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For a whole year more people were dying in Mexico than normally died. There’s been one long bloodbath there and an untold story. Mexico may not have hit the “photogenic” headline stage that Brazil, Iran, and India did, but nonetheless, somewhat unnoticed, it’s been continuously bad. Mexico has the dubious honor of being one of the worst for testing, with positivity rates at the virtually the highest in the world, running at 35% and even reaching over 50% at times. Few countries have had higher rates (currently only Tunisia, Namibia, maybe Colombia are worse). The Case Fatality Rate has run at 12% for a year, only confirming that there weren’t enough tests to know the real scale of the infections. The excess deaths graph tells its own story. The wave of 2020 ran for a whole year with deaths running at 50 – 100% higher than in a normal year. Since the pandemic began some 350,000 excess deaths have been recorded. The death toll for Covid in Mexico may be 60% higher than the official Covid casualty count of 230,000. As winter made the situation even worse, things got desperate enough (finally!) for cheap treatments to be organized.
Ivermectin use at 200 microgram/kg started on December 21 and was gradually rolled out across Mexico. It took months, but finally, for the first time in a year, Mexican deaths are back to normal, and even slightly lower.
Obviously some countries are too rich to use cheap drugs. For them, only patentable ones with big profits attached can “solve” this crisis.
Vaccinations did not start en masse til February 15th, and by the start of June only 17% of the country had even received one dose.
 Ivermectin use began being rolled out on December 21, 2020. @jjchamie How many lives would have been saved and how many lockdowns could have been prevented?
Obviously excess deaths in a pandemic are also due to hospitals being overwhelmed, and shortages or restrictions and the failure of normal healthcare. It may be years before those factors can be unravelled and a better estimate of Covid deaths can be made.
After Mexico City introduced Ivermectin, COVID hospitalizations and deaths were reduced
Concerned about hospital capacity in the summer of 2020, the Mexican government devised an aggressive testing regime, ramping up from 3,000 tests per day in June to around 24,000 antigen tests every day by that November, according to TrialSiteNews. Mexico City Ministry of Health head Oliva López later announced that doctors will give ivermectin and azithromycin to treat COVID-19.
“The Ministry of Health has identified that there is enough evidence to use in people positive for SARS-CoV-2, even without symptoms, some drugs such as ivermectin and azithromycin,” López confirmed in a press conference.
Local authorities created a home-treatment-kit, including ivermectin, for its 22 million-strong population on December 28, 2020, following a spike in cases of COVID-19.
Dr. Juan J. Chamie-Quintero, a senior data analyst at private Colombian university EAFIT, followed the trends in hospitalizations and deaths in Mexico City before and after the government implemented its ivermectin treatment program.
UPDATE: Cases and deaths are on the rise again in Mexico this week. J Chamie says ‘…the war isn’t over in Mexico Not a surprise that a new surge is growing from Quintana Roo (bottom right in the map)) where a group of MDs are actively blocking IVM treatments. https://facebook.com/COVIDQRoo/posts/no-a-la-ivermectina/283548253281495/ h/t TIP
The wonder drug that disappeared
If you only email friends one link — make it this story. It’s the biggest medical scandal since 1850— Why is a cheap safe drug being ignored? Could it be that there would be no medical emergency and no need to rush out other riskier new treatments which are still classed as “experimental” if there was a safe alternative? There are billions of reasons to ask this question but newspapers wouldn’t publish the story. In desperation, some Americans are going to court to get rulings to order doctors to use Ivermectin on their loved ones. Even if they win, sometimes hospitals still refuse to use it on patients with few options left. One family hired a helicopter to take their mother away from intensive care in a hospital that refused to give Ivermectin (and had a happy ending). The debate is so suppressed, there are rumours the US President was treated with it in secret last year.
For peer reviewed studies read: The BIG Ivermectin Review: It may prevent 86% of Covid cases.
