Are we in a Pandemic?

How many times have you heard a politician or media personality make a statement similar to the ones above? In the mainstream Covidist narrative, the existence of a “pandemic” (or “outbreak”) means that it is not appropriate to permit basic freedoms, alternative views, or even access to quality scientific information. 

Considering the serious crimes against humanity committed in the name of ‘pandemic response,’ it is understandable that there is a great deal of interest in what constitutes a pandemic. However, the debate of whether or not a virus with the pathogenic profile of SARS-CoV-2 can cause a pandemic is a fool’s game. It doesn’t tell us anything about how we should address the health risks posed.

Defining ‘pandemic’

There is no universal definition of a pandemic. All definitions include a disease that has become considerably more common in more than one country. Beyond that, the definition varies. It may include high morbidity/mortality, a new disease, or limited duration. Some examples are below.

WHO, 2009

An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.

WHO today

A pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease.

An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus emerges and spreads around the world, and most people do not have immunity. Viruses that have caused past pandemics typically originated from animal influenza viruses.

Medicinenet.com

Pandemic: An epidemic (a sudden outbreak) that becomes very widespread and affects a whole region, a continent, or the world due to a susceptible population. By definition, a true pandemic causes a high degree of mortality (death).

Encyclopedia Britannica

Pandemic, outbreak of infectious disease that occurs over a wide geographical area and that is of high prevalence, generally affecting a significant proportion of the world’s population, usually over the course of several months. 

Medical dictionary (thefreedictionary.com)

pandemic [pan-dem´ik]

1. a widespread epidemic of a disease.
2. widely epidemic.

Lockdown propagandists always use the word pandemic in the same way. They never use it in the sense of a mild disease of low fatality. It is only used in the Hollywood disaster movie sense; a cataclysmic mega-crisis for which all must be sacrificed. 

Proportional response

I don’t have to tell you that a response to any threat to society should be proportionate to the threat and factor in any possible harm that may arise from the response. You don’t send an army to battle a neighborhood street gang. A major threat to public health warrants a major response, so long as collateral damage is avoided. 

Highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs), for example, have caused over 100 million acute poisonings and taken 10-15 million lives in humans. This is a health threat that can easily be neutralized. Banning HHPs, as has been done in Sri Lanka, has been shown to buckle poisoning rates and save lives, while leaving farmers with affordable alternatives for controlling pests. Acute pesticide poisoning — big health threat, easy policy solution with no drawbacks.

How about a high-fatality respiratory virus? What would a proportionate response look like? 

Expanded treatment for the sick. Healthcare may need to be expanded in order to accomodate considerable numbers needing medical attention. This could require measures such as making short training programs for nursing aides to enable expanding capacity. To be ethical, providing treatment for respiratory patients must be done without reducing access to any other healthcare services. Income assistance for the sick and their caretakers would also be appropriate.

Public education. Teaching hygienic practices such as staying home when feeling sick, coughing into your sleeve, and regular handwashing, will reduce contagion. This can involve paid advertisements and free interviews in the media.

Travel advisories or restrictions. If there is a major outbreak in a particular country, it would be prudent for foreign governments to issue a travel advisory to discourage people from visiting. An outright ban on travel to and from the affected country could also be warranted.

The above three policies comprise an appropriate response to a fast-spreading respiratory pathogen with high mortality. If there are a lot of people requiring hospitalization, it will require a marshalling of resources to accommodate these people in the healthcare system without reducing healthcare access in other areas. That is a robust pandemic response. There is never any justification for reducing healthcare access or restricting basic freedoms, such as employment or interpersonal association. 

The argument that restricting freedoms is acceptable because there is a “pandemic” does not hold water. If we take the term in its most severe sense, as a pathogen that is fast-spreading, causes severe illness, and has a high death rate, it does not follow that anything the government does is justifiable. International human rights law emphasizes the concept of proportionality and time-limitation on any derogation of rights for health reasons. 

The Terror has not been proportional. The actions of the government have injured people psychologically and physically with hundreds of times greater magnitude than if every single person contracted SARS-CoV-2. Moreover, the oppressive actions (masking, social distancing, etc) have all been in vain because they are based on sham science. They are all based on the theory of high rates of asymptomatic spread. In reality, asymptomatic spread is rare and results in only mild illness at worst.

1. murder (from healthcare denial; starvation resulting from preventing people from earning money or closing down the food supply chain; vaccination with deadly gene therapy) 
2. forcible transfer of population 
3. imprisonment/severe deprivation of liberty (stay-home orders) 
4. torture
5. persecution against an identifiable group (eg. vaccine passports)
6. other inhumane acts (masking, social distancing rules)

There is no level of health threat that justifies any of these six actions. If we take “pandemic” to mean a highly fatal, quickly-spreading illness, and accept that there is a pandemic for COVID-19, it still does not follow that anything the government does is justified. It is no exaggeration to state that governments have played the pandemic card so that the public would accept a ‘win at all costs’ strategy in which nothing they do can be opposed. 

