By Olivia Pierson
First published on Insight@theBFD 8/8/2020

[Author’s edit: this article was written before NZ was put into another lockdown on August 12th.]
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When it comes to a national response to dealing with COVID-19, it’s no secret that I abhor lockdowns. I’m opposed to their liberty-crushing nature in principle.
Back in March, nearly all world leaders panicked, then pathetically implemented the virus-combatting playbook of Communist China, the very country which sent forth this plague to begin with.

Taiwan, which sits only 100-miles off the south-eastern coast of China, so successfully and swiftly contained the virus, that it’s been dishing out advice to other countries’ health departments ever since.

With only 457 cases and 7 deaths in a population of 23 million people who live on an island that measures only 12,456 square miles (NZ is 103,737), Taiwan put technology and past experience to work effectively and were the ones to first alert the WHO that a strange and lethal new strain of “pneumonia” was on the rise in China.

Closely monitoring Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo and WeChat alerted Taiwan early to the fact that a novel virus was brewing in Wuhan. Dr. Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who first warned his medical colleagues about the virus before being shut down by his own government for “disturbing the public order” posted his findings to PTT Bulletin Board, originally founded in Taiwan. Dr. Li died allegedly from COVID-19 soon after, but his posts were noticed by a health officer in Taiwan named Philip Lo, who raised the alarm in Taiwan.

By January 1st, 2020, Taiwan was already actively screening all passengers flying in from Wuhan. By February, it had banned all incoming flights and ships from China. Only Taiwanese citizens were allowed to enter the country.

Having learned hard lessons from the 2003 SARS epidemic, Taiwan knew that many people carrying coronaviruses are often asymptomatic. This knowledge served to help them never miss a case when people presented no symptoms. Mandatory and closely policed 14-day quarantines were implemented for citizens coming from high-risk areas, with medical care, food and lodging paid for by the government and delivered to their doors. 

Integrating data from health insurance providers with immigration and customs to track recent travellers, Taiwan was able to alert officials to early cases by linking them with doctors’ visits. These methods were all well in place by the beginning of March.

Along with price-fixing government-made PPE, in order to avoid opportunistic price hikes, and mobile apps to let citizens across the country, from village to village, know which pharmacies and drug-stores were well-stocked, Taiwan managed to get through this pandemic without a lockdown. Businesses, schools and day-cares stayed open (except for several weeks during February) with strict hygiene measures in place – masks, temperature guns, hand-sanitisers and social distancing.

Taiwan’s response and results are remarkable, but it hinged on a high level of government oversight and herd immunity amongst the large population is neither a goal, nor a likelihood.

Sweden, on the other hand, another country which did not believe in crushing its economy over a flu pandemic, took an entirely different approach.

Unlike Taiwan, the Swedish government did not take an invasive approach and certainly didn’t believe in forcing people to wear masks etc. They opted for a good faith, high-trust model, in keeping with the fact that they are a capitalist, social democracy. They did not initiate a sweeping lockdown.

The rest of the world, especially those under Draconian lockdowns, love to hate Sweden for this non-conformist method of dealing with the pandemic and often highlight its death-toll while salivating over articles such as this one in USA Today, which contain chop-licking statements like these:

“And yet, the Swedish death rate is unnerving.

Sweden has a death toll greater than the United States: 556 deaths per million inhabitants, compared with 425, as of July 20.

Sweden also has a death toll more than four and a half times greater than that of the other four Nordic countries combined — more than seven times greater per million inhabitants. For a number of weeks, Sweden has been among the top in the world when it comes to current reported deaths per capita. And despite this, the strategy in essence remains the same.”

What the article fails to note is that Belgium, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy (and Peru) all have higher death tolls than Sweden, yet these countries have had in place very strict lockdowns and mandatory masks and PPE. France’s death stats, along with Brazil’s, are also close on the heels of Sweden’s.

So lockdowns are not the defining factor in smashing COVID; they are a defining factor in smashing economies - and lives.