Ivermectin has also been used, with apparent success in India, Peru and Mexico (and so many other places). Covid cases fell in the states of India that approved Ivermectin use but rose in Tamil Nadu where it wasn’t permitted. Despite the success, India’s Health dept suddenly stopped Ivermectin use again and people in India are suing the WHO in disgust. In Peru, Ivermectin cut covid deaths by 75% in 6 weeks.
The FDA and others will say there is little evidence of success so far, but that’s a scandal in itself. Why are there no large trials? And why are other drugs like Remdesivir approved with only one trial? Ivermectin is so safe some 3.7 billion doses have already been used around the world. The inventors won a Nobel Prize for its discovery in 2015. We’ve known it might be useful since April last year, when an Australian group searched through many cheap safe drugs looking for any that might help against Covid. The news then was “Another possible cure for coronavirus, found in sheep dip: Ivermectin”. This was just a lab study, and it suggested doses would need to be too high. Even so, successes keep turning up in the real world? By July last year there were already signs Ivermectin could save as many as 50%. Why were large trials not started then? The UK trial is hobbled from the start.
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 …. Australia and the UK can close one coal plant each, but Asia will build 600.
There’s a socially awkward moment coming at the G20’s next dinner, but despite the combined selfish evil of the theoretical Asian Planet Wreckers, no one will really say much, put trade embargoes on, or boycott the Olympics.
Ultimately, everyone at the table knows that Carbon Voodoo is a Western dinner party game, not a serious pollutant.
Jillian Ambrose, The Guardian
Five Asian countries are jeopardising global climate ambitions by investing in 80% of the world’s planned new coal plants, according to a report.
They are all developing nations, apparently, so they can be forgiven, even though the list includes number 2 and 3 on the Worlds Biggest Economies list, and one of these fledglings just left the nest and landed on Mars.
Spot the craziness:
Carbon Tracker, a financial thinktank, has found that China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam plan to build more than 600 coal power units, even though renewable energy is cheaper than most new coal plants.
Why are they knocking back all the cheap solar and wind power? Could it be that China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam are filled with stupid people who can’t add up. Or is it that they can do the sums and they noticed that every nation with renewables also has expensive electricity?
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The Heat Dome was a freak local event
Once upon a time, scientists would say only 30 year trends counted. Now, all weather is climate except when it isn’t. Climate modelers know the heat over North East America was caused by your beef steak, but the cold over New Mexico was not even worth mentioning. (Nor apparently was the minus 81 in Antarctica a couple of weeks ago).
As Ryan Maue says: Overall the contiguous US is 1.4F below average.
 …h/t Clarence.t WUWT
The Sun is already saying the Heat Dome “killed at least 500 people”. Strangely the February Texas freeze and blackouts may have killed 700 people, but five months later the media is still carefully waiting for confirmation before it puts that in a headline.
Blame the Pacific Ocean
Even NOAA says a Heat Dome is caused by La Nina and a local weather phenomenon:
This [heat dome] happens when strong, high-pressure atmospheric conditions combine with influences from La Niña, creating vast areas of sweltering heat that gets trapped under the high-pressure “dome.”
A team of scientists funded by the NOAA MAPP Program investigated what triggers heat domes and found the main cause was a strong change (or gradient) in ocean temperatures from west to east in the tropical Pacific Ocean during the preceding winter.
Given that climate modelers can’t predict a La Nina more than six months in advance, they also can’t predict the likelihood of Heat Domes in any given year.
Anthony Watts explains that the heat was a weather phenomenon created by air being compressed as it flowed downhill.
High pressure rotates clockwise, causes sinking air, and creates downslope winds (Foehn winds), which heat up because the air compresses as it flowed down the slope of the Cascade Mountains from east to west towards Portland and Seattle. It’s like the Santa Ana winds in Southern California. It’s the same effect as using a bicycle pump to fill a tire. The pump gets warm, not from friction, but because of the gas (air) is being compressed. Conversely, aerosol cans get colder, because gas under pressure is escaping and decompression occurs inside the can. This is described by science, known as the Adiabatic process.
Anthony also points out that as the heat dome moved past the temperatures fell in hours by an astonishing 52F (29C). That was another record drop in temperatures, and all on the same day, but who’s counting?
