If the "extreme right" gets its way and tribunals are set up, the entire governing body of the Netherlands should be behind bars, at least three-quarters of the health care sector and the judiciary. Causing tens of thousands of deaths or looking away while you could and should have known better, that goes towards complicity in multiple manslaughter or murder. And especially if public health or civil protection were part of your duties. Institutions are paid for this by the citizens whose interests they simply did not represent. Not for a moment. To an excess mortality of many tens of thousands of Dutch citizens they do not even care.
But the whole establishment behind bars, that is going to be very impractical and will not be considered desirable. It would possibly discredit certain individuals or even worse: lower vaccination readiness! At least that is how the establishment thinks. And those are the ones who can judge it because, after all, you need highly educated people and experts for that.
No need to apologize
So it will be a general pardon at most. I can completely follow the reasoning: mistakes were indeed made, big mistakes even, but in those circumstances and because all decent people did it, no one is really to blame. That will be the verdict. Everything was completely reasonable, so what would anyone have to apologize for? Those were really different times and we can already hear: "Well, with the knowledge of now... That's easy talk." But we told you already back then! "Yes, that's not so difficult either: The best helmsmen are ashore!"
Resolved. Too bad for those who suffered, they may have learned not to be so obstructive next time and just to cooperate a little, to have some faith!
Collaborating with the most promising, that was also the Dutch norm in this corona war, and the entire establishment joined in once again. It was by no means "maladjusted," on the contrary, it became more and more "normal". Those who resisted were either abnormal or they did it for the money (see also the donation button on this site, directly to my private account ;) ). That commercial motive, of course, did not apply to public servants but only to poor slobs who did not receive a guaranteed salary from their own taxes.
On the whole, in this financially government-dependent class, we were dealing with good, well-intentioned citizens, including the dummies of the OMT, the bunglers in the cabinet and at the Department of Health and Human Services, MPs: you name them. Officials, regulators, medics: Marion Koopmans even, who had no association even with the disaster she had helped cause. All decent, intelligent people of integrity....
The bubble steers
All these people can't be Bad or Wrong, like "Wrong in the war", can they? Really all of them!? Impossible. It seems more like their education and the systems they are in are giving them incomplete information and the wrong incentives. The incentives are the wrong way around. Institutes like EMA and Lareb being paid by pharmaceutical companies for every drug they review, that is already wrong. Instead, for each drug they reject, they should get five times the usual amount plus a bonus for the person who discovers the flaws. That's real protection! Reverse the incentives, to encourage thorough critical reviews. You should not punish the damaging side but reward the protective side. To my knowledge, we do not have such a system in our intensive regulatory environment. The pharmaceutical companies, with their billions in profits, don't care; they'll simply adjust their price setting if necessary.
An alphabetical selection of the institutes that have given up considerably. I didn't devote a separate heading to RIVM and CBS, but we now know that. Click to read more. Tip: Jurisprudence, with a video where Willem Engel has to explain to the judge how things work. The Media lemma is the longest, but it is also where the most serious crimes have been committed: withholding information from the population, manipulating messages, censorship and propaganda.
All the while, this was the last bastion that could have protected the citizens by providing them with multi-sided information. The totalitarian lack of transparency should have been broken open by the media. That was their job as "watchdog". Because of the failure of this very last safeguard, the corona crisis was able to dig the unprecedentedly deep grave into which we now stare.
Academia
RIVM was not alone. The entire academic world was silent in the face of the rape of science. The university employs more than 60,000 people, including nearly 3,500 professors and professors.
Logical inconsistencies and crooked reasoning did not bother the professors of Logic, Philosophy of Science or Argumentation Theory. My left-wing rebellious classmates at the time, always super committed – I haven't heard from them, anywhere. There were a lot of them because I studied for a long time ('extremely thorough', I always say). Surely some of them have made it into science. Nada.
Did mathematicians jump into the saddle in the face of nonsensical (probability) calculations, or in the worthless interpretations of CBS? It remained with a brave few. Did they flag the incorrect graphs? Nothing.
