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Nick Hudson on the award PANDA received from the Free Market Foundation<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a delightful surprise, yes, and we had a wonderful evening last night with a fairly lengthy presentation and [I] thoroughly enjoyed it. I think true to their colours, they were looking at the work that PANDA had done and our fight against dogma and a very bigoted version of science, and I think they saw in that something that was consistent with the values of their organisation, and I think it was on that basis that the citation reads as it does and they decided that the members of PANDA deserved the recognition and it was very welcome. You know, it\u2019s been a long, hard struggle and a lot of the people at PANDA have put up with enormous risks and challenges to their livelihoods and careers. So to have this recognition for them I think is particularly welcome and important.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
On why people at PANDA are under pressure:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a very strange authoritarian aspect that has infiltrated our academic institutions and public health institutions and this notion of science as an authoritarian concept, as there being such a thing as settled science, as science is something that you should follow, almost a trademarked \u2018the science\u2019 kind of concept. And it\u2019s very antithetical to what science is actually about, which is conjecture and criticism, dissent and debate, driving the formation of new knowledge, the creation of new knowledge. It\u2019s in that authoritarian environment where somebody who looks at the data has a different interpretation and sees the world differently from the average person. You know, they\u2019re at risk of being cancelled and censured and bullied, really, by these people who are doing something that couldn\u2019t, in any normal world, be described as scientific.<\/p>
Well, it\u2019s symptomatic of the really weird thinking of a lot of our critics because none of what we have to say is anything to deny the existence of Coronavirus. Our perspective from the beginning has been that the response has been disproportionate and later on the response has actually worsened the situation. So it\u2019s rather strange to attack people who take this perspective and support it with data and quality scientific perspectives and somehow refute it by things getting very bad in a country that has had amongst the most insane policy responses on the planet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
On why he says our policy responses were insane:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have adopted policies which were already evidently not working in the rest of the world. It didn\u2019t take a lot to look at the emergent data. We did it a year ago. And since then, around 50 papers have been published showing that the stringent restrictions that have been imposed have done nothing. They, of course, have lots of collateral damage involved and they worsen the public health outcomes in that regard but it\u2019s been quite patently clear for more than a year now that lockdowns, which were ruled out by all prior policy guidelines for respiratory virus policies, have indeed been a bad idea and that those guidelines ruled them out for good reason. It\u2019s not a very contentious thing to be saying. The contentious thing to say is that lockdowns are good and that they should continue. That is the novel and unusual thing to be saying and it\u2019s been proven wrong systematically through the entire course of this pandemic. There isn\u2019t a single country\u2019s curve where we can see the beneficial impact or the imposition of restrictions or mask mandates or the detrimental effect of the release of those restrictions or mask mandates. And it\u2019s just been astonishing to me.<\/p>
You know, when Texas opened up and said, that\u2019s it, no more mask mandates, no more lockdowns, these guys on the other side of the debate called them Neanderthals, predicted disaster and it\u2019s been months now and absolutely nothing has happened. You would think that at some point these pro-lockdown people would start to eat some humble pie and stop encouraging policymakers to enact these restrictions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
On the third wave in Gauteng: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yeah, it\u2019s a terrible situation. It just wouldn\u2019t be made any better by continuing with mask mandates or going to Level 5 or whatever. I mean, there\u2019s just no evidence for that claim being valid. And, you know, your heart goes out to anybody who\u2019s in that kind of position of having to make these life and death decisions, but I believe very firmly that we\u2019re in this situation precisely because we locked down so hard at the beginning. It would have been much better for us to have pursued the effective strategy of countries like Sweden.<\/p>
The other thing that\u2019s relevant here and not being talked about enough is that there appears to be a quite high representation among the sick people who are recently vaccinated. And that is not being analysed and discussed enough because that\u2019s another area that is profoundly censored but it\u2019s a conversation that has to be had. We see all around the world resurgences in Coronavirus deaths that coincide with the inception of mass vaccination plans. We have our theories as to what may be causing that and those theories may be wrong but the discussion should be had. Instead, what we get is this blanket silence with no debate happening and everything that we learn has leaked out of official forums and that kind of thing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
