The Highwire with Del Bigtree - NEW DATA EXPOSES LOCKDOWN FAIL

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

NEW DATA EXPOSES LOCKDOWN FAILBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Jeffrey, I mean, this is amazing, right? There's one thing to keep saying that clearly the wheels have come off and things are crumbling down, but they're already now throwing people on the bus, pointing fingers, which means we're way past them accepting that this was a disaster. They now know it's a disaster, and now they're going to try and rewrite the history around it. But what is this all about? What is this John Hopkins study that's being referenced? Yeah, Del, there's so much spin going on out there.

We have some work to do today. So this John Hopkins study, now, Jen Saki was talking about the John Hopkins study when she was questioned about it. She said, we've never really supported lockdowns. Well, let's go right to the John Hopkins study and people can read it for themselves. It's a literature review of a meta-analysis of the effects of lockdowns like COVID-19 mortality. This is John Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics and Global Health. They looked at 24 analysis to go through this paper throughout the world. And in this paper, now here's where Jen Saki either didn't read.

the paper or she's playing word games to confuse you because in the paper it says lockdowns are defined as an imposition of at least one compulsory non-pharmaceutical interventions that's closing of schools that's closing businesses that's mandating a face mask and it says in here while this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to know public health effects they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted in consequence lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument they go on to conclude this the authors. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion.

Lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument. Now, again, we knew this because, I'm sorry, go on. So just to be clear, when she's saying, well, we have other tools in lockdown, she's referencing the masks that they're still recommending. But this study put masks in as a part of that's a lockdown measure, putting masks, forcing people to do something they wouldn't naturally do in order to handle COVID. So where she's saying, we don't believe in lockdowns, we believe in the other tools. They are saying those other tools are lockdowns, right? Yes, yes.

Okay, got it. Yeah, according to this study, absolutely. And this is what they looked in this meta-analysis. And we knew this was the case. You know, we knew it because of the Great Barrington Declaration in early 2020. They said this exactly will happen if you put these lockdowns in. And it's going to affect the harder-hit lower socioeconomic classes around the world even harder. And it did that.

So we knew this. And now we're getting this full circle. And there's spin trying to be put on it. So let's just be clear about that. But we're seeing headlines like this. This is an amazing article of the telegraph. It was lonely opposing the first lockdown it reads, but the day will come when no one remembers backing it. So as this evidence keeps piling up that these lockdowns weren't worth it.

It says in this article that 93% of British people back the first lockdown. The second lockdown was backed by 85%. And even by this past summer, 71% still one of the restrictions coming in. So as these people are waking up to the fact that, you know, that we've known at the Highwire here and so many other outlets have reported that these are not worth it. They're going to have to face this cognitive dissidence that we talked about last week. And it seems like the media and the public health apparatus is really trying to super-touching. charge, this cognitive distance, and trying to rewrite history, as you mentioned. It's really interesting.

But here's another headline. This started the UK. This is called shambolic. COVID PCR testing rules meant one in three who isolated were never contagious. So now we have these PCR tests, the case tests, as so many have already reported, it's coming around full circle that these cases, the PCR tests were not reliable. And this was a study co-authored by Dr. Tom Jefferson. He is a co-authorized. of this article, an epidemiologist at the Center for Evidence-based Medicine at the University of Oxford. And he said here, looking at the data, he said, quote, we found that about one-third of people who isolated probably didn't need to. PCR positivity means that you can tell people to isolate and ruin their lives basically, even though in a large portion of these cases, they are not

infectious. It's absolute chaos. The whole regulation of these tests seem to be shambolic. And what he was talking about here is basically they found anything over 30 cycles, a cycle threshold, 30 cycles was not going to show an accurate positivity rate. And they found that most tests around the world were set at 35 and even 40 cycles. So people are again quarantining their cases. They can't travel. They have to work from home all because of these tests. And we knew this, but now it's really coming out. And just really quickly for people that are brand new to the high wire, We've gone over all the science around cycles. You can go back and watch other shows about the cycles and PCR tests.