Blame the jet streams
The simultaneous extreme heat and cold may be created by wavy jet streams. But climate modelers could never figure out what the jetstreams were going to do. They flipped and flopped post hoc as the data changed. The models predicted waviness would go down, but it went up. Then someone came up with a way to explain that, but then the waviness stopped going up.
Meanwhile other researchers without climate models found that jet streams correlate with solar output “over a millennium”. And other researchers found that the interplanetary magnetic field can affect the polar regions on Earth, and also the mid latitude air pressure.
 Wandering Jetstreams help create the heat dome. More than one skeptic predicted the jet streams would get wavier as solar activity weakened. Read Stephen Wildes theory here. And Cap Allon here.
If a weak sun causes wavier jet streams we may well get lots more “extreme” weather phenomenon which will have nothing to do with CO2.
But whatever happens the Climate Experts will be right.
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Is this the future of wind all over the world?
The salad days of wind power in Germany are over. Bad news is rolling in from several directions. Twenty years of hope-n-subsidies has run aground. Profits are grinding down, and hardly any new towers are being erected. People are fighting back against the noise, the views, and the bird chopping. Conservationists might like the idea of wind, as long as it’s in someone else’s forest. Suddenly groups that oppose wind towers are gaining traction, and the red tape and legal battles have grown wings and settled on new developments like a bat plague.
New turbines are now supposed to be two kilometers from any home, and there just isn’t enough spare land to build them on. German wind farms are running out of Germany.
If only they were profitable and provided an essential service, they might still have friends.
Alex Reichmuth; Nebelspalter, via GWPF
Lengthy planning and approval procedures stand in the way of the expansion of wind energy. There is too little designated space for possible locations and too many lawsuits against projects. The resistance to the construction of wind turbines is enormous in many places. Countless nature conservationist groups and citizens’ groups see the landscape impaired, health threatened or rare birds in danger and are fighting with all possible means against new wind turbines. Frequently, political leaders of municipalities and states are against easing the elimination of wind power locations.
To make matters worse for the future of wind energy is the fact that many wind farms are threatened by shutdown. The German Renewable Energy Act which has been in force since 2000 guarantees wind turbine operators secure subsidies for twenty years. For thousands of wind projects this deadline will expire in the next few years. Without subsidies they are no longer profitable. By 2025, there is a risk of 15,000 MW of wind projects being lost which corresponds to over a quarter of Germany’s onshore wind power.
One Minister of Energy and Environment is talking of an industry in freefall:
“We are heading for a disaster,” said Lies to the “Handelsblatt”…
“If the federal government does not pull the rip cord, Germany faces a gigantic dismantling of wind energy with all the consequences for eliminating it.
The wind lobby want to build in forests. Apparently in order to save the wilderness from climate change we have to accost it acoustically. We know infrasound can cause humans to get nosebleeds, dizziness, rashes and headaches — what does it do to badgers and wildcats?
After we finish the human experiments perhaps we’ll start the animal ones?
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Peter Ridd writes that a new paper uncovers rare lithographs of corals underwater in 1862.
One hundred and fifty year old pictures of corals are rare enough, but these ones had the unmistakable pure white cauliflower look that marks them as totally bleached. But in 1862 the first coal fired power plant was still twenty years away from starting work as a coral destroyer, and carbon dioxide levels were a perfect 286ppm.
This is the spot (below) in the Northern Red Sea just at the end of “The Little Ice Age”. Perhaps the seas were too alkaline then, and were yet to reach the perfect pH nirvana they must have struck the year before humans started scuba diving en masse.
 Bleaching in 1862, twenty years before the worlds first coal fired power plant was built. Ransonnet 1862 | Tomas Cedhagen 2021 We can see why scuba diving was not popular in 1862.
 The first underwater camera had a little man inside?
Somehow the great marine-psychics of the world know that corals didn’t bleach in the early 1960’s even though, or perhaps “because”, there was almost no one down there to see it.
