Apr 302022
 


Dante Gabriel Rossetti Monna Vanna 1866

 

Why Europe Cannot Understand Russia (Escobar)
Empire of Lies Eager to Receive Mr. Sarmat’s Business Card (Escobar)
Patrushev Goes Triple-X Unplugged (Escobar)
Pentagon Spokesman Chokes Up While Talking About Ukraine (Hill)
Ukraine: The Real Zelensky (GZ)
‘Donbas Is Not Ukraine’: In Industrial East, Hopes For Russian Rule (Y!)
UK Wants ‘Global NATO’ Capable of Defending Pacific (LI)
The Sweet Sound of Censorship (Turley)
Naomi Wolf Eloquently Deconstructs the Terms Dis, Mis, and Malinformation (CTH)
Vaccinated Had Fewer N Antibodies Even After Covid Infection (Blaze)
Moderna Montreal Factory Will Make Canada An mRNA ‘Leader’ – Trudeau (CTV)
“This is This” (Kunstler)
The Shanghai Lockdown: a Memetic Analysis (Ugo Bardi)
Why the Yen Fell While the Dollar Rallied (Mises)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nailed it

 

 


Chinese state television channel CCTV map showing which countries would receive the territories of the Scoto-Russian federation after its collapse.

 

 

Quite a bit of Escobar today. He knows the territory better than just about anyone. History lesson:

Why Europe Cannot Understand Russia (Escobar)

The apparently monolithic liberal west itself also cannot be understood if we forget how, historically, Europe is also a two-headed beast: one head may be tracked from Charlemagne all the way to the awful Brussels Eurocrat machine; and the other one comes from Athens and Rome, and via Byzantium/Constantinople (the Second Rome) reaches all the way to Moscow (the Third Rome). Latin Europe, for the Orthodox, is seen as a hybrid usurper, preaching a distorted Christianity which only refers to St. Augustine, practicing absurd rites and neglecting the very important Holy Ghost. The Europe of Christian Popes invented what is considered a historical hydra – Byzantium – where Byzantines were actually Greeks living under the Roman Empire.

Western Europeans for their part see the Orthodox and the Christians from the East (see how they were abandoned by the west in Syria under ISIS and Al Qaeda) as satraps and a bunch of smugglers – while the Orthodox regard the Crusaders, the Teutonic chevaliers and the Jesuits – correctly, we must say – as barbarian usurpers bent on world conquest. In the Orthodox canon, a major trauma is the fourth Crusade in 1204 which utterly destroyed Constantinople. The Frankish chevaliers happened to eviscerate the most dazzling metropolis in the world, which congregated at the time all the riches from Asia. That was the definition of cultural genocide. The Frankish also happened to be aligned with some notorious serial plunderers: the Venetians. No wonder, from that historical juncture onwards, a slogan was born: “Better the Sultan’s turban than the Pope’s tiara.”

So since the 8th century, Carolingian and Byzantine Europe were de facto at war across an Iron Curtain from the Baltics to the Mediterranean (compare it with the emerging New Iron Curtain of Cold War 2.0). After the barbarian invasions, they neither spoke the same language nor practiced the same writing, rites or theology. This fracture, significantly, also trespassed Kiev. The west was Catholic – 15% of Greek catholics and 3% of Latins – and in the center and the east, 70% Orthodox, who became hegemonic in the 20th century after the elimination of Jewish minorities by mainly the Waffen-SS of the Galicia division, the precursors of Ukraine’s Azov batallion.

Pepe Escobar and Danny Haiphong; Russia, China, and the Post-Dollar World

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I split this summary into two parts. Part 2 is just below.

“Totalen Krieg proceeds in parallel to the engineered controlled demolition of the EU’s economy..”

Empire of Lies Eager to Receive Mr. Sarmat’s Business Card (Escobar)

Especially since the onset of GWOT (Global War on Terror) at the start of the millennium, no one ever lost money betting against the toxic combo of hubris, arrogance and ignorance serially deployed by the Empire of Chaos and Lies. What passes for “analysis” in the vast intellectual no-fly zone known as U.S. Think Tankland includes wishful thinking babble such as Beijing “believing” that Moscow would play a supporting role in the Chinese century just to see Russia, now, in the geopolitical driver’s seat. This is a fitting example not only of outright Russophobic/Sinophobic paranoia about the emergence of peer competitors in Eurasia – the primeval Anglo-American nightmare – but also crass ignorance about the finer points of the complex Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership.

As Operation Z methodically hits Phase 2, the Americans – with a vengeance – have also embarked on their symmetrical Phase 2, which de facto translates as an outright escalation towards Totalen Krieg, from shades of hybrid to incandescent, everything of course by proxy. Notorious Raytheon weapons peddler reconverted into Pentagon head, Lloyd Austin, gave away the game in Kiev: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” So this is it: the Empire wants to annihilate Russia. Cue to War Inc.’s frenzy of limitless weapon cargos descending on Ukraine, the overwhelming majority on the road to be duly eviscerated by Russian precision strikes. The Americans are sharing intel 24/7 with Kiev not only on Donbass and Crimea but also Russian territory.

Totalen Krieg proceeds in parallel to the engineered controlled demolition of the EU’s economy, with the European Commission merrily acting as a sort of P.R. arm of NATO. Amidst the propaganda dementia cum acute cognitive dissonance overdrive across the whole NATOstan sphere, the only antidote is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed. The West ignores them at their own collective peril.

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Part 2 of the same article.

“So far, on Operation Z, the Russian Armed forces have used only 12% of its soldiers,10% of its fighter jets, 7% of its tanks, 5% of its missiles, and 4% of its artillery.”

Patrushev Goes Triple-X Unplugged (Escobar)

let’s move to an extremely detailed interview by Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, where Patrushev sort of went triple-X unplugged. The key take away may be here: “The collapse of the American-centric world is a reality in which one must live and build an optimal line of behavior.” Russia’s “optimal line of behavior” – much to the wrath of the universalist and unilateralist hegemon – features “sovereignty, cultural and spiritual identity and historical memory.” Patrushev shows how “tragic scenarios of world crises, both in past years and today, are imposed by Washington in its desire to consolidate its hegemony, resisting the collapse of the unipolar world.”

The U.S. goes no holds barred “to ensure that other centers of the multipolar world do not even dare to raise their heads, and our country not only dared, but publicly declared that it would not play by the imposed rules.” Patrushev could not but stress how War Inc. is literally making a killing in Ukraine: “The American and European military-industrial complex is jubilant, because thanks to the crisis in Ukraine, it has no respite from order. It is not surprising that, unlike Russia, which is interested in the speedy completion of a special military operation and minimizing losses on all sides, the West is determined to delay it at least to the last Ukrainian.”

And that mirrors the psyche of American elites: “You are talking about a country whose elite is not able to appreciate other people’s lives. Americans are used to walking on scorched earth. Since World War II, entire cities have been razed to the ground by bombing, including nuclear bombing. They flooded the Vietnamese jungle with poison, bombed the Serbs with radioactive munitions, burned Iraqis alive with white phosphorus, helped terrorists poison Syrians with chlorine (…) As history shows, NATO has also never been a defensive alliance, only an offensive one.”

In a subtle reference to the work of Sergei Glazyev [..] Patrushev hit the heart of the current geoeconomic game, with Russia now actively moving towards a gold standard: “Experts are working on a project proposed by the scientific community to create a two-circuit monetary and financial system. In particular, it is proposed to determine the value of the ruble, which should be secured by both gold and a group of goods that are currency values, to put the ruble exchange rate in line with real purchasing power parity.” That was inevitable after the outright theft of over $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves. It may have taken a few days for Moscow to be fully certified it was facing Totalen Krieg. The corollary is that the collective West has lost any power to influence Russian decisions. The pace of the game in the new chessboard is being set by Russia.

[..] So far, on Operation Z, the Russian Armed forces have used only 12% of its soldiers,10% of its fighter jets, 7% of its tanks, 5% of its missiles, and 4% of its artillery. The pain dial is set to go substantially up – and with the total liberation of Mariupol and the resolution one way or another of the Donbass cauldron there is nothing the hysteria/propaganda/weaponizing combo deployed by the collective West can do to alter facts on the ground.

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“I don’t want to make this about me.”

Pentagon Spokesman Chokes Up While Talking About Ukraine (Hill)

The Pentagon’s top spokesperson became emotional Friday after he was asked whether he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin to be a “rational actor.” “It’s hard to look at what he’s doing in Ukraine, what his forces are doing in Ukraine and think that any ethical, moral individual could justify that,” press secretary John Kirby began before appearing to become choked up and pausing for several seconds. “It’s difficult to look at some of the images and imagine that any well-thinking, serious, mature leader would do that. So I can’t talk to his psychology. But I think we can all speak to his depravity,” Kirby added. Kirby later apologized for becoming emotional, saying “I don’t want to make this about me.”


He then called Putin’s reasons for the invasion in Ukraine “BS.” “It’s hard to square [Putin’s] … BS that this is about Nazism in Ukraine, and it’s about protecting Russians in Ukraine, and it’s about defending Russian national interests, when none of them, none of them were threatened by Ukraine,” said Kirby, pounding on the lectern for emphasis. Kirby also listed several “unconscionable” actions by Russian troops, including the reports of civilians being “shot in the back of the head, hands tied behind their backs. Women, pregnant women being killed, hospitals being bombed. I mean, it’s just unconscionable.”

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Natylie Baldwin interviews academic Olga Baysha.

“..cannot be explained apart from the success of his television series, which, as many observers believe, served as Zelensky’s informal election platform…”

Ukraine: The Real Zelensky (GZ)

The basic argument presented in my recent book is that the astonishing victory of Zelensky and his party, later transformed into a parliamentary machine to churn out and rubber-stamp neoliberal reforms (in a “turbo regime,” as they called it), cannot be explained apart from the success of his television series, which, as many observers believe, served as Zelensky’s informal election platform. Unlike his official platform, which ran only 1,601 words in length and contained few policy specifics, the 51 half-hour episodes of his show provided Ukrainians with a detailed vision of what should be done so that Ukraine could progress. The message delivered by Zelensky to Ukrainians through his show is clearly populist.

The people of Ukraine are portrayed in it as an unproblematic totality devoid of internal splits, from which only oligarchs and corrupted politicians/officials are excluded. The country becomes healthy only after getting rid of both oligarchs and their puppets. Some of them are imprisoned or flee the country; their property is confiscated without any regard to legality. Later, Zelensky-the-president will do the same towards his political rivals. Interestingly, the show ignores the theme of the Donbass war, which erupted in 2014, a year before the series started being broadcast. As the Maidan and Russia-Ukraine relations are very divisive issues in Ukrainian society, Zelensky ignored them so as not to jeopardize the unity of his virtual nation, his viewers and ultimately his voters.

Zelensky’s election promises, made on the fringes of the virtual and the real, were predominantly about Ukraine’s “progress,” understood as “modernization,” “Westernization,” “civilization” and “normalization.” It is this progressive modernizing discourse that allowed Zelensky to camouflage his plans for neoliberal reforms, launched just three days after the new government came to power. Throughout the campaign, the idea of “progress” highlighted by Zelensky was never linked to privatization, land sales, budget cuts, etc. Only after Zelensky had consolidated his presidential power by establishing full control over the legislative and executive branches of power did he make it clear that the “normalization” and “civilization” of Ukraine meant the privatization of land and state/public property, the deregulation of labor relations, a reduction of power for trade unions an increase in utility tariffs, and so on.

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Odd take from the MSM.

‘Donbas Is Not Ukraine’: In Industrial East, Hopes For Russian Rule (Y!)

At a market in the industrial town of Lysychansk in east Ukraine — war-scarred after relentless attacks by Russian forces — one woman quietly hopes Moscow’s army will break through. “Technically, we’re Ukrainian. But Donbas is not Ukraine,” Olena confided to AFP, referring to swathes of east Ukraine that Moscow has vowed to capture from Kyiv. “Ukrainians are the foreigners here — not Russians,” she said, giving a pseudonym, concerned that unpopular opinions like hers could land her “in prison”. Olena’s view on the war is not unique in this part of Ukraine where long-standing ties with Russia, nostalgia for the Soviet Union and hopes for a fast end to fighting mean many would welcome a Russian takeover.

For years the Kremlin has accused Ukraine of discriminating against Russian speakers in the Donbas region, which has been partially controlled by pro-Kremlin separatists since 2014. It says it wants to “liberate” parts of the mining and oil hub still controlled by Kyiv. Moscow’s forces are closing in, pounding Lysychansk and seizing villages around it. Ukraine’s army has put up fierce resistance, slowing Russia’s advance, but some wearing blue and yellow patches already feel as if they are in enemy territory. “Even if we do everything possible to hide our positions, residents here give the other side information about us,” a sergeant in the Ukrainian army, Iryna, told AFP. Attesting to that, Kyiv’s army regularly announces arrests of “saboteurs” in Donbas territory it controls and many among the rank and file said they were suspicious of residents.

Iryna, whose unit recently withdrew from Russian-controlled Kreminna north of Lysychansk, described this tale-telling as “very, very common”. “It comes from people who are supposed to be above suspicion — even priests,” she added. Some Ukrainian troops and officials hope that the Donbas residents fleeing fighting towards Russia are the ones sympathetic to Moscow. Still, they worry pro-Russia sentiment is lingering among some who have remained. “These are people who at best don’t mind and at worst are hoping for the arrival of the Russians,” Vadim Lyakh, the mayor of Sloviansk in northwestern Donbas, told AFP. Lyakh, whose city briefly fell to the separatists in 2014, said however that now was not the time to confront the mainly elderly Kremlin-sympathetic residents who long for the Soviet past. “Now is not the time to quarrel with them,” he told AFP.

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Contradictio in terminis.

UK Wants ‘Global NATO’ Capable of Defending Pacific (LI)

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said her government favors the creation of a “global NATO” that is able to guarantee the defense of Taiwan and the broader Pacific region, calling for preemptive action against would-be aggressors. In an address outlining UK foreign policy on Wednesday, Truss said London rejects the “false choice between Euro-Atlantic security and Indo-Pacific security,” instead arguing “we need both.” “I mean that NATO must have a global outlook, ready to tackle global threats,” she continued. “We need to preempt threats in the Indo-Pacific, working with allies like Japan and Australia to ensure that the Pacific is protected. And we must ensure that democracies like Taiwan are able to defend themselves.”

Though the official did not elaborate on what kind of support she favors for Taipei or what she envisions for a globally-engaged military alliance, Truss’ speech mirrored remarks by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier this year, when he said NATO’s reach must be extended into the Indo-Pacific. Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand are already global NATO partners – each designated as a “major non-NATO ally” by Washington – while other security organizations serve similar functions in the Indo-Pacific region. The Quad alliance, consisting of the US, India, Japan and Australia, is often dubbed the ‘Asian NATO’ and largely exists to counter China. It has considered allowing other regional states to join to create a ‘Quad Plus,’ among them South Korea, Vietnam and New Zealand.

The three-way AUKUS collective, meanwhile, has seen Washington, Canberra and London join forces to bolster the defenses of the region, including through the sharing of nuclear information. Like the Quad, the grouping has also reportedly mulled whether to expand to include additional countries like Japan. In recent months, several members of the NATO bloc have conducted ‘freedom of navigation’ missions in the Pacific to support territorial claims recognized by the United States and its western allies, namely those of Taiwan.

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“I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities.”

The Sweet Sound of Censorship (Turley)

President Joe Biden’s new disinformation chief Nina Jankowicz argued online mockery of Vice President Kamala Harris and other women in public life was a threat to national security: “Platforms and governments aren’t doing enough. It’s time to act. Our national security and democracy are at stake.” Jankowicz previously argued that Congress should create new laws to block mockery of women online by reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and including “provisions against online gender-based harassment.” Jankowicz testified before British House of Parliament last year about “gender misinformation” being a “national security concern” and a threat to democracy requiring government censorship. She has demanded that both tech companies and government should work together using “creativity and technological prowess to make a pariah of online misogyny.”

On the Hunter Biden laptop, Jankowicz pushed the false narrative that it was a false story and that “we should view it as a Trump campaign product.” She continued to spread that disinformation, including tweeting a link to a news article that she said cast “yet more doubt on the provenance of the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story.” In another tweet, she added “not to mention that the emails don’t need to be altered to be part of an influence campaign. Voters deserve that context, not a [fairy] tale about a laptop repair shop.” She even cites the author of the Steele Dossier as a guide for how to deal with disinformation. In August 2020, Jankowicz tweeted “Listened to this last night – Chris Steele (yes THAT Chris Steele) provides some great historical context about the evolution of disinfo. Worth a listen.”


She also joined the panic over the Musk threat to reintroduce free speech values to Twitter. In an interview on NPR, she stated “I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities.” Pitch perfect. Indeed, in seeing how we all “measure up,” Nina Jankowicz “is practically perfect in every way.”

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” Wolf doesn’t waste time debating “misinformation”, “disinformation”, or “malinformation”, instead she accurately just says those things do not exist.”

Naomi Wolf Eloquently Deconstructs the Terms Dis, Mis, and Malinformation (CTH)

All politicians and candidates for office should watch how Wolf responds to the first question from Tucker Carlson, and then makes the better argument. Wolf doesn’t waste time debating “misinformation”, “disinformation”, or “malinformation”, instead she accurately just says those things do not exist. Information stands undefined. From that position there are truth and lies. Her approach is exactly correct. Do not accept the insanity of the Alinsky language effort. A refreshing and really good interview:

On January 13, 2022, the fraudulent and managed autocrat, the installed occupant of the White House, gave instructions to his fellow travelers in Big Tech, and I quote: “I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets: Please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that’s on your shows. It has to stop.” ~ Joe Biden. It was crystal clear what Joe Biden was telling his allies in social media to do. There is information the Government wants us to hear, and everything else is disinformation or misinformation the U.S. Govt disapproves of. Immediately CTH encountered criticism for our position on information. However, Wolf understands exactly what we have discussed:


…”There is no such thing as “disinformation” or “misinformation”. There is only information you accept and information you do not accept. You were not born with a requirement to believe everything you are told; rather, you were born with a brain that allows you to process the information you receive and make independent decisions.”…

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The “vaccines” focus only on S antibodies.

Vaccinated Had Fewer N Antibodies Even After Covid Infection (Blaze)

In a preprint paper posted last week, the NIH researchers studied the N (nucleocapsid) antibody levels of those who participated in the Moderna clinical trial vs. the placebo group upon the unblinding of the participants. Their findings were earth-shattering. m“We analyzed data from 1,789 participants (1,298 placebo recipients and 491 vaccine recipients) with SARS-CoV-2 infection during the blinded phase (through March 2021). Among participants with PCR-confirmed Covid-19 illness, seroconversion to anti-N Abs at a median follow up of 53 days post diagnosis occurred in 21/52 (40%) of the mRNA-1273 vaccine recipients vs. 605/648 (93%) of the placebo recipients (p < 0.001).” Kudos to Igor Chudov for finding this paper that clearly our government agencies are not excited to advertise.

Overall, the study’s authors found, “For any given viral copy number, the odds of anti-N seropositivity were 13.67 times higher for the placebo arm than the vaccine arm.” It’s truly hard to overstate the significance of this finding. These are the actual participants in the Moderna trial, and their levels were checked roughly seven weeks after being diagnosed with COVID, plus this was a study of the original strain of the virus when supposedly the vaccines were more effective. Yet just 40% of those with prior infection among the vaccinated group had anti-nucleocapsid antibodies, while 93% of the placebo group did. To be clear, this means that not only is the vaccine inferior to natural immunity, but it is so inferior that it might inhibit your acquisition of immunity to the nucleocapsid protein of the virus even if you wind up getting the virus, which you assuredly will because the vaccines don’t stop infection.

When you hear the proponents of the shots bragging about antibody titers, they are measuring the anti-spike protein (S) antibodies. The shots code your body to produce the most dangerous part of the virus, but on the other hand you don’t get the benefit of full immunity because your body is trained to recognize only the spike, not the main shell of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The implication of this study would be that the more you vaccinate, the more it erases your natural immunity, so not only do you still get the virus, but you will continue getting it because you can never achieve full immunity, as you might with natural infection without having been jabbed with a gene therapy that primes your body to respond inappropriately. It is an anti-herd immunity shot.

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“People forget Moderna was losing money in 2020..”

Moderna Montreal Factory Will Make Canada An mRNA ‘Leader’ – Trudeau (CTV)

The news leaked a day early, but Canadian leaders and biotech company Moderna officially announced Friday that a new vaccine production facility will be created in Montreal, helping ensure a long-term supply of made-in-Canada vaccines. “Our government promised to strengthen our capacity” for producing vaccines “here in Canada,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at an announcement at McGill University in Montreal. Canada has a now-infamous trajectory over the last few decades of building up top-notch vaccine research but dismantling its domestic capacity to actually produce vaccines, leaving it dependent on vaccine facilities in other countries.

The facility, expected to be operational as soon as 2024, will employ 200 to 300 people and will be able to produce up to 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses per year, Trudeau said. But it will also ultimately be able to do research and hopefully produce other kinds of vaccines or treatment based on the same mRNA technology, or messenger RNA, that was first used in the COVID-19 vaccines, he said. “It also will have a significant impact in the research that they’re doing on a range of illnesses. We talked about Alzheimer’s, we talk about cancers, we talk about the range of things that messenger RNA is able to deliver to keep Canadians and people around the world healthy,” said Trudeau. “And Canada, that has long been leaders in research around mRNA, will now be also leaders in delivering mRNA to Canadians and to the world.”

Moderna’s founder and board chair has deep ties to Montreal, where his family fled after escaping Lebanon’s civil war. He attended Loyola College and McGill before going to M.I.T. in Boston. Moderna, which was founded in 2010, is still based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company’s CEO, Stéphane Bancel joined Trudeau and Quebec Premier François Legault for the announcement, saying that Moderna’s path over the past two years has been a dramatic one, as it raced to get its mRNA vaccine developed and approved for the first time. “People forget Moderna was losing money in 2020,” he said. “We didn’t have the financial straps to get this industrial machine going. And Canada was one of only a few, a couple, countries here to help,” by putting in one of the first pre-orders for the vaccine and sending much-needed cash, he said.

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“The Left has exercised a Macumba voodoo death grip on free speech for years now.”

“This is This” (Kunstler)

“This is this,” DiNiro’s character “Michael” famously told Cazale’s “Stan” in The Deer Hunter, explaining the metaphysics of the bullet in his hand, and pretty much everyone watching the movie got the drift of that cryptic utterance. Likewise, Elon Musk’s character “Elon Musk” explained to America’s Maoist managerial legions: “Free speech is free speech” — as if, a week after Twitter’s surrender to Elon, there was some part of the formulation that the Left didn’t understand. (Apparently, all of it.) What a concept! Free speech is free speech. It has bowled over the — what? — maybe twenty-three percent of the country that considers free speech “a threat to democracy.” This is what comes of inverting and subverting language itself for the purpose of mind-raping the nation like Jeffrey Epstein on a 15-year-old. The Left has exercised a Macumba voodoo death grip on free speech for years now.

The deeper the Left’s crimes against the constitution and common decency, the harder they strangled the flow of news, information, and opinion until the mental life of the USA turned into a gibber of shamefully obvious unreality. It’s one thing to lose your dignity as citizens, and another to just lose your country altogether, and that is the circle of hell that the Left has dragged everyone else into since even before Hillary Clinton booted the 2016 election. This tyrannical Maoist managerial mob, grown paradoxically rich beyond precedent, became a tool of the state itself working around the inconvenient first amendment to hog-tie public debate. Will the US government allow Mr. Musk to get away with liberating the new “public square?”

It looks like the DOJ, the SEC, and perhaps other nefarious actors of degenerate officialdom are fixing to go after the rogue Tesla mogul who had the effrontery to oppose totalitarian control of the narratives driving public life. It’s rumored that money-losing Twitter could not exist without the government footing the bill for the vast, backstage server arrays that enable all Twitter’s messaging. In an odd twist, though, the shareholders were not necessarily benefitting from that symbiotic relationship as Twitter’s stock fell from $71 a share in July ’21 to $32 in March ’22. But the C-suite of Twitter’s executives were already too massively rich to care about anything but punishing their political enemies — which they did with sadistic zeal — when Mr. Musk surprisingly stepped onto the scene.

The government’s first counter-move, under the vividly deliquescing “Joe Biden” — whose treasonous corruption became Twitter’s job-one to conceal — was to concoct a brand-new agency under Homeland Security called the Disinformation Governance Board, to be run by one Nina Jankowicz, “internationally-recognized expert on disinformation and democratization,” who also happened to be a RussiaGate shill and publicist for the fifty national security officials who labeled the Hunter Biden laptop story “Russian disinformation” (turned out: not). In other words, America now has a “truth” kommissar who is a soldier in the War on Truth.

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“My grandmother was not stupid: she was simply applying a tested method to deal with things she knew little about.”

The Shanghai Lockdown: a Memetic Analysis (Ugo Bardi)

A “meme” is a small unit of information that can easily move from one human mind to another. It is the virtual equivalent of a virus in the sense that it “infects” people and influences their behavior. To explain the concept, maybe the best way is with an example: how my grandmother was absolutely convinced that nobody ever should drink a glass of milk without having boiled it first. She was infected with a meme that we could describe as “boil the damn milk.” It was simple and direct, but, unfortunately, completely useless in the 1960s, when pasteurization had become common. My grandmother was not stupid: she was simply applying a tested method to deal with things she knew little about.

The problem is that memes can be (or become) wrong or obsolete, and yet they are very difficult to dislodge. In the photo, you see Colin Powell, in 2003, showing a vial of baby powder while claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed largely on the basis of a meme that turned out to be completely false. The Covid pandemic is another case of a complex story that most of us are unprepared to understand. We should be trained in microbiology, medicine, epidemiology, and more — no way! So, we rely on simplified snippets to guide their everyday activities. “Wear the damn mask,” “stay home,” “don’t kill granny,” “flatten the curve,” and the like. That includes our leaders.

All memes have a story: that’s true for the one that led my grandmother to always boil her milk, and also for the “lockdown” meme. But whereas the first (“boil the damn milk”) was harmless, the second (“lock everybody in their homes”) can do a lot of damage. It did, and it is still doing damage in China with the recent massive lockdowns of Shanghai and other cities. So, where does this meme come from? Its origin can be found in the evolution of the concept of “biological warfare.” But let’s go in order.

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“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.”

Why the Yen Fell While the Dollar Rallied (Mises)

How can we explain that the currency whose issuer has made the biggest inflationary mistake of all during the pandemic is the strongest (the US Consumer Price Index is up over 8 percent year on year), while that where the inflationary mistake if any has been the smallest (the Japan CPI is up less than 1 percent year on year) is the weakest? There lies the puzzle of the present dollar-yen rate. We can find at least part of the solution in a quote attributed to the Prussian and subsequently imperial German “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck. “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.”


Today the “hunt” is the search for yield by investors suffering from a famine of interest income on safe savings; the hunters have convinced themselves and others that persistent high returns obtained from risky assets, often highly leveraged, are the new normal, never mind a decade of economic sclerosis (as evidenced by only weak growth if any in median living standards and sluggish productivity growth). “War” is the military conflict in Ukraine coupled with the West’s economic campaign against Russia; accompanying propaganda is a version of Bismarck’s lies. “Elections” are most prominently the midterms in the US where the lies include Fed propaganda including promises of a soft landing and the total official silence on its disastrous policy mistakes inducing present high inflation.

The near collapse of the yen and fantastic strength of the US dollar (yen/dollar moving from 110 last autumn to almost 130 now) are the outcome of such illusions and propaganda. The essence of the “carry trade boom,” a well-known aspect of the hunt for yield, is investors moving out of a zero or negative interest rate currency into ostensibly higher yield assets whether in high-yield credit or high-interest rate currency markets. Currency carry trades involve short positions in the yen, euro or Swiss franc matched by long positions most of all in US dollars but also commodity currencies. High US inflation could wipe out gains to date. After all holders of US money are subject to at least a 12 percent inflation tax levy through 2021–22.


Yet many of the carry traders act as if the tax is phantom, always to be effaced by exchange rate gains or to now fade away. Some believe apparently the Fed has really changed its spots from inflationmonger to inflationphobe. Yes, top Fed officials are talking aggressively and nonstop—the so-called hawkish pivot—about their promise to bring inflation back down to below 3 percent in 2023 without a recession along the way. This is music to the ears of Democrats who face voter wrath about their number one issue of concern—present high inflation. According to the Fed and the administration, high inflation was not due to avoidable policy mistake but bad luck—pandemic dislocation and “Putin’s war.”

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Brand cash

 

 

More than 30 years ago Fidel said: “The next war in Europe will be between Russia and fascism, except that fascism will be called democracy.”

 

 

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Feb 062022
 


Giuseppe Arcimboldo Four elements – Air 1566

 

99% of All Covid Prior Infections Resulted in ‘Natural Immunity’ (BN)
Pentagon Responds to Claim of Spiking Post-Vaccine Disease Rates (ET)
This Medical Data From The US DoD Is Explosive (Kirsch)
Strictly Regular Use Of Ivermectin As Prophylaxis For Covid-19 (RG)
Ivermectin, A Potential Anticancer Drug Derived From An Antiparasitic Drug (PMC)
The Power of Protest (Tucker)
Prosecutors Gear Up As GoFundMe ‘Redirects’ Convoy Donations (RT)
Retaking Crimea By Force ‘Impossible’ – Ukraine (RT)
‘Without Russia, We Won’t Stop A Full-on Ukrainian Offensive’ (RT)
Joe Rogan Apologizes As Podcasts Disappear From Spotify (RT)
Joe Rogan Apologizes for Being Joe Rogan, Begs Woke Forgiveness (CTH)
Man Being Devoured By Hungry Sharks Tries Apologizing To Them (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Good speaker

 

 

 

 

Reuters

 

 

Füllmilch

 

 

“..for three different types of important antibodies, about 95% of people with prior infections retained all three..”

99% of All Covid Prior Infections Resulted in ‘Natural Immunity’ (BN)

Johns Hopkins university this week dropped a quiet bombshell of a study that went widely ignored in the mainstream media. Dr. Marty Makary, spearheading a team at Johns Hopkins to do the work that the CDC and NIH refuse to do, showed that 99% of unvaccinated people known to have Covid infections had robust “natural immunity” that did not diminish for at least 650 days. The charts included in the study reveal the story. As you can see, for three different types of important antibodies, about 95% of people with prior infections retained all three. 99% had the anti-RBD positive type of antibody.

Most importantly of all, this is clear indisputable evidence that natural immunity is far more durable than vaccinated immunity: The Covid protection lasted for 650 days with no noticeable decline.

As Becker News reported in October, Dr. Makary was leading a study that would force the CDC and NIH to do their jobs and not merely act as vaccine salesmen. “The NIH should be doing a long-term study of natural immunity instead of torturing thousands of beagle puppies, including cutting their voice box to avoid barking sounds (sick),” he said. “All taxpayer funded. All our health agencies need fresh new leadership.” “My Johns Hopkins research team is leading a long-term study of natural immunity because the NIH and CDC are not doing it,” he added. “They have $50 billion and 30,000 employees and yet can’t seem to conduct one of the most important studies we need done to inform the public.”

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The military is actively trying to tone down the data now.

Pentagon Responds to Claim of Spiking Post-Vaccine Disease Rates (ET)

Three United States military doctors have blown the whistle on documents allegedly from The United States Department of Defense (DoD) that they had access to, which show “skyrocketing rates of disease” since the introduction and mandating of the CCP virus vaccines in armed forces, human rights attorney Leigh Dundas told The Epoch Times. Dundas was recently approached by Dr. Samuel Sigoloff, Special Forces flight surgeon Lt. Col. Peter Chambers, and Aerospace occupational medicine specialist Lt. Col. Theresa Long. They handed documents to Dundas, who appeared recently with attorney Tom Renz in a five-hour hearing organized by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) titled “COVID-19: Second Opinion.” Renz shared some of the numbers related to medical disorders in the U.S. military data with The Epoch Times.

