Rocking the Boogie-Woogie Flu (Updated)

By Charlie Johnston

The pressure is mounting anew to force people to get the Covid jab to keep their jobs, get surgical procedures, or do normal communal things. This is un-American, of course, but the left hates America, anyway, so to them, that is a feature, not a flaw.

I have said since last November that I believe the Covid jab is going to be the biggest medical disaster in history. I wanted to be persuaded otherwise – and have always been so willing. My primary objection to all of this is neither religious nor political, but simply practical. This piece could have been 300 pages long, but I wanted something practical that you could use easily to sum up some major issues.  I have stayed away from exotic theories, even though I believe many of them to be correct. My method is inspired by St. Thomas Aquinas, who took great pains, in battling both the Manichean and Cathar heresies, to fight them on their own terms; to show that even by their own internal logic their thesis did not hold up. Of course, I am not near as refined or penetrating as St. Thomas, but I figured if I stayed with information that is easily available through the CDC, NIH and other “official” sources, it would be harder for them to refute, if not harder for their allies to cancel. If you think you are smart because you reject hard data for the narrative peddled in media interviews with officials, you will be shocked to find that when you compare the actual data their official organizations have compiled with what they say in media interviews, there is a vast canyon of disconnect. If, after checking that for yourself, you still stick with the narrative rather than the facts, you are not smart; you are either lazy or desperate to be one of the “cool kids.”

I object to the use of aborted fetal stem cells in the development in these, as I have against almost all vaccines in America for the last 25 years. On the use of fetal stem cells, though, this mRNA jab is no different from almost all vaccines used in the last generation.  It is only that many people first became aware of the use of fetal stem cells in the testing and manufacture of vaccines with this one. I am not philosophically anti-vaccination. Innoculations have been used successfully and commonly in America since colonial times. I am leery of the explosion of vaccines for children. When I was a kid, five or six vaccines seemed to cover the serious stuff. Now it is ten times that, with little or no serious study on how this multitude might interact negatively with each other. I am not convinced that those who fear the massive modern regimen of vaccines have triggered an excess of autism are right, but I am not convinced they are wrong, either. Both the pro- and the anti-conventional vaccine crowds strike me as enthusiasts for their own positions rather than sober analysts seeking to follow the evidence wherever it leads. And I am most assuredly not persuaded that just because a little of something is good, a whole lot of it must be better. If that were the case, I would replace my steak entirely with garlic. Or, to paraphrase a thinker I revere, man was not made for vaccines, but vaccines for man.

Before a debate over how extensive emergency government powers are or should be, there should be some reasonable consensus on what constitutes an emergency. Other than the first few weeks last March in which a novel coronavirus had emerged with some peculiar characteristics, other than flapping jaws and assertions of authority, that has never happened with Covid. The data that emerged early on that everyone could agree on justified a warning that this virus was particularly dangerous to those who were older, obese, or had diabetes. Rather than a calm assessment and sober recommendations after a few weeks the media, public health officials, and opportunistic politicians did everything they could to foment panic in order to justify arbitrary exercises of power over a formerly free people.

Data was so bowdlerized it was very difficult, nearly impossible, to get good statistical information. Hospitals were offered a governmental bounty for every death they could attribute to Covid – and they responded enthusiastically. People who were killed in car accidents or from knife or firearm wounds were listed as Covid deaths. Those you could easily see were NOT Covid deaths. One had to wonder how many other deaths from the flu, pneumonia or other less obvious lies, were not from Covid. This became particularly obvious when reported annual deaths from the flu in the U.S. last year, normally about 80,000 per year, dropped to near zero. Other diseases which could, for a bounty, wrongfully be attributed to Covid, did much the same. The once noble CDC has become the premier font of medical misinformation in the last year and a half. When it claimed that Covid took 500,000 additional lives last year, a footnote showed that its methodology was to assume that all other causes of death remained at normal levels and add on the actual number of those it had attributed to Covid. It did not even take into account its own actual numbers showing the collapse in the death rate from a multitude of other causes. Even worse, when enterprising researchers looked into the actual raw numbers of reported deaths state by state, 2020 was entirely normal in the total number of deaths from all causes. Yet the response of officials and the media was to constantly pump up the panic.