But think of it like that little magnifying, you know, the microscope where you're turning it and getting bigger and bigger microscopic, you know, information. Well, at 30, they're saying you're so deep into this that now you're going to start picking up dead fragments that aren't necessarily the virus anymore. Maybe you breed them in, but they're not infectious where your body's already gone through it and you're letting them go. but we went beyond 30, 40. I even think, if I remember right, the New York Times reporting that a lot of these centers in America were using 45 cycles,

meaning you were just exaggerating, tiny fragments that even Tony Fauci said were totally irrelevant and couldn't be considered infectious disease, yet those people were being quarantined because of those results. Absolutely. And that was, quote, the science, and people I didn't agree with that at that time

were, you know, they were called a bunch of names. And so the media is now trying to pivot here, but it's important not to, forget what the media was saying. So one of the major mouthpieces was CNN's medical analyst, Leanna Winn. She had a lot to say during the pandemic. She talked about unvaccinated, not being able to go out in public. She talked about universal masking for kids for this entire time. Let's listen to what she had to say in April, April 5th, 2021. Take a look. There are many more people, millions of people who, for whatever reason, have concerns about the vaccine,

who just don't know what's in it for them. And we need to make it clear to them that the vaccine is the ticket back to pre-pandemic life. And the window to do that is really narrowly. I mean, you were mentioning, Chris, about how all these states are reopening. They're reopening at 100%. And we have a very narrow window

to tie reopening policy to vaccination status. Because otherwise, if everything is reopened, then what's the carrot going to be? How are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine? So that's why I think the CDC and the Biden, administration needs to come out a lot bolder and say, if you're vaccinated, you can do all these

things, hear all these freedoms that you have because otherwise people are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms anyway. Unbelievable, looking back. I remember what she said that, but we can't just have people like enjoying their lives. They'll never get the vaccine. That's the case. And of course, she was referencing the fact that Texas and Florida were just walking away saying, this is ridiculous.

We're done here. And she's like, oh, my God, you know, we got to scare. And then remember, they were trying to say. They scare everybody. There's going to be huge outbreaks in Texas. They didn't get their vaccines. Florida, you can't open up. We ended up having some of the lowest rates around here in Texas, Florida, the same.

Proved that she was wrong. But here's someone that literally wanted to keep them locked down so that we can use this as an incentive. I mean, what else? I mean, we got to have that carrot, that carrot that gets them to get the vaccine. That vaccine is their passport to freedom. I mean, it was crazy how she wanted to use locked in and Biden administration to be stronger. I mean, just an outrageous statement. Rob people of their freedoms before they end up being too happy.

Yeah. And at that point, the writing was starting to become on the wall that, you know, the things are going to be opening up pretty soon. So she was desperately trying to, as you said, use those lockdowns as an incentive to get people vaccinated. But she's changed her tune a little bit. This was her this week. Listen to this.

All right. Do you agree with the move? I do. There was a, and is a time in place for pandemic restrictions. But when they were put in, it was always with the understanding that they would be removed as soon as we can. And in this case, circumstances have changed. Case counts are declining. Also, the science has changed.

We know that vaccines protect very well against Ammocram, which is the dominant variant. Everyone, five and older, have widespread access to vaccines. And we also know about one-way masking, the idea that even if other people around you are not wearing masks, if you wear a high-quality mask, that also protects you, the wearer, And so in this case, I'm not saying, I don't think anyone really is saying that no one should ever wear masks, but rather that the responsibility should shift from a government mandate imposed from the state or the local district of the school. Rather, it should shift to an individual responsibility by the family who can still decide that their child can wear a mask if needed. You know, take New Jersey, the case of New Jersey, for instance, their new case average is just over 4,000.

Is that an acceptable number to do this or are they projecting out to March 7th at this point? I don't think we should be looking at case counts at all at this point, especially when we're dealing with a milder variant and when so many people were exposed to Omicron and therefore have at least some level of protection either through vaccination or immunity. The key number that we should be looking at is hospitalizations. If our ICUs and hospitals in that particular region are not overwhelmed, if they're not overcapacity, we can set a number, for example, 75% or 80% full, then we should be able to relax all restrictions.