The whistleblowers, who are represented by Renz, gave him the data “under penalty of perjury,” he said during the hearing. Renz intends to submit the information to the courts, he told Johnson. The DoD responded that the DMED (Defense Medical Epidemiology Database) data from 2016 to 2020 that the whistleblowers brought up was erroneous and incomplete, and is currently under review. “DHA’s Armed Forces Surveillance Division (AFSD) conducted a complete review of the data contained in the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) and found that the data was incorrect for the years 2016-2020,” Maj. Charlie Dietz, a spokesperson for the DoD, told The Epoch Times. “DMED is a web-based tool to query de-identified active component personnel and medical event data contained within the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS).

“Comparing the DMED database to the source data contained in DMSS, AFHSD discovered that the total number of medical diagnoses from 2016-2020 that were accessible in DMED represented only a small fraction of actual medical diagnoses for those years. In contrast, the 2021 total number of medical diagnoses were up to date in DMED. Comparison of 2021 to 2016-2020 resulted in the appearance of significant increased occurrence of all medical diagnoses in 2021 because of the under-reported data for 2016-2020. AFHSD has taken DMED offline to identify and correct the root-cause of the data corruption,” Dietz said. Renz responded: “The DoD has claimed that the DMED data from the years 2016-2020 was incorrect. This is absurd.

We spend millions of dollars per year on DMED and people monitoring DMED which is one of the premier epidemiological databases in the world. Accuracy in this database is critical as it is used to monitor for health issues in our troops. “The DoD would have us believe that the DMED database was wrong from 2016-2020 but then magically was corrected in 2021 despite the fact that they had not noticed it was wrong until we pointed it out in our testimony before Senator Johnson. Further, we are asked to believe that in 2020, the year of what they claim to be the greatest pandemic since 1918, and despite the fact that it is documented that the CDC was also watching this database, no one noticed an error of 20 million-plus injury/disease codes per year,” Renz told The Epoch Times.


Ron Johnson letter

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“VAERS is severely under-reported this year relative to other years by at least a factor of 10.”

This Medical Data From The US DoD Is Explosive (Kirsch)

I spoke to a doctor in the military who confirmed the high incidence of vaccine-caused events in his practice. This doctor estimates that 85% of the military has been vaccinated, although the military official total is 93%. The doctor is responsible for thousands of service members and has dozens of significant vaccine injuries that are VAERS reportable (most of which have not been filed). This is a significant adverse event rate of more than 0.75%, i.e., nearly 1 in 100 soldiers are vaccine injured, some very seriously. It’s important to note that the soldiers are tough and don’t want anything on their medical records that could limit their responsibilities. So many simply don’t report severe symptoms. So our .75% vaccine injury rate is likely an underestimate. And remember, this is in a very healthy young population.

This doctor has zero VAERS reportable injuries in nearly two decades. So this suggests that the increased rate of reportable adverse events from these vaccines is far more than 500X. But other physicians I know with larger practices report elevated rates of from 600 to over 20,000 from the shots this year. In short, the number of adverse event reports from these vaccines is off the charts compared to other vaccines. This suggests that the 30X increase in the rate of adverse event reports in VAERS is because the vaccine is dangerous, not from reporting bias. It also suggests that VAERS is severely under-reported this year relative to other years by at least a factor of 10.

The FDA has assumed that VAERS is over-reported compared to previous years by 30, our estimate is that VAERS is under-reported compared to previous years by 30. Note that this estimate (comparing the propensity to report between years) doesn’t change our minimum 41 under-reporting factor estimate for events this year. This doctor had no doubts that the vaccine is causing these injuries. Over and over again, severe reactions (some never seen before in his/her career) all started happening shortly after after the soldier was vaccinated.

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Hospitalization rate was reduced by 100% in strict users. 90% reduction in mortality.

Strictly Regular Use Of Ivermectin As Prophylaxis For Covid-19 (RG)

This is a prospective observational study of the program mention above, that used ivermectin at a dose of 0.2mg/kg/day for two consecutive days, every 15 days. We obtained and analyzed the data regarding the accumulated dose of ivermectin use, in addition to age and comorbidities, to analyze the patterns of reduction of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates, and risk of dying from COVID-19, according to the regularity and amount of ivermectin used in a 5-month period. Following definitions of regularity, we considered as strictly regular subjects that used at least 180mg of ivermectin (180mg = 30 tablets), and as sporadic users subjects that used 60mg (= 10 tablets) or less during the 5-month period.

Comparisons between subjects that did not use ivermectin and these two levels of regularity of ivermectin use were performed. Analysis of the intermediate levels of ivermectin use are present in the supplement appendix of this study. To analyze hospitalization and mortality rates, we utilized the database of COVID-19 infections of all participants, from Itajai and outside. To analyze COVID-19 infection rate and risk of dying from COVID-19 we utilized the Itajai city database. Propensity score matching (PSM) was employed, followed by multivariate adjusted analysis for residual differences (doubly adjusted analysis). Results: Of the 7,345 cases of COVID-19, 3,034 occurred in non-users, 1,627 in sporadic users, and 289 in strict users, while the remaining cases occurred in the intermediate levels of ivermectin use.

Strict users were older (p < 0.0001) and non-significant higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes and hypertension. COVID-19 infection rate was 39% lower among strict users [4.03% infection rate; risk ratio (RR), 0.61; 95% confidence interval (n = 289 in each group for both comparisons; 95%CI), 0.53 – 0.70; p < 0.0001] than in non-users (6.64% infection rate), and non-significant 11% reduction compared to sporadic users (4.54% infection rate) (n = 1,627 in each group; RR, 0.89; 95%CI 0.76 – 1.03; p = 0.11). Hospitalization rate was reduced by 100% in strict users, compared to non-users and to sporadic users, both before and after PSM (RR, 0.00; 95%CI, not applicable; p < 0.0001).

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But…there’s no money in it..

Ivermectin, A Potential Anticancer Drug Derived From An Antiparasitic Drug (PMC)

Since the first report that IVM could reverse tumor multidrug resistance (MDR) in 1996, a few relevant studies have emphasized the potential use of IVM as a new cancer treatment. Despite the large number of related studies, there are still some key issues that have not been resolved. First of all, the specific mechanism of IVM-mediated cytotoxicity in tumor cells is unclear; it may be related to the effect of IVM on various signaling pathways, but it is not very clear overall. Second, IVM seems to induce mixed cell death in tumor cells, which is also a controversial issue. Therefore, this review summarized the latest findings on the anticancer effect of IVM and discussed the mechanism of the inhibition of tumor proliferation and the way that IVM induces tumor programmed cell death to provide a theoretical basis for the use of IVM as a potential anticancer drug.


As the cost of the research and development of new anticancer drugs continues to increase, drug repositioning has become increasingly important. Drug repositioning refers to the development of new drug indications that have been approved for clinical use [28]. For some older drugs that are widely used for their original indications and have clinical data and safety information, drug repositioning allows them to be developed via a cheaper and faster cycle and to be used more effectively in clinical use clinically [29]. Here, we systematically summarized the anticancer effect and mechanism of IVM, which is of great significance for the repositioning of IVM for cancer treatment.

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“What exactly were Fauci, Farrar, and Collins doing the whole of February 2020 instead of examining ways that sick people could get well? Why did they use burner phones?”

The Power of Protest (Tucker)

The great slogan is “living with Covid.” It is an implicit repudiation of everything that has happened for two years. It’s what we should have done along along. But the fanatics took over. The hysterical scream back in 2020 was that the power of the state, backed by media and corporate interests, would somehow make the virus go away. It was always ridiculously unachievable. The attempt unleashed massive abuse against the population, disrupted economies everywhere, and unleashed a tremendous amount of financial corruption that is still going on today. We are nowhere near done with this. Massive restrictions are still in place. Travel is still a disaster. The mask mandate on transportation is as awful as ever. The segregation in D.C., NYC, and Boston is morally repulsive.

Plus, so many lives have been shattered. So many businesses have closed. Public health is in shambles. The demographic disruption has been profound. There are scandals lurking everywhere. What exactly were Fauci, Farrar, and Collins doing the whole of February 2020 instead of examining ways that sick people could get well? Why did they use burner phones? And that article debunking the lab leak in Nature, the one highly criticized later. How did that come about? Mysteries abound about the vaccine trials. And wait until people have a look at the “Emergency Use Approval” documents submitted by the manufacturers. They will discover that the pharma companies never promised much at all. They certainly never said that the vaxx would stop the spread, keep people from being infected, much less end the pandemic. They never said that it would work against variants.

This is only a few of many remarkable shocks that will be pouring out over the coming years. Governments spent many trillions of dollars, most of which ended up in the pockets of well-connected elites in the corporate and banking sectors. The payoffs and graft connected with everything, from testing kits, to masks, to therapeutics will be alarming to behold. And wait until people figure out that all along we might have had solid generics that have a massive effective impact on early treatment. All wars come to an end, but governments rarely think in advance about the exit strategy. Instead, they kill and destroy until exhaustion sets in and then try to sneak away hoping that everyone will just move on. That’s pretty much how things fared with the Iraq War, and the results were devastating for the whole world.

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DeSantis is there too. And Texas.

Prosecutors Gear Up As GoFundMe ‘Redirects’ Convoy Donations (RT)

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Ohio AG Dave Yost have urged citizens who donated to the anti-vaccine mandate ‘Freedom Convoy’ in Canada to come forward, after crowdfunding site GoFundMe seized nearly $8 million in donations. Morrisey says the platform engaged in “deceptive” practices. “In [West Virginia], organizations must not deceive donors and engage in deceptive advertising practices,” Morrisey, a Republican, tweeted on Friday night. “If you’ve been victimized by a deceptive act or practice, let us know!” Ohio’s Dave Yost, also a Republican, issued a similar statement on Saturday morning, instructing duped donors to file a complaint on his website. It is still unclear what kind of legal action, if any, the AGs are preparing to take.


The ‘Freedom Convoy’, a group of truckers who have clogged up roads in the Canadian capital, Ottawa for a week now, had raised $7,964,141, before GoFundMe shut down their fundraiser on Friday. The decision was seemingly made at the behest of Ottawa’s police department, which thanked the company for “listening to our concerns as a City and a police service.” GoFundMe announced that unless donors request refunds, the site will distribute the seven-figure sum to “credible and established charities.” Even though the truckers confirmed that “funds would be used only for participants who traveled to Ottawa to participate in a peaceful protest,” the crowdfunding platform justified its decision by saying that the protest has become an “occupation” of the Canadian capital. Conservatives on both sides of the US/Canada border were outraged.

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“..the areas of the country currently under the control of separatists in eastern Ukraine. According to Danilov, capturing these areas is also impossible by military means..”

Retaking Crimea By Force ‘Impossible’ – Ukraine (RT)

Using the Ukrainian military to retake Crimea from Russia is not a realistic proposition, but it could be an option in the future, the chairman of Kiev’s National Security and Defense Council said on Thursday. Speaking to TV channel 1+1, Aleksey Danilov explained that Ukraine would not simply accept that Crimea is now a part of Russia and stated that the government would “do everything” in its power to take control of the peninsula. “Do we have a strategy to return Crimea militarily? Right now, we have a strategy to return Crimea. Whether it will be the military way, whether it will be any other way, it depends on many factors. As of today, I can say that it is impossible,” Danilov said. “What will happen tomorrow or in a year, we will see. It is not such a simple matter.”


Crimea came under the control of Moscow in 2014, when the peninsula was re-absorbed into Russia, following a referendum. The vote took place a month after the events of the Maidan, when violent street protests toppled Kiev’s democratically elected government. Ukraine, as well as most of the world, considers the referendum illegitimate and views Crimea as illegally occupied by Moscow. The national security official also spoke about the areas of the country currently under the control of separatists in eastern Ukraine. According to Danilov, capturing these areas is also impossible by military means, as it would entail a large number of casualties. Speaking last year, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia would work “to help Ukraine solve the problem” of Donbass, but “Crimea is out of the discussion.”

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“Ukraine has blocked almost 90% of the water supplies flowing into Crimea, after the republic joined Russia ..”

‘Without Russia, We Won’t Stop A Full-on Ukrainian Offensive’ (RT)

“It takes time to replace a window. First, they take the measurements and then you have to wait for the window to be made. If we’re talking about just one window, everything will be done more or less fast, but a bulk order, for several families, takes more time to process, coordination takes time. We have had several cases when the customer did not live to receive the promised support. Sometimes, when we finally arrive at an old woman’s house to install a window, it is already too late. She has died, they tell us. It happened on several occasions. Once we were even treated with pastries at a funeral repast.” Vladimir does not attach much importance to the present-day escalation, nor does he believe the status of the Donbass republics is going to change.

He thinks that any offensive, limited to the Donbass – no matter if it comes from Ukraine, or the Donbass republics, or the Russians – will only bring more destruction and take more human lives. “This is an urbanized area, where both conflicting sides spent eight years in the trenches. Debaltsevo was destroyed and, after seven years, it is still in ruins. Why lose more lives, tens of thousands of lives? If Ukraine wins, it will have to address the Crimean issue and the need to restore the Donbass region it has destroyed with its own hands. If the republics get the upper hand, the war will continue, but the frontline will be moved to Mariupol and Slavyansk, instead of Gorlovka and Donetsk,” he says. “Only the Russian peacekeepers can bring this war to a close by launching a massive attack against the rear parts of the Ukrainian armed forces. This is what can help end the war in Donetsk and Gorlovka, in Mariupol and Slavyansk, and in Kharkov, in Odessa, in Kiev.

And this is when Crimea will finally get enough fresh water. [Ukraine has blocked almost 90% of the water supplies flowing into Crimea, after the republic joined Russia – RT.] And I will be able to finally ask this bunch of scum, our public officials – where is the money that was supposed to stop civilian losses? Where has it all gone, I will ask them, and I don’t care if this will make them think that I’m siding with Ukraine.” These people, who fell victim to a geopolitical conflict, do not fool themselves. They do not insist that the path they have chosen is perfect and beyond reproach. The rasputitsa that we witnessed in September 2014 when the first Minsk Protocol was signed, then again in February 2015 with Minsk II, has diverted the Donbass and the rest of Novorossiya from their path of rejoining Russia.

Dirty politics has almost succeeded in confusing millions of people, in persuading them that everything they have gone through – fighting, hardships, friends and family members killed in the war, all the defeats and victories – everything was done for the sake of something entirely different. However, every nation has a special legend they turn to in times of hardships. The Russians of the Donbass are no exception. They go on living in their native land, hoping that this period of rasputitsa triggered by hybrid politics will be over one day, and all the foul and mean things that are happening now will freeze along with the mud of the steppes. And then these people, living in the constant fear that tomorrow may never come for them, will finally get a chance to liberate their towns and themselves. Are they afraid of the “Russian invasion”? No, they are hoping for one. And they call it “humanitarian intervention.”

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Not getting any prettier.

Joe Rogan Apologizes As Podcasts Disappear From Spotify (RT)

More than 70 episodes of ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ podcast have vanished from Spotify, as first reported by JRE Missing, a service that monitors the popular podcast. The episodes disappeared this week and feature a variety of guests, from commentator Michael Malice to comedian Tom Segura. News of the pulled episodes comes as Rogan has addressed controversy around his show for the second time in an Instagram video, offering an apology for some past language and jokes highlighted recently by critics calling for the comedian’s widely popular show to be censored or pulled by Spotify. Rogan addressed multiple instances of him using the N-word, as well as another podcast clip that has long been criticized where he appears to compare a black neighborhood he arrived in to the film ‘Planet of the Apes’.


On using the N-word, Rogan revealed he once would use the word “in context,” as in discussing a story or person that involved the word, like comedian Redd Foxx breaking cultural boundaries by using the word on television. Rogan says he knows today that he was wrong in his thinking that ‘context’ mattered. Addressing the ‘Planet of the Apes’ clip, Rogan explained that he acknowledges making a bad joke on the show in question and then recounts what a positive experience he had. “There’s nothing I can do to take that back. I wish I could. Obviously, that’s not possible,” Rogan said. “I certainly wasn’t trying to be racist, and I certainly would never want to offend someone for entertainment with something as stupid as racism.” Rogan ended his statement by saying he hopes this instance is a “teachable moment” to others and offering his “sincerest deepest apologies.” Neither Rogan or Spotify have offered an explanation for the new batch of missing episodes.

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“Joe Rogan stuck the fork in himself – another irrelevant notch on the belt to be forgotten..”

Joe Rogan Apologizes for Being Joe Rogan, Begs Woke Forgiveness (CTH)

This never ends well. Joe Rogan has self-flagellated while treading water in a pool of Alinsky piranhas. This never ends well. Apparently, the Lightbringer for all modern Alinsky tribal followers, Barack Obama, triggered the final thumbs down and threatened the financial mechanism that supported the embattled Mr. Rogan, Spotify Inc. With the twitch of his pinkie ring, Teh One, the bringer of all racial and progressive enlightenment, Barack Obama, forced the ashamed and humiliated Joe Rogan to kneel before the altar of wokeism and apologize for the mortal sin of using the “N” word. Earlier on Saturday, Mr. Rogan assessed his bank account, glanced at the tin cup and used Woke-Insta to profess his sins and beg forgiveness from the leftist tribe. In an effort to avoid his cancellation, Joe Rogan denounced his skin color, renounced his former shameful conduct and announced his new enlightenment.

Rogan predictably declared the oft familiar last ditch effort phrase, “this is a teachable moment.” Quickly, Joe Rogan’s newly subscribed conservative audience was warm to appreciate his humility and offer their forgiveness. However, that tribe is not the Spotify audience who manage the coliseum of his indentured servitude. Despite their protestations to the contrary, the progressive and enlightened woke tribe never relent until they have achieved their goal – the removal of all Joe Rogan flesh and death by ten thousand screaming piranha bites. For the professional and political left, apology is weakness. Weakness must be punished. The Alinsky clan bait their victims with the false promises of forgiveness; if you just cower strongly enough, bend meekly enough, apologize sincerely enough, it will be okay. But forgiveness is never provided, it is never okay.

The millions of dollars that Joe Rogan might be worth to the corporation known as Spotify are irrelevant to the swarm. Indeed, the mob view higher value as a challenge, a new height for the wokeness to achieve. Rogan just bled into the pool of that swarm. There is no exit now. The professional political left does not control media in all forms as a business proposition, for them it is a weapon. Rogan’s financial value to Spotify means naught – his cancellation is only a matter of time and contractual exit. He’s done; another sacrifice on the altar of Wokeism. Joe Rogan stuck the fork in himself – another irrelevant notch on the belt to be forgotten with hundreds, if not thousands, of previous notches. Everything now is simply a formality. We’ve seen this cancellation show too many times to pretend we don’t know how it ends.

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“Look, these creatures charging me with their blood-drenched teeth and soulless black eyes seem reasonable..”

Man Being Devoured By Hungry Sharks Tries Apologizing To Them (BBee)

According to sources, a local man was devoured by several hungry Great White Sharks off the coast of California today after several failed attempts to calm down the murderous creatures by apologizing to them. “Look, these creatures charging me with their blood-drenched teeth and soulless black eyes seem reasonable,” said the man. “I must’ve done something to anger them or hurt their feelings! I should just do the right thing and apologize to them.” “Hey there Mr. Shark!” said the man to one of the creatures chewing through his left leg. “I am deeply sorry for any comments I may have made in the past that were hurtful and damaging to the shark community. This has been a time of learning and growth for me. I’m grateful for you and others like you who have called me to ‘do better.’ I am deeply sorry.”

The shark then chewed off the man’s right leg as well. “I suppose I deserved that,” said the man. “Thank you for holding me accountable.” Sources say the man apologized to the brainless underwater killing machines several times until they devoured the rest of him. The man is survived by his family and friends, all of whom have now disowned him. Medics arrived on the scene to find only half of a severed arm left in the water. The severed arm has been hired by The Daily Wire.

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Now it makes sense

 

 

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Oct 052021
 
 October 5, 2021  Posted by at 8:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  84 Responses »


M. C. Escher Circle limit III 1959

 

They All Lied. Throw Them All Out NOW (Denninger)
Covid-19: The Hyperferritinemic Syndrome (Chesnut)
Slowly, Then All at Once (Kunstler)
The Age of Exterminations – III (Ugo Bardi)
Italian Court Sides With Nurse Wrongly Suspended For Refusing Covid-19 Jab (LSN)
New Zealand Abandons Controversial ‘Zero COVID’ Policy (SN)
India To Pay $674 Compensation For Every Covid-19 Death (BBC)
Harvard Epidemiologist Censored by LinkedIn for Defending Healthcare Jobs (BI)
New PCR Test Intelligence Suggests Covid-19 Virulent Earlier Than Thought (RM)
Antibodies Last Over A Year After Covid-19 Infection (JTN)
Europe’s Energy Crisis Presents A Real Danger (Lacalle)

 

 


From https://wereldintransitie.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/covid-19-in-perspectief.pdf

 

 

Veritas Pfizer

 

 

Qantas
https://twitter.com/i/status/1444644291758919686

 

 

“The ghouls involved in this up and down the line, from hospital administrators to doctors to nurses to politicians all must hang for this.”

They All Lied. Throw Them All Out NOW (Denninger)

The Government has been analyzing CMS data. Not a shock; they have every person over 65’s medical records, in real time, as everyone over 65, statistically speaking, is on Medicare and the government pays for it. They therefore have the records. The US Government has been analyzing this data through Project Salus. They know that:
• 71% of the Covid-19 cases occurred in these fully-vaccinated people and roughly 80% of the population >65 is vaccinated. In other words they know the vaccines do not stop you from getting Covid.
• Both of the mRNA vaccines lose effectiveness between 4-6 months post-injection; the failure rate doubles between 5-6 months as opposed to 3-4 months.
• Age is NOT why the vaccines lose effectiveness. It is simply that they stop working.
• While Moderna vaccines work slightly better than the Pfizer ones, the key word here is slightly. Both degrade materially and the difference in the 5-6 month timeframe is not statistically significant. Yes, it appears to be slightly better but not statistically so. In other words the damn things do not work to provide durable protection — period.
• The nuclear lie: As of August 7th 60% of hospitalizations were among fully-vaccinated individuals. You have heard repeatedly that this is now a “disease of the unvaccinated.” That is a damned, knowing lie.
• In the 5-6 month timeframe the hospitalization protection also is wildly ineffective; the rate per 100,000 approximately doubles between the 3-4 month and 5-6 month time periods.
• Prior infection is highly protective but post six months vaccination has become much less-so. Note that “prior infection” now goes back 18 months to the first wave. Do we still need to have a conversation about “natural immunity”? No: THE US GOVERNMENT KNOWS DAMNED WELL AND HAS PROVED THAT INFECTION PROTECTS BETTER THAN THEIR FRAUDULENT JABS.

This is now all in the data folks, and the US Government knows it. You have been lied to repeatedly folks — these are not errors, and what Fauci did yesterday on TV was not an error either. These are not “noble” anything; they are lies. The jabs are a failure in that no matter the promise you care to hang your hat on they become more and more worthless over time and that time period is short enough to void the effectiveness which the FDA claims must exist in order to approve such a thing as a “vaccine.” The Government has been analyzing this data and knows damned well the jabs stop working and in fact this is not a disease of the unvaccinated; the claims that the hospitals are “full of unvaccinated people” are damned lies intended to coerce you into a dangerous and, over time worthless act.

At the same time they know that prior infection and recovery is effective and remains effective yet they continue to claim that there is “no data” to prove this. They’re full of crap; they not only have the data they’ve analyzed it and know that’s yet another lie; there is no reason to take a jab that wears off if you have been previously infected. Period. And finally a new analysis shows this is not US-centric; infection rates are not correlated with vaccination percentages, which is hard, statistical proof that the jabs are worthless to stop you from getting and giving Covid-19 to others. The ghouls involved in this up and down the line, from hospital administrators to doctors to nurses to politicians all must hang for this.

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Check your iron.

Covid-19: The Hyperferritinemic Syndrome (Chesnut)

Ferritin is double edged. It is both an inflammation promoter and an immunosuppressant. But, it needs a trigger for BOTH of its abilities to be engaged. That trigger is none other than the Spike Protein’s cytotoxic attack on virtually EVERYTHING due to its affinity for ACE2! It is said that the Devil’s greatest trick is getting mankind to believe he doesn’t exist. It is the WHO’s and the CDC’s greatest trick that they convinced mankind that SARS-CoV-2 is a natural virus. It is a bioweapon. In particular, the Spike Protein. Only something invented could so artfully, perfectly bridge the gap and induce BOTH a hyperinflammatory state and immunosuppression. The result? ARDS in the short term. AUTOIMMUNITY in the long run.

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“Help wanted signs are plastered everywhere and no help is on the way.”

Slowly, Then All at Once (Kunstler)

Meanwhile, the country is too busy committing suicide by Covid-19. The stupid vaccine mandates guarantee the loss of hospital services and the failure of medical care generally as nurses, technicians, doctors, and even the cleaning crew peel away from their jobs. Ditto, public education… and just about everything else, really, where employment is conditioned on getting vaxed. A lot of ordinary people have weighed the costs and benefits and have decided to opt out. No thank you on blood clots and a premature death. Help wanted signs are plastered everywhere and no help is on the way. For many businesses, no parts or raw materials are on the way either. The truckers don’t want the vax. With the vaccine program failing, Pfizer and the gang are looking to ride to the rescue with a new magic Covid cure pill that does exactly what Ivermectin has been doing, though constantly maligned in the mainstream news. Get a load of this statement issued by the Associated Press on Friday.

“Falsely touted as a treatment for Covid-19?” That’s about as maliciously dishonest as you can get, since it will contribute to killing people whose lives would otherwise be saved by the Ivermectin protocol — which has been shown to be safe and effective in the clinical setting around the world. By the way, Ivermectin is an off-patent drug costing only about two dollars a pill. Since the Covid-19 early treatment protocol runs five days, that’s about $10 for that medication. It must gall the pharma companies to see that enormous profit-potential slip through their hands. Their go-to drug the past two years has been Remdesivir, which is neither safe nor effective and costs $3,100 for a course of treatment (NPR-News). How much do you suppose Pfizer will charge for its new ivermectin replacement? So, while America strangles its economy to death, seemingly on-purpose, do you suppose the capital markets will not notice? You bet they will, and that means big trouble for Wall Street, probably soon. This is their season of the witch, you know, and just last week they twitched up-and-down five hundred points a day. Looking a little shaky.


Is it a coincidence, by the way, that four officers of the Federal Reserve have been outed for trading stocks and bonds in a pattern that looks an awful lot like front-running the Fed’s own “guidance?” Robert S. Kaplan, head of the Dallas Fed, and Eric Rosengren, head of the Boston Fed announced their “early retirements” last week over stock-trading ethics issues. Fed Vice-chair Richard Clarida’s financial disclosure statement indicated that he dumped millions of dollars in a Pimco bond fund and jammed them into a Pimco stock fund the day before Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced emergency interventions to battle the Covid-19 epidemic in early 2020. Mr. Clarida was involved in deliberations leading to the change in fed policy. And Richmond Fed president Thomas Barkin is under scrutiny for voting to bail out the corporate bond market while sitting on a portfolio of corporate bonds. In his past role as CFO of McKinsey & Co, a global consulting firm, Barkin advised Purdue Pharma L.P. on maximizing sales of its painkiller OxyContin, the infamous scourge of the US opioid epidemic.

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“In 2020 the average life expectancy in the US has declined by nearly 2% for a total of 600,000 extra deaths, most of them old people. So, we are talking of some 20 billion dollars saved just in terms of pensions. But it is much more than that considering the saving in health care costs.”

The Age of Exterminations – III (Ugo Bardi)

Let’s make a few calculations. In the US, there are nowadays about 46 million retirees living on social security. The US spends about 7% of its GDP on pensions, that is, about 1.5 trillion dollars per year (about $30.000/person/year). That’s more than the about 1 trillion dollars that the US government spends for the military budget, bloated as it is. Assuming that you could remove just 10% of the retirees, it would mean saving some 150 billion dollars per year. But, in practice, much more than that if you take into account the health care costs. For instance, summing nursing care facilities and home care for the elderly, we are talking of something close to 300 billion dollars per year, and that does not include hospitalization costs. The potential savings are truly huge: hundreds of billions of dollars.

Of course, exterminating the elderly cannot be done using the same demonization techniques used in the past against the witches and the Jews. Old people are fathers and grandfathers and their offspring won’t normally like to see them burned at the stake or gassed in extermination chambers. But extermination takes many forms, and it is rarely explicitly proclaimed. After all, it never happened in history that you could find a sign with the words “extermination camp” at the gate of an extermination camp. During WWII. for instance, the Germans were told that the Jews were just being relocated, not that they were being exterminated. In other cases, the people being exterminated were glorified as heroes. So, what form could the extermination of old people take? It would be done using well-known propaganda techniques, the main one being to state the exact opposite of what is being done. In other words, when the idea is to kill some people, propaganda will convince everybody that it is done to do them a favor (do you remember the “humanitarian bombs” dropped on Serbia?)

In practice, the weak spot of the middle-class retirees is that they need medical assistance and that they cannot normally pay the skyrocketing costs on their personal saving. So, they could be gently removed from the state budget by degrading the public health care system while saying that it is being modified in order to protect them. A clever way of doing it would be to focus so much on curing a specific single disease that the result would be a decline of the care for the illnesses that mostly affect aged people: cardiovascular diseases and tumors. A parallel measure to intensify the effect would be to degrade the quality of the food available, making it become less nutritious and contaminated with all sorts of pollutants.This method would not affect the elites, who can pay for good health care and and good food, but it will hit directly those who live on pensions.

Now, let’s take a look at the current situation. In 2020 the average life expectancy in the US has declined by nearly 2% for a total of 600,000 extra deaths, most of them old people. So, we are talking of some 20 billion dollars saved just in terms of pensions. But it is much more than that considering the saving in health care costs. These numbers are not large in comparison to the US budget, but not peanuts, either. And what we are seeing is just the start of a trend.

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“..suspended without pay in February..”

Italian Court Sides With Nurse Wrongly Suspended For Refusing Covid-19 Jab (LSN)

A civil court has sided with a nurse who was suspended without pay after she refused the COVID-19 vaccine. The ruling was given by the Tribunal of Milan on September 16, following the appeal of the Italian nurse, who was not named. She had been suspended without pay in February because she refused to receive the jab in defiance of a vaccine mandate imposed by her employer. The tribunal called the suspension “illegitimate” and ordered the employer to pay the nurse her full wages with interest and arrears. The decision overturns previous court rulings for similar cases. It is the first time in Italy that a court of law has ruled in favor of an employee in a case of a suspension or a dismissal for failure to vaccinate.

The decision comes from one of Italy’s most authoritative courts and is considered particularly significant because it overturns precedents and enshrines in law the illegitimacy of dismissing or suspending employees without pay for failing to vaccinate. “This was one of the first cases of suspension of a healthcare worker,” stated Mauro Sandri, the nurse’s lawyer, in an interview on YouTube. Sandri compared the case to that of 5 nurses in a similar situation; they lost their appeal in May. “Everyone [in Italy] will remember the ruling in Belluno, when 5 nurses who were suspended by their employer launched an appeal and lost it,” he said. “The mainstream [media] amplified the outcome of that ruling by going so far as to say that it was pointless to appeal to suspensions imposed by employers.”

Sandri then recalled that the ruling in that case was “unfortunately emulated by other tribunals, including Modena and Verona” and that “a jurisprudence had been created, giving employers license to suspend their employees.” All of Sandri’s previous attempts to appeal such decisions had been unsuccessful. However, he sees that this new decision had overturned the trend. “This decision was overwhelmingly positive, as it established the illegitimate nature of the suspension,” he said. The nurse in question had been suspended since February and had not received any salary since that time. The court therefore ordered the employer to pay her salary for the full period in which she had not been compensated, with added interest, as Sandri pointed out. “The appeal aimed at obtaining her reinstatement in the workplace (…) So we requested that, as well as a full payment of her wages, with arrears.”

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But the people who implemented it get to stay? How does that work?

New Zealand Abandons Controversial ‘Zero COVID’ Policy (SN)

New Zealand has announced it is dropping its controversial ‘zero COVID’ policy after numerous critics pointed out that such an approach to eliminating the virus was impossible. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the announcement earlier today during a press conference in which she acknowledged, “The return to zero has been extremely difficult.” “What we have called a long tail has been more like a tentacle that has been difficult to shake,” she added, noting that the delta variant of the virus forced a change in policy. Critics had repeatedly asked how the country expected to maintain a ‘zero COVID’ policy given the emergence of new variants of the virus and decreasing efficacy of the initial round of vaccinations.