I have stayed away from even credible medical sources who have a long-standing anti-vaccine agenda. If I know that a particular expert would likely decry the Covid jab even if it was the best, most effective thing ever, I do not use them. Dr. Peter McCullough does not fit this mode at all. He is fully establishment, was Vice Chief of internal medicine at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas who taught at Baylor University and at Texas A & M. He has made the astounding claim that, already, the Covid jab may well have killed more people than the virus. He cites credible evidence that as few as six percent of reported Covid deaths are actually Covid deaths – and that the reported deaths through the VAERS system, at most, only account for 10 percent of the actual deaths. Since approximately 6,100 Covid jab deaths have been reported, this supposition is entirely plausible. (See update below. Dr. McCullough is no longer affiliated with Baylor Medical Center)

Up until Covid mania set in, both the CDC and the WHO were agreed that masks, except for specific types in rigorously controlled environments, were ineffective at preventing the transmission of viruses. But since they could be used to further the panic and justify authoritarian power grabs, masks became the go-to strategy – and are about to become so again. The reality is that masks provide as much protection from viruses as argyle sweaters do from bullets. In the favor of argyle sweaters, they do not increase facial and laryngeal infections or weaken the immune system as masks do. Officials did two sorts of serious damage here: first, they ordered something that has actual adverse health consequences for many and; second, they convinced frightened people that masks gave them protection that they did not. They, in effect, prescribed argyle sweaters for the general public and called them bullet-proof vests. Masks do provide some protection from smoke, dust and pollen, so it has dismayed me to see some ridicule people for wearing them. I don’t know what another’s situation is – and they may be using it for one of the areas in which it does provide real protection. I am as adamantly opposed to anyone mandating that others not wear masks as I am that officials mandate that they do.

This has been a manufactured crisis. The facts justified putting out an advisory to those who were particularly vulnerable, but not wholesale draconian restrictions imposed by people who do not have that sort of blanket authority. Hysterics have tried to make this the equivalent (or even worse than) the Spanish flu of a century ago. The average age of reported mortal victims of Covid, even with the government’s bowdlerized statistics, is 73. The average age for victims of the Spanish flu was 28. It turns out the vaunted tests for Covid have been pulled by the CDC because they can’t differentiate between Covid and the common cold – both show a positive result. They are almost useless. As a general rule, the states which had the lightest touch had better results than whose which cracked down. Even among those with co-morbidities, the survival rate for those who get Covid is 99 percent. (Actually, it is higher than that, but why quibble over 100ths of a percent when the number that officials will, themselves, concede repudiates the notion of a “deadly” pandemic?) Sweden, which alone among nations, kept things normal, focused only on extra protection for those who were particularly vulnerable and left ordinary people to make their own decisions about their health, has been completely vindicated. Their approach worked.  Now the powers that be are pumping up the panic by talking about the “Delta variant,” as if a respiratory virus has never mutated before. Here’s some news: they all do – and the variants are almost always weaker than the original. So far, the data on this variant show it to be more communicable but significantly less virulent. Unless we are planning to maintain a perpetual state of emergency and give the government unconstitutional power whenever there is an emergency, we need to wisen up. The fact is, if you are willing to give gov’t officials extraordinary arbitrary power every time there is an emergency, they will keep coming up with emergencies to preserve their extraordinary arbitrary power.

The suppression of effective therapies against Covid gave me pause. The effectiveness of a hydroxychloroquine-zinc regimen was recognized by serious doctors and scientists early on – but was banned while Donald Trump was president by politicized health boards. It has been acknowledged as safe now that Joe Biden occupies the oval office, but leftist health advocates still try to pretend it is innocuous – even though it and ivermectin have had GREAT results wherever they are tried. Similarly, Ivermectin was largely banned. What was most unnerving was the frankly dishonest methods with which the politicized health officials went about trying to discredit these therapies. A major study tested hydroxochloroquine without zinc to find it ineffective. Well, of course. Zinc is the vital ingredient, but hydroxy is the vital delivery method to get it into your system (Note – in an earlier version of this article, I flip-flopped hydroxy and zinc) . It was as transparently dishonest as declaring nitro-glycerin safe and stable by testing glycerin without ever adding nitric acid to the mix. Ivermectin is described as dangerous. But it is dangerous only if you overdose, which is true of every drug, including aspirin. Of course, there could have been no emergency use approval of the mRNA shots if there was an effective therapy. I have to wonder why the powers that be have gone to such great lengths to herd us into this experimental gene therapy.