Because 50% of deaths in all countries are the elderly (those over 70) with underlying health conditions who live in nursing homes or have assisted care visits, the best measure of all to avoid deaths is to vigilantly quarantine this vulnerable sector of society until herd immunity is reached with the rest of the population and the virus dies out.

Sweden now borders this enviable destination – and with its economy intact.

Meanwhile in a country like New Zealand, which has been heralded for a lockdown that seemingly eradicated the virus, leaving a fairly low death rate in its wake (and no herd immunity), there is no telling how long the country can tolerate the chronic isolation of closed borders and the economic destruction that brings with it. 

Far from being transparent, our government manipulates the economic data in a cynical attempt to convince Kiwis that there are no bad consequences from lockdown, so if we have to do it again, it will all be fine.  Humbug! 

Exhibit A: This week New Zealand put out its official unemployment rate at a suspiciously innocuous 4.0%.

This figure is grossly deceptive as it does not count the hundreds of thousands of people still buoyed up by wage subsidies which end next month, neither does it reflect the reality that during lockdown people were not recorded as “actively seeking employment” because the economy was closed for six to eight weeks.

Even our “experts” are now curiously reminding us that New Zealand remains extremely vulnerable to a second wave of COVID, which can only come through our border since we live surrounded by a giant moat, and they’ve told us that we eliminated the virus. There remains no plan in place to even attempt the reopening of our borders and many of us know that the economic shakedown has not yet happened but looms for 2021- but let’s sit back and congratulate ourselves that at least another 90-year-old with Alzheimer’s, diabetes and a dicky heart might live to see out another few months of breathing.

If lockdowns and mandatory masks worked as significant factors in quelling COVID, Belgium would not be the country which leads the world in the most deaths per capita.

If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer"

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By Olivia Pierson
First published on Insight@theBFD 30/07/2020

During the 2016 U.S election debates between candidates Trump and Clinton, Hillary began to spin the narrative around what would later become the Russia collusion hoax. 

Often referring to Trump as “Putin’s puppet,” Clinton also made common reference to Russian election meddling and claimed that the election of Trump to the White House would be a great gift to Putin.

Hillary knew this to be orchestrated nonsense.

Fred Fleitz, former chief of staff to the National Security Council, says that then-CIA Director John Brennan “suppressed the truth and put forward lower quality intelligence to claim the Russians backed Trump.”  Fleitz explains:

“House Intelligence Committee staff told me that after an exhaustive investigation reviewing intelligence and interviewing intelligence officers, they found that Brennan suppressed high-quality intelligence suggesting that Putin actually wanted the more predictable and malleable Clinton to win the 2016 election.”

Russia collusion was a shabby little ruse which was given maximum and relentless amplification by the MSM.  There was no truth to it. Mueller’s special counsel investigation findings proved this to be so.

During one of the 2016 presidential debates, Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked both candidates if they were prepared to accept the results of the election, no matter who won. Clinton answered in the affirmative. Trump did not commit to a clear answer, “I’ll have to see what happens,” he said. (In his interview with Wallace just two weeks ago, he gave an identical answer to the same question.)

On the night of her defeat, it is rumoured Clinton had such a dramatic emotional meltdown that she had to be given Xanax and restrained from physically assaulting her campaign managers Robbie Mook and John Podesta. Appallingly, she even failed to attend her costly gathering at the Javits Centre to give a concession speech to her waiting, shell-shocked supporters. She hadn’t even written one. She sent Podesta out instead to “clean up the mess.”

By May 2017, Clinton openly declared herself to be “part of the resistance” along with all the other peevish losers who bitterly refuse to call Trump “the President,” instead repairing to the dehumanising title, “the occupant of the White House.”  So much for accepting the election result.

We are now watching a plot form before this year’s November election that is equally as perverse as the Russia hoax proved to be.