However, with 48% of the population fully vaccinated, no return to normal is expected anytime soon given that Ardern has said 90% will need to be fully vaxxed before the lockdowns will end. Kiwis have faced continuous lockdown measures almost as brutal as their Aussie neighbors since the beginning of the pandemic. As we highlighted in August, Ardern mimicked Australia’s top public health official by telling citizens, “Don’t talk to your neighbors,” after the country went into full lockdown as a result of just a single COVID case being detected. Authorities also previously announced that they would put all coronavirus infectees and their close family members in “quarantine facilities” even if they refuse.

Where will it stop?

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The differences within India are stunning.

India To Pay $674 Compensation For Every Covid-19 Death (BBC)

India’s top court has approved the government’s decision to pay 50,000 rupees ($674; £498) as compensation for every death due to Covid-19. The Supreme Court’s order followed a petition by lawyers seeking compensation under India’s disaster management laws. India has officially recorded more than 447,000 Covid-19 deaths so far. However, experts believe that up to 10 times more people could have died in the pandemic. They have arrived at different estimates after examining excess deaths – a measure of how many more people are dying than would be expected compared to the previous few years. On Monday Justice MR Shah said the “next of kith and kin of the deceased person” shall be paid this compensation within a month of applying. This would be “over and above the amounts paid by the centre and state under various benevolent schemes”, he said.


The court added that the compensation should be paid within 30 days after a family submits an application. In June, petitioners sought the court’s intervention in paying compensation to the families of Covid-19 victims. They said since Covid-19 was “specially” notified as a disaster under India’s National Disaster Management Act, compensation should be paid to the victims. The 2005 law was enacted for efficient management of disasters, including preparation of mitigation strategies, capacity-building and compensation for lost lives, injuries and damaged properties. The law says monetary assistance of 400,000 rupees should be paid to family of people who have lost their lives in a disaster.

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Kulldorff.

Harvard Epidemiologist Censored by LinkedIn for Defending Healthcare Jobs (BI)

Now LinkedIn – owned by Microsoft – appears to have joined the censorship brigade, targeting probably many venues but the Brownstone Institute in particular. The timing is particularly awkward because of the potentially millions of people who could be fired from their positions in the coming weeks and months for non-compliance with Covid mandates. Brownstone has defended the rights of workers to choose against vaccination and in favor of natural immunity or exposure through normal living. The takedowns of our posts began last week when the venue took down a piece arguing against the politicization of disease. The post was put up and disappeared. This happened to everyone who attempted to post the piece. It was a magic disappearing act, clearly targeting the URL and content.

We thought we found a workaround by posting the link for mobile viewing but LinkedIn’s algorithms figured that one out quickly and took it down too. As with all such cases, the first impulse is to believe that there was something about that piece that the censors found objectionable, perhaps in tone or content. And that piece did have an edge about it. Surely it was just once. It won’t happen again, or so we hoped. Now we find a pattern. The famed Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff – one of three brave scientists who drafted the Great Barrington Declartion one year ago today – wrote a piece in defense of the nurses at a Harvard hospital who are refusing the vaccination. These nurses and others in the hospital had worked mightily and tirelessly for 21 months with daily exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and had thereby acquired natural immunity which all research has shown to be as good or better than the vaccine.

They do not need it. It is unscientific to the point of absurdity for these immunity mandates not to consider natural immunity, about which humanity has known for 2.5 millennia. “Hospitals are firing nurses and other staff with superior natural immunity while retaining those with weaker vaccine-induced immunity,” wrote Kulldorff. “By doing so, they are betraying their patients, increasing their risk for hospital-acquired infections…. If university hospitals cannot get the medical evidence right on the basic science of immunity, how can we trust them with any other aspects of our health?” LinkedIn at first accepted the article on its platform. It unfurled the post with image and excerpt. It achieved a very high reach with many likes and shares. This makes sense because so many people on this platform are either losing their own jobs or losing colleagues in every profession. Kulldorff was bravely coming to their defense.

Within the first hour of posting, the unfurled posts started disappearing. Kulldorff’s own posting on his LinkedIn page disappeared. So did the Brownstone post. Along with it, all shares were made to disappear too. This article – by one of the world’s leading scientists at one of the world’s most prestigious universities that defended workers and their jobs – was being torn down by a platform designed to assist people in their career advancement.

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“..the timeline for when the virus was actually spreading in the wild would dramatically shift: from December 2019 to as early as May 2019..”

New PCR Test Intelligence Suggests Covid-19 Virulent Earlier Than Thought (RM)

The coronavirus may have been spreading through Wuhan, China much earlier than previously thought, according to an analysis of Chinese procurement records by Internet 2.0, a company that specializes in digital forensics and intelligence analysis. According to a report released Monday, entitled “Procuring for a Pandemic: An Assessment of Hubei Province PCR Procurement Contracts,” there was a dramatic increase in the number of Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR, contracts inked by Hubei Province and institutions in and around Wuhan in the second half of 2019. [..] PCR tests are the gold standard for COVID-19 virus testing and if there was spike in the use of those tests in the Spring of 2019, as the report suggests, that could mean the timeline for when the virus was actually spreading in the wild would dramatically shift: from December 2019 to as early as May 2019.

Among other things, there was a dramatic increase in the total amount of money spent on these tests in and around Wuhan, in Hubei province, the report said. In 2015, institutions there spent about 19.1 million yuan ($2.9 million) on PCR tests. Two years later, in 2017, they spent about 29.1 million yuan and in 2018, institutions around Wuhan spent 36.7 million on these tests. But when analysts looked at the spending in 2019, the government contract value for PCR tests was higher than the previous two years combined: 67.4 million yuan. (The tests got more expensive, which also suggests they got pricer as demand went up, the report says.) A team of experts from the World Health Organization investigating the origins of the pandemic visited The Wuhan Institute of Virology back in June to see if it could link its research on coronaviruses with the pandemic.

WHO’s findings have been inconclusive, though the Internet 2.0 report notes that the institute was one of the biggest purchasers of PCR tests and equipment in the second half of 2019. The company’s analysis is based on data collected through bidcenter.com.cn, which tracks Chinese government contracts. According to the researchers, there were 52 contracts found in 2015, and about the same number in 2016. In 2019, though, institutions like the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, the Wuhan CDC, and Hubei CDC had secured 135 contracts for PCR tests. Nearly double the number of the previous two years combined.

The monthly breakdown of purchases offers clues, too. There was a significant increase in spending on PCR tests and equipment over the summer of 2019, starting in May, which was remarkably different from the spending patterns in previous years. “The full inventory of this catastrophe is still being compiled,” Robert Potter, one of the authors of the report, said in a written statement. “What is clear is that investigating the coverup of the virus still has some distance to go before it is fully understood. The data presented here gives us a strong indication that the outbreak started prior to December 2019, meaning the information gap and window for the emergence of the virus is larger than when we started this project.”

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Are we measuring the right thing? This appears to suggest that those who had severe Covid are better protected. I doubt it.

Antibodies Last Over A Year After Covid-19 Infection (JTN)

Most people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, will carry antibodies for at least a year, according to a recent peer-reviewed study. The European Journal of Immunology accepted a study on Sept. 24 from scientists at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, who studied 1,292 subjects eight months after infection for the presence of antibodies. Their findings included 96% of subjects still carrying neutralizing antibodies and 66% with the nucleoprotein IgG antibody. After randomly selecting 367 subjects from the original cohort who were not yet vaccinated a year following infection, the scientists found that 89% of subjects still had neutralizing antibodies, and 36% with the IgG antibody.

Subjects who had experienced a severe SARS-CoV-2 infection had higher antibody levels, anywhere from two to seven times as many antibodies as those with mild infections at least 13 months after contracting the disease. While the antibodies provide lasting protection against the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, their neutralization efficiency against the Alpha, Beta, and Delta variants decreased over time. The neutralizing antibodies “were only slightly reduced” in the Alpha variant and “considerably declined” in the Beta variant. However, “over 80% of the subjects who had recovered from severe” SARS-CoV-2 infection still had neutralizing antibodies against the Delta variant a year after being infected.

Nature Medicine published a study in May that found “that neutralization level is highly predictive of immune protection” against SARS-CoV-2. A preliminary study, which is not yet peer-reviewed, found that antibodies decreased 10-fold just seven months after subjects received the second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

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The decisions are made by people who don’t understand what energy is.

Europe’s Energy Crisis Presents A Real Danger (Lacalle)

This week the wholesale price of electricity has exceeded the psychological barrier of 200 euros per megawatt hour in most countries of the European Union. Although the daily price currently only affects 15% of the energy sold, since the rest is locked for almost twelve months since last winter at much lower prices, it is a sign of future risk. Thousands of contracts are going to have to be revised with huge price increases in the next three months when the locked contracts expire. The price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has soared to $34/mmbtu delivered in December and January. In comparable energy terms it would be about $197 per barrel of oil equivalent, according to Morgan Stanley. Meanwhile, the price of natural gas (NBP) has risen more than 200% in 2021.

The price of CO2 emission rights has increased more than 1,000% since 2017, and more than 200% in 2021. This concept, which is a hidden tax for which the governments of the European Union are going to collect more than 21 billion euros in 2021, adds to the inflationary spike.These extraordinary tax revenues should be used to mitigate the price increases in consumer bills and avoid an energy crisis in Europe that will sink the recovery. Two key factors explain the rise in energy prices and in both there is a responsibility of governments: The forced closure of the economy is a key factor to understand the damage generated in the supply chains, and the prohibition of investment in gas resources and abandoning nuclear in Germany has led to a more volatile and expensive energy mix in peak demand periods.

This, coupled with a political decision to impose a volatile and intermittent energy mix has left Europe much more dependent and exposed to gas price fluctuations. Renewable energies work 20% of the time and when they do not work, the only guarantee of supply is to use natural gas, which tends to happen as Asia demand rises and when its price has skyrocketed. Of course, demand is a very important factor, but we cannot forget that, in natural gas, as in coal, there is no supply problem. There is, in fact, excess capacity. Under normal circumstances, the price of natural gas and CO2 would have moderated once the base effect dissipated -in June-, but we forget the disastrous impact of monetary and government interventionism. The rise in CO2 emission rights is directly the fault of the tax voracity of European governments, which have massively limited the supply of these rights so that the price rises.

Additionally, the increase of many goods and services is directly due to the massive money supply growth in 2020, well above the demand for money, generating inflation by political decree. I do not understand how the fiscal voracity of some governments blinds them to two important risks: an energy crisis that leaves businesses and families suffocated by a price increase caused by political decisions, and a massive reaction of the population against environmental policies when they see prices skyrocket due to planning errors (more volatile and intermittent energy mix and dependent on gas) and legislation (charging citizens with the full cost of environmental policies and making those who pollute pay, and those who do not, pay even more ).

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15 years of WikiLeaks
Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks (Within months of this talk, #Assange was under house arrest. He has been arbitrarily detained since 7 December 2010.)

 

 

 

Ron Johnson

 

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime; donate with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

Aug 162021
 
 August 16, 2021  Posted by at 9:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  93 Responses »


Roy Lichtenstein Hopeless 1963

 

Ultrapotent Antibodies vs Diverse & Highly Transmissible Covid19 Variants (Sc.)
Vaccine Inventor Dr. Robert Malone Ruined “His Chances For A Nobel Prize” (TSU)
Shedding of Infectious SARS-CoV-2 Despite Vaccination with Delta (Mx)
Here Comes Nosocomial DISASTER (Denninger)
A Message From France (TBP)
French Covid Permit Scheme Extended To Paris Department Stores (G.)
UAE Covid-19 Death Toll Exceeds 2,000 For First Time, 1,189 New Cases (AlA)
Biden Offers Cash To Florida Schools That Defy Gov. Ron DeSantis (NYP)
China, the WHO and the Powergrab That Fuelled A Pandemic (Times)
The Clocks Are Wrong or Biden’s Camp David Photo Was Taken Months Ago (GP)
White House Twitter Account Apparently ‘Outs’ Intel Officials, Locations (RT)
CNN Praises Taliban For Wearing Masks During Attack (BBee)

 

 

Biden “may talk in a few days”, Kamala is AWOL, and Jen Psaki is gone until August 22.

What do you think when you’re in Hong Kong, or Taiwan, Ukraine, Lithuania? That America’s got your back?

This damage is forever. The US gave itself all away in 24 hours.

 

 

 

 

10% have had 3rd vaxx. Israeli PM Bennett is a confused man.

 

 

 

 

“Our study demonstrates that convalescent subjects previously infected with ancestral variant SARS-CoV-2 produce antibodies that cross-neutralize emerging VOCs with high potency.”

Ultrapotent Antibodies vs Diverse & Highly Transmissible Covid19 Variants (Sc.)

Our key defense against the COVID-19 pandemic is neutralizing antibodies against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus elicited by natural infection or vaccination. Recent emerging viral variants have raised concern because of their potential to escape antibody neutralization. Wang et al. identified four antibodies from early-outbreak convalescent donors that are potent against 23 variants, including variants of concern, and characterized their binding to the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. Yuan et al. examined the impact of emerging mutations in the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein on binding to the host receptor ACE2 and to a range of antibodies. These studies may be helpful for developing more broadly effective vaccines and therapeutic antibodies.

Blood from 22 convalescent subjects who recovered from SARS-CoV-2 WA-1 infection was screened for neutralizing and binding activity, and four subjects with high reactivity against the WA-1 variant were selected for antibody isolation. SARS-CoV-2 spike (S)–reactive antibodies were identified through B cell sorting with S protein–based probes. WA-1 live-virus neutralization assays identified four RBD-targeting antibodies with high potency [half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) 2.1 to 4.8 ng/ml], two of which were derived from the same IGHV1-58 germline but from different donors. Antigen-binding fragments (Fabs) of these antibodies exhibited nanomolar affinity to S (2.3 to 7.3 nM).

Competition assays and electron microscopy indicated that two of the most potent antibodies blocked angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) and bound open conformation RBD, whereas the other two bound both up and down conformations of RBD and blocked ACE2 binding. Binding and lentivirus neutralization assays against 13 circulating VOCs or variants of interest—including B.1.1.7, B.1.351, B.1.427, B.1.429, B.1.526, P.1, P.2, B.1.617.1, and B.1.617.2—indicated that these antibodies were highly potent against VOCs despite being isolated from subjects infected with early ancestral SARS-CoV-2 viruses. Cryo-EM studies of the two most potent antibodies in complex with S revealed that these antibodies target a site of vulnerability on RBD but have minimal contacts with mutational hotspots, defining the structural basis for their high effectiveness against the emerging VOCs and further delineating an IGHV1-58 antibody supersite.

To investigate potential mechanisms of escape, we applied antibody selection pressure to replication-competent vesicular stomatitis virus (rcVSV) expressing the WA-1 SARS-CoV-2 S (rcVSV-SARS2) and identified S mutations that conferred in vitro resistance. We evaluated these antibodies individually or in combinations for their capacity to prevent rcVSV-SARS2 escape and discovered that antibody combinations with complementary modes of recognition to the RBD lowered the risk of resistance. [..] Our study demonstrates that convalescent subjects previously infected with ancestral variant SARS-CoV-2 produce antibodies that cross-neutralize emerging VOCs with high potency. Structural and functional analyses reveal that antibody breadth is mediated by targeting a site of vulnerability at the RBD tip offset from major mutational hotspots in VOCs. Selective boosting of immune responses targeting specific RBD epitopes, such as the sites defined by these antibodies, may induce breadth against current and future VOCs.


Isolation and characterization of convalescent donor antibodies that effectively neutralize emerging SARS-CoV-2 VOCs.

Antibodies isolated from donors infected with ancestral SARS-CoV-2 viruses showed ultrapotent neutralization of emerging VOCs. The two most potent antibodies shared usage of the IGHV1-58 gene and targeted the RBD with minimal contact to VOC mutational hotspots. Cocktails of antibodies with complementary binding modes suppressed antibody escape.

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“This was a conscious decision to take risk.”

Vaccine Inventor Dr. Robert Malone Ruined “His Chances For A Nobel Prize” (TSU)

This afternoon, The Atlantic wrote a fair piece titled, “The Vaccine Scientist Spreading Vaccine Misinformation.” The article started out with the author, Tom Bartlett, asking: “Robert Malone claims to have invented mRNA technology. Why is he trying so hard to undermine its use?” Again, we think the article is fair and objective. Unlike Logically.AI, which categorically said Dr. Malone was not the original inventor of the vaccine, Mr. Bartlett credited Dr. Malone for being the first person to “demonstrate how RNA could be delivered into cells using lipids.” Below is how Mr. Bartlett describes Dr. Malone’s body of work:

“The abridged version is that when Malone was a graduate student in biology in the late 1980s at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, he injected genetic material—DNA and RNA—into the cells of mice in hopes of creating a new kind of vaccine. He was the first author on a 1989 paper demonstrating how RNA could be delivered into cells using lipids, which are basically tiny globules of fat, and a co-author on a 1990 Science paper showing that if you inject pure RNA or DNA into mouse muscle cells, it can lead to the transcription of new proteins. If the same approach worked for human cells, the latter paper said in its conclusion, this technology “may provide alternative approaches to vaccine development.””

Mr. Bartlett’s piece is not really the purpose of this article. The question is, what did Dr. Malone say or do to jeopardize his chances of winning a Nobel Prize? To answer this question, we need to go back to his TV appearance on June 23. During the interview, Dr. Malone stated that he was not discouraging the use of the vaccine that the government is not being transparent with us about what those risks are. “[O]ne of my concerns are that the government is not being transparent with us about what those risks are. And so, I’m of the opinion that people have the right to decide whether to accept a vaccine or not, especially since these are experimental vaccines,” Dr. Malone said, pointing to the fact the vaccines are not formally approved but instead being administered under Emergency Use Authorization.

Dr. Malone added: “This is a fundamental right having to do with clinical research ethics,” he said. “And so, my concern is that I know that there are risks. But we don’t have access to the data, and the data haven’t been captured rigorously enough so that we can accurately assess those risks — and therefore … we don’t really have the information that we need to make a reasonable decision.” Immediately after the interview, the news about what he said quickly travel across the mainstream media, News York Times, Washington Post, and now, The Atlantic. Since then, Dr. Malone has been under attack. About a month later, Logically.Ai wrote a piece claiming that Dr. Robert Malone did NOT invent mRNA vaccines. Just as Mr. Bartlett said in the Atlantic story, “Whether Malone really came up with mRNA vaccines is a question probably best left to Swedish prize committees, but you could make a case for his involvement.”

Which leads us to Dr. Malone’s chances of getting a Nobel prize. In a tweet this afternoon, Dr. Malone shared a statement from a cellular immunologist Stan Gromkowski who did work on mRNA vaccines in the early 1990s. According to the tweet, Gromkowski said this about Dr. Malone: “He’s fucking up his chances for a Nobel Prize.” In the same tweet, Dr. Malone added that he was well aware of the potential impact on a possible Nobel. “I made a choice,” he wrote. That’s not all. In a follow-up tweet, Dr. Malone said he was “very aware of this risk and discussed it with Bret and Steve right before the infamous Dark Horse podcast, indicating that the stakes were too high to worry about a Prize when trying to save the lives and health of our children. This was a conscious decision to take risk.”

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“68% of individuals infected despite vaccination tested positive with Ct <25, including at least 8 who were asymptomatic at the time of testing.”

Shedding of Infectious SARS-CoV-2 Despite Vaccination with Delta (Mx)

The SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant and its sublineages (B.1.617.2, AY.1, AY.2, AY.3; [1]) can cause high viral loads, are highly transmissible, and contain mutations that confer partial immune escape [2,3]. Using PCR threshold cycle (Ct) data from a single large contract laboratory, we show that individuals in Wisconsin, USA had similar viral loads in nasal swabs, irrespective of vaccine status, during a time of high and increasing prevalence of the Delta variant. Infectious SARS-CoV-2 was isolated from 51 of 55 specimens (93%) with Ct <25 from both vaccinated and unvaccinated persons, indicating that most individuals with Ct values in this range (Wilson 95% CI 83%-97%) shed infectious virus regardless of vaccine status.

Notably, 68% of individuals infected despite vaccination tested positive with Ct <25, including at least 8 who were asymptomatic at the time of testing. Our data substantiate the idea that vaccinated individuals who become infected with the Delta variant may have the potential to transmit SARS-CoV-2 to others. Vaccinated individuals should continue to wear face coverings in indoor and congregate settings, while also being tested for SARS-CoV-2 if they are exposed or experience COVID-like symptoms.

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“Viral loads of breakthrough Delta variant infection cases were 251 times higher than those of cases infected with old strains detected between March-April 2020.”

Here Comes Nosocomial DISASTER (Denninger)

“Methods: We studied breakthrough infections among healthcare workers of a major infectious diseases hospital in Vietnam. We collected demographics, vaccination history and results of PCR diagnosis alongside clinical data. We measured SARS-CoV-2 (neutralizing) antibodies at diagnosis, and at week 1, 2 and 3 after diagnosis. We sequenced the viruses using ARTIC protocol.

Findings: Between 11th–25th June 2021 (week 7–8 after dose 2), 69 healthcare workers were tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. 62 participated in the clinical study. 49 were (pre)symptomatic with one requiring oxygen supplementation. All recovered uneventfully. 23 complete-genome sequences were obtained. They all belonged to the Delta variant, and were phylogenetically distinct from the contemporary Delta variant sequences obtained from community transmission cases, suggestive of ongoing transmission between the workers. Viral loads of breakthrough Delta variant infection cases were 251 times higher than those of cases infected with old strains detected between March-April 2020. Time from diagnosis to PCR negative was 8–33 days (median: 21). Neutralizing antibody levels after vaccination and at diagnosis of the cases were lower than those in the matched uninfected controls. There was no correlation between vaccine-induced neutralizing antibody levels and viral loads or the development of symptoms.”

Reasonable conclusions drawn from this data:
• The vaccines do not prevent health care workers from getting infected; the antibodies are ineffective.
• When health care workers get infected post-vaccination with Delta they are not becoming infected from the community; they are passing it among each other.
• Their viral loads and thus infectiousness are extremely high; in other words they become a reservoir of extreme infection risk to other employees in the facility and, it must be assumed to the patients in their care.
• A reasonable hypothesis (but not proved) is that the vaccines are in fact potentiating viral replication via ADE-type effects, specifically given the paper I pointed to yesterday. That is the act of encouraging or even forcing medical workers to take the jabs is leading to higher viral loads and thus greater infectiousness — that is, greater risk to patients rather than less.

Congratulations folks — you just turned hospitals into death traps for anyone who is medically compromised, particularly if they were either unable to be vaccinated themselves for medical reasons or, far worse, they were vaccinated but due to immune compromise failed to build an effective response. PS: Want to know why this sort of study hasn’t — and won’t — be done here? Because the instantaneous freak-out factor, never mind the nasty words “malpractice” or even “depraved indifference” — would start getting thrown around immediately, that’s why.

Read more …

A message of hope. Everything comes to a standstill. Tons of pics of empty cafes and restaurants.

In the US, tens of millions soon’t can’t fly. Will that make the airlines happy?

A Message From France (TBP)

Here in France it has gone to the extreme with the “Health” Pass. Last week on the 21st ALL restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and any leisure activities like sporting events, theaters, cinemas, museums, were closed to anyone without “the pass” and all staff at these places are mandated to get the jab to keep their job. It is now a 6 Month prison sentence if you are caught inside any of these places without the pass (the man who slapped the president in the face got only 3 months prison time). Business owners will get a fine of 45,000 euros and 1 year prison sentence if they do not comply with the use of “the pass” and force all their employees to get the jab. (If you know France, you can commit murder and have less of a sentence)

So the result? All the low paid employees quit, they can make more on welfare here (for now). We can still technically “get take out food” but I just tried last night and every restaurant in our town (that is dine in with take out) has closed their doors due to the lack of staff. As of last week ALL doctors, nurses and health industry workers have been mandated to get the jab or lose their license, practice, job, business etc. (ALL health care here is Govt paid positions and there are no private health care Doctors or Hospitals etc.) Since the Health care system is state run and funded, it has been run into the ground. All the good doctors left France 5 Years ago, all the hospitals look like they are 3rd world hospitals since there is no money to repair them, half of the equipment doesn’t work and not every hospital is stocked with supplies needed for daily needs (masks, gels, disposable gowns etc).

For 5 years Nurses have been understaffed and doing double the work because the Health care system is nearly bankrupt…. So add to this the mandatory jab. So the result? Well they took to the streets by the millions and now all the hospitals just lost another 50% of staff capacity. My doctor just went into early retirement (a.k.a. he quit) and I have yet to find a replacement. As of Aug 1st ALL large malls, retail stores and grocery store owners and their staff need to be jabbed and the health pass is required to enter for employees and customers. This would be the equivalent to closing ALL Targets, Walmarts, Costcos, Home Depots, and all major grocery stores. (basically any building over 20,000 squre meters) to those without “the pass”. Result.?? Aug 15th Truckers will be going on strike nation wide; Blocking all access roads in and out of Paris.

Yesterday an entire airport in Northern France closed due to the majority of staff quitting. As of Sept 15th All public areas and access will be off limits. No farmers markets, no parks, no national parks, lakes, rivers, beaches, recreation areas, campsites etc. and no gathering over 100 people, no churches, no weddings, etc. As of Oct 1st ALL small vendors such as, delis, pizza trucks, sandwich shops, butchers, bakers, vegetable stands etc. So as of Oct 1st I will only be able to purchase food by internet and pick up (if allowed). Food shortages, Truckers strike, hospitals and airports shutting down unemployment going through the roof. Its going to be a bumpy ride folks. Is it me or does all this seem a bit extreme for a “pass” that isn’t exactly working? America, Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, you’d better wake up.

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Close those too.

French Covid Permit Scheme Extended To Paris Department Stores (G.)

France’s pass sanitaire health permit system will be extended to more than 120 major department stores and shopping centres on Monday in areas where levels of Covid infection are causing concern, including Paris and the Mediterranean coast. The decision to extend the measure restricting entry to customers who can prove they have been vaccinated, have had a negative Covid test or have recovered from coronavirus was made by local officials. The pass will be required for shoppers entering Paris department stores such as Galeries Lafayette, Printemps, BHV, Le Mon Marché and La Samaritaine, and others mainly in the south of the country.


Several large shopping centres around the Channel ports popular with British tourists had feared being included but were given a reprieve as the local Covid infection rates are lower than the national average. Local prefects are imposing the pass on large stores and shopping malls in areas where the infection rate is above 200 per 100,000 people. Although Paris has not reached this level, officials are concerned about the high number of cases especially among young people in the neighbouring areas of Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne. The worst-hit areas are in departments along the Mediterranean coast. In the Bouches-du-Rhône, which includes the popular holiday areas of Provence, the Côte d’Azur, Marseille, Arles and Aix-en-Provence, the rate has reached 693 per 100,000.s

The French bring their own chairs, table, food. No pass required.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1426810220471361538

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Most vaccinated country on earth. They work great. UAE=9.7 million people.

UAE Covid-19 Death Toll Exceeds 2,000 For First Time, 1,189 New Cases (AlA)

The United Arab Emirates on Sunday recorded 1,189 new coronavirus infections, 1,419 recoveries and four deaths in 24 hours, the country’s National Emergency Crisis and Disasters Management Authority (NCEMA) reported. Health authorities conducted 218,163 COVID-19 tests to determine Sunday’s numbers which indicated another daily decline in infections from Saturday’s 1,206. The UAE’S COVID-19 death toll now sits at 2,001, while total recoveries increased to 679,760, according to NCEMA. The country has recorded a total of 701,776 coronavirus cases since the pandemic’s onset. There are currently 20,015 active cases within the country. As of yet, over 81 percent of the population has received at least one vaccine dose and around 72 percent have been fully inoculated against COVID-19.

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They love hurting DeSantis for 2024.

Biden Offers Cash To Florida Schools That Defy Gov. Ron DeSantis (NYP)

The Biden administration is offering cash to Florida school districts that defy Gov. Ron DeSantis’ mask ban as COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations rose in the state. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona on Friday sent a letter to DeSantis and the Florida education commissioner saying school districts can at their “sole and complete discretion” use federal funds to pay the salaries of administrators and board members withheld by the state for defying the order. “We are eager to partner with [the Florida Department of Education] on any efforts to further our shared goals of protecting the health and safety of students and educators,” Cardona wrote. “If FLDOE does not wish to pursue such an approach, the Department will continue to work directly with the school districts and educators that serve Florida’s students.”


A DeSantis spokeswoman blasted the Biden administration for wanting to spend federal funds “on the salaries of superintendents and elected politicians, who don’t believe that parents have a right to choose what’s best for their children, than on Florida’s students, which is what these funds should be used for.” The Republican governor last month signed an executive order banning school districts from making face masks mandatory for students and staff defending “parents’ freedom to choose.” The order came days after the CDC recommended all students and staff wear masks when they return this fall. On Monday, the governor’s office threatened to withhold the salaries of school board members and superintendents who did not comply with the ban. DeSantis has also threatened to withhold state funding from districts as well.

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“Beijing had been instrumental in installing Tedros as the £170,000-a-year head of the agency by pulling strings and calling in favours during the 2017 election for the job.”

China, the WHO and the Powergrab That Fuelled A Pandemic (Times)

Barely eight months after taking charge, the director-general of the WHO gave a speech that would prove extraordinarily prophetic. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that all nations were facing the ever-present threat that a new respiratory illness, such as the Spanish flu, might emerge and spread across the globe in weeks or months, killing millions. It was why, the Ethiopian told the audience at his keynote speech in Dubai in February 2018, he had made it his daily priority since becoming the WHO’s chief to make sure he was up to date on the thousands of reports the health body received every month that might flag up signs of an outbreak The WHO, a Geneva-based United Nations agency with a £5 billion budget from 194 member states, was on a war footing.

Tedros said it would act fast and decisively, because ignoring the signs of an outbreak could “be the difference between global spread of a deadly disease and rapid interruption of transmission”. So far this “new tighter focus” was working, he added. So when the first alert of a mysterious respiratory illness in China, exactly as Tedros had described, was reported by health monitors in Taiwan at the end of December 2019, the health agency should have been prepared and ready for action. In fact the WHO would receive considerable criticism for failing to help stop the spread of the Sars-CoV-2 virus in the opening weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic. Not only did the organisation fail to act but it also promulgated misinformation about the virus originating from China and even discouraged other nations from taking steps that might have contained the spread.

For all his foresight, Tedros would be accused of being ineffective when the big test came. The world paid a heavy price for the WHO’s inaction. As Tedros predicted, the virus has killed more than four million people, and there will be many more. The body that is charged with looking after the world’s health seriously malfunctioned in those opening weeks, when humanity most needed it to come to the rescue. Why? Our investigation reveals today how a concerted campaign over many years by Beijing to grab power inside the WHO appears to have fatally compromised its ability to respond to the crisis. It raises serious concerns about the extent of Beijing’s influence over the WHO and its director-general, and how this undermined the organisation’s capacity — and willingness — to take the steps necessary to avert a global pandemic.

Its leadership put China’s economic interests before public health concerns. The results have been nothing short of catastrophic. It is a story that stretches back many years before the Covid-19 crisis. After being strongly criticised by the health agency for attempting to cover up the 2003 Sars crisis, China set out to increase its influence over the WHO. By applying financial and diplomatic leverage over some of the world’s poorest nations, Beijing won a global power struggle to get its favoured candidates installed at the very top of the organisation. As a result, years later, a body that was set up with the lofty goal of “attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health” has been co-opted into aiding the Chinese state’s campaign for global economic dominance.

Its leadership began to speak differently, espousing statements and pursuing policies that were markedly convenient to China — even praising Beijing’s questionable allies such as North Korea, despite its appalling health and human rights record. Beijing had been instrumental in installing Tedros as the £170,000-a-year head of the agency by pulling strings and calling in favours during the 2017 election for the job.

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Or months into the future?