What about the medical faculties, when all the basic rules of responsible health care were flouted, all knowledge about respiratory diseases suddenly turned out to be worthless – and there was no one to raise a finger?
Fundamental rights evaporated. Where were all the intellectuals? Where had those always sharply critical medical and law students of the past gone? Not to mention philosophers and lawyers. These professions have degraded themselves. They have allowed their most important representatives in the media to proclaim their dangerous unhindered. Also through the Disinformation Think Tank. Willy Spaan... It is incomprehensible that academia wants to be represented in this way. See also some again Pierik and Verweij in de Volkskrant Performed. The universities have become centres of free democracy-undermining – and no one is protesting.
The scientific (and certainly pharma-medical) world is characterized by highly debatable connections within and outside science. Science as we knew it is dead, I hear that observation repeatedly from people who work there or are in close contact with it professionally.
Academics who spoke out with integrity have been thwarted and/or fired. It now appears that they have often had the scientific right on their side. For the purposes of this article, we will stick to the fact that the scientific and academic elite were simply completely wrong in this corona war.
Central Bureau for Medicines (MEB)
The MEB employs five hundred people, mainly paid by pharmaceutical companies and sponsored by the government. Just for fun, read what they think of themselves: "As an independent authority, the MEB regulates the quality, efficacy and safety of a medicine, and encourages the correct use by the right patient." "The MEB is at the heart of society, openly and in direct collaboration with patients, doctors, pharmacists and scientists. The MEB initiates and encourages the sharing of knowledge – from scientific research to user information." source) and then wonder how it is possible that low-side effect drugs were canceled (even with major consequences for doctors) and junk was injected into populations that didn't need it at all, leaflets missed essential information and knowledge was kept out of the picture. Were they on vacation, perhaps?
EMA
Everything that was put forward by the American (corrupted) FDA and/or the German RKI (see the recent "RKI-Protokolle") was blindly copied by the almost nine hundred bright minds of the European Medicine Agency. The added value of these 900 knowledge workers is not so easy to see for the layman. However, the EMA also collects reports of adverse reactions in Europe. It is not clear exactly why this happens. EMA doesn't do anything with them until they are briefed from America.
In fact, when alarming side effects are pointed out, the answer is invariably one: they are reports AFTER vaccination, not BECAUSE of vaccination. Causal link has not been demonstrated. Like Lareb, the EMA has not taken any action on red flags.
The Health Council of the Netherlands
The Health Council of the Netherlands (about 100 members, 6 million per year in the government budget) recently announced that it is actually not such a good idea for pregnant women to get mRNA vaccinated. "A corona jab can be given safely during pregnancy, but is usually not necessary." The latter does not only apply to pregnant women. This uncomfortable news - because pregnant women were previously strongly advised to get vaccinated - they managed to keep it under wraps for at least a year. Moreover, there has never been any data that justified such a positive recommendation. Pregnant women were excluded from the trials when the vaccine was approved under emergency conditions. By the way, that was the sterile, lab-produced vaccine and not the bacteria-produced mass-produced product that was eventually injected.
On the other hand, there have been later signals from all over the world that something was wrong with pregnancy/births and mRNA, for example from Scotland. Breast milk was found to be contaminated with vaccine spikes for days after vaccination. mRNA found its way everywhere in the body, including the placenta. Six months ago, a study was published on the subject: "Increased risk of fetal loss after COVID-19 vaccination". There was no action on that either – or that reaction took six months.
Health and Youth Care Inspectorate
Recent court rulings confirm that the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ) has conducted a witch hunt against doctors, without medical or legal substantiation. An institute that has to monitor public health on behalf of a ministry allows itself to be sent out like a BOA, even if the obviously erring boss asks for it. The IGJ was wrong. Read more about this at WOB-researcher Cees van den Bos, including the text of this article, also as a Dutch version.
Lareb Hotels
When Lareb received many times more reports of side effects than anticipated, the main problem was the manpower to process those reports and where the money had to come from to pay for them. It didn't go any further. See also the Substack van Cees van den Bos for the corresponding FOI documents.
