[Diggers350] Alternative media, honest & fake, doing what Private Eye should be...

[Tony Gosling]

Moon of Alabama – It’s time to say goodbye
in which we debunk a “debunking”



Kit Knightly   https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/16/__trashed-2/

Oct 16, 2020
http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=181023#181023

Bernhard, the proprietor of alternate-news site 
Moon of Alabama, has taken it upon himself to 
<https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/09/in-which-we-debunk-a-coividiots-pamphlet.html#more>“fact-check” 
one of our many Covid-related articles. It was 
done without informing us of his intent, or 
indeed offering us a right of reply.

Whilst this is regrettable – and highly 
unprofessional – I do understand, given the 
nature and quality of the article, why he would 
neither want us to read it, nor respond to it.

Nevertheless, read it I did, and respond we must.



PREAMBLE

I would like to start with a few words of regret, 
mourning for the age of solidarity now passed. 
Until very recently I had believed – perhaps 
“hoped” is the better word – that all of us in 
the “alternate news” sphere were more or less on 
the same side. After all, OffGuardian and MoA 
have a long history – continuing to this day – of agreement.

On Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Russia-gate, Assange 
and MH17 our opinions and coverage have always 
almost totally aligned. This pattern is solid up 
to this very day, with the obvious attempted coup 
Belarus forming the most prominent recent example.

I would hope that such numerous strokes of 
agreement – accompanying as they do a broadly 
similar world-view – would therefore be able to 
comfortably encompass such diversions of opinion 
as are sure to manifest between even the most 
like-minded of people. I had assumed that any 
such conflicts of interpretation which did 
eventually arise would be handled with, if not 
amiable good humour, at least passing civility.

Sadly, that is not the case, and whilst “B” is 
not noted in the alt-media world for either his 
good humour or social skills, it is nonetheless 
sad to find a former ally has become so willing 
an enemy. Disagreeing is one thing, but publicly 
attacking our intentions and honesty is quite another.

Secondly, I would like to make note of certain 
contradictions – not only from MoA, but across a 
lot of those who consider themselves “independent 
journalists” or “alternative news” or “alt-media” 
or whatever their preferred nomenclature. 
Specifically the contradiction of picking and 
choosing when and how to trust the mainstream.

Many of these people devote their entire careers, 
if not their lives, to debunking and 
contradicting the mainstream media – and yet, 
when a story appears with which they agree, which 
reinforces their preconceived ideas or bolsters 
their own particular biases – they gladly accept 
it. MoA’s “fact-check” is a prime example. I have 
to say I fundamentally disagree with this approach.

The modern media is not a machine you can trust. 
Not ever. It is a construction built to control 
and corral opinion. To shuffle the public mind 
around a game-board they do not know they are on, 
based on rules they must never be allowed to 
understand. It serves no other function. It 
doesn’t “tell the truth sometimes”; it isn’t 
“occasionally trustworthy”. It’s a buffet of 
poisoned courses, selectively stacking your plate 
to suit your palate will not spare you the toxic 
effects. You’ll just smile as you choke.

To choose to believe or disbelieve the media only 
when it suits your case is as foolish as being 
entirely oblivious to its nature. Perhaps more 
foolish, because you cannot hide behind blameless 
ignorance. You, notoionally, know better.

Scepticism is a lens through which one must 
examine everything, or nothing. It cannot be put 
aside lightly when you want to score easy points, 
or salve your own sense of panic, or you just 
feel like fitting in for once. To do so is moral cowardice.

Using the mainstream propaganda term “covidiot” 
is a perfect example. It is the product of the 
same Deep State-media thinktanks and focus groups 
that birthed “conspiracy theorist” into the 
public consciousness. More recently we have seen 
“Russian bots” and “Assad apologist” and “Kremlin 
stooge” join these ranks – alongside the ubiquitous “denier”.

These are labels designed to encourage 
groupthink, to “other” dissenters and stifle 
intelligent and informed debate. To use them is 
to debase both yourself and the conversation.

