To Refurbish Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), One Must Admit That Lockdowns Were Indeed Harmful On Balance

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has been taking quite a drubbing lately.  Some say it has been thoroughly discredited since it was de facto practiced (to an extent) during the pandemic, and massive inflation resulted.  But that glib commentary misses the real root cause of the inflation:  the shortages of goods, services, and labor resulting from the massive global supply chain disruptions, which in turn resulted from the lockdowns and related restrictions. 

(And it's not entirely due to ignorance, since those naysayers actually DO admit as much about the lockdowns, but yet they still speciously put most, if not all, of the blame on MMT, because reasons.)

MMT per se was never the problem.  But to refurbish it, one must admit that lockdowns and related restrictions did very real harm, something that the pseudo-left is loath to do.  Not that MMT is flawless, by any means.  But Rodger Malcolm Mitchell's related theory, Monetary Sovereignty (MS), essentially fixes those flaws, especially when he (belatedly) jettisoned the specious idea of interest rate hikes (which only deepened the stagflationary quagmire) as an inflation-fighting tool.  A good essay about the differences between the two can be found here.

In a nutshell, when you literally shut down the broader economy in most of the world for an extended period of time (which greatly disrupts and shrinks supply), AND then try to paper over it by printing unprecedented amounts of money (which stokes demand), that WILL be inflationary.  But the money printing was NOT the root cause, and remember that if the powers that be didn't do that, there would have been a full-blown depression, if not a complete collapse of civilization as we knew it, and within a couple weeks the masses would have been furiously calling for their heads with torches and pitchforks.  Or, they could have simply adopted the "flu strategy" and NOT imposed any restrictions, and perhaps implemented a more modest (but more brief and front-loaded) stimulus package, and this whole stagflationary quagmire could have been avoided.  And as the experience of Sweden and other countries has famously shown, it would not have resulted in any more excess deaths than occurred with lockdowns.  Hindsight is quite literally 2020.

It's not that lunch cannot ever be free.  It actually can be, at least to a point.  But truly lockdowns can never be a free lunch, no matter how much money gets printed to paper over the massive holes they make.

As for the specious notion that MMT (and by extension, MS) is a "luxury belief", well, we know that the real luxury beliefs are austerity and artificial scarcity.  Not to mention lockdowns as well.

Hindsight Is Literally 2020

Hindsight is quite literally 2020.

Four years ago (roughly) today, the world lost its marbles and began to shut down.  And as we have noted before, it was effectively all for naught.  In the end, the lockdowns, masks, and jabs did more harm than good on balance. 

From the ever-insightful Dr. Steve Kirsch's recent Substack article last year, in a nutshell:

"Special mention for the fact that the entire pandemic was completely unnecessary. 3 supplements work better than vaccines and are safe and cheap. All the lockdowns, masking, vaccines, mandates, social distancing, etc. were all unnecessary. And even though this is now known, nobody will pay attention since it will make them look bad.

"Uptake of vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc were significantly associated with the reduced risk of infection and severity of COVID-19 (OR: 0.006 (95% CI: 0.03–0.11) (p = 0.004)) and (OR: 0.03 (95% CI: 0.01–0.22) (p = 0.005))... this study was conducted before the start of mass vaccination against COVID-19 in Bangladesh."

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/23/5029

That's over 150x decreased risk just from taking these 3 dirt-cheap supplements that everyone has known to be safe + effective for decades! And it was all pre-vax, it was for the original Wuhan strain that was most dangerous!"

Read that again, and again, and again and let it sink in.  Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Zinc.  Those three things alone would have largely defanged and declawed this overall already relatively humdrum virus to begin with, which was basically a classic super-flu at worst, and never an existential threat.

And especially for Vitamin D, but the others too, this was confirmed time and again.  And again and again.

Oh, and one of the other thing that we at the TSAP have long advocated, the humble xylitol nasal spray, has also been confirmed yet again as prophylaxis.

It gets even worse still for the powers that be, apparently, when one also notes that the standard of care for patients with post-viral pneumonia was abruptly changed worldwide, at or before the beginning of the pandemic.  And not for the better, either. The change was to no longer give antibiotics for pneumonia if Covid was thought to be the cause, even though it was very likely that many if not most of such deaths were from secondary bacterial infections.  And antibiotics would have been given had they not been inexplicably removed from the protocols, and thus deliberately withheld from patients for political reasons.  A good chunk of excess deaths could thus easily be attributed to that alone.  

