Jan 062023
 


Dorothea Lange One nation indivisible. San Francisco 1942

 

Putin Calls for Ceasefire, Ukraine Rejects, Biden Pushes for More War (Celente)
White House Rejects Putin’s Christmas Truce As But A “Cynical Ploy” (ZH)
Ukraine Warns Germany Of ‘Russians Outside Berlin’ (RT)
US Won’t Fulfill Ukrainian Request – WaPo (RT)
2022: The World As We Knew It Ended. Decades Of Conflict Lie Ahead (Timofeev)
Russian “New Mobilization Process” For Major Offensive Imminent? (ZH)
Arrest Of Russian Outlet’s Journalist Is Blow To Press Freedom – Moscow (RT)
The Coup We Never Knew (Hanson)
The Ginni Thomas Investigation Ends Without a Mention in J6 Report (Turley)
Trump Announces Plan To Destroy The Drug Cartels With The US Military (PM)
Sotomayor Felt “Sense of Despair” Because Babies Would be Protected (LN)
These Doctors Pushed Masking, Lockdowns on Twitter. But They Don’t Exist (SFS)
Swiss Organization To Provide Safe Blood Transfusions From Unvaxxed (NN)
What Caused Damar Hamlin’s Cardiac Arrest? Experts Weigh In (CHD)

 

 

 

 

Have the vaccines saved lives?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“..the West wants to destroy Russia, so it provided Ukraine with more weapons than it could ever imagine and Zelensky’s goals grew..”

Putin Calls for Ceasefire, Ukraine Rejects, Biden Pushes for More War (Celente)

Ukraine rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call for a unilateral, 36-hour ceasefire to mark the celebration of Orthodox Christmas, calling Putin “hypocritical” for even suggesting laying down arms, albeit briefly. Mikhailo Podolyak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s top adviser, took to Twitter and said Russian troops must withdraw from all occupied territories, and only then will they have a “temporary truce.” “Keep hypocrisy to yourself,” he concluded. Reuters reported that the Kremlin released the statement from Putin calling for the truce after a conversation with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“Proceeding from the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the areas of hostilities, we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a ceasefire and allow them to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on Christmas Day,” Putin said, according to the report. Needless to say, Washington continued to promote war. President Joe Biden said the ceasefire was an effort by Putin to find breathing room. “He was ready to bomb hospitals and nurseries and churches” on 25 December and on New Year’s Day. I think he’s trying to find some oxygen,” he said. Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, said if Putin was sincere with his peace goals, he would withdraw troops. “A so-called ceasefire brings neither freedom nor security to people living in daily fear under Russian occupation,” Baerbock tweeted, according to Al Jazeera.

Ukraine’s position has been clear since the outbreak of war: all Russian troops must leave the country before any negotiated settlement can occur. But the West wants to destroy Russia, so it provided Ukraine with more weapons than it could ever imagine and Zelensky’s goals grew. Kyiv now wants Crimea and said it will not negotiate until Russian leaders face war-crime trials, which will never happen. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, spoke with Putin on the phone Thursday and called for the ceasefire. He said “calls for peace and negotiations should be supported by a unilateral ceasefire and a vision for a fair solution.” Putin, again, indicated that he is willing to negotiate for peace, but he will not part with any new territory.

Zelensky, meanwhile, warned that he expects a major Russian offensive after Putin mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops. “We have no doubt that the current masters of Russia will throw everything they have left and everyone they can muster to try to turn the tide of the war and at least postpone their defeat,” Zelensky said. “We have to disrupt this Russian scenario. We are preparing for this. The terrorists must lose.”

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NATO wants to keep up the fight.

White House Rejects Putin’s Christmas Truce As But A “Cynical Ploy” (ZH)

Update(1553ET): The White House has rejected Putin’s call for a Christmas truce in Ukraine. The Russian leader earlier in the day ordered a unilateral 36-hour ceasefire for his forces starting Friday, which will still apparently be in effect despite Ukraine rejecting it. Presumably Russian forces have been told to cease firing along the line of contact starting on Orthodox Christmas Eve day (Friday), unless they are fired upon from the Ukrainian side. The Biden administration cast it as a “cynical ploy” in order for Russian forces to regroup. Biden himself said the ceasefire proposal isn’t “serious” – as The Hill cites of the president’s words: President Biden said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call for a temporary, Christmas ceasefire is an effort to “find some oxygen,” dismissing that the Kremlin is serious about finding an off ramp for its assault against Ukraine.