From Peter Ridd:
Reef-scientists often claim that coral bleaching is a new phenomenon that only started in the 1970’s due to climate change. But a remarkable new paper published by Tomas Cedhagen, of Aarhus University in Denmark has uncovered a very early lithograph showing bleaching in 1862.
There are actually many other early observations of bleaching, including by Sir Maurice Yonge in the first major science expedition to the Great Barrier Reef in 1929 (if you don’t count Captain James Cook’s scientific exploration of the reef in 1770). But Eugen von Ransonnet’s remarkable lithograph, taken from an incredibly crude diving bell, seems to be the earliest picture.
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 Image by AngMoKio For anyone trained in genetics the news that China warned of the potential for race based genetic bioweapons in 2011 is just stating what any good SciFi writer has known for years. But the macabre detail may help wake up the rest of the world to the idea “What if”. What would a New Biotech Cold War look like, and does it look like this?
China was spelling out some toe-curling recipes: warning that new biotech could pump up the virulence of infectious agents; it could neutralize antibiotics and vaccines, or potentially make the “target” population more vulnerable by disabling specific genes. Theoretically, adversaries could add genetic material covertly. How about some involuntary “Gene Therapy”coming to an airconditioning system near you?
But hey, they were just speculating right?
Funnily enough, a guy called Miles Yu was working for Mike Pompeo, advising him on China, and he raised the existence of the Chinese submission with the US State Department last December. Pompeo ordered an investigation, but they couldn’t find a copy of China’s original submission at the time (it’s only a global UN convention, yeah?). But when Joe Biden was sworn in, the investigation was shut down. (They don’t call him Xiden for nothing. ) But Sharri Markson, or someone at The Australian, found it.
And Mr Yu said: “it send chills up my spine”.
How’s that UN Treaty against Biological Weapons going?
 Beijing’s own 2011 declaration to the UN, Biological Weapons Convention reads rather chillingly in hindsight. Though The Australian is not suggesting Covid-19 was a biological weapon or that China has carried out an attack.
China’s warning on man-made viruses
by Sharri Markson and Jack Hazelwood, The Australian
The Chinese government admitted research to create man-made viruses posed “a huge latent threat to mankind” – and said “accidental mistakes in biotech laboratories can place mankind in great danger”…
Chinese authorities also spoke of the “increased threat of biological weapons” and discussed using viruses as “genetic weapons” saying systems biology “can also create the potential for biological weapons based on genetic differences between races”…
..research could “significantly increase the destructiveness of biological weapons” by “making biological attacks more stealthy”.
So there was China in 2011 admitting to the Biological Weapons Convention that there might be trouble complying with the rules. So much for UN State Party agreements which grew out of a 1972 declaration, and is now a major treaty that is reviewed every five years.
By 2016, China was talking about a more sophisticated problem:
It says “foreign genes or viruses can be introduced into the target population asymptomatically by means of gene-therapy vectors, enabling a biological weapon attack to be mounted covertly”.
This could mean a two stage event where stage one was silently introducing a section of code to a target population, that could be used later.
And admissions like this in 2016 sit a little awkwardly with 2020 protests that lab leaks don’t need investigation:
“Accidental mistakes in biotech laboratories can place mankind in great danger,” it states.
Righto.
Hands up who thinks UN inspectors would be able to stop clandestine government laboratories from creating Black Death 2.0 even if the UN inspectors wanted to…
Even if they had an implementation body to assess compliance, which they don’t, they would also need an enforcement process.
Time to ditch the UN, and get serious about assessing the threat and how to respond.
Just another cold war
The weapons are different, but the rules stay the same.
 Lassa virus, Photo Credit: C. S. Goldsmith Translate a few tactics from the last cold war:
Firstly, there’s always deterrence — misbehaving nations need to feel some heat.
We don’t need to know if the virus was deliberately released, we already know that China did not play good global citizen in warning the world and stopping the spread in January 2020, when it could have been stopped so easily. Global trade and travel sanctions are a threat to a corrupt leadership. There should be a price when a nation doesn’t report a new contagion with honesty and openness.
