Yep, one by one they fall from Facebook, with the anti-immigration site vDare now copping it. Well, this is a war, and they, like us, will have to carry on regardless. I hate bloody Facebook, and would rather be subjected to the Chinese water torture than have to look at it every five minutes just to see who let off wind today (I just did, sorry, it was me, it’s the high meat diet):
  http://www.amerika.org/politics/facebook-takes-off-the-mask-bans-vdare/
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/05/06/facebook-supreme-court-packed-with-anti-trump-progressive-figures/

“Recently, Facebook decided to go down the dark path of hive-mind conformity and zapped longstanding Right-wing think tank VDARE from the platform. As Peter Brimelow writes: My refutation of Facebook’s ridiculous rationale for banning us.

     It was predictable; the globalist Left never let a good crisis go to waste, however it turns out. Thus, Covid-19 is now linked with climate change and the planetary crisis, at least in the minds of the acting class:
  https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/05/06/robert-de-niro-madonna-use-coronavirus-to-demand-climate-change-reforms-massive-extinction-of-life-on-earth-is-no-longer-in-doubt/

“Left-wing politicians have woken up to the fact that  the coronavirus pandemic “would be a terrible crisis to waste,” in the words of Hillary Clinton. Now a group of wealthy Hollywood stars is also capitalizing on the crisis to push a sweeping climate change agenda. Celebrities including Robert De Niro, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda, and Joaquin Phoenix have signed their names to an editorial published Wednesday in France’s largest newspaper, Le Monde, demanding a total overhaul of economies around the world in the name of saving the environment and fighting global warming. “The Covid-19 pandemic is a tragedy. This crisis, however, has an upside in giving us the chance to examine what is essential,” the editorial says. “The ongoing ecological catastrophe is a ‘meta-crisis’: the massive extinction of life on Earth is no longer in doubt, and all indicators point to a direct existential threat. Unlike a pandemic, however serious it may be, it’s a question of a global ecological collapse whose effects will be immeasurable.”

     When it suits them, feminists and the Left push “believe women,” on sexual assault offences/allegations, when the agenda is to take down a conservative, but when one of their own commits alleged sexual offences against women e.g. Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, why they all join ranks and attack the victim. It that is not corruption, nothing is!
  https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2020/05/05/nolte-biden-media-and-feminists-resurrect-clinton-era-playbook-to-destroy-tara-reade/

“What’s happening to Tara Reade at the hands of the corporate media, feminists, and Joe Biden is a disheartening return to the 1990s, to the infamous Bill Clinton era. Reade has come forward with one of the most credible sexual assault allegations we have seen in a very long time. She alleges that in 1993, while working in his Senate office, then Sen. Biden (D-DE) sexually harassed her, sexually assaulted her, and then fired her in retaliation for filing a harassment complaint. Tara Reade is Joe Biden’s eighth accuser. Tara Reade has five witnesses who corroborate she told them about the alleged assault at or near the time. If her claim is eventually debunked, Tara Reade risked prison last month by filing a formal criminal complaint against Biden. We now have video of Tara Reade’s anguished mother calling into a 1993 edition of CNN’s Larry King Live to ask advice about her daughter’s problems with a “prominent senator.” Tara Reade has challenged investigative reporters to dig into her story. Finally, Tara Reade is calling for Biden to make his Senate papers available in the hopes her harassment complaint will be found. Tara Reade is behaving like a woman with nothing to hide. Joe Biden denies the allegation, but is behaving like a man with everything to hide. And in an effort to allow Biden to hide straight through to the November election, and in an effort to personally destroy Tara Reade, Biden, feminists, and the media have decided to resurrect the Clinton-era Playbook. Those of us old enough to remember the 1990s, the way in which the media and feminists circled the wagons to protect Clinton, are very familiar with these cynical tactics.