The president said he was “reluctant to respond to anything Putin says,” but characterized the Kremlin as cynically attacking civilians over the December holidays. “He was ready to bomb hospitals and nurseries and church’s on the 25th and New Years — I mean, I think he’s trying to find some oxygen,” Biden added. At the State Department, spokesman Ned Price called Putin’s Christmas truce declaration a “cynical ploy… to rest, to refit, to regroup, and ultimately to re-attack, to re-attack with potentially even more vengeance, even more brutality, even more lethality, if they had their way.”

The majority of the populations in both countries are adherents of the Orthodox Church, with Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Christians traditionally celebrating Christmas on Jan. 7th. Germany was earlier in the day among the first Western countries to reject Putin’s announcement as inauthentic. And yet, ironically enough, calls have rang out from the West for months since the start of the conflict for Russian troops to cease fighting. One would think that any pause in fighting, however temporary, would be welcomed by the West – but alas not.

Update (1109ET): Within a mere hour after President Putin declared there would be a 36-hour ceasefire for all Russian forces along the line of contact in observation of Orthodox Christmas, Zelensky’s office has issued a firm rejection, calling it “hypocrisy” and demanding that all Russian troops must leave occupied territory immediately. Zelensky advisor Mykhailo Podolyak announced on Twitter, that Russian forces… must leave the occupied territories – only then will it have a “temporary truce”. Keep hypocrisy to yourself. He had earlier responded to Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill by calling the proposed Christmas ceasefire “a trap”. Ukrainian officials are also calling this a ploy for Russian forces to regroup and to take the momentum out of the Ukrainian army counteroffensive, which has been making some gains of late.

Update (1015ET): Shortly after Erdogan spoke with Putin this morning, the Russian leader has ordered a temporary cease-fire in Ukraine Friday and Saturday to mark Orthodox Christmas. The statement from the Kremlin cites earlier appeal from Patriarch Kirill for ceasefire over the holiday. Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill had previously said in a statement posted to the church’s official website: “I, Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and of all Rus, appeal to all parties involved in the internecine conflict with a call to cease fire and establish a Christmas truce from 12:00 on January 6 to 00:00 on January 7 so that Orthodox people can attend services on Christmas Eve and on the day of the Nativity of Christ.” [..] Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7th, and is a major holiday just as in the West during December (the Orthodox Church’s Julian calendar December 25 falls on January 7 on the West’s Gregorian calendar).

Bloomberg has meanwhile hinted at a negative response from Ukrainian leaders, given their initial reaction to Patriarch Kirill’s Christmas truce call: Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to cease fighting in Ukraine for 36 hours starting Friday at noon, Moscow time, in what appeared to be a rare sign of conciliation in an invasion that’s heading for its second year. The Kremlin said Putin gave the order Thursday for Russian Orthodox Christmas. It follows an appeal by the patriarch of that church, which has close ties to the Kremlin. Ukrainian officials denounced that as a trap. Kyiv has demanded Russia remove its troops from Ukraine as a condition for any ceasefire.

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Almost funny.

Ukraine Warns Germany Of ‘Russians Outside Berlin’ (RT)

Should Germany fail to provide Ukraine with tanks, it will soon have to use them to defend its own capital from advancing Russian troops, Alexey Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, warned on Wednesday. Speaking to Ukrainian TV, Danilov took a swipe at Germany’s leadership, particularly at Chancellor Olaf Scholz, criticizing him for refusing to send Kiev modern Leopard 2 battle tanks. If Scholz “wants the Germans to deploy German tanks to fight off the Russians outside of Berlin and Stuttgart, he could continue this game, conducting sociological surveys on whether they need to give us tanks or not,” he said. The official also highlighted the significance of the Ukraine conflict for Europe, adding that it poses “huge challenges” to the region.

“Those countries that understand that help us at 150% capacity. Those countries that are slowly wising up about the need to tackle this issue, they also started to act,” Danilov stated. While Berlin has been providing Kiev with large amounts of weaponry, it has been reluctant to supply it with modern Leopard 2 battle tanks. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had earlier explained that because no other country had made equivalent weaponry available to Ukraine, Berlin should not be the first one to do so. A December YouGov poll also showed that 45% of Germans do not want to send Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev, with another 33% saying they were in favor of such a step. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly voiced discontent over Germany’s stance on the matter, with Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba saying last month that Kiev does not understand why Germany is sending artillery but not heavy armor.

