« Après avoir usé et abusé d’un faux libéralisme, la réorganisation sociétale semble promettre de ressusciter le modèle soviétique, au profit de privés cette fois. » Coup d’Etat planétaire
Il y a 8 ans la grande aventure de ce site démarrait. Les articles se sont multipliés depuis. Nous en sommes à 1154, 1155 avec celui-ci. Et il y en a tout plein dans le pipeline.
Je voudrais vous remercier chacun de m’avoir fait confiance et encouragée par votre présence toujours plus nombreuse. J’ai fait de mon mieux pour vous informer autant que je le pouvais aussitôt que j’ai perçu le projet pharaonique et totalitaire qui s’imposerait à nous. Au risque d’être considérée par certains de catastrophiste.
J’aimerais vous remercier pour la qualité des messages que vous postez, qui sont certaines fois repris ailleurs en même temps que les articles. Merci donc d’enrichir ce site qu’une personne que j’estime considère comme relevant du domaine public.
Comme vous avez pu le constater, nous avons pu prévoir les mutations qui ont lieu et qui vont avoir lieu. Du coup, beaucoup de très vieux articles restent valables aujourd’hui et pourraient rendre encore service. Même si les histoires de monnaie et de banques centrales semblent rébarbatives, elles sont le fondement qui a permis la réalisation du projet qui est en cours de finalisation. N’hésitez pas à vous servir sans modération.
Amis lecteurs, j’espère que certains ont pu profiter des analyses pour se préparer aux difficultés actuelles. Je ne pouvais écrire ce qu’il fallait faire, mais je pense que ceux qui ont compris les arguments présentés ont pu prendre des décisions qui les mettraient un peu à l’abri. De mon point de vue, structurer un problème représente une part de sa résolution. Il est exclu d’asséner des directives sans tomber dans l’autoritarisme que nous reprochons à certains… Les réponses doivent venir des groupes et des individus eux-mêmes. Je peux me tromper, mais c’est ma philosophie.
Je voudrais aussi avoir une pensée pour toutes les personnes qui souffrent dans leur chair, mais aussi au niveau de leur psychisme, et ou de leurs finances.
Malgré l’anticipation, le fait de se retrouver avec des rues et des commerces vidés voués à la faillite est un déchirement pour nous tous. Et ce qui vient risque d’être encore plus compliqué. Il est donc plus important que jamais de s’unir, mais aussi de tenir bon. Il y a toujours une sortie au bout de tout tunnel.
Quand j’étais très petite, on m’avait appris à me boucher le nez et à m’immerger totalement sous l’eau pour laisser passer les vagues. La sensation de sécurité était juste incroyable. Je m’en souviens encore. La vague pouvait être grosse, elle ne me faisait pas mal!
Nous avons tous développé des mécanismes pour affronter nos vagues. Ce sont autant d’ »anticorps » qui nous aident à lutter contre l’agresseur. Et même si cette vague sera plus grosse que les autres, nos anticorps s’adapteront et nous nous en sortirons. Tôt ou tard. Alors prenons courage et fortifions-nous aussi bien individuellement que collectivement.
En ce 8ème anniversaire, je voudrais vous offrir un passage d’Apocalypse:
4.Il essuiera toute larme de leurs yeux, et la mort ne sera plus, et il n’y aura plus ni deuil, ni cri, ni douleur, car les premières choses ont disparu. 5Et celui qui était assis sur le trône dit: Voici, je fais toutes choses nouvelles.
Apocalypse 21:4-5
Joyeux anniversaire donc à NOUS tous qui contribuons au succès de cette plateforme.
(Natural News) Any reasonable American knows that, without a doubt, former President Donald Trump should not yet be a former president.
We know with certainty that for a year, at least, ahead of the 2020 election, Democrats and their swarms of lawyers plotted how to steal Trump’s reelection victory and install a weak-minded puppet, Joe Biden, who they could control and who would push through their country-wrecking Marxism.
We know they went into key battleground states and ‘convinced’ their political allies to unconstitutionally change voting rules and procedures in the weeks before the Nov. 3 election, using ‘health fears’ over COVID-19 as justification (even though it was safe enough for their residents to shop the big box retailers).
The strategy was as simple as it was diabolical: Get the battleground states to adopt universal mail-in balloting and then change validation requirements so that rafts of fake ballots could flood the system for Biden, then call anyone who questioned the procedures or claimed the voting was “rigged” a ‘dangerous conspiracy theorist.’
Obviously, the steal worked; Trump is in Mar-a-Lago and Biden is in the Oval Office, the main difference being that Trump knows where he’s at.
Now, Democrats who also managed to ‘eke out’ enough victories to take control of the Senate and retain control of the House are moving quickly to ‘legalize’ the vote theft and, thus, make it impossible for Republicans and libertarians to ever unseat them.
Moreover, they are also working on legislation that essentially criminalizes any dissent voiced by GOP voters.
“The Democrats appear intent on instituting one-party rule in the United States,” Phill Kline, editor of Real Clear Politics, wrote this week.
“They’re trying to use the U.S. Capitol riots as an excuse to criminalize dissent and banish conservative voices from the public sphere, and at the same time they’re hoping to use their temporary, razor-thin majority in Congress to rewrite the rules governing our elections in a way designed to keep the Democratic Party entrenched in power for decades to come,” he added.
Legislation dubbed ‘Patriot Act 2.0’ would create a brand-new domestic terrorism agency (not that DHS and the FBI don’t already have divisions that focus on all terrorism, foreign and domestic) that Democrats and leftists would use as a force of Brown Shirts to intimidate critics and Trump supporters into silence. Essentially, First Amendment activities like posting memes, protesting and voicing opposition to Democrat politics would be redefined as “threats” to domestic security and summarily punished.
Then, of course, there is the ‘Democrat Protection Act,’ so to speak.
“Although the Constitution explicitly places state legislatures in charge of managing federal elections, HR 1 seeks to use the power of the purse to bludgeon the states into conforming to a centralized system pioneered in California and other deep-blue states. Congress can’t technically compel the states to change their voting laws, but seasoned politicians know that the states have become dependent on federal money to run their elections, and can’t afford to pick up the tab themselves,” Kline writes.
Thus, under the threat of being cut off from tax money their own citizens contribute to federal coffers, most states would accede to Uncle Sam.
