I’m new to the work of Dr. Malcolm Kendrick but a skim of his blog suggests he has many wise things to say and has written several books that I intend to read.
I was unable to find many videos with Dr. Kendrick, and some that were on YouTube have been deleted by censors, but I did very much enjoy this must watch November 2020 discussion on Covid19.
Today’s essay by Dr. Kendrick may be the best I’ve read on Covid19 and nicely articulates how I’ve been feeling of late.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/09/03/i-have-not-been-silenced/
Despite Dr. Kendrick’s expertise, intelligence, curiosity, and determination, he has been unable to determine what is true about Covid19, and has decided to retreat to sanity.
My self-appointed role within the COVID19 mayhem, was to search for the truth – as far as it could be found – and to attempt to provide useful information for those who wish to read my blog.
The main reason for prolonged silence, and introspection, is that I am not sure I can find the truth. I do not know if it can be found anymore. Today I am unsure what represents a fact, and what has simply been made up. A sad and scary state of affairs.
… So, I have given up on COVID19. It is a complete mess, and I feel that, without being certain of the ground under my feet, I have nothing to contribute. I too am in danger of starting to make statements that are not true.
… faced with a situation where there are almost no facts that can be relied upon, from anywhere, I have officially removed myself from all discussions on the matter of COVID19.
Instead, I shall return to other areas where, whilst the truth is constantly battered and bruised, and lying in a bruised heap the corner, it is still breathing … just about alive. Sometimes it is capable of weakly raising its head and whispering quietly into my ear. I shall let you know what it says.
Before departing the arena Dr. Kendrick summarized what he believes is true about Covid19:
- SARS-CoV2 probably resulted from gain of function research in the Wuhan lab, but we’ll probably never know for certain.
- The current versions of SARS-CoV2 are a bit more deadly than our modern influenzas with an infection fatality rate (IFR) of about 0.15%.
- None of the test data can be trusted.
- It is impossible to compare the effectiveness of various strategies using available data.
- Misinformation exists on all sides of the debate.
- Everyone has an agenda including the fact-checkers.
I’m going to try to follow Kendrick’s lead and return my focus to the many much more important overshoot issues that are grounded in reliable science that we collectively deny.
peak oil + denial = Brexit + peak pig
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britain-facing-mass-cull-pigs-due-butcher-shortage-2021-09-30/
Dr. Kevin Anderson, one of the few wise climate scientists, explains that we have talked so long about fantasy solutions, like carbon capture and storage, that we now believe they are real, and as a consequence we have very little chance of staying below 3-4 degrees of warming this century. I think that means most of civilization is done.
Anderson says we need to change the narrative, but I observe he didn’t discuss the only thing that might help with all of our overshoot problems: rapid population reduction. Greta Thunberg also doesn’t focus on population reduction.
Anderson’s mostly talking about, and demonstrating at the same time, our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realties. Any good path forward must start with an awareness of Varki’s MORT theory.
Here’s a mother of a conspiracy theory on Covid, which I normally ignore, except this guy is really bright and appears to be expert in the domain he’s speculating about.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/were-some-folks-a-little-too-prepared
A commenter on this blog asked a question that has been bugging me for a long time:
From over on Naked Capitalism: You might say, “Well, the drug companies will soon have a booster that targets Delta.” Notice that they are instead offering boosters that are the same as the original shot, as in is designed to combat the Wuhan variant. The lack of any apparent plan to develop Delta or other variant-specific shots does not appear to be due to development or approval delays, but instead the span of variants. As GM explained:
See here for where I snipped that from: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/09/vaccine-only-mandates-as-a-manifestation-of-the-bizarre-civil-war-stoking-impulses-of-the-professional-managerial-class-in-the-us.html
Interesting, thank you.
Orgel’s second rule: “Evolution is cleverer than you are.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgel%27s_rules
Unusual wild storm here last night. Other strange weather events around the world. No doubt just a coincidence.
https://climateandeconomy.com/2021/09/30/30th-september-2021-todays-round-up-of-climate-news/
Nice example of the muddled thinking of economists who do not understand thermodynamics, nor the fact that fossil energy underpins money and creates everything we depend on to survive, and is also destroying everything we depend on to survive.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/price-oil-all-matters-central-banks
Just finished Dr. Malcolm Kendrick’s book “The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It”.
It’s brilliant evidence that the health care industry attracts people of subpar intelligence and ethics, which is also confirmed by Covid.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1016105.The_Great_Cholesterol_Con
Tim Watkins today with an excellent nuanced view of the UK gas shortages.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/09/29/a-crisis-of-affordability/
A few observations on the global situation- scratch the surface and it seems there is more to the decision by Australia to cancel its submarine deal with France and ink a new one with the US and UK than is immediately apparent.