On Monday, Michael Mueller, who sits on the Bundestag’s Foreign Policy Committee, told the German media that Berlin would continue to refrain from any “ill-considered unilateral moves,” especially in the context of arms shipments. Such deliveries are possible only “in coordination with our NATO partners,” he said, adding that the US-led military bloc wants to avoid becoming a direct party to the Ukraine conflict. Moscow has long warned Kiev backers against sending weapons to Ukraine, arguing that it would only prolong the hostilities. President Vladimir Putin also accused the West of turning Ukraine into “a colony,” and using its people as “cannon fodder, a battering ram against Russia.”

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M1 Abrams main battle tank is scrap metal: “..tanks’ heavy fuel consumption and propensity to break down make them unsuitable for the Ukrainian military.”

US Won’t Fulfill Ukrainian Request – WaPo (RT)

The US will not send M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Ukraine, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing officials. Despite repeated requests from the Ukrainian government, no NATO power has donated Western-designed battle tanks thus far. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official said that the Abrams tanks’ heavy fuel consumption and propensity to break down make them unsuitable for the Ukrainian military. One of the heaviest main battle tanks in service worldwide, the M1 Abrams weighs in at 60 tons, with the latest M1A2 variant increasing this heft to more than 73 tons. An M1 Abrams tank costs more than $450 per mile in fuel and repairs, according to a 1991 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report adjusted for inflation.

The Abrams’ poor reliability was noted by the GAO. After a decade in service with the US military, the report stated that the average M1 Abrams needs its track replaced after as little as 710 miles, with engines typically suffering catastrophic “blowouts” after 350 hours of operation. However, the US Army insists that the latest M1A2 variant, which rolled off production lines in 2020, “is the most reliable Abrams tank ever produced.” Ukraine has repeatedly requested delivery of the American-made behemoths, portraying them as crucial to its war effort. Mikhail Podoliak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, put them on his “Christmas wishlist” in a social media post last month, while Zelensky has himself repeatedly asked the US and its allies for tanks since March.

Zelensky and his officials have singled out Germany in particular, asking Berlin for Marder infantry fighting vehicles and Leopard main battle tanks on multiple occasions. Germany has thus far rebuffed these requests, with lawmaker and Bundestag Foreign Policy Committee member Michael Mueller telling reporters this week that sending the tanks could trigger “an escalation that none of us want to imagine.” France on Wednesday became the first NATO member to announce the transfer of Western-made “light tanks” to Ukraine, although the vehicles in question – six-wheeled AMX-10 units – are outdated, and technically closer to armored fighting vehicles than tanks such as the Abrams or Leopard.

The French AMX-10s are similar in weight to the US-made Bradley Fighting Vehicle, with both coming in at less than 30 tons. US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that the transfer of an unspecified number of Bradleys is currently being discussed in the White House. Russia has repeatedly warned the West against arming Kiev, saying that doing so will only serve to prolong the conflict, and risks making Western nations de-facto participants.

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“..It remains to be seen if the next cycle will not be the last for mankind..”

2022: The World As We Knew It Ended. Decades Of Conflict Lie Ahead (Timofeev)

In 2022, the remnants of the ‘end of history’ era finally became a thing of the past. However, there has not been a return to the Cold War either. Russian policy is mainly concerned about security interests. It is not derived from ideology, although it does include components of the identity of ‘the Russian world’, as well as historical motives for opposing Nazism. Russia does not offer a global ideological alternative comparable to liberalism – nor has China yet taken such initiatives. The end of the ‘end of history’ is notable for several other details. Firstly, a major power has risked giving up the benefits of the ‘global world’ overnight. Historians will argue about whether Moscow anticipated such harsh sanctions and the departure of hundreds of foreign companies so quickly. However, it is clear that Russia is vigorously adapting to the new realities and is in no hurry to return to US-centric globalization.

Secondly, Western countries have embarked on a very tough ‘purge’ of Russian assets abroad. Overnight, their jurisdictions ceased to be ‘safe havens’ where the ‘rule of law’ is followed. Now it is politics that calls the shots and Russia is the only harbor to which its citizens can return to relative peace. Stereotypes about the ‘stability and security’ of the West are breaking down. Of course, they are unlikely to begin a similar purge of other assets there. But looking at the Russians, outside investors are wondering whether they should hedge their risks. Thirdly, it turned out that in the West, they might face not only asset stripping, but outright discrimination on the grounds of nationality. Thousands of Russians ‘fleeing’ the ‘bloody regime’ have suddenly faced rejection and contempt. Others trying to prove that they are even bigger ‘Russophobes’ than their host partners are running ahead of the anti-Russian propaganda train. However, this does not guarantee that the stubborn dogmatists will embrace them.