The Clocks Are Wrong or Biden’s Camp David Photo Was Taken Months Ago (GP)

Either the clocks in Camp David are wrong or the photo taken of Joe Biden as Kabul fell to the Taliban is several months old. Former Fox News producer Kyle Becker noticed the time errors and pointed them out in a tweet late Sunday evening. “Recent White House photos show a 3-hour time diff. b/w London & Moscow. There are a few good explanations for this. Either Camp David’s clocks are wrong or the photos are from before March 28, when London went ahead on Daylight Savings Time, but Moscow didn’t. This is *fine,*” Becker wrote. “Also, Tehran is an hour and a half difference from Moscow currently, which is why I circled it when I was checking it out. (And yes, that half-hour difference is right; India has a time zone with a half-hour difference as well.)” — Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) August 16, 2021

“Also, Tehran is an hour and a half difference from Moscow currently, which is why I circled it when I was checking it out. (And yes, that half-hour difference is right; India has a time zone with a half-hour difference as well.)” Becker added. “This morning, the President and Vice President met with their national security team and senior officials to hear updates on the draw down of our civilian personnel in Afghanistan, evacuations of SIV applicants and other Afghan allies, and the ongoing security situation in Kabul. — The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 15, 2021

The photo discrepancy is particularly odd as Biden has been MIA and did not address the nation as the chaos unfolded. Instead, it was reported that he will do so “in the next couple of days.” Additionally, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki will be taking the entire next week off. Questions sent to Psaki are being met with an autoreply saying that she will be out of the office through August 22. “I will be out of the office from August 15th-August 22nd,” the auto reply email being sent to reporters reads.

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What an incredible mess. There should be awards for this.

White House Twitter Account Apparently ‘Outs’ Intel Officials, Locations (RT)

A White House tweet showing President Joe Biden appearing to be on top of the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan may also have inadvertently revealed the faces and locations of intelligence agents. The official White House Twitter account posted a photo on Sunday of Biden meeting by video conference with intelligence officials to hear updates on the drawdown of civilian personnel, “the ongoing security situation in Kabul,” and evacuations of Afghan allies, including interpreters who helped US and NATO forces during the 20-year war. The picture showed other meeting participants on a large screen, including CIA officials and three men at the “Doha Station.” Richard Grenell, former acting director of national intelligence in the Trump administration, called out the apparent blunder, tweeting, “Who took this picture outing intel officials? Dear God.”

One Twitter user quipped, “Umm, is the public supposed to see the faces of the CIA agents? Are we supposed to know there is a Doha Station?” The White House tweet may have been meant to portray Biden as actively involved in the evacuation from Afghanistan amid criticism that he was silent and on vacation while the Taliban was recapturing the country and triggering a rushed evacuation of Americans and allied Afghans from Kabul. Supporters of the president used the photo to brush off the criticism, insisting it shows that Biden is preoccupied with the crisis. Some eagle-eyed commentators suggested that the photo might not even be recent, pointing to the time difference between London and Moscow on the clocks in the conference room. The current difference is two hours, while the clocks above the conference screen show a three-hour difference. This would have been possible before March 28, when the clocks in the UK were moved forward by one hour.

The planned US withdrawal from Afghanistan has turned into a disaster for the Biden administration after the Taliban overran 26 provincial capitals out of 34 in the weeks after last US troops left Bagram’s airfield, their main military base in Afghanistan. Biden has faced backlash for apparently gravely underestimating the Taliban and overestimating the ability of the US-trained Afghan forces to withstand the assault. In July, Biden predicted that the Taliban wouldn’t overrun the country and that the evacuation would be nothing like the fall of Saigon in 1975, when US embassy staffers had to be plucked from the rooftop to escape North Vietnamese forces. On Sunday, two CH-47 Chinook helicopters were seen evacuating US embassy staff in Kabul as Taliban fighters entered the city and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.

The White House video conference tweet became more fodder for mockery. Biden supporters argued that identities of the people who appeared on the video-conference screen weren’t necessarily secret, but other observers said the existence of the Doha Station was not publicly known. “Heck of a job, White House communications shop,” National Review contributor Jim Geraghty said. “I figure you would want to crop out the teleconference screens labeled CIA and Doha Station – you panicking, amateur idiots.”

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Not sure we should be laughing.

CNN Praises Taliban For Wearing Masks During Attack (BBee)

Approximately twelve minutes after U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan, Taliban fighters have completely taken over the entire country. “Woah, that’s a bummer,” said the Biden Administration’s foreign policy team. “We didn’t see that one coming.” As the Taliban began its campaign of shooting and killing, as is their time-honored tradition, CNN anchors gushed with praise after noticing all the Taliban fighters were responsibly wearing masks to protect themselves and others from COVID. “Wow! In the midst of the battle and bloodshed, these noble desert knights of Islamic superiority are wearing masks! Bravo!” said Brian Stelter.


TV anchor and world-renown polemicist Don Lemon was also quick to weigh in. “All things considered, we ought to be praising the COVID-safe masks these majestic mujahideen warriors are wearing,” he said. “They are showing all of us the proper way to behave during a pandemic—something those horrible idiot Trump supporters don’t seem to get.” Inspired by their example, the Biden Administration has invited the Taliban to the White House to record TikTok videos in hopes of convincing Trump supporters to get vaccinated.

Read more …

 

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Aug 092021
 


René Magritte The evening gown 1954

 

A Hypothesis (Greer)
Fauci Warns Of ‘Worse Variant’ That ‘Could Impact The Vaccinated’ (RT)
14 Israelis Have Caught COVID-19 Even After Booster Shot (ZH)
Covid Booster Shots Coming “Soon”, Fauci Tells CNN (ZH)
What Changes The Unvaccinated Minds? Fear. (CNN)
Majority of American Physicians Decline COVID Shots (AAPS)
Prophylactic Role of Ivermectin in SARS-CoV-2 Infection (Cureus)
Information Security Expert On Revealed Pfizer Agreements (Aflds)
Covid-19 Survivors May Possess Wide-ranging Resistance To The Disease (Emory)
A Massive Black Hole With 34 Billion Times The Mass of Our Sun (SA)
Spanish Village Seeks Unesco World Heritage Status For Outdoor Chats
2500 Year Old Ancient Olive Tree Burned Down in Evia Fires in Greece (GR)

 

 

 

 

Ouch!

 

 

Iceland gives up on immunity through vaccination. Smart.


 

 

UK, Israel, US saw an early surge in vaccinations. 6 months later, they have a surge in infections.

 

 

Greer has the bleakest vision yet. It makes being vaccinated look like a crazy gamble.

Oh, and remember: ADE is not a wild hypothesis, it has been observed in numerous animal trials over the years.

A Hypothesis (Greer)

Stage Nine: Things Get Serious

All of a sudden, as a result, it was no longer enough to vaccinate 70% of the US population. Everyone without exception had to get vaccinated—if everyone gets the vaccine, after all, it will be easier to claim that what’s happening is a nasty new variant rather than vaccine-driven ADE, since nobody will be able to point out that the unvaccinated aren’t getting it. All of a sudden, officials dropped the (inaccurate) claim that the vaccines keep you from getting Covid-19. New outbreaks flared in which most people who got sick had been fully vaccinated; stories surfaced in the media about how strange it was that so many people were getting really nasty summer colds; the labor shortage somehow just kept getting worse and other shortages snowballed, but if you suggested that it was because too many people were sick you could count on being shouted down. Authorities began to talk earnestly about how a new variant might show up soon that would kill a third of the people who caught it. Under normal circumstances, there’s no way they could know that in advance. It makes perfect sense, however, if the vaccines have been found to cause serious ADE and they already have a good idea of what the fatality rate will be.

This is where we are as I write this. If my hypothesis is right, here’s what we can expect.

Stage Ten: Hoping for a Miracle

As ADE becomes more common, breakthrough infection clusters will pop up with increasing frequency, and the higher the percentage of the population in that region is vaccinated, the worse they will be. Variants will be blamed for this. Word of the imminent crisis will spread through the upper levels of society, however, causing increasingly frantic and irrational behavior, until it becomes next to impossible to get anything done if it depends on the government or big corporations. Medical laboratories will scramble to find a way to counteract ADE, though that’s been tried for decades now without success. Meanwhile the people who refuse to get vaccinated won’t budge no matter how much furious rhetoric and punitive policy gets dumped on them. Once this becomes clear, authorities will insist that everyone but a few holdouts has been vaccinated, in the fond hope that people will believe them one more time.

Stage Eleven: Into The Endgame

When ADE becomes too widespread to ignore and people begin to die in significant numbers, expect governments to proclaim the arrival of the predicted new hyper-lethal variant and impose a new round of shutdowns, mask mandates, and the like. The media will insist that the people who are dying are all unvaccinated as long as they can get away with it; pay attention to the vaccination status and health outcomes of people you know for a reality check. Unless some way of stopping ADE-enhanced infections can be found in a hurry, medical systems will buckle under the caseload and triage will become the order of the day. How soon this will happen, if it does, is impossible to say in advance. It’s also impossible to know in advance how soon it will become clear that the vaccines are responsible—or just how violent a backlash against the political and economic establishment this could provoke.

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“There’s a tenet that everybody knows in virology: a virus will not mutate unless you allow it to replicate..”

Another tenet says it’s unlikely to mutate very much unless you give it a reason to. Like a non-sterilizing vaccine.

Oh, and Tony, the vaccines allow it to replicate, remember?

Fauci Warns Of ‘Worse Variant’ That ‘Could Impact The Vaccinated’ (RT)

In his latest bid to promote Covid-19 jabs, White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci upped his pandemic warnings and cautioned vaccinated individuals about an even “worse variant” that could come after Delta. Those who remain unvaccinated, Fauci claimed in a Sunday interview with MSNBC, are responsible for the coronavirus mutating. This has led to the Delta variant, which health officials have continuously warned is partly behind the mass rise in cases and could lead to another surge in the fall. “There’s a tenet that everybody knows in virology: a virus will not mutate unless you allow it to replicate,” Fauci said. “Fortunately for us, the vaccines do quite well against Delta, particularly in protecting you from severe disease.”

“But if you give the virus the chance to continue to change, you’re leading to a vulnerability that we might get a worse variant, and then that will impact not only the unvaccinated, that will impact the vaccinated because that variant could evade the protection of the vaccine.” Despite aggressive efforts from Joe Biden’s administration to promote vaccines, rates have been lagging as coronavirus cases have been on the rise recently. Some cities, such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas, have found themselves facing reinstated mask mandates in response to the new cases. New York City also became the first this month to announce that proof of vaccination will be required at certain venues, gyms, and restaurants.

While Fauci does not see a federal mandate being imposed, he did say he believes that once the FDA gives full approval to the vaccines, which he predicts will be sometime later this month, it will make it easier for private businesses to begin mandating vaccinations, something Fauci has endorsed in the past. The infectious disease expert had previously predicted a “flood” of vaccine mandates earlier in the week when discussing the impending approval. “The time has come [when] we’ve got to go the extra step to get people vaccinated.”

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Good thing they’re cheaper by the dozen.

14 Israelis Have Caught COVID-19 Even After Booster Shot (ZH)

The population of Israel has been looked upon of late as a global guinea pig of sorts given it was the first country out of the gate to implement a large-scale booster shot program for people 60 and up who’ve already been vaccinated with two rounds of the COVID-19 shot. This was announced only at the end of July, and the early data is beginning to trickle in. Israel is considered to have among the world’s highest vaccination rates, with 5.3 million of its citizens having been inoculated with two doses, with weeks ago headlines declaring it had reached ‘herd immunity’ – only for the headlines to give way to reports of the alarming rapid rise of breakthrough cases.

And now it appears that even the much touted COVID booster shot could be failing to protect: “Internal Health Ministry data shows that 14 Israelis have been infected with COVID-19 a week after receiving a booster shot, Channel 12 news reports,” The Times of Israel writes Sunday. Already over the weekend Israeli media is reporting that “serious cases” have hit a four month high, with over 324 patients hospitalized, many of them in critical condition. It was only a little over a week ago that elderly Israelis began receiving the third shot, and so “early results” and observations have only now begun to come in, and it’s not looking good. The Times of Israel continues in its breaking report:

The network says 11 of those infected are over the age of 60 — two of whom have now been hospitalized — while the other three got their third dose because they are immunocompromised.= If confirmed in larger samples, the figures could cast doubt on the effectiveness of the booster shot, which Israel has started administering before major health bodies around the world have approved it. Channel 12 noted that the confirmed new infections were revealed based on tests performed one week after the group had received the third shot. Three of the above are being described as “younger patients”. This comes as the CDC and FDA have begun discussions on pushing forward with offering booster shots in the US – possibly as early as September, according to some reports.

[..] Anthony Fauci, has already begun making the pitch for a third shot “reasonably soon” while making the rounds on the big Sunday shows… “We need to look at them in a different light,” Fauci said of boosters on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on Sunday, according to Bloomberg. “We would certainly be boosting those people before we boost the general population that’s been vaccinated, and we should be doing that reasonably soon.” He began by noting the booster would first be made available for the immunocompromised and elderly (just like in Israel). “As soon as they see that level of durability of protection goes down, then you will see the recommendation to vaccinate those individuals,” Fauci added.

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Something I’ve been pondering:

“Fauci said the Delta variant presents the additional problem that vaccinated people can also transmit the virus to someone else.”

Whichever variant you have has been transferred to you from someone. The only “active ingredient” we know of related to the vaccines is spike proteins.

Does Alpha prevent their propagation, but Delta does not? How does that work?

Covid Booster Shots Coming “Soon”, Fauci Tells CNN (ZH)

As for the kind of data the CDC will be looking for, Fauci said that the CDC has been tracking the level of durability of protection for the elderly, those in nursing homes and young people, month by month. “As soon as they see that level of durability of protection goes down, then you will see the recommendation to vaccinate those individuals.” Speaking one day after Barack Obama’ epic birthday bash (despite it being shrunk for just the closest family and friends), Fauci said that health officials don’t take breakthrough infections “lightly,” warning that the delta variant which is more contagious and is fueling the surge of U.S. cases to more than 100,000 a day, will produce “more” breakthrough cases. Luckily, everyone inside the Barack Birthday Bash tent is exempt from such risks.


And speaking of furiously moving goalposts, Fauci said the Delta variant presents the additional problem that vaccinated people can also transmit the virus to someone else. That has led to the CDC revising its mask guidelines recently. But, he stressed: “The vaccines are still doing what you originally want them to do — to keep you out of the hospital to prevent you from getting seriously ill.” Actually, what the CDC “originally” wanted the vaccines to do, was to prevent those who were jabbed from infecting others. Only later did we learn that too was a fabrication. Finally, Fauci reminded viewers that all Covid-19 vaccines remains experimental although he assured his pals at CNN that a full approval could arrive “within the next few weeks.”

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Scare them into submission. Then get ’em a shrink.

“Of course, there will always be people who won’t get vaccinated no matter what. About half of America’s unvaccinated adult population say they’ll never get a vaccine.”

Wait, doesn’t that invalidate the entire concept?

What Changes The Unvaccinated Minds? Fear. (CNN)

So what does work to get more people to take the vaccine? One answer seems clear in the polling and in the real world: fear. Fear of getting the virus and of losing freedoms looks like it motivates people to get vaccinated. You can see this well in the latest trends in vaccination and case counts. As of Friday morning, more people have taken the vaccine in the last week than have since June. This has happened as case counts and hospitalizations have been rising nationally. Zoom in on the places where cases are the highest: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. With the exception of Florida, all have had some of the lowest vaccination rates since vaccines were made available. Over the last week, however, all five states rank in the top five for number of people per capita getting vaccinated throughout the entire country.

The correlation here is clear enough, and the polling buffers the idea of a real connection. The jump in vaccinations is happening as concern about the virus is rising once again. In Monmouth University polling, for example, concern that someone in your family would catch the virus jumped 11 points from June to late July. The Axios/Ipsos poll showed a similar trend with concern about the virus jumping in early August to its highest level since April. When we examine Ipsos’ last two polls more closely, the connection between fear of the virus and likelihood of the unvaccinated getting shots becomes clear enough. Among those who are extremely or very concerned about the virus, about 39% of the unvaccinated say they’re likely to get the vaccine. This drops to about 30% who are somewhat concerned.

It declines to only about 12% with those who are not very concerned about the virus, and a mere 5% of those who are not concerned at all about the vaccine. Kaiser Family Foundation polling confirms this trend. Of those who are open to getting the vaccine but aren’t sure (i.e. the wait and see group), 45% are concerned they could get seriously ill from coronavirus. This drops to just 8% among those who say they will definitely not get the vaccine. These findings also comport with what I showed last week: The vaccinated are most likely to fear the virus most. Protecting themselves from getting sick or fear of getting sick was the No. 1 and 2 reasons respondents who are vaccinated said they got the vaccine in a June Kaiser poll. Fear, not surprisingly, is a powerful emotion. For those who don’t fear the virus, fear of losing their job may be the answer to getting them vaccinated.

Ipsos showed this past week that 33% of unvaccinated adults said an employer requiring them to get the shot would make them likely to get one. That may seem low, but it was actually the highest rated action of any tested to see if the unvaccinated would likely get a vaccine. The only thing that came close was when respondents were told that they would get a bonus or raise (26%). [..] Of course, there will always be people who won’t get vaccinated no matter what. About half of America’s unvaccinated adult population say they’ll never get a vaccine. The key is to convince the other half who aren’t vaccinated yet to get it. Fear does seem to be working with them.

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June 16. They’re just not scared enough yet… Maybe they don’t watch CNN?

Majority of American Physicians Decline COVID Shots (AAPS)

Of the 700 physicians responding to an internet survey by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), nearly 60 percent said they were not “fully vaccinated” against COVID. This contrasts with the claim by the American Medical Association that 96 percent of practicing physicians are fully vaccinated. This was based on 300 respondents. Neither survey represents a random sample of all American physicians, but the AAPS survey shows that physician support for the mass injection campaign is far from unanimous. “It is wrong to call a person who declines a shot an ‘anti-vaxxer,’” states AAPS executive director Jane Orient, M.D.

“Virtually no physicians are ‘anti-antibiotics’ or ‘anti-surgery,’ whereas all are opposed to treatments that they think are unnecessary, more likely to harm than to benefit an individual patient, or inadequately tested.” The AAPS survey also showed that 54 percent of physician respondents were aware of patients suffering a “significant adverse reaction.” Of the unvaccinated physicians, 80 percent said “I believe risk of shots exceeds risk of disease,” and 30% said “I already had COVID.” Other reasons for declining the shot included unknown long-term effects, use of aborted fetal tissue, “it’s experimental,” availability of effective early treatment, and reports of deaths and blood clots.

Of 560 practicing physicians, 56 percent said they offered early treatment for COVID. Nonphysicians were also invited to participate in the survey. Of some 5,300 total participants, 2,548 volunteered comments about associated adverse effects of which they were aware. These included death, amputation, paralysis, stillbirth, menstrual irregularities, blindness, seizures, and heart issues. “Causality is not proven. However, many of these episodes might have resulted in a huge product liability or malpractice award if they had occurred after a new drug,” stated Dr. Orient. “Purveyors of these COVID products are protected against lawsuits.”

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India. “..reduced the risk of COVID-19 infection by 83%..”

Prophylactic Role of Ivermectin in SARS-CoV-2 Infection (Cureus)

Introduction
Healthcare workers (HCWs) are vulnerable to getting infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Preventing HCWs from getting infected is a priority to maintain healthcare services. The therapeutic and preventive role of ivermectin in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is being investigated. Based on promising results of in vitro studies of oral ivermectin, this study was conducted with the aim to demonstrate the prophylactic role of oral ivermectin in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection among HCWs at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Bhubaneswar.

Methods
A prospective cohort study was conducted at AIIMS Bhubaneswar, which has been providing both COVID and non-COVID care since March 2020. All employees and students of the institute who provided written informed consent participated in the study. The uptake of two doses of oral ivermectin (300 ºg/kg/dose at a gap of 72 hours) was considered as exposure. The primary outcome of the study was COVID-19 infection in the following month of ivermectin consumption, diagnosed as per Government of India testing criteria (real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction [RT-PCR]) guidelines. The log-binomial model was used to estimate adjusted relative risk (ARR), and the Kaplan-Meier failure plot was used to estimate the probability of COVID-19 infection with follow-up time.

Results
Of 3892 employees, 3532 (90.8%) participated in the study. The ivermectin uptake was 62.5% and 5.3% for two doses and single dose, respectively. Participants who took ivermectin prophylaxis had a lower risk of getting symptoms suggestive of SARS-CoV-2 infection (6% vs 15%). HCWs who had taken two doses of oral ivermectin had a significantly lower risk of contracting COVID-19 infection during the following month (ARR 0.17; 95% CI, 0.12-0.23). Females had a lower risk of contracting COVID-19 than males (ARR 0.70; 95% CI, 0.52-0.93). The absolute risk reduction of SARS-CoV-2 infection was 9.7%. Only 1.8% of the participants reported adverse events, which were mild and self-limiting.

Conclusion
Two doses of oral ivermectin (300 µg/kg/dose given 72 hours apart) as chemoprophylaxis among HCWs reduced the risk of COVID-19 infection by 83% in the following month. Safe, effective, and low-cost chemoprophylaxis has relevance in the containment of pandemic alongside vaccine.

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More ouch.

Information Security Expert On Revealed Pfizer Agreements (Aflds)

“If you were wondering why Ivermectin was suppressed, it is because the agreement that countries had with Pfizer does not allow them to escape their contract, which states that even if a drug will be found to treat COVID-19, the contract cannot be voided.”

Unredacted contracts for the experimental biological agent known as the “COVID-19 vaccine” between the Pfizer corporation and various governments continue to be revealed. Information security expert Ehden Biber told America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) Frontline News that the first document to recently emerge was discovered by Albanian newspaper Gogo.al. Biber then was able to locate the digitally-signed Brazilian contract, and at least two others, one with the European Commission, and the other with the Dominican Republic. AFLDS Chief Science Officer Dr. Michael Yeadon responded to the revelations after perusing the Albania contract, saying it “looks genuine.”

He continued: “I know the basic anatomy of these agreements and nothing is missing that I’d expect to be present, and I’ve seen no clues that suggests it’s fake.” Yeadon noted what he found “the most stunning revelation,” citing the clause that stipulates “if there are any laws or regulations in your country under which Pfizer could be prosecuted, you agree to CHANGE THE LAW OR REGULATION to close that off.” (emphasis his) In a Twitter thread that has since been removed except the first tweet in the thread, Biber explained the significance of the revealed agreements: “Because the cost of developing contracts is very high and time consuming (legal review cycles), Pfizer, like all corporations, develop a standardized agreement template and use these agreements with relatively minor adjustments in different countries.

“These agreements are confidential, but luckily one country did not protect the contract document well enough, so I managed to get a hold of a copy. “As you are about to see, there is a good reason why Pfizer was fighting to hide the details of these contracts.”

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No vaccines needed, just anti-virals.

Covid-19 Survivors May Possess Wide-ranging Resistance To The Disease (Emory)

Recovered COVID-19 patients retain broad and effective longer-term immunity to the disease, suggests a recent Emory University study, which is the most comprehensive of its kind so far. The findings have implications for expanding understanding about human immune memory as well as future vaccine development for coronaviruses. The longitudinal study, published recently on Cell Reports Medicine, looked at 254 patients with mostly mild to moderate symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection over a period for more than eight months (250 days) and found that their immune response to the virus remained durable and strong.

Emory Vaccine Center director Rafi Ahmed, PhD, and a lead author on the paper, says the findings are reassuring, especially given early reports during the pandemic that protective neutralizing antibodies did not last in COVID-19 patients. “The study serves as a framework to define and predict long-lived immunity to SARS-CoV-2 after natural infection. We also saw indications in this phase that natural immunity could continue to persist,” Ahmed says. The research team will continue to evaluate this cohort over the next few years. Researchers found that not only did the immune response increase with disease severity, but also with each decade of age regardless of disease severity, suggesting that there are additional unknown factors influencing age-related differences in COVID-19 responses.

In following the patients for months, researchers got a more nuanced view of how the immune system responds to COVID-19 infection. The picture that emerges indicates that the body’s defense shield not only produces an array of neutralizing antibodies but activates certain T and B cells to establish immune memory, offering more sustained defenses against reinfection. “We saw that antibody responses, especially IgG antibodies, were not only durable in the vast majority of patients but decayed at a slower rate than previously estimated, which suggests that patients are generating longer-lived plasma cells that can neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.”

Ahmed says investigators were surprised to see that convalescent participants also displayed increased immunity against common human coronaviruses as well as SARS-CoV-1, a close relative of the current coronavirus. The study suggests that patients who survived COVID-19 are likely to also possess protective immunity even against some SARS-CoV-2 variants. “Vaccines that target other parts of the virus rather than just the spike protein may be more helpful in containing infection as SARS-CoV-2 variants overtake the prevailing strains,” says Ahmed. “This could pave the way for us to design vaccines that address multiple coronaviruses.”

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If it eats 1/34 billionth of its mass each day, it’s not all that hungry?!

A Massive Black Hole With 34 Billion Times The Mass of Our Sun (SA)

Scientists have recently reported discovering what they believe is the most massive black hole ever discovered in the early Universe. It is 34 billion times the mass of our Sun, and it eats the equivalent of one Sun every day. The research led by the National University of Australia (ANU) has revealed how massive the fastest-growing black hole in the Universe really is, as well as how much matter it is able to suck in. The black hole, known as ‘J2157’, was discovered by the same research team in 2018. The study detailing the humongous black hole’s characteristics has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.


According to Dr. Christopher Onken and his colleagues, this object is 34 billion times the Sun’s mass and gobbles up the equivalent of one Sun every day. That’s billion with a b. For other comparisons, the monstrous black hole has a mass of approximately 8,000 times the mass of Sagittarius A*, the black hole located at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. “If the Milky Way’s black hole wanted to get fat, it would have to swallow two-thirds of all the stars in our galaxy,” explains Onken.

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Love it.

Spanish Village Seeks Unesco World Heritage Status For Outdoor Chats

It’s a nightly summer ritual across much of Spain: as the sweltering heat of the day eases off, chairs are hauled out to the street for an alfresco chat. Now an enterprising village in southern Spain is seeking to have the tradition recognised by the United Nations as a cultural treasure. The aim is to protect the centuries-old custom from the encroaching threat of social media and television, said José Carlos Sánchez, the mayor of Algar, a town of about 1,400 people. “It’s the opposite of social media,” he told the Guardian. “This is about face-to-face conversations.” Sánchez recently applied to have the custom added to Unesco’s list of intangible cultural heritage, hoping it will be able to earn a spot in a catalogue that ranges from the art of Neapolitan pizza making to sauna culture in Finland and a grass mowing competition in Bosnia and Herzegovina.


It’s a novel way to think about the impromptu, often banal gatherings that have long provided a respite from the heat, he conceded. But each time extended families and neighbours in the pueblo blanco – or white town – take to their front steps, he sees it as an effort to safeguard the tradition. “But it’s not what it was,” said Sánchez. “So we want to return to having everyone outside of their doors alfresco instead of scrolling through Facebook or watching television inside their homes.” Sánchez, who regularly spends balmy summer evenings on the doorstep of his 82-year-old mother’s house, is quick to list off the many benefits of what is known as charlas al fresco, from the energy savings gleaned from turning off the air conditioning for a few hours to the sense of community forged as neighbours share in the day’s gossip or comment on the latest news stories.

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” The tree was large, with a trunk so wide ten people could fit along its diameter. The tree was fertile with olives all the way until it fell victim to the wildfire.”

2500 Year Old Ancient Olive Tree Burned Down in Evia Fires in Greece (GR)

A 2,500 year old ancient olive tree on the island of Evia was destroyed today in the ongoing wildfires consuming the region. The ancient tree was located in the olive grove of Rovia, and was such an enduring symbol of the landscape that the ancient geographer and philosopher Strabo featured it in his writings. The tree was large, with a trunk so wide ten people could fit along its diameter. The tree was fertile with olives all the way until it fell victim to the wildfire. The tragic loss of the Evian tree was posted to Twitter by Apostolis Panagiotou, and the evocative image quickly gained over a thousand likes, with many Greeks leaving responses mourning the impact of the fires.


Apostolis Panagiotou

The destruction of the treasured tree is just one of many losses experienced by the Greek people in Evia during the course of the wildfires. In a statement that showcases the desperation and pain of the people of northern Evia, Giannis Kontzias, the mayor of Istiaia – Aidipsos, said that what the people are seeing now is ”the completion of a holocaust.” ”Truth be told, we could have saved much more,” he says. ”I’ve been up on the mountain from Wednesday at 2:30 PM making dramatic calls for more aircraft in the front that we managed to keep back for 30 hours.” Kontzias described the dramatic turn of events when the wind changed direction and brought the fire to the northwest of Evia.


”The wind turned the fire towards the Municipality of Istiaia Aidipsos, multiplying the fronts,” he explains. ”I’m making a dramatic appeal (to the Greek authorities) to bring aircraft.” ”Very few of them arrived yesterday, but they were inadequate. Today, only seven of them are operating particularly near Artemisio,” the devastated mayor explains. ”One after the other our villages fall. One municipal unit after the other is being destroyed completely. What’s saved has been saved by volunteers and the soul of the residents of this land,” Kontizas noted. ”They remained the last ones to save something from their homes, something from which we’ll be able to hold onto in order to stay and live in this land.”

Evia

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Quiet.

 

 

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Aug 072021
 
 August 7, 2021  Posted by at 9:06 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  93 Responses »


René Magritte The human condition 1935

 

Fauci: ‘Flood’ Of Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates After Full FDA Approval (USAT)
Covid19 Vaccine Efficacy & Effectiveness – The Elephant (Not) In The Room (L.)
Leaky Blood Vessels: An Unknown Danger of COVID-19 Vaccination (D4CE)
Early Signs Covid-19 Vaccines May Not Stop Delta Transmission (R.)
In England, Hundreds Of Vaccinated People Hospitalised With Delta (AlJ)
Greater Antibody Response In Recovered COVID Patients Than Vaccinated (Fed.)
Swedish Professor Says 5 Shots of COVID Vaccine May be Necessary (SN)
CDC Director Makes Case Vaccination Passports are Futile (CTH)
White House: No More Lockdowns Of Schools Or Economy Despite Covid Rise (JTN)
UK Draws Up Contingency Plans For ‘Firebreak’ Covid Lockdowns (iN)
Australia’s ‘Covid Zero’ Days May Be Numbered (ST)
Indiana University Students Appeal Vaccine Mandate To US Supreme Court (JTN)
US Last In Health Care Among Richest Countries Despite Spending Most (Hill)
Dems’ Crusade Against Trump Does Real Harm To Presidency, Constitution (Fox)

 

 

 

 

Yeadon

 

 

 

 

They’re planning the approval in early September. That will be the last of the FDA’s credibility.

“This is a dystopian world we’re living in,” he said. The public is awash in lies and misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines, “they are being misled.”

“Americans, he hopes, will say, “I’m not going to take any of this. I’m seeing everybody around me get sick and dying. Let me just go ahead and get vaccinated.'”

Fauci: ‘Flood’ Of Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates After Full FDA Approval (USAT)

As soon as the Food and Drug Administration issues a full approval for a COVID-19 vaccine, there will be “a flood” of vaccine mandates at businesses and schools across the nation, Dr. Anthony Fauci told USA TODAY’s editorial board on Friday. Mandates aren’t going to happen at the federal level, but vaccine approval will embolden many groups, he predicted. “Organizations, enterprises, universities, colleges that have been reluctant to mandate at the local level will feel much more confident,” he said. “They can say, ‘If you want to come to this college or this university, you’ve got to get vaccinated. If you want to work in this plant, you have to get vaccinated. If you want to work in this enterprise, you’ve got to get vaccinated. If you want to work in this hospital, you’ve got to get vaccinated.'”

Fauci doesn’t see more lockdowns in the nation’s future. They were issued early in the pandemic to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, known as “flattening the curve.” “The rationale for shutting down was that the hospital system would not be able to handle the surge of cases because everybody was getting sick,” he said. With upwards of 70% of adults having had at least one dose of vaccine, the epidemic has shifted to one of the unvaccinated, he said. “When you walk into a hospital, what you’re going to see is a lot of young people, some of whom are seriously ill, but you’re not seeing an overwhelming outstripping of the capability of the hospitals throughout the country,” he said. While he’s attacked online and in conservative media every day, Fauci said he worries less about himself than for the nation as a whole.

