News analysis from Planet Waves

Sunshine is the Best Disinfectant
It’s Time to Demand the Truth About Covid-19

“A noble and active mind blunts itself against nothing so quickly as the sharp and bitter irritant of knowledge.”

— Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

Dear Friend and Reader:

The world, or much of it, is involved in a concentrated, dramatic and tragic health crisis similar to none we’ve seen in recent memory. There has been the claim of loss of life in every country. There is the claim of some new illness.

There has been and continues to be much needless suffering. In the United States, the situation seems to be getting worse, not better. It’s become clouded in partisan politics, disinformation campaigns, and needless chaos in our public health response. Corporate leaders are competing to create a vaccine for an illness that they don’t understand.

Apart from those who are actually sick— from what, we do not know for sure — many others are panicked, frightened, confused, angry, or hungry. Many are grieving relatives, friends and loved ones who have been lost, and fearing for the safety of others. There is this idea floating around that to question the narrative we are being given is disrespectful of the dead. I would propose the opposite: we deserve to know what is hurting us and how, so we can do something about it.

The Prevailing Feeling of Agonizing Helplessness

For everyone else experiencing this matter through its effects, the negativity and stress are nearly unbearable. The prevailing feeling of helplessness is agonizing to behold. The message being given to the public, over and over again, is: there is nothing that can be done, except maybe a vaccine, which might not work and might also be harmful.

It actually seems that medical science, for as “advanced” as it is, cannot help much, especially if 88% of patients die after being put on a ventilator. Therefore, the only solution is for people to stay home, and wear a mask when you don’t. That is not enough — and is of dubious help. Yet there is plenty medicine can do to help, if only we could know about it, and if the profession could establish some standards.

We are not in the midst of a medical mystery thriller. We are in the midst of persistent, toxic chaos, and it’s not reassuring of anyone or anything. At times it looks like incompetence or negligence. And other times it looks like intentional deceit: like a cover-up.

People are easily manipulated when they are scared, confused and hungry. We must guard that vulnerability carefully, and take care about the many agendas that are roaming the planet right now. If you are not seeing this as a time of opportunity, many others are — big time.

We Have a Truth Problem

It is time to admit that we have a truth problem with this whole issue: with the “novel” coronavirus, and Covid-19 and all of their implications. We don’t know the truth about what is happening, or how it happened, and we must demand it.

From whom? From everyone: from our political leaders on every level; from the public health establishment; from news media, which is supposed to actually investigate and hold the government accountable rather than repeating its claims; and from the medical profession and our personal doctors. This demand must be a community effort, following an ethos that goes beyond “trust the experts.”

Most of all, we must insist on a standard of truth from ourselves, and from the people we know who are interested. Nearly all the time, the position of people on the ground is to submit to whatever authority figures may say without question — and to chide and marginalize those who dare to ask questions as “conspiracy theorists.” That is a toxic environment where honest inquiry cannot survive for long.

People are easily manipulated when they are scared, confused and hungry. We must guard that vulnerability carefully, and take care about the many agendas that are roaming the planet right now. If you are not seeing this as a time of opportunity, many others are — big time. And we must take care of the many people hurt by this crisis in ways other than medical.

Five Months of Team Reading Hundreds of Articles

We at Planet Waves have for nearly five months been team-reading well known publications such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and many others. And we have been tracking what is published outside the mainstream press, by which I mean scientific journals, medical school publications, primary source government documents, the international press, specialty publications and the reporting of both doctors and independent journalists around the world.

Our readers have sent in many interesting and valuable articles that have helped keep us up to date with the nuances of the issues. You can find a selection of the thousands of articles we have reviewed on our own blog, Covid19 News (published by our nonprofit arm Chiron Return). I’ve also been tracking what is reported on television, and what health officials and other government officers have to say to the general public when they are quoted in mainstream articles.

Together, we assess the content, the context and as best we can, the veracity what we’re reading. The article you are reading presents what we’ve learned on only a few issues; there are many more. And we could say much more about the ones we’ve covered here.

