The Global ‘Epidemic’ of Diseases
of Modern Civilisation
By Brane Žilavec, Easter 2020
New version: 23 November 2021
The Global ‘Epidemic’ of Diseases
of Modern Civilisation
By Brane Žilavec, Easter 2020
New version: 23 November 2021
In the times we live in now we can often hear warnings about the approaching end of humanity. Among the most ‘popular’ are: end of our civilisation due to large meteorite hitting the Earth; demise of human race due to overpopulation and depletion of natural resources; triggering the war between USA and Russia that will lead to nuclear Armageddon. My inner response is always the same: “Yes, these scenarios are not completely excluded. But, is it not that the most possible scenario is that which is related to the dramatic rise of diseases all over the globe? For if this rise continues with unabated tempo this will sooner or later bring about a situation where there will not be enough healthy people left to take care of ALL those who will be ILL!” Probably it is not hard to imagine all negative consequences of such development on the whole society, if it is not going to be stopped in due time. [1]
The Reality of the Apocalyptic Scope
of the Increasing Number of Diseases
If we look at available statistics about various forms of illnesses on a global scale or in single countries we will not arrive at very pleasant picture. For example, “in 2015, there were an estimated 422.7 million cases of cardiovascular diseases” [2] in the whole world. “In the UK, pacemaker implantation is one of the most common types of heart surgery carried out, with many thousands of pacemakers fitted each year.” [3] One patient who has received pacemaker wrote after surgery: “Within 30 minutes I’d joined the swelling army of pacemaker people – some 388,000 a year have them fitted in this country alone. That is more than the population of Bournemouth every year.” [4] This was in the year 2005 in the UK with a population of around 60 million.
Let’s take another example. “There were 17 million new cases of cancer worldwide in 2018. The four most common cancers occurring worldwide are lung, female breast, bowel and prostate cancer.” [5] Please note that this is not the number of all people who have cancer, but only new cases of cancer in a single year! On top of this “it is predicted there will be 27.5 million new cancer cases worldwide each year by 2040, if recent trends in incidence of major cancers and population growth are seen globally in the future. This is an increase of 61.7% from 2018.” [6]
The third example is diabetes. “In 2019, approximately 463 million adults (20-79 years) were living with diabetes; by 2045 this will rise to 700 million. The proportion of people with type 2 diabetes is increasing in most countries… In 2019, diabetes caused 4.2 million deaths and at least 760 billion US dollars in health expenditure – 10% of total spending on adults. More than 1.1 million children and adolescents are living with type 1 diabetes,” [7] the advanced stage of diabetes that demands treatment with insulin injections. This type of diabetes was in the past common only among adults and old people.
Let’s look now at the disorders of the digestive tract, such as inflammatory bowel syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, gall bladder disease, indigestion, etc. In the year 2002 there were more than 3 million visits to GPs every month in UK due to these digestive disorders. [8] More recent data shows that “as many as 86% of all British adults have suffered some form of gastrointestinal problem or ailment” [9] in the period from February 2015 to February 2016. This is about 3.4 million per month.
We will finish this short survey of the modern ‘apocalypse of diseases’ with obesity which is – by definition of World Health Organisation – “an abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health”. According to WHO “worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these over 650 million were obese. 40 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2018. Over 340 million children and adolescents aged 5-19 were overweight or obese in 2016.” [10]
We could go on and on with such alarming statistics, but what has been presented above should suffice to admit that we are in the midst of an extraordinary crisis in the area of care for human health on a global scale. For this medical system has managed to create societies where being ill is the norm; where having two, three, or more diseases is on the rise; where already babies or children are being diagnosed with illnesses which were not long ago common only among adults or old people; and where the obesity pandemic doesn’t move governments in the countries over the whole world into action “to save lives” – which could be done if they were confronting those who make huge profits by selling cheap junk food which is causing, due to large amount of sugar and artificial additives, similar effects of addiction as with drugs.
The existence of a serious crisis due to the ongoing rise of diseases is also evident from the following chart: [11]
The total number of all deaths in the year 2017 was 56 million. If we sum up all diseases and forms of malnutrition in the above chart, we get slightly more than 50 million deaths. All other causes – road injuries, suicide, homicide, drowning, alcohol and drug use disorders, conflict, fire, poisoning, exposure to extreme heat or cold, terrorism and natural disasters – have caused ‘only’ about 6 million deaths. This means that the possibility to die from a disease is more than eight times likely than the possibility to die from all other causes of death combined!
