State power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force. The state can train subjects, but it can never develop free people who take their affairs into their own hands, for independent thought is the greatest danger that it has to fear.
--Rudolf Rocker
The Pressure Campaign on Spotify to Remove Joe Rogan Reveals the Religion of Liberals: Censorship
All
factions, at certain points, succumb to the impulse to censor. But for
the Democratic Party's liberal adherents, silencing their adversaries
has become their primary project.
Joe
Rogan interviews Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Aug. 6, 2019, roughly
six months before he endorsed the Vermont independent for president.
American liberals are obsessed
with finding ways to silence and censor their adversaries. Every week,
if not every day, they have new targets they want de-platformed, banned,
silenced, and otherwise prevented from speaking or being heard (by
"liberals,” I mean the term of self-description used by the dominant wing of the Democratic Party).
For
years, their preferred censorship tactic was to expand and distort the
concept of "hate speech” to mean "views that make us uncomfortable,” and
then demand that such “hateful” views be prohibited on that basis. For
that reason, it is now common to hear Democrats assert, falsely,
that the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech does not protect
“hate speech." Their political culture has long inculcated them to
believe that they can comfortably silence whatever views they
arbitrarily place into this category without being guilty of censorship.
Constitutional
illiteracy to the side, the “hate speech” framework for justifying
censorship is now insufficient because liberals are eager to silence a
much broader range of voices than those they can credibly accuse of
being hateful. That is why the newest, and now most popular, censorship
framework is to claim that their targets are guilty of spreading
“misinformation” or “disinformation.” These terms, by design, have no
clear or concise meaning. Like the term “terrorism,” it is their
elasticity that makes them so useful.
When liberals’ favorite media outlets, from CNN and NBC to The New York Times and The Atlantic, spend four years disseminating
one fabricated Russia story after the next — from the Kremlin hacking
into Vermont's heating system and Putin's sexual blackmail over Trump to
bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, the Biden email archive being "Russian disinformation,” and a magical mystery weapon
that injures American brains with cricket noises — none of that is
"disinformation” that requires banishment. Nor are false claims that
COVID's origin has proven to be zoonotic rather than a lab leak, the
vastly overstated claim that vaccines prevent transmission of COVID, or
that Julian Assange stole classified documents
and caused people to die. Corporate outlets beloved by liberals are
free to spout serious falsehoods without being deemed guilty of
disinformation, and, because of that, do so routinely.
This
"disinformation" term is reserved for those who question liberal
pieties, not for those devoted to affirming them. That is the real
functional definition of “disinformation” and of its little cousin,
“misinformation.” It is not possible to disagree with liberals or see
the world differently than they see it. The only two choices are
unthinking submission to their dogma or acting as an agent of
"disinformation.” Dissent does not exist to them; any deviation from
their worldview is inherently dangerous — to the point that it cannot be
heard.
The data proving
a deeply radical authoritarian strain in Trump-era Democratic Party
politics is ample and have been extensively reported here. Democrats overwhelmingly trust and love the FBI and CIA. Polls show they overwhelmingly favor censorship of the internet not only by Big Tech oligarchs but also by the state. Leading Democratic Party politicians have repeatedly subpoenaed social media executives and explicitly threatened them
with legal and regulatory reprisals if they do not censor more
aggressively — a likely violation of the First Amendment given decades
of case law ruling that state officials are barred from coercing private
actors to censor for them, in ways the Constitution prohibits them from
doing directly.
Given
the climate prevailing in the American liberal faction, this
authoritarianism is anything but surprising. For those who convince
themselves that they are not battling mere political opponents with a
different ideology but a fascist movement led by a Hitler-like figure
bent on imposing totalitarianism — a core, defining belief of modern-day
Democratic Party politics — it is virtually inevitable that they will
embrace authoritarianism. When a political movement is subsumed by fear —
the Orange Hitler will put you in camps and end democracy if he wins
again — then it is not only expected but even rational to embrace
authoritarian tactics including censorship to stave off this existential
threat. Fear always breeds authoritarianism, which is why manipulating
and stimulating that human instinct is the favorite tactic of political
demagogues.
And when it comes to authoritarian tactics, censorship
has become the liberals’ North Star. Every week brings news of a newly
banished heretic. Liberals cheered the news last week that Google's
YouTube permanently banned
the extremely popular video channel of conservative commentator Dan
Bongino. His permanent ban was imposed for the crime of announcing that,
moving forward, he would post all of his videos exclusively on the free speech video platform Rumble
after he received a seven-day suspension from Google's overlords for
spreading supposed COVID “disinformation.” What was Bongino's prohibited
view that prompted that suspension? He claimed cloth masks do not work to stop the spread of COVID, a view shared by numerous experts and, at least in part, by the CDC.
When Bongino disobeyed the seven-day suspension by using an alternative
YouTube channel to announce his move to Rumble, liberals cheered
Google's permanent ban because the only thing liberals hate more than
platforms that allow diverse views are people failing to obey rules
imposed by corporate authorities.
It is not hyperbole to observe
that there is now a concerted war on any platforms devoted to free
discourse and which refuse to capitulate to the demands of Democratic
politicians and liberal activists to censor. The spear of the attack are
corporate media outlets, who demonize and try to render radioactive any
platforms that allow free speech to flourish. When Rumble announced
that a group of free speech advocates — including myself, former
Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, comedian Bridget Phetasy, former
Sanders campaign videographer Matt Orfalea and journalist Zaid Jilani —
would produce video content for Rumble, The Washington Post immediately published a hit piece,
relying exclusively on a Google-and-Facebook-aligned so-called
"disinformation expert” to malign Rumble as "one of the main platforms
for conspiracy communities and far-right communities in the U.S. and
around the world” and a place “where conspiracies thrive," all caused by
Rumble's "allowing such videos to remain on the site unmoderated.” (The
narrative about Rumble is particularly bizarre since its Canadian
founder and still-CEO, Chris Pavlovski created Rumble in 2013 with apolitical goals
— to allow small content creators abandoned by YouTube to monetize
their content — and is very far from an adherent to right-wing
ideology).
The same attack was launched, and is still underway,
against Substack, also for the crime of refusing to ban writers deemed
by liberal corporate outlets and activists to be hateful and/or fonts of
disinformation. After the first wave of liberal attacks on Substack failed — that script was that it is a place for anti-trans animus and harassment — The Post returned this week for round two, with a paint-by-numbers hit piece
virtually identical to the one it published last year about Rumble.
“Newsletter company Substack is making millions off anti-vaccine
content, according to estimates,” blared the sub-headline. “Prominent
figures known for spreading misinformation, such as [Joseph] Mercola,
have flocked to Substack, podcasting platforms and a growing number of
right-wing social media networks over the past year after getting kicked
off or restricted on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube,” warned the Post. It is, evidently, extremely dangerous to society for voices to still be heard once Google decrees they should not be.