The conflict between Russia and the West is likely to drag on for decades, regardless of how the conflict in Ukraine ends. In Europe, Russia will play the role of North Korea, while possessing much greater capabilities. Whether Ukraine has the strength, the will, and resources to become a European South Korea is a big question. Conflict between Russia and the West will lead to a strengthening of China’s role as an alternative financial center and source of modernization. A stronger China will only accelerate its rivalry with the US and its allies. The ‘end of history’ has ended with a return to its usual course. One of these is the collapse of the world order as a result of large-scale conflicts between centers of power. It remains to be seen if the next cycle will not be the last for mankind, given the risks of an open military clash between the great powers with a subsequent escalation into full-scale nuclear conflict.

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Ukraine makes up stories and the west duly repeats them.

Russian “New Mobilization Process” For Major Offensive Imminent? (ZH)

Ukraine says it’s bracing for a major new Russian offensive, which will involve a large influx of new ground forces at a time Russian forces are under pressure and reportedly lacking enough manpower to maintain front lines, but did not give a timeline for the expected push. In fresh statements widely circulated Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia is planning a major “new offensive” which will involve a planned “new mobilization processes.” He suggested the new mobilization is imminent given recent Russian battlefield losses in the east, which includes the devastating strike on a barracks in the city of Makiivka, resulting an a huge Russian troop death toll.

“We have no doubt that the current masters of Russia will throw everything they have left and everyone they can muster to try to turn the tide of the war and at least postpone their defeat,” Zelensky said. “We have to disrupt this Russian scenario. We are preparing for this. The terrorists must lose.” Kiev had begun issuing these warnings of a major escalation by Moscow shortly after last month Putin referred to the Ukraine special operation as a “war” for the first time. As the The Hill also details: Some Ukrainian officials also warned last month about a potential new Russian offensive in January or February, including Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, a top commander in the Ukrainian army who told The Economist that Russia is preparing some 200,000 troops and could have another go at Kyiv.

Previously, Ukraine’s defense minister Oleksii Reznikov also issued a New Year message, and in it appealed to the Russian people, warning that Putin his about to declare martial law and close borders to men, in preparation for a new wave of mobilization. Reznikov called for Russians to resist these efforts and stand for peace in the video address… Within Russia, public opinion appears increasingly divided on how military and Kremlin leadership is executing the war, particularly in the wake of the Makiivka barracks attack, which left up to hundreds of Russian conscripts killed. Hawks within Russia in the meantime have continued pushing for a more muscular escalation in order to achieve the military objectives laid out since the start of the invasion. Others are calling for both sides to implement a Christmas truce this weekend in observation of Orthodox Christmas (Jan.7 according to the Julian calendar).

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“Just last month, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia protested French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to offer Russia security guarantees..”

Arrest Of Russian Outlet’s Journalist Is Blow To Press Freedom – Moscow (RT)

The arrest of Sputnik Lithuania’s editor-in-chief is a violation of international norms of freedom of speech and the rights of journalists, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday. She called on international organizations to react appropriately to Latvia’s “overreach” in arresting Marat Kasem. “Riga has once again demonstrated that for it such values of a democratic society as media pluralism and the rights of journalists are nothing more than empty phrases,” Zakharova said in a statement. Earlier, the spokeswoman shared a video on her Telegram channel of Kasem speaking about the problems he was facing, noting that he had complained for years about pressure and mistreatment at the hands of governments in the Baltic states.

All the international organizations concerned with freedom of speech, who spent years ignoring Kasem’s safety concerns, should “finally justify their existence” and intervene, Zakharova argued. “It is not just a duty, but an obligation of the international community to do everything so these overreaching regimes would return to following the law,” she said. Kasem is a Latvian citizen, but has lived and worked in Moscow for the past several years. He returned to Latvia on family business just before New Year’s Eve. On Thursday, the authorities in Riga ordered his arrest and charged him with espionage and violating EU sanctions against Russia. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years behind bars. His lawyer has not yet been given the case files, and her request to release Kasem on bail has been denied. He is currently being held in Riga’s Central jail.