Thirdly, and finally, I would like to add a few 
words about professionalism, integrity and the 
ethics of journalism. Journalistic ethics are not 
really different from the natural decency with 
which one hopes everyone seeks to comport themselves.

It is unseemly, we can all agree, to attack 
someone and give them no chance to defend 
themselves. For example, blocking someone on 
twitter and continuing to bad-mouth them or their 
work when they can offer no refutation, is not 
generally speaking “the done thing”. Likewise, it 
is basic professional practice that, if you 
intend to refute someone’s work, you inform them 
of this. It would usually be considered right to offer them space to reply.

Likewise selectively quote-mining is always considered bad form.

Claiming that “It makes little sense to review 
and refute the whole mess”, and choosing to 
“concentrat [sic] on the 6 of the 8 [sic] “Take 
Home Messages” might seem, at first glance, to be 
an effort at maintaining brevity. However a more 
cynical reader might point out that, in doing so, 
MoA has chosen the only section of the text with no hyperlinked sources.

Throughout the original 5,000 word article there 
are over 60 linked references, the majority to 
academic journals and peer-reviewed studies. 
Bernhard does not refute one of these sources, in 
fact he doesn’t even acknowledge their existence. 
Instead choosing to attempt to refute 75% of the 
article’s conclusions, whilst ignoring 100% of 
the arguments and facts upon which those conclusions are based.

Lies by omission are poor form, you could even 
call them the hallmark of hack journalism.

With all that said, let us turn our attention to 
the task at hand. I will address each of 
Bernhard’s criticisms in turn, firstly quoting 
the original article authored by Dr Jeanmonod, 
then Bernhard’s response, and then my thoughts. 
Dr Jeanmonod has been informed on MoA’s attack on 
his work, and has given his blessing to us to 
make a response; while we don’t speak for him, we hope he can approve.



1. CORONAVIRUSES, COLDS, SARS AND MERS

In the 
<https://off-guardian.org/2020/09/22/do-you-remember-a-winter-without-a-cold/>original 
article for OffG, Dr Jeanmonod wrote:

1. Corona viruses are one of the viral agents of 
the common cold, which, just like the flu, invade 
the whole planet every year. They cause largely 
widespread, mostly benign, yearly pandemics of respiratory tract infections.

MoA’s response fits a familiar pattern – a rather 
pedantic nitpick, and then rather dishonest conclusion.

There are seven distinct corona viruses that 
infect humans. Four of those can cause the common 
cold. The infections are generally mild. At times 
they have more severe consequences like 
pneumonia. The infection fatality rate for these 
four corona viruses is estimated to be about 0.1%.

This is broadly speaking true. It also doesn’t, 
in any way, contradict anything Jeanmonod says.

This, however, is a misleading and irrelevant tangent:

The three other corona viruses, SARS, MERS and 
SARS-CoV-2 are very different beasts. They cause 
very severe symptoms in a significant numbers of 
the infected people. The infection fatality rate 
for SARS was 9% and for MERS it is even 37%.

Equating SARS and MERS with the other four 
coronaviruses he already mentioned neglects an 
important difference: The four “common cold” 
coronaviruses cause around 15% of the world’s 
“colds”. That is literally 100s of millions of 
cases every year. Conversely, there have been 
only 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome>10,617 
officially recognised cases of SARS and MERS 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndrome>combined 
in over 18 years.

Clearly, Jeanmonod is justified in claiming the 
vast majority of coronavirus infections as “mostly benign”.

SARS and MERS, themselves already the subject of 
hysterical “global health scares”, have fatality 
rates based on such small samples as to make them 
meaningless. They are suffering from the same 
problem the Sars-Cov-2 outbreak was suffering 
from back in spring – we have only hospital 
admissions to go on. We have only severe case data.

There have been very, very few seroprevalence 
studies done on these viruses, thus we have no 
data for how widespread these viruses are. How 
many asymptomatic infections for SARS or MERS 
have there been? We don’t know. How many mild 
cases dismissed as “the flu” or “colds” etc.? We don’t know.

