A crisis as grave, prolonged and far-reaching as the current COVID pandemic could not fail to have many consequences in the medical, social and political domains, as much as in the global economy where its effects are nothing less than catastrophic. The repeated contradictions, inconsistencies and backtracking by major western governments on almost every aspect of the crisis, whether medical or social, have left the public in a state of disbelief, anger and cynicism.

A general complaint is that decisions were made abruptly, with no open consultations or coherent explanations, within closed and often anonymous circles of ‘experts’ whose criteria for selection appear arbitrary since equally or better qualified colleagues had very different opinions and proposals for the sanitary strategies to be followed. Many of those medical authorities point out that, after many years of advocating  exercise in the open air, a varied diet, a stimulating lifestyle with many social interactions as conditions for good health, the people in charge of tackling the COVID-19 virus suddenly came to enforce the exact opposite measures for adults and children: confinement in closed spaces even when in hot climates, isolation from family and friends, suppression of all forms of entertainment and outdoor sports and dietary restrictions resulting from the effective limitations on shopping options and on monetary income.

Some cynics went so far as to say that many governments appeared to have tested, with the complicity of mass media, the resilience of their citizens against chronic illness and mental depression by reducing them to the worst possible conditions under a 24-hour bombardment of anguishing news about COVID infections and deaths all over the world, in an endless enumeration of individual anonymous cases, without making the distinction between infections (often asymptomatic) and grave afflictions.

A telling demonstration of the desire of certain medical and/or political authorities to ‘keep the pot boiling’ is provided by that fact that in France a new epidemic spike was announced in certain areas because the number of detected ‘infections’ had reached 50 per 100,000 people. Yet since 1985, the epidemic threshold for viral respiratory afflictions like the flu to be declared epidemic is set at 150 to 200 cases per 100,000. What was the point of dividing this percentage in three?

In the Belgo-French e-magazine le Vif, physician Dr. Daniel Rodenstein wrote (July 29, 2020) that state-sponsored propaganda has (deliberately?) ‘confused epidemic with a mortal threat’. Yet even in Belgium which had the highest per capita number of casualties in Europe, the annual death rate is barely above the average, even though many of the deceased were victims of lack of care, medical neglect and probably the fear and despair caused by the social and economic conditions created by the lockdown. What to say of the USA which does not have half of Belgium’s fatalities per capita?

In the USA, the bitter political war between the supporters of Donald Trump and his opponents has played a very visible part in the dramatization of the pandemic turned into the battle horse of Democrats against a Republican Administration which attempted to first deny and then underrate the extent of contagions in order to shelter the economy from damage and protect its own reputation. While there was a genuine emergency back in April in the State of New York and some others, the current situation does not warrant the fear-mongering hysteria that liberal media are fostering.

In an article entitled, Is America’s second corona wave a political hoax? (July 20, 2020), analyst F. William Engdahl has pointed out the misleading nature of the rates of ‘infection’ rattled off by most newspapers and TV networks at the behest of the very politicized Centre for Disease Control which, in spite of a 90% fall in fatalities since April, continues to report a rapidly increasing number of ‘PIC cases’ (PIC stands for pneumonia, flu and COVID-19 lumped together under the Covid bracket). 

The alleged ‘cases’ are in fact mostly ‘positive’ results for unreliable tests performed on people who don’t feel ill. Such tests are then taken as a basis for expanding the net of probability to up to 15 other individuals having been in contact with the ‘Covid suspect’. Engdahl further reports that many labs in the electorally critical state of Florida reported almost 100% positive tests and when challenged revealed that in some cases they had ‘mistakenly’ multiplied the percentage tenfold. There is no escaping the fact that COVID has become a major source of funding and profits in so many sectors of the economy which have no intention of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

In an article carried by the widely circulated French magazine France-Soir (August 4, 2020), anthropologist Jean-Dominique Michel accuses pharmaceutical labs of ‘systemic corruption’ and of ‘mafia-like’ collusion with government bodies and with many physicians. He qualifies the policies adopted as ‘terribly destructive’ and refers to the study conducted by the team of Prof. Ioannidis of Stanford University in early April at the peak season of the ‘pandemic’ which showed that both contagiousness and lethality were no higher than those of some more acute seasonal influenzas and that most infected persons did not even notice it.