Lareb has to act as a watchdog. In recent years, it has been one that you had to kick awake when there was a burglary, and even then he went to his drinking trough first. Lareb did not once show a signal function. Lareb was constantly lagging behind. An energy supplier's helpdesk is doing a better job.
Lareb should have been on top of the protection of the population and should have monitored possible side effects with suspicion. Especially with brand new injections, working according to a new principle with genetic aspects, side effects of which have not been sufficiently investigated and target groups have been excluded from the studies. Actually, there were a lot of things wrong with effectiveness – but effectiveness, of course, is not what Lareb is about, that is carefully separated.
The requirements set out in the conditional authorisation of the vaccines have not been met. It states that every 'adverse event' must be reported, even if it does not appear to be vaccine-related. Logical, otherwise you will never discover anything. The mortality reports alone showed that less than 5% were reported, including the text of this article, also as a Dutch version.
How anyone thinks they can combine the directorship of such an institute with participation in the Disinformation Think Tank is beyond me. Is anyone to blame for that? In any case, there is a lack of incentives to decide NOT to do it. After all, the Disinformation Think Tank had the very purpose of suppressing all negative expressions about vaccines, including about reported side effects. They could lower the willingness to vaccinate and that was not allowed under any circumstances. But no matter how bad the vaccines soon turned out to be, in accordance with the reports received by Lareb, the willingness to vaccinate had to and would increase, according to the Disinformation Think Tank.
KNAW
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences calls itself "Guardian and interpreter of science in the Netherlands". That's a big pair of pants to wear. As the national guardian of scientific integrity, the Academy has drawn up guidelines. Has anyone heard anything about this from the Academy, when their own members violated the term 'science' and gave inconsistent interpretations in the name of science that sometimes did not even make sense logically and flouted those guidelines? I wrote about it two years ago in this article about. At that time, Jaap van Dissel and OMT member Menno de Jong were still listed as members/experts on the KNAW website.
At the time, I found it striking that the Academy partly nominates the members of the RIVM Supervisory Committee, while senior RIVM officials are members of the Academy. Do I smell a conflict of interest there? We may be too small a country for that kind of construction, everyone comes together for drinks.
By the way, Willy Spaan is also a member of the RIVM Supervisory Committee... 😂 That beats everything. The guy who threw out an account with 4 years of tweets because it was largely outdated rabid nonsense. He should have been called to task by the Academy. But that's not how it works, we now know.
Media
We have not sufficiently realised that there are no longer any independent national media. The Netherlands is too small to keep such a mini-industry alive. We have seen how Unheard Netherlands has been sabotaged, which is not to say that they have never made a mistake – but at least they are independent. Means such as censorship and curtailment of freedom of expression are worse than the disease. The smear campaigns against Maurice de Hond by the Pointers of this world speak volumes. The man just had a point. MSM shows the Gestajo in full action: Secret state journalists; Fact-checking is the disguise. The first thing that dies in a war is information.
In the ongoing centralization of money and power, with a government that does not defend itself against globalist tendencies of concentration of power, it is therefore to be expected that such a puny media industry will merge into larger conglomerates that can make an optimization move. Copy/paste vaccination propaganda, for example, becomes much easier. And every unsuspecting citizen thinks that the danger is at his own doorstep.
The noise in the media was one-sidedly supportive of policy. An annoying word for this is state propaganda. Alternative perspectives remained underexposed or ridiculed. There were exceptions: a number of columnists in De Telegraaf saw it sharply and there was sometimes a single letter in Trouw or de Volkskrant, which was usually undermined in an editorial. Or an 'expert' who explained why it wasn't right, with words like 'really' and 'consensus'.