However, even if we accept the high fatality for 
SARS and MERs, that is irrelevant, which Bernhard 
himself admits in the next sentence


The true infection fatality rate for SARS-CoV-2 
depends on various circumstances (health service 
availability, social and medical conditions of 
the population etc.) but is currently estimated to be around 1%.

Firstly, the fatality rate for Sars-Cov-2 is not 
1%. It is substantially lower than that. In May 
the CDC estimated it to be 0.26%, they then 
<https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios-archive/planning-scenarios-2020-09-10.pdf>changed 
it to 0.65%. Dozens of studies have been done 
<https://swprs.org/studies-on-covid-19-lethality/>all 
around the globe which roughly confirm 0.2% (the 
numbers range from 0.08% to 0.3%). According to 
the WHO’s “best estimate” 
<https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/08/who-accidentally-confirms-covid-is-no-more-dangerous-than-flu/>it’s 
likely around 0.14%.

But let’s put that aside (we’ll go into it in 
more detail in point 2) – let us temporarily 
concede that MoA’s figure is correct – that 
Sars-Cov-2 has a fatality rate of 1%. Why is he 
then listing it alongside diseases which have 
fatality rates between 10 and 37 times higher?

He has conceded that the IFR for Sars-Cov-2 is 
nothing like as high as the other viruses. 
Introducing the fatality rates of SARS and MERS 
is a good example of the Association Fallacy – an 
attempt to put some large scary numbers into the 
mix, by claiming an irrelevant connection. All it 
really does is demonstrate that the Sars-Cov-2 
fatality rate is comparatively low.

Summary: The fatality rate of Sars-Cov-2 is much 
less than 1%, as evidenced by many studies. The 
fatality rates for SARS and MERS are entirely 
irrelevant to discussion of Sars-Cov-2.



2. DEATH RATES, SELECTIVE REASONING AND FILLER

In the original article for OffG, Dr Jeanmonod wrote:

2. COVID-19, the infection caused by SARS-CoV-2, 
the current corona mutation, is not more lethal 
than the flu, with a 0.1-0.2% infection fatality rate.

Bernhard’s response to this is in two halves – 
firstly a pedantic focus on the word “mutation” 
and a lot of text about genomes, second an accusation of dishonesty.

This is a. outright nonsense that has no scientific basis and b. a lie.

The paragraphs devoted to waffling about genomes 
are irrelevant. Viruses 
<https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2020/04/27/2020.04.23.20076075.full.pdf>mutate 
very rapidly, for a number of reasons, and it 
seems undeniably clear that Dr Jeanmonod is using 
the word “mutation” as shorthand to refer to this 
seasonal generation of respiratory viruses, that is all.

The accusation of dishonesty is far more serious. 
He calls Jeanmonod’s claim that Sars-Cov-2 has a 
fatality rate in line with seasonal flu “a lie”, 
and claims it is “outright false and easy to refute.”

For some reason best known to himself, he then 
chooses to ‘refute’ this by doing his own maths 
using rough, months old data from New York City. 
Doing this he produces an IFR of 1.29%.

As we discussed above, this is much too high.

The World Health Organization estimated the IFR 
to be 3.4% back in the Spring. This was an 
absurdly high number which totally disregarded 
the possibility of mild or asymptomatic cases. We 
now know that the majority of infections are 
symptomless, and the vast majority of those who 
get symptoms only ever get mildly ill. The 
corollary of this is the IFR has tumbled.

If Bernhard were being an honest broker on this 
issue he would, at this point, acknowledge that 
OffG has been shown to completely right about 
this. We have been writing that the IFR was 
inflated and would surely drop since May. Whereas 
<https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/04/on-coronavirus-and-smoking-infection-fatality-rates-and-more.html?cid=6a00d8341c640e53ef025d9b4a84a2200c#comment-6a00d8341c640e53ef025d9b4a84a2200c>his 
own predictions relating to IFR have not aged half so well.

