“Pandemic is Over” – Former Pfizer Chief Science Officer Says “Second Wave” Faked

This video provides one of the most erudite and informative looks at Covid-19 and the consequences of lockdowns. As AIER notes, it was remarkable this week to watch as it appeared on YouTube and was forcibly taken down only 2 hours after posting.

The copy below is hosted on LBRY, a blockchain video application. In a year of fantastic educational content, this is one of the best we’ve seen.

Dr. Michael Yeadon is an Allergy & Respiratory Therapeutic Area expert with 23 years in the pharmaceutical industry. He trained as a biochemist and pharmacologist, obtaining his PhD from the University of Surrey (UK) in 1988.

Dr. Yeadon then worked at the Wellcome Research Labs with Salvador Moncada with a research focus on airway hyper-responsiveness and effects of pollutants including ozone and working in drug discovery of 5-LO, COX, PAF, NO and lung inflammation. With colleagues, he was the first to detect exhaled NO in animals and later to induce NOS in lung via allergic triggers.

Joining Pfizer in 1995, he was responsible for the growth and portfolio delivery of the Allergy & Respiratory pipeline within the company. He was responsible for target selection and the progress into humans of new molecules, leading teams of up to 200 staff across all disciplines and won an Achievement Award for productivity in 2008.

Under his leadership the research unit invented oral and inhaled NCEs which delivered multiple positive clinical proofs of concept in asthma, allergic rhinitis and COPD. He led productive collaborations such as with Rigel Pharmaceuticals (SYK inhibitors) and was involved in the licensing of Spiriva and acquisition of the Meridica (inhaler device) company.

Dr. Yeadon has published over 40 original research articles and now consults and partners with a number of biotechnology companies. Before working with Apellis, Dr. Yeadon was VP and Chief Scientific Officer (Allergy & Respiratory Research) with Pfizer.

What likely triggered the Silicon Valley censor-mongers is the fact that a former Chief Science Officer for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer says "there is no science to suggest a second wave should happen." The "Big Pharma" insider asserts that false positive results from inherently unreliable COVID tests are being used to manufacture a "second wave" based on "new cases."

As Ralph Lopez write at HubPages, Yeadon warns that half or even "almost all" of tests for COVID are false positives. Dr. Yeadon also argues that the threshold for herd immunity may be much lower than previously thought, and may have been reached in many countries already.

"we are basing a government policy, an economic policy, a civil liberties policy, in terms of limiting people to six people in a meeting...all based on, what may well be, completely fake data on this coronavirus?"

Even more significantly, even if all positives were to be correct, Dr. Yeadon said that given the "shape" of all important indicators in a worldwide pandemic, such as hospitalizations, ICU utilization, and deaths, "the pandemic is fundamentally over."

"Were it not for the test data that you get from the TV all the time, you would rightly conclude that the pandemic was over, as nothing much has happened. Of course people go to the hospital, moving into the autumn flu season...but there is no science to suggest a second wave should happen."

In a paper published this month, which was co-authored by Yeadon and two of his colleagues, "How Likely is a Second Wave?", the scientists write:

"It has widely been observed that in all heavily infected countries in Europe and several of the US states likewise, that the shape of the daily deaths vs. time curves is similar to ours in the UK. Many of these curves are not just similar, but almost super imposable."

In the data for UK, Sweden, the US, and the world, it can be seen that in all cases, deaths were on the rise in March through mid or late April, then began tapering off in a smooth slope which flattened around the end of June and continues to today. The case rates however, based on testing, rise and swing upwards and downwards wildly.

Media messaging in the US is already ramping up expectations of a "second wave."

The survival rate of COVID-19 has been upgraded since May to 99.8% of infections. This comes close to ordinary flu, the survival rate of which is 99.9%. Although COVID can have serious after-effects, so can flu or any respiratory illness. The present survival rate is far higher than initial grim guesses in March and April, cited by Dr. Anthony Fauci, of 94%, or 20 to 30 times deadlier. The Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) value accepted by Yeadon et al in the paper is .26%. The survival rate of a disease is 100% minus the IFR.

Dr. Yeadon pointed out that the "novel" COVID-19 contagion is novel only in the sense that it is a new type of coronavirus. But, he said, there are presently four strains which circulate freely throughout the population, most often linked to the common cold.

