Is this Chris Wray’s “Amicus…” brief???

FBI Director Wray burying documents and not cooperating ...

FBI launches internal investigation into its handling of Michael Flynn case   

The Justice Department has claimed the (Flynn-Russia) investigation was unwarranted.

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Friday ordered an internal investigation into the bureau’s handling of the Michael Flynn case, just two weeks after the Justice Department declared that it was dropping the case against him and that federal investigators had no standing to interview the general in early 2017. 

Wray “today ordered the Bureau’s Inspection Division to conduct an after-action review of the Michael Flynn investigation,” the FBI announced on Friday. 

The Inspection Division essentially functions similarly to an internal affairs office found in lower law enforcement agencies. 

IS EVERYBODY MISSING THE POINT OF THIS?

Sara Carter: “Wray’s Friday announcement, is in my opinion, a ruse to get lawmakers off his back.”

We believe that FBI  Director Wray has ordered this “investigation” at this late date (why didn’t he do such an investigation following the IG report which was so critical of the Bureau’s handling, and, when GOP congressmen were trying to get information on the subject?), for no other reason that to support Judge Sullivan’s effort to ‘get FLYNN”. 

The results of Wray’s “investigation”, we believe, will amount to a ‘friend of the court’s’ declaration that the DOJ’s request to dismiss the Flynn case was unwarranted and the FBI’s handling of it may have been ” a bit clumsy’, but entirely proper and legitimate. 

So…Judge Sullivan, the FBI’s “investigation” proves you are right to ignore the DOJ and act as the ‘prosecutor’ and charge him with perjury, contempt, and maybe even “treason”.


We’ll apologize…again…for reminding readers that we may well have been the first to assess Christopher Wray as a “Deep State Fraud”!

We’ll go out on a limb again…and suggest that “Good Old Chris Wray” Is At It Again…Still Attempting to Cover The “Deep State’s” and the FBI’s Asses !

Admittedly, we could be accused of making our early assessment of Wray on the thinnest of evidence…the fact that all but 5 Democrat senators voted against his confirmation as Director of the FBI.

But it wasn’t that much of a stretch, actually, when one considers that:

a) few other Trump nominees received such great Democrat support (even Jeff Sessions was confirmed 52-47 with only one Dem in favor…Joe Manchin;

b) Wray was Assistant Attorney General from 2003 to 2005, working under Deputy Attorney General James Comey.

c) In a May 30, 2013 …it was revealed that Wray was one of the senior Justice Dept officials that nearly resigned in 2004, alongside then FBI Director Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General James Comey, due to illegal surveillance techniques the Bush administration had put in place under the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

d) Wray’s Senate confirmation hearing commenced on July 12, 2017.[26] Among other testimony, when asked if he believed that the investigation into Russian 2016 election interference and possible links to Trump’s campaign is a “witch hunt,” he stated that he did not.

e) In 2019, Wray was interviewed by ABC News.  In the interview, when asked about characterizations of the FBI and its agents as the “deep state”, Wray responded: “I think that’s the kind of label that’s a disservice to the men and women who work at the FBI who I think tackle their jobs with professionalism, with rigor, with objectivity, with courage.

f) He said he did not believe the Trump campaign was unfairly targeted by the FBI probe.

Recently, the ‘right of center’ PowerLine blog noted: “FBI Director Christopher Wray has been a severe disappointment. He has shown no inclination to reform that troubled agency, and seems to have, if anything, abetted the longstanding coverup of FBI misdeeds. Today he belatedly announced that the FBI is launching an investigation into its conduct in the Flynn case…”

——

Sara Carter has written following Wray’s announcement of an “investigation:

Wray’s Friday announcement, is in my opinion, a ruse to get lawmakers off his back.How can we trust that Wray’s internal investigation will expose what actually happened in the case of Flynn, or any of the other Trump campaign officials that were targeted by the former Obama administration’s intelligence and law enforcement apparatus.

It’s Wray’s FBI that continues to battle all the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act requests regarding the investigation into Flynn, along with any requests that would expose  information on the Russia hoax investigation. One in particular, is the request to obtain all the text messages and emails sent and received by former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.regarding the investigation into Flynn, along with any requests that would expose  information on the Russia hoax investigation. One in particular, is the request to obtain all the text messages and emails sent and received by former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

The FBI defended itself in its Friday announcement saying that in addition to its own internal review, it has already cooperated with other inquiries assigned by Attorney General William Barr. But still Wray has not approved subpoena’s for employees and others that lawmakers want to interview behind closed doors in Congress.