Moscow has complained about the ongoing persecution of several journalists in Baltic states back in 2021, prior to the conflict in Ukraine escalating. Kasem had been detained in Vilnius and deported from Lithuania as a “threat to national security” in 2019. His colleague Valentin Rozentsov, editor-in-chief of Sputnik Latvia, was detained and interrogated in Riga in 2018. The former Soviet republics have adopted a hardline stance on the conflict in Ukraine. Just last month, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia protested French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to offer Russia security guarantees, and demanded no exemptions on the ban on Russian fertilizer exports, despite EU concerns about potential famine in Africa.

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Lots of things changed and somehow became normal.

The Coup We Never Knew (Hanson)

Did someone or something seize control of the United States? What happened to the U.S. border? Where did it go? Who erased it? Why and how did 5 million people enter our country illegally? Did Congress secretly repeal our immigration laws? Did Joe Biden issue an executive order allowing foreign nationals to walk across the border and reside in the United States as they pleased? Since when did money not have to be paid back? Who insisted that the more dollars the federal government printed, the more prosperity would follow? When did America embrace zero interest? Why do we believe $30 trillion in debt is no big deal? When did clean-burning, cheap, and abundant natural gas become the equivalent to dirty coal?

How did prized natural gas that had granted America’s wishes of energy self-sufficiency, reduced pollution, and inexpensive electricity become almost overnight a pariah fuel whose extraction was a war against nature? Which lawmakers, which laws, which votes of the people declared natural gas development and pipelines near criminal? Was it not against federal law to swarm the homes of Supreme Court justices, to picket and to intimidate their households in efforts to affect their rulings? How then with impunity did bullies surround the homes of Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas—furious over a court decision on abortion? How could these mobs so easily throng our justices’ homes, with placards declaring “Off with their d—s”?

Since when did Americans create a government Ministry of Truth? And on whose orders did the FBI contract private news organizations to censor stories it did not like and writers whom it feared? How did we wake up one morning to new customs of impeaching a president over a phone call? Of the speaker of the House tearing up the State of the Union address on national television? Of barring congressional members from serving on their assigned congressional committees? When did we assume the FBI had the right to subvert the campaign of a candidate it disliked? Was it legal suddenly for one presidential candidate to hire a foreign ex-spy to subvert the campaign of her rival?

Was some state or federal law passed that allowed biological males to compete in female sports? Did Congress enact such a law? Did the Supreme Court guarantee that biological male students could shower in gym locker rooms with biological women? Were women ever asked to redefine the very sports they had championed? When did the government pass a law depriving Americans of their freedom during a pandemic? In America can health officials simply cancel rental contracts or declare loan payments in suspension? How could it become illegal for mom-and-pop stores to sell flowers or shoes during a quarantine but not so for Walmart or Target?

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The emptiness expands.

The Ginni Thomas Investigation Ends Without a Mention in J6 Report (Turley)

The Jan. 6 committee issued its long-awaited report at 2022’s end, with the expected breathless punditry. Spoiler alert: It turns out the culprit of this “whodunit” was … wait for it … Donald Trump. What’s more interesting is the dog that did not bark. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “Silver Blaze,” the local inspector asks Sherlock Holmes, “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Holmes responds, “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” When the inspector objects, “The dog did nothing in the night-time,” Holmes replies, “That was the curious incident.” In the 895-page report, the “curious incident” is the lack of any reference to Ginni Thomas, Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife.

For months, members, the media and an army of pundits hammered away at the “smoking gun” texts Thomas sent to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and others calling the election stolen and demanding challenges to certifying the electoral votes. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was the first member of Congress to call for Justice Thomas to be impeached over his wife’s 29 messages. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) called for Thomas to resign immediately as a “corrupt jurist.” Former Sen. Barbara Boxer and others joined these calls. (Boxer was particularly ironic since she used the same underlying federal law to challenge the certification of George W. Bush’s election.) Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) demanded an investigation. On the committee itself, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) fueled the frenzy and demanded subpoenas for both Thomases.

The media also went into hyperbolic overload. Liberal sites demanded Thomas be impeached, citing “watchdogs” who turned out to be the same crowd that has long denounced the justice. MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan tweeted, “I have a question for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats: Why haven’t you impeached Clarence Thomas yet?” CNN and MSNBC commentator Tristan Snell tweeted that the couple had to be subpoenaed: “At best, they are material fact witnesses. At worst, they are co-conspirators to be charged with seditious conspiracy.” Professor Laurence Tribe (who declared Trump should be charged with attempted murder) also demanded the justice and his wife be subpoenaed. MSNBC’s Zeeshan Aleem declared in June that the scandal “keeps getting worse” but “the silver lining is that it will likely intensify calls for overhauling the high court, and help strip more people of the illusion that the Supreme Court is an apolitical branch of government and a neutral arbiter of the law.”