My guess is the decision is connected to military concerns not just about challenges in the Asia Pacific region but also about the looming problem of climate change, the prospect of proliferating failed states and future waves of climate refugees in the Northern hemisphere. Also it’s a more logical arrangement as the members of the new trilateral partnership are also members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
There is growing awareness by the military (see G. Dyers “Climate Wars”) that everything is happening a lot faster than the climate models predicted and we are hitting critical thresholds, hence the pivot to the Southern Hemisphere. It’s not just tech billionaires headed South.
The Pentagon and the UK Ministry of Defense are hedging their bets. Future breakdowns in BAU in the Northern Hemisphere could affect not just the functioning of conventional subs (supply chain problems – chip shortages, lack of mechanical parts, fuel interruptions etc) nuclear subs can go for years without refueling, but Everything and so the Southern Hemisphere – Australia, NZ , Antarctica and quite possibly the southern most reaches of S.America will become increasingly strategically important.
We are starting to see the pieces on the game board shift in very interesting ways in response to emergent problems.
Interesting speculation. I was thinking that Australia might be worried about China’s depleting coal reserves and the fact that Chinese citizens cannot afford higher electricity prices, and therefore what China might do in desperation to get more cheap coal.
Yes certainly, you are right about China’s depleting coal reserves. They have to use rolling blackouts to deal with electrical demand. Also at issue are critical minerals needed so essential to chip manufacturing and the global climate economy. Quad leaders are uniting to weaken Chinese dominance over rare Earth minerals. The US has no industrial capacity to produce rare earth magnets and rely on Chinese imports. It’s a national security issue for the US and COVID has exposed vulnerabilities in the supply chain. Here is a new awareness and urgency. The hope is to develop sources of supply in Australia.
Don’t you think the vulnerability to China is more than rare earths? They manufacture almost everything we need except weapons.
Yes absolutely. Pharmaceuticals, mechanical parts-you name it & many other products that Western companies need to keep their production lines going. Supply chain managers have grossly underestimated the risks of supply chain failure. Developing new sources of supply that are both reliable and reasonably priced will be a long slow process.
As a footnote, China has been making major investments in railways and ports in several African countries to ensure supply of raw materials. The US as far as I know has neglected similar types of investments.
Re: weapons – the Chinese may not make our weapons but I wouldn’t be surprised if the US military gets chips or other critical components from them. After all, I read that Federal law enforcement agencies in the Biden administration are reportedly purchasing surveillance drones from China that have previously been labeled a potential national security threat by the Pentagon. And the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI have recently acquired surveillance drones from DJI.
It always struck me as weird that we allowed drones made by Shenzhen-based company DJI to proliferate in the North American market. Seems like a potential security issue. An opening for them to collect land information data on pipelines, utilities and other critical infrastructure. The ppl making these purchasing and security decisions can’t all be idiots, I guess they know what they are doing. Or maybe beggars can’t be choosers and DJI is the only game in town.
Sorry Rob, I didn’t read the first part of your question carefully re the vulnerability “to” China. Right now they need coal. Energy. Anything they can get their hands on to keep their economy running . They are pushing up against limits same as the rest of the planet. And if they can’t meet their customer obligations that obviously makes them vulnerable on many different fronts.
…and yes I imagine Australians are worried about the Chinese because they are bullies. They’ve meddled in Australian internal politics, hoovered up all their PPE in the early days of the pandemic after those horrible bush fires and internationally they’ve gotten into territorial disputes in the South China Sea, put the Uyghurs in concentration camps, stolen billions of dollars of intellectual property and generally shown themselves to be bad global citizens. They would take Australia’s coal if they could get away with it. Or strong arm them somehow.
Rob – what are your thoughts on the current coal situation? Do you think Australia will strand these assets to aid global emission cuts? Or do you think the pressure to keep the lights on will win the day? There is a lot of contradictory information /chatter on the subject. Currently China is snubbing Australian coal but that could change as these things do when reality sets in. I’ve read about Australia doubling down to continue extracting fossil fuels despite growing pressure to cut carbon emissions. They are being pulled in two directions at once. Pretty sure that renewables aren’t going to cut it in the short term. I wish it were otherwise.
I don’t know. I’m not very knowledgeable about the coal market.
My guess is that some countries with good intentions backed by political will, like Germany, will strand some coal reserves until the economic pain of their citizens becomes so great that they are forced to reverse course. In the end I expect we will have burned everything, including the forests, that is economically feasible to burn.
It seems Australia is not in the group of countries with good intentions so they will probably not even pause their coal exports.
“Credit impulse” is a term used by economists to describe net changes in debt. An engineer more accurately calls it “debt acceleration” because it is the rate of change of debt velocity. Debt acceleration is one of the best predictors of economic health because citizens experience it as a change in their standard of living.