The recent documented discoveries by the Department of Justice make it all the more imperative that an outside review of the FBI’s handling of Flynn’s case is required. Those documents, which shed light on the actions by the bureau against Flynn, led to the DOJ’s decision to drop all charges against him. It was, after all, DOJ Attorney Jeffery Jensen who discovered the FBI documents regarding Flynn that have aided his defense attorney Sidney Powell in getting the truth out to the American people.  

dlh


From the Washington Examiner (continued):

FBI launches internal investigation into its handling of Michael Flynn case

Fox News reported on Friday that the bureau will seek to identify whether any current FBI officials “engaged in misconduct” during the investigation, as well as whether or not the agency can improve its investigation process moving forward. 

The bureau “does not have the ability to take any disciplinary action” against former employees, the FBI’s statement said. 

Flynn’s plight has received new attention in recent weeks, starting with the stunning Justice Department announcement at the beginning of the month. 

Following the department’s decision, the judge overseeing the Flynn case, Emmet Sullivan, declined to immediately dismiss it per the recommendation from Justice, instead inviting an amicus curiae brief from retired Judge John Gleeson in support of continuing the case against the general.

Flynn’s team this week filed an appeal requesting the dismissal of Sullivan and the barring of Gleeson’s brief from the proceeding. A federal appeals court on Thursday agreed to hear Flynn’s case against Sullivan, and also, in a rare directive, gave Sullivan an 11-day deadline to explain his handling of the ongoing trial.

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The ANTI-hydroxychloroquine propaganda machine

  • Anti-Trump hype over use of hydroxychloroquine is ludicrous
  • They tout not a double blind study, just blind
  • HotAir swallows WaPo poison pill
  • Hot Air in clinical trial to kill hydroxychloroquine?
  • Allahpundit is a jerk
  • Concomitant with orange man bad
  • Let’s wait for a vaccine!!

Now we are not here to endorse the taking of hydroxychloroquine alone or in combination with other drugs as a treatment for the Wuhan/CCP/Covid -19 virus or any drug without your doctor’s advice as part of a monitored treatment regime. Hydroxychloroquine  while in long-time use also has long been recognized as having serious negative implications for people with certain preexisting conditions. The cardiac effects of HCQ are well-known. That is true of just about every drug or “miracle” drug.* They can have predictable side effects, including serious, on people with known problems but they are used anyway on the better chance curing the problem  they are intended for is more compelling.

It is also well understood from interactions and side-effects that when taken in combinations with other drugs one might enhance the others curative OR problem aspects OR create one which would not have otherwise been present but for the combination. Those possibilities are understood by most sober people and one would hope by the intelligentsia writing for WaPo and Hot Air enough to be circumspect in their glee to promote anything that they can spin to be orange man bad – and Trump and his supporters as lunatics.

Read either or both of these Hot Air articles, so lacking in basic objectivity to mention the implications of the limitations to the study.

Large hydroxychloroquine study shows COVID-19 patients who got the drug died more often

Study: Hydroxychloroquine linked to increased risk of death in coronavirus patients

Reading the comment section we see respondents who take on Hot Air and allahpundit for being all WaPo with regard to the drug’s use. Hot Air writer allahpundit is consistently a snide jerk and we are disappointed in Hot Air for its failure to feature important disclosures attached to the study itself.

Here are important clarifications relative to the reliability of the headlined articles that were contained in responses to the article(s):

Zaggs

Another retro analysis. But buried in this report is this nuggest

“In our analysis, which was dominated by patients from North America, we noted that higher BMI emerged as a risk marker for worse in-hospital survival. “. Wanna take a guess which group had the higher BMI? In fact by every metric the control group was healthier than the other groups.

This (actual) study also said this

“Our study has several limitations. The association of decreased survival with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine treatment regimens should be interpreted cautiously. Due to the observational study design, we cannot exclude the possibility of unmeasured confounding factors, although we have reassuringly noted consistency between the primary analysis and the propensity score matched analyses. Nevertheless, a cause-and-effect relationship between drug therapy and survival should not be inferred. These data do not apply to the use of any treatment regimen used in the ambulatory, out-of-hospital setting”

Brock Peters

“Nevertheless, a cause-and-effect relationship between drug therapy and survival should not be inferred.”