     The religion of climate change has been given a slap in the face by socialist Michael Moore’s new film, Planet of the Humans, which is an obvious allusion to the Planet of the Apes move franchise. Moore has upset the environmentalists by attacking the sacred of sacreds, renewable energy. Here is Rolling Stone on this:
  https://theconversation.com/3-times-michael-moores-film-planet-of-the-humans-gets-the-facts-wrong-and-3-times-it-gets-them-right-137890
  https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/bill-mckibben-climate-movement-michael-moore-993073/

“Basically, Moore and his colleagues have made a film attacking renewable energy as a sham and arguing that the environmental movement is just a tool of corporations trying to make money off green energy. “One of the most dangerous things right now is the illusion that alternative technologies, like wind and solar, are somehow different from fossil fuels,” Ozzie Zehner, one of the film’s producers, tells the camera. When visiting a solar facility, he insists: “You use more fossil fuels to do this than you’re getting benefit from it. You would have been better off just burning the fossil fuels.” That’s not true, not in the least — the time it takes for a solar panel to pay back the energy used to build it is well under four years. Since it lasts three decades, it means 90 percent of the power it produces is pollution-free, compared with zero percent of the power from burning fossil fuels. It turns out that pretty much everything else about the movie was wrong — there have been at least 24 debunkings, many of them painfully rigorous; as one scientist wrote in a particularly scathing takedown, “Planet of the Humans is deeply useless. Watch anything else.” Moore’s fellow filmmaker Josh Fox, in an epic unraveling of the film’s endless lies, got in one of the best shots: “Releasing this on the eve of Earth Day’s 50th anniversary is like Bernie Sanders endorsing Donald Trump while chugging hydroxychloroquine.”

     The mental health fallout from the actual Covid-19 lockdowns may be greater than the actual deaths, perhaps right across the West. Consider this material on the suicide factor for example:
  https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/suicides-toll-far-higher-than-coronavirus/news-story/25a686904b67bdedbdcd544b1cab7f96

“Suicide rates in Australia are forecast to rise by up to 50 per cent due to the economic and social impacts of the coronavirus and tipped to outstrip deaths from the pandemic by up to 10 times. World-leading research by the country’s top mental health experts predicts the impact of the virus could result in an extra 1500 deaths a year over the next five years and a generational mental health crisis linked directly to the pandemic. The modelling, conducted by Sydney University’s Brain and Mind Centre and backed by the Australian Medical Association, is expected to be taken to national cabinet next week by Health Minister Greg Hunt ahead of an accelerated second-phase mental health package. The modelling also predicts a significant economic blow from falling productivity due to the mental health effects of unemployment, school dropouts and family crises. Regions hard-hit by a collapse in tourism are expected to be particularly vulnerable to an increase in suicide and it is feared that young people are among those most at risk. Former mental health commissioner and the head of the Brain and Mind Centre, Ian Hickie, told The Australian that the modelling showed the annual rate of suicide could rise from 3000 to up to 4500, with youth suicides making up almost half. A joint statement will be issued today by Professor Hickie, AMA president Tony Bartone and Orygen youth mental health organisation executive director Patrick McGorry, calling for urgent¬ action to address an issue which they claim will kill more people than the virus. Preliminary modelling by the Brain and Mind Centre suggests the COVID-19 pandemic may give rise to 25 per cent more suicides, with up to 30 per cent of those among young people aged 15-25 years. This was based on an unemployment rate of 10 per cent and the associated recessionary impacts. But this could rise to 50 per cent if unemployment was to peak at 15 per cent. The modelling shows hotspots in regional areas, including the Grafton and Northern Rivers regions of NSW, which have been severely hit by loss of tourism and hospitality as well as outer-metropolitan areas of Sydney and Melbourne. “We are facing a situation where between an extra 750 and 1500 suicides may occur annually, this in addition to the 3000-plus lives that are lost to suicide already every year,” Professor Hickie said.”

     I must admit, that even though these are confusing, if not dangerous times, with the New World Order closing in, like one of those rooms with walls lined with spikes that come in on you, it is still … delightful! Much like a dessert, that is so sweet and fatty, and tasty, that you eat it and die happy. Take this one, for example, dear to my heart because it challenges, in a foundational way, the globalist ideology of the Australian universities:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8259917/China-stop-students-tourists-visiting-Australia.html?ito=push-notification&ci=13868&si=1326534

“Chinese students and tourists could stop coming to Australia if Prime Minister Scott Morrison pursues an inquiry into the beginnings of coronavirus, a leading Chinese official has warned. The stern warning was issued by Chinese Ambassador Cheng Jingye who labelled a push for an independent COVID-19 inquiry by the federal government as 'dangerous'. Mr Jingye warned that if Australia continued to be 'unfriendly' to China, its people - in particular its students and tourists - may have second thoughts about travelling. While admitting that his country had not handled the COVID-19 outbreak 'perfectly' he said the reaction by nations like Australia had left the Chinese people 'dismayed'. 'I think in the long term... if the mood is going from bad to worse, people would think 'Why should we go to such a country that is not so friendly to China? The tourists may have second thoughts,' he told The Australian Financial Review. 'The parents of the students would also think whether this place which they found is not so friendly, even hostile, whether this is the best place to send our kids.' Education is Australia's third biggest export and is worth more than $30 billion to the economy every year. The ambassador refused to comment on whether key exports such as iron ore, coal and gas would be affected by perceived anti-China sentiment.”

