News Round-Up: Germany's Covid Files, Rise of Cancer among Young People and the US FDA Deleting Its Posts on Ivermectin
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
German Covid files reveal that experts warned of the harms of the lockdown policy, government still used coercive measures.
Gas-fired power generation in Europe is on the rise.
More cancer cases among younger adults: scientists are puzzled why.
Sweden's central banker: cash payments must be written into law.
The US FDA agreed to a court settlement to delete misinformation claiming that ivermectin is not effective in Covid treatment.
German Covid documents reveal that experts warned of the harms of the lockdown policy, government still used coercive measures
Germany's health agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), had to publish the confidential protocols of the Covid crisis team meetings after a long legal battle with journalists, and these documents have provoked a lively response in the country, Remix News reports. The hitherto secret documents – 2,500 pages in total – clearly indicate RKI's knowledge, even before the lockdown policy was implemented, that it was going to do more harm than good. For example, they referred to Africa's past experience and the negative results observed there. The disclosure shows that the RKI's concern in 2020 was, among other things, that the use of lockdown policies could lead to increased child mortality.
RKI experts also considered that there was a lack of data to support the use of face masks as effective in limiting the spread of the virus. For example, one of the protocols states that it would make sense for the RKI to communicate actively why it does not recommend the use of masks. However, it is noteworthy that no such messages were ever issued by the agency, despite the fact that the masks and other stringent measures were implemented and protested against in wider society.
Moreover, the documents show that, while experts may have been restrained in their opinions, politicians over-dramatised the situation. It is possible that this was done precisely in order to impose more coercive measures and to justify the restriction of people's fundamental rights. It is worth recalling that harsh rules and restrictions on movement were often enforced by police coercion, and often by using quite brutal force.
It is also noteworthy that some of the material based on the meeting notes of the crisis unit between February 2020 and April 2021 have still been redacted – more than a thousand paragraphs, or about a third of the text. The German public is now demanding that the redacted part must also be published.
In any case, the publication of these documents has provoked a great deal of controversy in the country, including in political circles. While the opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD) is predictably calling for a commission investigation, it is somewhat surprising that a review of Covid's policy has also been demanded by the so-called progressive wing – the Greens, who currently share government responsibility in the country, are now also calling for a comprehensive review of Covid policies.
Gas-fired power generation to soar in Europe
While major European countries are still talking about decarbonising electricity grids by 2035, the reality shows that there is little faith in this – witnessed by plans to build 72 gigawatts of new gas-fired power stations across Europe. This would be sufficient to power 60 million homes. Compared to the current situation, this will increase gas-fired electricity generation by 27%.
It is primarily a question of the need to ensure a steady energy supply, i.e. to choose which controllable generating capacity will accomplish the need. In other words, the capacity of wind turbines, for example, can be developed indefinitely, but the question is what to do in a situation where there is no wind. What is needed is a controllable capacity that is independent of weather conditions, and one such option is gas-fired power stations.
The United Kingdom plans to increase the new gas capacity the most. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a few weeks ago that the construction of new gas-fired power stations is the insurance policy the country needs to protect its energy security. “A nation that is dependent on the whims of dictators for its energy supply can never be truly safe," he said. However, Sunak added that at the same time, the move towards the 2050 Net Zero target will continue.
Such plans for gas plants will, of course, come under sharp criticism from the advocates of the Net Zero movement, who say they run counter to the government's pledge to make the electricity grid carbon-free by 2035. For example, Labour, currently in opposition, is promising to decarbonise electricity generation by 2030 but has been reluctant to talk about the costs. A recent analysis, however, calculated that this would cost £116 billion (€136 billion), making it essentially unfeasible.
Cancer diagnoses among young people on the rise
The recent announcement by the UK's Princess Catherine that she has cancer has also sparked a wider debate in the UK about the rise in cancer diagnoses, particularly among young adults, reports The Telegraph. Doctors are used to seeing more older people with certain types of cancer, but in recent years there has been a mysterious new “epidemic” of abdominal cancers in younger people aged under 45. Many are fit and healthy, prompting a scramble among scientists to establish what is causing the trend.