Worse, HR 1 claims that Congress has the “ultimate supervisory power over Federal elections” — despite the Constitution’s specific language to the contrary (Article I, Sect. 4).
— Bans the requirement to provide a full Social Security number for voter registration
— Creates a nationwide “Motor Voter” registration, automatically registering people who obtain a driver’s license, which is how thousands of illegals became registered voters in California and Nevada
— Establishes nationwide same-day registration
— Prohibits the type of work done by Judicial Watch to clean voter rolls of non-residents
— Mandates early voting
— Creates nationwide vote-by-mail and legalized ballot harvesting
— Bans a personal identification requirement as a condition of obtaining a ballot
— Prohibits requiring notarization or a witness signature to obtain or cast an absentee ballot
— Permits a voter to designate any person to deliver an absentee ballot and puts no limit on how many ballots a person may deliver
— Lays the groundwork for D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood
— Puts redistricting in the hands of Congress
Now, though Article 1, Sect. 4 grants Congress some authority to set voting rules, there is no way states would have ratified the Constitution in the 1780s if the central government were given this kind of authority to run federal elections.
But this isn’t about the Constitution, obviously, because the theft of the 2020 election was purely unconstitutional. This is about perpetuating Democratic control of government until the end of time.
(Natural News) Three of the evilest entities on the planet were charged in a Peruvian court the other day of conspiring to create the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) for world domination.
Bill Gates, George Soros, and several members of the Rockefeller family were deemed responsible for the advent and spread of the Chinese virus, which has killed tens of thousands of small businesses and forever changed the world for the worst.
The Chicha and Pisco Criminal Appeals Chamber decided that the ever-dreaded Chinese germs were the product of “criminal elite around the world” – mostly multi-billionaires with global depopulation on their minds.
These defendants had tried to appeal, but Judges Tito Gallego, Luis Legia, and Tony Changarei issued a delay, justifying it due to the “unpredictable” nature of the “pandemic.”
It was only predictable for ordinary people, however, as the alleged creators of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “who have been involved in it and continue to manage it with particular secrecy in their environment” are entirely unaffected.
In fact, Bill Gates has never once been seen wearing a face mask, nor is he willing to take the vaccines he is now pushing everyone else to get for their “safety” and “protection” against the WuFlu.
“No world government, individuals or legal entities, nor the defense of the accused can claim that this pandemic has the quality of ‘foresight,’ except for the creators of the new world order, such as Bill Gates, Soros, Rockefeller, etc.,” the magistrates wrote in their resolution, which was posted to the LP Law portal.
Time to hang Bill Gates, George Soros and the Rockefellers
One does not have to read much between the lines to see that these Peruvian judges get it. The plandemic is nothing more than a scam that was hatched by the worst kinds of criminals this world has ever seen; those with lots of money and a penchant for genocide.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Gates et al. funded and created the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) for nefarious purposes – or as the court put it, the Chinese virus was “created by a criminal elite that rules the world.”
The document specifically names billionaire financier and globalist agitator George Soros, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and the entire Rockefeller family as criminals who are guilty of “managing” and “continuing to direct” the virus straight into the “new world order.”
If only our own criminal justice system would take the same approach, then perhaps we could finally put an end to all the lockdowns, mask-wearing and superstitious paranoia that has brainwashed millions of our own people. Even better, we could finally try Gates et al. for their many crimes against humanity and punish them accordingly.
Meanwhile, in lieu of justice, Gates is already planning for the next plandemic, warning those who actually listen to what he has to say that this is war.
“We can’t afford to be caught flat-footed again,” the whiny geek is quoted as saying. “To prevent the hardship of this last year from happening again, pandemic preparedness must be taken as seriously as we take the threat of war.”
The problem for Gates, of course, is that he is the enemy in that war, and someone we should all band together to eliminate for our collective benefit.
Whether right, left, or somewhere in between, all Americans have a stake in seeing Gates and his co-conspirators locked up forever, at the very least. In truth, they deserve so much more, and hopefully someday soon they will get it with a vengeance.
If this story piqued your interest, you will find more like it at Pandemic.news.
(Natural News) In yesterday’s Situation Update podcast, I revealed that all the seemingly insane events of Big Government can best be understood by realizing the globalists are pursuing an active campaign of global genocide against humanity. The order has gone out, and human beings are to be exterminated by the billions. This explains the engineered food scarcity, deadly vaccine injections, engineered bioweapons, deliberate economic collapse and more.
But people everywhere desire to be free, and populist uprisings are taking place everywhere across the globe, even reaching into the financial sector with the Robinhood / GameStop phenomenon that has made headlines all week.
Because of their ability to communicate through decentralized platforms and electronic means, the populists are winning the war of awakening humanity to the fundamental human right to be free. This groundswell in human awakening — spurred by the junk science and media lies surrounding the plandemic of 2020 — is terrifying the globalists who now realize they are rapidly losing control of the people they seek to enslave.
To try to halt the populist uprisings, governments of the world are turning to terrorism against their own people in the form of psychological terrorism and even kinetic terrorism.
This shift into terror now characterizes the brutal Biden regime, which is already hard at work destroying jobs for American workers and flooding the United States with violent illegal alien criminals. Efforts are also under way to launch a new government police state expansion to spy on the 80+ million people who voted for Trump and aren’t buying the obviously rigged election.
Rest assured that in order to justify the existence of this new police state expansion, the Biden regime will carry out large-scale false flag attacks on U.S. soil to blame conservatives and gun owners while demanding more police state powers to spy on everyone.
Gun confiscation is an important waypoint that globalists see as necessary to achieve depopulation. So the order of events goes like this:
False flag event -> Gun confiscation -> Genocide
The false flag event — which we should expect to see this year — will be used to justify the gun confiscation that disarms the 150+ million Americans that the brutal Biden regime seeks to exterminate with government death squads.
Notably, President Trump refused to use the powers of government to protect Americans from left-wing terrorism, so Joe Biden will be happy to use the powers of government to destroy Americans using government-sponsored terrorism. This means America, under Biden, has become a state sponsor of domestic terrorism targeting its own voters.
In other words, the swamp see voters as the enemy. And that’s why they had to separate the voters from the capitol building using razor wire and fences that look like a scene ripped right out of Third Reich holocaust camp.