Since, despite this, the media still claim a prominent role, we have to make up our minds. The verdict can only be that they were Wrong in the corona war and even the source of the clouding of public opinion, making correction from below impossible. A democracy is based on an informed population that can make choices. From the behaviour of Tijs van den Brink we can learn that the Germans were only proven wrong because they lost WWII. If they had won, there would undoubtedly have been a feeling in the media and in the lecture halls that perhaps not everything had gone smoothly, but that sometimes it is simply necessary to put things in order. Ordnung muss zijn; So it had to be this way for a while and that really wasn't because it was so much fun. They didn't come up with the corona policy for fun either!
The disappearance of critical media has repercussions on the functioning of our democracy. Democracy is based on elective citizens, multi-sidedly informed. It doesn't work with a mass brainwashed with propaganda. The problem of a dysfunctional democracy urgently needs to be addressed. The role of the media in this cannot be overestimated. Without a functioning democracy, the Netherlands can no longer be called a democracy. "Mediacracy" is a better term. An elite that creates support through the media and can therefore democratically justify any policy, no matter how unwise or harmful. 'Plutocracy' or 'dictatorship' does not do justice to the pseudo-democratic smokescreen that is being erected with the help of the media.
In any case, the media is right Wrong, with enormous consequences because our policymakers and experts also look and read in their 'quality media'. There are some politicians in a position to control the (social) media. The lower echelons think they can inform themselves in the same media about what their supporters expect from them, while the loyal supporters read what they should think about it, without taking note of a rebuttal.
Medical industry (incl. NHG, Medical Contact etc.)
Although no infertility experiments have been done on unvaccinated people, anyone who saw Hugo de Jonge and Attje Kuiken at work, in combination with the unprecedented docility among doctors, knew that it would not take much more. Confidence in white coats was so limitless that it became silly. And the overestimation of those white coats too.
For example, experienced doctors explained to me that ivermectin cannot work against Covid because Covid is a virus. So it was utter nonsense that ivermectin could work. Against viruses, only drugs that end in "vir", such as Remdesivir, will help. Enough evidence, for these doctors.
There is no arguing against that. If you give a valid argument, about research, early or late treatment, bacterial pneumonia, etc., the answer is "I don't know." That is the end of the conversation because upon further explanation follows the same answer "Well, I don't know" or "No, I don't know anything about that." It's about what they know and what they don't. Their knowledge is the defensive wall that protects their profession. For mediocre craftsmen, this may still be defensible, but it has nothing to do with excellent science at all, it is even at odds with it. While doctors claim to base themselves on science. They simply don't know what it is.
In short: the 'vaccines-are-safe' naivety among NRC, Volkskrant, Medisch Contact- and Doctor and Auto-reading doctors was downright shocking. Even the CDC director was pleased with the CNN news that vaccine effectiveness was as high as 95%.
Of course, they thought the corona vaccines were safe because vaccines always have been, according to the authorities. So no critical curiosity was to be expected from the doctor's side. In fact, the more activist provaxxers contributed to an activist initiative based on stupid principles: The "Disinformation Think Tank" that threw one bêtise after another into the world.
Fortunately, a number of sensible doctors gathered in the Doctors' Collective, which was promptly labelled 'disinformation' by the establishment (and therefore by the Think Tank).
The doctors who are walking in step (hello NHG, Medisch Contact...?) should have been more aware of the fact that the authority granted to them, which they are only too happy to embrace, also entails responsibility. Their docile docility, however, contributed to the Wrong narrative. Let's leave the role of virology in biological warfare for what it is, as we have seen recently Attention. In that respect, the heading of this entry would have been better to be "Medical/military industrial complex".
National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV)
The logistical management of the policy was outsourced to the NCTV, which soon took over the reins, no doubt in consultation with foreign colleagues, given the occasionally striking synchronicity. In the case of terrorism, national borders should not be an obstacle in the event of a virus, hence the intensive international coordination, I understand the choice for NCTV. But science and society disappeared from view. The European NCTVs seemed to lose sight of the fact that these were not terrorists. That actually suited the government well: tools for more control and therefore more control, exactly what was already being pushed for with digital IDs and CBDC. Read all about the dubious role of NCTV and how our government danced to its tune on the Substack by WOB researcher Cees van den Bos. But has the NCTV kept the population safe? Yesterday I saw again how a young woman was sprayed with her head against a concrete wall by a water cannon, I don't know...