We can make another calculation. As it is very likely that these numbers have not decreased in the last years, we can spread 50 million deaths from various types of diseases and malnutrition over the whole year and come to the result that in average about 137.000 people die each day from diseases. IIs not this something that should have triggered a long time ago a rescue action by all politicians and medical professionals if they are genuinely concerned about saving human lives? And not just lives, for all those diseases are causing enormous amounts of suffering which could be decreased and sometimes even alleviated if there would be a willingness to collaborate with all who can contribute something positive to the healing of people – not just with those who work inside the privileged system of allopathic medicine, but also with all professionals of complementary, traditional and alternative medicine.
The Artificially Increased Mortality Rate Due to ‘Coronavirus’
As we can see in the above chart, in the year 2017 there were 3.91 million of deaths due to respiratory diseases, 2.56 million due to lower respiratory infection, and 1.18 million due to tuberculosis. [12] In total 7.65 million deaths due to various forms of respiratory diseases. Among them “2.56 million people died from pneumonia” [13] and “between 290.000 and 650.000 people die of flu, or ‘flu like illness’, every year” [14] in the world.
If we compare these numbers with those which have caused the introduction of mass quarantine on a global scale and other restrictions of normal life, then we are entitled to ask why these measures have not been implemented in previous years. Dr Joel Kettner, professor of Community Health Sciences and Surgery at Manitoba University, former Chief Public Health Officer for Manitoba province and Medical Director of the International Centre for Infectious Diseases, is asking the same question:
“I have never seen anything like this, anything anywhere near like this. I’m not talking about the pandemic, because I’ve seen 30 of them, one every year. It is called influenza. And other respiratory illness viruses, we don’t always know what they are. But I’ve never seen this reaction, and I’m trying to understand why.” [15]
If we want to gain a proper picture of the extent of the present ‘pandemic’ we need to start with the comparison of 7.65 million of deaths due to various forms of respiratory diseases in the year 2017 (i.e. 630.000 per month) and 5.14 million that were officially confirmed as Covid-19 deaths in the period from 1st March 2020 to 19th November 2021 (i.e. 250.000 per month). [16] Thus we can see that the numbers of deaths attributed to Covid-19 are by any means well within the average yearly rate of deaths for all respiratory diseases on the global level.
This is the comparison of official statistics of Covid-19 deaths. However, these numbers are quite illusory because the WHO, CDC (Center for Disease Control) and other governmental medical institutions in the USA and Europe have created the following legal ‘incentives’ to enable the reporting of the ‘increasing’ numbers of Covid-deaths. Among them are: [17]
If we single out just one method that any patient dying ‘with Covid-19’ (i.e. person who had a ‘positive’ PCR test in the period of 4 weeks before the death) is listed as ‘Covid death’, in spite of existing multiple serious chronic illnesses – and remembering that worldwide each day at least 130.000 people die due to various forms of illnesses – we can see that there are plenty of ‘resources’ to keep the uninformed public in permanent fear of a ‘deadly viral disease’ by means of daily statistics.
Two examples of ‘corona death’ from countries with very different political systems
The false reliability of the statistical data of reported deaths attributed to coronavirus is demonstrated by the following story about “an elderly man (about 77 years old) with unmanaged diabetes who had been very resistant to taking his medications and modifying his diet for many years. Over the years, he had lost vision in one then the other eye due to diabetes. His kidneys were not working well. He collapsed one afternoon and was taken to the hospital. Within less than 24 hours, his kidneys failed, his lungs collapsed, he went into coma and passed away. He was reported as a ‘corona patient’ to his family and in the hospital report. He was buried not as a regular dead person but as a ‘corona’ person (without the regular Muslim ritual washing and prayers). The family was told to be in quarantine for at least 14 days.” [19]
This happened in Iran. But similar things were happening in other countries as well. This is obvious from a remarkable similarity of the above story with the following ‘corona’ death in the UK: “My brother in-law had been ill for several years, his conditions included kidney failure, diabetes, he had been on dialysis 3 times a week and in and out of hospital for a few years. Clearly in pain suffering and on medication. Not well at all. On the evening of 31st March he was admitted into a large north London hospital, he was kept in A&E then transferred to resuscitation unit & then ICU. At some point he was apparently tested for Coronavirus. We are unsure about this as when my wife spoke to the doc he did not seem that confident of this. At approximately 10pm the doctor informed my wife that there was nothing more they could do for him, my understanding is he was wheeled into the Blue Zone and all treatment was withdrawn and the doc made it clear he would not last to the morning. My wife could not visit him, or see her brother. He died at 2am on 1st April, his widow is now quarantined for 14 days alone at home. We don’t know when the funeral will be, but it has been made clear only a few people can attend and they must practice social distancing. His mother and father are abroad and will not be able to attend their son’s funeral.” [20]
These two stories occurred in countries with very different political systems and cultural habits. But what they have in common is a modern medical care system that is to a specific degree ‘independent’ of the state and is obliged to follow the instructions and regulations of WHO in accordance with international agreements.