This Post
attack on Substack predictably provoked expressions of Serious Concern
from good and responsible liberals. That included Chelsea Clinton, who
lamented that Substack is profiting off a “grift.” Apparently, this
political heiress — who is one of the world's richest individuals by
virtue of winning the birth lottery of being born to rich and powerful
parents, who in turn enriched themselves by cashing in on their political influence in exchange for $750,000 paychecks from Goldman Sachs for 45-minute speeches, and who herself somehow was showered with a $600,000 annual contract from NBC News despite no qualifications — believes she is in a position to accuse others
of "grifting.” She also appears to believe that — despite welcoming
convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to her wedding to a
hedge fund oligarch whose father was expelled from Congress after his
conviction on thirty-one counts of felony fraud — she is entitled to
decree who should and should not be allowed to have a writing platform:
This Post-manufactured
narrative about Substack instantly metastasized throughout the liberal
sect of media. “Anti-vaxxers making ‘at least $2.5m’ a year from
publishing on Substack,” read the headline of The Guardian, the paper that in 2018 published the outright lie
that Julian Assange met twice with Paul Manafort inside the Ecuadorian
Embassy and refuses to this day to retract it (i.e., “disinformation").
Like The Post, the British paper cited one of the seemingly
endless number of shady pro-censorship groups — this one calling itself
the “Center for Countering Digital Hate” — to argue for greater
censorship by Substack. “They could just say no,” said the group's
director, who has apparently convinced himself he should be able to
dictate what views should and should not be aired: “This isn’t about
freedom; this is about profiting from lies. . . . Substack should
immediately stop profiting from medical misinformation that can
seriously harm readers.”
The emerging campaign to pressure Spotify
to remove Joe Rogan from its platform is perhaps the most illustrative
episode yet of both the dynamics at play and the desperation of liberals
to ban anyone off-key. It was only a matter of time before this effort
really galvanized in earnest. Rogan has simply become too influential,
with too large of an audience of young people,
for the liberal establishment to tolerate his continuing to act up.
Prior efforts to coerce, cajole, or manipulate Rogan to fall into line
were abject failures. Shortly after The Wall Street Journal reportedin
September, 2020 that Spotify employees were organizing to demand that
some of Rogan's shows be removed from the platform, Rogan invited Alex Jones onto his show: a rather strong statement that he was unwilling to obey decrees about who he could interview or what he could say.
On Tuesday, musician Neil Young demanded
that Spotify either remove Rogan from its platform or cease featuring
Young's music, claiming Rogan spreads COVID disinformation. Spotify predictably sided
with Rogan, their most popular podcaster in whose show they invested
$100 million, by removing Young's music and keeping Rogan. The pressure
on Spotify mildly intensified on Friday when singer Joni Mitchell issued a similar demand. Allsortsofcensorship-madliberalscelebrated this effort to remove Rogan, then vowed to cancel their Spotify subscription in protest of Spotify's refusal to capitulate for now; a hashtagurging the deletion of Spotify's app trended for days. Many bizarrely urged that everyone buy music from Apple instead; apparently, handing over your cash to one of history's largest and richest corporations, repeatedly linked to the use of slave labor, is the liberal version of subversive social justice.
Obviously,
Spotify is not going to jettison one of their biggest audience draws
over a couple of faded septuagenarians from the 1960s. But if a current
major star follows suit, it is not difficult to imagine a snowball
effect. The goal of liberals with this tactic is to take any disobedient
platform and either force it into line or punish it by drenching it
with such negative attacks that nobody who craves acceptance in the
parlors of Decent Liberal Society will risk being associated with it.
“Prince Harry was under pressure to cut ties with Spotify yesterday
after the streaming giant was accused of promoting anti-vax content,” claimedThe Daily Mail which, reliable or otherwise, is a certain sign of things to come.
One
could easily envision a tipping point being reached where a musician no
longer makes an anti-Rogan statement by leaving the platform as Young
and Mitchell just did, but instead will be accused of harboring
pro-Rogan sentiments if they stay on Spotify. With the stock price of
Spotify declining as these recent controversies around Rogan unfolded, a
strategy in which Spotify is forced to choose between keeping Rogan or
losing substantial musical star power could be more viable than it
currently seems. “Spotify lost $4 billion in market value this week
after rock icon Neil Young
called out the company for allowing comedian Joe Rogan to use its
service to spread misinformation about the COVID vaccine on his popular
podcast, 'The Joe Rogan Experience,’” is how The San Francisco Chronicle put it
(that Spotify's stock price dropped rather precipitously
contemporaneously with this controversy is clear; less so is the causal
connection, though it seems unlikely to be entire coincidental):
It is worth recalling that NBC News, in January, 2017, announced
that it had hired Megyn Kelly away from Fox News with a $69 million
contract. The network had big plans for Kelly, whose first show debuted
in June of that year. But barely more than a year later, Kelly's
comments about blackface — in which she rhetorically wondered whether
the notorious practice could be acceptable in the modern age with the
right intent: such as a young white child paying homage to a beloved
African-American sports or cultural figure on Halloween — so enraged
liberals, both inside the now-liberal network and externally, that they
demanded her firing. NBC decided it was worth firing Kelly — on whom
they had placed so many hopes — and eating her enormous contract in
order to assuage widespread liberal indignation. “The cancellation of
the ex-Fox News host’s glossy morning show is a reminder that networks
need to be more stringent when assessing the politics of their hirings,”
proclaimedThe Guardian.
Democrats
are not only the dominant political faction in Washington, controlling
the White House and both houses of Congress, but liberals in particular
are clearly the hegemonic culture force in key institutions: media,
academia and Hollywood. That is why it is a mistake to assume that we
are near the end of their orgy of censorship and de-platforming
victories. It is far more likely that we are much closer to the
beginning than the end. The power to silence others is intoxicating.
Once one gets a taste of its power, they rarely stop on their own.
Indeed,
it was once assumed that Silicon Valley giants steeped in the
libertarian ethos of a free internet would be immune to demands to
engage in political censorship ("content moderation” is the more
palatable euphemism which liberal corporate media outlets prefer). But
when the still-formidable megaphones of The New York Times, The Washington Post,
NBC News, CNN and the rest of the liberal media axis unite to accuse
Big Tech executives of having blood on their hands and being responsible
for the destruction of American democracy, that is still an effective
enforcement mechanism. Billionaires are, like all humans, social and
political animals and instinctively avoid ostracization and societal
scorn.
Beyond the personal interest in avoiding vilification,
corporate executives can be made to censor against their will and in
violation of their political ideology out of self-interest. The
corporate media still has the ability to render a company toxic, and the
Democratic Party more now than ever has the power to abuse their
lawmaking and regulatory powers to impose real punishment for
disobedience, as it has repeatedly threatened to do. If Facebook or
Spotify are deemed to be so toxic that no Good Liberals can use them
without being attacked as complicit in fascism, white supremacy or
anti-vax fanaticism, then that will severely limit, if not entirely
sabotage, a company's future viability.