Three black swan events that might disrupt Biden and his coming reign of terror against Americans
As far as we know, there are only three things that can prompt the military to remove Biden from power due to his acts of sedition, corruption and treason against the United States:
A domestic nuclear attack on a major U.S. city using dirty bombs or nuclear detonations, both of which were threatened to be used against Trump by the deep state. The most likely originators of dirty bombs or nuclear bombs in the US are Democrats, deep staters and globalists. The FBI is no doubt trying to recruit scapegoats for this scenario right now. Think about who has access to uranium: Mueller, Clinton, Brennan, etc. (Read up on the Uranium One scandal.)
A cascading debt collapse that obliterates most of the value of US stocks, which would cause a collapse in pension funds, retirement investments and equities held by tens of millions of Americans.
War with China. This war looks increasingly likely to occur, and China is engaged in sabre rattling against Taiwan, while the outgoing Trump administration labeled China a nation engaged in “genocide” and “crimes against humanity.” Under Trump, the US dropped its “one-China policy” and recognized Taiwan as an independent nation.
After any of these three possible black swan events, we anticipate regional warfare and horrific chaos. This era will be characterized by utter lawlessness, violence, arson, looting, food shortages, gun battles and basically every nightmare scenario you can imagine.
When this scenario occurs, anyone stuck in a blue city can basically kiss their chances of survival goodbye. America’s cities will be turned into death zones.
Biden’s popularity under such circumstances would, of course, plummet well below 30%, and the US military would obviously have the justification it needs to step in, remove the illegitimate pretender-in-chief Biden and work to restore the rule of law in America, which would require holding new, honest elections using paper ballots.
These topics and more are covered in today’s Situation Update podcast:
« La chef de service de pédopsychiatrie à l’hôpital Necker à Paris Pauline Chaste explique qu’une nette augmentation des troubles psychiatriques a été relevée chez les jeunes patients. »
Nouvelles vagues de décès chez des personnes âgées “vaccinées” contre le COVID-19 Posted: 29 Jan 2021 11:15 AM PST Trois nouvelles inquiétantes à propos des prétendus « vaccins » à ARNm : à Gibraltar et dans une maison de retraite médicalisée dans le disctrict du lac de Constance en Allemagne, et à Basingstoke en Angleterre, des vagues de décès ont été constatées après l’administration d’injections Pfizer/BioNTech censées protéger contre les effets les plus néfastes du COVID-19. On parle carrément de « massacre ». La campagne de « vaccination » a commencé le 9 janvier, après l’acheminement de 5,850 doses Pfizer/BioNTech ; dans les dix jours suivant le début des injections, pas moins de 53 personnes sont mortes : toutes avaient reçu la piqûre. Cinquante d’entre elles étaient des résidents de l’équivalent local de nos EHPAD. La plupart des décédés avaient entre 70 et 90 ans. Gibraltar comptait dimanche 130 cas actifs de COVID-19. Avant cette vague de décès, les 32,000 habitants de ce territoire britannique avaient été très épargnés par le virus, ayant enregistré seulement 17 victimes… Les autorités locales attribuent les décès au COVID-19. Mais comme au Royaume-Uni où le déploiement du vaccin va de pair avec une mortalité croissante, Gibraltar – qui n’a jamais été isolé au cours de la pandémie – fait face à une vague de décès inattendue. Pour ce qui est de l’EHPAD allemand, je vous soumets l’information publiée le 28 janvier par le site de journalisme indépendant reitschuster.de : « Après que 40 résidents de l’établissement résidentiel pour personnes âgées d’Uhldingen-Mühlhofen ont été vaccinés avec le nouveau vaccin ARNm de Biontech/Pfizer le soir du Nouvel An, certains d’entre eux ont peu après montré les premiers symptômes d’une infection par le pathogène Sars-Cov-2. En conséquence, des tests PCR ont été effectués immédiatement, comme l’a annoncé la responsable de la communication de la société Korian Tanja Kurz. « Depuis lors, 13 résidents du parc résidentiel pour personnes âgées sont “décédés en relation avec Covid-19”. » La direction de l’établissement a précisé que les victimes étaient des personnes très âgées souffrant de comorbidités graves – qui ont été « vaccinées » après que le médecin traitant eut attesté qu’il n’y avait pas de contre-indication. D’ailleurs, les responsables du foyer ont écarté tout lien avec l’injection Pfizer, ce serait la faute à pas de chance : les infections auraient eu lieu peu avant ou peu après la piqûre, celle-ci n’offrant que « 50 % » de protection. Le rappel est censé offrir 95 % de protection contre les formes graves, mais a été retardé d’une semaine après la vague de décès. Tiens, tiens… Certains accusent les responsables de n’avoir pas suffisamment informé les résidents ou leurs proches, en cas de démence, avant de procéder aux « vaccinations », et – comme dans des EHPAD en France, d’après des témoignages directs – ceux qui refusent sont menacés d’isolement au sein de l’établissement. A Basingstoke, dans le Hampshire, le tiers des effectifs d’une maison de retraite médicalisée sont mort en ce mois de janvier. Pemberley House, un établissement de la chaîne Avery Healthcare accueillant des personnes de plus de 65 ans, a vu vingt-deux résidents mourir dans les semaines qui ont suivi la première salve de vaccinations. Une porte-parole de la municipalité, tout en affirmant que les autorités locales ne font pas de commentaires sur les morts qui surviennent dans des établissements privés, a précisé que « la protection que donne le vaccin prend du temps », ajoutant qu’il fallait quand même se laver les mains, porter un masque et respecter une distance de deux mètres entre les individus. L’article de la BBC qui donne cette information ne pose aucune question sur le fait que la vague de décès soit survenue seulement après les vaccinations…
