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January 25, 2021

Bystander at the Switch: The Moral Case Against COVID Lockdowns

Do you remember the moral riddle taught in grade school called the "Bystander at the Switch" (also known as the Trolley Problem)? It was a story about a runaway train hurtling towards a cluster of people stuck on the tracks ahead. But you have the option to pull the switch and send the train down another track with a smaller number of people on it. You have the option of saving some lives by sacrificing a smaller number of others. Do you pull the switch?

In grade school the riddle was posed as a moral dilemma. But it's not. There was only ever one correct choice. We invented universal human rights to make it clear that no person or government has the right to pull the switch to send the train down another track towards a sacrificial group of victims. 

January 22, 2021

Open letter to Dr. Theresa Tam (Chief Public Health Officer of Canada) regarding the public health response to COVID:

Dear Dr. Tam,

RE: Request for a two-way public discussion with you about the public health response to COVID. 

Many people, both in Canada and worldwide, are critical of the public health response to COVID-19 (lockdowns, masks, PCR testing, treatment options, vaccine rollout, etc.). The Great Barrington Declaration alone counts more than 53,000 medical practitioners and medical scientists, as well as over 700,000 concerned citizens like myself who have tried to prompt a broader discussion about these measures. But for the past 10 months, our media, politicians, and health authorities have largely ignored our concerns or, worse yet, lectured and ridiculed us as conspiracy theorists or uncaring monsters who don't care about grandma.

December 21, 2020

Unravelling the Mystery of Human Intelligence

The brain's evolutionary balancing act between storage, connectivity, data processing, and the free exchange of ideas.

Increasing brain size is credited as the key feature that propelled us from tree-climbing ape to space-traveling modern human. But is intelligence really just about an increase in brain mass?

Human intelligence has been shaped by the brain's delicate balancing act between data storage and data processing capability. But data storage can be outsourced. By talking to our friends and neighbors, reading books, doing a Google Search, or looking something up on Wikipedia, we've changed the rules of the evolutionary game so that memorization isn't as important as it used to be. It's creativity - finding useful patterns in the flood of data - that gives us an evolutionary edge in the modern world.

As a result, evolutionary pressure is gradually swinging away from data storage and towards more efficient data processing and more creative problem-solving. This is, quite literally, reshaping the way our brains are structured.

September 29, 2020

Opinion is Not Evidence, Ignoring Science to Follow Gut Instinct

(Part 1 of Face Masks: A Placebo with Harmful Side Effects)

(This is the first article in a series exploring the science, psychology, and unintended consequences of COVID-19 face masks.) 

~ ~ ~
Our health officials (and the media) have relentlessly promoted face masks as a common-sense solution to reduce the spread of COVID-19. The messaging has been so effective that one jurisdiction after another has adopted mandatory mask laws. Why wouldn't they if wearing them is all upside with little downside? Mask critics are easily dismissed with a little shaming. "So, they're a little uncomfortable, get over it, you could save another person's life!"

If only it was that easy. 

Droplets and Aerosols, Why Catching the Sneeze Doesn't Reduce Viral Transmission

(Part 2 of Face Masks: A Placebo with Harmful Side Effects)

(This is the second article in a series exploring the science, psychology, and unintended consequences of COVID-19 face masks.) 

Part 2 - Droplets and Aerosols, Why Catching the Sneeze Doesn't Reduce Viral Transmission

~ ~ ~

In part 1 of this five-part series about face masks, I discussed how the politicization of the COVID-19 virus has led our health authorities to prioritize opinions over evidence, causing them to turn their backs on decades worth of randomized controlled trials, which clearly demonstrated that face masks are not an effective tool to reduce the spread of respiratory viruses. 

In this article I will explain why they don't work, despite our initial gut instinct that they should.

Spreading Fear and False Expectations, One Mask At A Time

(Part 4 of Face Masks: A Placebo With Harmful Side Effects)

(This is the fourth article in a series exploring the science, psychology, and unintended consequences of COVID-19 face masks.) 