NWO
The name of the institute says it all: "Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research". Then don't do anything if your domain is up for grabs withscientifice methods and manipulative interpretation of researchresults? Is it not part of your job description, perhaps? "No, we didn't know that. We only organize congresses" or something like that, but woolly and elusive, after all, they are still civil servants, adept at clinchers with which co-responsibility and therefore complicity are shrugged. Not good either, not to say wrong.
Politicians
Politicians insisted on stripping doctors of their jobs if they didn't fall in line. In this way, our government has threatened and persecuted doctors who stood up for their patients. Judges have now established that the minister(s) of Health, Welfare and Sport have "gone beyond their remit". An ordinary citizen might end up behind bars for the same offenses. It seems surreal for an open and free-thinking democracy. We can only conclude that most politicians were wrong in this war. We all think of Hugo de Jonge, but Wiebes, Kuipers... Everyone in that position is doing the same thing. And don't forget the role of the Minister of Justice, who had the Court on a string.
Almost the entire House of Representatives participated. Can you blame Wieke Paulusma, Attje Kuiken, Pia Dijkstra? They should never have been in the chamber during such a turbulent period, let alone in the cabinet. They are indicators of the prevailing incompetence at the level of government and show the failure of the outdated systems that were once set up to safeguard our democracy.
It doesn't work anymore: the people who rise to the top in policy positions don't have leadership qualities; Above all, they know how to conform well to the stimuli of the system. The job carousel demonstrates that.
Jurisdiction
Scientists were dismissed 'because the OMT' and that OMT was appointed by the government, so that was right. The Netherlands a state governed by the rule of law? It was really a puppet show. Anyone heard anything about dissident judges having trouble with what they had to do? If one was reprimanded because the government didn't like a statement, you didn't hear about it again. Arrange a quick appeal, overrule the verdict and move on. And shut up now, it's serious now, we don't have time for constitutional considerations.
Not to mention the attitude of the Public Prosecutor's Office, with the imprisonment of Willem Engel and Jan Bonte, for example. The police who recently searched the house of comical (Also corona-)critic Hans Teeuwen, making use of the totalitarian gains made in recent years. They should have tried that 5 years ago. It was a scandal and it still is. If you follow the current court case against Willem Engel, you will see that it is still not over, the Kafkaesque harassment by the state. Will there be prosecutors or judges standing up against this absurdist charade/costume party?
It looks like Jiskefet when you look at the video registration. These professionals, like doctors, virologists and epidemiologists, discredit their own profession. They make a fool of themselves. It will be a long time before any respect is restored, if ever, for the impractically educated class.
People still beg for 'trust', but practice has taught us that 'trust' is by definition misplaced when it comes to higher positions of power. By definition, strict control is necessary and therefore unimpeded transparency. Even – or perhaps especially – if one has the best intentions. Wrong, in other words.
The Science®
Politicians wanted to justify the policy scientifically (or hedge it, whatever you want to call it). That is the opposite of implementing scientific insights. On behalf of the government, RIVM compiled an OMT of "solid and competent intellectuals and academics". The past has shown that this is not necessarily a guarantee for an empathetic team that puts the interests of citizens first. In fact, it doesn't mean anything. Just Google it and include the quotation marks.
WOB documents show that the RIVM/OMT did grant requests very easily to scientifically substantiate certain policies afterwards. There was very little and usually no objection, even if the order was wrong. Even when the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport took over the corona dashboard in order to be able to use it as a propaganda tool, the RIVM did not give a damn, at least not publicly. Perhaps it was kept "among us", that's how decent people do. CBS made a fool of itself on Twitter with one thread of sophistry after another.
All this should have unleashed a revolt: protests, seething parliamentary questions. But they looked on passively. Well, what fool risks his job for the national interest? Only a handful of heroes, apparently. The rest was Wrong.
There was a lot more wrong with the science, see the featured article on scientific integrity, including the text of this article, also as a Dutch version.