Joe Biden, who obviously has some kind of dementia in play, is not fit to run as a presidential candidate and Democrats who happen to be paying attention are fretting in their pantaloons – but hey, anything’s better than another Trump win in their eyes. Those around Biden who know him well and must be firsthand witnesses to his cognitive decline, are trying to hoodwink the American people over something as important to civilisation as a free and fair election during a time of cultural unravelling. Biden won’t even agree to in-depth interviews such as the one Trump just did with Chris Wallace. Wallace, a Democrat, has extended invitations (plural) to Biden, but Biden’s handlers have repeatedly declined.

Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times wrote a recent op-ed advising Biden to not consent to partaking in this year’s traditional presidential debates unless Trump consents to making his tax returns public – yet another ruse to see that Biden avoids the mental rigours of live debates. Friedman’s opening line is, “I worry about Joe Biden debating Donald Trump.”  He’s far from being alone. If Biden demands Trump’s tax-returns, Trump should demand Biden’s neurological records.

On top of this chicanery, while milking that almighty catch-all excuse of the current COVID pandemic, Democrats are trying to force all 50 states to swiftly legislate for en-masse mail-in ballots instead of the usual face-to-face voting at a booth. 

Mail-ins are notoriously prone to error in the form of voter pressure from friends and family members, unverifiable identities and time delays in the postal system. Then there’s the practice of ballot harvesting, where one person drops off hundreds of collected ballots at a time for the count, rather than only an officially designated person acting for the voter. In many states this practice is illegal, since it opens the door to fraud and coercion, as well as delaying accurate election results on the night.
 
Democrats have proved themselves to be so deranged about all things Trump – and so desperate in their dirty tactics to win at any cost, as surely as night follows day, they will cheat.

When Wallace asked Trump if he would accept the results of this year’s election, his response, “I’ll have to see what happens,” was a crucially honest and sensible answer. If en masse mail-in voting takes place, it could well be a contested election since fraud and I.D inconsistencies statistically will be much more likely.  That’s hardly rocket-science and shouldn’t be news to anyone.

Brian Klass of the Washington Post – a Democrat organ stuffed full of fake news wrote these words this week, “President Trump is laying the groundwork to do something that no previous president has ever done: falsely claim that an election was fixed against him in order to discredit the vote.”

All the warning lights are blinking red. University of Birmingham professor Nic Cheeseman, an expert on contentious elections and political violence… normally worries when contested votes happen in Kenya or Zimbabwe. Now, he’s worried about the United States. “There are five warning I always look for,” he told me. “Organized militias, a leader who is not prepared to lose, distrust of the political system, disinformation, and a potentially close contest. Right now, the U.S. has all five.”

That’s a Democrat projection, again.

Rather amusingly, writers such as Klass make every effort to lock the attention of Americans myopically onto the blinking red warning lights in a bid to make sure they tune out the screaming fire alarms as the sprinklers rain down.

Why?

Because organised militias and radical mob violence are happening in broad daylight as I write this, thanks to ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter activists – and they’re all Democrats. 

There’s also the inconvenient fact that the elites of Obama’s administration refused to accept Trump as their elected president and colluded with intelligence agencies, not only to spread disinformation, but also to criminally use government apparatus to spy on Trump’s campaign team, his transition team and his early administration during his presidency.

This has served to give the American people one hell of a stark lesson in just how corrupted the political system had become during the Obama years. It truly was untrustworthy.  This also remains the reason why we’re currently awaiting John Durham’s report to find out exactly just how deep that vein of corruption ran.

Now the same people are seriously running an old man with dementia for president, and they’re trying to pretend he’s capable of filling the shoes of that titanic role, when it’s obvious to observers that Biden’s yet to be chosen Vice President is the person who will become the leader of the Free World, as Biden flakes out onto the soft, fuzzy sofas of la-la-land should he win.

This year’s Democrat election playbook is a ruse, wrapped in a ploy, inside a deception – with swindle on top.  Just as it was in 2016.

If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer"