Why Social Distancing Should Not Be the New Normal Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola - Story at-a-glance According to some, social distancing is part of “the new normal.” Alas, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest social distancing and lockdowns will not be necessary at all, and were probably a bad idea in the first place The rate of SARS-CoV-2 mortality never experienced exponential growth, as was predicted, which suggests a majority of people may have had some sort of prior resistance to the virus Statistical data reveals a mathematical pattern that has stayed consistent regardless of the interventions implemented. After two weeks of exponential growth, the growth curve quickly becomes sub-exponential Evidence for resistance to SARS-CoV-2 is emerging. One recent study found 40% to 60% of people who had not been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 still had resistance to the virus on the T-cell level. According to the authors, this suggests there’s cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2 One statistician believes the ratio of people that are not susceptible to COVID-19 could be as high as 80%. Once sensible behaviors such as staying home when sick are entered into this model, any potential benefit of lockdown efforts vanish altogether According to some, Bill Gates prominently among them, social distancing is part of “the new normal.” Alas, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest social distancing and lockdowns will not be necessary at all, and were probably a bad idea in the first place. According to Nobel-prize-winning scientist Michael Levitt,1 the rate of SARS-CoV-2 mortality never experienced exponential growth, as was predicted, which suggests a majority of people may have had some sort of prior resistance or immunity. Levitt, a professor of structural biology at the Stanford School of Medicine, received the Nobel Prize in 2013 for his development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems. No Exponential Growth in Mortality Statistical data, he points out, reveal a mathematical pattern that has stayed consistent regardless of the interventions implemented. As reported by Freddie Sayers in the video above: “After around a two-week exponential growth of cases (and, subsequently, deaths) some kind of break kicks in, and growth starts slowing down. The curve quickly becomes ‘sub-exponential.’ This may seem like a technical distinction, but its implications are profound. The ‘unmitigated’ scenarios modelled by (among others) Imperial College, and which tilted governments across the world into drastic action, relied on a presumption of continued exponential growth — that with a consistent R number of significantly above 1 and a consistent death rate, very quickly the majority of the population would be infected and huge numbers of deaths would be recorded. But Professor Levitt’s point is that that hasn’t actually happened anywhere, even in countries that have been relatively lax in their responses … He believes that both some degree of prior immunity and large numbers of asymptomatic cases are important factors … He describes indiscriminate lockdown measures as ‘a huge mistake,’ and advocates a ‘smart lockdown’ policy, focused on … protecting elderly people.” Quarantining the Healthy Was Unnecessary Now, evidence for prior resistance to SARS-CoV-2 is emerging, adding support to Levitt’s suspicions that the lack of exponential mortality growth may be due to the fact that a majority simply aren’t (and weren’t) susceptible to the disease in the first place. A study2 published May 14, 2020, in the journal Cell, found 40% to 60% of people who had not been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 still had resistance to the virus on the T-cell level. According to the authors, this suggests there’s “cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.” In other words, exposure to coronaviruses that cause the common cold appear to allow your immune system to recognize and fight off SARS-CoV-2 as well. This is great news. Professor Karl Friston, another statistician whose expertise is in mathematical modeling, believes resistance or prior immunity could be as high as 80%. Sayers reports:3 “[Friston] invented the now standard ‘statistical parametric mapping’ technique for understanding brain imaging — and for the past months he has been applying his particular method of Bayesian analysis, which he calls ‘dynamic causal modelling,’ to the available Covid-19 data … His models suggest that the stark difference between outcomes in the UK and Germany, for example, is not primarily an effect of different government actions (such as … earlier lockdowns), but is better explained by intrinsic differences between the populations that make the ‘susceptible population’ in Germany — the group that is vulnerable to Covid-19 — much smaller than in the UK ... Even within the UK, the numbers point to the same thing: that the ‘effective susceptible population’ was never 100%, and was at most 50% and probably more like only 20% of the population.” Social Distancing Should Not Be Part of ‘New Normal’ As noted by Sayers, this really throws the idea of social distancing being an unavoidable part of the post-COVID-19 “new normal” into question. What’s more, once sensible behaviors such as staying home when sick are entered into this model, the effect of lockdown efforts “literally goes away,” Friston says. According to Friston, the reason why Sweden and the U.K., for example, have had very similar mortality rates despite vastly different government interventions (Sweden did not impose mandatory stay-at-home orders or business closures while the U.K. did), is because Swedes who felt sick stayed home anyway. This is common sense for most people, especially during an active pandemic. When Sayer asks Friston to comment on Neil Ferguson’s now discredited Imperial College model4 that predicted the death of 2 million Americans and 500,000 Britons unless draconian lockdown and social distancing measures were implemented, he replied that Ferguson’s models were correct “under the qualification that the population they were talking about is much smaller than you might imagine.” “In other words, Ferguson was right that around 80% of susceptible people would rapidly