That’s my favorite line. Of course, WaPo, Hot Air,  . . .have gone on to “infer” that HQ kills people.

Oh well!

Velouria

They have it in their own study. Why not address it? And why do we have to go deep into the study to find all these qualifiers? You guys certainly didn’t mention it. why is that?

TRS

Liberals should never or be allowed to take hydroxychloroquine under any circumstances!

WhoCares?

Is anyone being forced to use Hydrochloroquine? Just wondering.

Where is the Fracking ZINC.

It is the early use of hydroxychloroquine AND ZINC that is said to work.

Humboldt10

Hydroxychloroquine was approved by the FDA in 1955 and has been dosed 5 million times. It seemed to be safe until Trump said positive things about it.

YodasDad

A study showing people about to die did in fact in many cases die.
Another throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing if it sticks report. These trials are posthumous studies of statistics and are totally meaningless. As the leftards are keen to say, “this has been debunked”

redstate

“A high percentage of stage 4 cancer patients who were given chemotherapy have died. Therefore chemotherapy with its side effects should not be given to any cancer patients.”
-Liberal thinking.


*Common miracle drugs

Prednisone is immunosuppressive  Infection: This medication may mask some signs of infection, and new infections may occur during treatment with prednisone.

More severe antibiotic side effects include:

Antibiotic allergies or hypersensitivity reactions are some of the most common side effects of antibiotics leading to emergency room admission.1 Always tell your doctor of any previous allergic reaction to any medication, including antibiotics. Mild allergic reactions may only result in a skin rash or itch. A more severe allergic reaction, called anaphylaxis, is a life-threatening medical emergency that requires immediate medical attention.

Anaphylactic reactions due to antibiotics may include:

Shortness of breath
Wheezing
Severe nausea/vomiting
Lightheadedness, dizziness
Fast heart rate
Swelling of the face, lips or tongue
Shock

FDA watching thes 14 drugs for serious side effects

Chemo — is often prescribed as prolongation of life more than cure and side effects can do you in

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Prayers for Bobby

  • No details as to type or severity
  • Channel 4 reports:

Bobby Schilling, congressional candidate in Iowa, announces he has cancer

Bobby Schilling, former Illinois congressman and current congressional candidate in Iowa, announced Wednesday night that he has been diagnosed with cancer.
Schilling said in a statement,

“My family and I received some tough news this week. I went in for a checkup with my doctor. They noticed some irregularities and performed some tests. Today we got the results we were told to expect: cancer.

But there’s good news: this is operable. We’re going to fight and we’re going to win. I will be undergoing surgery tomorrow. Please keep me and my family in your prayers during that time. 

As my family and supporters know, I’m a fighter. I’ve been through many challenges in my life, and to be frank, this will be my biggest challenge yet. But I know, with my wife, 10 children, and 13 grandkids behind me, I will be able to overcome this setback. I couldn’t be more prepared.

I want to assure the voters of the Iowa 2nd District: I’m not quitting. I am confident that we will beat this thing and be back at the campaign in very short order!”    . . .

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House Clown Show — That’s Why She’s “Speaker”!

‘Morbidly Ugly’ Nancy Pelosi gives a ‘Morbidly stupid’ diagnosis         dlh

Emmet Kelly would be a good likeness of many of the homeless people in the Speaker’s district

Pelosi Calls Trump ‘Morbidly Obese’ On CNN  Daily Caller, by Henry Rodgers

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called President Donald Trump “morbidly obese” Monday night after he announced that he has been taking hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus preventative treatment for more than a week.In an appearance on CNN, Pelosi was asked about Trump’s usage of hydroxychloroquine, to which she responded by saying “He’s our president and I would rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group and in his, shall we say, weight group — morbidly obese, they say” Pelosi said to CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

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Interlude- saying it in charts, pics and memes

Another pledge of support sent to Biden :

Thanks to TN:

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What the heck’s the deal at NewsMax??

  • Insight, answers, clarifications welcome as to whether this is par for the course there
  • A short colloquy between yours truelies

R Mall writes:

I did not figure Newsmax to spin this way

Trump Revives Clinton Playbook to Battle Biden

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/2016-election/2020/05/18/id/967789/

Boy do they leave a lot out that precipitated what they snidely report about Trump

dlh responds:

This is all over Google; every news and opinion blog seems to be carrying it. But notice below…the ‘story’ is apparently written by “Jonathon Lemire and Bill Barrow” of ASSOCIATED PRESS!