Just #3tablets of azithromycin or doxycycline would often have been enough to save their lives.

What should have been done?  "Letting it rip", that is, "adopting the flu strategy", ultimately would have in fact been the least-worst alternative in the long run, all things considered.  That is precisely what a properly right-brain dominant person would have advocated from the get-go, at least if they were properly informed and NOT bombarded 24/7 with fearporn news media.

Looks like "Stockholm Syndrome" should really be renamed "Melbourne Syndrome" because #SwedenGotItRight.  The verdict is in.  In terms of cumulative all-cause excess mortality, Sweden, who famously eschewed lockdowns and masks and such, actually came out as one of the best in Europe, and not very different from their much stricter neighbors in the long run.  Ditto for other countries and US states that largely ignored the plandemic, but did similarly or better than their stricter neighbors.  Lockdowns, masks, and jab mandates were thus worse than useless.

On March 12, 2020, interestingly enough, the band The Killers released the song "Caution".  The song, while not about the virus, is nonetheless basically about the theme of "throwing caution to the wind".  And in hindsight, that is ironically pretty much what should have been done in regards to the virus, at least for the vast majority of the population who was at relatively low risk overall, whose resulting "herd immunity" would have thus ultimately protected those who were truly vulnerable to the virus.  Lockdowns, on the other hand, merely dragged things out and ultimately put the genuinely vulnerable at greater risk.  The science of epidemiology and public health didn't really change, but the politics sure did.

And failing that, once those who were genuinely fooled (including myself somewhat as well, regrettably) had wised up early on, the second least-worst policy would have been to, as the same song says, "go straight from zero to the Fourth of July" in terms of reopening and ending all restrictions at once.  That's right, ALL at once, all the way back to 2019 normal, period, and don't look back. 

But instead, the unholy "public health" trinity of collective action problems, prevention paradox, and precautionary principle had all been turned on their heads and weaponized against We the People.  Benjamin Franklin spins in his grave.

Moral of the story:  NEVER give up any rights "temporarily", that you are not willing to say goodbye to forever.  Or at the very least, you will not get them back without a fight. 

Indeed, hindsight is 2020, in more ways than one.

Case Closed: Masks STILL Don't Work

(This is a repost of an article from February 2023, as we thought the reader might need a reminder now in light of current events involving mask zealots.)

A major new gold standard Cochrane review study has come to a conclusion that only the utterly brainwashed would consider at all shocking at this point:  masks don't really work to stop the spread of respiratory viruses.  Never did, and never will.  Not even the vaunted N95.  Handwashing is likely modestly effective, but masks are basically a joke overall, and not a very funny one either.

This concurs with over a century of research that came out overwhelmingly in support of the anti-mask side of the debate.  In fact, by 1919 it was practically settled science that these devices aren't anywhere near what they were cracked up to be, a consensus which prevailed until March 2020.  Then the pandemic narrative took over and turned the science upside down for nearly three years straight, while any studies were to the contrary were systematically file-drawered for far longer than those supporting the narrative.  And now the entire pandemic narrative has collapsed faster than formerly healthy young athletes on the field after being jabbed.

We recently noted how the ever-insightful Ian Miller has so thoroughly debunked, deboned, sliced, diced, and julienned the pro-mask arguments, and laid waste to their utterly scorched remains for good.  And be sure check out the excellent Fargo study from Josh Stevenson et al. about masks for kids as well, likely the very best one yet, with the very least biases or confounding.  Spoiler alert:  masks STILL don't work.  Not for kids, not for adults, not for no one.

Oh, and let's not forget the dreaded Foegen Effect as well.  And other harms as well, see here.  That literally makes masks WORSE than useless.  Jettison them!

To the anti-mask side:  you are now hereby overwhelmingly vindicated, and really always have been in fact.  You have literally passed the biggest functional IQ test in all of modern history.  To the pro-mask side:  we are still waiting for you to apologize.  Yesterday.  And to those who switched jerseys anytime after February 2022 (that is, only when it became socially acceptable to do so), you are fooling no one.

QED

UPDATE:  Some may pedantically point out that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", therefore "no one can really say" that masks don't work.  True, you cannot (definitively) prove a negative.  But given the totality of the research and real-world evidence, it would be slothful induction (if not magical thinking as well) to still believe that masks have any sort of net benefit at all. If they did have a net benefit, it would have been self-evident long ago.  We need to see the forest for the trees.