PCR dans le TDC en RPC Posted: 29 Jan 2021 02:08 AM PST La Chine entend mettre en place des tests COVID-19 plus réactifs pour dépister certaines catégories de personnes – certains évoquent les voyageurs internationaux – qui vont certainement apprécier… Le prélèvement, au lieu d’être fait dans le nez ou dans la bouche, s’effectue dans l’anus. C’est en tout cas ce que préconise Li Tongzeng, directeur délégué chargé des maladies infectieuses à l’hôpital You’an de Pékin : s’exprimant sur la chaîne Télévision centrale de Chine (CCTV), contrôlée par le régime communiste, il a signalé que ce type de prélèvement permet de mieux détecter le virus SARS-CoV-2 qui survit plus longtemps dans l’anus ou dans les excréments que dans les voies aériennes. D’où le titre de ce message : des tests PCR dans le trou du… en République populaire de Chine. Selon une étude chinoise datant d’août dernier, les patients guéris du COVID-19 continuent d’être testés positifs un peu plus longtemps en utilisant cette technique alors qu’il n’y a déjà plus de traces du virus dans les voies aériennes : les signataires proposaient de ce fait de tester les patients par ce moyen avant de mettre fin à leur hospitalisation, et de les maintenir à l’isolement tant que le virus n’aurait pas totalement disparu. Le dépistage par introduction d’un écouvillon dans le rectum sur 3 à 5 centimètres a déjà été testé dans une école de Pékin forte de 1,200 élèves où un garçon de neuf ans avait été testé positif au SARS-CoV-2 ; tous les résultats de la campagne de dépistage furent négatifs. La chaîne CCTV a précisé que selon les autorités, le test n’est pas aussi commode que les tests nasaux (pas besoin d’être grand clerc…), mais envisage de l’appliquer dans des centres de quarantaine, notamment sur des voyageurs en provenance de l’étranger, rapporte David McLoone de LifeSiteNews. En attendant, un expert médical chinois, Yang Zhanqiu, a remis en question la fiabilité des tests anaux : les tests positifs ne désignent pas avec certitude une contamination dans les voies digestives, selon lui. Le Dr Sanjaya Senanayake, infectiologue à l’Australian National University, va plus loin : les résultats positifs sur des personnes cliniquement guéries et ayant bénéficié d’un test négatif dans les voies aériennes « pourraient simplement être source de confusion », a-t-il affirmé, accusant les autorités chinoises de « probablement vouloir rechercher ou identifier le plus grand nombre de cas possible » pour des raisons politiques. Air connu. En Chine, les rumeurs sur des cas d’infection dans des communautés chrétiennes ou catholiques dans la province de Hebei ont déjà conduit l’une des vice-Premier ministres de la Chine, Sun Chunlan, à affirmer qu’il fallait en tirer les leçons pour éventuellement « suspendre » les activités collectives dans les lieux de culte.
The Man Who Isn’t There Posted: 29 Jan 2021 06:54 AM PST Clusterfuck Nation For your reading pleasure Mondays and Fridays Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page And thanks to all my Patrons for your support! One might ask: why is it so easy to put over narratives on at least half the people in this country? Here’s the answer: because we are living in a time when nothing adds up and there are no consequences — but especially no consequences for the folks in charge of things that don’t add up. For instance, the January 6 riot at the US Capitol building. The Deep State axis of interests — politicians, permanent bureaucrats, Beltway contractors, K-Street influencers, shady international NGOs, and most of the news media — needed something that would overrule objections to certifying the election. They got what they needed in just the right place for it to happen, the very house of Congress. The objection procedure was neatly sabotaged. The riot launched Donald Trump back into civilian life under a cloud of odium, labeled an “insurrectionist.” It enabled the Democrats to paint their opponents as “domestic terrorists” and manufacture a narrative that America was under attack by “white supremacists.” Troops occupying the center of Washington since Joe Biden’s inauguration are there to reinforce the story that the government is “under siege.” The tech companies de-platform anyone who writes about or speaks of “election fraud.” Next, the new regime cooks up legislation to intensify surveillance of US citizens. Worked out perfectly for the Party of Orwell. Have we gotten a satisfactory accounting of exactly who led the incursion inside the building? I don’t think so, though after three weeks you’d think the FBI could have ID’d many of the characters captured on thousands of videos posted online. Everybody knows the guy in the horned helmet now, one Jacob Chansley (a.k.a Jake Angeli), but he was a very conspicuous street agitator in Phoenix, AZ, well-known to the FBI before January 6, and there’s reason to believe he has been playing more than one side in this game. The DC federal attorney, Michael Sherwin, says they have a list of 400 suspects. Any hints about their actual affiliations? Of course not. By the way, the authorities still haven’t identified the Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt dead. Is it a state secret, or what? Any chance that Antifa or BLM were involved on the scene that day? How is it possible that they would forego the opportunity to mix in with the MAGA crowd and make some trouble happen on Capitol Hill? What could have been easier, or more obvious? All they had to do was put on a red hat. One we know for sure is John Sullivan, the founder of Insurgence USA, a BLM spinoff, but mainly because he also happened to be an attention-whore who went on CNN afterward where Anderson Cooper introduced him to the nation as “a left-wing activist.” Was he the only left-wing activist on duty at the Capitol that day? Somehow, I doubt it. The New York Times, mouthpiece of Wokery, is working triple overtime to sell the narrative of white supremacists on the loose. Anyone to the right of Woke is now an enemy of the state. Last time I looked, it was Antifa and BLM tearing up the streets, setting federal courthouses and police stations on fire, looting stores, destroying businesses, and injuring policemen — in the case of Portland, OR, and Seattle, WA, all summer long. Democrats somehow omitted to label them as any kind of threat to the public interest. Vice-president Kamala Harris (then-senator), led a campaign to raise bail money for Antifas and BLMs arrested during last year’s riots. Woke District Attorneys dropped charges against hundreds of them. Governors and mayors sat on their hands. There were no consequences for any of that. If anything, the political right-wing of the USA has shown miraculous self-restraint through four years of FBI / DOJ / CIA sedition, tech company tyranny, impeachment chicanery, and the rage-fueled calumnies of Pelosi and Company, all aggravated by questionable Covid-19 lockdowns, and climaxing in a fraud-inflected election that has not been subject to any adequate judicial audit. How much of the current artificial hysteria these first weeks of the “Biden” regime is designed to divert attention from the question of who is actually running Joe Biden? My guess would be Barack Obama via Susan Rice, Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and formerly Mr. Obama’s National Security Advisor. I would suppose that Ms. Rice is on the phone with Mr. Obama bright and early every morning, and for more than casual conversation. She is surely plugged into the rest of the Obama network, too, in effect a shadow government, which may explain the seeming flimsiness of the crew assembled around Joe Biden. Seems to work for now. But how many weeks will go by before the whole country realizes that Mr. Biden is not actually functioning as president?