Activists like Sarah Lipton-Lubet, Take Back the Court Action Fund executive director, declared that “there’s much more to the story of Ginni Thomas’ participation in the January 6 attack that the House Select Committee and the American public deserve to know.” Yet it turns out what we knew was largely all we needed to know. There was not “much more to the story.” The entire Ginni Thomas scandal merited nary a mention in the massive report. Indeed, it doesn’t appear the committee had anything more than what we knew when the controversy began. The texts were never denied, and they weren’t surprising since Ginni Thomas was publicly supporting Trump and his claims. She was willing, moreover, to answer the committee’s questions voluntarily.

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Something’s not going right.

Trump Announces Plan To Destroy The Drug Cartels With The US Military (PM)

Former President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he would order the US military to declare cartels as enemy combatants if he were to be reelected president. Trump said that he would deploy the Navy and Special Forces to defend the security of the Western hemisphere. Trump made the announcement as President Joe Biden prepares to make his first trip to the southern border, after having previously said that there were “more important” things to deal with. “The drug cartels are waging war on America—and it’s now time for America to wage war on the cartels,” President Trump said in his announcement. “The drug cartels and their allies in the Biden administration have the blood of countless millions on their hands. Millions and millions of families and people are being destroyed. When I am back in the White House, the drug kingpins and vicious traffickers will never sleep soundly again.”

A statement from Trump lays out an action plan that he says will “destroy the drug cartels,” which includes steps such as:
• “Restore all Trump border policies and fully secure the border”
• “Deploy all necessary military assets, including the US Navy, to impose a full naval embargo on the cartels, to ensure they cannot use our region’s waters to traffic illicit drugs to the US”
• “Order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other covert and overt actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations”
• “Designate the major drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations”
• “Cut off the cartels’ access to the global financial system”
• “Get full cooperation of neighboring governments to dismantle the cartels, or else fully expose the bribes and corruption that protect these criminal networks”
• “Ask Congress to ensure drug smugglers and traffickers can receive the Death Penalty”

“Joe Biden has spent the last two years dismantling the southern border,” the statement says. “Biden’s Open Borders policies are killing innocent Americans, ravaging American communities, enriching the cartels, and destabilizing large parts of Mexico and Latin America.” Trump’s statement points out that since Biden took office, 200,000 Americans have died from drug overdoses, with hundreds of thousands of pounds of fentanyl, heroin, meth, cocaine, and other illicit narcotics “pouring across our wide-open border and into American communities.” Enough fentanyl was seized at the border last year to kill every single American. “BOTTOM LINE,” Trump’s statement ends, “Biden has destroyed the border—President Trump will destroy the cartels.”

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From Abortion

Sotomayor Felt “Sense of Despair” Because Babies Would be Protected (LN)

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed a “sense of despair” and sadness Wednesday about recent decisions by the conservative-majority court, including the Dobbs v. Jackson abortion case. Sotomayor and two other justices dissented in the historic June ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade and began allowing laws to protect unborn babies from abortion again. Research estimates at least 10,000 unborn babies were saved from abortions just in the first two months. Speaking at the Association of American Law Schools’ annual meeting in San Diego, Sotomayor said she feels “deeply sad” about the new direction of the court, according to Reuters. “I did have a sense of despair about the direction my court was going,” the Obama appointee said.

Although she did not mention the Dobbs case specifically, Sotomayor talked about feeling “shell-shocked” and “deeply sad” about recent rulings, adding: “It’s not an option to fall into despair. I have to get up and keep fighting,” Reuters reports. Sotomayor would have upheld Roe and continued to force states to legalize killing unborn babies for any reason up to viability, but she was overruled. Some of her arguments against Dobbs were based on false and misleading claims by the pro-abortion movement and have been debunked by researchers and doctors. The Dobbs decision may have been the most monumental ruling by the Supreme Court in decades. For nearly 50 years under Roe, American abortion laws were among the most extreme and permissive in the world.

Just a few other countries, including China and North Korea, allow elective abortions up to birth, as Roe did. As a result, more than 63 million unborn babies were legally aborted in the U.S. Now, because of Dobbs, state and local lawmakers may pass legislation to protect unborn babies again. Already 14 states are enforcing laws that limit or ban abortions and eight more are fighting in court to do the same. In November, voters also elected more pro-life lawmakers to their state legislatures in several states, paving the way for even more protections. Despite her pro-abortion leanings, Sotomayor recently did defend her conservative colleague Justice Clarence Thomas from unfounded leftist attacks, saying she knows he “cares about people.” Thomas joined the majority in Dobbs.