Here’s what I can tell you, after all of this work and all this immersion in what is going on behind the scenes.

I have never seen a more frightening gap between what is on TV and quoted in mainstream outlets, and what you find out when you seek real information and contrast many sources. We have witnessed recent precedents for this kind of reality gap, which include the claim — reported and affirmed by every single mainstream newspaper and TV network — that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 9/11 incident, had a nuclear bomb program and in effect was about to take over the world in 2003 if the United States did not wage war against him.

We all know the truth: there were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no nuclear bomb program. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.

Reversing Positions on Important Issues from Day to Day

In the Covid situation, officials, such as at the World Health Organization (the WHO) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) can reverse their positions from one day to the next, and it’s barely noticed, much less taken as a cause for concern. For example, high level officials may tweet something one day, get headlines, and deny it the following day (recall the WHO tweet on asymptomatic carriers, and another on whether the virus can be spread outside).

To give another example, in March, CDC reversed its position on masks (very few of which are in fact actual PPE), abandoning its longstanding position that their use by healthy people is not necessary.

In a March 8 interview on the CBS program 60 Minutes, Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, explained it this way: “When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet. But it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And often, there are unintended consequences.”

Was there some scientific discovery that led to the reversal? Was there a discovery that bandannas work better than masks? I never heard of one. Earlier this month, Fauci tried to explain away his reversal in his interview with Mark Zuckerberg, claiming that really, it was about conserving supplies for health care workers.

Every Conceivable Lab Problem

As for problems with testing: reports of data problems and foul-ups with the various tests come through our reporters’ discussion list every day. Contaminated test kits, rushed sampling and analysis, inexperienced lab techs, failure to change gloves between each patient, messy paperwork, the same patient repeatedly testing both negative and positive, and differing testing methods and protocols from state to state, are all reported regularly, though in a scattershot way. They seem to run in cycles, with each major issue periodically recurring.

Nobody in the “big media” is pulling all of the pieces together, or even trying to — which effort would make it clear how serious these problems are and how sketchy this revered thing called science is.

Can you imagine if that made cable news, much of which is paid for by pharmaceutical companies? It would create a panic around these extremely profitable classes of drugs. This is a plausible reason to leave it out of the news — along with much else that’s being left out.

Twenty to Thirty Times Lower Death Toll Was Possible

Every now and then, the truth slips in. Last Thursday morning on live cable television, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s medical correspondent, said something I have proposed: that the Covid-19 death toll would be “20 to 30 times lower” had the medical profession handled the situation better — which would have required the cooperation of the government. If he is correct, that’s a lot of lives that could have been saved.

What is he talking about? I’ve read enough to know some of the kinds of measures that would have and still can contribute to saving lives — there are many, and none involve flying saucers, fairy dust or the Illuminati.

It’s been reported that many people who die from Covid-19 are Vitamin D deficient. That’s easy to address in advance. It has been known since the discovery of coronaviruses in the 1970s that they are averse to zinc, both from gargling and supplementation. That’s cheap and easy to take advantage of.

Helpful Approaches Banned or Denied

There are also direct measures that doctors can use to protect their patients and move them out of harm’s way. For example, a great many people are on medications called ACE2 inhibitors, or statin drugs. These are both suspected to make Covid-19 more deadly (designed to regulate blood pressure and cholesterol, both make the ACE2 receptor more vulnerable to attack by the virus).

There is also a problem with proton pump inhibitor antacids, such as Prilosec (which have many other issues).

Can you imagine if that made cable news, much of which is paid for by pharmaceutical companies? It would create a panic around these extremely profitable classes of drugs. This is a plausible reason to leave it out of the news — along with much else that’s being left out.

Once and once only, I saw a CNN feature on how zinc helps. Why isn’t that on once per hour? There’s a reason. If there’s a way to prevent this immediately and safely, there goes the vaccine gold rush now underway.

Note, if you are concerned about your medication, speak with your doctor, get a second opinion and do some reading. This article is not intended as medical advice; it is intended as reporting the information and facts we have learned. Also, we were just made aware of a study discounting this connection. That does not make it “proven science” and one must be vigilant about the financial interests involved in statins and ACE2 drugs.