Professor Andrew Beggs, a senior research fellow at the University of Birmingham, runs a clinic for cancer patients under 45. “When I started as a cancer surgeon 20 years ago, you rarely saw any younger patients, but now I see them regularly,” he said.
Models based on global data predict that the number of cancer cases will increase by about 30% between 2019 and 2030. This is a significantly faster increase than in the previous 30 years.
The Telegraph notes that researchers are confused about what could be causing such a rapid increase, although most believe it is unlikely to be down to a single factor. Some scientists believe that the cause may be partly genetic, but the increase in cancer risk could also be due to diet or environmental factors.
The article does not touch on another specific factor that has affected society as a whole in just the last few years, namely the injection of a large proportion of the population with Covid vaccines. Yet the role of these vaccines in promoting the development of at least some types of cancer has long been established. For example, Michel Goldman, a well-known Belgian immunologist, demonstrated already in 2022 that a booster dose of Pfizer's Covid vaccine caused his previously diagnosed lymphoma to develop particularly aggressively.
When Goldman completed his study, he considered at length whether to publish it at all. As a researcher and advocate of vaccines, he did not want to give the so-called anti-vaxxers any leverage. He still decided to publish the research and admitted that many people wrote to him after that saying they had had similar sad experiences – several of whom confirmed that they too had been diagnosed with an aggressively growing malignant tumour, following a vaccine dose.
Sweden's central banker: cash payments must be written into law
It must be possible to use cash both today and in the future, said Aino Bunge, Deputy Governor of the Swedish central bank (Riksbank), at a recent seminar on the use of cash given at the Swedish parliament. "Legislation is now needed to ensure that it is still possible to pay with cash in Sweden. Ultimately, it is the state's responsibility to ensure that payments are safe, efficient and accessible – and that all parts of the cash chain work – in normal times, in crises and in a state of heightened alert," Bunge said.
While digitisation has contributed to the creation of innovative, fast, and convenient payment solutions, in which she said Sweden is leading the way, it has its problems as well. Bunge said it must be possible to make payments even when, for example, electricity is out or data communications are down due to a crisis. In other words, cash helps to improve the resilience of the payment system. At the same time, a growing number of businesses in Sweden have stopped accepting cash and a recent Riksbank survey shows that only one in ten people in the country have used cash in a shop for their last purchase. According to Bunge, the trend could lead to more shops and services stopping accepting cash, making it even harder to access and use it.
Such messages are important in the context of a world that is increasingly talking about replacing cash with digital-only payment options. In addition to the problems that can befall digital payment solutions in a crisis, cash is also anonymous in comparison.
The legal protection of cash as a means of payment has also been the subject of a lengthy debate in Austria, for example, where some political parties would like to see this possibility included in the constitution. However, no political agreement has been reached to do so.
The US FDA agreed to a court settlement to delete misinformation claiming that ivermectin is not effective in Covid treatment
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reached a settlement agreement in a Texas court on the 21st of March, agreeing to remove social media posts and websites that urged people not to use ivermectin to treat COVID-19, reports The Epoch Times.
In an effort to make the drug unappealing to people and to prevent it from being used as Covid treatment, the FDA made posts to this end on both its website and social media during the height of the pandemic in 2021. For example, ivermectin was portrayed as a drug used to fight parasites only in domestic animals. “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it,” one official FDA social media post, for example, read. Such a post is unfair even if one accepts that ivermectin has no effect in treatment against Covid-19. In fact, the drug is widely used and very necessary in the treatment of human parasites in the southern hemisphere. There were other posts denigrating ivermectin, and now the FDA must delete them all.
The FDA must also take down the web pages that spread misinformation about ivermectin. For example, a page has already been taken down that had the following question-and-answer: “Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? No.” Within 21 days, a webpage explaining why ivermectin should not be used to prevent or treat Covid-19 must also be removed. This page states, among other things, that ivermectin is not effective against Covid-19, while citing studies showing just the opposite.
Doctors who brought the lawsuit against the FDA will drop further claims under the settlement.
It is particularly noteworthy that the efficacy of ivermectin against Covid-19 has indeed been demonstrated by most of the studies conducted on the matter. During the pandemic, however, this knowledge was denied, and information and debate about it were censored.