The Daily Skeptic (UK), 31 July 2021

There follows a guest post by retired dentist Dr. Mark Shaw on the strangeness of this ongoing ‘pandemic’.

I was booked in for a telephone consultation with a new representative from my pension company recently.  We introduced ourselves and somehow couldn’t avoid the subject of Covid. I didn’t want to get too involved in a potentially awkward discussion but couldn’t hold back from highlighting the illogic in so much of the Government’s response to the disease. I sensed he too wanted to remain neutral so it was both a relief and quite surprising to hear him respond with: “I have to agree – it all does seem so very odd.”

Do I sense a point in time, a turning point, now where more and more people are thinking the same?

In the last 18 months:

• How is it that cases (in the medical clinical sense) were in the past always referred to as those patients with symptoms (i.e. real patients) but are now classified as people who have tested positive on a (novel and unreliable) test?
• How is it that symptomless people now have to isolate when this was not necessary for people with flu (a deadly respiratory virus) pre-Covid? Where is the evidence that people without symptoms spread illness?
• If vaccination helps stop spread (and most of the population are vaccinated), and the elderly and vulnerable are much less likely to be seriously ill having been vaccinated, then why do the vaccinated need to isolate, and why should any asymptomatic person isolate?
• If most who were seriously ill from Covid were the very old and vulnerable and they have been vaccinated, why should everyone else be jabbed when herd immunity can be reached naturally and is likely to be a stronger, safer form of immunity?
• Why have deaths from Covid been recorded as deaths occurring within 28 days of a positive test when no such recording system was used pre-Covid for infective respiratory diseases?
• How come, for all the years I studied and practised as a dentist, there was no good evidence that wearing masks in public had any beneficial effect whatsoever against airborne viruses, until Covid came along? (Hint: it’s not because there is now good scientific evidence for masks.)
• How come, if I search hard enough on the internet, I’m seeing huge crowds protesting against lockdowns and forced vaccinations in cities across the world, but this is not shown on the BBC?
• Why has the Government not invited any (zero) of the well-known medical experts from organisations such as HART, like Dr Clare Craig and Dr John Lee, and those endorsing the Great Barrington Declaration to scrutinise the data presented by SAGE at the numerous Government press briefings?
• Why has the BBC been interviewing young adults recently who are reluctant to be vaccinated and portraying them as being naïve, lacking intelligence, courage or having extreme conspiracy theories whilst not broadcasting interviews with many thousands of sensible young adults who would question the logic and have genuine health concerns following their balanced, logical risk assessment?
• If the disease is now still so deadly why can politicians, FIFA officials etc. be exempt from some of the restrictions imposed on the public? Why can healthcare workers and other key workers be ‘pinged’ but then exempted from isolating if the disease is so deadly?
• Why has the BBC not openly debated for hours on end the evidence that lockdowns work or that they cause huge overall harm? And if they work why are ‘cases’ plummeting since ‘Freedom Day’, and why have countries like Sweden and some states in America with no meaningful lockdowns or mask-wearing mandates fared no worse than those with strict lockdowns?
• Why have the principles of informed consent, first do no harm, careful prescribing following a thorough risk/benefit analysis, and an ethical obligation to prevent patients from being coerced into accepting a particular course of medical treatment all been abandoned specifically for Covid?

While my own experience of not knowing anyone who has died from Covid may not be representative, I do see hundreds of people each day who are still alive and well. I have talked to many people each week since February 2020 and I have only heard of one relative of these people that died of or with Covid. Maybe my situation is completely unique but I have also searched the internet for celebrities and those in the public eye who have died from Covid and can’t find anyone I know of and, of those listed, many were in their 70s, 80s or over (isn’t this more dying of old age?).  I know that people really are dying of Covid and it would be just as daft to pretend people don’t die of flu and old age but if it is so deadly, why don’t I know or have heard of more of them?

Doesn’t it all seem so very odd?