"There are at least four well characterised family members (229E, NL63, OC43 and HKU1) which are endemic and cause some of the common colds we experience, especially in winter. They all have striking sequence similarity to the new coronavirus."

The scientists argue that much of the population already has, if not antibodies to COVID, some level of "T-cell" immunity from exposure to other related coronaviruses, which have been circulating long before COVID-19.

"A major component our immune systems is the group of white blood cells called T-cells whose job it is to memorise a short piece of whatever virus we were infected with so the right cell types can multiply rapidly and protect us if we get a related infection. Responses to COVID-19 have been shown in dozens of blood samples taken from donors before the new virus arrived."

Introducing the idea that some prior immunity to COVID-19 already existed, the authors of "How Likely is a Second Wave?" write:

"It is now established that at least 30% of our population already had immunological recognition of this new virus, before it even arrived...COVID-19 is new, but coronaviruses are not."

They go on to say that, because of this prior resistance, only 15-25% of a population being infected may be sufficient to reach herd immunity:

"...epidemiological studies show that, with the extent of prior immunity that we can now reasonably assume to be the case, only 15-25% of the population being infected is sufficient to bring the spread of the virus to a halt..."

In the US, accepting a death toll of 200,000, and a survival rate of 99.8%, this would mean for every person who has died, there would be about 400 people who had been infected, and lived. This would translate to around 80 million Americans, or 27% of the population. This touches Yeadon's and his colleagues' threshold for herd immunity.

Finally, the former Pfizer executive and scientist singles out one former colleague for withering rebuke for his role in the pandemic, Professor Neil Ferguson. Ferguson taught at Imperial College while Yeadon was affiliated. Ferguson's computer model provided the rationale for governments to launch draconian orders which turned free societies into virtual prisons overnight. Over what is now estimated by the CDC to be a 99.8% survival rate virus.

Dr. Yeadon said in the interview that "no serious scientist gives any validity" to Ferguson's model.

Speaking with thinly-veiled contempt for Ferguson, Dr. Yeadon took special pains to point out to his interviewer:

"It's important that you know most scientists don't accept that it [Ferguson's model] was even faintly right...but the government is still wedded to the model."

Yeadon joins other scientists in castigating governments for following Ferguson's model, the assumptions of which all worldwide lockdowns are based on. One of these scientists is Dr. Johan Giesecke, former chief scientist for the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who called Ferguson’s model “the most influential scientific paper” in memory, and also “one of the most wrong.”

It was Ferguson's model which held that "mitigation" measures were necessary, i.e. social distancing and business closures, in order to prevent, for example, over 2.2 million people dying from COVID in the US.

Ferguson predicted that Sweden would pay a terrible price for no lockdown, with 40,000 COVID deaths by May 1, and 100,000 by June. Sweden's death count is under 6,000. The Swedish government says this coincides to a mild flu season. Although initially higher, Sweden now has a lower death rate per-capita than the US, which it achieved without the terrific economic damage still ongoing in the US. Sweden never closed restaurants, bars, sports, most schools, or movie theaters. The government never ordered people to wear masks.

Dr. Yeadon speaks bitterly of the lives lost as a result of lockdown policies, and of the "savable" countless lives which will be further lost, from important surgeries and other healthcare deferred, should lockdowns be reimposed.

Yeadon's warnings are confirmed by a new study from the Infectious Diseases Society of America., summarized succinctly in the following twitter thread from al gato malo (@boriquagato) Anyone still presuming that a Positive PCR test is showing a COVID case needs to read this very carefully:

even 25 cycles of amplification, 70% of "positives" are not "cases." virus cannot be cultured. it's dead.

lot of people still seem to not understand what this means, so let's lay that out for a minute.

PCR tests look for RNA. there is too little in your swab. so they amplify it using a primer based heating and annealing process.

the US (and much of the world) is using a 40 Ct (cycle threshold). so, 40 doublings, 1 trillion X amplification.

The way that we know this is by running this test, seeing the Ct to find the RNA, and then using the same sample to try to culture virus.