Secondly, there’s Part I of the Biotech Arms Race — You have one nasty virus, we have 1,000: The MAD doctrine in the cold war meant both sides had obscenely powerful weapons to unleash. The problem was and is that destructive weapons sometimes destruct. Nuclear accidents happen, and so do laboratory leaks. Not a sweetness-and-light kind of world to live in. But it might slow down a nation tempted to post out a new Pox.
Thirdly, there’s Part II of the Arms Race: Build the “Star Wars” of Biotech: For every nasty virus there will be ways to intercept. While China was dreaming of bioweapons in 2011, I was advising we dump the Clean Green renewables fantasies and get into the real medical revolution instead. All that money on windmills and expensive green electrons could be spent curing diseases.
We need a mastery of medical science. That means finding faster ways to detect new viruses, and building molecular tools that chop up viral sequences. We can already screen antiviral cheap chemicals in a matter of weeks (though we might want to clean up the medical swamp bureaucracy that stops us using them). We could get very good with CRISPR and go right into cells and cut the offending code out, or we might swamp the code with anti-sense RNA that sticks to offending sequences and renders them harmless. Then there are monoclonal antibodies, or nanobodies that do the work our immune system is supposed to do, but in the lab, pre-prepared, rather than waiting to make it happen in a sick body.
We have so many tools, but right now, they are the planes and guns of pre-World War I.
Covid is a baby biotech weapon. The next ones could be so much nastier.
 Ebola Virus budding from a African Green Monkey kidney Cell. Author BernbaumJG REFERENCES
Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, UNODA, UN Office for Disarmament Affairs.
https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/un/disarmament/bwc/conf1112.pdf
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Science of Civilization Lesson #2: What’s the most deadly kind of government on Earth?
“Big Government”
One third of millennials approve of communism, probably because they don’t know what it is:
January 2020: Poll of young Americans found 70% will “vote socialist” and half of them think communism is OK
 Gulag in Latvia | Image Rakoon. According to a poll commissioned by the Washington, D.C. area nonprofit Victims of Communism, 70 percent of Millennials say they are likely to vote for a socialist while one in three view communism favorably.
The same poll also reported that 27 percent of people believe President Donald Trump is the biggest threat to world peace. The survey placed the U.S. president over North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
According to YouGov, 36 percent of millennials say they approve of communism. That percentage is up almost 10 percent from 2018.
Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, has a plan that students in his state should understand why Cubans swim to Florida more than Floridians swim to Cuba:
Douglas Ernst, Washington Times
“We have a number of people in Florida, particularly southern Florida, who’ve escaped totalitarian regimes, who escaped communist dictatorships to be able to come to America,” Mr. DeSantis said Tuesday. “We want all students to understand. Why would somebody flee across shark-infested waters, say, leaving Cuba, to come to southern Florida? Why would somebody leave a place like Vietnam? Why would people leave these countries and risk their life to be able to come here?”
At a guess, the move is likely to unify immigrants and non-immigrants more than burning down Wendy’s does.
University diversity test coming:
How radical. Instead of marking universities on their diversity of skin color, DeSantis wants to mark them on their diversity of ideas. Florida will require universities survey staff and students on beliefs.
The survey will examine “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented” in the state universities and colleges — and seeks to find whether students, faculty and staff “feel free to express beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom,” according to the bill, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Think of it as a scorecard for the university, with the promise of financial support for universities that pass:
But DeSantis and bill sponsor Sen. Ray Rodrigues suggested that budget cuts could be imminent if universities and colleges are found to be “indoctrinating” students.
“That’s not worth tax dollars and that’s not something that we’re going to be supporting moving forward,” DeSantis [said].
Imagine a situation where a university has an incentive to teach both sides? Spread this idea around….
Western Civilization is not dead yet.
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Well here’s a surprise. A year and a half later and now we find out that Australian labs were also helping China?
 And tonight, 520 days after China shared the genetic sequence of SARS-2, Australian scientists are suddenly very concerned about how Australia might still be doing gain-of-function work with viruses? Minister Greg Hunt is asking for a “review” of gain-of-function research in Australia? Did he even know?
