Are we, the public, being treated like sheep, as if we’re too dumb to think for ourselves? Are we acting like sheep? Or both? Why such anger in the hallowed halls of science where precise, rational thinking is revered? What is going on? How can we rise out of anger to allow disagreement and healthy debate?

B is for Plan B

B could stand for Bias or Bigotry. But let’s focus on the positive. Plan B is defined by Merriam Webster as an alternative plan of action for use if the original plan should fail. More broadly, Plan B describes the impressive innovation that has occurred during this COVID-19 lockdown. New COVID-19 Search Engines:  theverity.com, a search engine in beta focusing on the credibility of COVID 19 news, and a search tool for looking through thousands of COVID-19 scientific research papers. Google Blogs launched a COVID-19 Research Explorer powered by semantic AI. The World Economic Forum and Industry Week focus on new gadgets that harness AI, robotic and other technology for COVID-19. More disruptive innovations are in the pipeline that can change how we learn, manage health care, energy and a range of products and services that are distributed, rather than centrally controlled.

Rory Spowers’ article in Ecohustler reminds us that the Taoist ideogram wei-chi translates as both crisis and opportunity, calling for personal and societal change, catalyzed by crisis.

Credit: ecohustler.com
David Gorski MD PhD, starts with a politically correct attack on Dr. Judy Mikovits and then introduces two crisis/ opportunity stories that could be starting points for Plan B:

The John D. Rockefeller Pharma Story. In the early 1900s, America’s first Billionaire, John D. Rockefeller bought a German pharmaceutical company that would later assist Hitler to implement his eugenics-based vision by manufacturing chemicals and poisons for war. Rockefeller wanted to eliminate the competitors of Western medicine, so he submitted a report to Congress declaring that there were too many doctors and medical schools in America, and that all natural healing modalities were unscientific quackery. Rockefeller called for the standardization of medical education, whereby only his organization be allowed to grant medical school licenses in the US. And so began the practice of immune suppressive, synthetic and toxic drugs. Once people had become dependent on this new system and the addictive drugs it provided, the system switched to a paid program, creating lifelong customers for the Rockefellers. Currently, medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US. Rockefeller’s secret weapon to success was the strategy known as, “problem-reaction-solution.” Create a problem, escalate fear, then offer a pre-planned solution. Sound familiar?

Flash forward to 2020…They named it COVID-19. Our leaders of world health predicted millions would die. The National Guard was deployed. Makeshift hospitals were erected to care for a massive overflow of patients. Mass graves were dug. Terrifying news reports had people everywhere seeking shelter to avoid contact. The plan was unfolding with diabolical precision, but the masters of the Pandemic underestimated one thing… the people. Medical professionals and every-day citizens are sharing critical information online.

Whether we’ve started to wonder or not, the damage is done. As Dr. David Gorski observed,

“The overlords of big tech have ordered all dissenting voices to be silenced and banned, but they are too late. The slumbering masses are awake and aware that something is not right. Quarantine has provided the missing element: time. Suddenly, our overworked citizenry has ample time to research and investigate for themselves. Once you see, you can’t unsee.”

C is for Critical Thinking

We cannot be critical thinkers if only one point of view is allowed. Who decides that John Q. Public is not smart enough to choose what videos to watch and what interviewers to believe?

Evolution could not operate if all organisms in a species were genetically identical. And if everyone holds exactly the same view, we have no foundation for democracy.

Tagged under Intelligence, Police State & Civil Rights, Science and Medicine, on May 11, 2020, an article was released called Catholic Clergy on COVID-19: Three Cardinals Join Global Appeal Decrying Crackdown on Basic Freedoms Over Coronavirus

The appeal “for the Church and the world” warned that the coronavirus pandemic is being used as a “pretext” by world leaders to “control” people and strip them of their basic rights in a “disturbing prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control.”

Critical Thinking Combats Polarization

Behind the contrasting policies for handling COVID-19 in Sweden and the UK lie opposed medical assumptions. Sweden’s medical experts defined “herd immunity” as a time when 40% – 60% of the population would have been exposed and developed antibodies to the virus. This is generally an anti-mask strategy. In contrast, the UK, like the US, had a masked, lockdown strategy.

On May 12, 2020 Foreign Affairs published a striking review of Sweden as a model: Sweden’s Coronavirus Strategy Will Soon Be the World’s: Herd Immunity Is the Only Realistic Option—The Question Is How to Get There Safely. Swedish authorities imposed some restrictions designed to flatten the curve: no public gatherings of more than 50 people, no bar service, distance learning in high schools and universities, and so on.

Sweden did not institute harsh controls, fines, and policing or location-tracing technologies or apps, and so avoided threats to privacy and personal autonomy. Final tallies of Sweden’s alternative to lockdown are not in, but University of Stockholm mathematician Tom Britton has calculated that 40 percent immunity in the capital could create sufficient “herd immunity” to stop the spread of the virus by June. Though Sweden has experienced more deaths among the elderly, Sweden has fared better than many countries in Europe, and the final tally is not in, though Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, and the primary architect of Sweden’s strategy, said in early June, 2020 that he would do some things differently.

