635: Did The Science™ of COVID Change? Or Did The Science™ Move the Goalposts?

Brian Nichols  0:01  
Did the science change about COVID-19? Yeah, let's talk about that. Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, happy Friday there, folks, Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show and thank you for joining us on of course another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host joining us live from our Stratus ip Studios here in lovely Eastern Indiana. Don't have cyber attacks are outdated Business Technology, put your company at risk. Learn more at Brian Nichols show.com forward slash Stratus ip folks Yes, we here I want to read you this this and I'm gonna see if you agree COVID-19 is a threat. It's a very real disease that yes, in fact kills a lot of people. However, the government lockdowns and the related intrusions on civil liberties pose a serious threat not only to lives but to civilization itself, a threat that must be resisted. At this juncture, the science is quite clear on what key policy responses should be, or what should have been. But this is no longer about the science and let's be real, it never was. What is required now is a mobilization against what is essentially an enormous public relations indoctrination machine that is fueling fear and removing the agency from people's lives in the world over now. I'm gonna pause there. Do you agree with that here, as we're recording on December 2 22? Most likely, but what if I were to tell you that that was actually the beginning of an episode that we shared back in January of 2021. Referring to what we had learned over the past at that point, half a year, a plus of COVID going across the world. And doing so was Nick Hudson from Panda. And we discussed at length, the impact of COVID 19, but specifically the policies that were brought to the table that ended up causing so much more pain and devastation. Now, that obviously leads to the question. Well, did the goalposts change? Did the science change? Which is it? Well, I think you're going to listen to the date today's episode, and the answer is going to be quite apparent. And very crystal clear that no, the science did not change, but rather the goalposts change in order to fit the new narratives. And this is something that Nick addresses, way back in January 2021. Think back to that mindset, where we were back then versus where we are today. A lot of what you're going to hear is definitely evergreen, and it opens up the eyes in terms of what we're doing now, if you are in a blue state, who is facing COVID restrictions, but listen to this episode, listen to what the insanity has been promoted from the very beginning that has been made to make you afraid. And it's done intentionally. So with that being said, listen as we go back in time, yes, it seems like it is a all the way, way back in the future January 2021. Nick Hudson, here on The Brian Nichols Show. Hello, Brian, thank you for having me. Absolutely. Nick, thank you, first and foremost, for joining us here on The Brian Nichols Show I said from this morning here on The Brian Nichols Show, you're hailing from South Africa. So good morning, from your neck of the woods all the way on the other side of the world but the global COVID 19 pandemic right it's not regional it we feel it here in the states we feel it in South Africa we feel in India we feel all over the world. And right now we're I think we're more so feeling the the long term implications of these COVID-19 government mandated lock downs which NIC led you to lead this new organization panda focusing on entirely on the economic outcomes and consequences of these lockdown. So Nick, kind of what got you first and foremost started into looking at these lockdowns and the severity that they are causing.