become infected, and … that of those between 0.5% and 1% would die — he just missed the fact that the relevant ‘susceptible population’ was only ever a small portion of people …” Sayer writes. Pandemic Response Plan Has Been a Giant Flop Why did U.S. public health officials persuade lawmakers to almost immediately shutter businesses and issue stay-at-home orders for most of our population rather than implementing traditional disease control measures that identify, quarantine and treat the sick? Remember, quarantining is normally reserved for those infected, not for the healthy. This is a question that deserves an answer. We’re unlikely to get it, however, because the answer would likely reveal that this pandemic has been yet another massive fraud to enrich multinational corporations at the expense of just about everything and everyone else. And, if it weren’t for the captured mainstream media, it would never have worked. At this point, we can clearly see that an all-encompassing global totalitarian plan had been quietly put together, piece by piece, behind the scenes, only to be put into action once a pandemic — real or imagined — emerged. A key player in the coordination of this plan has been Bill Gates, who stands to profit in any number of ways, both from vaccines and technological rollouts. As noted by investigative journalist James Corbett in his four-part Corbett Report on Gates,5 “every aspect of the current coronavirus pandemic involves organizations, groups and individuals with direct ties to Gates funding.” This includes the World Health Organization, of course, but also the two research groups responsible for shaping the decision to lock down the U.K. and U.S. — the Imperial College COVID-19 Research Team responsible for the grossly inaccurate mortality model, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation — as well as the National Institutes of Health, and the NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been leading the White House pandemic response team. Then, of course, there was Event 201, conducted six weeks before the infections started. This was a tabletop exercise staged in October 2019 in which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security got together to gauge the nation’s preparedness for a global coronavirus pandemic. While that exercise revealed “massive preparedness gaps,”6 we’ve seen no shortage of preparedness in terms of comprehensive plans for how to track and trace the infection and vaccine status of everyone using electronic means. Ditto for plans requiring everyone to carry vaccine records in order to regain the freedom to work, get an education, travel and engage in social activities going forward. I wrote about this elaborate proposal in “Rockefeller Foundation’s Plan to Track Americans.” As noted by Corbett:7 “Given the incredible reach that the tentacles of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have into every corner of the global health markets, it should not be surprising that the foundation has been intimately involved with every stage of the current pandemic crisis, either. In effect, Gates has merely used the wealth from his domination of the software market to leverage himself into a similar position in the world of global health. The whole process has been cloaked in the mantle of selfless philanthropy, but the foundation is not structured as a charitable endeavor. Instead, it maintains a dual structure: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation distributes money to grantees, but a separate entity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, manages the endowment assets. These two entities often have overlapping interests, and … grants given by the foundation often directly benefit the value of the trust’s assets.” Medical Mafia Indeed, I wrote about this illegal setup in “Bill Gates — Most Dangerous Philanthropist in Modern History?” The Canadian citizen journalist who goes by the name "Amazing Polly," has also detailed how global health groups shamelessly use extortion and protection to achieve their goals, which have everything to do with building wealth and nothing to do with protecting or improving public health.8 For more details on this, see “Global Health Mafia Protection.” In Mafia protection racket schemes, people will pay extortion money when they are convinced bad things can or will happen if they don’t pay the fee. The same phenomenon is now seen with governments who might have been skeptical about an imminent pandemic until the arrival of COVID-19 and now want to pay for preparedness. All in all, it’s looking like a giant racketeering scheme. And to keep it going into the future, they need everything to fall in line with the idea that nothing can ever be the same as it was pre-COVID-19. Well, that is a lie. Throughout this pandemic, common-sense prevention strategies have been rebuffed and denigrated, helpful treatment strategies have been suppressed, and scientists and doctors have been censored for speaking out about the usefulness of alternative therapies or older, inexpensive drugs such as hydrochloroquine. All of this is evidence that public health is not a primary concern but transferring assets to the very wealthy certainly is. Many will be enriched from the global vaccination program and its tracking and tracing technologies, which will ultimately be tied to digital IDs and digital economies. Enough is enough. The global population needs to see the plan for what it is — a global, totalitarian power grab — and renounce it. We’ve allowed fear to dramatically alter our world. Let’s not make things worse by making those alterations permanent. As noted by Barbara Loe Fisher in her thought-provoking commentary, “How Fear of a Virus Changed Our World”: “Some of the core values, which have shaped our history and defined who we are as a nation, have been put on trial in 2020 because we are paralyzed by fear of a virus that doctors say could be hiding in the breath of every person who comes near us and contaminate everything we touch … The authoritarian lockdown approach by governments to the coronavirus pandemic has been framed as a choice between safety and liberty … Public health officials have persuaded lawmakers to divide the American people into two classes: those who are considered “essential” and allowed