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The time has come for my annual short Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

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New analysis of COVID-19 death rate ranks it the same as “a strong seasonal flu”

A new analysis of the COVID-19 death rate has found that it is really no more dangerous than “a strong seasonal flu”, and that it poses little threat to the general population.

Moreover, the analysis finds that

Up to 30% of all additional deaths may have been caused not by Covid19, but by the effects of the lockdown, panic and fear. For example, the treatment of heart attacks and strokes decreased by up to 60% because many patients no longer dared to go to hospital. Even in so-called “Covid19 deaths” it is often not clear whether they died from or with coronavirus (i.e. from underlying diseases) or if they were counted as “presumed cases” and not tested at all. However, official figures usually do not reflect this distinction.

Read it all. There is lots more, all pointing to the unwarranted nature of the panic over the flu, and how that panic likely caused more deaths and damage. Had we reacted more calmly (as had been done for all past similar new such respiratory diseases), the harm to society and number of deaths would have likely been less.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

8 comments

  • Andrew_W

    Swiss Policy Research is a propaganda site of no importance run by persons unknown referencing studies like the Santa Clara antibody study that have been proven flawed.

    Mr. Zimmerman, in searching the net for such obscure sites to support your confirmation bias you’re embarrassing yourself.

    All you prove is that, yes, you can find sites supporting your wildest dreams and beliefs on the internet.

  • Andrew_W: I usually do not waste time debating you, but once again, you focus on trying to discredit the source, rather than read what they say.

    And please stop attempting to make believe you have the slightest idea of the research I do. You don’t, and your effort to discredit me by doing so does not credit you in the slightest.

  • Andrew _W

    Mr. Zimmerman, how could I possibly have pointed out that they reference flawed studies like the Santa Clara study without reading the site to see what studies they reference? Also I describe Swiss Policy Research as a “propaganda” site because that’s the word they use to describe their site (I suspect it gains in translation).

  • R7 Rocket

    @Andrew_W

    COVID19 hysteria is a hoax and you know it.

    If you actually do believe it, will you unequivocally denounce the BlackLivesMatter riots?

  • David M. Cook

    Andrew underscore W, is there nothing you can‘t debunk? Clearly, you‘ve missed your true calling!

  • wodun

    I don’t trust this “science” any more than any other random thing that gets passed around about diets or cures for cancer. Interesting to read but should be treated with skepticism.

    It reminds me a lot about right after a big event, lots of information is being pushed out. Some of it is accurate but a lot of it isn’t. We know very little about this virus and the “science” is all over the place.

    There have surely been over reactions but there have also been under reactions. I much prefer a balanced approach to mitigating risk but I’m not finding anything along those lines anywhere on the internet. People are getting too hardened along ideological lines and rational thought doesn’t exist.

  • wayne

    David M. Cook-
    Good stuff!

  • m d mill

    The fact that 75% of all Swedish covid-19 deaths occur in nursing homes, and that the average age of death is 86 in itself is valuable information whether the site is deemed “propagandistic” or not. Saying that the site is simply of “no importance” and thus should be ignored IS the simplistic argument of a propagandist. Most organizations and people seem to disseminate possibly flawed results at some point, including WHO and US CDC. Does this mean these organizations are of “no importance”?…only to a propagandist trying to find a reason to discredit an alternative viewpoint. Indeed, trying to prevent all viral death of very aged people (mostly in nursing homes) with severely degraded immune systems (for whom vaccines do not work well) by destruction (total lock down) of an entire economy and other normal societal benefits (such as normal hospital and doctor visits, schooling, jobs, income, food production and distribution, etc) is arguably a ridiculously losing proposition. I think Sweden did the correct thing generally, although I would hope and do believe methods of isolation in nursing homes and for the elderly/susceptible population could be greatly improved with use of well designed masks, fever detection, and other protocols.

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