It’s amazing what the power of a good reporter can achieve. Hail Sharri Markson and The Australian.
For 500 long pandemic days some publicly funded scientists had millions of reasons apparently, not to talk about how the virus might have been a lab leak. These public servants may have been publicly scoffing at the idea the virus may have leaked from a lab, but they didn’t think to mention that they’d worked with bats, and gain-of-function viruses and even the Wuhan lab itself?
They were ethically bound to speak up. Did they say nothing, or did they talk to Morrison and Hunt in private? After which, given the government’s role, possibly none of them wanted to let that bat out of the bag?
Public trust in these institutions might be about to dive…
The CSIRO has even been forced to correct itself. Somehow it didn’t tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth to the Senate Estimates Hearing.
Sharri Markson and Liam Mendes, The Australian
The CSIRO has been forced to correct evidence it gave at a Senate estimates hearing after initially denying its researchers had undertaken work on live bats with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab at the centre of growing international concern it was the source of Covid-19. CSIRO chief operating officer Judi Zielke admitted the organisation had “undertaken research on bats previously”.
“Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness did undertake research on bats in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2016-17,” Ms Zielke said.
The same organisations with the same grant games to play wouldn’t have an interest in not telling the whole truth on climate models? Different researchers, but the same process, same incentive, and same organisations?
Go Matt Canavan:
Under questioning from Nationals senator Matt Canavan on June 3, the CSIRO initially gave evidence that it “does not undertake research on live bats at ACDP”. However, Senator Canavan later presented the CSIRO with an excerpt from a scientific paper written in conjunction with the Wuhan lab stating: “Wild caught P Alecto bats were trapped in Southern Queensland, Australia, and transported alive by air to the Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Victoria, where they were euthanised for dissection.”
And this research helped us, how?
The CSIRO and the Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborated on several projects on bats’ antiviral immunity in 2011. The purpose of a study was to understand why bats remained asymptomatic to viral infection that was capable of spillover to other susceptible mammals “with lethal consequences”.
Indeed, the ten projects were spread over ten years but one researcher at the University of Queensland was involved with that Wuhan Institute of …”Bioweapons” itself as recently as August last year. US intelligence had already warned the whole pandemic might be due to a lab leak, and yet Dr Hume Field was working with the very same Professor Shi (the Batwoman) and Peter Daszek (the Fauci favorite). Dr Field is an advisor to the infamous “EcoHealth Alliance”.
 Spot the names… Something about the way we fund our scientists is seriously screwed.
Professor MacIntyre said there needed to be more community consultation on this research.
You don’t say…
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The new super meta review of Ivermectin is out. It’s 27 pages of fine print detail and 144 references, and it’s very impressive.
 Ivermectin…. by Fvasconcellos Bryant et al soaked themselves in 24 studies involving 3,406 people and found that ivermectin use reduced deaths by a very nice 60% with “moderate certainty”. But ivermectin appears to be at its best when used to prevent infections in the first place. There was “low certainty” but with prophylactic use Covid infections were reduced by an average of 86% . But by the time patients were “in need of mechanical ventilation”, the data, while muddy, suggested ivermectin was not much help.
The bad thing about Ivermectin is that there are not many bad things. It’s too good, too cheap, too safe, and too far out of patent to be profitable.
Given the evidence of efficacy, safety, low cost, and current death rates, ivermectin is likely to have an
impact on health and economic outcomes of the pandemic across many countries. Ivermectin is not a new
and experimental drug with an unknown safety profile. It is a WHO “Essential Medicine” already used in several different indications, in colossal cumulative volumes.
We can almost hear the frustration as Bryant et al compare how easily other drugs get approval to treat Covid:
Corticosteroids have become an accepted standard of care in COVID-19, based on a single RCT of dexamethasone.1 If a single RCT is sufficient for the adoption of dexamethasone, then a fortiori the evidence of 2 dozen RCTs supports the adoption of ivermectin.