The Covid-related economic crisis has been complete with market crashes, the price of oil falling below zero, tens of millions newly on the unemployment rolls (and shorn of health insurance), and trillions of dollars in new government debt racked up in a just a few months — and frankly, with no end in sight.

Social and Economic Unrest

Beyond the disaster caused by our ill-equipped, poorly informed, profit-driven, disorganized and too-small medical system, we are facing an economic crisis. As of now we do not understand the extent of the economic problem, or the potential implications.

They have yet to set in, though they are serious: a massive swath of the tax base has dropped out from under the government.

And there is also a social crisis. To give one example, federal cops in unmarked tactical uniforms with unmarked vehicles — a secret federal police force — have been arresting protesters in Portland. This made page one of The New York Times. Covid contact tracing phone software (supposedly a public health measure, at the cost of privacy) has been used to track people at protests in Minneapolis.

The Covid-related economic crisis has been complete with market crashes, the price of oil falling below zero, tens of millions newly on the unemployment rolls (and shorn of health insurance), and trillions of dollars in new government debt racked up in a just a few months — and frankly, with no end in sight.

In the Context of a Staggering ‘Case’ Count

All of this is set in the midst of a crisis sustained by a staggering “case” count based on the improperly used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test; reports of people who did not even give a sample getting a call saying their test was positive; and innumerable accounts of deaths being falsely reported as from Covid, and doctors being pressured to claim a death was Covid when it was not. In the spring, we published a series of articles on governments walking back their presumed Covid death counts, upon further research — a kind of story we see appear regularly.

Perhaps some people recognize that there’s something not quite adding up. If you ask about this, you might be accused by your neighbors of believing in “conspirituality.” What is that? It’s “the confluence of right wing conspiracy propaganda and new-age magical thinking,” as someone on the Pacifica Radio station managers list said about me today after reviewing a draft of this article.

Most others are so frightened by the endless news reports as to be paralyzed and cut off from their own ability to think rationally. And in any situation where science is a factor, most people are conned out of their ability to think for themselves by how mystical the whole situation seems, and all the technical language. We easily forget that the whole concept of science is to demystify and make practical.

And as has been selectively reported, 13 of the first 41 cases in Wuhan had no contact with the fish market. This demonstrates that the cases did not originate there and that the others were brought to the market from somewhere else. Where is that somewhere else? I am surprised people are not more curious about this. I am also surprised to hear people say that it doesn’t matter where the virus came from.

In The Beginning: The Origins of This Situation Matter

One of the biggest deceptions involves how all of this happened. We have had no information forthcoming about the actual origin of the suspected virus — only disinformation. If the matter comes up (it hasn’t for a while), all we get on cable news and the big news sites, to this day, is the often-repeated, untrue story of how the virus originated with a bat at a disgusting market in China where they eat anything. Then suddenly the whole world was infected.

In fact, 13 of the first 41 cases showed no link to the Huanan wet market where the outbreak was said to have begun, according to a study published by The Lancet medical journal. “That’s a big number, 13, with no link,” said Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University, in an interview with Science.

Early on, the wet market story was modified to the degree of admitting that bats are not sold at markets or eaten at cafes in China.

We were then told it must have gone from a bat (who flew from a cave six hundred miles away, coincidentally the same cave where scientists collect bat viruses) through some other unnamed, unidentified animal, to a human and poof, global disaster.

‘Cases’ Did Not Begin at the Market

This contact tracing demonstrates that the first cases were brought to the market from somewhere else.

Where is that somewhere else? I am surprised people are not more curious about this. I am also surprised to hear people say it doesn’t matter where this came from.

The point of origin matters; all beginnings do. That is in the Tao Te Ching, and it’s the basis of astrology, astronomy, cosmology and radiocarbon dating.

The Torah and the Holy Bible begin with the phrase, In the beginning. Ancient and modern storytelling is on a constant quest for the origins of whatever it is considering. And now that something has suddenly impacted the whole world, nobody is interested?

