Eric Zuesse
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Eric Zuesse, originally posted at Strategic Culture
Early in the “coronavirus-19” — subsequently called “Covid-19” — pandemic, Denmark and Sweden were often being compared with one-another because both are Scandinavian countries, but on 13 March 2020, Denmark had started a lockdown and imposed strict recommendations for businesses and personal behavior, whereas Sweden did nothing of the sort, and so the two countries were considered to be especially suitable to serve as being an almost controlled experiment in what the results would be of socialism versus libertarianism in social policy (regulations) regarding a communicable disease.
On 26 March 2020, EuroNews headlined “Neighbours Denmark and Sweden miles apart on coronavirus confinement”. Whereas both countries had socialized healthcare, and were also otherwise generally considered to be similar, Sweden was pursuing Europe’s most libertarian policies on coronavirus or Covid-19, and yet Denmark had a 15% higher percentage of its population who had come down with that disease. On 29 June 2020, I headlined “‘Herd Immunity’ Is a Failed Response to Coronavirus: Comparing Denmark versus Sweden on Coronavirus,” and reported that in early April Sweden’s population-percentage who had the disease had switched (increased so fast as) to become 14% higher there than Denmark’s population-percentage who had Covid-19, and that Sweden’s percentage was also increasing much more quickly than Denmark’s. And, so, at that time, as of 28 June 2020, Sweden had 2.5 times as high a percentage of its population who had contracted the disease, as compared with Denmark’s percentage. There were 131 reader-comments to that news-report, at Reddit, and they were overwhelmingly in denial, and pro-libertarian, anti-socialist, though each comment had a different excuse for their reality-denial.
CNN headlined on 28 May 2020 “Sweden says its coronavirus approach has worked. The numbers suggest a different story” and made clear that, at least up till that moment in time, Sweden’s approach was a failure, not only in competition as compared to Denmark’s, but globally.
Then, on 12 May 2020, Foreign Affairs, the prestigious journal of America’s Council on Foreign Relations, bannered “Sweden’s Coronavirus Strategy Will Soon Be the World’s: Herd Immunity Is the Only Realistic Option—the Question Is How to Get There Safely”, and presented the standard libertarian argument: “There are good reasons for countries to begin easing their restrictions. It will take several years to tally the total number of deaths, bankruptcies, layoffs, suicides, mental health problems, losses to GDP and investments, and other costs attributable not just to the virus but to the measures used to fight it. It should already be obvious, however, that the economic and social costs of lockdowns are enormous.” In other words: the best “regulation” is to let nature rule, not to impose any human-imposed regulations, but just “the free market” should reign.
On 7 January 2021, the Scandinavian Journal of Public health headlined “A comparison of COVID-19 epidemiological indicators in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland” and reported that:
Compared with its Nordic peers, Sweden had a higher incidence rate across all ages, a higher COVID-19-related death rate only partially explained by population demographics, a higher death rate in seniors’ care, and higher all-cause mortality. Sweden had approximately half as much mobility change as its Nordic neighbours until April and followed similar rates as its neighbours from April to July. Denmark led its Nordic peers in testing rates, while Sweden had the highest cumulative test-positivity rate continuously from mid-March. …
Looser government restrictions at the beginning of the outbreak are likely to have played a role in the impact of COVID-19 in Sweden. In an effort to improve epidemic control, Sweden has increased testing rates, implemented more restrictive prevention measures, and increased their intensive care unit bed capacity.
Here are the figures as-of 30 April 2021:
Denmark cases per million = 43,282
Sweden cases per million = 95,909
Denmark deaths per million = 428
Sweden deaths per million = 1,384
Denmark March unemployment rate = 4.5%
Sweden unemployment rate = 10.0%
But Denmark versus Sweden aren’t, by any means, the only indicators that libertarianism was failing on Covid-19.
On 1 August 2020, I headlined “India and Brazil Are Now the Global Worst Coronavirus Nations”, and that statement was forward-looking, predictive, and not referring only to the numbers at that time but to where the various nations were heading, and it was referring only to medium-sized and large nations (for example, not to the worst performer of all, Andorra, which currently has 171,029 cases per million and a population of only 77,367 people). (Andorra has had a total of 13,232 cases, which is 17.1% of its entire population. The only country that has a population of over 10 million and which is among the 9 worst — and America scores as being absolutely the world’s 10th-worst — is Czechia, the Czech Republic, which has 152,046 cases per million. At the end of this article, Czechia will be discussed.)