Very good thread on global economic problems by Panopticon today. Skimming his headlines you can see how everything is connected.
https://climateandeconomy.com/2021/09/29/29th-september-2021-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/
Disturbing. These are the Limits to Growth, I would guess. Finally, we have reached them …
Chris Martenson seems to have come to the same conclusion as I have. Time to step up preps.
Ongoing supply chain problems seem to be worsening rather than improving. Now there are emerging energy shortages around the world. China shut down a bunch of factories yesterday because of electricity shortages. Gasoline shortages in the UK. Natural gas shortages predicted for all of Europe this winter.
If our idiot leaders can’t handle COVID wisely, they sure as hell won’t be able to handle the implications of energy shortages.
Rob, I agree, the news on and off the headlines is really starting to give the impression that the current global human system is hitting limits.
If that is true, what happens to that system from here? (Dr. Dennis Meadows said LTG may not be a good predictor of things after collapse starts. )
So, is it going to be a long slow road to perdition? Or a rapid dissolution of the current energy production, geopolitical, and social system down to a new lower set point, and a few years on that plateau?
What are your thoughts on prepping Rob, for those of us who choose to remain in place and deal with what comes now?
Everyone has different priorities, resources, needs, etc. so it’s hard to generalize. What helped me was to create a spreadsheet with things I use grouped into categories. Then close your eyes and think about how that thing is made, where it comes from, and what life would be like without it. A plan specific for you will emerge.
One example, my days of travel are done so I need to find healthy pleasure near where I live and my thing is hiking. I bought some spare hiking boots as explained here:
https://un-denial.com/2020/12/26/preptip-save-your-sole/
Another example, I eat rice most days. It’s delicious, inexpensive, keeps forever, we don’t grow it in Canada, and I don’t want to eat potatoes every day, so I bought some extra rice.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-number-of-single-vaxxed-people
I really struggle to trust anything from someone that doesn’t do initial capitalisation argh LOLz
It’s funny what influences us. I’m the opposite. I like people who focus their energy on substance rather than fluff like capitals. 🙂
I’m like that with swearwords – extra emphasis means it’s more true haha. I did see a study once that people who swear are more honest. I’m a professional writer so some grammar/punctuation things bother me more than is healthy. But I do appreciate good intel no matter what form it’s in 😉
https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indias-ivermectin-blackout—part-v-the-secret-revealed/article_9a37d9a8-1fb2-11ec-a94b-47343582647b.html
A reader who wishes to remain anonymous sent me a couple excellent links on Covid:
https://off-guardian.org/2021/09/22/30-facts-you-need-to-know-your-covid-cribsheet/
They make 30 intelligent points and still missed one of the most important: the gross incompetence and/or crime of ignoring proven early treatments.
Isn’t it remarkable that our “leaders” never discuss or debate any of these points?
Also remarkable is how comparatively unintelligent the messages from our health organizations are.
https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2021/09/all-cause-mortality-rates-in-england.html?m=1
Lots of stuff going on that smells like the downside of peak oil (aka human overshoot) except no one other than those of us with defective denial genes calls it that.
Most call it peak demand, or the green transition, or the great reset, or QE/ZIRP.
Wolf Richter calls it a crackdown on emissions.
Note that the Chinese government is targeting the high tech companies first.
https://wolfstreet.com/2021/09/26/suppliers-in-china-for-apple-tesla-intel-nvidia-qualcomm-nxp-infineon-ase-tech-forced-to-halt-production-amid-chinas-energy-crackdown/
TonyH explains…
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-sept-24-2021/#comment-726326
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/behave-normally-uk-transport-minister-tells-britons-queuing-fuel-2021-09-26/
Tim Watkins explains what’s going on:
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/09/26/the-march-of-folly/
From Mr. Watkins post: “Crucially, unlike fossil fuels, there is more than enough uranium (and thorium if anyone can commercially breed uranium from it) to potentially power and grow the global economy. ”
Mr. Watkins is usually spot on most things. But does the statement above seem correct?
He does note later their is no replacement for diesel. I don’t know how you build thousands of reactors – the numbers required to replace fossil fuels – in a world of continuously declining diesel fuel availability.
I agree with you. In addition, the reserves of uranium are murky every time I’ve checked so I don’t know what is the reality. Thorium is a promising dream that will remain a dream until someone builds a full size commercial reactor. The cash and diesel required to build enough nuclear reactors to make a difference is I suspect more than we can afford and I worry that with dysfunctional governments and uncivil society that will result from degrowth the safety risks of nuclear reactors are too high.