Still doesn’t quite answer for me, ‘what’s going on with this?’ I don’t understand why Newsmax runs this w/o explanation that it comes from AP.      dlh

May. 18, 2020 7:22 AM EDT
2016 Repeat? Trump Revives Clinton Playbook To Battle Biden
By JONATHAN LEMIRE and BILL BARROW
Associated Press

Anybody know what the deal is??

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Don’t hold your breath for justice befalling this crowd

But then dlh here at  V’PAc has been lamenting this likelihood for, oh pretty much ever.

Kurt Schlichter writing at Townhall

Forget About Seeing Any Justice For Obamagate    (excerpt)

. . .   You need to prepare yourself. No one of any significance is going to jail for any of this. Ever.

What Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit did with classified info would have put you and me in striped PJs for a decade. She walked. So did her whole clique.

Andrew McCabe lied again and again and … nope, they won’t charge him.

Looming Doofus Comey will walk. Every Democrat donor in the Mueller gang will walk. Samantha Power will walk. And Obama? Sheesh, chatty perpetual Hannity guest and occasional senator Lindsey Graham may get around to holding his long-promised Obamagate hearings on about the 5th of Never. Big Talkin’ LG won’t even dare to call BHO to testify and you think the Grand Marshal of the Supreme Court is gonna be frog-marching The One out of his new beach mansion to prison? Come on.

I’d love to be wrong. Maybe I am. Maybe the unbroken track record of injustice we’ve seen over the last decade will suddenly break. And maybe my pet unicorn Chet will be the foreman of the jury when one of these slugs somehow gets called to account.

“Then I guess we should just give up and resign ourselves to tyranny?” Oh no. Oh, not at all. My short-term assessment is grave, but my long-term assessment is bright. Tyranny tends to fail over time. Remember, the establishment’s embrace of tactical tyranny is an admission of weakness. When they weren’t threatened they could afford to hide their true nature. All this is their last-ditch effort to resist the popular uprising against their inept rule.

Keep your eye on the prize. The prize is not seeing these scumbags behind bars,

Well yeh, that would make a lot of people happy, its not about vengeance, it is about a reckoning and validating the Constitution

though that would satisfy our righteous yearning for justice. The prize is the power to not merely defend our rights and prosperity but to enhance them.

So we keep pushing.    . . .

Then as if to confirm some of Schlichter’s commentary, Katie Pavlich:

Barr Pours Cold Water on Criminal Charges for Obama and Biden, But Leaves Room for Others  

 

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The next Jim Jeffords?? He’s already Flakey

Romney denounces multiple IG firings as ‘threat to accountable democracy

“Republican Sen. Mitt Romny (sic) (Utah) on Saturday denounced President Trump’s firings of several inspector generals in various federal government offices as a “threat to accountable democracy.”

“The firings of multiple Inspectors General is unprecedented; doing so without good cause chills the independence essential to their purpose. It is a threat to accountable democracy and a fissure in the constitutional balance of power,” Romney tweeted.”

Probably “Mittens” doesn’t know Obama didn’t have an IG for the State Dept. for the first 6 years of his two terms (Breitbart).

———
Another V’pac Prediction; Watch For It!:

Pierre Delicto will take a page from one time Vermont GOP senator, Jim Jeffords’ playbook, and become “Jumpin’ Pierre”

It was in 2001 that another “Republican” senator of the ‘Mitt Romney variety’ made his ‘proud’ departure from the GOP which had supported, voted for, and funded his campaigns for 2 terms, to become an “independent”, turning control of the senate from Republican to Democrat as Bill Clinton ended his presidency;…As an “independent” Jeffords caucused with his buddies, Chris Dodd, Ted Kennedy, Tom Daschle, Harry Reid, and the other Democrats.

‘Jumpin’ Jim’, as he will be forever known in many political circles had always been an ‘eastern Republican”, like “Mittens” )Romney)… more liberal than even ‘moderate’.

Jeffords made his traitorous move immediately after his reelection as a Republican to a second term. If the Vermont GOP voters were surprised that their senator turned ‘blue’ on them as soon as possible after they voted for him, they shouldn’t have been.