On what PANDA stands for: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we stand for proportionality in response and the importance of conducting cost-benefit analysis before conducting massively impactful restrictions, number one. Number two, we have since the very beginning pointed out that these non-pharmaceutical interventions by and large just haven\u2019t shown any benefit in the data and that the one that held a lot of promise, which was to concentrate on ventilation, especially in hospital and nursing home settings, to reduce the viral titers in the air in their settings was one thing that was really worth paying attention to. That\u2019s only been belatedly acknowledged by the World Health Organisation in the last few weeks. Both the World Health Organisation and the CDC have quietly slipped onto their websites paragraphs saying that, yes, airborne aerosol transmission is an important component of transmission of Coronavirus, and the World Health Organisation for the first time made a nod in the direction of the importance of maintaining good infection control by use of improved ventilation. We\u2019ve been saying that since May last year. Now it gets recognised. Instead, people continue running around doing all the things that they did when WHO initially emphasised fomites and droplet transmission \u2013 all the sanitising, all the social distancing stickers, the weird little bits of Plexiglass and so on are still what you see when you walk around. Those are, in our minds, just a completely poor effort in light of the scientific evidence that\u2019s emerged.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
On the effectiveness of mask-wearing: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
I mean the intuition is, yes, that some percentage of the droplets, the larger droplets would be stopped by a mask \u2013 but that\u2019s only a one-stage analysis. The next stage is, once large droplets have been stopped by your mask and you exhale over those droplets, you cause them to turn into aerosols which stay suspended in the air. That\u2019s also not a very difficult intuition to grasp and it\u2019s a better one because it\u2019s consistent with the data, which, as I say and have repeatedly said, is consistent with there being no benefit to a slight harm from the imposition of mask mandates.<\/p>
I don\u2019t think you should wear a mask. It\u2019s a kind of fantastical idea that viral transmission of respiratory viruses will be stopped by cloth masks. Even the idea that surgical masks are effective is extremely contentious and seems only to be valid to a small degree in the highly controlled settings where the masks are fitted and worn by qualified professionals. There\u2019s modest evidence in favour of those but there\u2019s absolutely nothing to support the effectiveness of cloth masks. The experiments that have supposedly been done to support them are all highly contrived and the European CDC, which did an analysis of the studies that had been conducted, came to the conclusion that all the evidence in favour of mask-wearing was of no evidentiary quality and most of it reflected strong bias. And, you know, you can\u2019t really argue with an analysis like that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
On Covid censorship and the oppression of free speech:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the start, this whole response to Coronavirus has adopted a decidedly technocratic securicrat surveillance-type tone with oppression of free speech, with all sorts of impositions on liberties and rights that are considered the norm in democratic societies. We\u2019ve been promised time and time again that it was just temporary and that it was two weeks or three weeks or until the vulnerable had been vaccinated or until whatever. The goalposts just keep moving. It should be clear to any thinking person that what we are seeing is an assault on liberal values and it\u2019s not done in the interest of public health. It\u2019s not about a virus.<\/p>
I think the thing that\u2019s not entering the public discourse nearly enough is the extent to which our institutions of media and public health have been captured by a handful of entities, with the effect that neither the journalists nor the scientists could even speak out if they disagreed with the policies or conventional narratives of the times. And that is just becoming more and more evident by the day. Editorial policy is not free and scientific opinion is not free. So we are entering, I think, very dark times. And this is one of the the hushed-up stories.<\/p>
There are elements of ideology and culture that I think are the easiest ones to describe. Our universities for decades now have been teaching the completely bogus narrative of postmodernism, of critical theory. This is where wokeness comes from in all its manifestations. This is where safety culture and cancel culture come from. They are fundamentally illiberal ideas. They are fundamentally unscientific ideas. And we can\u2019t get too surprised when we see that our culture is full of people who behave in this fashion. So that\u2019s my starting point, is to talk about ideology. But we also need to look at, as I say, at the influence of some of these super national organisations and the degree to which they have captured our institutions. You cannot find a single mainstream scientist who is not subject to that kind of pressure and who could actually speak out even if they decided that they disagreed with what is being done.<\/p>