"But...but...they worked in Japan!" See here for a good debunking of that myth as well.

And in case the pro-masker zealots pathetically trot out the fatally flawed Boston school mask study in desperation, rest assured that Ian Miller has successfully laid waste to that one as well.  And so has the ever-insightful Emily Burns, as well as Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, one of the authors of the Fargo study. 

Oh, and another study found that masks in HOSPITALS make no difference to infection rates.  Thus, if they don't even work in hospitals with all of their universal multilayered precautionary measures, they simply don't work at all, period.

UPDATE 2:  A re-analysis of the infamous Boston mask study has now thoroughly debunked it.

UPDATE 3:  For more on the harms of masks, see here.

UPDATE 4:  And another school masking study can be found here as well, co-authored by the aforementioned Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg.  Again, surprise surprise, masks STILL don't work.  Period. 

UPDATE 5:  And that's before we get into the toxins that can be emitted from some types of masks, including the vaunted N95.

UPDATE 6:  Pushback works.  Contrary to Carl Jung's famous saying, what you resist does NOT persist, as long as you resist enough.  DO NOT COMPLY!

UPDATE 7:  Looks like masks are even more harmful than we thought, especially for children. 

And finally, see here about the ultimate success of one of the most anti-mask (and anti-lockdown) countries in the world, Sweden.  As a result, we think "Stockholm Syndrome" should really be called "Melbourne Syndrome", because #SwedenGotItRight.

(Mic drop)

How To Create A Deadly Plandemic In Five Easy Steps

The ever-insightful Joel Smalley of Metatron posted an excellent Substack titled, "How to Create a Deadly Pandemic in Five Easy Steps", complete with charts/graphs.  It was a classic "Problem, Reaction, Solution" (often incorrectly called "Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis" or "Hegelian Dialectic") scheme per the MO of the psychopathic oligarchs in charge.  To paraphrase Smalley as follows:

1. "Accidentally" release a fairly ordinary virus (ordinary because one's GOF abilities were quite inferior), that can only be detected with a special test (that is conveniently easy to manipulate), and then blame it on the Chinese (even if it was probably a joint venture).
2. Euthanize old folks, typically done with midazolam, and blame it on the virus.
3. Deny regular early treatment with antibiotics and corticosteroids, for those who one cannot easily euthanize.
4. Introduce a "cure" in the form of a novel and experimental "vaccine", which (oops!) turns out to be deadly in itself, and then have the GALL to blame it on the unvaccinated. 
5. Slowly and quietly re-allow the use of various antivirals and such that were previously mocked, discouraged, censored, or banned, in addition to antibiotics and corticosteroids, and then let the "vaccine" take credit for any improvements that result.

In other words, it was an iatrogenocide of epic proportions.  And he backs this up with correlations between various prescription data, "vaccine" dose data, "Covid" death data, and all-cause excess death data.  Such data are VERY damning indeed.  Now we can see the big picture, and all that went into it.

And it pans out quite accurately indeed.  Also, a Bangladesh study found that just three nutrients--Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Zinc--would have been enough to make the pandemic a non-event (at least if the pre-2020 standard of care had not been denied).

That, of course, was before the "vaccines".  And it should go without saying that any excess deaths and other harms that occurred after early 2021 or so could not possibly be disentangled from the "vaccines."

And of course, all the lockdowns, masks, and antisocial distancing were gasoline on the fire, as were the jab mandates and such.  While the five steps above could have still proceeded without these things, and with everything strictly "voluntary" per manufactured "consent", these things are very effective add-ons if one is going for maximum impact of a deadly plandemic.  They crank the fear factor up to 11, increase power and control by the oligarchs, divide and conquer the masses, and cause their own direct and indirect harms and deaths as well.

How will they ever live this down?

UPDATE:  Bonus points for the lockdowns, antisocial distancing, and related restrictions temporarily knocking out the competition from other, more benign and endemic respiratory viruses and allowing the more novel coronavirus to take hold more easily, while also perversely selecting for strains that were both more contagious and more deadly at the same time, AND also managing to build "immunity debt" to the temporarily suppressed viruses by the time they inevitably come roaring back with a vengeance. 

The lockdown zealots have a LOT to answer for!

Three Nutrients. Three Tablets. Three Lost Years That Could Have Been Averted

We have noted this before, but we will again.