Nick Hudson  3:56  
Brian the the story for us really started as a group of friends trying to understand what was going on. And the picture we were developing of the actual impact of the virus was that it was much smaller than it was being proclaimed to be. So we took a view very early that this was clearly a disease that affected overwhelmingly, the elderly population, and that young people were facing negligible risk. And this was clear from very early on. And we were quite alarmed by the emerging trends to lock down and enforce all these draconian non pharmaceutical interventions. We were very concerned that they might be taken up in developing countries such as South Africa, because such countries typically have large swathes of the population occupying a running society that is only just above poverty. And so any kind of intervention that has a A big impact on the economy stands to force people by the hundreds of millions into poverty. And anybody with half a grain of common sense, will realize that that kind of move has public health implications all of its own. And we got even more worried when South Africa lockdown and yet more worried when the promise two to three weeks to prepare the hospital system turned into a rolling lockdown that is now in it's 260 s Day in South Africa. And we formed the group more formally got together with some other professionals. So at this stage, it was a couple of activities and economist, a lawyer and a couple of doctors. And we were using our sort of multidisciplinary skill to unpack the whole broader picture, not just of the epidemic and the virus but of the implications of these political reactions. We wrote our first paper which was called quantifying years of life lost locked down which attempted to bring to the public's attention. The fact that there was no trade off between lives and economy, this was a completely false and city concept. An economy does nothing other than mediate lives. And so it needed to be reframed as a question of lives versus lives, there was a profound trade off going on and using insurance mathematics to try and move from the economic impact to a kind of morbidity and mortality consequence, we came to the conclusion that even utilizing the most conservative projections for the epidemic, by which I mean the most severe predictions, there was no chance that the epidemic would would kill nearly as many people as the economic events. In fact, we said that it will be at least time 30 times the loss of life would arise from the economic impact than from the disease itself. And as I said, that was using very severe forecasts, which we actually disagreed with, we published our own forecasts, which have been incredibly accurate, we estimated our first wave or of the epidemic, as you might refer to it, within 1% accuracy over eight months. So we were we were very accurate that 30 times figure was based on much more severe forecasts. And here we sit with devastated economy in South Africa. But after several months of doing this, trying to motivate for ending the lockdown for taking on the strategy of focus protection, which means really spending your meager resources on protecting the vulnerable and letting the rest of the society get on with normal life. We realized that it was not about the science, no matter how many times we were right about things. We were just being ignored, and that our government was undertaking these foolish measures under the cover of the World Health Organization and other countries, governments, and so we decided to take our activities International and over the last four months, we've expanded very aggressively, we established our Scientific Advisory Board, which now has seven eminent scientists, professors of infectious disease and epidemiology. The three founding signatories of the Great Barrington declaration, Professor School of Bhattacharya and Gupta, Professor Levitt, Nobel laureate of 2012, Professor bhakti, from University of minds. Professor Townsend who's a professor of psychology in the United Kingdom, and Dr. Michael Uden, who's former Pfizer, Chief Science Officer of respiratory viruses. And we have also added to our actual working team, nearly 100 people, most of whom are scientists of international repute, helping us navigate all aspects of the epidemic.

Brian Nichols  9:23  
Wow. Wow. Okay, so much to unpack there. Right. So the first one that that instantly makes me start to question is, why are people going this whole mentality of trust the experts when I mean, my goodness, Nick, you just listed off, you know, a treasure trove of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years of epidemiological and virologist experience and yet people are looking at us who are questioning these lockdowns as the Kooks were told that we need to trust the experts look to the experts. What's what's leading to, I guess, maybe this rejection of, in this case, the real experts With the government narrative,

Nick Hudson  10:02  
yeah, and it really is a case of that. I mean, our team includes leaders in their field kinetics in modeling in economics in, you know, infectious diseases, they really are among the very top people in the world. So this whole business of follow the science, trust the experts, what it what that really is, is code for a certain kind of authoritarian adherence to a narrative. It's what I call the bogus narrative of COVID, which simply put is, there's a deadly new virus. We're all susceptible to it. And so we lock down and wear our masks, we're all going to die. That's the bogus narrative. And the interesting thing about the bogus narrative is every single element is untrue. The virus is not new. It's a it's a close individual of the first SARS virus closely related to other coronaviruses, which has been broadly circulating in the human population. That means that healthy people's bodies recognize it and are able to mount an immune response. That means we're not all susceptible masks are not effective. So no sign of being effective in epidemiological data, I should say mask mandates rather than masks. lockdowns are the very interesting thing about lockdowns is that basic epidemiology says that when you face a sharply age graduated mortality story in a disease as we do with COVID, which affects the young about 1000s as badly as it does the elderly, then the actual expectation of general lockdowns is that they will cause the disease burden to shift onto the vulnerable, and they will actually cause higher mortality than doing nothing. And that is when I say basic epidemiology that is undergraduate epidemiology, a well known result. And as soon as you introduce age specific mortality rates into your model are pops that result, you hit a lot, you do a general lockdown, more people die. Wow. So the entire narrative is just bullshit, if I may use that word, and every element, not just one component. And so we rail against this narrative with the very best science and the very best scientists. And yet people turn around and say, trust the experts follow the science, what is that? It's a kind of postmodern adherence to a narrative. And that narrative is not based in Reason and facts and science. Yes, it's kind of thing that emanates from the world of Derrida and Foucault. It's not normal science.

Brian Nichols  12:55  
Now. It's now and what we're seeing is a real negative implications and result of people not trusting the real science in this case, right? And, and what we're talking about is, I mean, goodness, you're talking about South Africa, right? Like your person, your average person who's in poverty in South Africa, relative to your average person in poverty in America, it's night and day, I'm going to assume, and yet in America, we think, you know, especially because, you know, I see it firsthand a number of people losing their jobs left and right. But there are people in South Africa literally starving to death, like people across the world. I mean, the number I saw was 10,000 children starving per day across the world right now. I mean, that's, that's horrifying. So there are real statistics and real outcomes that we're not seeing here in the states that are a direct result of these lock downs that are hurting the very, most, I would say the most risk adverse, or there was risk focus among us. And that'd be that the people who are impoverished the people who are, you know, the needy, the ones who are the sick and so forth.