As some Lockdown Sceptics readers will be aware, we’ve been having a bit of trouble sending our daily newsletters to some of our email subscribers. This issue relates only to @mac.com, @iCloud.com and @me.com addresses, all of which are run by Apple Inc. We’re trying hard to resolve this, but if anyone affected by this is missing our morning newsletter and would like to keep receiving it in the meantime, please re-subscribe to our newsletter using an alternative email address. Incidentally, if you no longer wish to subscribe please notify Ian Rons that you wish to be removed from the mailing list. Don’t mark the emails as “junk”.
Vaccine Wars
AFP via Getty
In a huge escalation of the vaccine row, the European Commission invoked Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol in the Brexit deal yesterday in a bid to prevent the region becoming a backdoor for EU vaccines to be sent to the wider UK. This would effectively have created a hard border between Northern Ireland and its southern neighbour, but after furious criticism from the British, Northern Irish and Irish governments, it quickly backed down. The Mailhas more.
The EU sensationally backed down last night over its plans to impose Covid vaccine controls on the Northern Ireland border after the proposals were met with a strong and united backlash from UK and Irish politicians.
EU chiefs had been accused of an “incredible act of hostility” after announcing controls on the export of jabs to the UK, including Northern Ireland.
In a move which would have effectively created a ‘hard border’ on the island of Ireland, EU officials had planned to override part of the Brexit trade agreement and demand checks of vaccines flowing from Europe into Northern Ireland.
Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheal Martin raised objections to EU leaders, while Michel Barnier, who was the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said he was calling for “co-operation” over vaccines between the UK and Brussels.
And in another strongly-worded statement, Boris Johnson last night said he had “grave concerns” over the proposals and demanded the EU “urgently clarify its intentions”.
But in a major climb-down, hours after announcing the proposals, bloc leaders quickly reversed the decision and say they will now no longer go ahead with the controls.
In a statement released late last night, the European Commission said: “To tackle the current lack of transparency of vaccine exports outside the EU, the Commission is putting in place a measure requiring that such exports are subject to an authorisation by Member States.
“In the process of finalisation of this measure, the Commission will ensure that the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol is unaffected. The Commission is not triggering the safeguard clause.
“Should transits of vaccines and active substances toward third countries be abused to circumvent the effects of the authorisation system, the EU will consider using all the instruments at its disposal.
“In the process of finalising the document, the commission will also be fine-tuning the decision-making process under the implementing regulation.”
Stop Press: Read Ambrose Evan Pritchard’s report in Telegraph on the prospect of the EU invoking Article 122 against Astra Zeneca, paving the way for seizure of its intellectual property and data, and arguably taking control of its production as well.
Stop Press 2: Meanwhile, Macron has backed claims that the AstraZeneca vaccine is ineffective for the over-65s. Which begs the question, why is he so desperate to get hold of it?
More Fines and More Invasions of Privacy
Yesterday, without much in the way of reporting, new coronavirus regulations came into force. PA media has the details.
Fines of £800 for people caught at house parties and fresh powers to share data with police on those who should be self-isolating have become law in England.
The latest coronavirus regulations came into force at 5pm on Friday as part of tougher measures to crack down on illegal gatherings and those flouting the legal requirement to self-isolate during the pandemic.
The house party penalty will apply to groups of more than 15 people and will double after each offence, up to a maximum of £6,400 for repeat offenders.
This supersedes existing fines of £200.
But the £10,000 penalties for unlawful groups of more than 30 people will still only apply to the organiser.
According to the legislation, called the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021, the £800 fine is cut to £400 if paid within 14 days…
Police are given extra powers to access Test and Trace data under the new law.
It comes after data published by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on Thursday showed just 332 fines had been issued by forces in England and three in Wales, to people failing to self-isolate after arriving from a country on the Government quarantine list between September 28th and January 17th.
The latest laws, signed off by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, amend self-isolation regulations “to correct a number of errors” in previous versions of the legislation and “update the information which may be shared for the purposes of carrying out functions under the regulations, or preventing danger to the health of the public from the spread of coronavirus, and to allow certain information to be shared only where necessary for specified law enforcement purposes”.
Contact details, including a phone number and email address where available, can be shared if someone tests positive for coronavirus or if a person has come into close contact with a positive case, the laws state.
Last year, it emerged people in England who had been told to self-isolate through NHS Test and Trace could have their details shared with police on a case-by-case basis after the Government updated its guidance.
But police would not have access to data from the NHS COVID-19 app, which is anonymous so the Government does not know who has been sent instructions to self-isolate.
Adam Wagner, the human rights lawyer who’s an authority on Coronavirus regulations, has a useful thread on this, detailing both the new rules and the important human rights issues that they raise:
Important changes to lockdown/self-isolation regulations from 5pm The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 £800 ‘house party’ FPN & police can now access track & trace data
The Government just made a law – without parliament or even publicity – allowing police to access NHS Test & Trace data of people who are self-isolating. This is a disastrous move that’s draconian, undemocratic and misguided in equal measure.
Stop Press: openDemocracy is reporting that some 1,500 Met Police officers have, on the quiet, been ordered to switch off the NHS COVID-19 tracing app while at work. This appears to be aimed at reducing the number of officers having to self-isolate.
Did ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ Increase Covid Infections?
Rishi Sunak Twitter
Yesterday brought further confirmation that the Treasury is the most sceptical of the Whitehall departments after it issued a stout defence of the Eat Out to Help Out scheme. This followed heavy criticism of the scheme in the wake of the winter surge in Covid infections. The Sun was first to the story.
Rishi Sunak has launched a full throated defence of his flagship Eat Out to Help Out scheme after data showed no link to rising Covid cases.
The incredibly popular £849 million scheme launched last August to keep the hospitality industry afloat has come under fire in light of the deadly second wave.
More than 160 million punters were given 50% off meals to try to get people back into struggling pubs and restaurants, with the scheme credited for getting 400,000 workers off furlough.
Now data published by the Treasury shows areas with the high take up of the scheme also still had low virus levels between August and October.
The figures show places such as Westminster and Scarborough and North Devon had very high take-up of Eat Out to Help Out, but very low subsequent Covid cases.