to continue working and those who are considered “nonessential” and barred from earning a living. Small businesses and services judged to be “nonessential” have been forced to close their doors … while, paradoxically, everyone is free to roam through grocery stores, drug stores and big box stores like Walmart, Target and Home Depot, owned by big corporations … What we have allowed to be done in the name of public health has no parallel in American history or human history. The world did not lock down during centuries of epidemics of smallpox, which was a highly contagious virus and had a case fatality rate of 30% … Societies have not closed businesses and schools to prevent tuberculosis, a contagious disease that spreads the same way as coronavirus and has a case fatality rate still between 20% and 70% … Why are the majority of people in educated societies like the U.S. cowering in fear before a virus that does not cause any symptoms or complications in the majority of children and adults under the age of 65, and has a mortality rate of about 1%, which is even lower if all the asymptomatic infections are counted? … You have an opportunity, right now, to contact your elected representatives and let them know how you feel about protecting civil liberties and vaccine informed consent rights in your state. Sign up to use NVIC’s Advocacy Portal to defend voluntary vaccine choices. And, when you go to the polls November 4, 2020, think hard about who you are voting for and why. If you don’t like the response to the COVID-19 pandemic that your governor or other elected representatives have made, your vote in this and every election beyond this one could affect whether America will continue to value liberty or throw it away.” View All Mercola Interviews
Why would you listen to an osteopath for advice on viruses or a pandemic? Besides, Mercola is a huckster not to be taken seriously.
I've posted exposés in the past about Mercola. I read those. They informed me not to pay any attention to him. But you keep reading his bilge. The bigger question is Why would you listen to an osteopath with a history of quackery for advice about a pandemic that is at odds with experts in the field? Let me know when you work that one out.
You must no be paying attention to what's happening now in the states that eschewed social distancing vs those that pushed for it? Pretty much everything in this post is parroting now thoroughly debunked nonsense that Trump pulled out of his ass, wake up and take a look around!
it is important to be aware of the many aspects and viewpoints of impactful events. we live in an age of rampant 'news' manipulation, on that we can All agree, no? What have you based your position on that i probably missed? please present links or sources of accurate data to support your position? where can we go to look at the information that you have looked at on this topic? this started out as a two week lockdown, back in the day...
It's not a "position", it's simply data. Every state has a dashboard that shows the number of positive COVID tests vs total test and number of deaths. You can find Florida's at https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429 and Texas' at https://dshs.texas.gov/coronavirus/additionaldata/ for example, but simply type "state covid dashboard" in Google and you can find the source data for every state. That data clearly shows that by and large the states that denied COVID was serious and avoided mandating social distancing and those who are now suffering the largest number of COVID cases and death, while the cases and deaths are declining in the states that took it more seriously. As far as the debunking of hydroxychloroquine, I'd direct you to the New England Journal of Medicine study at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2012410, the UK study at https://www.recoverytrial.net/files/hcq-recovery-statement-050620-final-002.pdf and the Lancet retraction of the only positive study at https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31324-6/fulltext just for starters. Something that strikes me when I go to Fox news is not that they say things that are blatantly false, although Fox opinion writers do all the time and I fear most Fox viewers don't grasp the difference. It's that anything that doesn't conform to the Fox worldview simply didn't happen. It's either not reported or buried at the bottom of the page in tiny print. So while I was initially somewhat appalled that, if I took you for your word, you legitimately weren't aware of the above. But it does make sense if your narrow worldview comes from a few carefully curated sources that won't ever make you question it, and you are then able to discount anything that's inconvenient for your worldview with this "we live in an age of rampant 'news' manipulation, on that we can All agree, no?" attitude. I certainly agree that some conservative news outlets like Fox, Breitbart, OAN and pretty anything that Trump tweets definitely fit the definition of "rampant 'news' manipulation", and would also agree that Huntington Post, Slate, and Vox are of a like mind on the other side. I completely reject that assertion when it comes to the rest of the news universe....you all need to realize that reporting on an exact tweet that Trump made or statement he uttered will never in this universe be "manipulation" just because it's so very inconvenient for you so you say it is. But if you insist on convincing yourself that anything that doesn't comport with your worldview is "manipulation", then there's plenty of source documentation like I provided above. At the point you decide the New England Journal of Medicine is "manipulation" you've lost your last tether to reality.
Good post, although I don’t agree that Huffington, Slate and Vox engage in the kind of manipulation or outright falsehoods as do Breitbart, OAN and FOX. I think that was a bit of false equivalence.
thanks imho tv news is a sham. - are all tests done with the same diagnostic kit type? what is tested for, corona or the covid-19 sub-strain branch of the corona tree? corona is the common cold, after all. - along these lines - for how long after exposure / infection will the subject test positive? Have the stats remained constant for positive vs positive with symptoms? What is the false positive rate?