Like many others, Michel points out that many of the drastic measures were indeed illegal under national legislations and EU laws (for one it has been established that in France it is unlawful to fine people for not wearing a mask whereas in Spain the Constitution, particularly vigilant against state authoritarianism, prohibits ‘locking down’ law-abiding people). He also notes that a majority of deaths (two thirds in the UK) were caused by either lack of proper treatment of the pulmonary infection or by non-treatment of other grave pathologies, not to mention the many suicides caused by depression or by social and economic distress and even a 30% increase in road accidents often involving drivers wearing masks.

The great profiteers apart from the giant GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft) are of course the pharmaceutical companies which made what Michel calls ‘obscene benefits’. To quote him: ‘The (pharma) industry has required shorter time-frames and less delays to thoroughly analyse proof (of the efficacy and safety) of new drugs; it has resulted in an increase in hospitalizations and deaths. Fulfilling the needs of pharmaceutical companies has been given priority over the needs of patients. If such corruption of regulatory provisions is not stopped the situation will continue to worsen’.

He adds; “…The state of systematic corruption… is such that a pharma company can indeed, without a valid medical or pharmaceutical reason, make a Minister change the labelling of a medicine at the very moment when it can be a saviour”. He cites here the well-known case of Hydroxychloroquine on which we will come back subsequently in this article. His mention of the major social media platforms is significant because we know that Facebook in particular uncritically reflect and spread the officially endorsed versions of the COVID situation and its therapies which censor alternative perspectives and views, even when voiced by health professionals. They try to block opinions skeptical about or opposed to vaccinations and instead of providing space for free debate they are indeed enforcers of the status quo in the name of combating ‘conspiracy theories’.

While certain medical professionals like Dr. Thierry Gouvenec have written about the irrational panic and obsession created by the COVID alert, comparing it to the bizarre waves of collective madness recorded at various periods in history in many parts of the world, the very typical policy of mainstream media and social media giants has been to condemn, ridicule and shut down without discussion those who dissent from the official diagnosis by accusing them of betraying right-wing extremist ideology, mental disorders, anti-social behaviour and a shocking lack of empathy and sense of responsibility. This is typical of witch hunts and other mass repressions of those individuals who don’t conform with a uniform belief and way of life.

Among the aforesaid beneficiaries, companies doing research on vaccines are on top of the pile. As part of its ‘Operation Warp Speed” the Trump Administration has given itself discretionary power to pick and choose the businesses to be lavishly funded against the promise of producing a vaccine ASAP. Apart from signing a $2 billion contract with Pfizer in association with a German company, the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority has pumped $1.6 billion into Novavax, a corporation which has not produced a vaccine in the last thirty years.

On his side, Bill Gates has also expended very large amounts on an unsuccessful vaccine venture which has so far, according to Robert Kennedy Jr.’s foundation, Children’s Health Defense, only made a large number of monkeys sick. One of the most depressing aspects of this pharmaceutical gold rush is that it involves the torture and murder of thousands of captive simians and other animals as biologically close as possible to the human species and kept in dismal conditions in lab cages, all to produce vaccines that may be unnecessary by the time they reach the market, and that will be refused by a large proportion of the population concerned about their potentially harmful effects.

It is all a reflection of the wastefulness, cruelty and insensitivity of our allegedly advanced civilization founded on human rights and respect for life. In the article quoted above, Dr. Michel reports that the European Union has ordered from SANOFI (the very company which asked the French Minister to declare Hydroxychloroquine a ‘dangerous’ substance in 2018) a ‘very speculative’ vaccine based on ‘messenger RNA’ which modifies the genome of those to whom it is given by means of an as yet untested and potentially risky technology involving the use of GMOs. Unsurprisingly the accelerated access to market of this vaccine entails short-circuiting testing procedures and providing exceptional immunity to the manufacturers in case of side effects, he comments.

(To be concluded …)