The one bright spot in all
this — and it is a significant one — is that liberals have become such
extremists in their quest to silence all adversaries that they are
generating their own backlash, based in disgust for their tyrannical
fanaticism. In response to the Post attack, Substack issued a gloriously defiant statement
re-affirming its commitment to guaranteeing free discourse. They also
repudiated the hubristic belief that they are competent to act as
arbiters of Truth and Falsity, Good and Bad. “Society has a trust
problem. More censorship will only make it worse,” read the headline on
the post from Substack's founders. The body of their post reads like a
free speech manifesto:
That’s why, as we face growing
pressure to censor content published on Substack that to some seems
dubious or objectionable, our answer remains the same: we make decisions
based on principles not PR, we will defend free expression, and we will
stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation. While we have content guidelines
that allow us to protect the platform at the extremes, we will always
view censorship as a last resort, because we believe open discourse is
better for writers and better for society.
A lengthy Twitter thread
from Substack's Vice President of Communications, Lulu Cheng Meservey
was similarly encouraging and assertive. "I'm proud of our decision to
defend free expression, even when it’s hard," she wrote, adding:
"because: 1) We want a thriving ecosystem full of fresh and diverse
ideas. That can’t happen without the freedom to experiment, or even to
be wrong.” Regarding demands to de-platform those allegedly spreading
COVID disinformation, she pointedly — and accurately — noted: “If
everyone who has ever been wrong about this pandemic were silenced,
there would be no one left talking about it at all.” And she, too,
affirmed principles that every actual, genuine liberal — not the Nancy Pelosi kind — reflexively supports:
People
already mistrust institutions, media, and each other. Knowing that
dissenting views are being suppressed makes that mistrust worse.
Withstanding scrutiny makes truths stronger, not weaker. We made a
promise to writers that this is a place they can pursue what they find
meaningful, without coddling or controlling. We promised we wouldn’t
come between them and their audiences. And we intend to keep our side of
the agreement for every writer that keeps theirs, to think for
themselves. They tend not to be conformists, and they have the
confidence and strength of conviction not to be threatened by views that
disagree with them or even disgust them.
This is becoming increasingly rare.
The U.K.'s Royal Society, its national academy of scientists, this month echoed Substack's view
that censorship, beyond its moral dimensions and political dangers, is
ineffective and breeds even more distrust in pronouncements by
authorities. “Governments and social media platforms should not rely on
content removal for combatting harmful scientific misinformation
online." "There is,” they concluded, "little evidence that calls for
major platforms to remove offending content will limit scientific
misinformation’s harms” and "such measures could even drive it to
harder-to-address corners of the internet and exacerbate feelings of distrust in authorities.”
As both Rogan's success and collapsing faith
and interest in traditional corporate media outlets prove, there is a
growing hunger for discourse that is liberated from the tight controls
of liberal media corporations and their petulant, herd-like employees.
That is why other platforms devoted to similar principles of free
discourse, such as Rumble for videos and Callin for podcasts, continue
to thrive. It is certain that those platforms will continue to be
targeted by institutional liberalism as they grow and allow more
dissidents and heretics to be heard. Time will tell if they, too, will
resist these censorship pressures, but the combination of genuine
conviction on the part of their founders and managers, combined with the
clear market opportunities for free speech platforms and heterodox
thinkers, provides ample ground for optimism.
None of this is to
suggest that American liberals are the only political faction that
succumbs to the strong temptations of censorship. Liberals often point
to the growing fights over public school curricula and particularly the
conservative campaign to exclude so-called Critical Race Theory from the
public schools as proof that the American Right is also a
pro-censorship faction. That is a poor example. Censorship is about what
adults can hear, not what children are taught in public schools.
Liberals crusaded for decades to have creationism banned from the public
schools and largely succeeded,
yet few would suggest this was an act of censorship. For the reason I
just gave, I certainly would not define it that way. Fights over what
children should and should not be taught can have a censorship dimension
but usually do not, precisely because limits and prohibitions in school
curricula are inevitable.
In
sum, censorship — once the province of the American Right during the
heyday of the Moral Majority of the 1980s — now occurs in isolated
instances in that faction. In modern-day American liberalism, however,
censorship is a virtual religion. They simply cannot abide the idea that
anyone who thinks differently or sees the world differently than they
should be heard. That is why there is much more at stake in this
campaign to have Rogan removed from Spotify than whether this extremely
popular podcast host will continue to be heard there or on another
platform. If liberals succeed in pressuring Spotify to abandon their
most valuable commodity, it will mean nobody is safe from their
petty-tyrant tactics. But if they fail, it can embolden other platforms
to similarly defy these bullying tactics, keeping our discourse a bit
more free for just awhile longer.
NOTE: Tonight
at 7 pm EST, I will discuss the Rogan censorship campaign and the
broader implications of the liberal fixation with censorship on my live
Callin podcast. For now, live shows can be heard only with an iPhone and
the Callin app — the app will be very shortly available on Androids for
universal use — but all shows can be heard by everyone immediately
after they are broadcast on the Callin website, here.
Reality is the kryptonite of the Left, sapping its superpowers of coercion and persecution which — get this — are the only
abilities it cares about. The Left only pretends to want to make the
world a better place. It doesn’t care about governing, y’know, managing
national affairs, and it wouldn’t know how — as no one has demonstrated
better than “Joe Biden” and the shadowy wrecking crew running him behind
the scenes. The Left actually just seeks to punish its adversaries, and
it generates ever-new adversities and animosities in its quest to lay
on more punishments, the more sadistic the better. Thus, the
never-ending Covid-19 melodrama, which provides such an excellent excuse
for torturing the populace. The Left’s motto: the beatings will continue until morale improves!
Reality is intruding now, though, with the help of its twin sister,
Truth. Particular truths are emerging to fortify reality and weaken the
Left’s efforts to beat-down the peoples of Western Civ. For instance,
the implacable truth that the mRNA vaccines don’t work and that they
gravely injure people. In the face of this obvious reality, government
and corporations persist in their irrational campaigns to vaxx-up every
last man-woman-and-child. Why, at this point, despite all the free
Kit-Kat bars you could stuff down your craw, would any sane employee of
the Hershey’s Chocolate empire opt for a vaxx that could make you stroke
out at your desk? The ridiculous official answer, of course, is: to protect the already-vaccinated. Sshh-yeah, right….
Ditto, the unfortunate, put-upon citizens of Austria, such a tidy
little country, too, and so hopelessly lost in its daze of mass
formation psychosis. This week, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, the UK,
and Ireland are dropping all Covid-19 restrictions and impositions,
while Austria makes its vaxx mandate a national law. (How many Austrians
are secretly studying Hungarian now?) The cognitive dissonance must be
unbearable, like a kind of 5G-induced tinnitus that afflicts an entire
population, making them want to bang their heads against the nearest
wall.