If you cannot culture the virus, then the virus is "dead." it's inert. if it cannot replicate, it cannot infect you or others. it's just traces of virus, remnants, fragments etc

PCR is not testing for disease, it's testing for a specific RNA pattern and this is the key pivot

When you crank it up to 25, 70% of the positive results are not really "positives" in any clinical sense.

i hesitate to call it a "false positive" because it's really not. it did find RNA.

if 70% of positives are NCP's at 25, imagine what 40 looks like. 35 is 1000X as sensitive.

no one can culture live virus past about 34 and we have known this since march. yet no one has adjusted these tests.

TWEET: el gato malo @boriquagato · Mar 27 presuming it bears out, this is a key finding.

it shows that many patients that are PCR+ for COV-19 are not shedding infectious virus.

this would imply shorter quarantine needed and provide a testable basis for discharge of isolated patients.

This is more very strong data refuting the idea that you can trust a PCR+ as a clinical indicator.

The FDA would never do it, the drug companies doing vaccine trials would never do it... it's because it's nonsense.

And this same test is used for "hospitalizations" and "death with covid" (itself a weirdly over inclusive metric)

It's not how to get control of an epidemic, it's how to completely lose control of your data picture and wind up with gibberish and we have done this to ourselves before.

TWEET: Dr Clare Craig @ClareCraigPath · Nov 16 The last major false positive pseudo-epidemic was Swine Flu in 2009. Everyone said we would never let it happen again.

Saying "a sample requiring 35 Ct to test + has a 3% real clinical positive rate" does not mean "97% of + tests run at 35 Ct are NCP's"

Most tests are just amplified and run. they don't test every cycle as these academics do. that would make the test slow and expensive, so you just run 40 cycles then test.

Obviously, a real clinical positive (RCP) that would have been + at 20 is still + at 40.

but when you run the tests each cycle as the academics do, that test would already have dropped out.

so saying that only 3% at 35 are RCP really means that 3% of those samples not PCR + at 34 were PCR and RCP + at 35.

so we cannot say "at 25 Ct, we have a 70 NCP rate." in fact, it's hard to say much of anything. it depends entirely on what the source material coming in looks like.

Today at 40 Ct, 7% PCR positive rate could be 1% RCP prevalence when that same thing meant 6% RCP prev in april.

If there is lots more trace virus around, more people who have recovered and have fragments left over, etc this test could be finding virus you killed 4 months ago.

So if we consider RCP rate/PCR+ rate, we would expect that number to drop sharply late in an epidemic because there is more dead virus around for PCR to find, but we have no idea what that ratio is or how it changes.

Testing is being made out to be like the high beams on a car, but when it's snowing like hell at night, that is the LAST thing you want. It is not illuminating our way, it's blinding us.

A bad inaccurate map is much worse than no map at all, and this is a world class bad map...

We're basing policy that is affecting billions of humans on data that is uninterpretable gibberish.

It's a deranged technocrat's wet dream, but for those of us along for the ride, it's a nightmare.

Any technocrat or scientist that does not know this by now is either unfit for their job or has decided that they just don't care and prefer power to morality.

This is, of curse, precisely the kind of person who winds up running a gov't agency... oopsie.

