brand logo

Are lockdowns based on flawed tests and junk data? 

07 Sep 2021

  • Seasonal flu morphs into Covid-19 as the political Left and Right trade places
BY Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake Covid-19 has blurred distinctions between the political Left and Right in many other parts of the world. Civil society groups, organisations, unions, and political parties that are usually concerned with labour, minorities, women’s, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) rights and freedoms, increasingly embrace and promote travel restrictions, militarised healthcare, coerced vaccination, digitalisation and surveillance of education, society, and the economy in the name of Covid-19 prevention. The curtailment of citizens’ rights and freedoms to breathe and communicate freely, assemble and travel, as well as the right to choose not to be vaccinated are increasingly normalised by human rights groups and advocates in the name of the greater good and social “duty”, while the need for information on the pros and cons of vaccines developed literally at “warped speed” and the right to balanced information of vaccine consumers, as well as informed consent are ignored. Never mind the Hippocratic Oath of “First, do no harm”, with vaccines or any other drugs or purported medication! Many seem to have fallen for the unscientific and unethical claim made by World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that: “No one is safe until everyone is safely vaccinated.” Thus, a former Head of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka has called for mandatory vaccinations! What has become of measured, balanced, judicious data and evidence-based policy-making? Simultaneously, the Covid-19 narrative has divided and fragmented movements for social and economic justice, as much as communities and families. Those who are not vaccinated are increasingly scapegoated as governments move to implement vaccine passports in public spaces. Those who are circumspect that exercise the freedom to think independently, examine the local and national data and evidence on the “global pandemic” narrative, and choose to not take vaccines developed for “emergency use only” sans adequate trials and testing, stand accused of being anti-social Covid-19 naysayers or neocons, who are a danger to society and themselves, or in league with former US President Donald Trump’s agenda. Those who value science, common sense, and ancient Eastern yogic wisdom on the need to breathe deeply and freely (i.e. sans masks) in order to maintain a good immune system as the first line of defence against disease, which is also an important aspect of mental health to avoid panic attacks and those who examine the data and perhaps hopelessly pursue data-driven, evidence-based policy are accused by liberals, minority rights and labour activists, and Leftists of encouraging the spread of the virus in the community and only being concerned about our own economic self-interests. Rights groups for lockdowns? Indeed, the political Left and Right seem to have traded places, as part of the Covid-19 effect as identity politics appear to have again trumped social and economic justice issues, as well as science and common sense, globally and locally. At this time, labour unions and minority rights groups and organisations are blithely talking up a “Covid-19 fourth wave” in Sri Lanka following a meeting of WHO experts on 10 August 2021. They are calling for the Government to impose curfew and islandwide lockdowns despite their economically devastating impacts on the working poor and daily labourers – the folks most vulnerable to what Oxfam termed the “hunger virus”. Despite the problems with Covid-19 data, politicians of all hues – Government and Opposition alike – have united to jump on the WHO’s global vaccine bandwagon, seemingly to show voters how much they care. Although from the onset of the so-called pandemic in March last year, the WHO has consistently promoted surveillance and applauded militarisation of the health system (now spilling into the militarisation of the education system), as local politicians of all parties urge the electorate to get vaccinated, without first doing the research on how effective or safe or indeed necessary the vaccines are – vote bank politics as usual? Since the Government had imposed curfew, erstwhile Leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the Tamil National Alliance’s M.A. Sumanthiran have taken it upon themselves to advise citizens to subject themselves to “lockdowns” or “lockups” for their own good – in a remarkable volte face and display of servility to the WHO’s masked experts and related big pharmaceutical corporations that call the Covid-19 shots. The question of the accuracy of the Covid-19 numbers, the need for country-specific data, and evidence-based policy-making have been unfortunately politicised and hence obfuscated. Indeed, data analysis and evidence-based policy, which requires historical depth, longitudinal, and comparative analysis has come a cropper. Since Covid-19 has been evolving over the past year and a half – both locally and in a global context – amidst confusing, cross messaging, an infodemic of numbers of cases and deaths, vaccines, and virus patent wars, with narratives about constantly mutating virus variants – from Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta plus, minus, squared, to Epsilon onto Omega – and amidst more geopolitics, this article attempts to leave the politics aside and examine the country-specific Covid-19 data, the methods whereby the data are generated and modelled based on Sri Lanka’s country context and country-specific data analysis. Data concerns and flawed PCR tests While there are serious concerns about the Covid-19 morbidity and mortality data on which lockdowns are based in Sri Lanka at this time, attention has mainly focused on provincial, regional, or local area data collection, data cleaning, and generation errors, rather than the main problem, which is the margin of error with the current PCR testing machines, regimes, and protocols that generate Covid-19 test results. It is PCR test results that enable the identification and counting of Covid-19 morbidity and mortality, cases, deaths, and the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR), which is the tried and tested measure to ascertain the severity of a disease or epidemic in a population.  PCR testing enables the rapid making of millions of copies of a specific deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sample in a swab test, allowing laboratories to amplify it (or a part of it) to study in detail and is used in many of the procedures used for genetic testing and research. Copies of very small amounts of DNA sequences are exponentially amplified in a series of cycles of temperature changes. The margins of error depend on the type of testing machine and the use of an appropriate cycle threshold (Ct) rate (usually 26-19 Ct) for a PCR test and machine, and are significant. Hence, in many instances, a person tested twice in an hour may have both a positive and a negative test. It is noteworthy here that the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has announced the discontinuation of the current PCR tests by the end of this year, because of inaccuracies and the tendency to: 1) give a high rate of false positives or negatives depending on the highly sensitive Ct threshold of magnification, usually 26-29 Ct; 2) current PCR tests and machines do not enable distinguishing between Influenza A and Covid-19; and hence, 3) enable the conflation of Covid-19 cases with Influenza. In Sri Lanka, Ct rates of over 35 are used in a range of machines, giving rise to high numbers of false positives. At this time, Sri Lanka is in the midst of its annual wave of monsoonal seasonal influenza and dengue, when mortality and morbidity, cases and deaths peak annually. However, data on cases and deaths of influenza which is symptomatically indistinguishable from Covid-19 have mysteriously disappeared and been replaced by orders of a massive rise in Covid-19 cases. This data is based on PCR tests which tend to deliver false positives or negatives if not properly administered and processed at the recommended Ct. As some doctors skeptical of the Covid-19 policy response noted, given that influenza is symptomatically indistinguishable from Covid-19, and hospitals are crowded with flu and dengue patients, there is a high likelihood of the cross-infection of seasonal flu patients who would otherwise be at home but have gone to hospitals. Overcrowding of hospitals is a direct result of the current Covid-19 fear, psychosis promoted through the media’s sensationalist reporting of “Covid-19 deaths”, and some WHO and medical associations’ and organisations’ dubious epidemiology models and predictions, seemingly based on questionable if not outright junk data. Contextualising the data Indeed, several studies by medical researchers including important research by Dr. Duminda Yasaratne (attached to the Peradeniya Uniersity’s Medical Faculty) and Epidemiology Prof. Shyamali C. Dharmage (Head of the Melbourne University’s Allergy and Lung Health Unit), have shown that respiratory diseases have a major impact on the Sri Lankan health system. In 2017, and before Covid-19, chronic respiratory diseases and pneumonia caused the highest number of hospital deaths which accounted for 39.3 (18%) out of 218.5 deaths per 100,000 population. Furthermore, the comparison of proportionate mortality data during the past decade revealed a rising trend of deaths in hospitals due to these two conditions. A comparative study on influenza and pneumonia deaths in previous years in the weekly epidemiological report of the Health Ministry’s Epidemiology Unit notes: “According to the latest WHO data published in 2014, influenza and pneumonia deaths in Sri Lanka reached 7,292 (5.7%) of the total deaths. The age adjusted death rate was 35.08 per a population of 100,000. In Sri Lanka, 21,111 and 21,811 cases of pneumonia, and 1,417 and 1,448 deaths due to this disease had been reported for the years 2005 and 2006, respectively. 