Thought of the Day - March 11 2022 - Stories We Have Been Told

It has been amazing to see over the past couple of years the number of "stories" we have been told concerning SARS-CoV-2 and COVID.

Let's look at a few we have talked about here on the blog.

The Public Does Not Need Masks

The one that still strikes most close to home for me, arose in the early days. The infamous declarations by Canada's Chief Medical Officer, Theresa Tam, that the public should not use masks ( Thought of the Day - June 22 2020 - Masks Revisited ).

• January 2020 - "It can sometimes make it worse, if the person puts their finger in their eye or touches their face under their mask,"

• February 2020 - "Wearing a mask could give people a false sense of security that could encourage wearers to relax physical distancing."

• March 2020 - "There is no need to use a mask for well people." / "Putting a mask on an asymptomatic person is not beneficial."

• April 2020 - “A non-medical mask can reduce the chance of your respiratory droplets coming into contact with others or landing on surfaces,”

The real story: There was a concern by the medical profession that they would have a shortage of medical masks.

We Need Expensive COVID Preventive Treatments

Then there was the story demonizing Ivermectin as a poisonous horse dewormer (you know the one that won the 2015 Nobel Prize for use in humans).

Two recent studies. A Brazil study shows you are 44% less likely to contract COVID if you have taken Ivermectin. On top of this, a study recently published in Florida shows if you have COVID you are 70% less likely to die using Ivermectin as treatment compared to Remdesivir. Canada paid tens of millions of dollars for our first 100,00 doses of Remdesivir while banning the import of Ivermectin. For the same investment, we could instead have supplied the whole country with the more effective Ivermectin ( Thought of the Day - June 23 2021 - India Does the Right Thing ).

The real story: There was no money to be made in Ivermectin.

The Natural Origin of the Virus

And of course, there is "bat soup" story. I think it goes: SARS-Cov-2 jumped from bats, through pangolin, and into people through the sale of live animals at the Wuhan Wet Market. Indeed, theories other than this were labelled a conspiracy and actively removed from social media until mid-2021! Well, just last week the Wall Street Journal published an article stating A pair of scientists from Hungary may have stumbled into more evidence supporting the theory that Covid-19 emerged from a laboratory. In contrast, the New York Times is still trying to peddle the original story with the February 27th, 2022 headline: New Research Points to Wuhan Market as Pandemic Origin - makes you think SARS-CoV-2 originated from the Wet Market right? Wrong. The only thing that is said is that there is evidence that a spreader event in Wuhan kicked off around the market ( Thought of the Day - August 24 2021 - USofA Origin Report ).

The real story: Senior US officials were trying to keep quiet the fact they were funding Coronavirus Gain-of-Function-Research at the Wuhan lab in China.

COVID Vaccines Stop Transmission

From the start, we have been hearing stories that the best way to protect others is to get vaccinated in order to stop transmission. Although vaccine manufacturers say they have never claimed this, indeed transmission was never even part of their trials or discussed in their approval submissions, some people still believe it ( Thought of the Day - October 8 2021 - Delta Spreaders ).

The real story: Vaccine mandates require this as an assumption, otherwise, there is little reason to discriminate against people who are unvaccinated. Remember the upside of vaccine mandates is they help shift the excess vaccine we bought.

The list goes on and on.

It has been an amazing journey and reminds me of the key takeaway from my Flat-Earther encounter from years ago: Question Everything ( Thought of the Day - August 5 - Whatever Facts You Want ).

Cheers

Cliff