Nick Hudson  14:00  
Yeah, there's no question so lockdowns, the way I see them are the most regressive policy that has ever been introduced. The what you're doing with a lock down is protecting people who are not really at risk, you are very comfortably off, you can sit behind their little zoom screens, and work from home comfortably. That is not how the bulk of the world lives. And so you're transferring the disease burden, which is very slight for you on two populations for whom it is very severe. And that is one of the most selfish acts a human being could do. And so I look with some head scratching at the people on the left who advocate for lock downs, because it's if you are worried about inequality, if you if that has been your mantra for decades, then you should absolutely hate lockdowns, they increase inequality like nothing else. We will see, as you say, starvation in huge numbers as a result of these consequences of lockdown. And it the very alarming thing is there were there were strong interventions from the World Health Organization from the Gates Foundation from other countries, governments trying to persuade these developing countries to adopt these strategies. Now, I don't think those strategies were even right in developed markets. I think they're disgraceful strategies. They don't comport with pre COVID Science of any sort. And the effects as we measure them in the current epidemic are horrible. They don't save lives. But to try and impose them in developing economies was an act of great grilled and I shake with anger, when I think of the Bill Gates's and Ted Ross's of the world, sitting there giving instruction to these governments, to implement lockdowns without a care about the socio economic consequences, which will clearly clearly be much more severe than the virus. It is absolutely disgraceful.

Brian Nichols  16:22  
Yeah, is there now I gotta put my conspiracy theory hat on, right. Because I mean, why not? Is there a possible ulterior motive here? Because I mean, you look across the world let you know here let's let's just because my audience is predominantly American. You've looked just in the States. We see New York's governor, Pennsylvania's governor, Michigan's governor, New Jersey's governor, California's governor, all of a sudden just hopping on board with these arbitrary decision making processes for the lockdowns saying they're following the science. And the science to your point is coming top down from organizations like the World Health Organization, which was pretty much in bed with China from the very start. And then one has to ask, is there a is there something behind the scenes here that we're missing, that this is all part of some grand plan? I'm not saying the pandemic, right. So I think we can acknowledge the pandemic itself, it's a very real thing, and we can approach it in a very real way. But I'm talking more so about the approach from the governments in terms of looking at this threat and taking this opportunity for them to really seize a massive amount of control over the lives of billions of people. In the world of wine. There are so many choices, and that's why blood of tyrants, wine has tyrants losing their heads, whether you're looking for a new go to that home, or watching impress your friends at a party. A lot of times wine has you covered. And if you're trying to get rid of some errands in your life, well if we've got that covered, too, and the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash wine and get $5 off your order. One more time, Brian Nichols show.com, forward slash wine freemen don't ask permission. So take a sip, you'll be glad you did.

Nick Hudson  18:01  
So let's start by saying what I think needs to be said in the context of all of these conversations. SARS, cov. Two is a real virus, that in some portion of people who are infected leads to a disease called COVID. That disease kills people, especially the elderly, and severely co morbid or severely obese. It kills more people this year than a typical flu season. Probably though, in line with severe flu, its mortality rate is higher than flu for old people and lower than flu for young people. Having said all of that, I can approach this conversation of conspiracy on along two lines. The first is, if they're telling you they're doing it, and why then it's not a conspiracy. Conspiracy is something that gets plotted in a smoke filled room with people who are out to benefit themselves at the expense of everybody else. That's number one. Number two, I wish there was a conspiracy because it would be far easier to understand and to manage against than what we're dealing with, which is, first of all, the consequence of a terrible degree of centralization. Way too much power has landed up in the hands of far too few individuals. And they're riding riding roughshod over Parliament's over constitutions over law under the cover of this suppose a deadly virus. And many of these parties have strong economic incentives. They also have delusions of grandeur and a kind of egomaniacal approach to the setting and the situation. They believe that they know what is good for the rest of the world and that the In that they're distributing is going to be worth it in the long run. And I think that that is a fundamental institutional failing. Nobody should have as much power as these people have. So I look at the incentives, I look at the alignment of commonality of interest between these big players, and I don't see in it conspiracy. I see in it. abuse of power. So how do we governance