And I actually believe that we should be starting to, with the first restriction removed, should actually be the restriction on children. Because while for adults, you could say, well, what's the harm of adults masking when they go into a grocery store? There actually is a harm that we should be discussing of children continuing to mask. That doesn't mean that masking doesn't have its place for children when there are very high rates of hospitalization. If we get a new variant in the future that children are particularly susceptible to, we may want to bring masks back. But we should also be intellectually honest and say that

masking has had a cost, especially for the youngest learners, people with English as a second language, children with learning disabilities, there has been a cost to them. So the risk-benefit calculation has really changed. I mean, these people, Jeffrey, have, it's like no conscience, right? I mean, what you just saw there is the definition of a chill. Like, I will stand by and have anything come out of my mouth. I'm told to say and have no reference point to what I've said before or where we're going in the future. I mean, for her to say, look, I mean, I don't think anyone would say that, you know, you shouldn't wear your mask, but I'm saying, then later on, she's like, but it's definitely harmful for children. I don't

recommend doing it. I mean, she's all over the map, but this entire idea of saying no case, I think we should stop looking at case counts, that that's confusing everything. We should really look at hospitalizations. That's exactly what Donald Trump said in the middle of all this. Why are he called it a casemic. This is a casemic. We are making our country look bad by over testing with tests that aren't accurate. And so we're freaking everybody out for no reason. We never filled up. You know that all those army hospital tents that were put outside in New York and all over the country? Not one of them was ever used. We never used them. We never overflowed a single hospital. So her entire point is the exact opposite of where she was, you know, a year ago.

or what they've been saying to us. They're literally acting like, well, no, we got through it. No, we never filled up hospitals. Nobody ever overflowed a single hospital in the United States of America, yet we were locked down. I mean, look, I'm glad she's coming around. I'm glad it is so embarrassing now that she has to go out and just retract virtually everything she said without saying I'm retracting it, just that the science has changed. And honestly, Jeffrey, what does that mean?

I mean, I made me think about what does science change? The science actually changed. I try to think this. Science changes. Is science the immovable object, or is it always changing? I know our perception of the science. At least I think the science is, you know, that this is what's been discovered. But if it changes, then our perception was wrong.

Either way, what she's saying is, we totally misunderstood this. And had you been watching the high wire, you would have been right the whole time. We're finally coming around to where the high wire was at, where the Great Barrington Declaration. So the science has changed. All right. Whatever you want to call it. you were wrong. And the science hasn't changed on masking kids.

It's never been right to universally masked kids. And she says, we have to be intellectually honest that masks of harming kids. They've always harmed kids. We've known this. They're emotional setbacks. They're verbal setbacks. All of these things. Intelligence quotions. We've reported on all this. We've known this. And for her to say this now,

I mean, okay, thanks for coming out. So reportedly, there was a New York Times report. Just quickly, just I think about that term intellectually honest. I mean, I think maybe the reason she has so much difficulty with that is certainly to be intellectually honest, you have to have an intelligence, correct? Yeah.

Okay. Instead of reading off a teleprompter, perhaps, or a talking point, that may be one of the options we're looking at here. So according to New York Times, there was a meeting last week of governors talking about looking for Biden and Biden administration to have a roadmap on how to get these mask mandates and a plan on reopening and ending these restrictions finally. And it wasn't moved on vast enough. So at the beginning of this week, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, he took the first initiative.

And from there, it's been dominoes. And so what the headlines look like at that point, New Jersey to end school mass mandate on March 7th at COVID cases Wayne. They're lifting it on March 7th for school districts will be able to decide, though. So now we went from the state calling the shots on the mass mandates to letting the school districts decide. How about we let the parents decide? But I guess that's still too far. Just remember people, if you're going to be.

If they try to do this again, remember how hard it is wrestling this power away from them. So we're at the point now where I guess the school district get to decide at some point, but now it keeps going. And also, let's give a shout out to New Jersey, because by the way, I realize you weren't able to get rid of Murphy, but you got rid of Sweeney, which was his bulldog that was in the Senate president, Sweeney, who was the one pushing all of this pharma agenda all over New Jersey. He was disgusting and he lost to a nobody with no money.

He was funded by pharma, and even that wasn't enough to get Steve Sweeney in. So even though I know you were all upset in New Jersey, look at the power. It did. Sweet is away. The Bulldogs is gone. And so now Murphy works for you again. You've got him back on the leash. Well done.

Battle of Trenton, one of the great moments in the history of this conversation. So again, New Jersey is standing up and showing what happens when you just had to take one of those cogs out of there, one of the cogs out of the machine, and the entire thing starts falling apart.