The origins of a thing determine its qualities at the inception: its true nature and intent. If the virus did not originate from the seafood market in Wuhan, it had to come from somewhere else. There are only a few plausible possibilities. They all involve laboratories.

It happens that there are two labs where people routinely handle coronaviruses in Wuhan — one of which is a BSL 4 (biosafety level 4, the highest) factory-sized laboratory right in town that collects, concentrates and manufactures coronaviruses, ostensibly for research purposes. The BSL 4 lab is partially paid for by the CDC (that is, the U.S. federal CDC, thanks to the generosity of Tony Fauci) — and is the only facility of its kind in all of China.

The other is a BSL 2 lab that is owned and run by the Chinese government, the city’s Center for Disease Control. That is barely 200 meters from the seafood market, though I could not map it for some reason. With these two facilities, we have potential point sources.

Credible scientists have said that the virus looks like it came out of a lab, including Luc Montagnier, the Nobel Prize winning discoverer of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). References quoting Montagnier have been subject to Facebook “fact checking” bans, as if a social media platform is capable of refuting the opinion of a Nobel-laureate virologist.

Blocking Facts from Search Engines and Social Media

The problem of blocking and removing discussion of Covid from search engines and social platforms has persisted, most recently with Google banning ads from anything it considers to be a “conspiracy page.” (Conspiracy is actually a crime in state and federal jurisdictions, so I wonder how that distinction is made.)

Setting aside any thoughts of a potential bioterrorism incident (which is always possible here in the age of terrorism), the virus may have escaped from a lab by accident (such events are commonplace, such as potentially someone got exposed at work, got sick and passed it on). Researchers frequently get the viruses they investigate, and lab safety issues are well-established as a persistent problem. If such a thing happened, it would be nice to know exactly what this stuff is and what its properties are. Maybe there’s an antidote (in virology, called an antiserum).

While we are on the topic, what exactly is the Wuhan Institute of Virology used for? What kinds of experiments do they do there, and what is their complete inventory of viruses? Why is it cosponsored by the United States (which began when virus enhancement research was illegal domestically) ? Why is the whole thing kept so hush-hush?

Everyone is on notice that this is a potential problem. It is not science fiction. It’s reflective of the scientific and political realities of our day — realities that have existed at least since the 1950s.

If perchance this incident is the result of bioterrorism, it would be sensible to know who did it, which could help stop a second attack. If “gain of function” is involved in the pathogen or pathogens circulating (a common practice of designing a virus to be more powerful in certain specific ways, usually for biowarfare), we would benefit from knowing exactly what functions have been juiced up and why. Credible scientists have offered their view that this virus comes out of a lab, and we are aware of many plausible theories for how that may have happened — including through a bad batch of influenza vaccines (which, alongside other vaccines, are often contaminated with unintended viruses through the problem of cell line contamination).

Knowing the exact nature of the problem and its origins would help doctors and public health officials understand the situation and formulate appropriate responses. It would help them save lives. The “mystery virus” scenario does not. Keeping people in suspense is good for ratings, which are in actual fact a concern and a goal of infotainment disguised as “news” networks, which run endless ads for drugs (and fast food).

When someone goes to a doctor with a problem, it may take months or even years to come up with a solid, trustworthy diagnosis. Many tests are involved. Second and third opinions are sought; specialists are involved. If you want to solve a problem, it helps to understand it first, especially where medical decisions are concerned and life is at stake.

Biotech and Statistics are Not Diagnosis

There are, as many have noted, more questions and contradictions than answers — which may have been conceivable in March but is not acceptable eight months into the global medical response to the problem. Among the best doctors in the world, this problem can be solved. Yet the helplessness and hopelessness persist.

The size and scale of the outbreak is indicated not by hospitalization rates, hospital capacity or even death counts.

The problem is most often described by the tally of “confirmed cases,” which today make it seem like the entire state of Florida and indeed the entire southern United States should be strewn with people struggling to breathe and dying of blood clots. That is not happening.