     Here is an informative article showing why Italy has been so severely hit by Covid-19. It all has to do with Chinese migration. Well, blow me over, who would have thought that immigration could have any fault at all, being a gift of the gods?
  https://www.amren.com/features/2020/04/italy-china-and-the-coronavirus/

“For decades, a large, sometimes hostile Chinese community has worked in the Italian fashion and textile industries. Immigrants — legal and illegal — started as a cheap, “exploited” labor source that allowed high-fashion companies to slap a “Made in Italy” label on products churned out in sweatshops. Now, Chinese own many off-the-books factories, ignoring employment and safety laws, and dodging taxes. They are also carving out a competitive niche in the fashion industry, and even buying up iconic Italian companies. Was the China connection the reason the coronavirus outbreak hit Italy so hard and so early? So much immigration has been illegal — and so many Chinese factories don’t even exist on paper — that contact tracing and other disease control measures were impossible. Where did the Chinese come from? How many are there? The first Chinese migrants settled in Milan and Turin in the 1930s, with a few more trickling in over the next decades. Many were peddlers, and some opened family workshops for leather goods. In 1975, there were only 402 Chinese adults in the country, but more arrived during the early 1980s. Like earlier migrants, they came mostly from Zhejang Province in southeast China, especially the coastal city of Wenzhou. In 1986, Italy granted 1,618 residency permits to Chinese. In 1996, it granted 16,200, and in 2001, the figure was almost 69,000. The number of illegals was unknown. In 1986, 1990, 1995, 1998, and 2002, Italy passed a series of amnesties and “reforms,” and every one of them encouraged immigration. For example, in 1995, the government let illegals stay in the country if they registered with police. In 1998, a liberal government passed a law that let any public entity (including immigrant advocacy groups and NGOs) sponsor migrants. Immigrants got access to the medical system and can now bring in relatives through “family reunification schemes.”

     Censorship everywhere … why just a few months ago we would never have expected such measures, the equivalent of sending bad kiddies to their rooms. But, here we are, and it is only going to get worse:
  https://www.amren.com/news/2020/04/internet-speech-will-never-go-back-to-normal/

“COVID-19 has emboldened American tech platforms to emerge from their defensive crouch. Before the pandemic, they were targets of public outrage over life under their dominion. Today, the platforms are proudly collaborating with one another, and following government guidance, to censor harmful information related to the coronavirus. And they are using their prodigious data-collection capacities, in coordination with federal and state governments, to improve contact tracing, quarantine enforcement, and other health measures. As Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recently boasted, “The world has faced pandemics before, but this time we have a new superpower: the ability to gather and share data for good.” Civil-rights groups are tolerating these measures—emergency times call for emergency measures—but are also urging a swift return to normal when the virus ebbs. We need “to make sure that, when we’ve made it past this crisis, our country isn’t transformed into a place we don’t want to live,” warns the American Civil Liberties Union’s Jay Stanley. “Any extraordinary measures used to manage a specific crisis must not become permanent fixtures in the landscape of government intrusions into daily life,” declares the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group. But the “extraordinary” measures we are seeing are not all that extraordinary. Powerful forces were pushing toward greater censorship and surveillance of digital networks long before the coronavirus jumped out of the wet markets in Wuhan, China, and they will continue to do so once the crisis passes. The practices that American tech platforms have undertaken during the pandemic represent not a break from prior developments, but an acceleration of them. As surprising as it may sound, digital surveillance and speech control in the United States already show many similarities to what one finds in authoritarian states such as China. Constitutional and cultural differences mean that the private sector, rather than the federal and state governments, currently takes the lead in these practices, which further values and address threats different from those in China. But the trend toward greater surveillance and speech control here, and toward the growing involvement of government, is undeniable and likely inexorable.”