*****THE HEAD OF THE NIH IS NOT THE BEST SCIENTIST, IT'S THE BEST POLITICIAN.****

Clinical Infectious Diseases CORRESPONDENCE CORRESPONDENCE • CID 2020:XX (XX XXXX) • 1 Correlation Between 3790 Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction–Positives Samples and Positive Cell Cultures, Including 1941 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Isolates o 󰁴󰁨󰁥 E󰁤󰁩󰁴󰁯󰁲—he outbreak o the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic due to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was declared a pandemic on 12 March 2020 by the World Health Organization [1]. A major issue related to the outbreak has been to correlate viral RNA load obtained ater reverse-transcription pol-ymerase chain reaction (R-PCR) and expressed as the cycle threshold (Ct) with contagiousness and thereore duration o eviction rom contacts and discharge rom specialized inectious disease wards. Several recent publications, based on more than 100 studies, have attempted to propose a cuto Ct value and duration o eviction, with a consensus at approx-imately Ct >30 and at least 10 days, re-spectively [2–5]. However, in an article published in Clinical Infectious Diseases , Bullard et al reported that patients could not be contagious with Ct >25 as the virus is not detected in culture above this value [6]. his limit was then evoked in the French media during an interview with a member o the French Scientiic Council Covid-19 as a possible value above which patients are no longer contagious [7]. At the beginning o the outbreak, we correlated Ct values obtained using our PCR technique based on ampliﬁcation o the E gene and the results o the culture [8]. Since the beginning o the pandemic, we have perormed 250 566 SARS-CoV-2 R-PCR or 179 151 patients, o whom 13 161 (7.3%) tested positive. Up to the end o May, 3790 o these samples, reported as positive on nasopharyngeal samples, were inoculated and managed or culture as previously described [8]. O these 3790 inoculated samples, 1941 SARS-CoV-2 isolates could be obtained afer the ﬁrst in-oculation or up to 2 blind subcultures. Te correlation between the scanner values and the positivity o the culture allows us to observe that the image obtained with 10 times more isolates than in our prelim-inary work (1941 vs 129) does not change signiﬁcantly (Figure 1). It can be observed that at Ct = 25, up to 70% o patients re-main positive in culture and that at Ct = 30 this value drops to 20%. At Ct = 35, the value we used to report a positive result or PCR, <3% o cultures are positive. Our Ct value o 35, initially based on the results Figure 1. Percentage of positive viral cultures of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 polymerase chain reaction–positive nasopharyngeal samples from corona-virus disease 2019 patients, according to Ct value (plain line). The dashed curve indicates the polynomial regression curve. Abbreviations: Ct, cycle threshold; Poly., polynomial.

Even a Military/US Marines-Enforced Quarantine Can’t Stop the Virus, Study Reveals:

Jeffrey A. Tucker American Institute for Economic Research

– November 13, 2020
AIER >> Daily Economy >> Regulation >> Authoritarianism
The New England Journal of Medicine has published a study that goes to the heart of the issue of lock downs. The question has always been whether and to what extent a lock down, however extreme, is capable of suppressing the virus.
If so, you can make an argument that at least lock downs, despite their astronomical social and economic costs, achieve something. If not, nations of the world have embarked on a catastrophic experiment that has destroyed billions of lives, and all expectation of human rights and liberties, with no payoff at all.

This does not affect this article’s conclusion; indeed it strengthens it: even under extreme measures, the virus spread, and more so with the extra measure intended to control the virus. Nearly all infections were without symptoms.]

AIER has long highlighted studies that show no gain in virus management from lock downs. Even as early as April, a major data scientist said that this virus becomes endemic in 70 days after the first round of infection, regardless of policies. The largest global study of lock downs compared with deaths as published in The Lancet found no association between coercive stringencies and deaths per million.

To test further might seem superfluous but, for whatever reason, governments all over the world, including in the US, still are under the impression that they can affect viral transmissions through a range of “non pharmaceutical interventions” (NPIs) like mandatory masks, forced human separation, stay-at-home orders, bans of gatherings, business and school closures, and extreme travel restrictions.

Nothing like this has been tried on this scale in the whole of human history, so one might suppose that policy makers have some basis for their confidence that these measures accomplish something.

A study conducted by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in cooperation with the Naval Medical Research Center sought to test lock downs along with testing and isolation. In May, 3,143 new recruits to the Marines were given the option to participate in a study of frequent testing under extreme quarantine.

The study was called CHARM, which stands for COVID-19 Health Action Response for Marines. Of the recruits asked, a total of 1,848 young people agreed to be guinea pigs in this experiment which involved “which included weekly qPCR testing and blood sampling for IgG antibody assessment.” In addition, the CHARM study volunteers who did test positively “on the day of enrollment (day 0) or on day 7 or day 14 were separated from their roommates and were placed in isolation.”

What did the recruits have to do? The study explains, and, as you will see, they faced an even more strict regime that has existed in civilian life in most places. All recruits, even those not in the CHARM group, did the following.

All recruits wore double-layered cloth masks at all times indoors and outdoors, except when sleeping or eating; practiced social distancing of at least 6 feet; were not allowed to leave campus; did not have access to personal electronics and other items that might contribute to surface transmission; and routinely washed their hands. They slept in double-occupancy rooms with sinks, ate in shared dining facilities, and used shared bathrooms.

All recruits cleaned their rooms daily, sanitized bathrooms after each use with bleach wipes, and ate preplated meals in a dining hall that was cleaned with bleach after each platoon had eaten.