40% of these pneumonia cases were among children under four years of age.” In this context, questions arise as to whether this is a year of more severe flu given the Covid-19 factor? Are flu deaths and Covid-19 deaths being conflated? Is there an excess of deaths being reported, after all daily deaths are counted and their causes ascertained? These are questions not just for doctors of the WHO’s expert committee that blithely recommended lockdowns after presenting dubious, fear-inducing epidemiology models based on dubious statistics and data, without contextual and historical analysis of mortality and morbidity rates and data cleaning at a meeting on 10 August, but also for statisticians and social scientists – particularly from the Census and Statistics Department (DCS). However, social scientists and statisticians have been excluded from the various Government and WHO Covid-19 task forces. As Yasaratne and Dharmage, providing comparative context for Covid-19 disease severity and burden on the health system, noted: “A survey of self-reported diseases in 2014 found asthma to be the most prevalent chronic disease in those aged below 35 years. A substantial gap between the disease prevalence and asthma management was observed in a cross sectional study in 2016, which found wheezing prevalence in adults to be 24% (95% confidence interval (CI): 22-25.9%) while only 11% (95% CI: 9.6-12.5%) was using medication. The Burden of Lung Diseases survey revealed an overall prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease of 10.5% (95% CI: 8.8-12.2%) among Sri Lankan adults aged over 40 years. Among males, the prevalence was 16.4% (95% CI: 13.2-19.5%) compared to 6% (95% CI: 4.2-7.7%) in females who are largely non-smokers. Some plausible causes include outdoor and indoor air pollution.” The rising problem of poor air quality is claimed to be responsible for the rise of respiratory diseases, namely obstructive lung diseases, interstitial pneumonitis, and lung cancers. Urbanisation and the exponential increase of motor vehicles are blamed for poor ambient air quality throughout the country. Many groups of professionals and conservationists have been lobbying for an improvement in air quality in the recent past, creating substantial public awareness on the quality of the air that they breathe. However, there is no proper air pollution monitoring network maintained in most congested zones.  Although the incidence of the flu has mysteriously disappeared while Covid-19 cases have increased by orders at this time, few are questioning the accuracy of the Covid-19 PCR test data and numbers and the recommendations to lockdown the country made by WHO’s experts in any systematic fashion. Questions arise as to whether various WHO experts and organisations like the Gates Foundation funded Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the Washington University generate sensational and fear-inducing graphs, charts, and epidemiology models based on junk data? Questions remain, as to whether Covid-19 has replaced influenza this year and if so what are the policy impacts? In the context of the fact that PCR tests deliver high numbers of false positives and do not enable distinguishing between flu and Covid-19 cases and deaths, it would be important to ascertain whether the Covid-19 numbers are accurate, and the Government Covid-19 Task Force must call for daily excess deaths reports at this time to ascertain the truth about the Covid-19 data, also in the context of the fact that the CDC will retire existing PCR testing machines precisely because of the potential to confound influenza and Covid-19. Is this part of a Covid-19 data hoax and numbers game?  2020 data: Reduced mortality, no excess deaths – whither Covid-19? Data now available for last year, 2020 – the year of the so-called Covid-19 pandemic from the DCS, shows that there were significantly fewer deaths in the country last year than in the previous year. If there was a Covid-19 crisis in Sri Lanka last year, there should have been excess deaths reported in the country data for 2020. However, DCS data for 2020 show a decrease in the country’s death rate compared to the previous year (2019), indicating that there were no excess deaths in 2020 and thus no health emergency, Covid-19 or otherwise! Indeed, there was a decline in the overall mortality rate in 2020 as there were significantly few deaths – 13,600 in 2020, the year of the so-called Covid-19 pandemic when compared to the previous year. In 2019 there were 146,053 deaths, whereas in 2020 there were 132,431 deaths. Likewise, the crude death rate declined from 6.7 in 2019, to 6 in 2020. The fortunate fact that few doctors, nurses, public health inspectors, paramedics (fewer than 10), and frontline health workers have succumbed to Covid-19 in the past one-and-a-half years of the so-called Covid-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka also supports the conclusion that there was no health emergency of any kind in 2020 in Sri Lanka. However, the country was placed in lockdown, increasing poverty, malnutrition, and disease vulnerability for several months in 2020 on the recommendation of the WHO and its local partners. In this context, at this time, with a 10-day lockdown coming into effect, it is imperative that