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Whatever.

These Doctors Pushed Masking, Lockdowns on Twitter. But They Don’t Exist (SFS)

Last month, Dr. Robert Honeyman lost their sister to Covid. They wrote about it on Twitter and received dozens of condolences, over 4,000 retweets and 43,000 likes. Exactly one month later, on Dec. 12, Honeyman wrote that another tragedy had befallen their family. “Sad to announce that my husband has entered a coma after being in hospital with Covid. The doctor is unsure if he will come out,” they tweeted. “This year has been the toughest of my life losing my sister to this virus. This is the first time in my life I don’t see light at the end of the tunnel.” Again, the condolences and well-wishes rolled in. But there was a problem: Honeyman wasn’t real.

The transgender “Doctor of Sociology and Feminist studies” with a “keen interest in poetry” who used they/them pronouns was, in fact, a stock photo described on DepositPhotos, a royalty-free image site, as “Smiling happy, handsome latino man outside—headshot portrait.” Their supposedly comatose husband, Dr. Patrick C. Honeyman, was also fake. His Twitter photo had been stolen from an insurance professional in Wayne, Indiana. The two fake doctors, whose accounts urged extreme caution about Covid-19, were part of a network of at least four fake accounts that touted their ties to the LGBTQ+ community, vocally advocated for mask-wearing and social distancing, and dished out criticism to those they felt were not taking the pandemic seriously.

The Honeymans could not be reached for comment, as they do not exist. At publication time, Robert Honeyman’s account was no longer active. The fake doctors were uncovered by Joshua Gutterman Tranen, a self-described “gay writer” pursuing a master’s of fine arts at Bennington College. He saw Robert Honeyman’s tweet about their husband being in a coma, noticed people he followed also followed them, and thought that they might be part of the LGBTQ+ academic community. But after 10 minutes of googling, Gutterman Tranen concluded that Robert Honeyman’s photo was a stock image and their biography stretched boundaries of believability: an academic who left no traces on academic websites and had lost two family members to Covid in late 2022, despite masking and distancing.

The character looked like “liberal Mad Libs,” Gutterman Tranen said. “I’m a self-identified leftist, and I understand that people have a lot of different identities, but it felt concocted in the lab about how many identities and horrible experiences can we put on one person,” he said.

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“..Della Pietra has contacted hundreds of clinics all over Europe, all of which still don’t allow people “the human right of free blood choice.”

Swiss Organization To Provide Safe Blood Transfusions From Unvaxxed (NN)

An organization in Switzerland called Safe Blood Donation has been set up to provide people all over the world with safe blood transfusions exclusively from people who remain unvaccinated against the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19). The organization was founded in late 2022 by Swiss naturopath George Della Pietra. According to the group’s website, the group’s goal is to provide people all over the world with a way to receive life-saving blood transfusions while refusing to take the vaccines developed against COVID-19. “Be it an emergency, a scheduled operation or because you need regular transfusions for other medical reasons. This is where Safe Blood Donation comes into play as an intermediary,” reads a statement on the organization’s website.

The group will essentially act as a middleman to connect people all over the world with medical partners who are willing to accept blood donations and provide blood transfusions to people with health needs, but are hesitant to go to hospitals where they will almost certainly receive blood from vaccinated individuals. Della Pietra created his organization due to the release of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines causing disputes all over the world over blood treatments and transfusions. Specifically, people who are skeptical of the benefits that come with taking the experimental vaccines and doesn’t want their body tainted by the unsafe products. [..] Della Pietra has contacted hundreds of clinics all over Europe, all of which still don’t allow people “the human right of free blood choice.”

Furthermore, dozens of clinics he contacted have all refused to become a partner of the new organization. Some of these clinics are sympathetic, but claimed they do not want to be mentioned for fear of reprisals from the mainstream medical community. The founder further noted that his main goal is not to run Safe Blood Donation as a blood bank, noting that “this is not possible at the moment” due to legal concerns, but to act as a quick referral service “to match blood donors and recipients” who are then sent to a medical partner’s clinic where the safe, unvaccinated blood transfusion will be handled. In return for providing people with this service, members are also urged to “make themselves available as blood donors” for other people looking for unvaccinated blood transfusions.