As-of 30 April 2021, the following are the world’s only nations that have had more than 6,000,000,000 Covid-19 cases:
USA = 33,044,872
India = 18,881,587
Brazil = 14,592,886.
Those are now the Covid-19 giants (the worst-performing major countries), which, back on August 1st, is what I was expecting them to be, by the present time. Ultimately, I expect Brazil and India to be scoring even worse than the United States. All three countries have been exceedingly lax in their anti-Covid-19 policies, extraordinarily libertarian regarding this.
On 20 September 2020, I headlined “All 8 of America’s Worst-Hit Coronavirus States Are Now in the South.” That reported “the worst 11 states … are: Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Iowa, Arkansas, and Texas” — and all 11 of them had voted for Donald Trump, the more-libertarian (and losing) candidate, in 2020. The United States therefore provides overwhelming evidence of the failure of libertarianism regarding coronavirus-policies.
On 14 March 2021, I headlined “Republican States Have Higher Covid Rates than Democratic States” and — ranking all from the best (#1) to the worst (#51) — reported that the average state which had voted for Trump scored 33.3 or two-thirds of the way down the list of the 51 states + DC, and that the average state which had voted for Biden scored 19.5 out of the 51.
The more corrupt a country is, the more libertarian it is, and on 5 May 2020, I headlined “America’s Design Causes It to Fail the COVID-19 Challenge” and reported that because America is an extraordinarily corrupt country (very libertarian, as compared to other nations), “America is designed so as to fail the coronavirus-19 challenge. The power of big-money (concentrated wealth) is destroying this country. It controls both Parties and their respective media, so the public don’t know (and certainly cannot understand) the types of realities that are being reported (and linked-to) here.”
India and Brazil are nipping at America’s heels on this, but, still, the record up till the present moment shows America as still retaining its title as being the worst of all major nations on coronavirus-performance.
Finally, here, will be considered what might be the strongest exception to the general principle that libertarian policies are inferior to socialistic policies in order to control and limit a pandemic: Czechia. Wikipedia’s article “COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic” says:
The Czech Republic was the first[11] European country to make the wearing of face masks mandatory from 19 March onwards.[12] COVID-19 testing was made widely available with drive-through locations from 14 March,[13] and from 27 March anyone with a fever, dry cough or shortness of breath was eligible for a free test.[14] From 13 April onwards, COVID-19 testing capacity significantly surpassed demand.[15] Contact tracing in the country also included voluntary disclosure of mobile phone position and debit card payments data for previous days and the quarantining of identified contacts.[16] By 1 May 2020, altogether 257 COVID-19-related deaths were identified in the Czech Republic compared to 2,719 in similarly populous Sweden, which did not impose a full lockdown. However, Belgium, also with a similar population, had suffered 7,866 deaths at that time, despite having implemented an early and strict lockdown. …
By April 2021, the Czech Republic has recorded the highest confirmed death rate in the world after Hungary. There are some root causes speculated.
None of those proposed explanations of this is any sort of scientific explanation for it. A great deal remains that is important to know but that is currently unknown about Covid-19. Obviously, Czechia is the most challenging case, not because it is the worst, but because it has been a leader in adherence to international guidelines but has nonetheless disastrously failed on this virus. If that’s not a warning for the world to do lots more research on the Covid-19 problem, then nothing is.
NOTICE TO LIBERTARIANS: Libertarian ‘news’-media often try to obfuscate the importance of the Covid-19 results in the various countries by pretending that a Covid-19 “case” means merely someone who has tested positive for having become infected by the virus, but that is very definitely NOT TRUE. Like virtually all libertarian beliefs, that belief is based upon wishful thinking in order to dismiss and discredit scientific findings which are inconsistent with those beliefs. In fact, the “2020 Interim Case Definition, Approved April 5, 2020” (and still in force as-of 2 May 2020) makes crystal clear that the definition of a Covid-19 “case” is VERY DIFFERENT FROM AND FAR MORE RESTRICTIVE THAN merely having the infection. Libertarians want to be deceived, because they want to continue believing the myths that they cling to, but news-media try to exploit those ‘free market’ myths in order to build their own following (and to please the ‘free market’ winners — the billionaires — who benefit by having as large a percentage of the public as possible be deceived into believing the ‘free market’ myth (that they became so wealthy by virtue of their virtue and genius, instead of by their cunning and psychopathy). Justice in this world is the opposite of natural: it is un-natural and can be imposed only by careful skepticism and scientific human planning, not by any ‘invisible hand’ of anyone, or any group of people, who constitute an actual Deep State. They own and control the mainstream ‘news’-media and many of the non-mainstream ‘news’-media, and also the vast majority of members of Congress and other key government officials, but that’s the opposite of justice; it is, instead, institutionalized injustice. Libertarianism and corruption go hand-in-hand, and always will. (Outside the United States, libertarianism is more commonly called “neoliberalism”, but it’s the same thing.)