At the other end of the spectrum is the story from the UK. On March 19, 2020 two events occurred in the UK. New legislation was proposed in Parliament to allow the UK government extraordinary powers because of COVID-19. On that same day, Public Health England downgraded COVID-19 from a High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID) to a disease on the level with the flu. Some noted that this downgrade was not publicized, enabling the legislation proposed on that day to be enacted four days later (on March 23). Those who questioned the UK government assuming extraordinary powers when COVID-19 had been downgraded were called “conspiracy theorists.”

COVID–19: The Big Pharma players behind UK Government lockdown describes how philanthro-capitalism, Big Pharma and government agencies, are collaborating on a global immunization agenda, with massive projected profit for Big Pharma and associates of Gates, the WHO, UNICEF, and world governments (see also Part One).

CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, was launched at Davos in 2017 by the governments of Norway and India, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the British-based Wellcome Trust global health charity, and the World Economic Forum. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky argues that CEPI seeks “a monopoly role in the vaccination business, the objective of which is a global vaccine project.” The Oxford University start-up, Microsoft-funded facial recognition firm Onfido recently raised $100 million (now $200 M.) to boost its ID technology to enable the creation of immunity passports.

Of concern is the connection between the UK COVID-19 strategy and the potential for massive global surveillance, which could be baked into our passports. The idea that businesses predict future needs, develop products and services to meet those needs and make a profit if they perform effectively is implicit in the capitalist economy. What is of concern are mandates that force the purchase of products.

Questions are raised that call for critical thinking.

An entire global population has been convinced to accept conditions that we would have called bizarre even a year ago:

• house arrest, or euphemistically, “shelter in place,”
• complete shutdown of economies, putting life and work at risk for many,
• wearing masks everywhere and agreeing not to congregate,
• accepting that anyone who questions these orders is a quack who should be viciously attacked.

Ada Yakota graphic from David Korten, YES! Magazine, cited below

The image above highlights the bizarre nature of “the new normal” – it suggests fear, conformity, and control. If we accept this new normal, what else will be acceptable? Cancelling elections? Denying people the right to choose what medical treatment they want or don’t want? It should be easy, after convincing everyone to wear masks, to mandate annual flu vaccines for the planet’s 7+ billion people. Who profits?

For many years I’ve refused to have an annual flu vaccine, not because an expert told me to do that but because I intuited that it would be best for me to let my own immune system respond. I don’t get the flu, but there’s no “one size fits all” correct solution for everyone. Vaccines were a brilliant discovery to combat some diseases and for some people. I formerly flew to Australia frequently. Planes landed, and while all the passengers were locked in the cabin, stewardesses walked down the aisles spraying all passengers with insecticide. I was the only passenger on every flight I was on who walked to the front and said, “Insecticides make me sick.” I was allowed to step outside. To my amazement, all other passengers calmly accepted being sprayed.

In the future I may not have that choice. I may be forced to pay for health care I don’t want, just as cats are now required to have annual rabies shots that make the cats sick and profit the rabies vaccine industry. I’m not on an anti-vax campaign; I’m advocating the right to choose.

Decades ago, the tobacco industry claimed that cigarettes were good for your health. What is claimed changes. By asking questions, rather than pinning hate labels on those with other points of view, we’ll learn. The pseudoscience hate label has mushroomed to include many health categories. Wikipedia has a large pseudoscience list, which includes anti-vaccine activists such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who concludes his foreword to Plague of Corruption with, “This account by Judy Mikovits and Kent Heckenlively is vitally important both to the health of our children and the vitality of our democracy. My father believed moral courage to be the rarest species of bravery. Rarer even than the physical courage of soldiers in battle or great intelligence. He thought it the one vital quality required to salvage the world. If we are to continue to enjoy democracy and protect our children from the forces that seek to commoditize humanity, then we need courageous scientists like Judy Mikovits who are willing to speak truth to power, even at terrible personal cost.”

Why are those who raise questions labeled quacks? What is new is abandoning the strong case for personalized medicine to force everyone, sick or not sick, to accept globally mandated standardized behaviors and treatments. For the entire 7+ billion global population to be mandated to buy these flu vaccines for which the manufacturers offer no guarantee and are released from all liability and for us to have no freedom to choose – that would be new.

If the US is a nation of free speech, why do those who question the standard narrative on the topic of COVID-19 face such a backlash? Why is John Q Public deemed too dumb to read multiple points of view and decide?

Aren’t we exposing shortcomings of an educational system where people are stuffed full of “correct facts” and do not learn the critical thinking skills to be able to hear conflicting views and decide?

Beyond health debates, COVID-19 has raised questions about how government handles emergencies and financial bailouts. Robert Reich wrote an impassioned plea: “Our government must bail out the American people, not corporations.” That means “No industry—not airlines, not hotel chains, not cruise ships—should be bailed out. . . in this sweeping economic stabilization bill.” Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell proposed hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts for the airline industry and other industries that recklessly mismanaged their budgets by fattening the pockets of their CEOs. Propublica is tracking these bailouts. The Institute for Policy Studies reported that, though tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic, America’s ultra-wealthy elite experienced a net worth surge of $282 billion in just 23 days.