Brian Nichols  20:31  
I was gonna say, so how do we get out of this? Right? Because right now, I think that's the the number one question not just across the states, but across the world, because it seems like far too often than not, we've seen these, these, I would say governors or executives taking these powers, and more often than not not yielding back their emergency powers once the crisis is averted. I mean, goodness, just in New Zealand, they just decided that now that they haven't had Coronavirus For how many days is it? That now they can have life back to normal? And that's that's very dystopian, I would say. So what's the next step? What's the plan of action that I guess the folks who are more in the Hey, we can act like Rational folks and make risk decisions based on our own risk assessments? What's that kind of a, I guess, plan of attack for us going forward?

Nick Hudson  21:22  
Well, people definitely need to start speaking up standing up rising up, I would like to see a mass burning of mosques. I would like to see people raising their voices, challenging their politicians, I would like to see, the media finally start to wake up to the incredible damage that is being done to the people, they're meant to protect against the powerful, they have sided with the powerful against the vulnerable against the poor, against all the marginalized groups. And that needs to change. And I think there's a difficulty there because those same powerful people who have been directing this foolish health care policy, also have their tentacles into the ownership of media. There's an unholy alliance between big tech between the supranational organizations and media and politicians. There's much corruption behind all of these scientists who are maintaining the bogus narrative is funding from organizations who are pulling the strings. And none of that is conspiracy. It's all out in the open. And it's a big problem. And until people stand up, and until they start making their voices heard, we are not going to be able to get traction on the pushback.

Brian Nichols  22:41  
Yeah. And now, I guess the question is, how long? I mean, I saw a number, I think it was $18 trillion in lost productivity just in the United States alone? I believe it was. So I mean, the numbers that we're going to see in terms of lost economic productivity, it's going to be devastating. So Nick, I asked you, what's what's going to be the the timeline, is there a timeline for us to get some road to recovery?

Nick Hudson  23:11  
Well, I mean, the economic recovery will take many years, we may even have to measure it in decades at the red things are going because the whole just gets dug deeper and deeper. But at least in terms of arresting the policy. I would, I would think that we need to do this within months. There are many very dystopian things on the horizon. All of these immunity, passports, health passports, I see now, New Yorkers made some modification to law to make it legal for workplaces to demand that its employees become vaccinated. I think that kind of law needs to be attacked as unconstitutional. So we need to form grassroots organizations, collectives of lawyers and doctors, who are prepared to do the hard work of pushing back against this insane kind of idea. Yeah,

Brian Nichols  24:07  
and now I look at you guys, right, and what you're doing a panda getting all the data pulled up right now, obviously, this is going to be a resource for folks going forward to leverage because I think there is a lot of misinformation. I mean, there's a reason they and the mainstream media, the corporate media, they're only talking about the total cases that we have in the United States, they're not looking at it more objectively, they're not breaking it down it with some context and nuance. So when folks go ahead and start to check out all the data you guys have, what can they expect? What are some of the the key factors that you guys are looking into?

Nick Hudson  24:40  
Well, the hit line story at the beginning was the economy mediated impact on mortality of lock downs. The next story was the ineffectiveness of lock downs as NPI as a non pharmaceutical intervention. We are about to release a paper showing that at As expected in basic epidemiology, lockdowns actually cause greater COVID mortality. You can also look on our website to understand the dynamics of resurgences. We have many, many resources, interviews, articles covering these topics. So there's a wealth of information there. If you started listening to all of our podcasts, interviews, and so on. Today, you wouldn't be finished by the end of next month. There's so much material there now. We also you will also see, recently released our protocol for reopening society, which was designed in support of the Great Barrington declaration. And that's probably about an eight page document that details what we believe government should be doing. And we are hoping that lawyers, ordinary private citizens, business owners, will use that document as in letters to their congressmen, senators, mayors, to ask whether this wouldn't be a better way forward, then these incredibly costly and deadly measures that are being used at the moment. So that's kind of where it's at. We've also got quite a business going in connecting the various organizations around the world who are pushing back against the malarkey doctors, groups, legal groups, and of course, the scientists. And so we are gradually roping together organizations around the whole world. In the last few days, I've spoken to people in New Zealand, in England, in the United States in South America, got a conversation coming up with the Philippines. So we really are working very hard to try and combine these groups so that we're not replicating work that we can leverage off each other's work. We supporting legal cases, we join them as amicus curiae. I have friends of the court, we support petitions to local Parliament's and European Parliament with content. And that content then comes with the imprimatur of the Scientific Advisory Board. And we produce very impressive founding affidavits for cases and supporting material for lawyers who are trying to take on people in their own jurisdictions. And because our data is fully international doesn't concentrate on South Africa, it covers the entire world, we are able to assist in a variety of jurisdictions.