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
The problem with Professor Zuesse’s reasoning is that “cases” are not illness, those who were actually ill got worse because their Doctors abandoned them without treating their illness with cheap medicines that work like Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Ivermectin, Zinc, HCQ, Quercetin and N-acetyl-cysteine. Sweden has very large Care Homes so their Deaths were higher. The average age of Deaths was about the same as the average Lifespan, and finally, the number of deaths is vastly exaggerated because over 90% were actually due to chronic medical illness and Comorbidites and not COVID. The abandonment of the patients by their Doctors… Read more »
Bang on. All based on the farcical PCR test. The only statistics that matter are the deaths from covid-19 – not “with” but of. These are tiny in every country in the world, although our authoritarian globalist masters, of whom Zuesse seems a willing servant, went out of their way to disguise this. So we had whole nations put under house arrest and their health services as well as their economies ravaged, causing not just economic dislocation, but many unnecessary deaths not just now but for months or years to come from untreated or undiagnosed illnesses, because of this nonsense.… Read more »
You are wrong: In the counting-process, the definition of a “Covid-19 case” is very different from the definition of a “Covid-19 infection (a person who has merely tested positive for having the virus)”. You are falsely assuming that governments are counting as a “case” anyone who tests positive for the virus.
The definition of a Covid case could also include a cold. I had a cold with a slight fever 2 weeks ago and because I have 1/2 a lung missing it would qualify as Covid-19 by the CDC definition. What you forget is that Fauci tried the same thing for H1N1 but was called out by Kary Mullis as a scientific hack looking for a pandemic. Luckily Mullis died and Fauci found enough people that could see an advantage to a pandemic. BTW It was Mullis who insisted that a PCR test should never be used as a diagnostic. But… Read more »
That’s false. Did you even look at the definition of a “Covid-19 case”? It is clearly not referring to just anyone who has been infected by the virus. Nor does “a cold” qualify. Here that definition is: Clinical CriteriaAt least two of the following symptoms: fever (measured or subjective), chills, rigors, myalgia, headache, sore throat, new olfactory and taste disorder(s) OR At least one of the following symptoms: cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing OR Severe respiratory illness with at least one of the following: Clinical or radiographic evidence of pneumonia, OR Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). AND No alternative more likely diagnosis Laboratory CriteriaLaboratory… Read more »
So I had a fever and shortness of breath
And yes I did follow the link and read the definition and having 2 of the criteria …
Plus after a year they still haven’t found a defined protein they can use to make a common fluorescent/serological type test with?
Just because you say something is science doesn’t make it science. Bleeding was once considered real science for curing people’s ills.
With Fauci all he cares about is money and power – science has nothing to do with it.
Why are people negative toward what I said about the definition of a “Covid-19 case”? Did anyone there even look at that definition? Here it is: Clinical CriteriaAt least two of the following symptoms: fever (measured or subjective), chills, rigors, myalgia, headache, sore throat, new olfactory and taste disorder(s) OR At least one of the following symptoms: cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing OR Severe respiratory illness with at least one of the following: Clinical or radiographic evidence of pneumonia, OR Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). AND No alternative more likely diagnosis Laboratory CriteriaLaboratory evidence using a method approved or authorized by the U.S. Food… Read more »
Why was that response of mine downgraded? Did that reader ignore the link at the definition of a “Covid-19 case”? It is clearly not referring to just anyone who has been infected by the virus. Here that definition is: Clinical CriteriaAt least two of the following symptoms: fever (measured or subjective), chills, rigors, myalgia, headache, sore throat, new olfactory and taste disorder(s) OR At least one of the following symptoms: cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing OR Severe respiratory illness with at least one of the following: Clinical or radiographic evidence of pneumonia, OR Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). AND No alternative more likely diagnosis… Read more »
You are wrong: In the counting-process, the definition of a “Covid-19 case” is very different from the definition of a “Covid-19 infection (a person who has merely tested positive for having the virus)”. You are falsely assuming that governments are counting as a “case” anyone who tests positive for the virus.