     This will be a big, big, problem for the position held by Sweden, that herd immunity will arise, sooner or later. Yes, but what if it does not?
  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/what-if-covid-19-immunity-doesnt-last-long

“the most critical unknown by far is how long do people remain immune from the virus once they contract it and recover? A number of COVID-19 patients have seen the virus mysteriously resurface after initially contracting it, leading some to question whether antibodies truly do confer permanent and complete immunity on all recovered patients. That's why the WHO has pushed back against immunity passports, much to Bill Gates' chagrin.”

     The conservative, and Left mind too, does not cope well with masses of conflicting data, and hypotheses, let alone scientific uncertainty. We see this with climate change, where fanatics from the Left take a “it’s all proven approach,” which those from the Right must deny, by asserting exactly the opposite, when as matter of real science, almost everything is uncertain. Cosmological events could change the situation in seconds, whatever the reality is. Likewise, for Covid-19.
  https://affirmativeright.blogspot.com/2020/04/stating-obvious-false-dilemmas.html

     We have a divide here even within the Dissent right, or freedom movement, with Natural News.com championing the apocalypse view, and other sites going from a spectrum of positions right down to it is all a false flag. The problem we have is that all the models of the coronavirus infection were wrong:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/health/all-coronavirus-models-were-wrong
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-04-30-new-data-covid-19-deaths-above-300000.html
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/antibody-tests-support-whats-been-obvious-covid-19-is-much-more-lethal-than-flu/2020/04/28/2fc215d8-87f7-11ea-ac8a-fe9b8088e101_story.html
  http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2020/04/30/covid-19-is-not-the-flu/

     Perhaps it is some sort of cosmic compensation for putting up with mass rapes, but the otherwise cucked Sweden seems to have lucked out in coronavirus responses.
  https://www.zerohedge.com/health/why-sweden-has-already-won-debate-covid-19-lockdown-policy

“On the European front, the Scandinavian country of Sweden is now garnering more attention than before, and has become an object of both criticism and fascination for those against or in favor of lockdown policy. While countries like the United States and Great Britain continue to top the global tables in terms of COVID-19 death tolls, Sweden has only suffered marginal casualties in comparison, while avoiding the intense strain on society and loss in public confidence which lockdown governments are now grappling with as they continue to push their populations to the limits of social stress and economic tolerance. You could say those governments are already careening over the edge by looking at the latest jobless figures coming out the US with 30 million new people filing for unemployment in the last few weeks. Unlike many others, Sweden has not enforced any strict mass quarantine measures to contain COVID-19, nor has it closed any of its borders. Rather, Swedish health authorities have issued a series of guidelines for social distancing and other common sense measures covering areas like hygiene, travel, public gatherings, and protecting the elderly and immune compromised. They have kept all preschools, primary and secondary schools open, while closing college and universities who are now doing their work and lectures online.

     The coronavirus freak-out, if anything, shows that globalism globalises disease, and that the only sensible approach to modern statecraft is nationalism. But, the globalists will not be giving up easily, and have an uncanny knack of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Anyway, two good articles at vDarew.com, on this; I like this site better than American Renaissance, it does not have the East Asia worship, and most writers are pretty straight shooters:
  https://vdare.com/articles/always-remember-the-coronavirus-pandemic-is-a-product-of-globalization-political-correctness-and-immigration

“Always remember this simple truth: the Covid-19 outbreak is the product of globalization, mass immigration and rampant political correctness. The main stream media/ democrat complex is counting on the disease and resulting economic disruption to take down Donald J. Trump’s presidency. But it’s actually shown why nationalism, and a realistic attitude to race, is more relevant than ever. What the U.S. needs going forward: economic self-sufficiency, an immigration moratorium, and a restored sense of national identity so that its leaders can respond quickly in a crisis without the paralyzing fear of being called “racist.” There is still much we don’t know about the coronavirus, including the deeply controversial question about whether it was man-made, a product of Chinese dietary habits, or some completely unknown source [Chinese lab conducted extensive research on deadly bat viruses, but there is no evidence of accidental release, by Joby Warrick, Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris, and Anna Fifield, Washington Post, April 30, 2020]. However, we do know that the Chinese government is refusing the World Health Organization’s request for a joint investigation about where the virus came from [China refuses WHO requests to participate in coronavirus investigations: report, by J. Edward Moreno, The Hill, May 1, 2020]. We thus see two critical lies of globalism revealed:

     This call against the globalists, was made by Yair Netanyahu, the son of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Against the EU, Yair championed a free, democratic Christian Europe. And what is wrong with that?
  https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/netanyahus-son-calls-for-return-of-a-free-democratic-christian-europe-626266