When someone goes to a doctor with a problem, it may take months or even years to come up with a solid, trustworthy diagnosis. Many tests are involved. Second and third opinions are sought; specialists are involved. If you want to solve a problem, it helps to understand it first, especially where medical decisions are concerned and life is at stake.

At the heart of this situation is a thing many people had not heard of till Covid: the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test that is being used to give us the staggering count of “confirmed cases.” But next to none of these are actually diagnosed, with other possibilities ruled out.

Antibodies tests are coming into use, and they have their own problems, which I will come back to in a different article. The main issue with the antibodies test is their unreliability. The government has not decided whether having antibodies means one is now immune (the usual definition, and the goal of a vaccine) or whether it means one is still an “active case.” Then the two numbers have been added together, supporting the illusion of more cases than actually exist.

After a few employees developed a bad cough, medical school officials feared it was whooping cough, which is thought to be highly contagious.

The Case of the Nonexistent Cases: A Phony Pertussis Epidemic — at Dartmouth Medical School

PCR testing, invented in the early 1980s, has previously been responsible for raising false alarms and even creating pseudo-epidemics. Its inventor, who won the Nobel Prize for his work, warned about this possibility for decades. He warned that biotechnology is not medical diagnosis.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) documented three examples of PCR false alarms in its Aug. 24, 2007 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) titled “Outbreaks of Respiratory Illness Mistakenly Attributed to Pertussis — New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Tennessee, 2004–2006.” In the space remaining, I will tell you about one of them.

As background, pertussis, or whooping cough, is potentially fatal for infants, children and adults. Its symptoms are nondescript and could apply to many issues, much like those of Covid-19: runny nose, watery eyes, a fever, and, eventually, a severe cough.

In addition to being documented by MMWR, the magazine Dartmouth Medicine detailed the administration’s response to a suspected 2006 outbreak in New Hampshire at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

After a few employees developed a bad cough, medical school officials feared it was whooping cough, which is thought to be highly contagious.

To investigate, the PCR test was used. One thousand employees were screened and tested. Sick people were ordered home, prophylactic antibiotics were given to “1,300 contacts of suspected cases,” and over 4,500 campus employees were vaccinated in a three day period. In the process, 146 PCR-confirmed positive “cases” came back from the lab and a major outbreak was “confirmed.” (This is similar to how we have millions of “confirmed cases” of Covid-19 using the PCR test.)

Then what happened?

Eight months later, the employees were informed that it was a false alarm after the PCR test results were sent for confirmation by another method. Nobody actually had the disease.

Most biological samples from healthy people contain a brew of viruses and bacteria, so many things will be available in any one of them. Just because it turns up in a PCR test does not mean it’s the cause of the disease, or the result of a disease.

‘Outbreaks’ Without a Single Case: False Pandemics

“Not a single case of whooping cough was confirmed with the definitive test, growing the bacterium, Bordetella pertussis, in the laboratory, The New York Times accurately reported. “Instead, it appears the health care workers probably were afflicted with ordinary respiratory diseases like the common cold.”

How was this possible?

It’s because the PCR test was relied on as diagnostic tool when it’s not one. It can find very nearly anything it’s told to look for; the “chain reaction” is an amplification process. It takes anything the researcher wants to find, and makes more of it.

aMost biological samples from healthy people contain a brew of viruses and bacteria, so many things will be available in any one of them. Just because it turns up in a PCR test does not mean it’s the cause of the disease, or a result of a disease.

Misuse of the PCR test is what’s sustaining the idea of how large the case count is. Public health officials are on notice that tests being used for Covid can pick up coronaviruses that cause the common cold, or, according to Cormon et al, potentially a detection range that potentially includes all Asian viruses. Should that kind of error occur, the result still becomes a “confirmed case” of Covid-19.

The implication of the Dartmouth incident and others like it is that the PCR test can find something that may not exist or may not be pertinent to the diagnosis in question.

