MY EMAIL TO ROGER FRANKLIN, EDITOR OF QUADRANT ONLINE

Dear Roger,

It is a while since I was unceremoniously kicked off your esteemed website Quadrant Online. Though I have no ambition whatsoever to renew my subscription there (or even to apply for continuation of what I  paid for but never got to use) I do visit the site every so often, just out of curiosity.

I always enjoy reading Peter Smith, even if I do not always agree with him. And so I came to read his The Anxious Arithmetic of COVID Alarmism at  https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/02/the-anxious-arithmetic-of-covid-alarmism/ . 

After reviewing some material, he states in conclusion: 

"To wit, Worldometer reports, as at February 25, 21,875,800 active COVID cases worldwide with only 91,841 or 0.4 per cent serious or critical.

"Put together the very low risk of getting seriously sick with the evidence that those at risk can be fairly well identified. Now that just has to be a clue, even for those who credulously believe in the wisdom of government, as to why lots of people don’t want, and see no need, to have the jab — including, as it happens, me. But, of course, there will be no real choice; unless, that is, you choose to forage for food and live alone in a cave."  [?]

I suggest that Smith read what the staff of the famous Mayo Clinic have to say on this:

QUOTE BEGINS: Most people who have coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recover completely within a few weeks. But some people — even those who had mild versions of the disease — continue to experience symptoms after their initial recovery.

These people sometimes describe themselves as "long haulers" and the condition has been called post-COVID-19 syndrome or "long COVID-19."

Older people and people with many serious medical conditions are the most likely to experience lingering COVID-19 symptoms, but even young, otherwise healthy people can feel unwell for weeks to months after infection. The most common signs and symptoms that linger over time include:

Fatigue

Shortness of breath

Cough

Joint pain

Chest pain

Other long-term signs and symptoms may include:

Muscle pain or headache

Fast or pounding heartbeat

Loss of smell or taste

Memory, concentration or sleep problems

Rash or hair loss

[From there, it gets worse:]

Organ damage caused by COVID-19

Although COVID-19 is seen as a disease that primarily affects the lungs, it can damage many other organs as well. This organ damage may increase the risk of long-term health problems. Organs that may be affected by COVID-19 include:

Heart. Imaging tests taken months after recovery from COVID-19 have shown lasting damage to the heart muscle, even in people who experienced only mild COVID-19 symptoms. This may increase the risk of heart failure or other heart complications in the future.

Lungs. The type of pneumonia often associated with COVID-19 can cause long-standing damage to the tiny air sacs (alveoli) in the lungs. The resulting scar tissue can lead to long-term breathing problems.

Brain. Even in young people, COVID-19 can cause strokes, seizures and Guillain-Barre syndrome — a condition that causes temporary paralysis. COVID-19 may also increase the risk of developing Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Blood clots and blood vessel problems

COVID-19 can make blood cells more likely to clump up and form clots. While large clots can cause heart attacks and strokes, much of the heart damage caused by COVID-19 is believed to stem from very small clots that block tiny blood vessels (capillaries) in the heart muscle.

Other parts of the body affected by blood clots include the lungs, legs, liver and kidneys. COVID-19 can also weaken blood vessels and cause them to leak, which contributes to potentially long-lasting problems with the liver and kidneys.

Problems with mood and fatigue

People who have severe symptoms of COVID-19 often have to be treated in a hospital's intensive care unit, with mechanical assistance such as ventilators to breathe. Simply surviving this experience can make a person more likely to later develop post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression and anxiety.

Because it's difficult to predict long-term outcomes from the new COVID-19 virus, scientists are looking at the long-term effects seen in related viruses, such as the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Many people who have recovered from SARS have gone on to develop chronic fatigue syndrome, a complex disorder characterized by extreme fatigue that worsens with physical or mental activity, but doesn't improve with rest. The same may be true for people who have had COVID-19.

Many long-term COVID-19 effects still unknown

Much is still unknown about how COVID-19 will affect people over time. However, researchers recommend that doctors closely monitor people who have had COVID-19 to see how their organs are functioning after recovery.