RCT means a Random Controlled Trial. Sometimes one trial will do, other times 24 trials isn’t enough.
h/t to Ian and Phillip
Meanwhile, the BBC has announced that Ivermectin will be studied as possible treatment in UK
Hold off on the champers. The Principle Study appears to be a holding pattern to fend off questions about “why they weren’t studying Ivermectin”. Good reporters will want to ask why the trial will allow people to join up to 15 days after they get symptoms when the best results come with early treatment and even prophylactic use. If only there were good reporters left at the BBC.
The trial will also allow people who are vaccinated to join which is a good way to dilute the results. If we compare 2000 vaccinated people with 2000 also-vaccinated people the difference between placebo and drug may not be very significant. And if the vaccine “is the ticket to freedom” why invite vaccinees to join the trial? Is it, perhaps a back route to reducing deaths in vaccinees who get breakthrough infections? Let’s just hope for the vaccinees sake, that the docs don’t wait until they’re on the ventilator.
If the UK Ministry of Big Pharma Health really wanted to test Ivermectin, they’d offer it to people in high risk areas who weren’t sick and weren’t vaccinated, and compare like for like cases without Ivermectin in the same area.
But that might show good results.
h/t Steve,
Indonesia however is poor enough to approve Ivermectin use. Without access to $5000-dollar-a-day ICU beds, or mass experimental vaccines, Indonesia is looking down the Delta variant barrel. They have been given Sinovax, the Chinese vaccine, but seemingly that’s not much (as it wasn’t it the Seychelles, or in Chile either).
Production capacity of Ivermectin is said to be 4 million per month. (Presumably they refer to doses?). But with 270 million people, that might not be enough, even if they are dished out to the highest risk people. With 15,000 new daily cases and doubling fast, they are racing against the tide. They would probably need a few million doses just for the current contacts.
Indonesia doesn’t just have two new variants of concern, they have 211.
Watch this space…. (and pray for the people of Indonesia). We have lift off. 🙁
We have to admire both Craig Kelly and Malcolm Roberts in Australia.
REFERENCES
Bryant, Andrew MSc1,*; Lawrie, Theresa A. MBBCh, PhD2; Dowswell, Therese PhD2; Fordham, Edmund J. PhD2; Mitchell, Scott MBChB, MRCS3; Hill, Sarah R. PhD1; Tham, Tony C. MD, FRCP4 (2021) Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection, A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Trial Sequential Analysis to Inform Clinical Guidelines
American Journal of Therapeutics: June 17, 2021 – Volume Publish Ahead of Print – Issue –
doi: 10.1097/MJT.0000000000001402
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Perhaps Google just wanted to help some medical researchers?
There’s nothing to suggest the Google charity funded the Wuhan Lab, or Covid, and Google says they didn’t. But the Google charity did send money to Peter Daszek and his charity which in hindsight doesn’t seem like a good place to put money. The EcoHealth Alliance is the one that Fauci helped fund, which did send money to Wuhan. And Daszek was the guy who joined the WHO team to “investigate” the origin and tried to quash the idea that it was a lab leak. He helped author a paper on Nature that said it was natural based in nothing much last February.
So it’s an odd fish for Google to have company with. Somehow there are millions of dollars of what appears to be careless money sloshing around in the system — and being divvied up for things that the careless funders might not have thought too much about. The Big Tech companies are acting like Dictators of medium sized nations but without the accountability…
These viral studies occurred in places like Japan, the US and Malaysia. One team worked on Henipavirus, which is also a bat borne virus. Another team worked on Macacine Herpes-virus (MaHV1) which has a mortality rate in humans of >70%.
If Google has only honest intentions and wants to help — maybe it could stop censoring Doctors who have a different opinion?
 …. Some of this research probably needs to be done somehow. But can any one company play both a Global Medical Director, and Ruler of the Town Square?
We didn’t vote for that…
Daily Mail
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It was ten degrees below normal at Scott Base, in June, and usually July is the coldest month.