The systematic misuse of statistical methods and twisting of data
From all available evidence it is clear that there exists an intention to artificially inflate the number of deaths attributed to the corona pandemic. One example of plain manipulation with statistical data can be found in an attempt to show to the public the supposedly ‘disastrous’ effect of the Swedish approach without use of any lockdown restrictions. The first chart which was presented in the media shows the number of all deaths in Sweden from the year 1900 to 2020. This chart shows that the year 2020 (the time of corona pandemic) is the second worst year after the year 1918 (the time of Spanish flu pandemic). However, when we take into account the population growth in Sweden then we get quite a different chart of mortality rate per population for the same period. This chart shows clearly that the number of deaths in 2020 is – with the exception of the period from 2014 to 2019 – below the number of annual deaths per population since 1900!
Mansoureh Tajik, an expert within the field of medical statistics, gives a good summary of the unreliability of present corona statistics: “I am speaking from the perspective of someone who has been in the field for years and is well-versed in the subject. It is from educational and experiential knowledge of someone who has collected, analyzed, and interpreted data in order to design and implement projects that could perhaps lower the rates of morbidity and mortalities from infectious and non-infectious diseases by a fraction, a decimal point, and just a few number in a thousand, or a hundred thousand population. Furthermore, for years and semester after semester, I had to teach students methods, approaches, analytical techniques about how to differentiate between apparent patterns of things (diseases, mortalities, toxins, pathogens, etc.) and their actual patterns. They have to be able to critically examine how to determine there is a causal link between a virus, for example, and a given disease, when there is an association, when there are co-factors and more.
With the current ‘pandemic’ situation, I see before me a series of ineptly-conducted non-systematic and haphazard data collection, opaque and questionable diagnostic procedures, falsely classified deaths, and more that are used as data points, numbers, and information to present some patterns as real. I ask myself why?
I listen to well-known ‘experts’ in the field (connected to WHO, Centre for Disease Control, National Institute for Health, and others) and I can see how, in a very crafty way, they try to conflate and augment Covid-19 with other factors, other numbers, and other events to make this real but manageable infectious disease into a giant crisis of global proportion that it is not. Again, I ask myself why?” [21]
We can also ask: Why are we in the present ‘corona pandemic’ everywhere exposed to daily statistics of confirmed cases of infections, of recovered cases and of deaths on a global scale? Something like this has never happened before. This brings up many questions which demand good answers which we do not get from media and official medical institutions and politicians.
The Need for Cultivation of the Inner Sense
for Reality by Means of Spiritual Science
If we want to improve our ability of recognising the truth it must be clear to us “that the essence of anthroposophy cannot be grasped with the help of a few simple concepts or a theory briefly propounded, let alone a programme. The forces of the whole soul must be involved.” We need to know that “before a human being can reach the highest stage of development he already has in his heart and in his soul the sense of truth.” What is needed is that we devote ourselves open-mindedly to the nurturing of this sense of truth and that we are aware that “in our present age there are many influences which divert men from the natural feeling for truth that is present in their souls.” If we are capable of overcoming all prejudices that are leading us astray, then we will be “able to sense truth where it genuinely exists. Honest criticism is therefore always possible, even if someone is only at the very beginning of the path of attainment,” [22] of the knowledge of the spiritual realities or such complicated phenomena as the present social and medical crisis.
If we want to know what is going on in the society around us we should never believe anything just on the basis of trust in the authority which is the source of the information. This means that in the present age there is an absolute necessity that each individual “must become one who ask questions and convinces himself through his innermost freedom of judgment.” [23] Only in this way can we free ourselves from all dogmatic forms of religious or scientific belief. Even if one “hear words of spiritual truth, convincing himself of it is something he has to do on his own. If he wishes to participate and be active in society and the community he must do so out of his innermost heart impulses.” [24]
Many people “feel on secure ground when they can reckon by means of figures, when they can prove things by statistics. At first nothing can stand up against figures because of the faith that is reposed in them. But later on one begins to see just how ‘reliable’ such figures are! Admittedly, figures are sometimes a means of proof, but if one goes beyond them and investigates more closely, one often notices things” [25] that do not fit into the narrative that is promoted by authors of statistics. Therefore “one has to approach things objectively. One must achieve truthfulness even in the smallest matters. If you cannot develop the urge for truthfulness in yourselves, you will always be open to the danger of being infected, influenced, by the untruthfulness that lives in the world” [26] around us.