‘Good old Jim’ had been, well before his reelection, a ‘pro choice, pro gay marriage’ legislator, and  an outspoken critic of G H W Bush’s ‘tax cuts’. He voted against Clarence Thomas nomination to the Supreme Court.

“Pierre” Romney also doesn’t care much for ‘tax cuts’, and he definitely doesn’t care for a Republican president who governs as a “Love America” conservative. (Who forgets that “Romneycare” was a precursor to “Obamacare”…Romney’s creation when governor of Massachusetts.)

And, if there is anybody who thinks that “Pierre” would not prefer “Sleepy Joe’s” election   ( or Michele Obama’s, or Andrew Cuomo’s, or you name the Democrat) to Donald Trump’s second term, then they must also believe that Pope Francis is a capitalist!

If, by any chance, the 2020 election would result in a Senate party deadlock, ‘Pierre Delicto’ Romney would move like a frijoles saltarines!          dlh

 

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“The Sleepy One” and “‘Governor” Stacy Abrams…Trump’s “Dream Ticket”

  • V’PAC fully on board with New York Times Op ED

  • Shhh! You’re Scaring the Democrats!

Come on conservative press – don’t fight it – just keep quiet about Joe for now

If you keep up with the revelations about Joe, next thing you know, they’ll give the nomination to someone else (Michelle? Cuomo?); And We Want Joe on Their Ticket  . . . Joe and Stacy!  Yay!         dlh

GAFFE RIDDLED GLITCHY ROUNDTABLE PANNED WHEN BIDEN CAN’T RECALL WHO BRIEFS HIM ON CORONA VIRUS

“The former vice president had the memory lapse during another virtual event filled with now-expected technical glitches and awkward problems on Thursday.

“Biden struggled to recall the name of the staffer as he hosted a virtual roundtable on the coronavirus pandemic from his home’s basement.

“Um, and uh, and I’m not, and I, I have a, I have a, uh, like all of you but every day I get between an hour and an hour and a half brief with um, uh, the former head of, our former surgeon general, anyway, with docs across the country, um …” the 77-year-old said.”

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Slip this guy in to replace Fauchi

  • Credentials as impressive
  • Looks the part
  • Probably no biased connection to Gates or WHO or China
  • Trump should substitute him and most of the country would say “science”
  • Put ‘Spiked ‘on your go-to list for sound analysis of COVID 19 policy

Spiked is a UK oriented publication that has run many articles questioning the West’s response to the Wuhan flu.   In this particular article, as informative as it is, there is one aspect missing we wish this interviewee (an American) would have dealt with which is the reliability of Communist Chinese reporting and their efforts and results. Thanks to LB for the forward.

‘We could open up again and forget the whole thing’     Epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski on the deadly consequences of lockdown.   (excerpt)

Looks the part — let’s go with him

Governments around the world say they are following ‘The Science’ with their draconian measures to stem the spread of the virus. But the science around Covid-19 is bitterly contested. Many experts have serious doubts about the effectiveness of the measures, and argue that our outside fears of Covid-19 are not justified. Knut Wittkowski is one such expert who has long argued for a change of course. For 20 years, Wittkowski was the head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at The Rockefeller University’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science. spiked spoke to him to find out more about the pandemic.

spiked: Is Covid-19 dangerous?

Knut Wittkowski: No, unless you have age-related severe comorbidities. So if you are in a nursing home because you cannot live by yourself anymore, then getting infected is dangerous.

We had the other extreme in Switzerland, which was hit pretty hard. There was one child that died. People believed that this child was born in 2011. In fact, it was born in 1911, and that was the only child that died. It was a mere coding error. Somebody with the age 108 was coded as aged eight.

Wittkowski: It is over in China. It is over in South Korea. It is substantially down in most of Europe and down a bit everywhere, even in the UK. The UK and Belarus are latecomers, so you do not see exactly what you are seeing in continental Europe. But everywhere in Europe, the number of cases is substantially declining.

spiked: Have our interventions made much of an impact?

Wittkowski: When the whole thing started, there was one reason given for the lockdown and that was to prevent hospitals from becoming overloaded. There is no indication that hospitals could ever have become overloaded, irrespective of what we did. So we could open up again, and forget the whole thing.