A sure way NOT to inspire confidence in me was for the government and media to collaborate to censor any information that did not conform to the official government narrative. It was not just censorship of laymen like me, but of highly credentialed and accomplished doctors and scientists from places such as Stanford, Harvard and other top universities. Didn’t matter. People with lesser credentials in government offices or NO credentials in anything, much less medicine or science, at social media sites routinely censored top men and women who did not parrot the approved narrative. Truth will stand the test of examination. If you are not willing to submit it to examination and your only response to anyone questioning it is, “Shut up, hick!” you are peddling something, but it ain’t truth.

I have been shocked that about a dozen honest doctors I know were peddling the company line. They also know me, so when I told them some contra-indicative facts, they did take the time to do the research – and then told me in shocked bewilderment that I was right. I somewhat sympathize with people who, to save time, rely on what were once trusted and reliable sources. But people’s health and livelihoods are at stake here. When significant and serious controversy arises, when top professionals are being silenced, a doctor has an obligation to do his research independently. First, do no harm. I am not a doctor or scientist, but I am a more than competent researcher – and our medical professionals who are not captive to the narrative ought to take time to become the same.

In the last year, we have succeeded in adopting policies that damage our health, devastate our economy, destroy many people’s livelihoods, condemn many old folks to die alone, and traumatize our children. What we have accomplished is to give many hall monitors wearing big shoes the frisson of bossing around what they think are underlings while laying the groundwork for labeling a multitude of perfectly ordinary challenges into emergencies to keep the hall monitors’ frisson going.

I have received two flyers in the mail from public health authorities about the Covid jab. Both assure me that it is “safe and effective.”  That’s it. To take a page from the media’s playbook, they make this assertion without evidence. Oh, they gave a nod to “misinformation,” but tell me not to be fooled by it, but trust their authority. That is not an argument, it is just a mantra. And I am supposed to trust the people who have, at best, been serially wrong about most everything for the last few years – and at worst flat out lying about everything?!

Now let us turn to the Covid jab. First, a few facts – and accompanying commentary and questions. I know, only stupid rubes ask questions of their governmental and media overlords and are likely to get censored if they dare. But I will ask anyway:

• The mRNA shot for Covid is NOT a vaccine. It is experimental immunotherapy, a form of gene therapy being tested on everyone who gets it under an emergency use authorization. A vaccine is a suspension of attenuated or killed microorganisms to trigger the body’s natural production of antibodies to fight similar infections from full-strength organisms of the same type. This gene therapy injects trillions of biological devices to trigger the body into making spike proteins to target such infections. It has not ever been used in humans before. They call it a vaccine because that is a comfortable term that hearkens to therapies that most people are familiar and have experience with. This is NOT the same thing. Anyone who will not acknowledge that from the start is ignorant or is lying – and either way you should not trust anything further they say.
• There has been no long-term testing of mRNA jabs in humans. You who take it ARE the test subjects. There have been extensive animal tests for over a decade – but the results I have found are so horrifying, long-term, that I will not write about them. On three occasions, medical professionals have brought up the animal testing to me when I note that there have been no long-term human tests. In each case, I told them I was familiar with a good chunk of the animal tests, but have not found any that had good results and asked if they would send me a link to those they knew about that have had good results. None knew of any – and one forlornly said he had been assured that the problems had been worked out.
• The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) was inaugurated in 1990 to accept and analyze reports of adverse reactions to vaccines. It is co-managed by the CDC and the FDA. Before the Covid jab, a threshold for pulling a vaccine from the market and re-working it because of dangerous adverse reactions has been 50 reported deaths. The reason for such a small number is because the CDC estimated that each reported incident represents only one to ten percent of actual cases – so 50 reported deaths translates to 500-5000 actual deaths. As I write this, the reported deaths from the Covid jab are at 6,100. At this point, there have been more reported deaths and other adverse reactions from the Covid jabs than from all other vaccines combined for the last 31 years. Unless there is some compelling reason that the reporting on this is different from every other traditional vaccine, that means that between 60,000 to 600,000 have died from this jab. I want to know, A) why was not standard protocol followed when the fatalities from this jab reached 50 to pull them from distribution and; B) if the traditional ratios do not apply, I want a compelling explanation for why they do not. And no, “shut up and obey, stupid,” is not a sufficient explanation for me. The raw data compiled by the CDC, itself, indicates this jab is a clear and present danger to public health.
• It is a federal crime to force anyone to undergo any medical procedure without their consent. On what basis can businesses and government force people to comply? And for an experimental therapy, at that? Other than, of course, the left’s traditional ethos of, “the law and Constitution be damned. You WILL do what we want.” And with compliant courts torturing the plain language of the law to give leftists what they demand, there is no legal defense for people who dissent from the narrative. But if that is the case, we are most assuredly NOT a free, self-governing people any longer.
• The CDC, itself, recognizes that the mRNA jab is linked to swelling of the heart in young people. It says that it has identified over 1,200 such cases in people under 30. It is also recognized that Covid jabs increase the risk of blood clots – but the data is bowdlerized there, too. Some outlets say that only one in every hundred who get the shot develops a blood clot (about the same number who die of Covid EVEN if you accept the vastly inflated numbers of Covid cases), others say it is only five in a million, and one even claims absurdly that you are more likely to get a blood clot if you don’t get the shot. This, apparently, is the baffle them with bullschiff strategy.
• MIT researchers angrily assert that the vaccine hesitant are cheating by using actual, reproducible data to defend their case. I kid you not. Apparently arming yourself with solid facts and evidence is racist or something and should be banned. “Just do what we say, rubes.”