From the ever-insightful Dr. Steve Kirsch's recent Substack article, in a nutshell:

"Special mention for the fact that the entire pandemic was completely unnecessary. 3 supplements work better than vaccines and are safe and cheap. All the lockdowns, masking, vaccines, mandates, social distancing, etc. were all unnecessary. And even though this is now known, nobody will pay attention since it will make them look bad.

"Uptake of vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc were significantly associated with the reduced risk of infection and severity of COVID-19 (OR: 0.006 (95% CI: 0.03–0.11) (p = 0.004)) and (OR: 0.03 (95% CI: 0.01–0.22) (p = 0.005))... this study was conducted before the start of mass vaccination against COVID-19 in Bangladesh."

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/23/5029

That's over 150x decreased risk just from taking these 3 dirt-cheap supplements that everyone has known to be safe + effective for decades! And it was all pre-vax, it was for the original Wuhan strain that was most dangerous!"

Read that again, and again, and again and let it sink in.  Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Zinc.  Those three things alone would have largely defanged and declawed this overall already relatively humdrum virus to begin with, which was basically a classic super-flu at worst, and never an existential threat.

And especially for Vitamin D, but the others too, this was confirmed time and again.  And again and again.

Oh, and one of the other thing that we at the TSAP have long advocated, the humble xylitol nasal spray, has also been confirmed yet again as prophylaxis.

It gets even worse still for the powers that be, apparently, when one also notes that the standard of care for patients with post-viral pneumonia was abruptly changed worldwide, at or before the beginning of the pandemic.  And not for the better, either. The change was to no longer give antibiotics for pneumonia if Covid was thought to be the cause, even though it was very likely that many if not most of such deaths were from secondary bacterial infections.  And antibiotics would have been given had they not been inexplicably removed from the protocols, and thus deliberately withheld from patients for political reasons.  A good chunk of excess deaths could thus easily be attributed to that alone.  

Just #3tablets of azithromycin or doxycycline would often have been enough to save their lives.

And don't forget to read the eye-opening Spartacus Letter if you haven't already.

In other words, all of the lockdowns, closures, masks, jabs, and NPIs were basically in vain.  Not that these things would have ever really had any hope or redeeming quality in the first place, of course. 

Three nutrients.  Three tablets.  Three lost years that we will never get back, that could have all been averted, to say nothing of all of the gargantuan excess deaths that resulted.  How will they ever live this down?  And will future generations ever forgive us?

The Verdict Is In: Freedom Wins

We had already noted that Sweden was thoroughly vindicated for eschewing lockdowns, masks, and overall stringency during the pandemic.  Just like Belarus, Nicaragua, Tanzania, and even Brazil did similar to or better than their stricter neighbors in terms of cumulative all cause deaths as well.  

"But America is different!" the lockdown zealots speciously claim.  We are somehow too affluent, too spoiled, too poor, too unequal, too racist, too diverse, too multicultural, too fractured, too lazy, too workaholic, too unhealthy, too coddled, too independent, too dependent, too immature, too precocious, too low-trust, too credulous, too individualistic, too herd mentality, too smart for our own good, too stupid, too educated, too uneducated, too fragile, too many problems already, too (insert favorite adjective here, the more contradictory the better) to be able to even compare ourselves to other countries, let alone copy even in part what the world's few remaining free countries did without disastrous consequences resulting.  Or something. 

Of course, in this country, twelve US states (nearly a quarter of all states) basically eschewed lockdowns as well, most famously South Dakota, and several additional states were either much less stringent than the national average and/or only locked down briefly before opening up and lifting restrictions fairly quickly, most famously Florida, Georgia, and Texas.

And yet, now a new 50-state study finds that among US states and DC, less stringent states were not significantly different from more stringent ones in terms of health outcomes, but they did do significantly better on economic outcomes and education outcomes as well as overall outcomes.  For example, when adjusted for age and pre-existing conditions, Florida and California (with polar opposite policies) ended up being within error bounds of each other and the national average in terms of death rates.  And as we have noted earlier, this was not the only American study that arrived at similar (if not even more damning) conclusions either, namely that lockdowns and related restrictions were essentially all pain and no gain.  Thus it looks like freedom wins hands down, both in the USA as well as abroad. 

Let America be America again!

