? WSM reflects on Covid-19: chickens are back in the coop

Amid warnings from the World Health Organization (WHO), the U. S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Irish government about a resurgence of measles, William Saunderson-Meyer reflects on declining acceptance in those post-COVID-19 facilities. Despite the profound impact of the pandemic, WSM criticizes the health government for authoritarianism and misinformation. Vaccine skepticism has increased, contributing to the resurgence of preventable diseases. WSM emphasizes the need for evidence-based medicine and independent journalism to repair the public situation. accept as true in FitnessCare establishments.

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By William Saunderson-Meyer

Déjà vu, a lot? The World Health Organization (WHO), the U. S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Irish government warned last week of a resurgence of measles in their respective jurisdictions. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

Measles is a highly contagious, airborne disease that is harmful to children, immunocompromised adults, and pregnant women. Like another ancient scourge, polio, it is fortunately controlled smoothly through preventive vaccination, and prior to the Covid pandemic, both diseases had been virtually eliminated in the evolved world.

These three venerable establishments lamented the decrease in the number of vaccinations of their children. None of them knew one of the main culprits behind the spread of vaccine skepticism: themselves.

They lost, through their movements during the 2020 Covid pandemic, much of the unquestioned clinical and ethical authority they once enjoyed in the past.

Remember Covid-19? Once on everyone’s lips and obsessively covered by media, it has now disappeared from the public consciousness.

Although the disease still exists, spawning new variants and undoubtedly continues to claim victims, the “Covid dashboards” on each and every news site, which update statistics daily, are long gone. And while the WHO, national fitness agencies, and pharmaceutical companies continue to periodically announce that the public will come forward for a new vaccination circular, these remain virtually ignored and absolutely ignored.

The public’s amnesia is notable, especially given the devastation caused by the pandemic.

First, there are the quantifiable costs. Between 7 and 28 million people have died from (or with) Covid, depending on who crunches the numbers and how. It also caused the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, with the loss of 100 million jobs worldwide, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Then there are the social costs – both of the disease and of the measures taken to combat it – which are incalculable but considerable. The complex fabric of everyday life was transformed in an instant into a world of loneliness, isolation and fear. The tragic effects of delayed reparation in other life-threatening situations are still being felt.

And here’s another important effect that the political establishment refuses even to acknowledge exists, never mind deal with. It’s how the management of the pandemic by the WHO, national governments, and the mainstream media has seriously damaged the public’s trust in these keystone institutions.

But the evidence is growing. In the most developed countries, but especially in Europe and the United States, the immunization schedule against preventable childhood diseases is decreasing. Polio, which is close to being eradicated, is making a comeback. The same is true for measles, despite the long-proven efficacy and protection of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine.

This resurgence of the disease is partly due to the fact that, in many parts of the world, vaccinations from the Covid-19 pandemic regime were not carried out. But it is a challenge that corrects itself; Once lockdown measures are lifted, general vaccination patterns are expected to resume.

That didn’t happen. On the contrary, because of the way the government has dealt with the pandemic, there has been a marked increase in scepticism about vaccination, which has morphed into a more widespread distrust of the government and scientists in general.

Therefore, there is no doubt that when the next pandemic arrives, national governments and foreign bodies will benefit from the same point of public cooperation that marked the early stages of the Covid pandemic in particular.

And we’re not talking about conspiracy theorists here. Most citizens perceive that in a global crisis, such as the pandemic, it was necessary to make trade-offs between immediate interventions and unintended and potentially destructive consequences. Especially when those decisions had to be made on the basis of fragmentary information.

What they don’t like is authoritarianism and dishonesty. The WHO, dutifully adopted through national health governments throughout the democratic world (with the admirable exception of Sweden), proclaimed certainties on issues that were, at best, scientifically difficult to understand and of dubious value. .

Think about the masking, isolating, school closures, restrictions and stay-at-home mandates that were so confidently issued. All of them, to some extent or totally, were wrong and counterproductive or simply wrong.

It’s not that there weren’t credible counterarguments to consider. Although they claim to “follow the science” to arrive at evidence-based decision-making, as the government claims to do, they have ruthlessly silenced dissenting voices, no matter how dominant. Possibly they would be.

The Great Barrington Declaration, which expressed “grave concerns” about the “irreparable damage” that would be caused by lockdowns, was authored by three epidemiologists from Oxford, Stanford and Harvard, and cosigned by 46 medical luminaries from around the Western world. Their concerns were scornfully dismissed out of hand by Dr Anthony Fauci (who headed the US public health response) and the WHO. The director of the US National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, told the media that the authors were “fringe epidemiologists”.

Embarrassingly, as with virtually every statement emanating from the medical establishment, the mainstream media dutifully toed the official line. The only dissenting voices, which we have known since the U. S. government went to great lengths to illegally suppress them, were the online media. , especially Twitter.

The trend of obfuscation, kidnapping, and defamation faced by medical scientists in connection with the lockdown then extended to most aspects of the official response to Covid-19.

It is now clear that while older people, those with comorbidities, and those who are immunocompromised all benefited from Covid vaccines, there was little appetite to expand the vaccination crusade among healthy adults and none justified vaccinating healthy children. It wasted time and provided little more than a false sense of security.

However, to this day, neither the global medical nor media establishments are willing to acknowledge that they were often wrong. In a similar vein in South Africa, we have yet to see those who were arguing for legislated mandatory vaccinations— including leading medical ethicists, as well as the influential, constitutional guru Prof Pierre de Vos — concede that they got it nightmarishly wrong.

In 2022, Cochrane Reviews, considered the popular gold of medical studies, commissioned two renowned Oxford scientists to conduct a systematic review of the studies that had been used to justify the masking studies. They found that the quality of many of the studies was “appalling. “and failed to locate intelligent, quality evidence on the effectiveness of masks.

Their “incorrect,” i. e. , shameful, conclusions have provoked an educational and bureaucratic firestorm. Considerable pressure was put on the Cochrane Reviews to withdraw the study (which was not the case) and the authors, Dr Tom Jefferson and Professor Carl Heneghan, were criticised in the media and their studies were misrepresented before a US House of Representatives committee through the Director of the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

The CDC still maintains its “we know best” position. When an organization of scientists, selected through the CDC to update their hospital-acquired infection protocol, recently came to conclusions they didn’t like: that the evidence suggests there’s no difference in effectiveness. between N95 respirators and a reasonable surgical mask for infection: The CDC did not replace its protocol. Instead, he asked the panel to step aside and rework its findings.

Medical and media establishments have come to terms with the Covid pandemic. Worse, they haven’t learned anything from it.

Nor should his waning influence be surprising. To regain the public’s trust, they want to get back to basics: evidence-based medicine and impartial journalism. How complicated can it be?

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