ZonMW
ZonMW distributes research grants from the Ministry, approves or rejects the research objectives and insists that independent research is being conducted into the link between vaccinations and excess mortality when this is not the case. Only researchers who are affiliated with a university are eligible. That is already a welcome selection, see the heading Academia above. An important function of ZonMW has proven to be to shield transparency, similar to what Lareb does for the pharmaceutical companies. They have also compartmentalised the subjects in such a way that the main points remain out of sight.
In specialized sub-studies, the already fairly minimal budgets are largely spent on temporarily renting the necessary data. It will therefore never be possible to evaluate these studies independently: the source data will not be available. This has more to do with frustrating than advancing science. A priori protecting the government is wrong. In Eastern Bloc countries, this idea is common because they have experienced an 'Enlightenment' that we have sorely missed here.
National Health Care Institute (SENTENCE)
SENSE Self-defines: “National Health Care Institute works on behalf of the government to ensure that everyone in the Netherlands has and continues to have access to good care."That has everything to do with budget distributions and price levels. For example, ZIN negotiates reasonable prices with pharmaceutical companies so that healthcare budgets are distributed carefully and effectively. With some heart for their domain, they had spent the past 4 years shouting from the rooftops that decades of their work were being undone in a matter of months. On the contrary, they have been sleeping. Healthcare billions have been flushed down the drain and ZIN had no need to intervene. That's wrong, it directly threatened the field for which they were created: ensuring good care for everyone.
Suggestions for additions to this incomplete list please in the comments.
Preview of parliamentary inquiry
Will the parliamentary inquiry achieve anything? You would hope that they would look at the things that don't seem to have gone well. Possible starting points:
- the quality of the advice of the OMT (with regard to infection routes, for example, but also the vaccines)
- Warnings about lockdown measures ignored
- the erroneous models of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) and the accompanying quack statistics of CBS, gratefully presented by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport and further popularized in the media (all independently of each other...!?)
- Despite the vaccine protection and disappearing corona, excess mortality continued, which continued and even increased ('unexplained excess mortality')
- Fundamental rights violated
If those lids were ever lifted... Concrete pain points first, so to speak. But the first snatches of smoke are already visible in the illustration below. It starts with the fact that they will not go beyond March 2022. That covers roughly the first two years of the corona period, while we already know what the next two (2! two full years) looked like: disastrous.
They do not want to take this recent knowledge with them, despite the fact that the file research phase will run until February 2025! In fact, public hearings won't even begin until 2026. Unbelievable. Then you schedule a time in 2025 when the additional data will be delivered until March 2024 (or later)? That is, if you want to know whether what is actually happening in society is broadly in line with what you have observed on the basis of that first period. If, on the other hand, you want to hide behind Covid mortality, it is advisable to stop observing earlier. Otherwise, this is impossible to sustain until 2024. Perhaps until the beginning of 2022, just less than a year after the first reports of unexplained excess mortality.
I fear that the committee will mainly focus on the entire process from start to finish. And especially check whether the protocols have been followed properly. Given the extremely difficult circumstances, that went very well, just ask the experts and the NCTV.
Perhaps there is still a prize or honorary doctorate for Jaap van Dissel because he has done such a fantastic job in recent years at the scientific National Institute that deals with our Public Health.
So much for the institutes. You can read about the individuals in Decent people don't snitch, including the text of this article, also as a Dutch version.
I realize now that I forgot something. The Skepsis Foundation and the Association Against Quackery. Journalism squared. Biters who are going to attack what they have always said to guard. That turns out not to be common sense, nor is it common sense for the Dutch. It is the incumbent that they defend tooth and nail.
What about the "Disinformation Think Tank"?
A reprehensible activist initiative, based on stupid principles, but not a million-dollar institution. In my opinion, it didn't really fit in this list. Idea: I'll mention them at Academia and Medical Industry.
The role of social media in suppressing counter-information.
Fortunately, Elon Musk has put an end to this with X.
Nice overview, Anton. You could write a big book about this, I think.