“Yair Netanyahu, a son of the Israeli prime minister, called for the return of a “free, democratic and Christian” Europe in a tweet that criticized a joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony for Israel’s Memorial Day. Netanyahu’s post on Tuesday, Yom Hazikaron in Israel, was in response to a tweet from the European Union delegation to the State of Israel, @EUinIsrael, noting its participation in the ceremony sponsored by Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle, this year on Zoom, which included a record 200,000 participants. “Shame on you for financing a disgrace in the holiest day of the Israeli calendar!” Yair Netanyahu said. “We have one day in a year to remember our fallen soldiers! And you destroy it with a ‘memorial’ to Palestinian terrorists! EU is an enemy of Israel, and an enemy to all European Christian countries! Schengen zone is dead and soon your evil globalist organization will be too, and Europe will return to be free, democratic and Christian!” The Schengen zone comprises 26 European states that have officially abolished all passport and all other types of border control at their mutual borders, and includes Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland. Netanyahu, who lives with his parents in the official prime minister’s residence and receives personal security, has stirred controversy with previous posts on social media. Last week he tweeted an apparent death threat against “old people” protesting the establishment of a national unity government, which will be led for 18 months by his father, Benjamin, saying he hopes the gathering spread coronavirus to the left-wing demonstrators. He later deleted the post and the prime minister distanced himself from his son’s comment.”

     Monopolies, especially those of Big Teck, such as Google, must be broken up, because they become a threat to freedom and indeed to the market economy itself. Pam Geller has recently stated this and given some ideas about it, well worth thinking about:
  https://gellerreport.com/2020/04/youtube-censors-corna-drs.html/

“Google must be broken up. They own YouTube. We are under siege by big tech authoritarians. The idea of limiting media monopolies is not new. “Beginning in 1975, FCC rules banned cross-ownership by a single entity of a daily newspaper and television or radio broadcast station operating in the same market.” The ruling was put in place to limit media concentration in TV and radio markets, because they use public airwaves. The technology changed but the objective is the same. The FCC designed rules to make sure that there is a diversity of voices and opinions on the airwaves. That diversity no longer exists. We were the first to sue the social media giants for our First Amendment rights. In light of that fight, I began to focus AFDI activism to pursue anti-trust laws be used to break up social monopolies and duopolies. The Wall Street Journal now is suggesting the same thing, albeit for the wrong reasons. For the WSJ, it’s all about the … , but for principled Americans, it’s all about freedom. Please contribute to that fight here. Make no mistake, it is the most pressing issue of day. If we are going to fight against the forces of far-left authoritarianism, and we must, freedom of speech in the social media public square is essential. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a free society. Without it, these leftist tyrants can and are wreaking havoc unopposed, while we are silenced.”

     Go, big orange man, go!

Reporter:
"Have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the [Wuhan lab] was the origin?

     Look, this is just a misunderstanding produced by a racist society. Surely with billions more refugees, say another 4 billion, when the African population explosion happens in a few decades, these sorts of disputes will be a thing of the past, not even a memory:
  https://voiceofeurope.com/2020/04/migrant-tells-danish-man-you-danes-are-animals-you-will-be-exterminated-video/
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/04/29/shootings-sweden-increasing-despite-coronavirus-police-operations/

     It is hard to believe, but China which is supposed to be making everything in the Newer New World Order, is hoarding medical supplies. Whatever for, since didn’t the commo party tell us that everything is peachy cream with that old crazy virus?
  https://nypost.com/2020/05/04/dhs-claims-china-hid-coronavirus-severity-to-hoard-medical-supplies/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow

“US officials believe China deliberately downplayed the country’s coronavirus outbreak in order to stock up on medical supplies needed to fight the illness, intelligence documents show. In early January, Chinese leaders “intentionally concealed the severity” of the pandemic from the world, according to a four-page Department of Homeland Security intelligence report obtained by the Associated Press. The analysis also says that for much of January China delayed reporting the coronavirus “was a contagion” to the World Health Organization so they could import personal protective equipment. The report, which is dated May 1 and marked “for official use only,” said China increased imports and decreased exports of medical supplies while downplaying the growing crisis. The report’s conclusions were based on the 95 percent probability that China’s changes in imports and export behavior were not within normal range. There is no public evidence to suggest that China deliberately withheld information for the purpose of hoarding the world’s medical supplies.”