Jeanmonod himself links to two studies showing an 
IFR of 
<https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-020-01691-x>0.2% 
and 
<https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v3#:~:text=Seroprevalence%20estimates%20ranged%20from%200.222,epicenters%20with%20high%20death%20tolls.>0.1% 
respectively. At least a dozen other studies 
around the world have demonstrated similar numbers.

Of course, Bernhard is free to disagree with 
Jeanmonod’s interpretation, and to pick and 
choose which evidence he puts weight on and which 
he does not. But to ignore these data sources and 
claim the author is lying is incredibly dishonest.

Summary: The 0.1-0.2% fatality rate is based on 
seroprevelance studies from scientific journals. It is not “a lie”.



3. ON AGE AND CO-MORBIDITIES

In the original article for OffG, Dr Jeanmonod wrote:

3. An immense majority (95%) of fatal evolutions 
happen in old and frail individuals with 
premorbidities, with an average age of death at or above 80 years old.

Bernhard responded with:

That claim is again an outright lie

I’m going to be charitable and assume that 
Bernhard’s mistake here is to misread some admittedly ambiguous wording.

He calls the claim “an outright lie”, and 
proceeds to try and debunk the idea that 95% of 
Covid19 deaths are over 80 years old, but that is 
not what Dr Jeanmonod said. The “95%” here refers 
to having serious comorbidities, not the age. 
But, as I said, I will cede that this conclusion is ambiguously worded.

Of course, if Bernhard had bothered to tackle the 
entire article – and not just 6 of the 8 
bullet-pointed conclusions – he would know that. 
Here is the full quote from the body of the text (with sources included):

For example in Italy, 95% of the fatalities 
happened for patients suffering from one up to 
three or more pre-existing morbidities, and the 
<https://www.epicentro.iss.it/en/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_22_july_2020.pdf>mean 
age of the deceased patients was 82. Such a mean 
fatality age is very close to the average life 
expectancy of developed, e.g. European countries (83.6 years for Switzerland).

As you can see, there is no ambiguity here. The 
“95%” here refers to pre-existing medical conditions, not the ages.

That the vast majority of alleged Covid19 deaths 
have serious comorbidities is not just limited to 
the figures from Italy – it has been shown to be 
the case 
in<https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/09/report-over-95-of-uk-covid19-deaths-had-pre-existing-condition/> 
UK and 
the<https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Comorbidities> 
US as well. In fact basically everywhere.

Bernhard does make a claim that these 
co-morbidities don’t cause death and the virus 
does. This is unsourced conjecture, and is not in any way verifiable.

What IS verifiable is that government officials 
all around the world 
<https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/05/covid19-death-figures-a-substantial-over-estimate/>have 
gone out of their way to point out how loose 
their definition of “covid death” is, that it has 
already lead to 
<https://off-guardian.org/2020/07/17/uk-govt-finally-admits-covid-statistics-are-inaccurate/>huge 
over-counts.

It is also true that the average age of those who 
allegedly die from/with covid19 is over 80 (you 
can see a list of average age by 
country<https://swprs.org/studies-on-covid-19-lethality/#age> 
here). Bernhard does not refute this, because he can’t.

Summary: His claim this statement is “a lie” is 
based on either an accidental misreading of an 
ambiguously worded sentence, or deliberate 
quote-mining to take the author’s words out of 
context. Either way, the original claim is 
demonstrably true, and sourced to official reports.



4. ON T CELLS, HERD IMMUNITY AND THE “SECOND WAVE”

In the original article for OffG, Dr Jeanmonod wrote:

4. Antibody studies, cross immunization with 
other corona strains and the completion of the 
death toll curve in many countries are strong 
evidence that the human population is developing 
herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2. In this 
context, a severe “second wave” for SARS-CoV-2 is 
improbable. We may rather expect a new cold 
episode from it just like every year, but of 
regular or even weak intensity thanks to the gained herd immunity.