Likewise, the absurd government of Canada, led by the clueless ponce
Justin Trudeau, who refuses to take his patent-leather go-go boot off
the neck of Canadian truckers. The truckers aren’t having it anymore, of
course, and neither are the towing services that the government is
trying to enlist to get rid of the truckers’ trucks. Meanwhile, the
premiers of Saskatchewan and Alberta provinces have thrown in the towel
on Covid-19 restrictions, leaving Mr. Trudeau in his
fortress-of-solitude, exact whereabouts unknown, desperately hurling
objurgations at the “racists, Islamophobes, and transphobes” seeking to
end his career as a turbaned, cross-dressing, blackface political
entertainer.
And also likewise, the “progressive” sadists on the Loudoun County,
VA, school board, who refuse to lift their cruel and stupid mask mandate
on schoolchildren, despite Governor Glenn Youngkin’s recent executive
order to cut it out. The school board sadists surely don’t care about
the kids. Everybody from the Johns Hopkins Med School to The Atlantic magazine
— to even the lost-in-space CDC —have admitted that wearing face-masks
is pointless. Not to mention that Covid-19 has been reduced to the wimpy
omicron variant, plus the truth that the incidence of serious illness
in children from Covid-19 of any kind is near-zero. So, why keep the
kids in masks? For the pleasure of making them miserable and flaunting
their power over the kids’ parents. This is how the Left rolls.
Now, as a general proposition, you can bet that the reason the Left
wants to keep the Covid-19 scare going as long as possible is in order
to keep in place the “emergency” mail-in voting allowances that so
easily enable ballot harvesting and other election frauds. Alas, the
timing on this doesn’t look good for them. The rapid omicron up-spike
has turned into a rapid down-spike. The goldurned thing is vanishing in
the winter mist. By early March there may be no actual Covid
on-the-scene… omigosh… and then what? The midterms are yet months away, and if there’s no emergency….
Well, I dunno. It’s not beyond imagining that the Left and its
mysterious sponsors out there in the mythical matrix of sinister global
interests will send yet another new coronavirus variant down the chute
to keep the worldwide scare going so as to complete the ruin of Western
Civ. It’d have to be a humdinger, though, something, say, that made
folks bleed out of their ears, nostrils, and eye sockets — because
otherwise, at this point, the people are done with lockdowns, forced
vaxxes, mask mandates, green passes, and other social control nonsense,
and would opt to just get on with what remains of normal life in this
twilight of empire.
Looks like the backup plan is for “Joe Biden’s” geniuses in the
foreign affairs and intel bureaucracy to start a war with Russia over
Ukraine, our dearest ally in the whole wide world (not). Yesterday,
State Department spox Ned Price floated up a raggedy balloon about
Russia pulling a “false flag” stunt in Ukraine’s Donbass frontier to get
things going. It sounded like he was just making shit up. And he was
conspicuously short on details. “Our intel people something something, blah blah….”
Skeptical reporters shot the balloon down with a few barbed remarks —
the darn thing just zinged around the press room with the air rushing
out and crashed on the spox’s podium — suggesting that even the news
media is tired of its role in the controlled demolition of our country.
More likely, though, the financial scaffold of Late Modernity gives
way under the burden of rackets and Ponzis it has been asked to support.
This week, Facebook (a.k.a. Meta) scored the world record for biggest
single-day market value drop ever, shedding $232-billion in capital
losses. You go, Zuck! The Everything Bubble has achieved supernova scale
and everybody knows she’s gonna blow as soon as Jay Powell lifts the
Fed Funds rate twenty-five basis points. When that finally happens,
things get realer than real and Truth comes marching in like the saints
with bells on. It’ll be the Left’s Masque of the Red Death… ashes, ashes, all fall down.
The actual global economy itself — the thing that sends, you know, products
from one place to another — is seizing up like the engine on a beater
1998 Buick Regal. Long about right now, lots of things are not
going from point A to Point B, including stuff of a food nature. It’s
starting to irk the home-folks. When all that goes south, you’ll hear no
more about Covid-19, systemic racism, the patriarchy, the drag queen
story hour, and all the other hobgoblins that infest the Left’s gospel
garden of Wokery. The kryptonite is coming on hard. They are done… and
for the moment we are stuck with them running the country.
They rolled up on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill like one of the plagues in
the Book of Revelations, honking their infernal air horns, the grills
of their tractors grinning demonically, the sides of their dry vans
painted with blasphemies like “FREEDOM TO CHOOSE,” “MANDATE FREEDOM,”
“NO VACCINE MANDATES,” and “UNITED AGAINST TYRANNY.”
Yes, that’s right, New Normal Canada has been invaded and now is
under siege by hordes of transphobic Putin-Nazi truckers, racist
homophobes, anti-Semitic Islamaphobes, and other members of the working
classes!
And, in light of the exposure of Putin’s plot to produce a “very graphic” false-flag video
“involving the deployment of corpses” as a pretext to invade the
Ukraine and set off nuclear Armageddon, or at least a raft of economic
sanctions and DEFCON 1-level bellicose verbiage, it’s possible that the
entire “Covid pandemic” was an elaborate Putin-Nazi ruse designed to
bring down the Trudeau government, and sabotage the implementation of
the New Normal global-segregation system, and the compulsory mRNA
“vaccination” of every man, woman, and child on earth, and “democracy,”
and transgender rights … or whatever.
But, seriously, this is where we are at the moment. We are in that
dangerous, absurdist end-stage of the collapse of a totalitarian system
or movement where chaos reigns and anything can happen. The official
Covid narrative is rapidly evaporating. More and more people are taking to the streets to demand an end to whole fascist charade
… no, not “transphobic white supremacists” or “anti-vax extremists,” or
“Russian-backed Nazis,” but working-class people of all colors and
creeds, families, with children, all over the world.
The Covidian Cult has lost control.
Even hardcore mask-wearing, social-distancing,
triple-vaxxed-double-boosted members are defecting. Formerly fanatical
New Normal fascists are mass-deleting their 2020 tweets and switching
uniforms as fast as they can. No, it isn’t over yet, but the jig is up,
and GloboCap knows it. And their functionaries in government know it.
And therein lies the current danger.
There is a narrow window — a month or two, maybe — for governments to
declare “victory over the virus” and roll back their segregation
systems, mask-wearing mandates, “vaccine” mandates, and the rest of the
so-called “Covid restrictions.” Many governments are already doing so,
England, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Ireland, etc.
They have seen which way the wind is blowing, and they are rushing to
dismantle the New Normal in their countries before … well, you know,
before a convoy of angry truckers arrives at their doors.