I hope the intervention did not have too much of an impact because it most likely made the situation worse. The intervention was to ‘flatten the curve’. That means that there would be the same number of cases but spread out over a longer period of time, because otherwise the hospitals would not have enough capacity.
‘There is nothing unprecedented about the virus itself’

Now, as we know, children and young adults do not end up in hospitals. It is only those who are both elderly and have comorbidities that do. Therefore you have to protect the elderly and the nursing homes. The ideal approach would be to simply shut the door of the nursing homes and keep the personnel and the elderly locked in for a certain amount of time, and pay the staff overtime to stay there for 24 hours per day.

How long can you do that for? For three weeks, that is possible. For 18 months, it is not. The flattening of the curve, the prolongation of the epidemic, makes it more difficult to protect the elderly, who are at risk. More of the elderly people become infected, and we have more deaths.

spiked: What are the dangers of lockdown?

Wittkowski: Firstly, we have the direct consequences: suicides, domestic violence and other social consequences leading to death. And then we have people who are too scared to go to the hospitals for other problems like strokes or heart attacks. So people stay away from hospitals because of the Covid fear. And then they die.   . . .

The entire article and the comment section are informative


Related reading regarding Wuhan flu policy at Spiked:

Fear kills  
The media’s deranged fearmongering over Covid-19 has had terrible consequences.

We have no doubt similar “public heath iatrogenic sequela are happening in the US .  Case in point — with increased joblessness –  homelessness goes up — how’s that for  “public health” ?   We are not saying there was an initiating conspiracy, indeed we deny that,  but we are not denying that certain players are capable of aggravating the situation for political purposes or for the opportunity it presents in their warped frame of reference.

‘There is nothing unprecedented about the virus itself’  (excerpt)

Starting out with an observation about the willingness of so much of the population in Britain to give up civil liberties and not be skeptical of gooberment, (which much of the US is just as willing to do) the article moves on the main argument. The interviewee is a writer /social observer/critic using information readily accessible.

O’Neill: Why does the lockdown not add up, in your view?

Shriver: I don’t think it makes a lot of sense once the virus has spread generously in the population already. There is plenty of evidence that the virus does continue to spread, even if you do have a lockdown. What we are doing is dragging the period of infection out. A lot of epidemiologists will back that up. Rather than reducing the absolute number of infections and absolute number of deaths, you simply make them occur over a longer period of time. You could argue that is actually socially destructive. As long as your healthcare system can handle a higher rate of infection – which our NHS could do right now – then it’s probably better to get it over with.

O’Neill: One thing that you have raised is the absence of critical voices in the mainstream media. As you point out, there are actually epidemiologists who believe that the idea that you can lock a disease away in a cupboard and make it disappear is complete idiocy and is completely unworkable and only puts off the inevitable, which is that the disease will become part of the family of diseases. Those voices are not being heard as much as they might be, and certainly not with parity to the other, more terrifying voices. What have you made of the broader media culture around this discussion of the virus and the lockdown?

Shriver: The media are worse than the public. Of course, the media are also controlling the public to a degree. I have been especially appalled by how few dissenting voices ever appear on television. I force myself to suffer through news programmes on a nightly basis, and I was really struck recently by Channel 4. This was not even a story, it was just a little statistic that they flashed up on the screen. It was that we are expecting 1.5 billion people – which is, they were careful to clarify, half the workforce of the entire world – to have no source of livelihood. That was just a little fact. Then we went back to the situation in care homes in the UK, which took up most of the rest of the broadcast. It’s as if it was incidental. This never gets any attention.

Nor does any dubiety among the scientific community about the wisdom of treating this disease completely differently to how we treat any other disease. Nor do I ever see any comparative statistics aired on television news – and you rarely find them in newspapers, either – putting the deaths in context, both in the context of how many people die every year in certain countries and worldwide anyway, and also of how many people die of other diseases routinely.

In 2017, the number of people who died of malaria was 620,000. That is almost all in Africa. We totally ignore it. That’s three times the number of people who’ve died of Covid-19 so far worldwide. But it’s just ordinary. They live with it. In 2018, 1.5million people died of tuberculosis. And TB is especially dangerous because it’s developing a resistance to our treatment to it. So it’s actually more terrifying than Covid-19. Again, we forget about it. Typhoid, which we think of as a disease of the past, still kills up to 160,000 people a year. Cholera is the same – it kills about 140,000 people a year. Influenza, which Covid resembles in many ways, kills up to 650,000 people every year. It took me five minutes to find those statistics. Why don’t I ever see them reported?