Bernhard’s response to this is flawed in a few ways. Firstly:

Antibody prevalence even in hard hit place [sic] 
like New York City is way below the 80% or so 
that would be needed for some kind of “herd 
immunity”. In the U.S. and Europe antibody 
prevalence is in total way less than 10%. The bay 
area for example has only some 2%. Is the U.S. 
ready to give 10 times more lives than the 
266,000 who have already died of Covid-19 to 
achieve a only potentially temporary herd immunity?

His figure of 80% exposure for herd immunity is 
old, and based on flawed modelling which assumed 
there was no pre-existing mucosal and cellular 
immunity, this has been shown to be incorrect.

The Herd Immunity Threshold (HIT) for any disease 
is always, at best, a rough estimate and 
Sars-Cov-2 is no exception. It was stated as 80% 
back in April, but back then they said the UK 
would get 500,000 deaths and the IFR was 3.4%. 
Sweden worked on the model of 60% HIT. An article 
in Nature suggested 
it<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00451-5> 
was closer 50%. Another 
model<https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-thresholds-for-effective-herd-immunity-could-be-lower-than-predicted-heres-why-145069> 
put it at 43%.

More recent 
<https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20081893v3>preprints 
have suggested the herd immunity threshold is 
<https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160762v2>closer 
to 20% or even as 
<https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.15.20154294v2>low as 10%.

The point is the HIT is not nailed down, and 
Jeanmonod’s statement is backed up by scientific 
studies which Bernhard ignores.

Secondly:

Cross immunization with other corona viruses is a 
conjecture. We have so far no data that shows 
that there is cross immunity from other viruses that works against SARS-CoV-2.

This is simply completely untrue. There are many 
papers and studies showing pre-existing 
cross-reactive T-cells, likely the result of 
previous coronavirus infections. Here’s 
<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2598-9>1, 
<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z>2, 
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095096/>3, 
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867420306103>4 of them.

Thirdly:

The “improbable” second wave of Covid 19 is 
already developing in several European countries. 
Just take a look at France. And don’t worry. The 
rise in the still low death toll WILL follow the 
infection curve with a four weeks lag.

He illustrates this point using a graph of cases 
from France, insisting that the fatalities will 
lag but are coming soon (his tone regarding 
predicting the deaths of 1000s of people, is 
slightly odd, almost gleeful, but we’re not here discuss his psychology).

What he doesn’t mention is that cases have spiked 
– not just in France, but the rest of the Western 
world – ONLY thanks to a huge increase in the 
number of tests. If you test 100,000s of people, 
using a test with a known false-positive rate 
(more on this in point 5), looking for a disease 
with a high percentage of asymptomatic 
infections, you will undeniably get a spike in “cases”.

And that’s not actual cases, but “cases”.

You see, before 2020 a “case” of a disease was 
someone who got sick and developed symptoms. For 
some reason Covid19 has recently changed that, 
throwing 
<https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-does-a-case-of-covid-19-really-mean->all 
previous clinical practice out the window.

Summary: The statement about immunity and 
antibodies is backed up by several scientific 
papers, and MoA’s herd immunity threshold is out 
of date. The “second wave” is likely being 
generated by huge numbers of tests finding 
asymptomatic cases and false positives.



5. ON PCR TESTS AND THE CASEDEMIC

In the original article for OffG, Dr Jeanmonod wrote:

5. PCR testing of SARS-CoV-2 presence does not 
give any reliable prognostic evidence of its 
infectious power and lethality. The monitoring of 
the pandemic state and evolution is given only by 
the daily evolution of fatalities. In Switzerland 
as in many other countries, there is no longer 
any excess mortality attributable to the COVID-19 
pandemic. Positive test rate is low (around 3%), 
and tests have as always a technical false 
positive rate and react to inactive viral fragments or to other corona strains.

Since Bernhard’s response to this is refreshingly 
brief, I will quote it in full:

The author says that to evaluate the state of the 
pandemic we should follow the number (death) that 
is known to lag at least four weeks behind 
infections instead of following the number of new 
infections per day. That is lunatic. Its driving 
at high speed while only looking into the rear 
view mirror. During a highly dynamic pandemic we 
need current infection data and predictions, not reviews.