 Pitch black, minus 81C and a howling wind. Spare a thought for the hardy crew who are wintering down in Antarctica, experiencing near-record breaking cold temperatures.
They’ve come very near to the coldest ever recorded temperature of -89.6C.
Cap Allon at Electroverse points out that some of that Global Warming has made it up to New South Wales where it had the coldest June day in 122 years two weeks ago.
A few weeks before that, Dunedin Airport New Zealand hit a record of minus 8.8C in May. It was the coldest day ever recorded there in any month since records started in 1963. One cold day doesn’t mean a lot climate wise, but if Antarctica was close to record warmth would most of the worlds media have barely said a word?
Remember the poles are warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.
ht Climate Depot and Electroverse
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8.8 out of 10 based on 14 ratings
 Flynn Reef, Queensland, Photo by Wise Hok Wai Lum Ever since Australia asked for an investigation into the source of Covid, China has been accidentally-on-purpose sticking pins into our trade deals. Pop went the wine, coal, beef, barley and lobster markets.
Now after concreting corals reefs in the South China Sea and plundering the Galapagos, China is suddenly concerned about the Great Barrier Reef. Overnight Chinese players in the UN have pushed it to the top of a list that had 82 more fragile ecosystems ahead of it. Pop, goes the tourism trade as the headlines ring out that UNESCO says the Reef is “in danger”.
At the moment, the only tourists that could possibly be frightened away are a few New Zealanders, because no one else can easily get around the two week quarantine. But when flights reboot, Australia just needs to send photos of the glorious corals to the world and “pop” goes the UN and China’s reputation.
It’s time the West dumped the UN — it’s just a play tool for Sino power
That would “pop” some of the CCP web of influence. What’s a Veto of a dead committee worth?
How many other environmental scares have been pumped and carved to serve Beijing?
If China is so adept and willing to use fake environmentalism as a cold war weapon, what other environmental knobs have they turned?
Ben Packham, The Australian
Australia has been blindsided by a push by a China-chaired UN committee to declare the Great Barrier Reef “in danger” without proper consultation or scientific process.
Any downgrading of the reef’s status would threaten the 64,000 jobs and $6.4bn in tourism revenue linked to the natural wonder in a normal year.
Australia is a member of the 21-nation World Heritage Committee, but the body – under the chairmanship of China’s Vice-Minister for Education Tian Xuejun – is considered likely to accept the recommendation.
China also holds the position of UNESCO deputy director-general, the presidency of UNESCO’s International Union for Conservation for Nature, and is head of Asia at the World Heritage Centre – all three of which contributed to the World Heritage Committee’s draft decision.
The World Heritage Committee has not visited the reef since 2012, and there has been no mention of an “in danger” listing since 2015.
Commenters at The Australian get it:
Image: Wikimedia, author Wise Hok Wai Lum: Flynn Reef 2014.
10 out of 10 based on 61 ratings
Strap yourself in: Solar Power and batteries made a whole town 100% renewable (for 80 minutes).
It’s an Australian first! Put out a press release. No seriously, they did:
Western Australia has again demonstrated its remote renewable energy generation chops, after successfully powering the Pilbara town of Onslow entirely on a combination of large and small-scale solar and battery storage for a total of 80 minutes.
Only 520,000 minutes short of a whole year.
“The milestone achievement was announced by WA energy minister Bill Johnston on Friday morning after being demonstrated by state government-owned regional utility Horizon Power, which established the solar and storage microgrid next to an existing gas plant.”
Onslow is a metropolis of 847 people sited in one of the sunniest zones in one of the sunniest countries in the world. With at least 3650 hours of sun a year, Onslow vies for a top ten position globally.
If solar power was going to make it anywhere, this would be it. But we all know what keeps the lights on in Onslow and it isn’t solar power.
The renewable microgrid is made up of 700kW of customer generated solar, a 600kW solar array, and a 1MW (no MWh stated) Battery Energy Storage System.
Plus a gas plant…
Keep reading →
9.5 out of 10 based on 119 ratings
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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The nerds have the numbers on precious metals investments on the ASX
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