CBS, NVWA, KNMP, RIVM, NHG, NVVC, NVCI, NVOA, ASR, CZ, ACHMEA, MENZIS
The NHG definitely belongs in the list. With Medical Contact – but they already fall under Medical Industry. I'll mention them there.
Insurers, well. They do not have a duty of care. The settlement of what excess mortality means for the premium. Of course, you could also blame them for that.
I have been cured of the illusion that insurers would have an interest in our health by Suneel Dhand, among others; Sick is a business model, not health.
Tadaaa! A ribbon for the professor
I've been sending letters to all those experts who appeared in the media at the time, asking them all kinds of critical questions. Experience shows that for the most part you will no longer get an answer post 2023, while before 2023 these experts had no trouble taking the measure of someone else, which speaks volumes....
I intend to post all these letters on my blog: https://maartenleeflang.blogspot.com/?m=1
Here's a sneak peek: it's part of a letter I sent to my former manager: an epidemiologist who appeared in the media more than 100 times during the corona war years, and told me in response to this letter that he no longer wanted to talk about covid.
Volumes...
Dear 'Fons',
On Tuesday 30 May, we will have a meeting at the HUMC, which I am very much looking forward to. I hope we can talk about the implications of the 'conventional wisdom' as written down by JK Galbraith in this case covid. Within that conventional wisdom lies the reason why I left the academy, and within that conventional wisdom I see an opportunity to return to the academy, as a BIG registered doctor and epidemiologist, without anyone being left unscathed, which is my goal.
We've talked about Galbraith's essay on conventional wisdom before (pre-covid) and that essay is in the book: The Affluent Society (book we both have on our shelves). I won't quote extensively (you can read it for yourself there), but I will quote a few quotes that I find quite striking:
'Audiences of all kinds must applaud what they like best. And in social comment, the test of audience approval, far more than the test of truth, comes to influence comment.'
'Just as truth ultimately serves to create a consensus, so in the short run does acceptability.'
‘Numerous factors contribute to the acceptability of ideas. To a very large extent, we associate truth with convenience – with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. We also find highly acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem.’
‘Because familiarity is such an important test of acceptability, the acceptable ideas have great stability. They are highly predictable. […] I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the Conventional Wisdom.’
‘The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.’
I want to talk to you about 'the march of events'. In the following (and attached) you can see how I am compiling this course of events. A 'smoking gun' is the covid 'gives' pulmonary embolism story about which 'Richard' published at the time (and 'Marleen' in his entourage, and with it: the entire world of thrombosis experts), and of which 'Miranda' just can't find the cause despite the tons of subsidy she gets for this research (because she searches in all places except the right place, i.e., negligent acting) and what I presented to you in April-May 2020 as a typical covid example of medical negligence. And to which you responded by email that you were 'not an expert'. I understand all this very well from Galbraith's conventional wisdom. Relating Covid to medical negligence does not fit conventional wisdom, especially in April-May 2020. But it does fit within the march of events.
With that course of events, which I summarize as covid=flu + medical negligence, I am working on it by talking about it with anyone who wants to know, which has now led to parliamentary questions and publications. I talk about it with everyone and also with the media, politics, IGJ. The only party with whom I don't really talk about it yet (because of my voluntary excommunication = voluntary resignation HUMC) is the academy. I want to lift that excommunication by talking to you about it. I hope you are open to this.
And in response, don't want to talk about it anymore... How convenient. I understand very well. No one has to actively participate in their own condemnation, that's what it is.
What a huge iatrogenic scam it is.
I read your blog last week. Impressed! It's nice that there are 'awake' doctors. 'Awake', a word I've been muttering about for a long time...
It would be worth a lot if the information flows concerning 'whatever' were free and could not be guided by invisible (but evident) interests.
It should be the case that missteps can be brought into the limelight to such an extent that those responsible are looked down upon if they persist in being right. And here a heavy responsibility lies with the media/critical journalists/.....