Brian Nichols  27:39  
And obviously, this is something as you said, that can be used across the world. So I want people to be able to support you guys, right, because this is an organization that I think we need to really be focusing on supporting you because your mission is is not only imperative, it's it really I think, is the number one issue of our time. So Nick, where can folks go ahead and support all the great work, you're doing a panda

Nick Hudson  28:01  
whips website is www.pandita.org, there's a Donate button right there. And we deeply appreciate any donations we can get. Because what we are ultimately mounting is a costly public relations exercise. And there is a need for that to be supported by quite a lot of resources, mainly in terms of organizing and and publishing work. And so that would be very much appreciated. We also have social media accounts. The two that I'll mention here now are Twitter and Facebook, where our handles are identical Pandita 19 pound data 19. So the organization's name is Panda the website is Panda to.org. The handles are Pandita, 19. And anything that people can do to boost our meta message in their own social media networks, whether that be in their local WhatsApp groups, or on their Twitter handles and Facebook accounts, would be very much appreciated. We need to get the word out. We're also looking for people who have time and energy on their hands and relevant expertise. We welcome hearing from people who are involved in media who are involved in science, who involved in economics, with there's a place for them inside pander, we have as I said, you know, 100 or so active members at the moment, and that grows weekly. So those are the main main ways in which people can help us activate. Yeah.

Brian Nichols  29:29  
Awesome. And I'll make sure include just for ease for the audience to include all those links in the show notes. And Nick, honestly, this is, you know, this is why we've been talking about this number one, you know, on The Brian Nichols Show since March, because I said this, this is going to be one of those things. It's this is like a big deal. Like this is one of those moments like a 911 moment almost like this is going to be one of those blips in history that's going to have a very long lasting impact. And we need to make sure that we're talking about this as openly and honestly as possible. And whenever people are asking, well, what's the sign What's the data now we actually have a definitive source to to leverage all the work you're doing there at Panda. So Nick, thank you so much for you and all the work that your team at Panda are doing. pandita.org. I'll include the link in the show notes. Nick Hudson, thank you so much.

Nick Hudson  30:14  
Thank you, Brian. All right, folks, that's

Brian Nichols  30:15  
gonna wrap up our episode today, way back in January 2021. Yeah, so a lot of that stuff pretty much just reaffirms exactly what we were talking about here at the very beginning of the episode. Did the science change? No, did the goalposts changes the narrative change? Yes. Now, here's fun fact to you, by the way, or shortly thereafter, if when Nick joined the show back in January 2021, he went on to do a, a talk at a conference where he outlined and absolutely eviscerated the COVID narrative. And then within less than I think it was a few hours of him doing that his show and his talk ended up getting hundreds of 1000s of views over on YouTube, only to be subsequently banned. Shortly thereafter, which goes to the point it just talks about how this has not just been a matter of science, having an honest and open discourse and then changing as science changes, but rather that this has been a an indoctrination, a public relations fear campaign to get people afraid, and to not be able to have a conversation to not allow a dissenting opinion or different viewpoint. You can't really question science when you don't allow conversation and debate to exist. So if anything for today's episode, if you have some of your lefty friends out there, and not necessarily even lefty friends, I don't even know a lot of friends here on the political right who are still on board with a lot of the COVID restriction mindset, maybe not from a government implementing it from a top down perspective. But from a societal shaming standpoint, they're still in that camp wearing masks out indefinitely, shaming people because they didn't get shots or still aren't getting boosters, it's still out there. This is important for us to acknowledge what is happening and what has happened. So I implore you please, if you got some value from today's episode, please go ahead and give it a share. When you do go ahead and tag yours truly at be Nichols liberty. And by the way, we had a great episode yesterday where we went again back in time, all the way back again to 2020, where we discussed how libertarians could take on the duopoly and yes, in fact, when using what we call guerilla politics, if you missed that episode will have no fear. I will include that episode right here for you if you're joining us on the YouTubes. Or if you're joining us on rumble Odyssey Hello, do me a favor. And regardless of where you're joining us, please just hit that subscribe button and little notification bell. 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