's face facts.
Lockdowns only delay the inevitable, and they leave wreckage in their wake.
On Thursday of this week, Italy, which had a brutal and savage lockdown earlier this year, reported 428 deaths, which is the equivalent of 2,354 deaths in the United States.
That's where so-called science got them.
Now, because I am going to rush through a lot of material here, I'm going to refer you, if you want more, to my e-book called, Your Facebook Friends Are Wrong About the Lockdown.
Just text the word LOCKDOWN to the number 33444 and you'll get it.
Or you can go to wrongaboutlockdown.com.
Isn't that awesome?
The domain names I managed to buy.
Let's just take a few examples.
Peru, Belgium, the UK, they had hard lockdowns and high death rates.
Belgium and the UK are locking back down, as is much of Europe.
Now when the crazies are faced with this data, they try to claim that such and such country didn't lock down early enough.
It can't be that lockdowns don't work.
Remember, it's always that the stupid people didn't listen to the science, even though there is precisely zero science behind lockdown.
Nobody's recommending lockdowns in any of the literature up to now.
There's no guidebook on lockdowns.
Well, the reason this lockdown didn't work is you didn't follow the rules.
There is no rulebook for lockdowns.
Lockdowns weren't even a thing until 2020.
And you certainly can't say Spain didn't lock down early and hard, or Italy for that matter, much as they try to.
And now the same European countries whose insufferable intellectuals have been lecturing the US for its handling of the crisis are seeing spikes in deaths again.
In Italy, and the UK, and here and there and other places, at least some people are fighting back.
The last lockdown took everything they had.
One video which has gone viral shows an Italian woman crying that she has lost everything and has nothing to feed her child.
I guess she'd better listen to the science, right?
What a sick, deranged cult this is.
Now the one word that is like a crucifix before Dracula to these people is Sweden.
Peace.
Sweden never locked down, didn't close businesses, schools stayed open, there was no mask mandate.
Now, when you bring that up, you know what they're going to say.
You already know.
Oh, Sweden had a high death rate!
That's immediately their response.
Now, there are countries that locked down and ruined people's lives and had much worse death rates than Sweden, but leave that aside.
About 75% of the deaths in Sweden occurred in their atrociously run nursing homes.
Everybody gets that they're atrociously run and things need to be done about that.
But when you factor that in, you realize that it's actually not that particularly bad of a death rate.
They were told that if you don't lock down by June, you're going to have 96,000 deaths.
They had 4,000 by June.
So being off by a factor of 24 doesn't make the, listen to the science people, stop even for a second and think, maybe there's something about this virus that's a little different from what we learned in Chapter 2 of Introduction to Epidemiology.
My state of Florida did not lock down during the Sun Belt spike.
The Doomers have no explanation for how we got out of that.
This very week we recorded the lowest two-day death total since July.
That shouldn't be possible.
We have the fifth oldest population in the country.
Tourists coming in and out.
We're completely open.
We should be a basket case of non-stop death if the cartoon version were correct, but no.
Now there are lots of explanations for why this should be, but No one wants to listen to them.
They want to hear the same... For some reason, people are allergic to good news in this.
I've never seen anything like it.
And I'm going to say something else that's controversial.
There are other concerns in the world other than COVID.
How about that?
Incredible that we should have to say that!
Now I'm going to zip through just some of the problems with lockdowns.
Some of the non-COVID deaths caused by lockdowns.
Every single one of these is backed up with a link from a mainstream source that your friends can't argue with.
So you'll get more elaboration on them on a page I made tomwoods.com slash covid.
There's a link to a blog post I did called deaths by lockdown or death by lockdown.
So tomwoods.com slash covid.
So number one in the UK we have multiple sources saying they're going to be as many avoidable cancer deaths as covid deaths because of this crazy nonsense.
Then we have a UN report in April Saying that the radical disruptions of commerce could result in hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths this year, and also 42 to 66 million children could fall into extreme poverty as a direct result.
Then we have deaths of despair, drug and alcohol overdose and suicide, estimated in excess, an excess number of those of 75,000.
UNICEF warning of 1.2 million child deaths.
Due to causes related primarily to the lockdowns.
We have estimates of up to a hundred... This is Oxford University's Sunitra Gupta has been mentioning this quite a bit recently.
Up to a hundred thirty million people are at risk of starvation because of the possibility of famine caused by these lockdowns and supply chain disruptions in several dozen places around the world.
Suicidal ideation is exploding in the United States.
It used to be that between ages of 18 and 24, 25, somewhere between 6.8% and 11% of people in that group would contemplate suicide in a 12-month period.