Also: SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests DO NOT react to other 
coronaviruses. The RNA strings they are reacting 
to are unique to SARS-CoV-2. The tests can not even ‘see’ any other ones.

Before we address the flaws in what Bernhard does 
say, let’s take a second to focus on what he does not say.

He doesn’t, for example, refute the statement 
that PCR tests are of almost no diagnostic use. 
Because he can’t. 
<https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/05/pcr-inventor-it-doesnt-tell-you-that-you-are-sick/>Because 
it’s true.

He doesn’t, you may notice, refute that PCR tests 
have a noteworthy false-positive rate. Because he 
can’t. 
<https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/895843/S0519_Impact_of_false_positives_and_negatives.pdf>Because 
it’s true.

And he doesn’t, interestingly, refute that there 
is no longer any appreciable excess mortality. 
Because he can’t. <https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps>Because it’s true.

Now, let’s move on to what he does say.

Firstly, his assertion that “new infections per 
day” is the best way to track the pandemic.

This is seriously flawed in more than one way:

The term “new infections per day” is incorrect. 
Just because Person A is tested on Monday and 
Person B is tested on Tuesday does not mean B is 
a “new infection”, that is absurdly bad logic. If 
you start widespread testing, testing 10,000s of 
people every day – you have no way of knowing 
which infections are “new” and which are old. You 
could only get “new infections per day” by 
testing everybody every single day, which is obviously impossible.

If your test can’t tell the difference between 
viral RNA fragments and living virions (which PCR 
does not, and cannot), then you can’t tell the 
difference between someone who is actively 
infected and someone who was previously exposed 
to the virus and either never got sick, or got sick and recovered.

If your test doesn’t assess viral load (which PCR 
does not, and cannot) then you have no way to 
distinguish between a person who has enough 
virions to cause disease and someone who does not.

If your test can 
<https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/pcr-positives-what-do-they-mean/>react 
to the RNA of other viruses (which, counter to 
MoA’s assertions, 
<https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/895843/S0519_Impact_of_false_positives_and_negatives.pdf>some 
studies suggest 
<https://www.instand-ev.de/System/rv-files/340%20DE%20SARS-CoV-2%20Genom%20April%202020%2020200502j.pdf#page=12>it 
does), then you have no idea who is “positive for 
Sars-Cov-2” and who just had a cold a couple of weeks ago.

All in all the “cases” number is unreliable and 
borderline meaningless. To use it as a measure of 
the pandemic would be to create a forever war on 
an enemy which may already be defeated.

Summary: The PCR tests have been shown to be 
highly unreliable in more than one way, and are a 
potentially disastrous way of “tracking a 
pandemic”. Jeanmonod’s preference for dealing 
with confirmed deaths instead of misleading test 
results is backed by science and experts in epidemiology.



6. ON LOCKDOWNS, DEATH AND HYPOCRISY

In the original article for OffG, Dr Jeanmonod wrote:

General isolation, distancing and lockdown 
measures, by limiting social contacts, freedom 
and basic human rights, add to the death toll 
through an upsurge of psychosocial and economic 
destabilization, worsening of psychiatric and 
demented individuals and reduction of medical 
care to the whole population. We have thus a 
combined causality for an excess mortality of 
COVID-19, a significant part of it being not due 
to the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself but to the 
worldwide COVID-19 panic wave and the imposed 
introduction of drastic and inhumane measures.

Bernhard responds with his trademark tact and charm:

That is the “Lockdowns kill” thesis that many 
covidiots use to claim that negative side effects 
of pandemic control measures outweigh their positive effects.

The thesis is wrong. Spain had a total lockdown 
everywhere between March 14 and May 9. It also 
had a lot of excess death. A large countrywide 
seroprevalence study showed where the most people 
were infected. That data is available on a granular and localized level.