“This is a dystopian world we’re living in,” he said. The public is awash in lies and misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines, “they are being misled.” With COVID-19 cases rising among the unvaccinated as the highly contagious delta variant spreads, Fauci hopes people’s “better angels” will prevail over the sea of lies on social media. Americans, he hopes, will say, “I’m not going to take any of this. I’m seeing everybody around me get sick and dying. Let me just go ahead and get vaccinated.'”

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Absolute Risk Reduction = 1·3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 1·2% for the Moderna–NIH, 1·2% for the J&J, 0·93% for the Gamaleya, and 0·84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.

Covid19 Vaccine Efficacy & Effectiveness – The Elephant (Not) In The Room (L.)

Vaccine efficacy is generally reported as a relative risk reduction (RRR). It uses the relative risk (RR)—ie, the ratio of attack rates with and without a vaccine—which is expressed as 1–RR. Ranking by reported efficacy gives relative risk reductions of 95% for the Pfizer–BioNTech, 94% for the Moderna–NIH, 91% for the Gamaleya, 67% for the J&J, and 67% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford vaccines. However, RRR should be seen against the background risk of being infected and becoming ill with COVID-19, which varies between populations and over time. Although the RRR considers only participants who could benefit from the vaccine, the absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between attack rates with and without a vaccine, considers the whole population. ARRs tend to be ignored because they give a much less impressive effect size than RRRs: 1·3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 1·2% for the Moderna–NIH, 1·2% for the J&J, 0·93% for the Gamaleya, and 0·84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.

ARR is also used to derive an estimate of vaccine effectiveness, which is the number needed to vaccinate (NNV) to prevent one more case of COVID-19 as 1/ARR. NNVs bring a different perspective: 81 for the Moderna–NIH, 78 for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 108 for the Gamaleya, 84 for the J&J, and 119 for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines. The explanation lies in the combination of vaccine efficacy and different background risks of COVID-19 across studies: 0·9% for the Pfizer–BioNTech, 1% for the Gamaleya, 1·4% for the Moderna–NIH, 1·8% for the J&J, and 1·9% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford vaccines. ARR (and NNV) are sensitive to background risk—the higher the risk, the higher the effectiveness—as exemplified by the analyses of the J&J’s vaccine on centrally confirmed cases compared with all cases:8 both the numerator and denominator change, RRR does not change (66–67%), but the one-third increase in attack rates in the unvaccinated group (from 1·8% to 2·4%) translates in a one-fourth decrease in NNV (from 84 to 64).

There are many lessons to learn from the way studies are conducted and results are presented. With the use of only RRRs, and omitting ARRs, reporting bias is introduced, which affects the interpretation of vaccine efficacy.10 When communicating about vaccine efficacy, especially for public health decisions such as choosing the type of vaccines to purchase and deploy, having a full picture of what the data actually show is important, and ensuring comparisons are based on the combined evidence that puts vaccine trial results in context and not just looking at one summary measure, is also important. Such decisions should be properly informed by detailed understanding of study results, requiring access to full datasets and independent scrutiny and analyses.

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Doctors 4 Covid Ethics: “Are we about to witness the birth of an entirely new world of autoimmune disease?”

Leaky Blood Vessels: An Unknown Danger of COVID-19 Vaccination (D4CE)

Dear colleague: Six months ago, we laid out the reasons for our fears that gene-based vaccines were potentially dangerous [1]. These concerns were based primarily on the expectation that the vaccine would through lymphatic transport soon enter the circulation, where it would be taken up by the endothelial cells. These cells would then start producing the spike protein, which would cause them to be attacked and destroyed by cytotoxic Tlymphocytes. The resulting lesions would give rise to platelet activation and blood clot formation. Since then, clotting abnormalities have indeed taken center stage as propagators of adverse events following vaccinations.

Rapid entry of the vaccine into the bloodstream has been confirmed, as has rapid appearance of expressed spike protein in the bloodstream. Activation of clotting is very common even in those without characteristic or lasting symptoms, but the number of grave adverse events caused by this mechanism—heart attack, stroke, cerebral sinus venous thrombosis, and others—is very high. With this letter, your attention is directed to a second autoimmune pathway that will be triggered simultaneously with the activation of cytotoxic T-lymphocytes. We predict that this pathway will cause damage to and leakiness of blood vessels, with consequences that are far-reaching and profound, particularly upon repeated vaccination. This second autoimmune pathway will render booster shots uniquely dangerous.

1. The proposed mechanism
The first injection will induce the expression of spike protein, and the formation of specific antibodies to it. Re-vaccination will lead to a second round of spike protein production, including in endothelial cells. The antibodies, now already present, will bind to these spikes and will direct attack of the complement system to these cells. Neutrophil granulocytes, too, will be activated by antibodies bound to the endothelial cells. Vascular damage and leakage will ensue.

1.1. Evidence that SARS-CoV-2 spikes provoke complement attack on vessels
Investigations published last year by Jeffrey Laurence and colleagues [2] have establishedthat spike proteins direct complement attack to the inner vessel lining. The authors showed that spike proteins released from the lungs of COVID-19 patients travelled via the circulation to attach at distant sites to the inner vessel lining, i.e. the endothelial cells. Leukocytes and the complement system became activated precisely at those sites, which resulted in damage and leakiness of the vessels. Why this occurred became evident only recently, through several discoveries that we have discussed in a previous letter to physicians [3]. Specifically, the immune system of all individuals is already primed to respond to coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2, most likely through cross-immunity with widespread respiratory human coronavirus strains. This immunological memory causes antibody production to commence early on during SARS-CoV-2 infection [4–7]. Thus, antibodies will already be there to bind the spike proteins when these become stranded in the vessel linings. This inevitably triggers activation of the complement cascade.

1.2. The effect of booster shots
Repeat injections of gene-based “vaccines” are bound to intensify and reproduce this basic event wherever the newly expressed spike protein appears on the vessel lining. Spike protein-induced complement attack on vessels has been shown to evoke a plethora of skin lesions in COVID-19 patients [8]. These show a striking resemblance to some of those which are now being reported in vaccinated individuals [9]. Complementmediated vascular injury occurring at multiple sites throughout the body will have potentially devastating effects not only on the health of the vaccinated individual, but also on pregnancy and fertility. Complement will also likely potentiate coagulation abnormalities via yet another pathway. Spike protein molecules, known to be released into the bloodstream shortly after vaccination [5] will bind to platelets, marking them as targets for antibody binding. Subsequent attack by complement must be expected to cause platelet destruction, possibly culminating in immune thrombocytopenic purpura. This, too, has been clinically observed after vaccination [10–13]. With regard to long term effects of re-vaccination, what will happen when the “vaccines” seep out of damaged blood vessels and reach the organs of the body? Will gene uptake and spike production then mark each and every cell type for destruction by killer lymphocytes? Are we about to witness the birth of an entirely new world of autoimmune disease?

1.3. Conclusion
It is beyond question that repeated vaccinations carry serious and unprecedented risks as outlined above. While government officials, authorities and vaccine manufacturers may remain ignorant of the medical implications of such findings, any physician in possession of this knowledge cannot administer repeated COVID-19 vaccination in good conscience, nor in good faith. Under no circumstances is it acceptable for a doctor to knowingly inflict harm on a patient. ALL PHYSICIANS ARE HEREWITH CALLED ON TO RECONSIDER THE ETHICAL ISSUES SURROUNDING COVID-19 VACCINATION.

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Not THAT early…

Early Signs Covid-19 Vaccines May Not Stop Delta Transmission (R.)

There are early signs that people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 may be able to transmit the Delta variant of the virus as easily as those who have not, scientists at Public Health England (PHE) said on Friday. The findings chime with those from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which last week raised concerns that vaccinated people infected with Delta could, unlike with other variants, readily transmit it. read more The highly infectious Delta variant has become the dominant coronavirus type globally, sustaining a pandemic that has already killed more than 4.4 million people, including over 130,000 in Britain. Vaccines have been shown to provide good protection against severe disease and death from Delta, especially with two doses, but there is less data on whether vaccinated people can still transmit it to others.

“Some initial findings … indicate that levels of virus in those who become infected with Delta having already been vaccinated may be similar to levels found in unvaccinated people,” PHE said in a statement. “This may have implications for people’s infectiousness, whether they have been vaccinated or not. However, this is early exploratory analysis and further targeted studies are needed to confirm whether this is the case.” PHE said that of confirmed Delta cases that had ended up hospitalised since July 19, 55.1% were unvaccinated, while 34.9% had received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. Nearly 75% of the British population has had two vaccine doses, and PHE said that “as more of the population gets vaccinated, we will see a higher relative percentage of vaccinated people in hospital”.

Separately, PHE said another variant, known as B.1.621, first detected in Colombia, had shown signs of evading the immune response triggered by either COVID-19 vaccines or previous infection. PHE has labelled the variant “under investigation” but has not declared it a “variant of concern” – a designation that can trigger strong policy responses. “There is preliminary laboratory evidence to suggest that vaccination and previous infection may be less effective at preventing infection with (B.1.621),” it said, adding there had been 37 confirmed cases of the variant in England.

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How to redefine “rare”: “..34.9 percent had received two doses..”

In England, Hundreds Of Vaccinated People Hospitalised With Delta (AlJ)

Hundreds of fully vaccinated people in England have been hospitalised with the highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant, scientists said on Friday. In its latest COVID-19 update, Public Health England (PHE) also warned there were early signs that people who have been inoculated may be able to transmit the Delta strain as easily as those who have not received any jabs. From July 19 to August 2, 55.1 percent of the 1,467 people hospitalised with the Delta variant were unvaccinated, PHE said, while 34.9 percent – or 512 people – had received two doses. Dubbed “freedom day”, July 19 was the date England significantly eased lockdown restrictions. All vaccines in use in the United Kingdom – those produced by AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech – require recipients to receive two doses to be fully inoculated.


About 75 percent of the UK’s adult population has received two shots to date. “As more of the population gets vaccinated, we will see a higher relative percentage of vaccinated people in hospital,” PHE said. Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said the hospitalisation figures showed “once again how important it is that we all come forward to receive both doses of the vaccine as soon as we are able to do so”. “Vaccination is the best tool we have in keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe from the serious disease risk COVID-19 can pose,” Harries said in a statement. “However, we must also remember that the vaccines do not eliminate all risk: it is still possible to become unwell with COVID-19 and infect others.”

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“..such infection simultaneously assists in offering protection against developing variants.”

Greater Antibody Response In Recovered COVID Patients Than Vaccinated (Fed.)

A new study has found that individuals that have previously contracted COVID-19 show a more potent antibody response than those who were solely vaccinated for the respiratory virus. Conducted by a research team at Rockefeller University in New York, the analysis found “that between a first (prime) and second (booster) shot of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, the memory B cells of infection-naïve individuals produced antibodies that evolved increased neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2,” but also that “no additional increase in the potency or breadth of this activity was observed thereafter.” Meanwhile, researchers determined that not only do recovered COVID-19 patients possess neutralizing antibodies up to a year after infection, but that such infection simultaneously assists in offering protection against developing variants.

“Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection produces B-cell responses that continue to evolve for at least one year,” the study read. “During that time, memory B cells express increasingly broad and potent antibodies that are resistant to mutations found in variants of concern.” The analysis later goes on to conclude, “Memory antibodies selected over time by natural infection have greater potency and breadth than antibodies elicited by vaccination.” Moreover, the results suggest that “boosting vaccinated individuals with currently available mRNA vaccines would produce a quantitative increase in plasma neutralizing activity but not the qualitative advantage against variants obtained by vaccinating convalescent individuals.”

The study’s findings add to further mounting evidence detailing the level of protection natural immunity offers previously infected COVID-19 patients. Last month, Emory University published an extensive investigation describing the efficiency of long-term immunity against the respiratory virus. Similar discoveries have also been identified in research released by the Cleveland Clinic and the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, respectively.

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Every next shot is more dangerous.

Swedish Professor Says 5 Shots of COVID Vaccine May be Necessary (SN)

While many people have bragged about being “fully vaccinated” after taking two COVID-19 jabs, a Swedish professor says that as many as five shots may be needed to combat falling immunity. “We don’t know how long the vaccine protects against serious illness and death,” said Karolinska Institute Professor Matti Sällberg. “This means that you pick the safe before the unsafe.” Numerous European countries are planning a 3rd round of COVID “booster shots” in September, and the FDA also indicated that vaccinated individuals will be given another shot in the fall. However, Sällberg suggests this probably won’t be enough and that “recurring shots” will be necessary. “After receiving the second dose, the immune response slowly subsides. Within a year, many may have lost their protection. We do not know yet, but if you get a third dose, it will be activated again,” he said. “Biology says that a fading immune response is not unlikely. Then it’s time for a third, fourth, maybe fifth dose”.


One wonders whether Sällberg holds a conflict of interest given that he is also chairman of the board at vaccine company SVF. Meanwhile, in Israel, a doctor warned that “the effectiveness of the vaccine is waning/fading out” and that “85-90% of the hospitalizations are in fully vaccinated people.” Dr. Kobi Haviv also chillingly pointed out that 95% of the patients in hospital with the most severe symptoms are vaccinated. The meme below is already coming true, and with vaccine passports seemingly on the way, people will have to keep taking recurring vaccinations simply to maintain access to basic lifestyle activities. Whether vaccine side-effects or the hassle of continually having to return for more jabs will put some people off remains to be seen.

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“..both the vaxxed and non-vaxxed person walking into a restaurant, store, group, venue or workplace present the exact same risk to other people there, so how does the presentation of proof of vaccine make any difference?”

CDC Director Makes Case Vaccination Passports are Futile (CTH)

They are just making up narratives now, and the media are not calling them out on it…. The Director of the CDC made an important admission during an interview today on CNN. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky stated the vaccine does not prevent COVID-19 infection, nor does it stop the vaccinated person from transmitting the infection or the delta variant. According to Director Walensky, the only benefit from the vaccine now is presumably that it reduces the severity of symptoms. If a vaccinated and non-vaccinated person have the same capacity to carry, shed and transmit the virus – with or without symptoms – then what difference does a vaccination passport or vaccination ID make? According to the CDC TODAY, both the vaxxed and non-vaxxed person walking into a restaurant, store, group, venue or workplace present the exact same risk to other people there, so how does the presentation of proof of vaccine make any difference?

Additionally, her entire statement makes no sense. There is no evidence that vaccinated asymptomatic carriers are asymptomatic because of the vaccine. There are likely just as many asymptomatic non-vaccinated carriers. The data shows an equally distributed infection rate regardless of vaccination rate, which is simultaneously admitted by Direcor Walensky, which, as an outcome, is an admission that undercuts the entire argument for compulsory vaccines. The reverse is also evident in the data. There are just as many vaxxed carriers who are symptomatic (ie. sick), as there are un-vaxxed carriers who are symptomatic (ie. sick). The percentage of vaxxed and non-vaxxed people hospitalized it identical to the vaxxed/non-vaxxed population around the hospital.

In regional populations with extremely high vaccination rates, the COVID infection rate continues unabated. The percentage of vaccinated people hospitalized is identical to the percentage of people vaccinated in the community. In Gibraltar, 99% of the population vaccinated; COVID infection rate climbs. In Iceland over 75% of population vaccinated; infection rate climbs. Singapore and Israel show the same thing [Data Sets Here]. So what value is the vaccination passport?

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Does Fauci agree?

White House: No More Lockdowns Of Schools Or Economy Despite Covid Rise (JTN)

The Biden White House insisted Friday that American schools and the economy will not shut down again even as COVID-19 infections rise with the new Delta variant. “We are not going back. We are not turning back the clock,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. “This is not March 2020 or even January 2021,” she added. “We’re not going to lock down our economy or our schools because our country’s in a much stronger place than when we took office.” The promise came as some teachers unions aligned with the Democratic Party call for the school year to begin with virtual classes, not in-classroom learning.

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No lockdowns in US, but the UK knows better.

UK Draws Up Contingency Plans For ‘Firebreak’ Covid Lockdowns (iN)

The government has put contingency plans in place for further Covid-19 lockdowns should the NHS be forced back to the brink over winter, i can reveal. While No10 is confident that the vaccine rollout will prevent Covid hospitalisations rising to the levels that led to previous lockdowns, there remains concern that the NHS could be put under intense pressure from issues such as a large resurgence in patients suffering serious flu symptoms. A senior government source has told i that the Prime Minister authorised planning for “firebreak” lockdowns if a number of factors combine to push the NHS to breaking point in the autumn and winter months. There are also said to be concerns at a sharp increase in the number of NHS staff taking sick leave following 18 months fighting on the front line of the pandemic.


“The Government believes it has got to grips with the pandemic following the vaccine rollout,” said the Government advisor. “Barring a new vaccine-beating strain, fears over a rise in infections similar to that seen last autumn are actually outweighed by other issues like an NHS staffing crisis and the likely resurgence in flu infections, and other respiratory diseases. On top of Covid infections these factors could tip the NHS back to the brink and force more lockdowns.” However, the source added the Government is determined to avoid the long lockdowns the UK has endured since the pandemic struck in March 2020. = “Should more lockdowns be necessary, the plan is for them to be short, and preferably during the school holidays in late October and over Christmas. Firebreaks rather than lasting for months at a time.”

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Zero covid is a really stupid idea. So, ideal for Australia.

Australia’s ‘Covid Zero’ Days May Be Numbered (ST)

Australia’s coveted status as a haven from the pandemic could be at an end, with experts warning that a sustained Delta outbreak makes a return to “Covid zero” unlikely. After long stretches with zero local cases – what Australians once jokingly referred to as “doughnut days” – a Sydney outbreak has now grown to 4,610. Record numbers of new cases are being reported each day despite widespread lockdowns. Slowly but surely, some local authorities have shifted to talking about containing the virus rather than beating it. “Given where numbers are, given the experience of Delta overseas, we now have to live with Delta one way or another, and that is pretty obvious,” said New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian. After 18 months of advocating “Covid zero”, that represents a step-change in the country’s approach.

For experts like Emma McBryde, an infectious diseases and statistical modelling expert at James Cook University, the shift in tone is a reflection of the new reality that Delta has brought. “We’re buying time, not getting back to Covid zero,” she told AFP. Like most experts she agrees that Australia’s old virus toolbox – aggressive tracing and testing, snap lockdowns and extensive travel restrictions – while less effective, is still essential to stop exponential virus spread. But, she said: “The goal now should be keeping Covid in check for long enough to get vaccinated.” Dr Tony Blakely, an epidemiologist at the University of Melbourne, echoed those comments, telling public broadcaster ABC that Australia will “probably never” get back to zero transmission.

Barring a few isolated Pacific islands and neighbouring New Zealand, few countries weathered the first 18 months of the coronavirus quite as well as Australia. As the rest of the world hunkered down, got sick and lost loved ones, Australians flocked to bars, restaurants and the beach. Occasionally, the virus jumped from hotel quarantine facilities into the community but aggressive tracing and testing, snap local lockdowns and domestic travel restrictions kept it in check. Then came Delta.

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“An admitted IU student’s right to attend IU cannot be conditioned on the student waiving their rights to bodily integrity and autonomy..”

Indiana University Students Appeal Vaccine Mandate To US Supreme Court (JTN)

First Amendment attorney Jim Bopp filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday on behalf of eight Indiana University students, asking the nation’s top court to stop the university from enforcing its COVID-19 vaccine mandate. “Continuing our fight against this unconstitutional mandate is necessary to guarantee that IU students receive the fair due process they’re owed by a public university,” Bopp said in a statement sent to the media. “An admitted IU student’s right to attend IU cannot be conditioned on the student waiving their rights to bodily integrity and autonomy and to consent to medical treatment like IU has done here. The emergency application for writ of injunction was sent to Associate Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who is assigned to review cases coming out of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Bopp is requesting she issue a decision by Aug. 13, 10 days before the start of IU’s fall semester Aug. 23. Indiana University announced its COVID-19 vaccine mandate May 21, outlining what it called “strong consequences” for all those who did not comply – students would have their classes canceled and email accounts cut off, the university said, and employees would be fired if they hadn’t gotten the vaccine by the start of the fall semester. The university said exemptions would be “strictly limited to a very narrow set of criteria, including medical exemptions, and documented and significant religious exemptions.” Students were told they needed to get their first dose of the vaccine by July 1 in order to be fully vaccinated by the start of school.

In response to angry calls from parents and a letter signed by the majority of Indiana’s state senators (all Republicans) expressing concerns with the mandate, IU softened its position, and began to grant all religious exemptions. But those students were told they would need to continue to wear masks, would likely be prohibited from attending certain events on campus and would be subjected to frequent testing. Then in mid-July, the university introduced an ethical exemption, allowing students and employees who don’t qualify for a medical exemption and do not want to object on religious grounds to cite personal ethics as a reason for not choosing to get the vaccine. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana upheld the mandate in July, and a three-judge panel with the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals also sided with IU, saying if IU students didn’t want to get the vaccine, they could go elsewhere. Bopp said his firm filed suit “to preserve students’ rights to bodily integrity and autonomy and the right to consent to medical treatment.”

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The Hill labels it a “Stunning new report”. They must be the only ones who didn’t know yet.

US Last In Health Care Among Richest Countries Despite Spending Most (Hill)

The U.S. health care system ranked last among 11 wealthy countries despite spending the highest percentage of its gross domestic product on health care, according to an analysis by the Commonwealth Fund. Researchers behind the report surveyed tens of thousands of patients and doctors in each country and used data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Health Organization (WHO). The report considered 71 performance measures that fell under five categories: access to care, the care process, administrative efficiency, equity and health care outcomes. Countries analyzed in the report include Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the U.S. Norway, the Netherlands and Australia were the top-performing countries overall, with the U.S. coming in dead last.


The U.S. ranked last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity and health care outcomes despite spending 17 percent of GDP on health care, but came in second on the measures of care process metric. The nation performed well in rates of mammography screening and influenza vaccination for older Americans, as well as the percentage of adults who talked with their physician about nutrition, smoking and alcohol use. Half of lower-income U.S. adults in the report said costs prevented them from receiving care while just more than a quarter of high-income Americans said the same. In comparison, just 12 percent of lower-income residents in the U.K. and 7 percent with higher incomes said costs stopped them from getting care. The U.S. also had the highest infant mortality rate and lowest life expectancy at age 60 compared with other countries.

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Obsessed with power.

Dems’ Crusade Against Trump Does Real Harm To Presidency, Constitution (Fox)

The progressive crusade to bring down Donald Trump by any means necessary continues to damage the Office of the President and the Constitution’s separation of powers. New York prosecutors succeeded in subpoenaing a sitting president — and thereby interfering with his ability to carry out his duties — all for the sake of indicting a single Trump Organization official for under-reporting taxes. Now the Biden administration has inflicted even more damage on the Presidency by waiving Trump’s constitutional right to confidential communications with his closest aides. On January 23, 2021, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats sent a letter to the Department of Justice demanding production of documents concerning meetings and communications between Trump and high-ranking Justice Department officials regarding election fraud.

House and the Senate committees subsequently followed up with subpoenas for a slew of top former Justice Department officials, such as Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark, and U.S. Attorneys in Georgia and New York. In normal times, the Justice Department would immediately reject these demands. Article II of the Constitution specifies, after all, that the President “may require the Opinion” from his principal officers “upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective offices.” Ever since President George Washington refused to share documents with the House about the Jay Treaty, the Executive Branch has asserted the need to keep confidential documents and information that reflect presidential decision-making and deliberation.

In Nixon v. United States, the Supreme Court recognized that the President must enjoy an executive privilege in order to receive the full and frank advice of top officials in order to effectively discharge his constitutional duties. More recently, the D.C. federal court has recognized that “history and legal precedent teach that documents from a former or an incumbent President are presumptively privileged.” The Supreme Court has only recognized an exception when a criminal defendant’s own constitutional right to information conflicts with the President’s right to confidentiality. Then—and only then—has the Court sought to balance the two competing rights by intruding only as necessary on the claim of privilege. Congress’s demands for documents and subpoenas for testimony are more far-reaching and much more destructive to the separation of powers.

While Congress has a right to investigate the events leading to the terrible riot of January 6, it does not have a right to override the constitutional prerogatives of an independent branch of government. If Congress has the right to demand presidential documents and discussions at will, it could just as easily force the Justices of the Supreme Court to reveal their deliberations about the electoral fraud cases brought after the November 3 elections, too. Imagine the howls from Capitol Hill if the Trump Justice Department had issued subpoenas to Nancy Pelosi to obtain internal documents and communications between her and her top legislative advisors about threat assessments provided in the run-up to the January 6 joint meeting of Congress.

Read more …

 

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Vincent van Gogh Weeping woman 1883

 

UK Gov’t Panel: Covid Mutation With 35% Death Rate ‘Realistic Possibility’ (RT)
CDC Releases Study Showing 3/4 Delta Cases Are Among The Vaccinated (RT)
White House Covid-19 Spokesman Yells At Media For Quoting CDC Documents (RT)
Fauci *ADMITS* I Was Right In Spring of 2020 (Denninger)
Had Covid? You’ll Probably Make Antibodies For A Lifetime (Nature)
Recovered COVID-19 Patients Possess Robust Immunity To Virus (Fed.)
DeSantis: No Mandates, No Lockdowns, No Restrictions, No School Closures (CTH)
Nearly 1.6 Billion Disposable Masks Polluted Oceans In 2020 (JTN)
Things Get Ripe (Kunstler)
Thailand Bans Sharing Of News That ‘Causes Public Fear’ Amid Pandemic Criticism (G.)
Twitter Suspends Commentator for Criticizing Vaccine Policies (Turley)
Get Ready for the ‘No-Buy’ List (David Sacks)
Craig Murray’s Jailing The Latest Move To Kill Independent Journalism (Cook)
Poke (Chuck)

 

 

Brian Tyson

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was either that or 350%. They decided to lowball it.

UK Gov’t Panel: Covid Mutation With 35% Death Rate ‘Realistic Possibility’ (RT)

A British government science panel has claimed that a coronavirus variant could emerge with a 35% fatality rate – akin to that seen in the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) – noting that vaccine booster doses may be needed. A Friday report by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) looked at a series of hypothetical scenarios related to Covid-19 variants, finding it a “realistic possibility” that a mutation could appear with a case fatality rate comparable to SARS (10%) or MERS (35%), both of which belong to the coronavirus family.

While the body said that existing vaccines would remain effective against “serious disease” from such a variant short of “significant drift” or change in the virus’ spike proteins, it nonetheless added that “an increase in morbidity and mortality would be expected even in the face of vaccination,” as the jabs do not “fully prevent infection in most individuals.” The report suggested a number of ways to deal with a more deadly mutation, including “vaccine booster doses to maintain protection against severe disease,” as well as measures to limit the introduction of new variants from abroad. SAGE also considered the likelihood of a variant that “evades current vaccines,” saying that could occur in several different ways. The most likely cause would be a form of genetic variation known as “antigenic drift,” which happens when a virus mutates to a point when antibodies that prevented infection caused by previous strains no longer work.

The panel deemed that “almost certain” to happen to some degree. A “worst case” scenario described in the paper might happen when the immune system will no longer be able to produce antibodies for new emerging variants, either due to its past contact with the virus or as result of “previously experienced vaccines.” Such a doomsday scenario would make it “difficult to revaccinate” patients, however the researchers concluded that outcome is “less likely.” The same agency released a separate report on vaccines on Friday, which found that immunity is “highly likely” to diminish over time, suggesting “there will be vaccination campaigns against SARS-CoV-2 for many years to come.”

However, the report on variants also noted the coronavirus could follow an evolutionary path that sees it become more transmissible but less virulent, with SAGE drawing a comparison to “common colds.” It added that while this is “unlikely in the short term,” it could later become a “realistic possibility” as the virus fully adapts to its human hosts SAGE concluded that the UK should continue to “proactively support” a global vaccination drive, saying that could help to reduce the likelihood of “dangerous variants emerging in other parts of the world,” while also urging for increased investment in viral surveillance to keep tabs on new mutations.

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Not the internal document leaked on Thursday, but this one from Friday.

CDC Releases Study Showing 3/4 Delta Cases Are Among The Vaccinated (RT)

The CDC has released a study backing up its decision to recommend indoor masking for both vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans. The study examined one outbreak and found three-quarters of people testing positive were vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revised its masking guidelines on Tuesday, urging all Americans in areas with high Covid-19 transmission to mask up when indoors, regardless of vaccination status. Mask mandates in companies, government departments, and certain local jurisdictions followed, as CDC Director Rochelle Walensky insisted the decision was made on the back of fresh scientific evidence. The CDC released that evidence on Friday. In a study of 469 cases of Covid-19 that broke out in the resort town of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, earlier this month, 74% occurred in “fully vaccinated persons.”

Four out of five patients hospitalized were fully vaccinated, and on average the inoculated had completed their two rounds of doses only 86 days before infection. The cases studied occurred in people vaccinated primarily with Pfizer and Moderna shots, with a smaller number having received Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose jab. No one vaccine was singled out as providing better or worse protection, and none appeared to prevent symptoms from developing. Some 79% of vaccinated patients were symptomatic, the study noted. Lab testing revealed that 90% of all the Cape Cod infections involved the Delta variant of the coronavirus. The report lends weight to the argument that the current crop of vaccines aren’t as effective against the Delta variant, although the CDC and WHO both insist that vaccination is effective against “severe disease and death” from the virus, to quote WHO technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove in a briefing earlier on Friday.

[..] The study appears to negate the argument by top health officials that unvaccinated Americans are responsible for the fourfold rise in Covid-19 cases in the US since June. “This is an issue predominantly among the unvaccinated, which is the reason why we’re out there, practically pleading with the unvaccinated people to go out and get vaccinated,” White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN on Sunday, adding that the US is currently moving “in the wrong direction” with regard to stamping out Covid-19. Whether mask mandates will slow the spread of the Delta variant will be borne out with time. Beyond requiring masks and pressuring Americans to get vaccinated, the White House is running out of options.

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They can’t get their message straight.

Vaccine mandate? Useless.

White House Covid-19 Spokesman Yells At Media For Quoting CDC Documents (RT)

Even as they quoted internal CDC documents backing the renewed mask mandates due to the rise in Delta variant Covid-19 cases, both the New York Times and the Washington Post got a tongue-lashing from the White House. “Vaccinated people do not transmit the virus at the same rate as unvaccinated people and if you fail to include that context you’re doing it wrong,” Ben Wakana, deputy director of strategic communications for the White House Covid-19 response team, tweeted at the New York Times on Friday – in all caps – unhappy about the paper’s coverage of the new findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Wakana also had words for the Washington Post, which first published the CDC documents, calling their coverage “completely irresponsible” and countering it with CDC statements from three days prior.

The Twitter meltdown caught the attention of journalist Glenn Greenwald, who called it “super interesting” and suggested that “elite institutions” could find time “in between calling ordinary citizens stupid and selfish” to reflect on the “huge messaging failures, inconsistencies and lies that account for much distrust in official [Covid] messaging.” Wakana’s attempts to whip the corporate media into line follows Friday’s announcement by the CDC that claims 74% of people who recently got infected by the Delta variant of the coronavirus in a Cape Cod, Massachusetts resort were fully vaccinated. The Cape Cod study was “pivotal” in informing the decision to recommend indoor masking, said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. While the White House embraced the masking guidelines earlier this week, it has continued to insist on vaccinations as the way forward and argue that the rise in cases was predominantly a problem “among the unvaccinated.”

Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday that a national vaccine mandate is “not under consideration at this time,” and that the US is “not going to head towards a lockdown.” Jean-Pierre specifically cited CDC’s Walensky as an expert the White House defers to on virus matters. “We listen to the scientists, and they tell us that it’s the Delta variant,” she told reporters. “That’s what they’re telling us… These are scientists, they’re the experts.” Speaking with Fox News on Friday afternoon, Walensky said a federal vaccine mandate might be in the cards. “That’s something that I think the administration is looking into,” she said, only to backtrack later and “clarify” that there will be no such mandate.

Walensky kids

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“..it may last for years or even decades and may not be limited to Covid-19 either; any virus that can cross-react with the binding antibodies would be enhanced.”