Meanwhile Knowsley, Rochdale and Merthyr Tydfil had far higher Covid rates, but lower levels of use of the scheme.
The Treasury said: “These figures confirm that take-up of Eat Out to Help Out does not correlate with incidence of Covid regionally – and indeed where it does the relationship is negative.”
A spokesman said: “As we have done throughout the pandemic, we have worked with creativity and at pace to support individuals and businesses.
“We designed The Eat Out to Help Out scheme to protect two million jobs in hospitality, an industry whose employees are at high risk of long-term unemployment in the event of redundancy.
“It protected jobs across the UK by bringing back 400,000 people from furlough while safely restoring consumer confidence.”
The Treasury is obviously right about this. Last week Parliament was reminded that hospitality is not a huge risk when it comes to infection. The Catererreports:
Greg Fell, Director of Public Health at Sheffield County Council, and Richard Harling, Director of Health and Care at Staffordshire County Council, appeared before Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee yesterday [27th January].
When asked about whether hospitality was a vector for infections, the pair said the spread mainly occurred in people’s homes.
Fell said: “Most of the transmission events are within households and household to household.
“Hospitality doesn’t crop up as a terribly big risk on our radar. When we look at the common exposure data set hospitality isn’t a huge risk.
“There will have been transmission events within hospitality, but it’s certainly nowhere near the top of my risk radar.”
Harling added: “Back in the summer and autumn, once you put transmission between household members aside, the next most important one was transmission between different households.
“The hospitality sector did feature, but much lower down the list. At the moment, with the hospitality sector closed, the main [cause of spread] is other businesses and workplaces.”
A Smidgen of Pessimism on Masks
bbc
Today we have another contribution from Dr Rachel Mann, written in response to the “A Smidgen of Optimism on Masks” which we published last Sunday.
Having mulled over Steve Sieff’s interesting take on masks in the January 24th Lockdown Sceptics newsletter, I wondered whether to just bury my head in a box of face masks and accept the joyless existence of a world where the divisive impacts of masks are considered completely normal, or respond. As an arch sceptic of mask wearing, I couldn’t help but choose the latter of course.
The central theme of the “Smidgen of Optimism” piece was to think about a dial down of the mask debate in terms of ‘just the science’ and focus on mask wearing as a choice, based on an individuals’ own concept of their risk. This seems highly logical and completely sensible to me and would that we might have had that option last year. Instead of a mask mandate, allow individuals to assess their own risk and choose to wear a mask or not. Simple! Or is it?
We were never given that choice, to assess our own risk, nor are we likely to be in the distant future. The mask mandate was brought in last year with absolutely no thought or clear messaging as to how this so called ‘public health intervention’ should be managed. Consequently, the psyche of mask wearing has become shaped and warped by a popular opinion war as to what is right or wrong and polarised discourse.
I fear that we have gone past the point of no return in some ways because the concept of, as Steve himself says, “Those who do not wear a mask are letting down others and are stigmatised” has been, and is, occurring on a daily basis and I see no reason for it to change or that “More protective masks such as N95s and N99s could change this narrative”. So, parking the science about the (inconclusive) effectiveness of masks for one moment, I thought I’d briefly muse over a few issues that seem relevant to the divisive nature of masks:
1. Masking ‘Care’: We are already at a point where those admitting to vaccine hesitancy or outright refusal for whatever personal reasons to take the COVID-19 vaccine are being singled out as not worthy of receiving health care treatment for COVID-19 from the NHS. If choosing to mask up became a free choice, and that choice is the best possible protection (N95 or N99 mask) rather than a mandate, the use of a mask still continues to perpetrate the message a particular person choosing to wear the mask is stating to the outside world “I am responsible, I care about my health and the NHS is important to me”. Those who don’t mask up will still be stigmatised whether it is under mandate or a choice; choosing not to wear a mask has become and will remain entrenched in negative opinion as irresponsible, uncaring and selfish behaviour. As with the popular “no vax, no Covid treatment” opinion being embraced, those engaging in perceived negative behaviour of non-mask wearing will potentially be deemed not worthy of receiving health care for COVID-19, or maybe all respiratory viruses, or maybe even all conditions? The refrain of “you didn’t wear a mask to protect yourself from respiratory disease, so your partial knee replacement will be delayed until you mask up and protect your health first” is not really too dissimilar to denying people treatment who smoke or are overweight, is it?
2. Masking Affordability: The mantra of “we are all in it together” and that SARS-CoV-2 and “COVID-19 does not discriminate” is a myth; they are not socially neutral entities.
People living in more socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods and minority ethnic groups have higher rates of almost all of the known underlying clinical risk factors that increase the severity and mortality of COVID-19, including hypertension, diabetes, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart disease, liver disease, renal disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity and smoking”
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Health Inequalities, NIH
Yet, interestingly how do those people considered the most at risk of severe COVID-19, who are the most socio-economically disadvantaged in our population afford to pay for N95 and N99 masks? A very quick scout around Amazon revealed prices range for N95 mask from a single mask priced £6 to a box of 30 priced £56, and a box of five N99 masks for £50. The personal financial burden to hard-put working people would be immense and it’s likely that the most vulnerable would not wear masks due to eye watering unaffordable prices. If it’s food and rent needed, I think people would likely favour those choices over purchasing face masks. Or choose sub optimal masks due to costs and take the risk. What is the answer? State funded face masks, that are means tested and provided by the taxpayer? Another potentially divisive action perhaps as a mask wearer is then defined as someone on a lower income? Or equally someone who can comfortably afford an N95 and N99 mask is perceived as taking mask supplies from those who really need them?
3. Masking the Big “E” – “Environment”: In an age where we purport to be concerned about the environment it is quite astonishing that there is so much support for wearing face masks of the surgical, N95 and N99 variety; an item that is classed as ‘disposable’ but is in fact a non-biodegradable, one-wear item containing micro plastics. We care so much about our environment it seems that we are happy to send 1.6 billion ‘disposable’ face masks to landfill every month. If choice based masking becomes the ‘go to option’ this will inevitably contribute hugely to our future woeful landfill statistics. Or if we care about our drinking water supply and oceans, how about the recent studies that have investigated whether surgical face masks and N95 masks could be a source of microplastic pollutants in the environment? The results strongly suggested that masks act as a potential source of microfibers when they are released into the environment, adding additional burden to current microplastic pollution. Therefore, does a disposable N95 or N99, or whatever affordable masks one can buy, mean that you do not care about the environment and that you are putting your own selfish needs first? Does the need to protect yourself with a non-biodegradable mask rank above the needs of our global environment, our precious ecosystem, and the collective need to nurture and sustain our planet for our future generations? Are those who dispose of ‘disposable’ face masks, whatever their filtration properties to be labelled as “environmental safeguarding deniers”?