“Covid-19 infection (a person who has merely tested positive for having the virus)
not it is not a infected person is a SICK person
Zeusse would no doubt call me a reality denier, but what I am is a statistics skeptic who thinks that the statistics Zeusse sites are all utterly unreliable. PCR tests mean literally nothing and neither do the “case” stats that it generates., The death stats are also wildly exaggerated. What happened to the flu? How did it magically disappear? Is it that practically all flu and other respiratory disease and death is now being attributed to Covid?
You didn’t get what I was saying: The governments are NOT counting as “cases” people who merely have the infection. You didn’t click onto the link and read what it says.
So, I have now added a “NOTICE TO LIBERTARIANS,” which places that link into the article itself.
Why was my comment that I have now added that notice given negative marks by some reader(s) here? What can explain that?
It could be the Libertarian moniker used – Would you be happy if we were referring to you as a New World Order supporter?
Personally people today wouldn’t know science if it came up and bit them. We have had a few decades of Grant money science which in itself is usually bogus.
BTW Good to see you back after a short hiatus
keep it up mister Zuesse my regard for you gets lower with every reply i read from you and look at – your getting there are literally THOUSANDS of scientists that disagree keep up the vaccine pushing Bill Gates thanks you for it 20 plus scientists have demanded the retraction of the corman -drosten paper and yes the governments and media are labeling EVERY positive test a case people with a broken leg are labeled covid patients after a positive test people dying in nursing homes where all labeled covid deaths tests NOT required the WHO changed the definition for a… Read more »
That’s false. The definition of a “Covid-19 case” isn’t a positive finding on a PCR test. Nor is it referring to just anyone who has been infected by the virus. Here that definition is: Clinical CriteriaAt least two of the following symptoms: fever (measured or subjective), chills, rigors, myalgia, headache, sore throat, new olfactory and taste disorder(s) OR At least one of the following symptoms: cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing OR Severe respiratory illness with at least one of the following: Clinical or radiographic evidence of pneumonia, OR Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). AND No alternative more likely diagnosis Laboratory CriteriaLaboratory evidence using a… Read more »
The PCR False Positive Pseudo-Epidemic. Dr. Mike Yeadon By Dr. Mike Yeadon Global Research, April 02, 2021 Lockdown Sceptics 30 November 2020 Url of this article: https://www.globalresearch.ca/pcr-false-positive-pseudo-epidemic/5741669 Austrian Court Rules PCR unsuited For COVID, lockdowns unlawfulhttps://principia-scientific.com/austrian-court-rules-pcr-unsuited-for-covid-lockdowns-unlawful/ https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/ The published RT-qPCR protocol for detection and diagnostics of 2019-nCoV and the manuscript suffer from numerous technical and scientific errors, including insufficient primer design, a problematic and insufficient RT-qPCR protocol, and the absence of an accurate test validation. Neither the presented test nor the manuscript itself fulfils the requirements for an acceptable scientific publication. Further, serious conflicts of interest of the authors are… Read more »
Review report Corman-Drosten et al. Eurosurveillance 2020https://s2.googleusercontent.com/s2/favicons?domain=cormandrostenreview.comcormandrostenreview.com/report November 27, 2020This extensive review report has been officially submitted to Eurosurveillance editorial board on 27th November 2020 via their submission-portal, enclosed to this review report is a retraction request letter, signed by all the main & co-authors. First and last listed names are the first and second main authors. All names in between are co-authors. External peer review of the RTPCR test to detect SARS-CoV-2 reveals 10 major scientific flaws at the molecular and methodological level: consequences for false positive results.Pieter Borger(1), Bobby Rajesh Malhotra(2) , Michael Yeadon(3) , Clare Craig(4), Kevin… Read more »
The WHO Confirms that the Covid-19 PCR Test is Flawed: Estimates of “Positive Cases” are Meaningless. The Lockdown Has No Scientific Basis
If that were so, then why do those “lockdowns” become imposed?
Did you happen to notice (by the way) that my article documents that not only are Sweden’s numbers on the disease over twice as bad as Denmarks, but also Sweden’s numbers on unemployment are likewise over twice as bad?:
Here are the figures as-of 30 April 2021:
Denmark cases per million = 43,282
Sweden cases per million = 95,909
Denmark deaths per million = 428
Sweden deaths per million = 1,384
Denmark March unemployment rate = 4.5%
Sweden unemployment rate = 10.0%
You downgrade me for that question and those data, why?