the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) seek the assistance of the DCS and call for a daily excess deaths report based on the overall number of deaths and the causes of these deaths, in order to ascertain if there is a Covid-19 or influenza or dengue or any other health crisis in the country. Fourth wave of fear: They cannot protect themselves At this time, the Government is being blamed by the Opposition and labour unions for not taking even more draconian measures and implementing lockdowns to curtail the movements and rights of people, despite the deadly economic impacts of lockdowns including the spread of what Oxfam calls the “hunger virus” – poverty, widening inequality, malnutrition, and disease vulnerability leading to deaths, and never mind the fact that the rupee is once again in free fall. The Opposition has condemned the Government that took extreme measures to lockdown the country with militarised curfews while instituting surveillance and arresting Covid-19 curfew “violators” based on scant data last year, of being lax on restrictions this year. The claim is that there is a massive Covid-19 crisis in the country. The Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa and his minions who seem not to understand the meaning of national data analysis and balanced and evidence-based policy-making is seeking a two-week lockdown of the country to “protect” the citizens he claims to love and never mind if they starve to death. The Government worries that lockdowns will drive the already debt-trapped economy into the ground and create more poverty, inequality, social unrest, political instability, and disease vulnerability.  Citizens to Covid-19 subjects? Staging a pandemic for global governance The country’s leaders, Government, and joint Opposition seem to agree that citizens and their hard-won democratic rights now are a danger to themselves, and that they must be protected from themselves. The people or labouring masses need protection from themselves and have to be subject to “lockup” or “lockdown” and vaccinated without informed consent. Is it the case that as Karl Marx once famously said: “They cannot represent themselves, they need to be represented”?!  They cannot protect themselves? The people cannot make informed decisions even when provided requisite information, or otherwise determine what is in their own best interest?  Simultaneously, those who question the data or the WHO’s pandemic narrative and are accused of being unconcerned about the fate of the labouring masses, who the virus will target first, although there is remarkable data and evidence regarding the failure of the Covid-19 virus to spread in India’s teeming urban slum communities! What French historian Michel Foucault termed “biopolitics” and Italian political philosopher Georgio Agamben called the “Rule of Exception” has taken over the public sphere. The WHO’s global pandemic fear and groupthink reigns while the streets are deserted but ambulance sirens screech nevertheless to spread the fear psychosis, yet curiously the national sovereign seems marginalised even as citizens have been rendered subjects of Covid-19 groupthink, surveillance, infodemics, mutations, and vaccinations all wrapped up in an emergent global governance project. Since the onset of the so-called pandemic in March last year, the WHO has consistently promoted the militarisation of the health system and the surveillance of citizens who are increasingly rendered subjects of surveillance, and the biopolitics of global governance in the Covid-19 state of exception. This has been in collusion with several national doctors organisations, such as the Government Medical Officers’ Association and the Sri Lanka Medical Association that are funded by the WHO and the big pharmaceutical companies and their local partners that are selling lucrative vaccines. The whole Covid-19 episode would be a comedy of errors if it were not also a global tragedy and crime against humanity of epic proportions. As the Oxfam report “The Hunger Virus” notes and other social scientists have long pointed out, the WHO’s Covid-19 recommended lockdowns and vaccination policies will induce poverty, famine, starvation, and malnutrition among the subaltern masses and daily wage earners, and will kill more people in the Global South than Covid-19 in the long run. It is in this context that this article attempts to analyse the data and epidemiology models on which the Covid-19 pandemic narrative and lockdowns are based in Sri Lanka based on an examination of the now available data from the DCS for last year. One-and-a-half years after the so-called Covid-19 pandemic, historical, comparative, and contextual analysis of the disease and policy response is now possible and necessary to evaluate the data and policy going forward. Likewise, an analysis of the data is needed to determine the IFR which is the better metric that matters, rather than the currently used Case Fatality Rate (CFR) to determine disease severity and epidemiology, as well as appropriate policy responses.  This analysis will be further elaborated. To be continued. (The writer is a social and medical anthropologist)


More News..