This is a bit like how people in Germany eventually (had to) face what had gone wrong in the thirties and afterwards and then in such a way that those responsible were interrogated by their own children and did not allow themselves to be fobbed off
'Intensive supervision', wonderful term!
Yes, I'm going to use it more often. The logical consequence is therefore to reduce the number of civil servants! fun
They do not go beyond March 2022. Also interesting is the period before the corona crisis. See WOB/WOO researcher Cees van den Bos. The piece can also be found at maurice.nl. Put all off the list and all followers imprisoned in the EU province of the Netherlands converted to 15 minutes city. "We" on the Wadden Islands start again in freedom and peace. In recent years, it has become clear to me that in every profession, expertise, scientists, etc., there are awake people walking around, so we make something beautiful out of ;). Happy (almost last???) King's Day!
Nice summary, Anton. Of course, the narrative is rattling on all sides, we don't need to convince each other about that. Your list is very extensive. It is striking that the exact same pattern, but with different abbreviations (CDC, FDA, MHRA etc.) has manifested itself in other countries. Then you quickly move towards conspiracy. Or not, and then we call it mass hysteria.
During this period, I have come to realize more than ever that it is impossible to see things from someone else's perspective. I seriously don't understand how all these agencies went along with a narrative that was so nonsensical. In the end, all these institutions are made up of people. People with an average reasonable intelligence, we can hope. Yet, like tame sheep, they have started to implement a completely nonsensical narrative. My friends (most) and family the same. That's the big question for me.
I specifically felt very alone once. When I was not accepted at the award ceremony of a tennis tournament in which I had participated. Had gone home to take a shower. There was a lady with a QR scanner at the entrance. This was before the official introduction of the CTB (2022). At one point there was a nice crowd around me. The weather was beautiful, everyone was standing outside with a well-behaved wristband on. Several people apologized. They also thought it was nonsense, but yes, suppose the BOAs would come (meeting of more than x people), then fines and such. Narrow!
Then went back home without making a scene. But it did feel like apartheid. Of all those dozens, maybe 100 people, I was the only one who had trouble with this.
That is why I welcome forums of this kind where we can express our surprise. In fact, all I see are sensible, well-founded comments. And we are the wappies?
I think this self-inflicted crisis was inevitable. The WHO had been insisting for a long time on the next pandemic that just wouldn't come. A spark was enough to set off the alarm. Over the years, all these bodies have grown into huge bureaucracies, and they must have something to do. I have now come to the point where I assume that there has never been a pandemic in the old sense of the word. It's an inflated story. The reasonable voices (Ioanidis) in 2020 have been shouted down and censored.
This is not to say that it was a conspiracy. More like a technocracy that has gone completely off the rails and is self-reinforcing. And that's much scarier than a respiratory virus. That's why it's not over.
I'm definitely going to check out Maarten Leeflang's site
Cees, it's also a mystery to me why people are like this. So recognizable your story in tennis. I then sent an email to our club about that "fear of the boas" because it was "necessary for a virus, wasn't it?". They then started to stick to the rules instead of that "overdrive" so that the top athlete of our family could participate in training again, but had to stay in front of the crowd barrier in the open air with the people with wristbands on the other side of the fence at a few centimeters distance during meetings. The vast majority of them did not believe in a pandemic themselves, but walking along was more important and also the holidays etc. So important that they have put their health and that of their children at risk. There is a lot of suffering around us now, but no one wants to talk about the (possible) cause or even know what causes extra misery because there is no progress in looking for the right treatments. Also suffering where treatment is no longer possible... I was never bullied at school but also never participated in bullying and that also felt like being excluded. That feeling times a thousand is still there today.
As requested by Anton, I made a suggestion. And it has already been removed.
Yes, what do you want Teunissen: Active thinkers or just syrup spreaders?
Ik heb niets verwijderd…? Niet zo agressief svp. Of was het off-topic? Kan het mij niet herinneren. Zou je het nog eens willen proberen?
Ik heb niets verwijderd…? Niet zo agressief svp. Of was het off-topic? Kan het mij niet herinneren. Zou je het nog eens willen proberen?