A whole host of otherwise “conservative” commentators have refused to do a deep dive into the data involving this while defending people’s right to refuse forced medical treatment. This allows them to pretend that they are not one of the rubes, while still defending those rubes’ rights. People should always have the right to refuse medical treatment – and particularly experimental therapies – but all the supposed “conservatives” who say they support autonomy while personally supporting the “vaccine” are utterly abdicating their responsibility to look at the hard questions – and the very simple one of whether this is actually “safe and effective” based on actual facts and evidence. If you want to respond to the substance of my serious questions and relieve my concerns, I am open and have been eagerly seeking that for over a year. If you want to just be down with the cool kids, don’t bother, I’ll defend myself. And of course, the wimpy Republican caucus is just trying to protect its perks and privileges without getting caught in the crossfire.

Many of you are faced with either getting the jab or losing your job or being denied other necessary medical treatment. From the time I started writing eight years ago, I emphasized that bold platitudes were not going to cut it – that you were going to have to think very seriously about some hard decisions you never thought you would have to make in America. Now, I do not think sin attaches to taking these shots (or at least no more than taking any actual vaccine over the last generation). So I do not think you have to worry overmuch about whether you are right with God if you are coerced, or even just scared, into taking the shot. But I also think you are entitled to know what the actual stakes are – which even conservatives, faith leaders, and otherwise responsible public leaders are downplaying badly.

I think God has at least three things He intends to accomplish through all of this.

First, He will humble His people, that they may hearken more to Him. When I first began writing eight years ago I emphasized that people needed to think seriously about decisions they would have to make in extreme circumstances; that defiant platitudes shouted from the cocoon of comfort and safety in the west would soon not cut it. As people are having to make decisions to accept something they think is dangerously flawed or forfeit their job or medical treatment for other serious ailments, the majority are finding they are not nearly as boldly defiant as they thought they were. There is nothing wrong with this. The same disciples who boldly claimed they would go with Jesus to His death scattered in panic when that reality actually came. The risen Jesus did not condemn them for their weakness. Rather, He used it as an object lesson for them on the difference between brave talk and steadfast resolve – and that they were called to mouth off less going forward and live real, steadfast resolve. Most all people now will make decisions they are not sure of – and even are sometimes ashamed of. Have no fear. The Lord is not preparing you for destruction: He is getting your mind right to confront the rigors of the Storm. Less certainty of your own mighty prowess and more confidence in Him is exactly what we all need, without neglecting the little we actually can do.

Second, He will manifest His mighty power. With some people having manufactured a full-blown crisis out of a normal problem, the Lord is taking on the role of a parent confronted with a perpetually whiny child: “You want to cry, I’ll give you something to cry about.” I have little doubt we are about to go from a pretend crisis to a full-blown existential crisis. Whenever we go too long convincing ourselves that we are the masters of the universe, it pleases God to demonstrate to us that we are not. We will discover how dangerous it is to rely solely on our own prowess.

Third, He will manifest His glory. “For I know the plans that I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me.” (Jeremiah 29:11-13). Once you have seen His power, the time of choosing shall be upon you. “And if you be unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15) As the insightful Christian song by the later Bob Dylan says, You Gotta Serve Somebody. The choice you make will determine how you fare for the rest of the Storm. As the Lord says, the last will be first and the first will be last.

In short, we may be masters of a system devised by ourselves that is doomed to destruction or servants in the system devised by the Lord that leads to life. Choose well.