Here we see again the very careful process by 
which Bernhard selects his data, choosing to 
evidence his claim that “lockdowns don’t kill 
people” with a rather tortured statistical 
reasoning based on numbers from six months ago, 
and limited to a single country (Spain).

This is where the “debunking” lurches from 
impolite strident arrogance into complete denial, 
intellectual dishonesty and – worst of all – abject hypocrisy.

Lockdowns do cause death and destruction, this 
has never been debated, even by the people 
instituting them. The question was whether or not 
the risks of Covid19 merited the undoubted toll 
of collapsing the economy and shuttering 
hospitals. No one, on either side of this 
argument, has ever suggested they do no harm at all. Until now.

Refuting this kind of madness is like having to 
refute someone claiming they’re a coffee table or 
that they have six legs. Yes, it’s easy, and yes 
it probably does need to be done
but it’s 
slightly demeaning, and since you know they’re 
only going to ignore you and carry on being crazy, is there really any point?

Nevertheless, here we go: Yes, the lockdowns have 
killed people, and will likely continue to do so. 
They kill people in myriad ways which can be 
broadly defined in three categories:

Denial of medical treatment. The shuttering of 
hospitals has lead to countless tests, 
screenings, treatments and surgeries being 
cancelled. This is not up for debate. The exact 
number of deaths caused by this is unknown, but 
experts estimate 
<https://www.dumptheguardian.com/society/2020/jun/01/millions-in-uk-miss-cancer-screenings-tests-and-treatments-due-to-covid-19>24,000 
missed cancer diagnoses in England alone. Writing 
in the Daily Mail, a prominent oncologist 
revealed that 
over<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8824833/Lockdown-despair-drove-two-Professors-lives.html> 
110,000 patients are waiting to begin their 
cancer treatments. A study at Birmingham 
University found that, globally, over 
<https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2020/05/covid-disruption-28-million-surgeries-cancelled.aspx>28 
MILLION surgeries had been cancelled.

In a similar vein, the media’s pushing of the 
message that the virus is incredibly dangerous, 
combined with worrying people about over-crowding 
hospitals, has lead to a huge drop in people 
calling for emergency medical care. Hospital 
admissions for 
<https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)31356-8/fulltext>heart 
attacks, strokes etc. are all way down from 
yearly averages. According to the British Heart 
Foundation, this has 
<https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2020/september/thousands-of-excess-deaths-from-cardiovascular-disease-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic>already 
lead to thousands of excess deaths from heart disease in the UK.

Economic misery and poverty. The destruction of 
the economy, including rendering 
<https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/06/1067432>millions 
of people unemployed and possibly many thousands 
literally homeless, will obviously result in 
death and suffering. 
<https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malnutrition>Malnutrition, 
<https://www.nhs.uk/news/mental-health/recession-linked-to-rise-in-suicides/>suicide, 
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-crime-idUSTRE50Q6FR20090127>violent 
crime, 
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395917300877>drug 
use and 
<https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/news/20111013/as-economy-goes-down-drinking-goes-up#1>alcoholism 
all surge as poverty increases.

Plus the increased anxiety of financial 
destitution causes stress-related disease – 
ulcers, heart attacks, strokes – which we already 
established are not being treated thanks to 
medical shutdowns. In the United States, with 
their private healthcare system, unemployment and 
poverty can mean not being able to afford medications you need to live.

Fear, Anxiety and Stress. The increased stress 
isn’t just related to financial problems, but the 
pandemic itself. Fear and anxiety – as well as 
causing heart attacks etc. – also 
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361287/>deplete 
the immune system, leading to increased risk of 
other diseases. Further, denial of human contact 
is known to 
<https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/news/2020-07-30/lockdown-isolation-causes-shocking-levels-decline-people-dementia-who-are-rapidly>accelerate 
the progress of degenerative disease such as 
dementia.<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/07/covid-has-created-looming-mental-health-crisis-royal-college/> 
Mental health treatments have been halted, and 
people already suffering are at massively increased risk of suicide.