UPDATE:  Yet another international study found that not only were lockdowns, overall stringency, and jabs associated with higher death rates, but also HCQ and IVM were associated with lower death rates, just as the late Dr. Vladimir Zev Zelenko famously predicted back in 2020.  In a world of Lysenkos, be a Zelenko.

The Verdict Is In: Sweden Wins!

After two an a half years, we can now see more clearly just how effective, or, not, the various pandemic strategies were.  We are please to note that the country we were rooting for the hardest, Sweden, has come out the winner with their light touch, no-lockdown approach.  That was according to their ranking in terms of all-cause percent excess deaths over the whole pandemic from 2020 through mid-2022, and they came out the best of all countries examined in the study, and yes, even better than their vaunted Nordic neighbors (even Iceland).  Really.

As for Belarus, Nicaragua, Tanzania, Uruguay, and Brazil, who also eschewed lockdowns (Nicaragua even encouraged mass gatherings), those countries were not listed, but a cursory look at their excess all-cause mortality shows that their numbers varied but were similar to or lower than their stricter neighbors.  And as we noted previously, while the USA did abysmally overall in terms of excess deaths, the 12 US states that never locked down at all generally did better overall than their stricter neighbors and the national average.  And Florida, when adjusted for age, outperformed New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and even California, and was ultimately an average state overall.

DECEMBER UPDATE:  Looks like now even China's ultimate lockdown failure is yet another way Sweden (and Belarus, Nicaragua, Tanzania, South Dakota, Florida, etc.) has been vindicated.

It has been said, "you either do China, or you do Sweden (etc.), as anything in between will do more harm than good in the long run".  Now, it seems that the first five words of that are no longer true, if they ever really were.

QED

The Next Plandemic?

Just as the COVID-19 pandemic is basically over now as the virus and its descendents has transitioned to one degree or another of endemicity after reaching a level of functional herd immunity from mass infection (largely no thanks to the jabs!), no sooner does another potential one appear seemingly out of nowhere.  And that virus is.....MONKEYPOX! 

Monkeypox is mainly found in wild animals in parts of Africa where it is endemic at a low level, and related to smallpox but much milder and far less contagious between humans, hence it being quite rare in humans.  It generally requires VERY close contact to transmit it, and it is not known to spread in the absence of symptoms either.  But very recently there has been a rash (pun intended) of cases in several countries where it is not normally found among people with no history of travel to Africa, such as the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and now the USA.  The numbers remain quite small, less than 100 confirmed cases total and no deaths yet, but it is being closely monitored.

The ever-insightful Michael P. Senger (author of Snake Oil:  How Xi Jinping Shut Down The World) points out that, just like the COVID-19 pandemic was preceded by just a few months by a tabletop simulation of a SARS-like viral pandemic called "Event 201", so too was this monkeypox outbreak preceded just a year ago by another tabletop simulation of, and he quotes, a "global pandemic involving an unusual strain of monkeypox beginning in May 2022".  In fact, it takes place as beginning on May 15, 2022, accurate almost to the DAY.  Now, that is one eerie coincidence if there ever was one!  Or is it really a coincidence at all?  Things that really should make you go, hmmmm....

And Senger also points out that, at the center of both simulations is....George Fu Gao, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control.  Yes, really.  And he and his colleagues have been awfully quiet lately.

But don't worry, they have plenty of vaccines ready now--smallpox vaccines to be exact, which supposedly also work on this related virus as well.  Bill Gates must be salivating like a Pavlov's dog as we speak!

Meanwhile, the NYC Health Department is currently a world outlier among public health agencies in recommending that people wear masks again (!) to protect against monkeypox.  Yes, really.  Not even the CDC is saying that, and there is really no hard evidence that masks work against monkeypox in the general population.  But that didn't stop NYC from advocating it, because reasons.  Or something. 

We at the TSAP do NOT believe that this will actually become a real pandemic, rather, this outbreak will most likely fizzle out on its own as a mere flash in the pan.  But as the past two and a half years has so painfully shown us all, we must never, ever underestimate what sorts of evil machinations the global oligarchy is capable of, both in terms of deliberate or "accidental" release of natural or manmade bioweapons, as well as collateral damage from illiberal and totalitarian responses to same.

And all this just as the infamous WHO pandemic treaty is being revised in an increasingly illiberal direction and being actively debated as we speak....

Either way, whether it is a hoax, a real threat, somewhere in between, or some combination of both, this has the fingerprints of the oligarchy all over it.