I can’t speak for the others, but I downgraded you because you sound no different from all the MSM and other DNC/pro NWO paid shills defending the scamdemic which is indefensible. There is no pandemic, it is a Political Agenda, no matter how many times you want to deny it. We KNOW what the Agenda is about. People have been dying since time immemorial. Why have so many stopped dying from old age, and all the usual morbidities that usually lead to death? Statistics for all these causes of death have gone way down. The overall death rate has not… Read more »
I fear we’re all wasting our time with Eric Zuesse (at least as far as lockdown is concerned). He asks “why are all the lockdowns happening [if there is no pandemic]?”. But that can’t possibly be a real question. After all, there is no shortage of people out there explaining the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Great Reset, and the population reduction agenda. Anyone who, after a whole year of this subterfuge STILL can’t see, is choosing not to see it. “None so blind as those who won’t see”, so the saying goes.
build back better all the politicians read from the same script the great reset and remember the incubator babies from kuwait saddam hussein WMDs the FAKE swine flu 2009 and a smokescreen to
funnel billions to the billionaires
they have INCREASED their wealth by 25%
the stock market was about to crash AGAIN
billions for developing “vaccines”and more billions selling them more billions for tests and MASKS and passing TYRANNICAL LAWS the creation of a police state if you dont see/kow what is hapening i will
waste no more time
why do governments keep using this “test” RealStar® SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR Kit 1.0 For research use only! ( External peer review of the RTPCR test to detect SARS-CoV-2 reveals 10 major scientific flaws at the molecular and methodological level: consequences for false positive results.Pieter Borger(1), Bobby Rajesh Malhotra(2) , Michael Yeadon(3) , Clare Craig(4), Kevin McKernan(5) , Klaus Steger(6) , Paul McSheehy(7) , Lidiya Angelova(8), Fabio Franchi(9), Thomas Binder(10), Henrik Ullrich(11) , Makoto Ohashi(12), Stefano Scoglio(13), Marjolein Doesburg-van Kleffens(14), Dorothea Gilbert(15), Rainer Klement(16), Ruth Schruefer(17), Berber W. Pieksma(18), Jan Bonte(19), Bruno H. Dalle Carbonare(20), Kevin P. Corbett(21), Ulrike Kämmerer(22) i posted… Read more »
you ignored the fact that in previous years the death rates in Sweden where below average and a lot less than the surrounding countries Sweden deaths per million lower than a lot of lockdown countries why is Boris Johnson lying that the deaths have never been higher than sinds WW2 while in the last 20 years they have been 7 times higher and all the fear mongering is based on the computer models of dr Ferguson who has been wrong before that had his MISTRESS over during the lockdowns ‘Professor Lockdown’ Modeler Neil Ferguson Resigns in Disgrace In 2009, a… Read more »
Austrian Court Rules PCR unsuited For COVID, lockdowns unlawfulhttps://principia-scientific.com/austrian-court-rules-pcr-unsuited-for-covid-lockdowns-unlawful/ The PCR False Positive Pseudo-Epidemic. Dr. Mike Yeadon The published RT-qPCR protocol for detection and diagnostics of 2019-nCoV and the manuscript suffer from numerous technical and scientific errors, including insufficient primer design, a problematic and insufficient RT-qPCR protocol, and the absence of an accurate test validation. Neither the presented test nor the manuscript itself fulfils the requirements for an acceptable scientific publication. Further, serious conflicts of interest of the authors are not mentioned. Finally, the very short timescale between submission and acceptance of the publication (24 hours) signifies that a systematic… Read more »
The case statistics you cite are from PCR tests, not medical diagnoses, and none of the death statistics come from actually performing autopsies on the deceased. If you dies from practically anything within six weeks of a positive PCR test, they mark it as caused by Covid. I actually caught Covid last November and it is a distinct disease. I was given a PCR test at a hospital which came but positive but they also diagnosed me on the basis of my symptoms and gave me a printout telling me that the main effect of the virus on the body… Read more »
Maybe mr. Zuesse, being an investigative historian, might want to investigate the history of the coming into existence of the C19 virus without any scientific (sic) proof. Spoiler alert: those who can prove it, can claim 1 million EUR.
Thing is that all the fuzz, testing, angst, stats, petty tyrants acting like the mini Hitlers they are, novel immunity passports etc. is no proof.
Please present the scientific proof. I won’t hold my breath if you don’t mind.