Neill: Why does the lockdown not add up, in your view?

Shriver: I don’t think it makes a lot of sense once the virus has spread generously in the population already. There is plenty of evidence that the virus does continue to spread, even if you do have a lockdown. What we are doing is dragging the period of infection out. A lot of epidemiologists will back that up. Rather than reducing the absolute number of infections and absolute number of deaths, you simply make them occur over a longer period of time. You could argue that is actually socially destructive. As long as your healthcare system can handle a higher rate of infection – which our NHS could do right now – then it’s probably better to get it over with.

O’Neill: One thing that you have raised is the absence of critical voices in the mainstream media. As you point out, there are actually epidemiologists who believe that the idea that you can lock a disease away in a cupboard and make it disappear is complete idiocy and is completely unworkable and only puts off the inevitable, which is that the disease will become part of the family of diseases. Those voices are not being heard as much as they might be, and certainly not with parity to the other, more terrifying voices. What have you made of the broader media culture around this discussion of the virus and the lockdown?

Shriver: The media are worse than the public. Of course, the media are also controlling the public to a degree. I have been especially appalled by how few dissenting voices ever appear on television. I force myself to suffer through news programmes on a nightly basis, and I was really struck recently by Channel 4. This was not even a story, it was just a little statistic that they flashed up on the screen. It was that we are expecting 1.5 billion people – which is, they were careful to clarify, half the workforce of the entire world – to have no source of livelihood. That was just a little fact. Then we went back to the situation in care homes in the UK, which took up most of the rest of the broadcast. It’s as if it was incidental. This never gets any attention.

Nor does any dubiety among the scientific community about the wisdom of treating this disease completely differently to how we treat any other disease. Nor do I ever see any comparative statistics aired on television news – and you rarely find them in newspapers, either – putting the deaths in context, both in the context of how many people die every year in certain countries and worldwide anyway, and also of how many people die of other diseases routinely.

In 2017, the number of people who died of malaria was 620,000. That is almost all in Africa. We totally ignore it. That’s three times the number of people who’ve died of Covid-19 so far worldwide. But it’s just ordinary. They live with it. In 2018, 1.5million people died of tuberculosis. And TB is especially dangerous because it’s developing a resistance to our treatment to it. So it’s actually more terrifying than Covid-19. Again, we forget about it. Typhoid, which we think of as a disease of the past, still kills up to 160,000 people a year. Cholera is the same – it kills about 140,000 people a year. Influenza, which Covid resembles in many ways, kills up to 650,000 people every year. It took me five minutes to find those statistics. Why don’t I ever see them reported?

O’Neill: I want to go back to a point you made there about the incidental nature of the unprecedented economic collapse that the world is heading for. I have noticed that too; that in the media and in lots of political discussions, the predictions of a historically unprecedented contraction of economic life are treated either as incidental, or as significantly less important than Covid-19 itself. You give the example of 1.5 billion people losing their livelihoods in some way. Of course, in the UK, it is now being predicted that this will mean a 13 per cent drop in national output, which will be the largest contraction ever recorded. Why do you think that stuff is being pushed aside? Part of me thinks it’s some kind of Covid-related madness in which the media cannot see the broader picture. Or do you just think they cannot let anything get in the way of the politics-of-fear narrative that they are currently pushing?

Shriver: Madness is the word, but it is a shared hysteria. We are dealing with an international hysteria. You hear that word ‘unprecedented’ all the time. There is nothing unprecedented about the virus itself. It is very much like lots of other viruses and lots of other illnesses. In fact, it is less deadly than many other illnesses that we have had to learn to live with – some of which we have cured.

What is unprecedented is our reaction. And it’s the reaction that is causing the inevitable economic depression – or collapse, even. That is the level of economic failure we are dealing with. But it is as if the disease has caused the collapse. All that economic fallout is seen as simply the inevitable fallout of this terrible illness. But it has nothing to do with the illness. It has everything to do with our reaction to it.One more at Spiked for your edification:

Still more COVID 19 policy insight at Spiked:

We need an antidote to Covid hysteria  The destruction of freedom is a greater threat than the virus itself.

The lockdown left is no friend of the working class  
Middle-class Corbynistas are using fear and hysteria to keep working people under house arrest.

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