Now it's 25.5% of them contemplating it in a one-month period.
Now remember, those lives don't count.
The cult doesn't care about those lives.
They don't count.
The CDC estimates nearly 94,000 non-COVID excess deaths this year, and this includes cardiovascular conditions, diabetes, cancer.
Many of these were caused by the cancellation of allegedly non-essential care in the midst of the panic.
We know from the Lancet that during lockdown, people with dementia or severe mental illness had a higher risk of excess death, dementia patients a 53% chance of greater death, and a 123% greater chance of death among elderly patients with severe mental illness.
Then finally, even the New York Times reports that as a direct result of the lockdowns, there will be, over the next five years, 1.4 million excess tuberculosis deaths, half a million excess HIV deaths, and 385,000 malaria deaths.
This is the greatest public health fiasco in the history of the world and the media has distorted it so badly that much of the general public is celebrating villains and hissing at heroes.
And even, perversely enough, celebrating the destruction of their own lives and their children's lives.
Now, you remember that creep, Zeke Emanuel, who told us, we cannot return to normal till there's a vaccine.
You can't have conferences, concerts, sporting events, religious services, dinner in a restaurant, things that you live for.
You can't have that.
You can stay home and stare at the wall, if you like.
You'll still be alive.
Can't have that till we have a vaccine.
And he says, yeah, it's going to be tough to go 18 months, quote, without schooling and income and contact with your friends and extended family.
Okay.
That guy's advising Joe Biden on the virus.
And what did he say?
One of the important things for all your readers to look at is Italy.
Italy did a nationwide lockdown.
We've never gotten as low as Italy is today.
We needed that kind of process nationwide.
We did not have that.
So first of all, we need, he says, a nationwide lockdown that lasts eight weeks.
Okay, how's Italy doing now, you bozo?
Right?
It's exactly what everyone tried to tell you.
The virus just comes back.
I mean, what are you talking about?
And then Dr. Fauci said the same thing, you know, we were too stupid.
You know, when we shut down, in reality, only about 50% of the nation shut down.
In Europe, 90-95% of all activities were shut down.
That's why they did well.
Okay, well...
Now you look at what's going on in Europe.
The Daily Beast just wrote, Well, what a surprise.
Who could have predicted that?
about the return of COVID in Italy is that the country has done everything experts like
Dr. Anthony Fauci have been advising. Well, what a surprise.
Who could have predicted that? Except, I guess, people outside the hermetically
sealed bubble who've been paying attention for the past seven, eight months. So lockdowns
don't even work, except to suck the joy out of life, decimate people's savings, ruin their
livelihoods, delay necessary health procedures, disrupt supply chains, thereby threatening
famine, cause two million excess deaths from TB, HIV, and malaria, and lead to depression
and despair.
This should be excruciatingly obvious by now, and yet we have a shocking number of people who think this is what needs to be done, more of what failed the last time.
Now, the other preferred form of voodoo, other than the lockdowns, is masks.
We've been told that if only Americans had worn masks for six weeks, this whole thing would have been over quickly.
The problem is...
The charts don't bear this out.
I mean, believe me, I wish masks could solve the problem.
I wish just six weeks of that and that'd be great.
But it turns out, not so.
Alright, here's the UK.
Now, the UK introduced a mask mandate.
Let's try and guess where on that chart the mask mandate went into effect.
Was it maybe up at the top?
They put it in and said, okay, now we really need the mask mandate?
It was there.
Would you have guessed there?
Could I have held a competition?
Who could predict where the mask mandate was introduced?
Spain!
Okay.
Well, I bet when they got all the way up there, they said, we sure need a mask mandate.
Where'd the mask mandate come in here?
Right there.
So, the whole thing's over, then they said, let's put masks on.
Okay, let's go on, let's go to the next one.
Italy!
Okay, now Italy, I will tell you, in April, so right as it's starting to come down, they did say you have to wear masks in shops and on public transportation.
But when did they require masks outdoors?
Let's take a look!
Right there!
And as you can see, the virus has been wiped out.
All they had to do was wear masks for six weeks.
Let's go to the next one.
France!
Take a guess!
Where do you think?
Right there!
Obviously, as you can see, the virus is gone.
Just wear masks for six weeks.
All right, let's keep going with the voodoo.
Let's see.
Belgium!
All right.
Obviously, right?
All the data points to it.
That's where the mask mandate went.
Let's keep going.
Why the heck not?
We got Germany.
Where?
Just as it's coming down.
It's already coming down.
So no doubt the masks get the credit for it coming.
It was already coming anyway.
The state does this all the time.
Things come down anyway on their own.
They take credit for it.
Let's keep going.
