News Round-Up: Inflated Covid Death Numbers, Scottish Transideological Greens and American Climate Anxiety
News Round-Up: Inflated Covid Death Numbers, Scottish Transideological Greens and American Climate Anxiety
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:
Study: less than a third of Covid deaths were actually caused by Covid.
The Scottish Greens have replaced environmentalism with transideology.
Half of Americans believe the climate crisis will destroy the planet in their lifetime.
Europe's energy companies are slashing renewable energy targets: it's too expensive.
Mohammed, an Iraqi immigrant who killed a father on the street of Stockholm, was arrested in Sweden.
Study: less than a third of Covid deaths were actually caused by Covid
Newly published research looked at the US data on Covid deaths and discovered that in reality, in 2/3 of these cases, the cause of death was not Covid at all, reports The Epoch Times.
The data shows that of the deaths recorded as caused by Covid-19 during the pandemic, only 30% could actually be attributed to Covid as the underlying cause. To put it simply, for one death that was indeed caused by Covid-19, two more deaths were recorded as Covid deaths in the statistics that were not caused by Covid-19. This means, for example, that Covid was recorded as the cause of a person's death if they had been in hospital for some other reason that caused the death, but they had also tested positive for Covid.
The researchers also compared the recording of Covid-19 as the cause of death with whether and how influenza and pneumonia had been recorded as the cause of death in previous years. It turned out that in the past, these diseases had not been recorded as causes of death as frequently. About 30 percent of deaths with diagnosed influenza and pneumonia were registered as deaths specifically from one or the other disease on death certificates, whereas of people diagnosed with Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021, 90 percent recorded Covid as the underlying cause of death. In 2022, the same was true for 76 percent of deaths with diagnosed Covid-19.
In short, the data shows that Covid-19 was systematically overreported as an underlying cause of death during the pandemic by an average of about three times for all ages, compared to influenza and pneumonia during the same period – and the trend was highest in those aged 15 to 54.
The fact that higher Covid mortality numbers were achieved during the pandemic by artificially putting people who died of other causes into those sad statistics has been the subject of much debate. This is particularly the case in younger age groups, which had a high incidence of Covid deaths, even though the actual risk of the disease was very low in them. A comprehensive study by John P. A. Ioannidis et al., Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, has shown that in the age group 0-59, the pre-vaccination infection fatality rate was 0.035% (IFR, indicates mortality of all infected) and of course the younger the age group, the lower the overall mortality was, being 0.0003% in the age group 0-19. Given these numbers, it is not possible that there could have been significant Covid mortality in the younger age groups.
The Scottish Greens have replaced environmentalism with transideology
The Scottish Greens have expelled a group of deserving members from their party for declaring that “sex is a biological reality”, The Sunday Post reports. 13 people – including office bearers and some who have campaigned for the Greens for more than 40 years – were accused of making the party less safe for trans and non-binary members. The group signed a declaration stating women have a right to maintain the sex-based protections enshrined in the Equality Act. It added that “women and girls have the right to discuss policies which affect them without being abused, harassed or intimidated”.
Complainants said the signatories broke the rules prohibiting the undermining of party policy and behaviours that constitute prejudice and are a threat to others. The party has had a rule since 2018 that states “trans-exclusionary individuals of any kind are not welcome as members”. The Scottish Greens said it hoped the expulsion of the 13 members will send a clear message ahead of June, which is known as Pride month in transideological circles, that it stands in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community “now and forever”.
Half of Americans believe the climate crisis will destroy the planet in their lifetime
A recent survey covering all US states found that 48% of Americans believe they will see climate change destroy our planet in their lifetime. The poll of 5,000 participants covered all US states.
Hawaii is the state where 66% of people agree that climate change will destroy the planet in their lifetime. And 61% of Hawaiians also believed that climate change will affect their state more than others. How much of a role last year's wildfire on the island of Maui, which was caused by unmaintained power lines that fell down during a storm and sparked, plays in this opinion is not clear from the survey.
The states with the lowest climate concerns in the United States are Indiana (36%) and Missouri (37%).
Why almost half of Americans are so alarmed that they predict the end of the world in their lifetime is not clear from the survey, although one might suspect that the constant warnings of climate crisis in the mass media play a role. We have to take into account that the alarming climate crisis content is not counterbalanced by messages from the world's top scientists who say that nothing drastic is going to happen. These messages are largely ignored by the mainstream media.
Europe's energy companies are slashing renewable energy targets: it's too expensive
A number of Europe's major power companies have scaled back or are reviewing their targets to develop renewable energy, as a sign of difficulties in transitioning away from fossil fuels, The Financial Times reports. The reasons for this are the high costs associated with the development of renewable energy and the concurrent low price of electricity.
Starkraft, Europe's largest renewable energy producer, has announced a review of its targets, while Portuguese energy company EDP has decided to reduce its investment in renewables. Ørsted, the world's largest offshore wind farm developer, also recently said it is scaling back its development plans by more than 10 GW by 2030 after abandoning two major projects off the coast of the United States.
Spanish energy giant Iberdrola announced in April that it would adopt a more selective approach to renewable energy and focus more on developing electricity grids. Italian energy company Enel already announced in November last year that its renewable energy investments would fall from €17 billion to €12.1 billion over the coming years.
Only the German company RWE has increased its 2030 targets, according to the publication.
Mohammed, an Iraqi immigrant who killed a father on the street of Stockholm, was arrested in Sweden
Recently, a 39-year-old man, Mikael, was killed by thugs in Skärholmen, Stockholm, Sweden, as he was cycling towards a swimming pool with his 12-year-old son. He got into a conflict with the perpetrators which he tried to resolve, but got shot in the head. Police have now caught the murder suspect. The suspect is 18-year-old Mohammed Khalid Mohammed Mohammed, who was already well known to the police.
The suspect is an Iraqi immigrant who has been known for his criminal behaviour for years. He has previously been suspected of four counts of robbery, attempted theft, assault, vandalism and multiple drug offences. Most recently, he was convicted in 2022 for a drug offence and last year was charged with robbery after stolen goods were found in his possession.
Mohammed arrived in Sweden with his family in 2007, when he was supposedly 1 year old, and was granted Swedish citizenship five years later. At the age of 15, he was taken into state care due to the “abuse of addictive substances, criminal activity, and socially destructive behavior”.
As Mohammed had just turned 18 and was still a minor at the time of the killing, he is being tried as a minor. This means that the sentence he faces is also lighter – up to eight years in prison.
In Sweden, armed violence, including street shootings, has become a major problem. In 2022, a total of 391 shooting incidents were recorded in Sweden, resulting in 62 deaths. In 2021, there were 45 shooting deaths. Last year, however, a total of 363 firearm-related crimes were committed, killing 53 people.
A large proportion of these incidents are linked to power struggles between different criminal gangs. Firearms are accompanied by the use of explosive devices, which also pose a serious threat to bystanders. At the beginning of February, for example, bombs exploded on a daily basis in Swedish cities.
As in the individual case of Mohammed, this kind of gang violence and organised crime in Sweden in general is directly linked to large-scale immigration. In other words, the leaders of these violent gangs, which make their livelihoods primarily from the drug trade, are themselves immigrants and typically involve young people with an immigrant background.
The problems of uncontrolled immigration in Sweden and the labelling of citizens who draw attention to these problems as spreaders of misinformation, etc., were also discussed in a recent analysis we published.
You’re not even allowed to say these things on FB. They “fact check” almost all posts about Covid and climate change. Censoring out of control