If they let that happen, they will find themselves in the unenviable
position that Trudeau is now in. The Canadian truckers appear to be
serious about staying there until their demands are met, which means
Trudeau only has two options: (1) give in to the truckers’ demands, or
(2) attempt to remove them by force. There’s already talk about bringing in the military.
Imagine what an unholy mess that would be. Odds are, the military would
disobey his orders, and, if not, the world would be treated to the
spectacle of full-blown New Normal Fascism in action.
Either way, Trudeau is history, as long as the truckers stand their
ground. I pray they do not give an inch, and I hope the leaders of other
New Normal countries, like Australia, Germany, Austria, Italy, and
France, are paying close attention.
Some of my readers will probably remember a previous column in which I wrote:
“This isn’t an abstract argument
over ‘the science.’ It is a fight … a political, ideological fight. On
one side is democracy, on the other is totalitarianism. Pick a fucking
side, and live with it.”
This is it. This is that fight. It is not a protest. It is a game of
chicken. A high-stakes game of political chicken. In the end, politics
comes down to power. The power to force your will on your adversary.
GloboCap has been forcing the New Normal on people around the world for
the past two years. What we are witnessing in Canada is the power of the
people, the power the people have always had, and which we will always
have, when we decide to use it … the power to shut down the whole
GloboCap show, city after city if necessary.
So get out there and support the Canadian transphobic Putin-Nazi
truckers … or your local transphobic Putin-Nazi truckers. Don’t worry if
you don’t have a swastika flag. The agents provocateurs and the
official propagandists in the corporate media will take care of that!
Martin Schotz, a respected
Massachusetts-based author on the assassination of President Kennedy,
explores the systematic basis for Cold War logic.
The Cold War is back with a vengeance. The current impasse between
the United States and Russia over the Ukraine crisis is running the risk
of an all-out war in Europe, a war that could escalate into nuclear
Armageddon. The crisis is wholly manufactured by Washington’s
geopolitical power calculations – claims made against Russia about
planning to invade Ukraine are baseless if not absurd. The impasse
reflects an impoverishment of diplomacy and respect for international
law, and a reckless tendency to militarize bilateral relations. This is
the manifestation of Cold War thinking, primarily on the U.S. side.
In the following interview, Martin Schotz, a respected
Massachusetts-based author on the assassination of President John F
Kennedy, explores the systematic basis for Cold War logic. He contends
that the United States’ political class is locked in an entrenched Cold
War mentality that serves its hyper-militarized economy. Cold War
politics necessitates conflict and war in international relations, which
is all too clearly demonstrated by the present crisis over Ukraine
between the U.S. and Russia.
The depth of this Cold War logic of the accompanying national
security state is illustrated by the shocking murder of President John F
Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. His murderers and the
institutional coverup that followed were motivated by Kennedy’s growing
opposition to the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The fact of JFK’s
murder and the systematic denial by media is an indication of how deeply
engrained Cold War thinking is in the American political establishment.
That embedded logic explains why U.S. relations with Russia continue to
be dominated by seemingly irrational hostility. Why do peaceful
relations seem so elusive, so relentlessly thwarted? Is it really
because of malign Russians?
The inability of the Biden administration, or any U.S. administration
for that matter, to conduct normal, peaceful, diplomatic relations with
Russia within the bounds of the UN Charter and international law is
down to the intransigent Cold War logic of the American imperial state.
More than 58 years after the brutal murder of Kennedy, the imperial
state persists more than ever as can be seen in the reckless hostility
by Washington towards Moscow, as well as towards Beijing, Tehran,
Havana, Bogota and others designated as “enemies” of presumed U.S.
hegemony.
Martin Schotz co-authored the seminal bookHistory Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy (1996). It is widely acclaimed as a definitive record of how and why the state murdered Kennedy.
Schotz, MD, retired, previously practiced psychiatry in Boston. He
has a BA in Mathematics from Carleton College, and an MD from the
University of Pennsylvania. Following training in Adult and Child
Psychiatry at Boston University Medical Center, he was a graduate
student in the University Professors Program at Boston University. In
addition to practicing psychiatry, he is a playwright, essayist, short
story writer, and amateur jazz drummer.
He writes for the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord, as well as Massachusetts Peace Action. A recent article is entitled “Understanding and Resisting the New Cold War”.
An important theme
for Schotz is the political and societal effects on the United States
from the mass denial that continues in relation to Kennedy’s murder.
From his 1996 book cited above is this profound insight which is as
relevant today as it ever was:
“As citizens who have turned away for thirty years [now nearly sixty
years] from the truth of the murder of our elected head of state, we
should not be surprised that today we find our nation in intellectual,
political, and moral chaos. Confronting the truth of President Kennedy’s
assassination and its coverup is but one small step on a long path out
of that chaos and toward healing, a path along which we must confront
the true nature of our democracy and the reality of what our nation has
become for its own citizens and for people throughout the world. Such a
process of healing is not pleasant. It is a difficult and painful path,
but it is a necessary one. History will not absolve us.”
Interview
Question: You are a long-time observer of Cold War
politics between the United States and the former Soviet Union. How
would you compare the current deterioration and tensions in relations
between the U.S.-led Western states and Russia?
Martin Schotz: I’m afraid, if anything, I would say
matters are worse because of the deterioration of conditions in the
United States. On the one hand, we have the ever-growing control of the
Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Think Tank Complex.
Both major parties are wedded to the military establishment and espouse
Cold War propaganda with little dissent. When you combine this with the
weakening influence of the liberal establishment and the growing openly
fascist movement that combines the Republican Party and white supremacy
there seems to be tremendous potential for instability in this country.
The peace movement, such as it is, needs to reach out for support and
allies wherever it can. And we need to keep in mind Martin Luther King
Junior’s concept of “agape”, that is, faith in the capacity of your enemy to be transformed.
Question: The Cold War was supposed to have ended
nearly 30 years ago with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why do you
think it persists three decades on in the form of fraught and hostile
relations between Washington and Moscow?
Martin Schotz: In my opinion, it is a myth that the
Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Cold War from
the beginning was always about U.S./Western hegemony. No other system
can be permitted to exist that might be an alternative to the capitalist
system. When the Soviet Union collapsed, somehow Cuba didn’t. And
because Cuba represents another way – another economic and political
system, true national sovereignty, etc., – the U.S. continued to
demonize Cuba and kept its embargo intact. To me, this is evidence that
the Cold War didn’t end. At the time of the collapse of the Soviet
Union, it wasn’t so clear what direction China would be moving in. And
the Cold Warriors probably thought they might be able to bring China
into the U.S.-dominated capitalist system. Of course, they assumed that
Russia would be part of the system with Yeltsin and his successors. But
when China decided to pursue its own course and Russia re-emerged under
Vladimir Putin, the Cold War, which had been up to then somewhat quiet,
suddenly flared up again. There is a quote from prominent Cold War
diplomat and historian George Kennan from the 1980s in which he deplored
the establishment’s negative view of the USSR that could be written
today. All you have to do is take the passage and substitute “Russia”
for “Soviet Union”. Here is a long quote from Kennan’s bookThe Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American Relations in the Atomic Age (1982):
“I find the view of the Soviet Union that prevails today in large
portions of our governmental and journalistic establishments so extreme,
so subjective, so far removed from what any sober scrutiny of external
reality would reveal, that it is not only ineffective but dangerous as a
guide to political action.