Ignoring CDC Warnings

In light of this, in 2007 CDC presciently warned that “overreliance on the results of PCR assays can lead to implementation of unnecessary and resource-intensive control measures,” and cautions that “in outbreak settings, positive PCR results should be interpreted in conjunction with epidemiologic investigation, evaluation of clinical symptoms, and confirmation by culture.”

CDC and FDA emergency use instructions for the PCR test for SARS-nCoV-2 say essentially the same thing: that it’s not a diagnostic tool, nor is it proof of infection, infectiousness or of disease. Those must be confirmed other ways. But they are not: a single PCR test for the virus is considered a “confirmed case” of Covid-19, the disease that the virus presumably causes. “Confirmed” implies a second testing method.

Testing positive by a nose-swab test is no more proof of disease than having tobacco on one’s breath is proof of lung cancer.

None of the test’s protocols are being followed. The claimed virus has not been purified, nor has a causative relationship between exposure and resulting sickness been confirmed. We do not know for sure that the residue found in people’s nasal cavities is related to the “novel coronavirus” — the fragments are associated with it by a kind of inference. What we have is a correlation, and that is (as everyone knows) not scientifically confirmed causation. When someone dies, there is not an autopsy. Rather, a box is checked on a form.

Medical and scientific chaos is prevailing. People are giving up their civil rights as if they are meaningless. Many feel that to demand our rights is some kind of sacrilege.

We Must Demand More

Many are grieving the loss of loved ones. Many are afraid of their relatives and friends getting sick. This grief must be honored and not taken advantage of or exploited for corporate or political ends.

Society must do better than it is doing. Governments, particularly in the United States, are making far-reaching public policy based on incomplete, false or sketchy information. This crisis was begun when we were all told that at minimum 30% (and up to 70%) of the world population would get this disease, and 1% to 3% would die. Nothing of the kind is happening, though many governments are pretending that it is. Actual case fatality is in the range of 1 to 4 in a thousand, not 1 to 3 in a hundred. That is an order of magnitude differential.

Medical and scientific chaos is prevailing. People are giving up their civil rights as if they are meaningless. Many feel that to demand our rights is some kind of sacrilege. That sounds like what gun proponents have said after each and every mass shooting: this is not the time to develop a sane firearms policy. Leave that for later. Well, no. We need the facts about this now, and they are not going to be turned over voluntarily.

A thousand lies do not add up to the truth. You cannot carry water in a sieve.

Faulty scientific testing does not add up to the truth.

But someone knows the truth: someone, indeed, many people know what has happened and what is happening, on every level, whether medical, political or social — and happening directly to us. People who are close to events but not directly involved have different reasons for not speaking out: anyone who does so will be seen as a “whistle blower,” and we know what usually happens to them: at minimum, they must sacrifice their career and will often attract public scorn.

Meanwhile, we are not being protected from a potentially deadly disease. We do not know that the “novel coronavirus” is the actual pathogen or cause of disease. I challenge anyone to produce a scientific paper proving that it is, to the exclusion of all else.

We are sacrificing the pillars of American society day by day, which is too high of a price to pay at the altar of confusion, deception and profit agendas we are not acknowledging. It is time to both demystify and demand the truth about the “novel” coronavirus, Covid-19, and every issue associated with it.

As has been said before, sunshine is the best disinfectant.

With love,

Additional reporting and writing by Spencer Stevens. Additional research by Cindy Tice Ragusa.

PS — As we were going to press, one of our editors sent in this article, about how 5G technology (meaning very short microwaves) can induce the production of viruses in exposed cells. This is an issue that is lurking just behind public awareness.

This is said to be controversial, though EMFs or “radio frequency radiation” is a known source of injury to bees, other animals and are a type 2B probable human carcinogen according to the World Health Organization. Whether this is considered “proven” or not, it is an issue that deserves a public debate. 5G technology was rolled out starting in December, and Wuhan and New York City were among the first. Wuhan was able to have sufficient data capacity to allow autonomous city buses to operate. If you bring this up, you’re called a conspiracy nut. It’s not going on TV, which is sponsored by the 5G rollout.