GUEST POST: Chris Fearne, Bad Decisions Seldom Make for Good Outcomes
There has been so much misinformation on COVID-19 that it’s hard to know where to begin. So in an effort to return to normality it’s worth focusing on facts without the fear-mongering that we’ve grown accustomed to.
COVID-19 has an infection fatality rate of 0.15%. In those younger than 70 years of age, it is 0.05% per data from the CDC and other authoritative global health bodies. That is five in ten thousand. And those five are likely obese or have other risk factors. This information is freely available as local health expert Dr Jean Karl Soler has reiterated many times over, and it hasn’t been properly communicated for well over a year now.
In fact, for many months now, Dr Soler (along with myself and many others) have been shouting from the rooftops in an attempt to measure up the COVID-19 hysteria with the data and medical science.
The numbers and the government’s measures do not add up, in large part due to the fact that Malta has incorrect medical data.
In a recent Facebook post, Soler elaborated on the government’s substandard excess mortality figure from last year. He said: “this report states that total deaths rose 11% in 2020 as compared to 2019. One needs to have the mortality rates per age group to be able to comment further. Without the denominator, one cannot understand the full picture.”
In a detailed two-hour long discussion, Dr Soler outlines how the excess mortality rates in Switzerland, England and other countries were less than 0.1% to 0.15%. However, Malta’s excess mortality rate for 2020 was somehow recorded at 11%, which suggests that either the government’s incompetence is off the charts, or the data aggregation method in Malta is flawed or corrupted.
As Dr Soler pointed out in the discussion, this means that somehow Malta had a mortality rate over 100 times worse than its European counterparts (which also happened to have different lockdown measures – another very consequential data point in the jigsaw puzzle).
In one segment, he said: “You need to look at the trend of mortality rates over the years in every age-group and compare it to previous years. This exercise wasn’t done. When we asked a parliamentary question about mortality rates in 2020 this question was not answered.”
“Six months later we still do not know how many people died so nobody can say that 11%-12% more died.”
In other words, Malta’s data on COVID-19 is almost certainly incorrect until proven otherwise.
The discussion covers a range of topics from PCR testing to vaccinations, the link between cases and mortality rates, and international scientific research which, for the most part hasn’t seen the light of day in local news outlets.
One key take-away is the information on vaccination immunity, for which Dr. Soler’s explanation is simple: “if you are immune your safety does not depend on others’ vaccination. If you are vaccinated or immune, you are immune.”
Punto e basta.
In another Facebook post, Dr. Soler also noted that this latest round of measures is in breach of EU Law, which prohibits such arbitrary discrimination. He asked: “the Maltese Government feels that it can ignore the EU directive, and impose restrictions which go against the evidence. Any guesses where this will lead?”
Dr. Soler wasn’t alone in asking these questions. Legal expert Jonathan Galea also questioned the draconian and clearly unsubstantiated measure.
He said: “With the measures that you introduced this afternoon, you could potentially be in breach of Regulation 2021/953 which is applicable across all European Union Member States in an obligatory manner.
“Preamble 36 states that you cannot discriminate against persons who are not vaccinated due to medical reasons, or because they are not yet vaccinated, or because they choose not to.”
Dr Galea went on to state that Chris Fearne and Charmaine Gauci failed to inform the public of the duration of such restrictions, which is also in breach of the same regulation.
The government is therefore in breach of EU law on two accounts in this particular instance.
Earlier today, the EU denounced Malta’s travel ban on unvaccinated visitors as ‘discriminatory’, stating that “we have concerns that the measures could discriminate against people who are not fully vaccinated and we have made contact with Malta and asked for an explanation of the measures. We’ll raise this issue in a member states coordination meeting (IPCR).”
Without elaborating much further, it’s safe to say that the current set of circumstances is just the tip of the iceberg in a long string of fact-free decisions stretching all the way to 2020. From both a legal and medical science standpoint, the government’s decisions are questionable even under basic scrutiny.
I have attempted to shed light on these misguided verdicts for over a year now. As a concerned citizen of this country, I’d like to ask Chris Fearne, Charmaine Gauci and Robert Abela why they are hell-bent on stripping us of our liberties for completely arbitrary and unscientific reasons.
Why are you institutionalising discrimination against people who are exercising their sacrosanct right to free choice amidst a virus with a mortality rate comparable to influenza?
Why are you moving the vaccination rate goal-posts without justification and pretending that natural immunity does not exist?
Why are you creating unnecessary divisions between vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals when the science clearly says otherwise?
To those who doubt the severity of this situation (which cannot be understated), I encourage you to double-check the Nuremberg code and ask yourself: if the state can coerce you to take a COVID-19 jab, what’s to stop them from coercing you to take anything else once the precedent is set?
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