The central question is, why is there no discussion? Why is there no debate? Why are critics of public policy not being engaged with openly and in the public eye? And there are several reasons for this. First of all, there\u2019s this stranglehold that these supernational organisations have, which we\u2019ve already spoken about and secondly, there\u2019s a problem in the culture \u2013 an ideological problem \u2013 that is antithetical to normal scientific discourse. But thirdly, a lot of these scientists are in very conflicted positions and one of the main reasons they will not entertain debate is they are fully aware that those conflicts will be exposed. So I see it as a three-fold problem that\u2019s very serious and very costly to our society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
On what happens to PANDA next:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
We carry on fighting. With every passing day, people come around to our view and begin challenging the narrative that they\u2019ve been fed. They begin seeing that what public health officials all around the world have done is to promote a narrative of fear \u2013 fear that causes people to possess a completely distorted perception of risk. The fear is always going in one direction, which is towards overestimating risk and, you know, in those circumstances, it\u2019s terminal to critical thinking and to the ability to make wise decisions and evaluate risk appropriately. So what we see is with every passing day, people wake up one by one and once they\u2019ve woken up, once they come in the direction of open science, in the direction of facts, data and evidence over this very false narrative, it\u2019s an absorptive state. They never turn around and go back into the fear mindset. We don\u2019t see people who have sat down with us and gone through the information in the cold light of day, looking at our perspectives, you know, from a calm and considered perspective, we don\u2019t see those people suddenly waking up the next morning and and wetting the bed. So we believe that that will just continue, that it\u2019s a slow and gradual process of bringing people back to sanity, back to a sense of proportionality and perspective.<\/p>
I suspect the organisation will remain involved in science rather than gravitate towards politics because it\u2019s not only public health that is subject to this kind of very almost Stalinist approach and culture. I think as we go the frame of reference will expand. The very important thing is that for a lot of the scientists who are involved, many of whom have to be cryptically involved, PANDA represents an absolute lifeline. It connects them back to the science that they first fell in love with and it seems to me that in many ways, PANDA presents the only place to them where they are able to have open debate and discussion with their colleagues, where they\u2019re allowed to be wrong without being shouted at and allowed to learn and change their minds. The scientists appear really to enjoy that. Our weekly open science meetings are now so well attended that we\u2019re thinking of having to break them up into channels. And it\u2019s really a joy to be involved in that because the rest of the week we confronted by this shouty, woke kind of attitude that seems so disconnected from the real world and from the data. So it\u2019s almost as if PANDA has become an oasis for people who love science as opposed to, you know, loving dogma.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
On the team at PANDA: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
I guess it would be much more depressing if I didn\u2019t have access to such wonderful people and if I wasn\u2019t able to tap the brains of these guys to understand what\u2019s going on. And I mean, the last week was a case to point, again, something not mentioned anywhere in the mainstream media because it runs in the face of the narrative but very big news.<\/p>
A scientist has managed to uncover the deleted sequences from the database of genetic variants of Covid, which has been a source of great suspicion and head-scratching for us. There was in this database a move taken by a Chinese scientist to delete sequences which he had uploaded. Now, this guy managed to track those sequences back, they were originally up in the cloud and they turned out not to have been entirely deleted. And so he managed to discover these sequences and what they reveal is fascinating because it shines a light on the much larger diversity of the cluster of viruses that you would describe as the SARS viruses. It raises the question that we\u2019ve been saying is suggested by the epidemiological data of whether this virus wasn\u2019t actually around much earlier than the December 2019 Wuhan outbreak. It could quite possibly, based on these phylogenetic trees, have been around for years before and that highlights the craziness of the policies we\u2019ve been pursuing. If it wasn\u2019t even noticed, if there was no epidemic being spoken about, when the cluster of viruses was in broad circulation, then that would really draw the line under efforts to speak of lockdown appropriateness or effectivenes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2018We are entering very dark times\u2019 \u2013 Nick Hudson on censorship; FMF award 24th June 2021 by Claire Badenhorst The Free Market Foundation has presented its very first award to PANDA co-founder Nick Hudson for freedom of expression, decentralisation, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,2374,3592,2609,2276,3590,3591],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6442,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6441\/revisions\/6442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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