Fauci *ADMITS* I Was Right In Spring of 2020 (Denninger)

Let’s be clear: Fauci has now admitted, on live camera, that a person with a breakthrough infection is just as dangerous as someone who was never vaccinated and gets infected. This was expected by anyone who has ever studied anything about viral disease and the use of non-sterilizing immunizations when infections are active in a community. We have known this all the way back to Polio and is why we insisted on a sterilizing vaccine (OPV) following the inactivated injected vaccine (IPV) in the United States until 20 years after we were declared polio-free. In addition it is exactly what is expected if a non-sterilizing vaccine produces both binding and neutralizing antibodies and we know, scientifically, that all the existing jabs do exactly that. When levels wane you still have binding antibodies and when the neutralizing level falls below the threshold to protect you now have an enhancement of the disease rather than protection.

A person who was never infected and not vaccinated does not have the binding antibodies and thus, while at risk, doesn’t get the enhancement. Now we have real-world evidence that in fact the jabs produce risk as immunity wanes and that said risk may exceed, on a personal level, what someone has who never been infected or vaccinated is exposed to. As I pointed out the case rate had peaked and was headed down — hard — before the first jab went into the first arm. That which you do after something happens can’t be due to whatever it is you did. Not one group saw that collapse come after vaccination and no sub-group, even the very old, reached even 20% coverage before the case rate was in the ditch Obviously vaccines did not stop Covid in the winter and thus there’s no reason to believe they will materially impact whatever variation may come around — now or in the future.

Got JabbersRemorse yet folks? It appears you may need to continually take boosters to avoid this and accept the risk of blood clots, strokes, heart attacks, PAH and other adverse effects not just once or twice but every six months to a year if not more-often! Oh, and if you choose not to the duration of your increased risk is not known — it may last for years or even decades and may not be limited to Covid-19 either; any virus that can cross-react with the binding antibodies would be enhanced. What I said was the correct path forward in early 2020 and have maintained since is:

• Protect the most-vulnerable who cannot protect themselves. This means locking in all care-givers in institutional settings for the elderly and medically infirm. Yep, you work there, you do not interact with the public until and unless you can prove seroconversion. Period. If we have to pay more to get people to agree to this so be it. It is what it is.

• Urge immediate intervention with suspected or believed effective drugs that are rationally safe at the first sign of infection. If you can buy or use something of statistically similar risk over the counter then you must be able to buy these over the counter on your demand to a pharmacist, with he or she checking for interactions with other drugs you may be taking and warning as appropriate, but with the choice being yours and nobody else’s. Period. The list of said drugs includes hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, budesonide, famotidine and a few others. Why? Because we had no reason to believe originally that natural infection was not sufficient to prevent, in nearly every case, re-infection with a serious or severe instance as that has always been true for every other respiratory pandemic virus and time has proved this up for Covid-19 as well. In short natural infection has now proved superior to vaccination (note that nobody is seriously claiming Delta and other “variants” evade natural immunity) and therefore in those who are at reasonably-low risk infection is preferred as the immunity it produces is at least equal and likely superior, with said infection mitigated as to severity as one chooses. MY ASS, MY CHOICE.

• For those at extremely high risk offer but not mandate whatever prophylactic(s) we can come up with. This includes the current jabs but certainly isn’t limited to them. For example there is some evidence that Ivermectin is effective as a prophylaxis. Vitamin D may be; there is a very strong association between Vitamin D deficiency and severe or fatal Covid infections but association is not proof of cause nor that correcting it would change outcomes. Nonetheless there is nearly zero risk to that path forward and, for Ivermectin, the data is that the serious adverse event risk is 1 in 600,000 people. That’s tiny and less than the risk from Tylenol, to name just one OTC drug in question. Again, the goal here is for infections to happen as they will but not result in serious outcomes as that is the path out of every pandemic through history and there is no evidence this one will be different.

• Those who are at statistically-zero risk of serious harm or death (e.g. healthy children) should be encouraged to live normally and expect to get the virus. Their natural immunity provides a “free of cost” firewall for everyone else. We are criminally insane to do anything that limits or otherwise attempts to prevent that.

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2 months old but very relevant. And then they insert doubts. Antibodies for life, but do get a booster.

Had Covid? You’ll Probably Make Antibodies For A Lifetime (Nature)

Many people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. So suggest researchers who have identified long-lived antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from COVID-191. The study provides evidence that immunity triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection will be extraordinarily long-lasting. Adding to the good news, “the implications are that vaccines will have the same durable effect”, says Menno van Zelm, an immunologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Antibodies — proteins that can recognize and help to inactivate viral particles — are a key immune defence. After a new infection, short-lived cells called plasmablasts are an early source of antibodies.

But these cells recede soon after a virus is cleared from the body, and other, longer-lasting cells make antibodies: memory B cells patrol the blood for reinfection, while bone marrow plasma cells (BMPCs) hide away in bones, trickling out antibodies for decades. “A plasma cell is our life history, in terms of the pathogens we’ve been exposed to,” says Ali Ellebedy, a B-cell immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, who led the study, published in Nature on 24 May. Researchers presumed that SARS-CoV-2 infection would trigger the development of BMPCs — nearly all viral infections do — but there have been signs that severe COVID-19 might disrupt the cells’ formation2. Some early COVID-19 immunity studies also stoked worries, when they found that antibody levels plunged not long after recovery.

Ellebedy’s team tracked antibody production in 77 people who had recovered from mostly mild cases of COVID-19. As expected, SARS-CoV-2 antibodies plummeted in the four months after infection. But this decline slowed, and up to 11 months after infection, the researchers could still detect antibodies that recognized the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. To identify the source of the antibodies, Ellebedy’s team collected memory B cells and bone marrow from a subset of participants. Seven months after developing symptoms, most of these participants still had memory B cells that recognized SARS-CoV-2. In 15 of the 18 bone-marrow samples, the scientists found ultra-low but detectable populations of BMPCs whose formation had been triggered by the individuals’ coronavirus infections 7–8 months before. Levels of these cells were stable in all five people who gave another bone-marrow sample several months later.

“This is a very important observation,” given claims of dwindling SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, says Rafi Ahmed, an immunologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, whose team co-discovered the cells in the late 1990s. What’s not clear is what antibody levels will look like in the long term and whether they offer any protection, Ahmed adds. “We’re early in the game. We’re not looking at five years, ten years after infection.” Ellebedy’s team has observed early signs that Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine should trigger the production of the same cells4. But the persistence of antibody production, whether elicited by vaccination or by infection, does not ensure long-lasting immunity to COVID-19. The ability of some emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants to blunt the protective effects of antibodies means that additional immunizations may be needed to restore levels, says Ellebedy. “My presumption is, we will need a booster.”

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“..the human immune system produces a multitude of neutralizing antibodies, while also activating certain T and B cells to establish immune memory.”

Recovered COVID-19 Patients Possess Robust Immunity To Virus (Fed.)

A newly released study conducted by Emory University suggests recovered COVID-19 patients possess long-term immunity to the respiratory virus months after infection. Published in Cell Reports Medicine, the comprehensive study analyzed 254 individuals with mostly mild to moderate symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection over an eight-month period and found that patients possessed “durable broad-based immune responses” to the virus after recovering from an infection. “The study serves as a framework to define and predict long-lived immunity to SARS-CoV-2 after natural infection,” said Emory Vaccine Center director Rafi Ahmed. “We also saw indications in this phase that natural immunity could continue to persist.” Ahmed served as a lead author on the study.

The study goes on to note that in response to an active infection in the body, the human immune system produces a multitude of neutralizing antibodies, while also activating certain T and B cells to establish immune memory. Ahmed denotes that these developments make a strong case for some form of lasting immunity to the virus. “We saw that antibody responses, especially IgG antibodies, were not only durable in the vast majority of patients but decayed at a slower rate than previously estimated, which suggests that patients are generating longer-lived plasma cells that can neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein,” he said.

Moreover, the analysis also demonstrates that not only are recovered patients likely to possess lasting immunity to existing SARS-COV-2 variants, but that “SARS-CoV-2 infection also boosts antibody titers to SARS-CoV-1 and common betacoronaviruses.” “While pre-existing exposure and antibodies against HKU1 and OC43 betacoronaviruses are common in adults, pre-existing SARS-CoV-1 exposure is rare and antibody levels to SARS-CoV-1 spike protein were very low (essentially negative) in the pre-pandemic healthy controls,” the study says. “However, SARS-CoV-1 spike-reactive antibodies increased significantly after SARS-CoV-2 infection.” The report later goes on to conclude that taken together, the results of the study “suggest that broad and effective immunity may persist long-term in recovered COVID-19 patients.”

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Were the teachers elected?

DeSantis: No Mandates, No Lockdowns, No Restrictions, No School Closures (CTH)

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis delivered a statement about the future of Florida today while visiting Cape Coral on the Southwest coast. During his remarks, the governor highlighted his support for parent’s rights, taking the position that parents should be the ones making decisions for their children on masks, schools and vaccines, not government. Governor DeSantis promised Florida residents there will be no lockdowns, no mandates, no restrictions and no school closures. Additionally, the governor urged all local communities to follow common sense science and said he will soon issue an order allowing parents or guardians to choose whether their child wears a mask in schools.

“As of today, very few [school districts] are requiring it. Nevertheless, we have a lot of push from the CDC and others to make every single person, kids and staff have to wear masks all day,” DeSantis said during the event. “That would be a huge mistake.” The Florida Education Association (FEA), the largest teacher union in the state, said they will fight the Florida governor on all measures. The teachers union is considering not going back to work with in-person teaching, and has vowed not to give up control of the (k-12) children to the parents. “Governor DeSantis continues to think that Tallahassee knows best what all Floridians need,” FEA President Andrew Spar said in a statement. “We reject that kind of thinking” Spar continued.

“Instead, we ask Governor DeSantis to allow all Florida’s citizens to have a voice by empowering the elected leaders of cities, counties and school districts to make health and safety decisions locally based on their unique needs and circumstances,” Spar said. Emphasizing how the union feels they have more power in the blue and leftist urban area, and they have vowed to fight any conservative effort in the state to undermine the teachers financial interests and control over Florida students.

Read more …

So where’s the rest?

Nearly 1.6 Billion Disposable Masks Polluted Oceans In 2020 (JTN)

Nearly 1.6 billion disposable face masks ended up in the earth’s oceans in 2020, out of the roughly 52 billion produced in response to the pandemic, according to a new study. While governments around the world continue to support mask mandates in public spaces, the impact of disposable masks is only just emerging. The report, by the Hong Kong-based marine conservation group OceansAsia, title “Masks on the Beach,” also estimated that roughly 5,500 tons of plastic pollution entered the ocean in 2020 from masks. The figure is equal to 7% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a mass of plastic debris floating in the ocean that is twice the size of Texas.


While a cigarette butt or plastic bag takes 20 years or less to degrade in the ocean, according to Visual Capitalist, a plastic bottle, disposable diaper or a disposable mask takes nearly 450 years to fully break down. The majority of disposable masks – like N95 respirators and surgical masks – were produced in China factories, which were reportedly producing 450 million masks per day in April 2020.

Read more …

“..the toiling myrmidons of Big Pharma..”

Things Get Ripe (Kunstler)

Anyway, the Covid-19 story is now utterly unraveling and the official actions around it look desperately idiotic. It’s back to mass mask-ups and maybe even lockdowns. But don’t get the idea that those mRNA vaccines turned out to have a short half-life — though it kind of looks like they did. In which case, why the panicky rush to get absolutely everybody vaxed up? And how’s that working? I’ll tell you how: only with last-ditch attempts at totalitarian intimidation… you will have no rights to earn a living, go out in public, buy anything, or even protest on the street about any of these insults to human dignity.


The world has never seen the launch of such a gigantic lead balloon. All week, the hysteria has been building and now the balloon is falling to earth as the CDC prepares to announce that the vaxes are a bust against the “Delta variant” and it’s back to the drawing board for all the toiling myrmidons of Big Pharma. Did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi get some insider info on this, having appointed herself mask-sheriff of the US Capitol Building, threatening now to arrest non-masked members and their staffers. Indeed, even a few fully-vaxed-up congresspeople were moved to shout, “Hey wait a minute.”

Read more …

Thailand does what all western countries do: censor.

Thailand Bans Sharing Of News That ‘Causes Public Fear’ Amid Pandemic Criticism (G.)

The Thai government has outlawed sharing news that “causes public fear”, even if such reports are true, as officials face mounting criticism over their handling of the pandemic. On Thursday, the government tightened an emergency decree imposed more than a year ago that initially targeted false news. The latest constrictions forbid people from distributing “information causing public fear”, or from sharing “distorted information causing misunderstanding which affects national stability”. The measures have been widely condemned by media groups and rights experts as an attempt to shut down negative news reports and silence debate. Sunai Phasuk, senior researcher on Thailand in Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, described it as a “serious blow” to press freedom in the country.


“I think the government realises it is now facing a credibility crisis because of this disastrous response to the Covid situation, but instead of trying to find better solutions, more efficient solutions, it chooses to gag anyone from speaking about its failures,” said Sunai. “This provision doesn’t care about accuracy or whether it is true or false.” Under the regulations, if false content is spread online, the country’s broadcasting regulator will contact internet service providers to identify the individual’s ISP address and block their internet access. Internet providers who fail to comply will be deemed to have breached the requirements of their operating licences, and action will be taken against them. Sunai said he feared the measures wold be used against online reporters and critics who use social media to share political news and commentaries that do not flatter the government.

Read more …

Rubin’s been reinstated, with Twitter apologizing for the “error”.

Twitter Suspends Commentator for Criticizing Vaccine Policies (Turley)

Twitter’s actions against political commentator Dave Rubin is an example of how these companies are now dispensing with any pretense in actively barring criticism of government policies and viewpoints. Rubin was locked out under the common “misinformation” claim by Twitter. However, his tweet was an opinion based on demonstrably true facts. One can certainly disagree with the conclusion but this is an example of core political speech being curtailed by a company with a long history of biased censorship, including the barring of discussions involving Hunter Biden’s laptop before the election. With a new election looming, these companies appear to be ramping up their censorship efforts.

In his tweet, Rubin stated: “They want a federal vaccine mandate for vaccines which are clearly not working as promised just weeks ago. People are getting and transmitting Covid despite vax. Plus now they’re prepping us for booster shots. A sane society would take a pause. We do not live in a sane society.” Even President Biden admitted yesterday that he was wrong weeks ago when he assured people that if they took the vaccine, they would not be at risk for the variants and could dispense with their masks. There are breakthrough cases that have taken many officials by surprise. It is also true that there is now talk of likely booster shots.

Rubin takes those facts and adds his opinion that we should “take a pause.” Twitter declared that to be a violation of its policy “on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.” As always, Twitter simply refuses to explain its censorship decision beyond these generalized, categorical statements. It is not clear if Twitter is calling these facts misinformation or objecting to Rubin’s opinion about a pause. It does not matter. Twitter does not like his viewpoint and does not want others to read it or discuss it. This is precisely what Democratic leaders pressed Twitter to do in past hearings. As previously discussed the hearing with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey who followed up his apology for censoring the Hunter Biden story but pledging more censorship.

Read more …

Sacks is one of the co-creators of Paypal.

Get Ready for the ‘No-Buy’ List (David Sacks)

I have no desire to defend genuinely hateful or extremist groups. Indeed, when I was COO at PayPal, we regularly worked with law enforcement to restrict illegal activity on our platform. But we are talking about something very different here: shutting down people and organizations that express views that are entirely lawful, even if they are unpopular in Silicon Valley. As with the censorship of speech, financial deplatforming often begins as something that seems narrow and reasonable — who wouldn’t want to ban the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys? But once the power is granted, it metastasizes into widespread use. We have watched this unfold with online censorship. Many cheered the decision by the largest social media companies to kick President Trump and his most rabid supporters off their platforms after January 6.

They cheered even louder when Apple, Google, and Amazon deplatformed Parler, the one speech platform that didn’t ban Trump. In defense of these policies, we were told that these were private business decisions made by companies that had every right under both the First Amendment and Section 230 to police speech on their platforms. Then, a couple weeks ago, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki casually announced that the Biden administration has been flagging and reporting posts on Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms for removal as Covid-19 “misinformation” (another term with a changing and ever-expanding definition). She even said that when one tech company removes a post, they all should do it, implying that the White House is centrally coordinating a blocklist across social media properties.

The suppression of speech by the government is blatantly unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Given that both Congress and the administration are threatening Big Tech companies with antitrust lawsuits and the repeal of Section 230’s liability protection, it’s disingenuous for Psaki and others to claim Big Tech is doing this policing entirely of their own accord. How could they object when the administration and Congress have hung the sword of Damocles over their heads? The harm is compounded when the loss of speech rights is followed by restrictions on the ability to participate in online economic activity. Within days of the Trump-Parler cancellations, most of the finance tech stack (Stripe, Square, PayPal, Shopify, GoFundMe, and even enterprise SaaS company Okta, which wasn’t used by anyone in the events of January 6) declared they were canceling the accounts of “individuals and organizations connected to the [Capitol] riot.”

Now PayPal has gone much further, creating the economic equivalent of the No-Fly List with the ADL’s assistance. If history is any guide, other fintech companies will soon follow suit. As we saw in the case of speech restrictions, the political monoculture that prevails among employees of these companies will create pressure for all of them to act as a bloc. When someone mistakenly lands on the No-Fly List, they can at least sue or petition the government for redress. But when your name lands on a No-Buy List created by a consortium of private fintech companies, to whom can you appeal?

Read more …

is anyone awake anymore in Britain?

Craig Murray’s Jailing The Latest Move To Kill Independent Journalism (Cook)

Craig Murray, a former ambassador to Uzbekistan, the father of a newborn child, a man in very poor health and one who has no prior convictions, will have to hand himself over to the Scottish police on Sunday morning. He becomes the first person ever to be imprisoned on the obscure and vaguely defined charge of “jigsaw identification”. Murray is also the first person to be jailed in Britain for contempt of court in half a century – a period when such different legal and moral values prevailed that the British establishment had only just ended the prosecution of “homosexuals” and the jailing of women for having abortions.

Murray’s imprisonment for eight months by Lady Dorrian, Scotland’s second most senior judge, is of course based entirely on a keen reading of Scottish law rather than evidence of the Scottish and London political establishments seeking revenge on the former diplomat. And the UK supreme court’s refusal on Thursday to hear Murray’s appeal despite many glaring legal anomalies in the case, thereby paving his path to jail, is equally rooted in a strict application of the law, and not influenced in any way by political considerations. Murray’s jailing has nothing to do with the fact that he embarrassed the British state in the early 2000s by becoming that rarest of things: a whistleblowing diplomat. He exposed the British government’s collusion, along with the US, in Uzbekistan’s torture regime.

His jailing also has nothing to do with the fact that Murray has embarrassed the British state more recently by reporting the woeful and continuing legal abuses in a London courtroom as Washington seeks to extradite Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange, and lock him away for life in a maximum security prison. The US wants to make an example of Assange for exposing its war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and for publishing leaked diplomatic cables that pulled the mask off Washington’s ugly foreign policy. Murray’s jailing has nothing to do with the fact that the contempt proceedings against him allowed the Scottish court to deprive him of his passport so that he could not travel to Spain and testify in a related Assange case that is severely embarrassing Britain and the US.

The Spanish hearing has been presented with reams of evidence that the US illegally spied on Assange inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he sought political asylum to avoid extradition. Murray was due to testify that his own confidential conversations with Assange were filmed, as were Assange’s privileged meetings with his own lawyers. Such spying should have seen the case against Assange thrown out, had the judge in London actually been applying the law. Similarly, Murray’s jailing has nothing to do with his embarrassing the Scottish political and legal establishments by reporting, almost single-handedly, the defence case in the trial of Scotland’s former First Minister, Alex Salmond. Unreported by the corporate media, the evidence submitted by Salmond’s lawyers led a jury dominated by women to acquit him of a raft of sexual assault charges. It is Murray’s reporting of Salmond’s defence that has been the source of his current troubles.

And most assuredly, Murray’s jailing has precisely nothing to do with his argument – one that might explain why the jury was so unconvinced by the prosecution case – that Salmond was actually the victim of a high-level plot by senior politicians at Holyrood to discredit him and prevent his return to the forefront of Scottish politics. The intention, says Murray, was to deny Salmond the chance to take on London and make a serious case for independence, and thereby expose the SNP’s increasing lip service to that cause.

Read more …

Well done. Twitter thread.

Poke (Chuck)

ME: CDC, should I get poke if I already had Covid?
CDC: “Yes, you should be poked regardless of whether you already had COVID-19. That’s because experts do not yet know how long you are protected from getting sick again after recovering from COVID-19.”
ME: Oh, so we don’t know how long natural immunity lasts. So, how long does poke-induced immunity last?
CDC: “There is still a lot we’re learning about pokes and CDC is constantly reviewing evidence and updating guidance. We don’t know how long protection lasts for those poked.”
ME: Okay, but wait a second. I thought you said the reason I need the poke was because we don’t know how long my natural immunity lasts, but you’re saying we ALSO don’t know how long poke immunity lasts either. So, how exactly is the poke immunity better than my natural immunity?
CDC: …

ME: Uh … alright. But, haven’t there been a bunch of studies suggesting that natural immunity could last for years or decades?
CDC: Yes.
NEWYORKTIMES: “Years, maybe decades, according to a new study.”
ME: Ah. So natural immunity might last longer than poke immunity?
CDC: Possibly.
ME: Okay. If I get the poke, does that mean I won’t get sick?
BRITAIN: Nope. We are entering a seasonal spike and half of our infections and hospital admissions are poked people.

ME: CDC, is this true? Are there people in the U.S. catching it after getting poked?
CDC: We stopped tracking breakthrough cases. We accept voluntary reports but aren’t out there looking for them.
ME: Does that mean that if someone comes in the hospital with Covid, you don’t track them because they’ve been poked? You only track the UN-poked Covid cases?
CDC: That’s right.
ME: Hmm. Well, if I can still get sick after I get the poke, how is it helping me?
CDC: We never said you wouldn’t get sick. We said it would reduce your chances of serious illness or death.

ME: Oh, sorry. Alright, exactly how much does it reduce my chances?
CDC: We don’t know “exactly.”
ME: Oh. Then what’s your best estimate for how much risk reduction there is?
CDC: We don’t know, okay? Next question.
ME: Um, if I’m healthy and don’t want the poke, is there any reason I should get it?
CDC: Yes, for the collective.

ME: How does the collective benefit from me getting poked?
CDC: Because you could spread the virus to someone else who might get sick and die.
ME: Can a poked person spread the virus to someone else?
CDC: Yes.
ME: So if I get poked, I could still spread the virus to someone else?
CDC: Yes.

ME: But I thought you just said, the REASON I should get poked was to prevent me spreading the virus? How does that make sense if I can still catch Covid and spread it after getting the poke?
CDC: Never mind that. Also, if you stay unpoked, there’s a chance the virus could possibly mutate into a strain that escapes the pokes protection, putting all poked people at risk.
ME: So the poke stops the virus from mutating?
CDC: No.
ME: So it can still mutate with the poke?
CDC: Yes.
ME: This seems confusing. If the poke doesn’t stop mutations, and it doesn’t stop infections, then how does me getting poked help prevent a more deadly strain from evolving to escape the poke?
CDC:

CDC: You aren’t listening, okay? The bottom line is: as long as you are unpoked, you pose a threat to poked people.
ME: But what KIND of threat??
CDC: The threat that they could get a serious case of Covid and possibly die.
ME: My brain hurts. Didn’t you JUST say that the poke doesn’t stop people from catching Covid, but prevents a serious case or dying? Now it seems like you’re saying poked people can still easily die from Covid even after they got the poke from an unpoked person! Which is it??

CDC: That’s it, we’re hanging up now.
ME: Wait! I just want to make sure I understand all this. So, even if I ALREADY had Covid, I should STILL get poked, because we don’t know how long natural immunity lasts, and we also don’t know how long poke immunity lasts….
…And I should get the poke to keep a poked person from catching Covid from me, but even if I get the poke, I can give it to the poked person anyways. And, the other poked person can still easily catch a serious case of Covid from me and die. Do I have all that right?

……
ME: Um, hello? Is anyone there?

Read more …

 

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Dr. Robert Malone, 2 1/2 hours, the whole story.

 

 

 

 

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Jul 202021
 


Édouard Vuillard In bed 1891

 

60% Of People Admitted To Hospital With Covid Have Been Double-Jabbed (Sky)
Hospitalisation Data Not A Reason To Doubt The Vaccine (Moore)
Gottlieb Predicts ‘Most’ Unvaccinated Americans Will Get Delta Variant (HuPo)
The Flag Is In Tatters (Denninger)
Antibodies From Covid Infection Last At Least Nine Months (F.)
45K Death Count From Covid Shot Lawsuit (Renz Law)
Viral Diversity and the Pandemic Response (McCullough)
On ‘Freedom Day’, Boris Johnson Announces Mandatory Vaccine Passports (SN)
The Counter-truths Unspin (Kunstler)
Vax Wars are Global – Gerald Celente (USAW)
UK Government Advisor Admits Masks Are Just “Comfort Blankets” (SN)
AG Garland Bars Prosecutors From Seizing Reporters’ Records (AP)
The Shadow State: Corporations As Surrogates For Government Action (Turley)
The True Cost of Food (Rockefeller)

 

 

 

 

It’s just

 

 

He since “corrected” it to 40%.

My notes yesterday when I was reading this:

• UK: official numbers: 68% of adults are double jabbed (87% single jabbed)
• 60% of new hospitalizations are double jabbed (or 40%, if you will)
• winter high was 60K infections daily, now 50K
• but the vaccines are very very effective. in fact, they are over 90% effective.
• this does not make sense.

60% Of People Admitted To Hospital With Covid Have Been Double-Jabbed (Sky)

Sixty percent of people being admitted to hospital with COVID-19 have had two doses of a coronavirus vaccine, according to the government’s chief scientific adviser. Speaking at a Downing Street news briefing, Sir Patrick Vallance said: “In terms of the number of people in hospital who’ve been double-vaccinated, we know it’s around 60% of the people being admitted to hospital with COVID. “We do expect there to be over 1,000 people per day being hospitalised with coronavirus because of the increase in infections. “But the rates should be lower than they have been previously because of the protective effects of vaccination.” He said this was not surprising “because the vaccines are not 100% effective”.

“They’re very, very effective, but not 100%, and as a higher proportion of the population is double-vaccinated, it’s inevitable that those 10% of that very large number remain at risk, and therefore will be amongst the people who both catch the infection and end up in hospital.” Meanwhile, most regions of England now have more coronavirus patients in hospital than at any point since mid-March. Two regions – south-west England and the combined area of north-east England and Yorkshire – are back to levels last seen more than four months ago. For England as a whole, there are now 3,813 patients in hospital with COVID-19 – the highest number since 24 March. Sir Patrick also warned said there were “high levels of COVID and they are increasing”.

He said the UK was quite close to the previous “winter wave” of infections. “In the winter wave, we were up to around 60,000 people testing positive per day,” he said. “We are now somewhere on towards 50,000. So we’re quite close to the size of the winter wave of infections and this is going to increase.” He said the timing of the next peak of the virus would be “uncertain”. He said: “But most of the models are suggesting that there should be a peak and start seeing some sort of either plateau or decrease over August.

“And at that point, if things continue to increase at the rate they are – and as I said at the outset, there is something like 50,000 or near 50,000 cases per day, or positives per day, at the moment being detected – with a doubling time of 11 days, you can see that that gets to pretty high numbers very quickly. “And another doubling time will take you to even higher numbers, of course – that would be really quite, quite worrying. So we would like to see some flattening of this, some decrease in the trajectory, and ideally, as you rightly say, you’d like to see this coming down by September, as return of schools would add another pressure on top of that.”

Read more …

This is an analysis that goes with the article above.

Hospitalisation Data Not A Reason To Doubt The Vaccine (Moore)

The majority of people in hospital with COVID right now have been fully vaccinated. That will be a surprise to many people, despite the reassurance of the chief scientist Sir Patrick Vallance that it’s to be expected. But he’s right. Firstly, two doses of the Pfizer jab are 96% effective at preventing hospitalisation. For the AstraZeneca shot the figure is 92%. So while the protection is high, it’s not 100%. Secondly, the older you are the more likely it is that you will end up seriously ill if you get COVID. So if the virus does break through the protective barrier of the vaccine you are still more likely to end up in hospital if you are over 50.


It’s not a reason to doubt the vaccine. But it is a reason for everyone to get the jab and reduce levels of the virus spreading through the community. That would mean there’s less risk to double-vaccinated, older people. The good news is that the death rate is still much lower than in previous waves – about one in 1000 infections leads to death now, compared to around one in 50 in January. That’s partly down to the vaccine, but also better drug treatment for those in hospital. So even if double-vaccinated people are still ending up in hospital, they stand a much better chance of survival.

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And so will most vaccinated. But he doesn’t add that.

Gottlieb Predicts ‘Most’ Unvaccinated Americans Will Get Delta Variant (HuPo)

The former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration predicted Sunday that “most” unvaccinated Americans who haven’t already had COVID-19 will contract the delta variant — and it will be the “most serious” virus of their lives. “This virus is so contagious, this variant is so contagious … that most people will either get vaccinated or have been previously infected or they will get this delta variant,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb warned in an interview on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “And for most people who get this delta variant, it’s going to be the most serious virus that they get in their lifetime in terms of the risk of putting them in the hospital,” he added.

Gottlieb, who served under former President Donald Trump before the pandemic, spoke as cases of the disease were climbing across America, with the seven-day average of reported coronavirus cases soaring nearly 70% last week. All 50 states are experiencing a higher number of new cases. Among the hardest hit are states with low vaccination rates, such as Arkansas, Missouri and Florida. The Sunshine state last week accounted for 20% of all new cases in the country. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky called the new surge a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

Gottlieb said he believes actual cases of the more-easily transmissible delta variant are underreported. He estimated that health officials know about only one out of 10 or 20 cases because some of those infected have mild cases and testing is not widespread. “We’re not doing a lot of routine screening right now,” said Gottlieb, who currently serves on the board of vaccine-maker Pfizer. “Unless you work for the New York Yankees, you’re not getting tested on a regular basis. So I think that this delta wave could be far more advanced than what we’re detecting right now.”

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“The data from Israel says natural infection is 6-7x as effective in preventing a future infection as the jab.”

these vaccines are not sterilizing, which means every vaccinated person is a viral mutation factory”

The Flag Is In Tatters (Denninger)

Let’s not kid ourselves. If the media and “public health” people are telling the truth about Delta being as transmissible as claimed there is no way to reach a vaccination level that will suppress it. There are actually people claiming it has an R0 equal or even greater than measles. This is probably a lie, but the problem with lies such as this is that they preclude solutions you then put forward as you’ll never get there. In short we have what I pointed out originally: You either had Covid now or will get it, like it or not. It is as certain as winter. Further, if Delta arose it won’t be the last one. Worse, we now know, conclusively that these vaccines are not sterilizing, which means every vaccinated person is a viral mutation factory and won’t know they have it in many cases. We also know it does not block transmission, as was just demonstrated on the HMS Queen Elizabeth and in the Texas Delegation.

You cannot out-vaccinate a mutating virus; the reason is quite simple as the virus passes through people and mutates faster than you can modify vaccination formulas. I warned early on that the use of non-sterilizing vaccines was known dangerous back when IPV came out for Polio and is why Sabin’s OPV formula, which is sterilizing, was universally used in conjunction with IPV in the US until polio was no longer circulating here. In fact we kept using OPV in the United States for another 20 years after the nation was declared polio-free. Why? Because not doing so — using non-sterilizing IPV alone when polio was still circulating in the population — was damned dangerous as it placed evolutionary pressure on the virus that could cause more disease rather than less and we knew it.

There are no sterilizing Covid-19 vaccines and no evidence we can develop one. The manufacturers admitted their trials were not intended to prove that originally but now we have the data and zero of the shots produce sterilizing immunity. That’s scientific fact at this point. In short we have no choice but to drop the bull**** and accept that we have to live with Covid-19. It will never go away. It has become an endemic virus like the cold or flu viruses and will be with us forever. In addition eradication was always doomed to fail because it has animal reservoirs, specifically at least cats and ferrets. We have no choice in this matter.