Austria.
Where?
Maybe up at the top?
Oh no, here!
And as you can see, the virus has been wiped out.
Let's go to the next one.
Okay, these are places that require masks in the black, and places that don't.
Now, Denmark has introduced some limited mask requirements here and there, but generally they've been discouraging masks.
And isn't that funny?
I thought by listening to the science and wearing masks, that would help slow the spread, and yet, look at the red lines.
These are places that don't require them, and oddly enough, they seem to be doing better.
Okay, let's go to another one.
Kansas City, when did they have their mask mandate?
As you can see, the virus was suppressed.
All right, let's move on.
Montana, right there.
We get masks and then we get that.
So here's Montana versus Sweden.
I'm just not being fair here.
That's just not right.
Okay.
UK versus Sweden.
Okay, UK going back up, Sweden doing fine, and this shows us where all the different things the UK tried to do while Sweden is still living normally.
Czech Republic versus Sweden.
Okay, when did the Czech Republic get its mask mandate?
Probably way up there, because they were panicked.
Nope, they got one here, they got one there, and then it goes up and up.
Okay, now this is a chart of four counties in Tennessee.
Can you guess which one of them closed bars and limited restaurants to 25%?
I mean, as you can see, one of those charts is radically different from the others.
It's the one in the lower left.
But who cares, right?
It's obviously all the same.
If anything, that one looks worse.
Who even understands?
So what should we do?
Okay, what should we do, wise guy, you may say?
We should live!
We should protect the vulnerable and let everybody else live.
And some people say, thank you...
Some people say, oh, that's impossible.
You can't do that.
That's what they say.
They're having too much fun depriving you of everything that you enjoy.
So that's impossible.
We can't follow that strategy.
Well, I have links at that tomwoods.com slash covid page that show you exactly how possible it is.
And as a matter of fact, there are a lot of scientists who favor this approach as opposed to the locking everybody in their houses approach.
Harvard Medical School's Martin Kulldorff came on my podcast, The Tom Woods Show, and said that a majority of infectious disease epidemiologists favor that strategy and not the lockdowns.
Well, how about that?
You wouldn't really get that inside the hermetically sealed bubble, would you?
And three scientists who favor this, from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford, said this.
If we continue to use unsuccessful age-wide lockdown measures to suppress the disease, unless we have an improbably safe and effective vaccine, it could take several years for the epidemic to come to an end.
It is exceedingly unlikely that the measures available to protect older people could be maintained for that long.
If focused protection is used, the pandemic would likely be over in three to six months.
On Twitter, Alex Berenson, who's been excellent on this, says, virus gonna virus.
We can live with that reality and manage the consequences, you know, like adults, mainly by making sure our hospitals are prepared, and they are.
Or we can destroy our society for a virus most people won't even know they have.
And those are our only choices.
Pennsylvania's Secretary of Health reminded us that even with a vaccine, they're not going to leave us alone.
After people get the vaccine, she said, they're still going to wear masks.
They still need to social distance and avoid large gatherings.
What is the point?
And meanwhile, the midwits are constantly saying, anytime people gather together, that it's a super-spreader event, except when it's a protest that I politically favor.
So, when Trump had a rally in Sanford, Florida, everybody was saying, oh, death everywhere!
Death!
Death!
Super-spreader!
And the deaths in Florida continued to plummet, so they ignored that, went on to the next thing.
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, that led to... Yeah.
The paper alleging that that led to a big problem was refuted even by Slate.
You've gone to a low level when even Slate says you're full of it.
So...
All I can say is doomers must have no idea the extent to which normal life has resumed in many places.
I witness in Florida 20 things a day which, if the cartoonish view of the virus were correct, should result in mass death.
And none of them do.
Life goes on.
What is the point of indefinitely depriving ourselves of what makes life worth living so we can live in an anti-social dystopia?
Why are we staying alive so we can sit home and stare at the wall?
And then meanwhile, on top of the zillion deprivations our kids are suffering, there are the more subtle ones.
They're growing up to think it's normal to view other people with suspicion and avoid gestures of affection.
Babies and infants are experiencing a world where they can't see adult faces or a human smile.
And even the old people we're trying to protect are dying from social isolation.
All these things, this is my last statement, all these things that we've been told to give up, Which is affection and friendship from less than six feet away.
And indeed, large gatherings and family celebrations and companionships.
All these things are not, as Lord Sumption says, optional extras.
These things are life itself.
Life comes with risks.
Some of them moderate, some of them severe, some of them limited.
But sooner or later, it's going to be exceedingly obvious.
Hiding in your house doesn't solve it.
And masks don't solve it.
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