Many large medical centers are opening specialized clinics to provide care for people who have persistent symptoms or related illnesses after they recover from COVID-19.

It's important to remember that most people who have COVID-19 recover quickly. But the potentially long-lasting problems from COVID-19 make it even more important to reduce the spread of the disease by following precautions such as wearing masks, avoiding crowds and keeping hands clean. QUOTE ENDS

In short, it should be taken seriously. IMHO.

Covid testing is carried out because one can be Covid-19 positive, and infectious to others, without personally showing any symptoms at all beyond a bit of a sniffle. Peter Smith, refraining from any vaccination, could be Covid-positive and move among his friends and neighbours and the population at large like a perambulating Covid-19 fountain; blissfully unaware of it while at the same time infecting many others, and some possibly fatally. That is the reason for the lockdowns he so strongly resents.

Smith concludes:

"It will be interesting to see whether any serious efforts are made to uncover the truth. The powers that be in governments, in the medical profession and in the media are (mostly) invested in the virulence of the pandemic and the absolute need for the panoply of protective measures which have been applied in an effort to curb the spread of infections. It will be difficult for them to ever give credence to evidence showing that they were wrong and, thus, subjected people to unnecessary hardships.

"Think of climate change for an analogy. Even if global cooling were to soon emerge, as some think, it will be roundly denied by alarmists, even as icicles drip from their noses."

Arguably, this is a reprise of The Great Global Warming Swindle, that film which argued that climatologists were all motivated by base lust for research grants, and would claim anything and falsify everything to get their grubby little paws on them.  From (the despised at QO)Wikipedia:

"The film's basic premise is that the current scientific opinion on the anthropogenic causes of global warming has numerous scientific flaws, and that vested monetary interests in the scientific establishment and the media discourage the public and the scientific community from acknowledging or even debating this. The film asserts that the publicised scientific consensus is the product of a "global warming activist industry" driven by a desire for research funding. Other culprits, according to the film, are Western environmentalists promoting expensive solar and wind power over cheap fossil fuels in Africa, resulting in African countries being held back from industrialising."

 I maintain that the credibility and likelihood of a conspiracy, if it is to work, is inversely proportional to the square -  no, make that the cube - of the number of people who have to be in on it and at the same time refrain from blowing the whistle on it, remembering that any one of them who blew the whistle on it could dine out on it for the rest of their lives, and pick up awards and gongs galore. Worldwide, that is an awful lot of scientists. After all, as I kept reminding the readers at Quadrant Online in my brief time there, there are 198 scientific organisations worldwide, including the Royal Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the CSIRO which endorse AGW.

The Earth's hydrosphere-lithosphere-atmosphere-cryosphere-lithosphere-biosphere totality is, I maintain, the most complex system we know about: in the whole Universe. The AGW proposition as I understand it is that heat trapped by atmospheric CO2 shows up not solely as temperature rise (and as Ian Plimer showed in his Heaven + Earth, endlessly disputable) but as increased energy in the atmosphere. That can take the form of increased storms, with cyclonic depressions south of Australia bringing cold air up from the Antarctic continent. The key indicator is sea-level, which according to the satellite altimetry using the geographic centre of the Earth as its reference point ( https://sealevel.colorado.edu/ ) the global ocean is rising at 3.3 +/- 0.4 mm/y; caused by ice melt, thermal expansion of sea water, or both. Both down to heating. So the despised 'warmists' CAN have icicles on their noses as the sea steadily rises, due to AGW. 

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7096470/time-to-renew-trust-in-science-brian-schmidt-tells-climate-summit/

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/why-does-the-coronavirus-fatality-rate-differ-so-m 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle

Finally, I have on order a copy of Peter Smith's Bitter Harvest, but it has not yet shown up. Could you, Peter or both forward this to the publishers? As I recall, I paid for it via PayPal.

Regards,

Ian MacDougall

https://noahsarc.wordpress.com/

Sent from no eyephone.