Within a very short period of time if Delta is what they claim in terms of infectivity you’re going to see a dramatic shift here as we have in Britain and Israel. The data from Israel says natural infection is 6-7x as effective in preventing a future infection as the jab. The virus will shortly run out of non-jabbed people to infect and the vax-vs-nonvax numbers showing up in the ER will shift dramatically. The bad news is that those who got a “hidden” adverse effect, especially thrombosis of any sort, are at a very high risk of getting monkey-hammered if and when their immunity fails and they get infected anyway because that pre-existing damage will be synergistic with the virus effects.

Lockdowns, masks and mass-jabs will not solve the problem and in fact will make it worse due to the adverse effects. For the healthy 18 year old who is screwed by cardiomylitis what do you tell him or her? They were at an effective zero risk of death in the first place; the number harmed by the shots in that cohort exceeds the number saved. Jabbing such people is an unconscionable evil, and this presumes the risks are confined to what we know which is almost certainly not the case, and that evasion by the virus never occurs, which is ridiculously improbable. Good luck folks.

Read more …

180º lie: “..immunity from infection [..] is typically weaker than that provided by vaccination.”

Why would anyone want to spin such lies? What’s to gain?

Antibodies From Covid Infection Last At Least Nine Months (F.)

Almost all people who have recovered from Covid-19 have detectable levels of antibodies nine months later, according to a new study of almost the entire population of an Italian town, bolstering earlier research that suggests a prior infection conveys some protection against the coronavirus. Over a span of nine months, researchers from Italy’s University of Padua and Imperial College London tested more than 85% of the 3,000 residents of Vo, Italy, for Covid-19 antibodies. The researchers, writing in Nature Communications, found that 98.8% of people infected in the first wave—around February/March 2020—still showed detectable levels of antibodies nine months on when tested in November.

There was no difference between people who had symptomatic and asymptomatic illness, the study found. Lead author Dr. Ilaria Dorigatti said this suggests that “the strength of the immune response does not depend on the symptoms and the severity of the infection.” For some people, antibody levels actually increased between testing, indicating a boost to the immune system from another infection with the virus. The possibility of further infection could mean that people with antibodies—whether by infection or vaccination—are capable of transmitting the virus even if they are protected from disease, the researchers warned.

Understanding how long immunity to Covid-19 lasts is crucial to public health officials trying to manage the pandemic. While antibodies indicate an immune response, they do not provide a complete picture of the immune system and cannot tell us how robust immunity is. Though some evidence suggests immunity from infection might be long lasting, it may not be strong enough to protect against disease and is typically weaker than that provided by vaccination.

Read more …

Wasn’t sure what to make of the video I posted yesterday, but it’s a real lawsuit of 67 pages which alleges that VAERS undercounts vaccine deaths by a factor of 5.

45K Death Count From Covid Shot Lawsuit (Renz Law)



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“..mass vaccination when it hits >25% of the population, begins to promote latent variants to become predominant ..”

Viral Diversity and the Pandemic Response (McCullough)

There are multiple reports that fully vaccinated groups in the hubris of their newly gained freedoms are coming down with COVID-19, this time with the Delta variant. This mutant strain was born in India in response to evolutionary pressure that promoted a base pair changes from the original alpha variant out of the UK. The HMS Queen Elizabeth reported an outbreak of 100 COVID-19 cases among 3700 fully vaccinated, socially distanced, and masked sailers. Many were detected by unnecessary asymptomatic testing which is not approved by regulatory authorities and not sanctioned by the WHO. The lessons prove that the military should reserve testing for only sick sailors and not put any stock on the vaccines as they clearly have failed.

Fortunately, Delta is mild and very manageable if treated early at home in high-risk individuals or those presenting with severe symptoms. Why did the vaccines fail so quickly? >. First, the genetic vaccines are all coded to the original Wuhan wild-type spike protein. That strain has been extinct for months now. >. Second, mass vaccination when it hits >25% of the population, begins to promote latent variants to become predominant and the overall flora of mutant strains to become less diverse. For example, about six months ago in the US, we had about 14 strains according to the CDC. Now we have only about six strains, with the rising Delta expected to become super dominant. Since Pfizer, Moderna, and JNJ provide no coverage for Delta, we can surely expect more cases but the public may be blinded to reality.

This spring after the CDC was overloaded with >10,000 vaccine failure cases with full-blown COVID-19 after being completely vaccinated, the CDC notified Americans it was only going to track and report COVID-19 in the unvaccinated. This was a giant blunder since there is a great need to study why the vaccines are failing in order to plan for boosters or better technological vaccines.

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He wants his cake and eat it and order seconds.

On ‘Freedom Day’, Boris Johnson Announces Mandatory Vaccine Passports (SN)

On the occasion labeled ‘freedom day’, the UK government announced that vaccine passports would be mandatory to enter “crowded venues” from the end of September. Gee, I feel so free! After initially denying that domestic, vaccine passports would ever be introduced, Boris Johnson’s government feverishly set about creating the framework for them. Now on the very day that all coronavirus restrictions were supposed to be lifted, the UK’s vaccines minister has announced what basically amounts to medical apartheid. “By the end of September everyone aged 18 and over will have the chance to receive full vaccination and the additional two weeks for that protection to really take hold,” said Nadhim Zahawi. “So at that point we plan to make full vaccination a condition of entry to nightclubs and other venues where large crowds gather.”

From the end of September, people will also have the option of providing a negative test result to enter such venues removed, making the vaccine de facto mandatory. Boris Jonhson also refused to rule out future vaccine passports for pubs and bars, saying the government the government “reserved the right to do what’s necessary to protect the public.” “I would remind everybody that some of life’s most important pleasures and opportunities are likely to be increasingly dependent on vaccination,” said Johnson, openly threatening those who don’t get jabbed that their lifestyle will be severely stunted. The measures are being introduced to bully the 35% of 18 to 30-year-olds who haven’t taken the jab into getting it.

Once domestic vaccine passports have become commonplace for travel and to enter crowded venues, expect them to be extended to every other area of life. This will create a two tier society where those who for whatever reason refuse to have the vaccine will remain under de facto lockdown indefinitely.

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“Back in the day, LSD trips were mostly a matter of personal choice.”

The Counter-truths Unspin (Kunstler)

Back in the day, LSD trips were mostly a matter of personal choice. Today, though, all you have to do is wake up somewhere between Montauk and the Farallon Islands and your senses are overwhelmed with hallucinations. The public used to depend on newspapers and TV networks to suss out reality, but that filter is long gone, replaced by a relentless “narrative” machine, and all it does is spin out one technicolor whopper after another. The trouble is: narrative is not the truth. Generally, it’s the opposite of the truth. It’s manufactured counter-truth. The more narrative you spin, the faster you must spin off new supporting narrative to conceal the untruth of your previous narrative — until the national hive mind is lit up in unreality where nothing makes sense and the very language that separates humanity from the rough beasts becomes a social poison.

And is “Joe Biden” not the perfect gibbering epitome of this mess, a ghost in the narrative machine, beckoning us into chaos? America is on a bad trip. The country has lost its way psychologically. Two things will be required to bring it out of the fugue state it tripped into five years ago: some significant shocks to the system and the passage of time. Those shocks are in the offing and the “Joe Biden” regime — meaning Barack Obama and his wing-people who run things — are looking more and more desperate as auguries manifest.

Their current tactical hustle is to amp up paranoia over the receding Covid-19 episode. It looks like an attempt to smokescreen the emerging evidence of massive and widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and the growing eagerness of a few other states besides Arizona to mount audits of what went on last November 3rd. The supposed surge in new Covid cases is really just a tiny blip, considering it comes off a baseline of close to zero cases in many places. 11,140 so far have died from Covid vaccinations, according to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Last week 2,092 deaths from vaccinations were added versus 1,918 deaths from the virus. Countries with the highest vaccination rates are showing the most new Covid cases.

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“There are going to be new parties: anti-vax, anti-establishment, anti-tax and anti-immigration. The parties that unite under that will be the winning parties.”

Vax Wars are Global – Gerald Celente (USAW)

Celente says the pressure will continue to be pushed and coerced upon the so-called “unvaccinated” even though it is, in fact, an experimental human drug trial. No one will mention the fact that half the country already has natural immunity, according to Dr. Marty Makary at Johns Hopkins University. With death and injuries from fully vaccinated people going higher by the thousands every week, there are no facts that will sway the pro-vax crowd. Celente says, “The facts don’t count. If you show the facts, it’s misinformation if you put out facts. It’s a conspiracy theory when you put out facts, and in the United Soviet States of America, you are not allowed to put facts on any social media because they will ban you. You are not allowed to say anything to disagree with the government or the (so-called) ‘health experts.’”


Celente sees a huge trend in politics emerging and explains, “There are going to be new parties: anti-vax, anti-establishment, anti-tax and anti-immigration. The parties that unite under that will be the winning parties. They have to unite under that.” Celente says, “The whole damn system is corrupt.” Celente does not have high hopes for the election fraud being uncovered to actually do anything because the system is so corrupt. Celente also talks about the U.S. economy and that it should have tanked long ago, and the powers keep propping it up. He also comments on gold, silver, Bitcoin and why New York City and many other cities are not coming back. Celente says people will have to “unite to protect liberty and freedom,” and predicts it’s going to be a long fight.

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Too late to dispel the myth now.

UK Government Advisor Admits Masks Are Just “Comfort Blankets” (SN)

Dr Colin Axon, a SAGE advisor for the government told the London Telegraph that medics have given people a “cartoonish” view of how how microscopic viruses travel through the air, and the masks have gaps in them that are up to 5000 times bigger than Covid particles. “The small sizes are not easily understood but an imperfect analogy would be to imagine marbles fired at builders’ scaffolding, some might hit a pole and rebound, but obviously most will fly through,” Axon said. “Once a particle is not on a biological surface it is no longer a biomedical issue, it is simply about physics. The public has only a partial view of the story if information only comes from one type of source,” Axon continued, adding “Medics have some of the answers but not a whole view.”

Noting that the “mask debate is about the particle journey,” Axon explained that “Masks can catch droplets and sputum from a cough but what is important is that SARS CoV-2 is predominantly distributed by tiny aerosols.” “A Covid viral particle is around 100 nanometres, material gaps in blue surgical masks are up to 1,000 times that size, cloth mask gaps can be 500,000 times the size,” Axon urged. The professor noted that “those aerosols escape masks and will render the mask ineffective,” adding “The public were demanding something must be done, they got masks, it is just a comfort blanket. But now it is entrenched, and we are entrenching bad behaviour.”

“All around the world you can look at mask mandates and superimpose on infection rates, you cannot see that mask mandates made any effect whatsoever,” Axon further noted, adding that “The best thing you can say about any mask is that any positive effect they do have is too small to be measured.” Axon’s comments echo those of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who wrote in February 2020 that a typical store-bought face mask “is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material.” Fauci later reversed his position after the CDC began recommending that Americans wear face coverings. Similar recommendations were then made worldwide, with World Health Organisation officials even recommending that masks remain INDEFINTELY.

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Assange.

AG Garland Bars Prosecutors From Seizing Reporters’ Records (AP)

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday formally prohibited federal prosecutors from seizing the records of journalists in leak investigations, with limited exceptions, reversing years of department policy. The new policy largely codifies the commitment Garland made in June, when he said the Justice Department would abandon the practice of seizing reporters’ records in leak investigations. It aims to resolve a politically thorny issue that has long vexed Justice Department prosecutors trying to weigh the media’s First Amendment rights against government’s desire to protect classified information. But the memo makes clear that federal prosecutors can, in some cases, seize journalists’ records, including if the reporters are suspected of working for agents of a foreign power or terrorist organizations. There is also an exception for situations with imminent risks, like kidnappings or crimes against children.


Garland was moved to act following an outcry over revelations that the department during the Trump administration had obtained records belonging to journalists at The Washington Post, CNN and The New York Times as part of investigations into who had disclosed government secrets related to the Russia investigation and other national security matters. Others whose records were obtained were members of Congress and their staffers and former White House counsel Don McGahn. Garland’s announcement came after President Joe Biden said he would not allow the Justice Department to seize journalists’ phone records and emails, calling the practice “wrong.” Since then, Garland and other senior Justice Department staffers have met with representatives of news media organizations, with both sides agreeing on the need for new department policies. Garland has also said he would support federal legislation to add additional protections for journalists.

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It’s not just Big Tech.

The Shadow State: Corporations As Surrogates For Government Action (Turley)

This use of corporations is born out of political and legal convenience. Despite the rising call for mandatory vaccinations, the Biden administration clearly is not willing to face the political costs of a government mandate. As of July 11, 159,266,536 Americans were fully vaccinated — 48 percent of the country’s population. When you consider the extremely high rate of vaccination for those over 65 (an estimated 85 percent), the percentage of adults under 65 is even smaller. That is a lot of voters who would not take well to a government mandate before the 2022 election.

[..] The political convenience of relying on corporate controls is most evident in the support for a massive system of corporate-based speech controls now implanted in the United States. The government cannot implement a censorship system under the Constitution — but it can outsource censorship functions to private companies like Facebook and Twitter. Just this week, the White House admitted it has been flagging “misinformation” for Facebook to censor. At the same time, Democrats like Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have demanded that Big Tech companies commit to even more “robust content modification” — an Orwellian term for censorship. Liberal writers and media figures have called for corporate censorship despite the danger of an effective state media run through private corporations.

[..] Social media companies are not just any businesses, however. They were created as neutral platforms for communication between people when they were given special immunity from lawsuits. Yet these corporations now control an enormous amount of public discourse and have become a rising threat to the democratic process, expanding their authority to frame the debate on issues ranging from climate change to gender identity, from election fraud to public health. You must espouse the “truth” as established by these companies on certain questions or risk being banned as “misinformation spreaders.” Indeed, Psaki this week insisted that once people are banned by one company, they should be banned from all social media companies.

If these trends continue, citizens could find themselves effectively exiled by order of corporate governors — unable to travel or go to school while also barred from espousing dissenting views on social media. They would, effectively, be “disappeared” within a shadow state that lacks any electoral or appellate process — a dystopian brave new world that could become all too real if we allow elected officials to use corporate surrogates to control the essential aspects of our lives.

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I know, I know, Rockefeller Foundation.

The True Cost of Food (Rockefeller)

Although Americans have some of the most affordable food in the world, our food comes with hidden costs—to our health, to our climate, and to the farmers, fishers, ranchers, and food workers who ensure goods make their way to store shelves. As the pandemic made explicit, those workers bear the brunt of the unequal and unsustainable food system we live with today. In fact, our food system costs all of us far more than what’s written on our receipt as we exit the check-out line. Our food system is failing us, and too few people understand the true cost of the food we consume, and lack clear incentives to change a system that is costing us dearly. That’s why accounting for the true cost of the food we eat is the first, necessary step towards remaking the incentive structure that drives our food system today.

Consider this: In 2019, American consumers spent an estimated $1.1 trillion on food. That price tag includes the cost of producing, processing, retailing, and wholesaling the food we buy and eat. It does not include the cost of healthcare for the millions who fall ill with diet-related diseases. Nor does $1.1 trillion include the present and future costs of the food system’s contributions to water and air pollution, reduced biodiversity, or greenhouse gas emissions, which cause climate change. Take those costs into account and it becomes clear the true cost of the U.S. food system is at least three times as big—$3.2 trillion per year. The true cost of food disproportionately burdens people of color, who are more likely to suffer from dietrelated diseases, have less access to water and sanitation, and often work in food production jobs for less than a living wage.

Americans pay that high cost even if consumers don’t see it in the check-out line. And, if we don’t change our food system, future generations will pay those high costs, too.

Read more …

 

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Jul 092021
 


Alessandro Allori Self portrait c1555

 

Those Dying Post-Vaccine: Where Are The Autopsies? (WND)
‘Absolutely Government’s Business’ To Know Who in US Hasn’t Been Jabbed (Fox)
Pfizer To Seek Authorization For “Booster” Dose To Protect Against Delta Variant (ZH)
Feds Dispute Pfizer On Need For A Covid Booster Shot (JTN)
Fauci Defends Vaccines But Antibodies Don’t Protect Against Delta (ZH)
Fauci Tells People Hesitant About The Vaccine To ‘Just Get Over It’ (DC)
Sturgeon Warns Against Treating Young People Like Covid ‘Guinea Pigs’ (G.)
Risking England’s Health: Not Everyone Can Choose To Stay Safe (G.)
Canada Cracks Down On Doctors Who Warn Of Covid-19 Vaccines Risks (JTN)
How Some Teens are Faking Positive Covid-19 Tests (GR)
Wells Fargo Shuts Down All Personal Lines Of Credit (CNBC)
Trump Announces Class Action Lawsuit Against Twitter, Facebook & Google (HE)
Trump Says Hunter Biden Is Worse Than Al Capone (DM)
Hunter Biden Art Show Sparks Ethics Concerns (NYP)
UK High Court Grants US Permission for Appeal in Assange Extradition Case (CD)

 

 

 

 

Should I take the vaccine?

 

 

 

 

I don’t especially like to agree with Laura Ingraham, but in this case I do.

Ingraham

 

 

Jane M. Orient, M.D. is executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, AAPS.

Those Dying Post-Vaccine: Where Are The Autopsies? (WND)

My internal medicine training was in the dark ages before CT and MRI, but we were still supposed to make an accurate diagnosis. A patient who died without a medical history was an “ME case.” We had to call the medical examiner, who would decide whether an autopsy was indicated. Anything potentially related to the death, such as pill bottles, was evidence. If an injection had been given, the vial would be recovered if possible. With vaccines, one is supposed to record the lot number, so it would be possible to check a sample for contaminants. If the patient died in hospital, the medical resident was required to request permission for an autopsy. Survivors might be persuaded to OK one by the possibility that their loved one may have had a hereditary condition or an infection that might affect others.

In any event, we assured them that their loved one would be treated with respect and that funeral arrangements would not be affected. A chaplain would volunteer to attend. The most important reason was that the “altar of truth” was the ultimate “quality assurance” mechanism. Hospitals were required to perform autopsies on a certain proportion of decedents in order to maintain their accreditation. A classic study of 100 randomly selected autopsies from each of three years (1960, 1970 and 1980) revealed that major diagnoses had been missed in about 22% of cases in all three eras, despite the introduction of modern imaging methods. Unfortunately, autopsy rates have fallen from 25% to less than 5% over the past four decades. It never was a revenue producer for anyone except malpractice attorneys.

I always attended the autopsy if I could. One of my most important teachers was a patient in whom we had missed a condition that was glaringly obvious when the skull was opened. We might not have been able to save him, but since we hadn’t even thought of the diagnosis, he didn’t have a chance. Tens of thousands of patients died of COVID before a series of 12 autopsies done in Germany showed that most had blood clots and could not have been saved by forcing air into their lungs with a ventilator. If a person dies after a COVID jab, I would like to know whether there are spike proteins in the tissues and blood vessels, and whether there was an immunological reaction that was damaging those tissues. If a mother loses a baby, I would like to see a thorough examination of the placenta. Was the baby’s oxygen and nutrition cut off because of damaged blood vessels?

I find it shocking that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Joint Commission that accredits hospitals are not demanding autopsies or testing of vaccine samples. It is not possible to declare a product safe and effective without obtaining direct evidence from potential victims. The manufacturers are protected against product liability, thanks to Congress. But where is the accountability of the government agencies charged with protecting us, or of the private entities coercing employees or students to take an experimental, potentially dangerous, or even lethal product? If someone you love dies unexpectedly, call the medical examiner, and demand a forensic autopsy.

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Medical information is private.

‘Absolutely Government’s Business’ To Know Who in US Hasn’t Been Jabbed (Fox)

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Thursday it was “absolutely the government’s business” to know which Americans haven’t been vaccinated yet against the coronavirus. Responding to GOP criticisms of the Biden administration’s planned “door-to-door” campaign to encourage unvaccinated Americans to inoculate themselves, Becerra told CNN the government has had to “spend trillions of dollars to try to keep Americans alive during this pandemic.” “So it is absolutely the government’s business, it is taxpayers’ business, if we have to continue to spend money to try to keep people from contracting COVID and helping reopen the economy,” he said.


Becerra said people didn’t have to answer the door but he hoped they would so officials could dispel rumors about the vaccine, which has proven to be highly effective in driving down cases, hospitalizations and deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 56% of the adult population has been “fully vaccinated” and 67% has gotten at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. States that tend to vote Republican have reported lower vaccination rates, and polls show Republican voters are far more likely than Democrats to say they will not or likely will not get the vaccine. The issue has become part of a larger debate over public health measures colliding with Americans’ personal freedoms.

Ultimatum

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Every next shot is more dangerous.

Pfizer To Seek Authorization For “Booster” Dose To Protect Against Delta Variant (ZH)

Hours ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci emphatically defended the efficacy of the three American-made vaccines that have received emergency authorization for use by the FDA. His comments weren’t unprompted: reports out of Israel claiming the Pfizer jab is far less effective than advertised have shaken public confidence in the jabs, at a time where President Biden is about to send people knocking on doors to try and encourage more adults (and increasingly, children) to get vaccinated. It’s no secret that a handful of southern and western states are lagging the rest of the country in vaccine rollout. But not long after Dr. Fauci made his comments (which were picked up by all the major newswires) the NYT published a sneak peak at new research showing how the Delta variant bypasses the antibodies created by the vaccines, and prior infection with another strain of the virus.

It’s just the latest example of how the authorities don’t care about the “science” so much as protecting the narrative that helps Big Pharma sell the most vaccines. And while the vast majority of countries are still struggling with vaccination rates below 1% since they simply can’t get the supplies (while unused jabs are piling up across the US) – and Bill Gates doing everything he can to keep it that way – Pfizer and Moderna have apparently spotted an opportunity. Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced Thursday evening that they will seek authorization from the FDA for a third “booster” dose of their COVID vaccines that will offer increased protection against the Delta variant (despite the fact that both Pfizer and its rival Moderna repeatedly insisted that its vaccines are still effective against all known variants including Delta), the Hill reports.

In a statement, the company referenced the data out of Israel, where government scientists have estimated the real efficacy of the vaccine vs. Delta is somewhere around 64%, while leaving particularly vulnerable patients at risk of severe illness and death. The booster dose would ideally be given within 6 to 12 months post-vaccination. “Based on the totality of the data they have to date, Pfizer and BioNTech believe that a third dose may be beneficial within 6 to 12 months following the second dose to maintain highest levels of protection,” the companies said.

Don’t take the 2nd shot

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Once you’ve had the first one, you’re hooked.

Feds Dispute Pfizer On Need For A Covid Booster Shot (JTN)

Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech said Thursday they are developing a booster shot to combat the highly transmissible delta variant of the COVID-19 virus. As the pharmaceutical companies announced their shot, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that fully vaccinated people do not need those types of booster shots. “People who are fully vaccinated are protected from severe disease and death, including from the variants currently circulating in the country such as Delta,” the FDA and CDC said Thursday, according to Axios. “Americans who have been fully vaccinated do not need a booster shot at this time.”


The companies cited a study by the Israel Ministry of Health released on Monday that showed the “vaccine efficacy has declined six months post-vaccination, at the same time that the Delta variant is becoming the dominate variant in the country.” “These findings are consistent with an ongoing analysis from the companies’ Phase 3 study,” the companies said in a written statement, according to CNBC News. “That is why we have said, and we continue to believe that it is likely, based on the totality of the data we have to date, that a third dose may be needed within 6 to 12 months after full vaccination.”

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“The logic is confusing, but it goes something like this: Delta is scary, so get vaccinated…but vaccines don’t protect against Delta.”

Fauci Defends Vaccines But Antibodies Don’t Protect Against Delta (ZH)

As the world passes 4MM confirmed COVID cases, the NYT has just published new research published in the journal Nature calling into question the efficacy of US-made vaccines in offering protection against the Delta variant. Shortly before the research was released, Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday defended American COVID vaccines, claiming that the jabs developed by Pfizer, Moderna and J&J are all effective against the Delta variant, a mutant strain that has become the obsession of public health officials who claim that it could ignite another wave of the pandemic. But what they don’t tell you is that epidemiologists believe COVID is now endemic in the human population, and that reaching “COVID zero” simply isn’t possible.

At any rate, while the vaccine makers are salivating at the opportunity to produce lucrative booster shots offering protection against various variants, the new research previewed by the NYT and published in the journal Nature found that the Delta strain is able to bypass the antibodies produced by vaccination or prior infection. Delta, which was first identified in India, is believed to be roughly 60% more infectious than the alpha variant – the strain also known as the “Kent Strain”, or B.1.1.7, which was first identified by scientists in England. This week, as the number of new COVID cases climbed by double-digits from the prior week (while hospitalizations and deaths remained stagnant), Delta was declared the dominant variant found in the US. Almost as alarming, the researchers found that while Delta is able to effectively evade the antibody response, the Beta variant, which was first identified in South Africa, can do it even more easily. Here’s more from the NYT report on the research:

“The researchers looked at blood samples from 103 people who had been infected with the coronavirus. Delta was much less sensitive than Alpha to samples from unvaccinated people in this group, the study found. One dose of vaccine significantly boosted the sensitivity, suggesting that people who have recovered from Covid-19 still need to be vaccinated to fend off some variants. The team also analyzed samples from 59 people after they had received the first and second doses of the AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

Blood samples from just 10 percent of people immunized with one dose of the AstraZeneca or the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines were able to neutralize the Delta and Beta variants in laboratory experiments. But a second dose boosted that number to 95 percent. There was no major difference in the levels of antibodies elicited by the two vaccines. “A single dose of Pfizer or AstraZeneca was either poorly or not at all efficient against Beta and Delta variants,” the researchers concluded. Data from Israel and Britain broadly support this finding, although those studies suggest that one dose of vaccine is still enough to prevent hospitalization or death from the virus.”

What’s more, the delta variant was also found to be resistant to antibody-based treatments, like “bamlanivimab”, the monoclonal antibody cocktail produced by Eli Lilly. Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci tells reporters that nine out of ten Americans who died from the virus were unvaccinated. Despite the growing number of vaccinated patients who are being infected and seriously sickened, insisted that the “science” shows the vaccines are extremely effective at preventing infection. The logic is confusing, but it goes something like this: Delta is scary, so get vaccinated…but vaccines don’t protect against Delta. It’s just the latest reminder that Dr. Fauci & company don’t care about “the science”.

Tucker about vaccine coercion

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Those who still believe him have already gotten jabbed.

Fauci Tells People Hesitant About The Vaccine To ‘Just Get Over It’ (DC)

White House senior medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that people hesitant about getting vaccinated against COVID-19 should “just get over it.” Fauci appeared on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes,” where he went on a rant equating people’s hesitancy towards the vaccines’ safety to a “political statement.” “This is not complicated. We’re not asking anybody to make any political statements one way or another,” he said. “So many diseases that I deal with … don’t have solutions. It’s very frustrating — you don’t have a treatment, or you don’t have a vaccine,” Fauci added. “Here, we have a vaccine that’s highly, highly effective.”


“What is the problem? Get over it. Get over this political statement. Just get over it and try and save the lives of yourself and your family.” he concluded. Fauci has previously warned about the possibility of the emergence of “two Americas” as a result of low vaccination rates in some areas of the country. “When you have such a low level of vaccination superimposed upon a variant that has a high degree of efficiency of spread, what you are going to see among under-vaccinated regions … you’re going to see the individual types of blips. It’s almost like it’s going to be two Americas,” Fauci said on June 30.

Fauci GET OVER IT

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Don’t be a guinea pig. Be a guinea pig instead.

Sturgeon Warns Against Treating Young People Like Covid ‘Guinea Pigs’ (G.)

Nicola Sturgeon has warned against treating young people like “guinea pigs” by allowing them to get infected with coronavirus when lifting restrictions, amid fears they remain at risk of significant health impacts such as long Covid. Scotland’s first minister said the desire to live free of lockdown-style restrictions did not mean governments could “throw all caution to the wind”, while suggesting the “domination” of England’s plans to scrap Covid rules risked confusing other UK nations. The steep rise in infections across Scotland caused by theDelta variant may be levelling off, Sturgeon added. The current spike has led to six Scottish health boards being placed among the top 10 worst-hit regions in Europe by the WHO last weekend.


The levelling off gave her “more cause for optimism” that she would be able to confirm the move to level 0 of Scotland’s five-tier system of Covid controls in parliament next Tuesday, she said, before emphasising that the planned easing on 19 July “won’t be an abrupt end to basic protective measures like face covering, physical distancing, rigorous hand hygiene and advising on good ventilation.” However, she pointed out the “significant” impact the virus can have on younger people, even if there is a lower risk of death. She said: “I want to set out simply why we can’t just throw all caution to the wind. Firstly, this virus is still dangerous, as we see every day. It is still taking lives, though mercifully, thanks to the vaccines, it is doing so in far fewer numbers than we saw in earlier stages.”

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“the authors of the Lancet letter are too generous in describing this as “a dangerous and unethical experiment”: that terminology suggests a degree of scientific rigour and concern. Instead, this is a political wager..”

That comment is pro-vaccination. You would’t know without the context.

Risking England’s Health: Not Everyone Can Choose To Stay Safe (G.)

In a letter to the Lancet, over 100 global scientists have warned that rushing ahead with reopening on 19 July – rather than waiting until more people are vaccinated – is dangerous and premature. Those concerns will be compounded by the relaxation of travel restrictions announced on Thursday. Allowing children and double-vaccinated adults to travel to amber list countries without quarantining on return increases the risk of importing new variants which could be more infectious or more resistant to current vaccines, just as opportunities for transmission increase. The health secretary, Sajid Javid, concedes we could soon be looking at 100,000 cases a day, but argues that hospitalisation and death numbers are what matter more than anything.

Unfortunately, he will not say what figures he expects or would tolerate. The link between infection and serious illness or death has been much weakened, but not broken. Vaccination rates vary widely; in some areas, fewer than 30% have received two doses. On Thursday, the UK reported weekly rises of more than 50% in Covid hospital admissions and deaths – both of which lag rises in cases – to 456 and 35 respectively. The government’s chief medical adviser, Prof Chris Whitty, has said that we are likely to see a significant increase in long Covid; experts fear that huge numbers could be affected. Though the government talks of personal responsibility, there can be no responsibility without choice. For too many, danger is being imposed upon them. Vaccines are widely available, and people can still cover their faces.

But masks are better at protecting people from the wearer than protecting the wearer. Young workers on public transport or in shops, not yet able to get a second jab, will be exposed to the virus by customers who choose not to wear masks. They surely need and deserve protection. Children are currently unable to be vaccinated. The immunocompromised are less protected by vaccines and more likely to become seriously ill if they contract Covid. Reportedly, the department of health will be issuing new guidance for the immunosuppressed and clinically very vulnerable. But while support for shielders is needed, confining them to quarters indefinitely is hardly a liberation.

Nor is there much choice for exhausted NHS staff who face a soaring workload again, or for patients whose operations are being cancelled because hospitals are treating growing numbers of Covid patients or staff are having to self-isolate. If anything, the authors of the Lancet letter are too generous in describing this as “a dangerous and unethical experiment”: that terminology suggests a degree of scientific rigour and concern. Instead, this is a political wager, in which large parts of the population are not players but gambling chips.

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“I have not met a single vaccinated child or parent who has been adequately informed and who then understand the risks of this vaccine or its benefits.”

Canada Cracks Down On Doctors Who Warn Of Covid-19 Vaccines Risks (JTN)

Canadian doctors are facing professional repercussions for sharing their concerns about COVID-19 vaccines, specifically their emergency use authorization status and safety for children. The University of Saskatchewan removed Francis Christian, a clinical professor of surgery, from his faculty and administrative responsibilities days after he hosted a press conference about “the risks of mRNA vaccines to children” and alternatives to vaccination, including use of the drug ivermectin. The Saskatchewan Health Authority also said it was terminating Christian’s contract Sept. 21, after the required 90-day notice, for his “conspiracy theories” on COVID-19 vaccines. He is not “committed to fact-based, scientifically driven public messaging,” the provincial agency told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

Christian endangers lives by “potentially discouraging uptake on life-saving vaccines.” Christian opened the June 17 press conference with an explicit disclaimer that he was not representing the university or the provincial agency, and emphasized he was “very pro-vaccine” in general. “The principle of informed consent is being consistently violated in this province for the mRNA vaccine for our kids,” for whom there is no “emergency” justifying experimental COVID-19 vaccines, he said. “I have not met a single vaccinated child or parent who has been adequately informed and who then understand the risks of this vaccine or its benefits.”