Therefore one should not take for granted that we are dealing with realities when we listen to media reports and official statistics supposedly based on so-called ‘exact science’. For someone in the background can very easy manipulate the numbers to show the desired outcomes. “If one has a sense for reality, one cannot very well work with statistical methods of that kind; they do not hold out much promise. But such sense for reality is wholly lacking in modern people due to a certain necessity of the evolution of humanity.” [27]
Why is this so? “The man of ancient times looked into the outer world. By means of all that he bore within him, he viewed the relationships and connections of the world outside. He formed also his theory of the stars from out of his own inner stellar system. He had ‘a sense for reality’ and he carried it in his senses. This sense for reality has disappeared in the course of man’s evolution. It will have to be developed again; it will have to be developed to the same degree inwardly as it formerly was outwardly. We must really cultivate this sense for reality in our inner being by the training we receive in spiritual science; only then shall we be able to develop it in the world outside. If man were to keep straight on in the path in which he has been evolving with modern intellectuality, he would at length be quite unable to perceive what is going on around him.” [28]
IIn these present times there are many people who are unable to perceive what is going on around them. For example, some people think that it is not possible that all main media would lie to us; and there are other people who are convinced that they are contributing to the health of others if they vaccinate themselves. And we could add many other illusions that are held by otherwise quite clever people. But we should know that “it is because of the striving for truth – or rather the lack of striving for truth today – that things are said which are believed in the widest circles, although they are in fact nothing but absolute inversions of the truth. In an age when it is possible to make the truth conform to any kind of antipathy, passion or instinct, a great deal of effort will be needed to awaken a strong sense for the truth which can then lead to a spiritual life.” [29]
We can ask: “Why is the truth being so distorted at present? The answer is: The things that are said are intended to spread a fog over the truth so as to distract people’s attention from the truth. This is now the immensely difficult destiny of mankind: that people do not feel in duty bound to pursue the actual, real truth and truthfulness that lives in the facts – indeed, that the very opposite of this seems to have started to rule the world and to be all set to do so ever increasingly.” Numerous events and phenomena that are happening in the world nowadays are the consequence of extreme untruthfulness and distortion of facts. “The conclusion we have to draw from this is that we must enter ever more deeply into the facts, that we must develop a sense which can lead us to see in the appropriate places those things which can really throw light and reveal what is essential.” [30]
In the present crisis it is necessary that we do not believe the ‘facts’ about the ‘global Covid apocalypse’ reported by mainstream media. If we want to arrive at a more objective picture we must inform ourselves from other more independent sources. And even in such cases we must stay critical to such an extent that we do not accept anything without verification and cross-examination of available evidence.
Above all, we should not rush into conclusions; instead we should be especially attentive to separate facts from the interpretation of facts or manipulation of facts. Of course, beside manipulations and deceptive interpretations of facts, there are also good interpretations, but even in such cases we can discover some claims which are inaccurate. This is not so strange, for in the case of the present events we are dealing with the extremely challenging topic of the true causes for the emergence of human diseases and with the extremely complex relationships among many players in this social crisis.
Therefore “if the future is to contain hope, what must be striven for cannot be ‘of this world’. But that, of course, runs counter to man’s love of ease. It is more convenient to set up old customs as ideals and then to bask in the glow of self-congratulation; this is far pleasanter than to say: The great responsibility for the future must be shouldered, and this can be done only when striving for spiritual knowledge becomes a driving force in mankind. Therefore Easter today remains a festival of warning instead of being a festival of joy.” [31]
And the Easter of 2020 was the festival of warning to the extreme with ghost-like deserted cities, with people imprisoned in their homes and with closed churches, schools, cultural venues, restaurants, sport venues, etc. – that is, all places where people can meet and have social intercourse. This was a clear warning for those who are able to see what is really happening in the world, that the most urgent thing we need now is resurrection of a new, absolutely free spiritual life of humanity.
For an additional perspective see:
❖Three Main Culprits for the Present Worldwide Health Crisis
NOTES