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Hoo-wee! The young theologian, Daniel O’Connor, wrote a lengthy piece Wednesday positing that the Antichrist is about to make his malign entrance onto the world scene. As it is well known that I hold O’Connor in high, even affectionally paternal, regard, I am bombarded by people asking me what I think. Obviously, folks also know that it is foundational to my thought that I insist that, though the spirit of Antichrist is rampant in the world, the man of perdition does not make his appearance until the end – and this is NOT the end.

I reject O’Connor’s conclusion categorically. Even so, my regard for him is undiminished, chiefly because of his character. O’Connor is engaged in a search for what is true, not that whatever he says be true. He notes that this is speculative on his part, then makes a good case for why it might be true. I am completely confident that, should he turn out to have erred, he will own it candidly. There will be no effort to pretend he never said it or to surreptitiously go back and change an old article. Daniel works hard to find what is true and follow it. He has no interest in trying to prove that old errors are actually true.

I am kind of glad this has come up – and from an otherwise credible source. As insistent as I have been that this crisis is not the end, I have also been insistent that it will seem to many like the end. O’Connor makes a very good case for why the cultural infrastructure is now quite suited for such an appearance. On that, I think he is right. The devil is destined to lose this round badly, but like the wrecker he is, he is fomenting as much chaos as he can to cause as many souls as he can to perish before he is rebuked from on high. I particularly like Daniel’s felicitous phrase, “The devil’s dress rehearsal…” That is, I think, exactly what this is. The devil is testing the means he will later use for his final assault before being permanently banished to the lake of fire, himself, at the actual end of time.

For most, if they think the end is in sight, their instinct is to hunker down rather than to go forth. It absolves them of their evangelical and charitable duty before God. O’Connor is one of the few people I know who could seriously posit the entrance of the Antichrist AND simultaneously insist on going forth rather than hunkering down. On the latter, we remain as agreed as we ever have been. But most will leap to their own conclusions, anyway. It is a foundational concern of mine, for a growing number of people believe it might be the end – and I suspect before a few more months are gone, the number who so believe will jump geometrically. It is why I was so emphatic on that point at the conference and with our speakers: I wanted our attendees inoculated in real time against such things in preparation for when the current is raging against them. Those who are my friends are called to be those who help others weather the storm and fill them with new hope and steadfast resolve to be heralds of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart. I fully expect that, after that happens, Daniel and I will break bread together reviewing what we each got right, what we each got wrong, and give thanks for being able to be, as best we knew how, a sign of hope to all who would hear.

A quick review of some things that are foundational to my thought. (Foundational things will not change).

-This crisis will be the greatest in the history of the world except for the actual end.

-The crisis will degenerate so that many believe it to be the actual end.

-We have three prime duties before God: to defend the faith, hearten the faithful, and defend the faithful.

-We live that primarily by acknowledging God, taking the next right step, and being a sign of hope to those around us.

If you privately think that this might be the end and the time of the actual Antichrist, well, we have a diversity of opinions expressed here – and most help us hone our thought together. But that will NOT be preached from this site.

(Update – Dr. Peter McCullough, referenced in this article, signed a separation agreement with Baylor University Medical Center in February of this year. He WAS affiliated with them, but is no longer.)

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I have a busy weekend before me. I will spend most of tomorrow at the 24^th annual St. Thomas Aquinas Conference in Colorado Springs. It is a free conference that is put on by a dear friend of mine, Therese Lorenz, every year. Often I am out of town when it comes, but if I am in town, I like to go and visit with friends from across the country. If you are in the vicinity of Colorado Springs tomorrow, come on out and say hi. Just check the link above for the address of the Hotel Elegante where it is being held.

Then on Sunday, after Mass, I will head up to visit Mt. Meeker. I like to go there for contemplation several times a year. This time, a dear friend, Sue Domen, is in town from the Midwest. She is one of the governing board members of CORAC – and is the woman who quarterbacked all the moving parts to keep me on schedule when my car broke down in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, earlier this year. This will be the first time she has seen it. It is rewarding to go contemplate there – and especially rewarding to do so with a friend.

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Finally, I have never been in Facebook jail. I decided at the end of last year that the first time I was put there would also be the last, because I would quit posting on Facebook altogether. I won’t take the Pages down; I will just cease to use them. If that happens, you will be able to find me at MeWe. I dumped Twitter several years ago. I bring it up because if there is one thing the dewy-eyed censors at Facebook are all over, it is factual information on Covid that is contrary to the narrative of the government-media complex.  

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