In debates, it is always necessary to define the terms and issues being debated. Conspirators of The Terror, such as premiers and journalists, always use the word “pandemic” in the same way. As demonstrated in the four quotes above, they only use ‘pandemic’ to refer to a health crisis that is so extensive and so deadly, it is a given that no measure against it could ever be ‘too much.’ The very same people claim that severity of illness, including death rates, is not a criteria for a ‘pandemic,’ usually when defending WHO’s pandemic declaration for SARS-CoV-2. What contradiction! They use the term in one way while defining it in another! Clearly, if a pandemic is inclusive of low-fatality disease, it would not make sense to implement harsh human rights restrictions for any pandemic. 

No definition of ‘pandemic’ justifies curtailment of freedoms

According to how the term is used by pro-lockdown apologists, we are not in a pandemic. These public figures invariably use the term in a cataclysmic context — no mitigation measure too harsh, no tradeoff too large to tame such an animal. They make pandemics seem like a town siege by the Roman Army in ancient times, which often involved the killing of every single resident. SARS-CoV-2 carries roughly the same health risks as the flu. It clearly does not qualify as the bloodbath-level ‘pandemic’ of CNN lore.

If we take a pandemic to mean a new and highly contagious, quickly-spreading disease that has dispersed over a number of countries, regardless of acuity, we were in a pandemic last year, but are not now. SARS-CoV-2 has been common throughout the world for over a year. It is no longer new. Like the common cold, influenza, and many other infectious diseases, COVID-19 is a mild affliction that has become endemic in the population. 

Many Covidists have been seeding the idea of a permanent pandemic, meaning that denial of freedom will be permanent. No matter if there is herd immunity and few severe cases of COVID, propagandists openly try to make human rights a thing of the past by declaring that the COVID pandemic will never go away. Covidists’ goal was never to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 through suppression. They always intended to install a new social and political paradigm.

I think it is useful to remove both the high-acuity and novelty elements from the definition of pandemic. Let’s give the lockdown camp the benefit of the doubt and say that we are currently living in a COVID pandemic. Paradoxically, this would be the worst definition for their case. If a pandemic includes mild illness that has been around for considerable time, then the argument of a pandemic justifying anything but treating the sick goes out the window. It also means that there is and has always been a pandemic for everything from strep throat to cold sores. Any policy implications of pandemics are lost under this definition. “A pandemic is not the time to…” lacks any sense.

Logic dictates that any risk to society should be dealt with in a proportionate way, carefully balancing the potential benefits with any possible negatives. The public, therefore, should only care about finding the right balance. Why then, does anyone even care what defines a “real” pandemic? I think it is because of people’s renewed faith in authority. 

In the face of a major crisis, people regress developmentally and become psychologically infantile. They stop thinking for themselves and depend on authority figures, of any kind, to think for them. This phenomenon has transpired to a radical degree since COVID became the number one news story. 

Petrified of SARS-CoV-2 from too much fear porn, people have not been able to think rationally. They do not even wish to think for themselves anymore. Any depiction of authority onto which people can latch, such as media personalities, politicians, or UN officials, is welcomed as an intellectual surrogate.

The pool of infantilism in which people currently wade places a high priority of official declarations. A pandemic, a state of emergency, this week’s color of COVID risk — these formal declarations by our government or a stately-sounding paternal organization, like the World Health Organization or Public Health Ontario, give people reassurance. ‘Our dear leaders always know what’s best. Our role is not to think. It is to obey these sages,’ say we. 

Corruption

Famously, the WHO changed the definition of a pandemic in 2009, weeks before declaring a pandemic for a strain of H1N1 one third as deadly as the regular flu. The criteria for a high death rate was removed because they knew that the strain had a low death rate.

An investigation by the Council of Europe concluded that this and the aggressive push by the WHO for mass vaccination resulted from corruption. The WHO was representing the interests of the pharmaceutical industry and disregarding the public interest. The same can be said for the CDC and NIAID. In 2020, as in 2009, the WHO was moved to declare a pandemic to promote mass vaccination and make money for its de facto pharma owners.

For years, Robert Kennedy Jr. has been raising awareness that these institutions have been corrupted by the pharma industry, including promoting unnecessary vaccinations. There couldn’t possibly be any less credible organizations than the WHO, CDC, and NIAID to have any voice in health policy. While the latter two are American institutions, they wield global influence rivalling that of the WHO.

The WHO’s 2009 declaration of a pandemic fueled the push for universal vaccination against H1N1. The agency greatly exaggerated the mortality of the strain and maintained that universal vaccination was essential to save lives. Sound familiar? Official declarations of a pandemic by a government or intergovernmental agency makes for premium fear propaganda. Pandemic declarations are made solely for political and commercial purposes.

COVID-19 poses a minor risk to human health. A policy response commensurate with the risk would be limited to public health messaging of hygienic practices and, in select places, a modest and temporary expansion of healthcare services. The determining factor in addressing a novel health risk is the severity of that risk relative to the health risks created by the response itself. Whether or not COVID-19 matches the definition of a pandemic or outbreak is irrelevant. If a pandemic is defined as a serious public health threat, COVID-19 doesn’t qualify. If it is defined by a broadly disseminated, long-standing infectious disease, you wouldn’t be able to count all the diseases that qualify. Certainly, any inferences for a collective response would disintegrate in the latter case.

By summoning the pandemic theme, lockdown apologists have completely avoided discussion about proportionality and secured buy-in to sweeping restrictions on freedoms. Talk about a health crisis, pandemic, or outbreak is meant to instill panic in the public so people will beg their leaders to protect them by taking away all their freedoms.