In conclusion, I fear that whatever the future of face mask wearing, it will remain a divisive issue for some time to come, as indeed all labelling does, whether it is masks, exemption badges or green and red bands (I note the green band – red band home page shows banders of both colours wearing masks). Which incidentally makes me wonder about how those who would choose to wear a green band and no mask would be perceived by others? We seem intent on overtly identifying individual’s personal choices and beliefs. Perhaps we have entered an age of ‘unmasking’ personal health beliefs where one must wear one’s health beliefs on one’s sleeve, face or neck. Looking back to 20th century history I don’t feel that bodes well…
Does Charging Travellers for Enforced Hotel Stays Violate WHO Rules?
In the January 26th newsletter, we published a comment from a reader who had been looking at the WHO’s International Health Regulations and found that it might be against the rules to charge travellers for their period in mandatory quarantine. Today we have a response from Dr David McGrogan, an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School and a previous contributor.
Sadly, while the answer to this question may very well be “yes”, it has to be followed by an immediate “but”: this is highly unlikely to matter. The International Health Regulations are a treaty, which means obligations in it are binding on States which are party to it (which is all, or almost all, of them). But individuals would have no standing before any international court or tribunal to bring a claim for a violation. Only another State could do that. Why would one State sue another for charging people for using a quarantine hotel in violation of the International Health Regulations? (Particularly as they are all likely to be doing it soon if they aren’t already.)
The only other remotely realistic alternative would be for the WHO itself to raise the matter with the WHO’s World Health Assembly, but since the World Health Assembly is simply a body comprising representatives of the governments of the states who are members of the WHO, this would be very unlikely to bear fruit for obvious reasons.
There would be no prospect of a claim succeeding before a UK court, either. The UK has what is called a “dualist” system, which basically means that it treats international law as separate to domestic law. The UK government can sign whatever treaties it wants, more or less (although the first Gina Miller ‘Brexit’ case made clear that this power is not untrammelled), but they do not become ‘law’ at a domestic level until there has been an Act of Parliament making it so. And this means that our courts cannot enforce them without such an Act. This is the reason why, for example, the Human Rights Act 1998 was necessary in order to give UK courts the capacity to hear claims regarding violations of European Convention rights. It ‘brought rights home’ by in effect making them part of UK law. Since the International Health Regulations have not had a similar piece of legislation to make them part of our law, they are largely irrelevant as a matter for our courts.
At best, international legal obligations of the kind found in a treaty like the International Health Regulations can be said to have a ‘hortatory’ function – violation will have no legal effect but might shame a government to change its policy. International lawyers often claim that this is important. One can make up one’s own mind about that, of course.
Stop Press: The UK Government has placed travel bans on 33 high-risk countries. Travellers who set foot in any of the countries on the list, even in transit, will not be allowed into the UK.
British and Irish Nationals and third country nationals with the right of residence in the UK will be allowed in but will need to quarantine for 10 days upon arrival. Further details of the policy, including whether or not those in quarantine will have to pay for he privilege, will be set out next week.
Stop Press: Worth noting that the UK would not be the first to charge for quarantine. Australia, whose borders are closed to nearly everybody, even New Zealand at the moment, has been charging returning nationals and residents $3,000 dollars for a mandatory 14 day quarantine for months now.
The Adults are Having a Quite Different Conversation
Sam Bowman with two students from his A-level economics class at the Adam Smith Academy
Today we’re publishing a new response to Sam Bowman’s anti-lockdown sceptics article in the New Statesman last week. The response is by Timon Wapenaar, a violinist based in Spain. It’s a scorcher. Here’s an extract.
A piece in the New Statesman by Sam Bowman which ostensibly aims to debunk the “eight biggest Covid-sceptic myths” presents us with a pot-pourri of Twitter-troll inspired overripe low hanging fruit. No serious lockdown critic has ever framed the argument in the way Bowman represents it. Has Sunetra Gupta ever said that “we are overreacting to a virus which 99.5% of people will survive”? I doubt it. A Google search for “Sunetra Gupta” and the exact phrase “we are overreacting” yields Bowman’s own article as the first hit, and only five other hits in total, none of which contained the damning quote.
Likewise, there is not one lockdown sceptic of stature who says that “we aren’t seeing excess deaths”, or that “we’re witnessing a ‘casedemic’ of false positives from doing too many tests”. While there are assertions made about both excess deaths and a ‘casedemic’, their nature is much, much more nuanced than Bowman would have us believe. Indeed, his phrasing of the ‘casedemic’ is absolutely absurd. How on earth could any opponent worth arguing with believe something as patently stupid as “more tests result in more false positives”? He obviously hasn’t read or listened to Heneghan, or Jefferson, or Yeadon, or McKernan. Or Levitt, or Gupta, or Bhattacharya, or Kulldorff, or Sikora.
It is mala praxis to choose the worst possible version of your opponent’s argument, and yet this is what Bowman does. The refutations he offers might be useful for dunking on your brother-in-law at a family dinner, or vanquishing that Twitter troll with a hundred followers, but fall hopelessly short of being a contribution to any real argument over the efficacy of lockdowns.
If he’d been more courageous, Bowman would have addressed the most important question posed by sceptics: are state-mandated NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions) sufficiently effective to justify the significant harms they entail? That they reduce transmission to some degree (which they do, in all likelihood) is not sufficient. The gains must outweigh the price paid by society. Bowman instead chooses to focus only on whether lockdowns reduce transmission. This is disappointing: if the holistic effectiveness of the most restrictive lockdown measures can be proven, all other arguments become somewhat ancillary.
Lockdown sceptic firebrand Sir Desmond Swayne MP has come under intense criticism following the surfacing of an interview he did with Save Our Rights UK back in November.