Even Dr David Nabarro, World Health Organization 
special envoy for Covid-19, 
<https://twitter.com/spectator/status/1314573157827858434>said recently:

We in the World Health Organization do not 
advocate lockdowns as the primary means of 
control of the virus[
]just look at what’s 
happened to the tourism industry
look what’s 
happening to small-holding farmers[
]it seems we 
may have a doubling of world poverty by next 
year. We may well have at least a doubling of 
child malnutrition [
] This is a terrible, ghastly global catastrophe.”

To argue that lockdowns don’t cause harm, don’t 
cause death, is patently absurd. But, as I said, it’s also hypocritical.

Throughout this whole ordeal we “Covidiots” – or 
“pandemic deniers” or whatever you want to call 
us – have been told we are putting “money before 
people”, that we don’t care about the lives and 
suffering of human beings. That we’re saying some 
lives matter less than others. We’ve been called 
“selfish”, “inhumane”, even “genocidal”.

And now those authoritarians who are so 
pro-lockdown are turning around and not just 
backing policies which are proven to result in 
deaths – they are then refusing to acknowledge 
the deaths they cause. To wipe thousands of human 
lives out of existence, and claim they never 
existed. It’s sickening and, frankly, disturbing.

Summary: 
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/07/lockdown-killed-two-three-died-coronavirus/>Lockdowns 
cause excess deaths. This has been shown across 
multiple nations and for multiples causes. 
Denying that, at this stage, is almost insane. 
And one senses, more than anything, that Bernhard 
is attempting to soothe his own conscience more than deal with reality.

*

On the whole, if there were a theme to this 
“debunking” it would be “selectivity”.

He carefully selects to refute this article, and 
not the literal dozens of others we have done over the few months.

He carefully selects to refute the only part of 
this particular article without linked sources.

He carefully selects to refute the death rate 
with old data from one city, instead of new data from all around the globe.

He carefully selects to refute the idea lockdowns 
increased mortality with hastily constructed 
correlation, instead of officially cited causation.

And all the way through he carefully selects to 
ignore the academic sources Dr Jeanmonod 
references, and choose instead to present him as 
an ill-informed man making sweeping statements 
based on no evidence, rather than the truth: A 
highly educated expert making reasoned 
conclusions based on dozens of academic sources.

It’s not a “debunking” in the true sense. It’s 
2000 word strawman, deliberately twisting the 
irrefutable original into something with which he 
can argue. It’s intellectually flawed, but it’s 
also sad. MoA is a site I have always respected, but this is small.

His attacks on the author’s honesty, and the 
integrity of our site, are likewise unfair and, 
worst of all, all based on his deliberate 
misrepresentation of our position. There is no 
attempt at even-handedness or discussion. Only venal rage and abuse.

If he wanted to disagree with our article – or 
any of our hundreds of articles – he could simply 
have done so with a logical argument which 
acknowledged and attempted to understand our 
position. That would be reasonable and display 
integrity. He could have asked for a right of 
reply (we have never denied one to anybody, 
ever), or offered us one on his site.

If he would simply acknowledge that we cite 
sources from academic journals, that our 
interpretations differ but we have a reasoned 
argument based on science, and that our worries 
stem from a place of genuine concern for our 
fellow human beings, then perhaps some kind of understanding could be reached.

Instead he has set about burning a bridge, and 
claiming we started the fire. There’s a fevered 
madness about it. An hysterical refusal to admit 
any evidence he doesn’t like even exists at all. 
I don’t understand it, and I can’t excuse it.

If your only recourse to win an argument is to 
simply ignore all the evidence you may be 
mistaken, whilst spouting abuse and accusing the 
other side of dishonesty
isn’t that already an admission of something?

He closes his piece with this quote:

There are quite a number of authors with titles 
who have preconceived opinions and defend them 
even when that requires mangling the facts or to simply lie about the science.

The irony is apparently totally lost on him.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.gn.apc.org/pipermail/diggers350/attachments/20201017/82d8b08c/attachment-0001.html>