Most instruction and exercises were conducted outdoors. All movement of recruits was supervised, and unidirectional flow was implemented, with designated building entry and exit points to minimize contact among persons.

All recruits, regardless of participation in the study, underwent daily temperature and symptom screening. Six instructors who were assigned to each platoon worked in 8-hour shifts and enforced the quarantine measures.

If recruits reported any signs or symptoms consistent with Covid-19, they reported to sick call, underwent rapid qPCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, and were placed in isolation pending the results of testing.

Instructors were also restricted to campus, were required to wear masks, were provided with preplated meals, and underwent daily temperature checks and symptom screening. Instructors who were assigned to a platoon in which a positive case was diagnosed underwent rapid qPCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, and, if the result was positive, the instructor was removed from duty.

Recruits and instructors were prohibited from interacting with campus support staff, such as janitorial and food-service personnel. After each class completed quarantine, a deep bleach cleaning of surfaces was performed in the bathrooms, showers, bedrooms, and hallways in the dormitories, and the dormitory remained unoccupied for at least 72 hours before reoccupancy.

The reputation of Marine basic training is that it is tough going but this really does take it to another level. Also, this is an environment where those in charge do not mess around. There was surely close to 100% compliance, as compared with, for example, a typical college campus.

What were the results? The virus still spread, though 90% of those who tested positive were without symptoms. Incredibly, 2% of the CHARM recruits still contracted the virus, even if all but one remained asymptomatic. “Our study showed that in a group of predominantly young male military recruits, approximately 2% became positive for SARS-CoV-2, as determined by qPCR assay, during a 2-week, strictly enforced quarantine.”

And how does this compare to the control group that was not tested and not isolated in the case of a positive case? Have a look at this chart from the study:

New England Journal of Medicine

https://www.aier.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Screen-Shot-2020-11-13-at-10.16.32-AM-1200x691.png

Which is to say that the nonparticipants actually contracted the virus at a slightly lower rate than those who were under an extreme regime. Conversely, extreme enforcement of NPIs plus more frequent testing and isolation was associated with a greater degree of infection.

I’m grateful to Don Wolt for drawing my attention to this study, which, so far as I know, has received very little attention from any media source at all, despite having been published in the New England Journal of Medicine on November 11.

Here are four actual media headlines about the study that miss the point entirely:

CNN: “Many military Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic, studies show”
SciTech Daily: “Asymptomatic COVID-19 Transmission Revealed Through Study of 2,000 Marine Recruits”
ABC: “Broad study of Marine recruits shows limits of COVID-19 symptom screening”
US Navy: “Navy/Marine Corps COVID-19 Study Findings Published in New England Journal of Medicine”
No national news story that I have found highlighted the most important finding of all: extreme quarantine plus frequent testing and isolation among military recruits did nothing to stop the virus.

The study is important because of the social structure of control here. It’s one thing to observe no effects from national lockdowns. There are countless variables here that could be invoked as cautionary notes: demographics, population density, preexisting immunities, degree of compliance, and so on.

But with this Marine study, you have a near homogeneous group based on age, health, and densities of living. And even here, you see confirmed what so many other studies have shown: lockdowns are pointlessly destructive.

They do not manage the disease. They crush human liberty and produce astonishing costs, such as 5.53 million years of lost life from the closing of schools alone.

The lockdowners keep telling us to pay attention to the science. That’s what we are doing. When the results contradict their pro-compulsion narrative, they pretend that the studies do not exist and barrel ahead with their scary plans to disable all social functioning in the presence of a virus.

Lockdowns are not science. They never have been. They are an experiment in social/political top-down management that is without precedent in cost to life and liberty.

[The earliest version of this article misstated the conditions of the control group. They were equally locked down with those who participated in the study. The difference between the two concerned testing frequency and the isolation response. This does not affect this article’s conclusion; indeed it strengthens it: even under extreme measures, the virus spread, and more so with the extra measure intended to control the virus. Nearly all infections were without symptoms.]

https://www.aier.org/article/even-a-military-enforced-quarantine-cant-stop-the-virus-study-reveals/

New England Journal of Medicine

Here are four actual media headlines about the study that miss the point entirely:

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