It seems to be a manageable risk, particularly as figures have been manipulated… We’re told there is a deathly, deadly pandemic proceeding at the moment. That is difficult to reconcile with ICUs (intensive care units) actually operating at typical occupation levels for the time of year and us bouncing round at the typical level of deaths for the time of year.
He also told the group, which appears to be a broad tent that includes supporters of some of the wilder conspiracy theories, to “persist” in their anti-lockdown campaign, adding: “And I’ll persist too.”
His comments have been roundly condemned and the Labour Party has called for him to have the Conservative whip removed, though there’s no indication that will happen.
Michael Gove said: “I would hope that he issues a full and complete retraction and apology for what he said – it’s unacceptable.”
Boris Johnson’s spokesman said the Prime Minister agreed with Gove, though awkwardly when asked about it during his trip to Scotland, Boris replied: “I’m sorry I haven’t seen that.”
Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “Those comments are thoroughly wrong and I very much hope Desmond will reflect and take those comments back.”
The Whips’ Office said: “We completely condemn these comments. It is on all of us to work together to control the virus to protect the NHS and save lives.”
It is reported that Conservative chief whip Mark Spencer spoke to Sir Desmond and asked him to attend a meeting with scientific advisers – which Sir Desmond has happily agreed to do. Oh, to be a fly on the wall…
Angela Rayner, the Deputy Leader of the Labour party, wrote to the chair of the Conservative Party Amanda Milling alleging that Swayne “endorsed conspiracy theories about the veracity of the disease” – seemingly a reference to his claim that “figures have been manipulated”.
She laid it on thick: “The seriousness of his actions cannot be understated. For a member of parliament to appear on this platform and undermine our fight against the pandemic could have truly devastating consequences.”
The criticisms of Sir Desmond (at least, the ones that aren’t based on guilt-by-association) boil down to arguing that 1) there is no evidence that data has been “manipulated” and 2) that at the time of his comments, deaths were not “typical” for the time of year.
It is notable that no attempt has been made to dispute his claim about ICUs in November operating at “typical occupation levels for the time of year”, since that is demonstrably true, as this graph comparing 2020 with 2017 shows. This was not the impression many in Government and the media were giving at the time, with claims that daily “Covid admissions” were running at around 1,500 a day – which they were, but that wasn’t unusual – being made to whip up fear and used to justify increasing restrictions. This, presumably, is what Swayne means by “manipulation” of figures. That and the infamous prediction of 4,000 deaths a day made by Witless and Unbalanced in October to bounce the Government into the second lockdown. I think it’s fair to describe those figures as having been “manipulated”. After all, it was that prediction which prompted the UK statistics watchdog to issue another warning to the Government on its confusing and opaque use of statistics.
In terms of deaths, while November did see a greater number of weekly deaths than the average for the last five years, it was not hugely elevated and the trend was largely flat or declining. Describing this as “bouncing round at the typical level of deaths for the time of year” seems a fair description.
Sir Desmond defended his comments this week, saying they were “legitimate at the time”.
He is right to stand his ground. It must be acceptable for MPs, like journalists and other members of the public, to challenge Government policy, particularly during a crisis when momentous, far-reaching decisions are being made. Hindsight must not be used as a weapon to attack critics of the Government. Everyone has made some poor predictions in this crisis, Government ministers and advisers included. That’s not a reason for punishing dissenters from Covid orthodoxy in order to silence them. Any moves in that direction must be stoutly resisted.
Lockdown Sceptics win Cambridge Union Debate by 362 Votes to 309
On Thursday evening, Toby took part in a Cambridge Union debate. The motion was: “This House believes lockdown was a mistake.” Toby spoke in support of the motion along with Richard Tice and Sir Graham Brady MP. Writer, novelist and journalist Laura Spinney, novelist and physician Phil Whitaker and Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran spoke against. The motion was approved by 362 votes to 309. The Cambridge Independenthas more.
Getting the proceedings under way was Sir Graham Brady, who said that the Lancet medical journal reported on December 23rd that, looking at the second lockdown, “it remains unclear how effective tier restrictions were in reducing transmission and what additional reduction in transmission might have been accomplished by the second lockdown”.
“We can see the efficacy of lockdowns is unclear,” suggested Sir Graham, “certainly rates had started to fall before schools were closed earlier this month, or indeed last March.”
He said: “We know that rates of transmission can fall without lockdown and can rise whilst restrictions are in place,” adding: “While some degree of restriction does, I’m sure, impact transmission, it remains, as the Lancet report says, unclear whether lockdown has any particular beneficial impact.”
Sir Graham mentioned, among other things, the 800,000 people who have lost their jobs since March, those who may have no job to return to when furlough comes to an end, and “the growing number” of people who are taking their own lives.
Sir Graham also spoke of the “hideous toll” on children and young people, the “three-fold increase” in the reporting of eating disorders, and the NSPCC reporting a 43% increase in referrals for child abuse.
“Britain gets a boost to its vaccine programme” – The Spectator‘s Katy Balls reports on the Novavax vaccine, which has completed phase three trial and been found to highly effective against the Kent strain, though less effective against the South African one. A booster shot is to follow
“Welsh lockdown is extended by three weeks ‘to allow NHS to recover’” – MailOnline reports that the level 4 lockdown restrictions in Wales will remain in force for at least another three weeks so that NHS Wales can recover, but primary schools may reopen after February half term
“Are we immune to the suffering of our children now?” – In her column for the Belfast Telegraph, Fionala Meredith highlights the experience of children living through lockdown. Masked up and treated like vectors of disease, they are guinea-pigs in the biggest medical experiment in history and they are suffering for it
“Scepticism – the only intelligent option” – “We don’t need less scepticism,” says David Seedhouse in the Conservative Woman. “We need as much of it as we can muster”
“Who’s the sceptic?” – Omar S. Khan argues that the hard lockdowners are the real sceptics; sceptical of established public health practice and civilised norms
“No, Lockdowns do not foster creative destruction” – Writing on the AIER blog, Peter C. Earle warns against conflating entrepreneurialism with the rush to fill gaps created by major errors in public policy
Dr Pierre Kory on ivermectin – Watch Kory’s interview with Vincent Evans in which he discusses his research on ivermectin, the most promising treatment for COVID-19 he’s looked at so far