Christian said nearly 6,000 deaths have been associated with mRNA vaccines in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Echoing arguments by other medical experts, he said such associations “in any other drug or vaccine … would have been sufficient to stop the whole program” to allow for reevaluation. “Tomorrow the CDC is meeting in emergency session to discuss this issue” of heightened risk for myocarditis among young COVID-19 vaccine recipients, he said, and “there is a good likelihood that they too will call for a pause in vaccinating our kids.” The U.S. FDA added heart-inflammation warnings to two vaccines several days later.

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Can they fake negative tests as well? Asking for a friend.

How Some Teens are Faking Positive Covid-19 Tests (GR)

A new study released on Monday suggests that teenagers are using social media to share information on faking covid-19 tests in order to get a positive result. Since July 1, videos of young people sharing information on how to trick rapid at-home covid tests (lateral flow tests) into producing positive results using soda drinks have gone viral. This has prompted researchers at the University of Liverpool to look into whether there is any validity to the claim that artificial sweeteners used in sodas can change negative coronavirus results into positive ones. The results of their study, which is still awaiting peer review, were submitted to medRxiv on Monday. The videos of children faking positive covid-19 test results have gone particularly viral in the UK, where a single case of coronavirus in a school can often lead to the whole grade of the person diagnosed needing to isolate at home.

In the UK, schools have mandated students test themselves for the coronavirus twice weekly, in a move similar to that enacted by the Greek government. Some teens have decided that sham positive results are a good thing, as it allows them and their friends to skip school for around ten days and hang out instead. However, this can have a devastating effect on learning, as students miss out on school for days because of false information. Videos are continually being uploaded to social media sites with the hashtag “#fakecovidtest,” showing children putting different liquids on rapid antigen tests in an attempt to produce a positive result. The study by University of Liverpool researchers showed that soda drinks could be used to fake rapid covid-19 tests.

The researchers first ruled out the significance of artificial sweetener, as four different kinds of artificial sweetener and spring water produced negative results on the test swabs. However, when the researchers went to test sodas, the results became a bit more concerning. Ten out of fourteen sodas tested were able to produce positive or weakly positive results. However, the researchers have had a hard time identifying what ingredient produces this reaction, as there seems to be no apparent link between the test results and the soft drinks’ ingredients.

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One shut down after another. Not a good sign at all.

Wells Fargo Shuts Down All Personal Lines Of Credit (CNBC)

Wells Fargo is ending a popular consumer lending product, angering some of its customers, CNBC has learned. The bank is shutting down all existing personal lines of credit in coming weeks and no longer offers the product, according to customer letters reviewed by CNBC. The revolving credit lines, which typically let users borrow $3,000 to $100,000, were pitched as a way to consolidate higher-interest credit card debt, pay for home renovations or avoid overdraft fees on linked checking accounts. “Wells Fargo recently reviewed its product offerings and decided to discontinue offering new Personal and Portfolio line of credit accounts and close all existing accounts,” the bank said in the six-page letter. The move would let the bank focus on credit cards and personal loans, it said.

Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf has been forced to make difficult decisions during the coronavirus pandemic, offloading assets and deposits and stepping back from some products because of limitations imposed by the Federal Reserve. In 2018, the Fed barred Wells Fargo from growing its balance sheet until it fixes compliance shortcomings revealed by the bank’s fake accounts scandal. The asset cap has ultimately cost the bank billions of dollars in lost earnings, based on the balance sheet growth of rivals including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America over the past three years, analysts have said. It has also affected Wells Fargo’s customers: Last year, the lender told staff it was halting all new home equity lines of credit, CNBC reported. Months later, the bank also withdrew from a segment of the auto lending business.

With its latest move, Wells Fargo warned customers that the account closures “may have an impact on your credit score,” according to a frequently asked questions segment of the letter. Another part of the FAQ asserted that the account closures couldn’t be reviewed or reversed: “We apologize for the inconvenience this Line of Credit closure will cause,” the bank said. “The account closure is final.”

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“We are going to hold Big Tech very accountable..”

Trump Announces Class Action Lawsuit Against Twitter, Facebook & Google (HE)

Trump is suing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for violating his First Amendment rights. “Today, in conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, I’m filing as the lead class representative a class action lawsuit against Facebook, Google and Twitter,” Trump said. “Our case will prove this censorship unlawful.” “We’re demanding an end to the shadowbanning, a stop to the silencing, and a stop to the blacklisting, banishing and canceling that you know so well,” he added.


The lawsuits, filed in the Southern District of Florida, also call for the court to strike down Section 230, a decades-old Internet law that protects tech companies from lawsuits over content moderation decisions, per the New York Times. The suits seek unspecified punitive damages. The announcement came during a morning press conference at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, where he was joined by Linda McMahon and Brooke Rollins of the America First Policy Institute, per the Tennessee Star. Trump is bringing the lawsuit on behalf of not only himself, but other Americans whose First Amendment rights were violated by the Big Tech conglomerate. “We are going to hold Big Tech very accountable,” he said.

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He’s seen the laptop’s contents.

Trump Says Hunter Biden Is Worse Than Al Capone (DM)

Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday there was more ‘criminal activity’ on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop than mobster Al Capone ever carried out. Trump commented on what he termed the ‘laptop from hell’ as he announced his lawsuit against Facebook and big tech. He used language that suggested he may have seen the laptop, although he didn’t specify if he was referring to media reports on its contents. ‘The laptop from hell,’ Trump termed it. ‘You look at that thing, there’s more criminal activity on that laptop than Al Capone had if he ever had a laptop,’ the former president said. The tech-averse Trump then riffed: ‘We’d like to give Al Capone one, but he was a baby compared to what I was able to see.’

The laptop purportedly once owned by the president’s son has produced a series of revelations about Hunter Biden’s convoluted family sagas and international business deals. DailyMail.com consulted computer forensics experts who vouched for its authenticity. The New York Post reported on some of its email contents weeks before the election, reporting that it was dropped off at a Delaware repair shop in 2019 and never picked up. Recent stories unearthed from the laptop appear to show Hunter paying his father’s AT&T bill, saying prostitutes should unionize, as well as information on the family’s painful struggles with addiction. Longtime Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, whose apartment was raided by the FBI in April, said agents refused to take hard drives he said were Hunter’s during the search.

[..] Trump brought up the laptop while complaining about probes of him he terms witch hunts. ‘That’s what happened with Russia, that’s what happened with Ukraine,’ he said, before pivoting to Hunter. He invoked Capone, the Chicago mobster famously sentenced to 11 years on tax charges, days after longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was indicted on tax fraud charges over $1.7 million in perks and benefits prosecutors say he did not disclose.

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The White House ensures secrecy for the buyers? That’s in their job description?

Hunter Biden Art Show Sparks Ethics Concerns (NYP)

Government ethics watchdogs and art critics alike are voicing their concerns as first son Hunter Biden prepares for his first solo art exhibition this fall — where paintings from the former lawyer and lobbyist are expected to fetch between $75,000 and $500,000 and buyers will remain anonymous. “The whole thing is a really bad idea,” Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, told the Washington Post. “The initial reaction a lot of people are going to have is that he’s capitalizing on being the son of a president and wants people to give him a lot of money. I mean, those are awfully high prices.” Walter Shaub, who led the Office of Government Ethics under President Barack Obama, told the paper that the art buyers having their identities protected created a host of problems.

“Because we don’t know who is paying for this art and we don’t know for sure that [Hunter Biden] knows, we have no way of monitoring whether people are buying access to the White House,” he said. “What these people are paying for is Hunter Biden’s last name.” Painter also referenced the issue of anonymity, noting that foreign governments or lobbyists could buy the art through intermediaries in an effort to curry favor with the Biden White House. President Biden’s 51-year-old son is putting the finishing touches on the 15 paintings that will comprise his first solo exhibition, which is scheduled to open in October at the Georges Berges’ Gallery in Soho, with a private viewing for VIP collectors in Los Angeles in September. Speaking to The Post late last month, Berges, 45, who said he discovered Biden after being introduced by a “serious” Los Angeles-based collector, admitted he was skeptical of the president’s son’s artistic ability.

“A lot of people say they can paint and do sculpture, but what I was concerned about was whether Hunter’s work would be authentic,” the gallery owner said. Berges, who represents a roster of international artists, spent three years helping Biden, who is self-taught, take his abstract expressionist painting from a hobby that occupied “about 20 percent of his time” to a full-time job that saw Biden spend the last two and a half years holed up in his home studio on a hillside in Los Angeles following a “regimented” routine. “What interested me was whether the work was going to be honest — something that was really true to him and his journey,” Berges said. “But as soon as I met him, I had a real connection with him and I felt I could work with him.”

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Julian has nothing to expect from British law.

UK High Court Grants US Permission for Appeal in Assange Extradition Case (CD)

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s legal team said Wednesday that the United Kingdom’s High Court had granted permission to the U.S. government to appeal an earlier decision that blocked Assange’s extradition The court reportedly granted the appeal “on a limited basis” and on “narrow, technical grounds,” and did not set a date for a future court hearing. The ruling led to intensified calls by Assange’s supporters for his release from Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, where he has been held for more than two years following seven years in isolation at the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he claimed asylum. The High Court’s decision “means he is still at risk of extradition where he faces a 175-year prison sentence and…is certain to lose his life if he is extradited,” said Stella Moris, Assange’s partner.


District Judge Vanessa Baraister ruled at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in January that Assange should not be extradited to the U.S., where the government is pursuing Espionage Act charges against him for his publication of military and diplomatic documents, on the grounds that Assange was at “substantial” risk for committing suicide in the “harsh conditions” of the U.S. prison system. Baraister’s ruling led to calls for the U.S. to end its pursuit of Assange—which has been called a threat to press freedom all over the world by international rights groups including Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation—but U.K. authorities continued his detention at Belmarsh pending the Biden administration’s appeal.

Greenwald NSA Assange

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Russell Brand

 

 


disclaimer at the beginning of Birth of a Nation.

 

 

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Jun 022021
 
 June 2, 2021  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  64 Responses »


Paul Klee In the Houses of Saint Germain 1932

 

Fauci Emails Reveal Damage Control Scramble After ZeroHedge Article (ZH)
What Did I Say? (Denninger)
Fauci Continues Cult Of Personality With A New ‘Life Philosophy’ Book (RT)
So Now It’s Admitted, What Else Did You Do? (Denninger)
COVID-19 Antibodies May Last a Lifetime (HE)
Echoes Of Russia Reversal In Intel Community’s Covid Origins Probe (JTN)
Boris Johnson Says No Evidence To Delay England Reopening (G.)
Big Pharma’s EU Ties Could Stymie Vaccine Waivers (DP)
How Independent Were The US And British Vaccine Advisory Committees? (BMJ)
No, Obama Wasn’t Mad About Bailing Out His Wall Street Donors (DP)
JBS Shutters All US Meat Plants As Cyber Attack Jeopardizes Food Supply (ZH)

 

 

 

 

 

 

What an incredible mess.

Fauci Emails Reveal Damage Control Scramble After ZeroHedge Article (ZH)

In January, 2020, when the World Health Organization insisted that COVID-19 wasn’t transmissible between humans, and Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the risk to the American public from the virus was “low,” officials at the National Institutes of Health were scrambling to perform damage control after a controversial – and now withdrawn – study suggested that there were HIV-like ‘insertions’ included in SARS-CoV-2. The study, “Uncanny similarity of unique inserts on the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag,” posited that segments of the virus’s RNA had no relation to other coronaviruses such as SARS, and instead appeared to be closer to HIV. Specifically:

“To further investigate if these inserts are present in any other corona virus, we performed a multiple sequence alignment of the spike glycoprotein amino acid sequences of all available coronaviruses (n=55) [refer Table S.File1] in NCBI refseq (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) this includes one sequence of 2019-nCoV[Fig.S1]. We found that these 4 insertions [inserts 1, 2, 3 and 4] are unique to 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses analyzed. … We then translated the aligned genome and found that these inserts are present in all Wuhan 2019-nCoV viruses except the 2019-nCoV virus of Bat as a host [Fig.S4]. Intrigued by the 4 highly conserved inserts unique to 2019-nCoV we wanted to understand their origin. For this purpose, we used the 2019-nCoV local alignment with each insert as query against all virus genomes and considered hits with 100% sequence coverage. Surprisingly, each of the four inserts aligned with short segments of the Human immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1) proteins.”

The now-withdrawn paper piqued the interest of several journalists, including Zero Hedge (whose account Twitter banned one day after we updated our coverage of the article, claiming we ‘doxed’ a Chinese scientist in an earlier report). Thanks to a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Fauci’s emails, we now know that the National Institutes of Health was not only aware of the Indian report, but were actively discussing how to handle it. A January 31 email from AFP’s Issam Ahmed asks NIH immunologist Dr. Barney Graham for comment: “I was told by a contact you may be willing to give an opinion of this paper that has just gone live. It suggests the new Coronavirus has four inserts similar to HIV-1 and this is not a coincidence,” reads the email.

Graham immediately forwards the correspondence to the Office of Communications and Government Relations (OCGR), saying “This is one we don’t want to answer without high-level input, but wanted you to know about the rising controversy.”

That same Sunday morning, Fauci is looped in – with Sir Jeremy Farrar forwarding Zero Hedge’s article after mentioning how World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom and the organization’s cabinet chief were in ‘conclave’ – ostensibly on how to manage the narrative – noting “If they do prevaricate [bullshit the public], I would appreciate a call with you later tonight or tomorrow to think how we might take forward.” “Do you have a minute for a quick call?” Fauci replies, after having called the Indian paper “really outlandish.”

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“We killed 300,000 Americans for the express purpose of getting EUAs issued for vaccines..”

What Did I Say? (Denninger)

On 12/7/2020 I put forward that we had scientific evidence on how to slam the door on Covid-19’s transmission. We knew in October from the study I cited that there was a simple and near-zero cost way to do it. In mid-October the death count in the US stood at about 200,000. We did nothing. Why did we do nothing? Because if we admitted to the existence of this study, which was registered formally on the government’s clinical trial site, and followed what it told us to do, there would be no EUAs for vaccines. They would have been illegal. The FDA knew this, the NIH knew this and the CDC knew this since the trial database in question is run by the US Government. All three were fully-aware that there was a cheap, easy and immediate way to slam the door on transmission of Covid-19 and had been tested in a health-care setting – that is, where people are around folks who are known infectious all the time.

Our government, medical and political systems deliberately ignored the scientific evidence and a formal clinical trial which our government had registered and for which results posted in October of 2020. We did this and as a direct result more than 300,000 additional people died. We now know they died and the virus spread as a direct result of that willful and intentional act. We know this because now there is a further study that proves not only did the drug work to cut fatalities it also cuts off viral transmission dramatically and almost-immediately when used, which means had we used it the case rate would have never surged in the winter at all and a huge percentage of the people who died would have never got the virus at all.

In a multivariable logistic regression model, the odds of a negative test at day 6 was 2.62 time higher in the ivermectin group (95% CI: 1.06 to 6.45). Cultures at days 2 to 6 were positive in 3/23 (13.0%) of ivermectin samples vs. 14/29 (48.2%) in the placebo group (p=0.008). If the culture is negative you cannot transmit the virus to someone else because whatever you have in your body cannot grow in that person or any other person. Forward transmission capability within two days of administration of this cheap drug went from 48% -> 13%, a 73% reduction. Cutting off transmission within 48 hours of administering the drug would have stopped the winter spike from occurring.

Offering Ivermectin to all who tested positive and everyone in their household would have slammed the door instantly on forward transmission and ended the pandemic in the United States before the winter surge occurred. We now know this at a scientific level of certainty. [..] We killed 300,000 Americans for the express purpose of getting EUAs issued for vaccines. Leaving aside whether the vaccines are safe, and giving them full credit for being effective the fact still remains that our government and health care system killed 300,000 people by refusing to follow the science, that refusal was intentional and undertaken for financial reasons, and as a direct result a genocide-level manslaughter took place.

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The guy’s soon 80 years old. Why do it?

Fauci Continues Cult Of Personality With A New ‘Life Philosophy’ Book (RT)

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s celebrity status has skyrocketed during the Covid-19 pandemic, and he’s continuing to cash in on his cult of personality with a new “life philosophy” book. Fauci has been the face of the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic in the US through two incredibly different administrations. Considering the fact that he has been in that position through such uncertain times, one would assume he’d be a trusted, beloved figure, and he is – to some. Take a scroll through social media or look at recent polling on the man, and it’s clear he is as divisive as the politicians he stands next to. One poll last month found that the majority of people who identify as Republicans say he has “hurt” the US more than helped during the pandemic. Democrats remain much more faithful to the man, with a separate poll finding that 80% of them feel the infectious disease expert is doing a good or excellent job.


Fauci has been undeterred by this mixed response and simply leaned in on his celebrity status. While so many have struggled through the pandemic, Fauci’s smiling face could be seen in numerous cable news interviews, almost daily, at press conferences, throwing first pitches at baseball games, on magazine covers – he’s been treated as the “American hero” Jill Biden recently described him as. Now, we are subjected to the latest extension of his celebrity with an upcoming book entitled, ‘Expect the Unexpected: Ten Lessons on Truth, Service, and the Way Forward’. Compiled through “hours of interviews,” Fauci will give us his personal “life philosophy” through the read, as well as “universal advice to live by.” It is set to hit shelves on November 2, and you can bet Fauci will be making the media rounds to promote it.

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“..the case rate was collapsing by the end of the month, down by more than 50% over those two weeks, yet not a single person was immune by virtue of vaccination on January 1st 2021. Not one.”

So Now It’s Admitted, What Else Did You Do? (Denninger)

How about early treatment and intervention? HCQ/Doxycycline/Zinc? Ivermectin? Budesonide? Others? All have shown some efficacy. Remdesivir, on the other hand, only usable in a hospital, has shown none in a very large trial (Solidarity.) Whadda ‘ya mean there are no studies? What do you call those three links above and why were they not offered to patients every single time? Why doesn’t the person who has a disease get to choose? There is highly-credible evidence behind early treatment which began in the first few months of the outbreak; Florida near Palm Beach with Ivermectin, Michigan’s Henry Ford Hospital System with HCQ, a doctor in Texas with Budesonide, a confirmatory study on that run out of Australia and then very large populations that have used them such as India and Mexico City with several nations and provinces within nations telling the ghouls to stuff it over the last few months when the other path, relying on vaccines and expensive on-patent drugs like Remdesivir in the hospitals, did not stop the infections and death.

You want to know why Twitter doesn’t like people talking about those things? Ever look at their ads on their mobile app? Half of them are from pharma companies advocating this or that brand new, expensive drug. Gee, no problem there, right? Watch TV? How many pharma ads do you see there? Ever see an ad for an off-patent, cheap drug for something? You never have and never will — there’s no money in it.

[..] It takes 2 weeks after the second dose before you’re “protected.” The peak was on January 8th. The first doses went into arms on December 14th, so zero people had received two doses by the 8th of January and had it become effective, and more-damning was the beginning of actual vaccination in real people on a national basis was right around that time — yet no vaccine is effective instantly. The peak here in this county for cases was in fact on the 14th of December. A literal zero persons had been vaccinated before that day; the case rate was collapsing by the end of the month, down by more than 50% over those two weeks, yet not a single person was immune by virtue of vaccination on January 1st 2021. Not one. What’s the truth about epidemics like this — respiratory viruses — all through history?

Never has one been trouble in any material size for more than a handful of years – like two, occasionally with a “gap” in the middle. All are characterized by two waves or less, the second frequently more-severe. 1889-92, which looks to have been HCoV-OC43 (unproved), also a coronavirus, was two waves. 1918 was two waves. The 1957 pandemic was two waves, both roughly equally severe. 2009 H1N1 was two waves but, contrary to expectations, was mild. There is no evidence — zero — for any of the ten for which reasonably-contemporary records exist showing any deviation from this pattern. Every single one for which such records exist has burned itself out within two years and/or two phases or waves. Repeat: Covid-19 was over in the United States in December before the first stab went into the first arm. The first wave was in early 2020 and the second came in the winter which peaked before anyone could be vaccinated.

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“After a new infection, short-lived cells – called plasmablasts – are an early source of antibodies. But, they disappear soon after the body fights off the virus, and other longer-lasting cells make the antibodies.”

COVID-19 Antibodies May Last a Lifetime (HE)

If you’ve had COVID-19, you’ve likely been told that your antibodies last a few weeks, or months, at the maximum. However, new research suggests that many will make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. Researchers have identified long-lasting cells, which produce antibodies, in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from the virus, per Nature. The study provides evidence that immunity will last longer than once thought. “The implications are that vaccines will have the same durable effect,” Menno van Zelm, an immunologist at Monash University in Australia, said. Antibodies are the key to immune defense, as they essentially serve as a block for the virus. After a new infection, short-lived cells – called plasmablasts – are an early source of antibodies.


But, they disappear soon after the body fights off the virus, and other longer-lasting cells make the antibodies. “A plasma cell is our life history, in terms of the pathogens we’ve been exposed to,” Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis who led the study, said. Ellebedy’s team tracked antibody production in 77 people who recovered from mild cases of COVID-19. Indeed, antibodies plummeted in the four months after the infection, but the decline slowed and up to eleven months after infection, antibodies were still present. While this is critical information, it remains unclear what antibody levels will look like in the long term. “We’re early in the game,” said Rafi Ahmed, an immunologist at Emory University. “We’re not looking at 5 years, 10 years after infection.”

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“The only people rejecting the proper course of conduct was the mainstream media, aided by the clown show that is Adam Schiff.”

Echoes Of Russia Reversal In Intel Community’s Covid Origins Probe (JTN)

When President Biden recently revealed a schism in the intelligence community over the origins of the COVID-19 virus — with some now seeing it plausible a lab leak caused the pandemic — he did far more than just order a 90-day review. He acknowledged implicitly that the prevailing assessment of America’s spy agencies during the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency — that the virus evolved in nature – was now fully in question. Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, went a step further and revealed some U.S. intelligence analysts believed the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology much earlier but their views were suppressed from policymakers.

The COVID origins evolution echoes in some respects the deeply flawed Russia collusion probe, when the FBI dove headfirst into an election-year dossier funded by Hillary Clinton and opened a probe of Trump adviser Carter Page even as the CIA warned Christopher Steele’s intelligence was Moscow-fed disinformation and Page was one of the Agency’s own assets. The parallels have some questioning whether the intelligence community can still operate with clear eyes and give policymakers a 360-degree view of issues, including dissenting analysis, in this hyper-partisan era of America. “Our intelligence community doesn’t need another 90 days to assess the origins of the coronavirus,” said Fred Fleitz, a longtime intelligence analyst and former chief of staff to the National Security Council.

“There has long been enough open-source information to conclude with high confidence that the virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Fleitz said the intelligence community ombudsman has already concluded that spy agencies “deliberately played down and omitted intelligence” that China tried to meddle in the 2020 presidential election because they did not want to produce analysis that supported President Trump’s policies. “I believe it is very likely the same thing happened with the IC’s analysis of the coronavirus origin and the Chinese coverup,” he said.

Kash Patel, a former National Security Council adviser to Trump, said the failure to properly report on the origins of COVID-19 is the latest episode showing the intelligence community and the mainstream media taking positions contrary to Trump’s for reasons other than facts. “Every single time President Trump had the intelligence correct and based policy decisions in sound reasoning,” Patel said. “The only people rejecting the proper course of conduct was the mainstream media, aided by the clown show that is Adam Schiff.” While Biden has given American spy agencies 90 days to give the latest assessment, there is growing proof that the U.S. intelligence community had access to contrary evidence when it gave its first assessment in April 2020 that COVID-19 likely evolved from nature.

“The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified,” the ODNI said on April 30, 2020. President Trump and his advisers vehemently disagreed with the assessment, continuing to insist the most likely source of the virus was a lab leak.

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“Scientists say UK faces ‘perilous moment’ as Delta Covid variant now makes up 75% of cases..”

Boris Johnson Says No Evidence To Delay England Reopening (G.)

Downing Street believes early data shows England can forge ahead with the 21 June unlocking despite a chorus of warnings from scientists about rising case rates linked to the Delta variant first identified in India. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said there were encouraging signs vaccines were breaking the link between infections and hospitalisations as Public Health England announced zero daily reported Covid deaths for the first time since last summer. Boris Johnson is understood to be optimistic about the current data but a No 10 source said the next few days would be crucial to assess the impact of the unlocking that took place from 17 May – though early data did not show significant cause for alarm. “There is obviously concern about case numbers but we still need to see if that is translating to hospitalisations and deaths or if the vaccine is breaking that link,” the source said.


“At the moment we do not have evidence that definitively suggests we should delay.” The business minister Paul Scully also expressed “cautious optimism”. He told Times Radio the government did not want to have to roll back restrictions again. “One thing that we saw last year, before Christmas, was the stop-start nature just didn’t work for businesses and cost them more. So we’ve got to get it absolutely right. People’s jobs and livelihoods depend on it.” However, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Prof Sir Mark Walport, said on Tuesday it was “not impossible” that the country was in the foothills of a new wave as the Delta variant takes over, accounting for three-quarters of new cases. “It is a quite perilous moment, but we’ve just got to keep our fingers crossed that the measures work,” he said. A series of other scientists have echoed his concerns.

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“Macron’s position depends on the time of day or what’s in the newspaper that morning,”

Big Pharma’s EU Ties Could Stymie Vaccine Waivers (DP)

The Biden administration’s newfound support for waiving intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines could prove to be a turning point in the fight against the pandemic and a major step forward for health care access in the Global South. But before that, the effort needs to overcome a hefty roadblock: hostility from the European Union. Any legally-binding suspension of global patents on vaccines requires unanimous support from the World Trade Organization’s commission on IP rights, better known as the TRIPS Council, slated to meet June 8-9 in Geneva. While the United States said in May that it was finally interested in negotiating a proposal to do just that, signs suggest the European Commission — the executive branch of the EU, which has forged close ties with the pharmaceutical industry — will likely continue to oppose a proposed waiver on vaccines.

Pharmaceutical interests have become one of the biggest lobbying forces in Europe, according to spending disclosures reviewed by The Daily Poster. “Internationally, there’s a real risk that the European Union could make this drag out, that their actions in Geneva and at the World Trade Organization could lead to a serious delay,” says Kenneth Haar, a researcher at the Corporate Europe Observatory, a watchdog tracking corporate influence in the EU. “That’s a huge problem because time is of the essence.” [..] While at least two European governments, that of Spain and Poland, have publicly thrown their support behind a waiver since Washington’s about-face, the EU’s twin power brokers have yet to come around.

Despite some initial enthusiasm from French President Emmanuel Macron following Biden’s announcement, his government has yet to endorse a waiver of IP rights, while Germany hasn’t appeared to budge at all from its opposition. “With France, you never know, Macron’s position depends on the time of day or what’s in the newspaper that morning,” says Haar. “But officially, the French position is not in favor and they’re backing Merkel on this.”

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It’s a small world.

How Independent Were The US And British Vaccine Advisory Committees? (BMJ)

In the wake of lightning fast authorisations of covid-19 vaccines in the UK and the US, public health officials have worked hard to maintain confidence in these new products. British and American officials have emphasised the independence of the experts who authorise vaccines and those who issue advice on them. But an investigation by The BMJ has found that some of these experts have significant industry ties that government agencies do not always disclose. [..] In some cases, an expert has made a disclosure but the committee has not deemed it a conflict. For example, in the case of the UK’s JCVI, the chair of the covid-19 meeting is Wei Shen Lim, a professor at the Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, who JCVI says has “no registered conflicts of interest.” The same document, however, further states that Lim’s “institution has received unrestricted investigator-initiated research funding from Pfizer for a study in pneumonia in which Professor Lim is the chief investigator (non-vaccine related).” And in a preprint published only months before the JCVI’s December meeting, Lim reported this Pfizer grant.

[..] For example, Open Payments reported that Arnold Monto, professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and acting chair for the FDA s covid vaccine authorisation meetings, had received over $24, 000 in payments from drug companies in 2019. That same year, Open Payments reports that Myron Levine, a panellist from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, received about $30, 000, mostly in consulting fees. In 2019, Open Payments reports, Robert Schooley of the University of California at San Diego received over $25,000 in payments. It also reports that Ofer Levy at Boston Children’s Hospital received $5500 in mostly travel expenses from GSK. And in a 2020 publication Levy disclosed that he was a named inventor on several patent applications related to vaccine adjuvants.

[..] Joel Lexchin of York University in Toronto, who publishes research on conflicts of interest, says, “Twelve months is really quite short. I think that’s not acceptable.” He also suggests that government agencies should publish everything that experts disclose to them, instead of picking and choosing what to make public. “The best policy is disclose everything,” he says. “Second best, pretty far down, is to have clear rules about why certain things don’t need to be disclosed.” Schooley explains that the various time windows required by different disclosure policies can make it appear that an academic has reported financial interests in one case but not in another. More consistent disclosure policies are needed, he says—and universities, agencies, and journals should come together to normalise standards. “If all of this were harmonised, it would improve transparency and reduce the time required for all involved,” he wrote to The BMJ. “In the meantime, we can try to answer each request as best we can based on how we interpret each query.”

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“Then, Obama held a White House meeting with bank CEOs to tell them “help me help you.”

No, Obama Wasn’t Mad About Bailing Out His Wall Street Donors (DP)

Former President Barack Obama wants you to now believe that he was actually mad about giant Wall Street handouts that he voted for, then arm twisted lawmakers to expand — and then rescinded when some of the money might have gone to help homeowners. Obama’s foray into pure fiction is not only absurd — it is a reminder that history can repeat itself if we allow reality to be memory-holed. Obama’s comments came in a new interview with the New York Times’ Ezra Klein. “When we came into office, the economy was in a free fall,” the former president said. “We had to scramble and do a bunch of stuff, some of which was inherited, some of which we initiated to stabilize the financial system. People hated it. It’s hard to just underscore how much the bank bailouts just angered everyone, including me.”

Obama had an odd method of expressing his alleged rage. During the 2008 campaign, he made a public spectacle of leaving the campaign trail to cast a Senate vote for the no-strings-attached bank bailout. A few months later, Politico reported: “Not yet in the White House but working the phones as if he were, Barack Obama won a crucial Senate vote Thursday clearing the release of $350 billion more in bailout funds from the Treasury Department’s controversial financial rescue program. For the incoming president, the 52-42 roll call represented a first major test of strength, and Obama threw himself into the fight, reaching out to senators on both sides of the aisle and making calls until he had won all but one of the seven Democratic freshmen elected in November.”

Then, Obama held a White House meeting with bank CEOs to tell them “help me help you.” He used his bully pulpit to stop his own party’s efforts to prevent the bailout from subsidizing massive bonus payouts to AIG. And when some of that bank bailout money might have been redirected into helping homeowners who were getting thrown out of their homes, Obama signed legislation to rescind his own authority to spend the cash on such a priority. Official Washington then pretended the bailouts were actually paid back, even though that self-serving talking point is complete bullshit.

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Looks vulnerable.

JBS Shutters All US Meat Plants As Cyber Attack Jeopardizes Food Supply (ZH)

Update (2002 ET): The USDA has released an important update about the Biden administration’s steps to mitigate potential supply constraints and price surges following JBS’ ransomware attack.

As noted earlier today by the White House, USDA is aware of the ransomware attack against JBS, which is affecting the company’s operations, including its facilities in the United States. USDA continues to work closely with the White House, Department of Homeland Security, JBS USA and others to monitor this situation closely and offer help and assistance to mitigate any potential supply or price issues. As part of that effort, USDA has reached out to several major meat processors in the United States to ensure they are aware of the situation, encouraging them to accommodate additional capacity where possible, and to stress the importance of keeping supply moving.

USDA has also been in contact with several food, agriculture and retail organizations to underscore the importance of maintaining close communication and working together to ensure a stable, plentiful food supply. USDA will continue to encourage food and agriculture companies with operations in the United States to take necessary steps to protect their IT and supply chain infrastructure so that it is more durable, distributed and better able to withstand modern challenges, including cybersecurity threats and disruptions.

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Born in 1832 (5 years prior to the coronation of Queen Victoria), Jonathan the Tortoise is due to turn 190 years old in 2022. That makes him the oldest-known land animal alive today

 

 

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