Part 4 - Spreading Fear and False Expectations, One Mask At A Time

~ ~ ~

In part 1 of this series, I showed how our health authorities are ignoring decades of robust scientific evidence demonstrating that face masks don't reduce the spread of respiratory viruses in favor of opinions that they do. In part 2, I explored the basic physics of the droplets and aerosols produced by coughing, sneezing, and breathing, which explained why face masks cannot reduce the spread of a respiratory virus despite our gut instinct that they should. And in part 3, I showed how our misplaced confidence in face masks and air filtration caused us to recklessly expose many of our most vulnerable citizens to contaminated air spaces, leading to thousands of entirely preventable deaths.

In this article I will discuss how face masks are contributing to a self-reinforcing cycle of irrational fear. A placebo is not harmless if the psychological effect of wearing this placebo contributes to an unjustified level of panic not proportional to the threat. And, even more importantly, a placebo is not harmless if the illusion of safety offered by this placebo gives people unrealistic expectations of being able to avoid the risk altogether. Then, when this misplaced faith in masks fails to stop new infections and deaths, the public (and policymakers) erroneously blame "irresponsible" citizens, which leads to an escalation of authoritarian enforcement of ineffective health measures that dismantle our civil liberties and ruin our lives.

Mask Laws and the End of "My Body, My Choice"

(Part 5 of Face Masks: A Placebo With Harmful Side Effects)

(This is the fifth and final article in a series exploring the science, psychology, and unintended consequences of COVID-19 face masks.)

Part 5: Mask Laws and the End of "My Body, My Choice"

~ ~ ~

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." ~ Benjamin Franklin, 1755

A mandatory face mask is not just a piece of cloth strapped to your face. The laws making face masks mandatory represent a fundamental shift in the social contract between citizens and their governments. They have made individual autonomy negotiable, subject to the needs of our nations, the fears of our neighbors, and the whims of our leaders.

The Tragedy of Protecting the Vulnerable With A Placebo

(Part 3 of Face Masks: A Placebo with Harmful Side Effects)

(This is the third article in a series exploring the science, psychology, and unintended consequences of COVID-19 face masks.)

Part 3 - The Tragedy of Protecting the Vulnerable With A Placebo

~ ~ ~ 

In part 1 of this article series I explained why our health authorities turned their backs on decades of medical evidence when they wrongly assumed that face masks are capable of reducing the spread of respiratory viruses. In part 2 I discussed the basic physics of why the large droplets produced by coughing and sneezing don't meaningfully contribute to spreading the virus while the aerosols that are responsible for spreading the virus are too small to be filtered by masks. 

In this article I will explain how our misplaced faith in masks (and air filtration in general) is dramatically increasing the risk of death among our most vulnerable citizens in long-term care homes. The mistaken focus on air filtration prevented health authorities from implementing other effective measures and led to dangerous policies that put many of our most vulnerable citizens in harm's way by locking them in contaminated air spaces with other infected COVID patients. 

September 9, 2020

Carrots and Sticks Go Viral


Marks on the ground for where to stand,

Lines in the stores so we don’t get out of hand,

Punished in the park for where we sit,

Praised for wearing masks so no-one gets bit,

Now all that’s missing is biscuits, clickers, and chaining,

This ain’t a health exercise, it’s dog training!

April 20, 2020

COVID-19 Lockdown

The Epidemiological Data Shows it is Unnecessary, Extremely Risky, and Harmful to Those Most in Need of Protection

The rapidly-growing body of epidemiological, virological, and forensic data from around the world shows that, in our fight against the COVID-19 virus, we have taken the precautionary principle to absurd extremes, completely out of proportion to the risk we face. We are in the process of throwing ourselves off an economic cliff to escape a virus that, while not to be taken lightly, is revealing itself to be far less of a threat to the majority of our population than first anticipated.

Our health policies are not being adjusted to match the emerging data. The lockdowns have not been repealed and our politicians and public health officials are not being confronted by the obvious questions raised by this data. The public deserves to see what epidemiologists, virologists, and forensic scientists are learning about COVID-19 before we continue to submit to the significant restrictions and economic devastation that our leaders are unleashing upon us.

So, over the coming paragraphs I will go through this publicly available data on COVID-19 to explain why our lockdown is unnecessary, extremely risky, and even harmful to those most in need of protection from the virus.

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