“This endless series of distortions and oversimplifications; this
systematic dehumanization of the leadership of another great country;
this routine exaggeration of Moscow’s military capabilities and of the
supposed iniquity of Soviet intentions: this monotonous
misrepresentation of the nature and the attitudes of another great
people – and a long-suffering people at that, sorely tried by the
vicissitudes of this past century; this ignoring of their pride, their
hopes – yes, even of their illusions (for they have their illusions,
just as we have ours, and illusions too, deserve respect); this reckless
application of the double standard to the judgment of Soviet conduct
and our own, this failure to recognize, finally, the communality of many
of their problems and ours as we both move inexorably into the modern
technological age: and the corresponding tendency to view all aspects of
the relationship in terms of a supposed total and irreconcilable
conflict of concerns and of aims; these, I believe, are not the marks of
the maturity and discrimination one expects of the diplomacy of a great
power; they are the marks of an intellectual primitivism and naivety
unpardonable in a great government. I use the word naivety, because
there is the naivety of cynicism and suspicion, just as there is the
naivety of innocence.
“And we shall not be able to turn these things around as they should
be turned, on the plane of military and nuclear rivalry, until we learn
to correct these childish distortions – until we correct our tendency to
see in the Soviet Union only a mirror in which we look for the
reflection of our own virtue – until we consent to see there another
great people, one of the world’s greatest, in all its complexity and
variety, embracing the good with the bad, a people whose life, whose
views, whose habits, whose fears and aspirations, whose successes and
failures, are the products, just as ours are the products, not of any
inherent iniquity but of the relentless discipline of history,
tradition, and national experience. If we insist on demonizing these
Soviet leaders – on viewing them as total and incorrigible enemies,
consumed only with their fear and hatred of us and dedicated to nothing
other than our destruction – that, in the end, is the way we shall
assuredly have them, if for no other reason than that our view of them
allows for nothing else, either for them or for us.”
Question: As the author yourself of a
ground-breaking book on the assassination of President John F Kennedy,
you argue that he was murdered by powerful U.S. state elements precisely
because Kennedy was beginning to seriously challenge Cold War policies.
Can you elaborate on some of the peace initiatives that he was
embarking on with his Soviet counterparts?
Martin Schotz: Kennedy went through a gradual and
ultimately radical transformation over the three years of his
presidency. He initially as a senator had made a speech against
colonialism that had raised some eyebrows, but during the campaign for
the presidency, he seemed to be attacking Nixon from the right.
Eisenhower as he was leaving office had warned of the growing influence
of the military-industrial complex, and once Kennedy was in office it
didn’t take long before he began to tangle with the CIA and the
military. His refusal to allow U.S. forces to rescue the Bay of Pigs
invasion of Cuba in April 1961 was the first example. He tried to fire
Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, over Dulles’ deceit in the incident.
But as David Talbot’s book on Dulles, The Devil’s Chessboard,
demonstrates in great detail Dulles in fact continued to meet with his
associates even though Kennedy had officially removed him as director of
the agency. Then you had a little-known agreement signed between a
representative of Kennedy and a representative of then-Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev known as the McCloy-Zorin Agreement.
This outlined a plan for complete worldwide disarmament in stages. It
was brought to the UN and unanimously endorsed by the UN General
Assembly. At the time, I am not sure how seriously Kennedy took this
agreement. But you also have at this time the private correspondence
that Kennedy and Khrushchev were conducting, which allowed them to get a
better understanding of each other out of public view. Then you have
the Cuban Missile Crisis during October 1962. The pressure on Kennedy to
launch a war against Cuba and possibly a first strike on the Soviet
Union was enormous. But he resisted, showing great independence, and was
able to resolve the crisis by negotiating with Khrushchev. That crisis
was a real turning point. Kennedy saw how callous his military advisors
were to the possibility of millions of deaths in a war. The turning
point was quite radical. At this stage, I think the McCloy-Zorin
Agreement really started to mean something. Kennedy was reportedly
pressing his aides for plans for general disarmament in stages. Then in
June 1963, you have the American University speech.
This speech was a profound attempt on the part of the president to
start educating the American people on the subject of world peace. To me
it is perhaps the greatest speech by an American president and the
principles articulated in that speech are universal and eternal. Those
principles of mutual peace and coexistence, disarmament and an end to
militarism, are as relevant today as ever.
Question: You have pointed to the bold declaration
of peace by Kennedy in the American University speech in Washington DC
on June 10, 1963, as a watershed moment. In that 27-minute address,
President Kennedy talked about the pursuit of peace and an end to futile
Cold War animosity. Do you think that was the moment he signed his own
death warrant in the eyes of U.S. political enemies?
Martin Schotz: After the speech was delivered,
Khrushchev was so impressed by it that he had it reprinted throughout
the Soviet Union, so virtually every Soviet citizen knew about it. That
is something that needs to happen in the United States today. Amongst
other things, Kennedy announced in the speech a moratorium on nuclear
testing in the atmosphere and followed it by negotiating a test ban
treaty. Though the U.S. public opinion was initially solidly against the
treaty, Kennedy’s organizing and speeches won people over and the
treaty was approved by the Senate. So you have here a leader, the
president of the United States who is really part of the establishment
and has someone like John McCloy working on the one hand and he has
Norman Cousins working with him on the other hand. McCloy was as
establishment as you can get, and Cousins was one of the founders of the
Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. Cousins was Kennedy’s personal
emissary between himself, Pope John XXIII and Khrushchev. Cousins’ book, The Improbable Triumvirate,
is an important record of what was going on in 1963. Cousins was a
co-author of the American University speech. Well, you can see what a
radical turn was being taken against the Cold War. And the CIA and the
Military establishment were not about to have it. You know if Kennedy
had been given more time and the American people had really gotten more
of a taste for peace, a certain momentum might have developed.
Question: The JFK assassination is a profoundly
shocking revelation of U.S. state power; that an elected American
president was murdered by agents of the state on the grounds that he
wanted to normalize bilateral relations with the Soviet Union and
genuinely end the Cold War. Does that shocking, brutal elimination of a
U.S. president by his own state explain why bilateral relations have
remained dominated and distorted ever since by Cold War dogma?
Martin Schotz: Well, we not only have the president murdered by his own national security state, but we have the government issue an obviously fraudulent
report, the Warren Report. We also have the established institutions of
society, the media, the universities, and so on, they all turn away and
ignore the fact that this has happened. The President is murdered and
the government issues an obviously fraudulent report that is accepted.
What does that say about our society? John McCloy one of the Warren
Commission members was quoted as saying: “The primary purpose of the
Warren Commission was to prove that the United States was not a banana
republic, where a government could be changed by conspiracy.”
Question: Was there something of an echo of this
systematic hostility when former President Donald Trump vowed to pursue
more normal relations with Russia? His official encounters with
President Putin elicited howls of condemnation across the U.S. media. On
the surface, this disapproval of Trump’s outreach was said to be due to
“Russiagate” and alleged Russian interference in the U.S. 2016
presidential election, but would you agree that it was more due to a
deeper American state intransigence simply towards any kind of
normalization of relations between Washington and Moscow?
Martin Schotz: Nothing that Trump says means
anything as far as I am concerned. From my point of view, he can hardly
keep an idea in his head for more than a few minutes. So I don’t want to
give him any attention. “Russiagate” was a Democratic Party concoction
that was aimed at distracting from serious attention to how Hillary
Clinton had managed to lose to an imbecile. The real reason for her loss
was the abandonment over decades by the Democratic Party of its
working-class base. “Russiagate”, as Putin himself said, was really a
matter of U.S. domestic politics in which Russia was being used as a
scapegoat.
Question: It seems the United States’ modern
political formation is inherently and relentlessly driven by Cold War
thinking. Russia, China and other foreign states are designated enemies
by Washington often without credible justification. There seems to be a
permanent ideology of hostility and war in the U.S. as a nation-state.
What are the underlying causal reasons for this systematic mindset?
Martin Schotz: Over the years, the U.S. economy has
been increasingly militarized. So there needs to be a narrative that
justifies this war economy and that’s what we have. Military spending is
everywhere. It is in Hollywood. It is “defense contractors”, aka
“merchants of death”, buying congressional representatives. Then the
service that the military performs is to make the world safe for
unbridled corporate activity. It is a very daunting problem.
Question: Do you ever see the U.S. transcending its fixation on Cold War politics? What needs to change to make that happen?
Martin Schotz: What needs to happen is the political
leadership coming to the conclusion that we cannot dominate the world,
that we need the United Nations and we need international law. Can they
come to understand that none of the problems that are facing humanity
can be solved with military weapons? It is not beyond the realm of
possibility that sanity could reign. And it is the task of the peace
movement to reach as many people at all levels with this message.
How Many Pregnant Women Have Actually Died of COVID-19?
There follows a guest post by a Daily Sceptic reader,
who wishes to remain anonymous, who, being pregnant, was following
closely the advice and studies concerning pregnant women. However, her
own analysis of the reports on the deaths of pregnant women with
COVID-19 suggested that the alarming statistics about Covid in pregnancy
she was being provided with did not stack up.
As a pregnant woman, I have been following advice and studies that
concern this group closely. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly
difficult to find any balanced information amongst the blatant
propaganda. I am so sick of being told at every turn that ICU is full of
unvaccinated pregnant women. Below is an example of the stuff that gets
shared online by my local maternity team.
So I thought I would look at what stats MBRRACE had released lately.
They have two reports that caught my eye in particular: one on maternal
Covid deaths March-May 2020 (10 women) and another covering the period June 2020-March 2021 (17 women).
Despite being such a small group of people, I feel that each case is a
fascinating story that paints a dramatically different picture to that
portrayed by the media and the NHS. Here are some points that stood out
to me from each report
March-May 2020 (10 deaths)
None of the women who died received any actual treatment, just support.
Three of the ten women died because they were too scared to go to hospital.
Four
women died of suicide and not being able to access help was a factor (I
don’t think they were included in the ten deaths, but the insinuation
is that Covid restrictions contributed to their deaths).
Two
women were murdered by their partners, with health services already
knowing they were at risk (again, I don’t think they were included in
the ten, but the insinuation about restrictions is there again).
The
quote “pregnancy [sic] and postpartum women do not appear to be at
higher risk of severe COVID-19 than non-pregnant women” seems telling.
Only two women were classified as having received “good care”.
June 2020-March 2021 (17 deaths)
Three women did not even have Covid but died as a result of the side effects of restrictions.
Four women tested positive but died of unrelated causes – two of these women received poor care because of their Covid status.
60% of the women who actually died from Covid were obese and a further 20% were overweight.
50%
had pre-existing mental health conditions (personally I believe that
this both prevents women from being able to speak up for themselves and
creates a stigma that they are ‘difficult patients’).
One woman died at home of a urinary tract infection because no translator was available for her telephone appointment.
Four women died because they were too scared to go to hospital – one of these women sought no antenatal care at all and died after giving birth at home.
One woman died after being given painkillers for backache – she was only seen remotely by a GP so he or she couldn’t see she was both heavily pregnant and had sepsis.
Another woman died of sepsis from a miscarriage because doctors assumed she just had (asymptomatic) Covid.
A
woman died of obvious kidney/liver problems shortly after birth because
again, doctors bizarrely assumed she was actually suffering from Covid
following a positive routine test.
90% of the women who died had “care” that was not managed by the RCOG guidelines.
One woman was not given treatment despite poor clinical indications, as she did not “look sick”.
Three women who were very poorly and were considered for ECMO were denied this despite not having any contraindications.
One
woman died from a pulmonary embolism at home after her GP’s online
triage system did not recognise either her Covid status or recent
pregnancy as risk factors and didn’t give her an urgent appointment.
Only 10% of the women received “good care”, and in 70% improvements in care may have meant they survived.
The reports are heartbreaking and I do not wish to diminish the pain
that these women’s families must be suffering, but it is abundantly
clear that very few of these women died from actual Covid – many appear to be victims of the restrictions and fear – and the handful that did had significant confounding factors.
Editor’s note:Since incubation is just 2
days all those 7, 10, or 14-day quarantines of contacts and
international arrivals were absolute garbage.
Also with only half of the participants, none of whom had antibodies,
becoming infected after a droplet of virus was literally dropped into
their nose, it means contact with virus isn’t sufficient for infection.
There are other requirements we know nothing about.
With all these “science” people around, why did it take 2 years for them to finally do some science?
Why wasn’t this done and published 2 years ago? Because it would have
killed their grift? Because propaganda and playing Stalins is way more
fun?
Also this is from Imperial College, the biggest COVID exaggarators and freaks in the world.
Findings from the UK’s world-leading human challenge study provide new insights into mild infections with SARS-CoV-2 in healthy young adults.
The collaborative study is the first in the world to
perform detailed monitoring over the full course of COVID-19, from the
moment a person first encounters SARS-CoV-2, throughout the infection to
the point at which the virus is apparently eliminated.
The Human Challenge Programme is
a partnership between Imperial College London, the Vaccine Taskforce
and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), hVIVO (part of Open
Orphan plc.), and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.
Among several key clinical insights, researchers found that
symptoms start to develop very fast, on average about two days after
contact with the virus. The infection first appears in the
throat; infectious virus peaks about five days into infection and, at
that stage, is significantly more abundant in the nose than the throat.
They also found that lateral flow tests (LFTs) are a reassuringly reliable indicator of whether infectious virus is present (i.e., whether they are a likely to be able to transmit virus to other people).
The findings, published on a pre-print server and which have not yet been peer-reviewed, detail the outcomes in 36 healthy, young participants with no immunity to the virus.
This landmark study, which took place at a specialist unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London, shows that experimental infection of volunteers is reproducible and resulted in no severe symptoms
in healthy young adult participants, laying the groundwork for future
studies to test new vaccines and medicines against COVID-19.
“People in this age group are believed to be major drivers of the
pandemic and these studies, which are representative of mild infection,
allow detailed investigation of the factors responsible for infection
and pandemic spread.
“Our study reveals some very interesting clinical insights, particularly around the short incubation period of the virus,
extremely high viral shedding from the nose, as well as the utility of
lateral flow tests, with potential implications for public health.”
Clinical insights
In the trial, 36 healthy male and female volunteers aged
18-30 years, unvaccinated against COVID-19 and with no prior infection
with SARS-CoV-2 were given a low dose of the virus – introduced via
drops up the nose – and then carefully monitored by clinical staff in a controlled environment over a two-week period. The study used virus from very early in the pandemic obtained from a hospitalized patient in the ISARIC4C study, prior to the emergence of the Alpha variant.
Eighteen of the volunteers became infected, 16 of whom went on to develop mild-to-moderate cold-like symptoms,
including a stuffy or runny nose, sneezing, and a sore throat. Some
experienced headaches, muscle/joint aches, tiredness and fever.
None developed serious symptoms. Two participants were excluded from the final analysis after developing antibodies between initial screening and inoculation.
Thirteen infected volunteers reported temporarily losing their sense
of smell (anosmia), but this returned to normal within 90 days in all
but three participants – the remainder continue to show improvement
after three months.
There were no changes seen in their lungs, or any serious adverse events in any participant. All
participants will be followed up for 12 months after leaving the
clinical facility to monitor for any potential long-term effects.
Participants were exposed to the lowest possible dose of virus found
to cause infection, roughly equivalent to the amount found in a single
droplet of nasal fluid when participants were at their most infectious.
Accurate timeline of infection
The study has also revealed some unique insights into the timeline of
COVID-19, particularly during the very early period after virus
exposure that cannot be looked at in other types of study, where
patients are not identified until symptoms are noticed.
Among the 18 infected participants, the average time from
first exposure to the virus to viral detection and early symptoms
(incubation period) was 42 hours, significantly shorter than existing
estimates, which put the average incubation period at 5-6 days.
Following this period there was a steep rise in the amount of virus
(viral load) found in swabs taken from participants’ nose or throat.
These levels peaked at around five days into infection on average,
but high levels of viable (infectious) virus were still picked up in
lab tests up to nine days after inoculation on average, and up to a
maximum of 12 days for some, supporting the isolation periods advocated
in most guidelines.
There were also differences in where the most virus was found. While
the virus was detected first in the throat, significantly earlier than
in the nose (40 hours in the throat compared to 58 hours in the nose),
levels were lower and peaked sooner in the throat.
Peak levels of virus were significantly higher in the nose than in
the throat, indicating a potentially greater risk of virus being shed
from the nose than the mouth. This highlights the importance of proper
facemask use to cover both the mouth and nose.
Lateral flow tests
Importantly, lateral flow tests (LFTs) were shown to be a good
indicator of whether someone was harbouring viable virus. Positive LFTs
correlated well with lab-confirmed detection of virus from swabs
throughout the course of infection, including in those who were
asymptomatic. However, the tests were less effective in picking up lower
levels of virus at the very start and end of infection.
This is the first study that has been able to provide detailed data on the early phase of infection,
before and during the appearance of symptoms. While there is a
possibility of missing infectious virus early in the course of
infection, particularly if only the nose is tested, the researchers say
these findings overall support continued use of LFTs to identify people
likely to be infectious.
The study provides supportive evidence that LFTs can reliably predict
when someone is unlikely to infect others and can come out of
isolation, and that twice-weekly rapid tests would allow diagnosis
before 70-80% of viable virus was generated during the course of
infection.
“We found that overall, lateral flow tests correlate very well with the presence of infectious virus,”
said Professor Chiu. “Even though in the first day or two they may be
less sensitive, if you use them correctly and repeatedly, and act on
them if they read positive, this will have a major impact on
interrupting viral spread.”
The authors highlight that while the model is a safe and effective
approximation of real-world infection in young adults, the small sample
size, reduced diversity of infected volunteers and limited follow up
period may restrict the findings.
However, they add that despite these limitations, the study has
important implications for public health, including around proper
mask-wearing, isolation periods for infectious individuals, the use of
LFTs, and establishing the human challenge platform to investigate
further aspects of COVID-19.
Future work will see the team determine why some people became
infected and others did not and develop a challenge virus using the
Delta variant, which is already underway by Imperial in partnership with
hVIVO and funded by the Wellcome Trust, and which could be used in
follow-on trials.
According to the team, with these data supporting the safety of the
infection challenge model and a Delta variant available, this could
theoretically provide a ‘plug and play’ platform for testing new
variants and therapies, including vaccines.
Professor Chiu added: “While there are differences in
transmissibility due to the emergence of variants, such as Delta and
Omicron, fundamentally, this is the same disease and the same factors
will be responsible for protection against it.
“From the point of view of virus transmission related to the very
high viral loads, we are likely if anything to be underestimating
infectivity because we were using an older strain of the virus. With a
newer strain, there might be differences in terms of size of response,
but ultimately we expect our study to be fundamentally representative of
this kind of infection.”
Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England, said: “Human
challenge studies have been performed using other pathogens for
decades, including flu and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).
They need full independent ethical review and very careful planning – as
has been the case this time. Every precaution is taken to minimise
risk. “Scientifically these studies offer real advantage because the
timing of exposure to the virus is always known exactly, therefore
things like the interval between exposure and the profile of virus
shedding can be accurately described. “This important study has provided
further key data on COVID-19 and how it spreads, which is invaluable in
learning more about this novel virus, so we can fine-tune our response.
Challenge studies could still prove to be important in the future to
speed the development of ‘next-generation’ Covid-19 vaccines and
antiviral drugs. “These data underline just how useful a tool lateral
flow tests can be to pick up people when infectious and the importance
of wearing a face covering in crowded, enclosed spaces.”