I agree with you that the risk of nuclear is unacceptable. Even perennial optimist (NOT) Guy McPherson of NBL thinks nuclear is a non-starter because in any scenario where the grid goes down we end up with 400+ Fukushima/Chernobyls. And the grid is going to have problems as we decline.
AJ
How is your recovery going AJ?
Back to normal, no residual problems (other than old age, senility, collapse and perennial denial). I of course worry about having had the J&J vax. No boosters for me – why would I? I must have some inate immunity now? Don’t know what to think about long term risk from the vax, so much competing “science” on both sides. Thanks for asking.
AJ
I’m glad all is well except old age. Same here. 🙂
Good to hear AJ.
niko
This el gato malo guy is writing a killer post every day!
All cause mortality in UK now higher for vaccinated than unvaccinated. Need another few months of data to confirm if this will be a global trend.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/all-cause-deaths-and-vaccination
Dr. Bossche and Dr. Malone together today.
One YouTube comment stood out: “We are not anti-vaccine, we are anti-idiocy.”
That might be the last from me for a short while. I really think I need some internet detox. Thanks for putting me onto Ivor Cummins. I’ve really enjoyed listening to his knowledge on heart health.
I’ve just about finished Cummins’ friend Dr. Kendrick’s book on the cholesterol con. It’s excellent.
Enjoy your detox.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=243683&fbclid=IwAR23As5d5C8cAbuVjfYytPzrvuDawIlZWVeTUbhmH5n0m4XuqULV8Q8QKvU
Here’s another one for your perusal.
WTF! Is it possible the corruption and/or incompetence is this bad?
I’d say yes, because they’ve still not recanted or apologized for Ancel Keys killing millions.
From a newer post 3 days ago by el gato malo…
I like his attitude: Pure data driven truth seeking. No agenda. Good intentions.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/are-covid-boosters-accentuating-covid
Another 2 days ago…
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/winter-is-coming-and-the-vaccine
And from yesterday…
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/kitten-corner-vaers/comments
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-vaccinated-superspread-hypothesis?fbclid=IwAR0rLodTkgr9yfvP_iTVmY58Pzv0xk3sVWIO-EVm4sLrnd3wlYxw0f0YVwE
What do you make of this Rob? Let me know.
Excellent find Perran!
He asks: Why are deaths increasing, with less deadly variants, high vaccination rates, and vaccines that are effective at reducing sickness?
I love intelligent people that observe interesting things and then search for an explanation with an open mind.
He’s over my pay grade on Covid so doubt I have anything worthwhile to add but here are a few thoughts.
His thesis is, I think, is similar to that of Dr. Bossche. Strange that he didn’t mention Bossche. I’m currently betting they’re both right. Our flu vaccines are apparently also leaky which is why (I think) they’re administered BEFORE the flu season begins.
Other possible explanations for some of the observed data might be:
– Perhaps the vaccines are less effective than everyone assumes and what we are observing is actually a periodic seasonal cycle
– Perhaps Covid is more widespread than assumed and deaths with Covid are being recorded as death due to Covid to strengthen the agenda of the “health care” system that doesn’t actually care about our health.
One final thought, pushing vaccination on people who have recovered is yet anther method being used to skew the data in favor of vaccines. People with strong immunity get an unnecessary vaccine and then get added to the “success”.
P.S. Trying to chase down more work by this guy. I see Twitter has banned his account. Social media is fucked.
P.P.S. Skimming his blog. It’s awesomesauce. Will be monitoring on a regular basis.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-september-2021/#comment-726008
Actually, I believe some people tried to address this energy crisis 50 years ago. BUT, in the U.S. the majority hated Jimmy Carter’s attempt to conserve energy and they voted in climate change denier/environment hater Ronald (Morning in America) Reagan. I also think Limits to Growth and Population Bomb were about that time. Denial and Optimism Bias are wonderful things if you are not facing a finite planet.
AJ
File this under: You Can’t Make This Shit Up.
Today we have a reasonably intelligent documentary producer with 3 million subscribers discussing the implications of peak oil on Saudi Arabia without mentioning human overshoot and the many dire implications of declining energy, and then with a straight face, reporting that the Saudi’s strategy for coping with less oil revenue is to promote tourism, however to succeed they must first stop butchering into small pieces dissident journalists.
File this under: You Can’t Make This Shit Up.
I have to disagree-that’s just what they’ve done. The point of this video is summed up at the end- apparently the
Saudis “lack the vision to kick start organic economic transformation”
Silly Saudis it’s so easy – I am currently visioning a personal organic economic transformation into billionaire status and it’s already working. Been so busy with this visioning thing I haven’t bought a paper or my usual bottle of cider so I’m already £4.05 richer.
Perhaps I could sell my visioning skills to the Saudis although why bother? I won’t need the money.