     It is hard to believe that there could be rising anti-Chinese sentiment. It must just be mindless racism with no grounding in reality at all, because reality never gives any grounds for hating anything, other than whites, who are hated even by themselves, and they all want to die, after a good consumer life, consuming all of the resources and producing global warming:
  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-sentiment-ex/exclusive-internal-chinese-report-warns-beijing-faces-tiananmen-like-global-backlash-over-virus-idUSKBN22G19C

“An internal Chinese report warns that Beijing faces a rising wave of hostility in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that could tip relations with the United States into confrontation, people familiar with the paper told Reuters. The report, presented early last month by the Ministry of State Security to top Beijing leaders including President Xi Jinping, concluded that global anti-China sentiment is at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the sources said. As a result, Beijing faces a wave of anti-China sentiment led by the United States in the aftermath of the pandemic and needs to be prepared in a worst-case scenario for armed confrontation between the two global powers, according to people familiar with the report’s content, who declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter. The report was drawn up by the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a think tank affiliated with the Ministry of State Security, China’s top intelligence body. Reuters has not seen the briefing paper, but it was described by people who had direct knowledge of its findings. “I don’t have relevant information,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson’s office said in a statement responding to questions from Reuters on the report.

     My son was looking at the use of the statistical measure called meta-analysis, which is a statistical technique which analyses data from different studies, either identifying some measure common to studies, or showing why variation exists. There are a whole lot of formulas to learn and apply, although computers do most of the heavy lifting nowadays, which is just as well, given how challenged social scientists are mathematically. What struck me, was the fundamental philosophical point, that in almost every field, say perception, the theory of consciousness, and even mundane things like diet, statistically significant sturdies are in logical contradiction. So, the idea is to use statistical measures to synthesise data across all of the studies. Forget about the formulae, which tend to mind-numb things. In any areas, the studies are all mutually contradictory. How can a synthesise across them be possible, and if it is, why trust the meta-analysis because isn’t it a question of garbage in, garbage out? Thus, I suppose that a number of IQ studies could be subjected to a meta-analysis, but that rides over the very issue of the conceptual tenability of the tests in the first place, something the early fathers of psychometric, such as Spearman, pondered deeply:
  https://www.nature.com/articles/116436a0.pdf

     I have a really bad feeling about this whole field, and when I get time I hope that I can smash it, not that academics care what a high school teacher thinks, we being sub-standard, and proud of it. Long live cranks, highly useful devices.

     Today’s lesson is the rise and rise of technocracy, control of the world by wizards and witches wielding technical knowledge. Here is a story about one technocrat who helped get the present lockdowns going, complete with flawed modelling:
  https://www.technocracy.news/imperial-college-prof-accused-of-patchy-record-of-modeling-pandemics/

“Experts have cast doubt on the work of a key scientist whose apocalyptic prediction that coronavirus could kill 500,000 Britons led Boris Johnson to decide he had to lock down the country. Professor Neil Ferguson, director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College, London, authored a report which forecast that terrible death toll if nothing was done to stop the spread of the disease. Even plans to slow the virus – letting around two-thirds of the population catch coronavirus to build up ‘herd immunity’ – would result in 250,000 deaths, according to Imperial’s mathematical model. Prof Ferguson’s devastating conclusion led the Prime Minister to perform a drastic U-turn a fortnight ago. Schools were closed and people told to stay at home. Last week, Prof Ferguson told MPs these measures could see the eventual death toll cut to ‘substantially less’ than 20,000. Meanwhile a paper by separate colleagues at Imperial predicted just 5,700 deaths if the lockdown continues. Now a rival academic has claimed Prof Ferguson has a patchy record of modelling epidemics, which could have led to hasty Ministerial decisions. Professor Michael Thrusfield of Edinburgh University said Prof Ferguson was previously instrumental in modelling that led to the cull of more than 6 million animals during the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001, which left rural Britain economically devastated. Then, Prof Ferguson and his Imperial colleagues concluded: ‘Extensive culling is sadly the only option for controlling the current British epidemic.’ But Prof Thrusfield, an expert in animal diseases, claimed the model made incorrect assumptions about how foot and mouth disease was transmitted and, in a 2006 review, he claimed Imperial’s foot and mouth model was ‘not fit for purpose’, while in 2011 he said it was ‘severely flawed’.’