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“..in all cases there has been “airtight privacy” about whether they were vaccinated and what their diagnosis was..”

What Caused Damar Hamlin’s Cardiac Arrest? Experts Weigh In (CHD)

Damar Hamlin’s sudden collapse on live TV during Monday night’s NFL game triggered an avalanche of media coverage, with experts weighing in on what might have caused the 24-year-old player’s cardiac arrest after what appeared to be a routine tackle. Some news outlets quickly concluded Hamlin’s heart attack most likely was caused by commotio cordis, a rare phenomenon that occurs when a small and extremely fast-moving projectile — such as a baseball, hockey puck or lacrosse ball — strikes the chest in a precise location, disrupting the heart’s rhythm. The condition affects about 10-20 people per year, usually teenage boys. Most mainstream media reports rejected the theory that Hamlin’s cardiac arrest might be linked to COVID-19 vaccines, using terms such as “far-right,” “vile,” “anti-vaxxer” and “conspiracy theorists.”

However, Dr. Peter McCullough told “Good Morning CHD” host Aimee Villella McBride why he believes the vaccines can’t be ruled out. McCullough, an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist and leading expert on COVID-19 treatment, explained the possible role of the vaccines in cardiac arrest and other heart injuries among athletes. He explained that any physician watching replays of Hamlin’s collapse immediately starts thinking through a differential diagnosis of what could have caused it. He said: “Let me tell you that I did see head and neck contact with a tackle, which is not uncommon at all in football. Remember that the shoulder pads have a breastbone protector, [a] pretty substantial breastbone [protector], so they take helmets in the chest all the time.”

McCullough acknowledged that when a baseball hits an unprotected breastbone, it can precipitate a cardiac arrest, but said he was not aware of that happening in pro football, leading him to rule out commotio cordis. “And as I watched things unfold it was relatively clear that [Hamlin] was in a primary cardiac arrest,” he said. McCullough believes there is a public health obligation to disclose what happened. He said: “This is a player who is employed by a team, and the team and the league mandated the vaccine very publicly. “So we have a situation where we have a public figure, the public employer mandates the vaccine in a very public manner, there is a disclosure that 95% of the players have taken the vaccine, and the FDA says the vaccine causes myocarditis and the published peer-reviewed literature says that it can be fatal.”

“This is not a time for privacy,” McCullough said. “The public needs to know that diagnosis because he was under one of these mandates and this happened on the national and world stage.” McCullough said numerous athletes have collapsed on the field and been resuscitated, but that in all cases there has been “airtight privacy” about whether they were vaccinated and what their diagnosis was. “I think the Hamlin case is going to break through all this,” he said.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Cut a tree

 

 

Chinese exercise
https://twitter.com/i/status/1610702098198413313

 

 

1842 farmer

 

 

 

 

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Dec 142022
 
 December 14, 2022  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  64 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Portrait of Dora Maar 1943

 

Twitter Is Actually an Intelligence Gathering and Propaganda Tool (CTH)
Twitter Disbands Trust and Safety Council Amid Child Abuse Criticism (ET)
Jack Dorsey Responds To Twitter Files (RT)
Zelensky Aide Accused Musk Of Hiding ‘War’ From Twitter Trends (RT)
White House Defends Fauci From Musk (RT)
Zelensky: Russia Must Withdraw All Forces By Christmas (ZH)
NATO Chief Says Full-Blown War With Russia Is a ‘Real Possibility’ (Antiwar)
US Patriot Missiles to Ukraine: Peace Continues to be Banned in DC (Celente)
Peace Advocates Seen As ‘Traitors’ In EU – Former Austrian Vice-chancellor (RT)
Biden Operatives Plan “Swat Force” on Hunter Biden Scandal (Turley)
After the Ukraine Is Over, Many a European Heart is Aching (Batiushka)
NATO Is Trying To Find A Pretext To Attack Serbia -Again- (Saker)
EU Fails To Agree On Gas Price Cap (RT)
DOJ Faces Questions After Preventing SBF from Testifying in Congress (Turley)
The Seth Rich Case Gets Richer (Billingsley)

 

 

 

 

Laura Roth

 

 

 

 

DeSantis vaccine panel

 

 

 

 

Lapado

 

 

 

 

 

 

More from sundance.

“DHS doesn’t operate on the backbone of Twitter, Twitter operates on the backbone of DHS.”

Twitter Is Actually an Intelligence Gathering and Propaganda Tool (CTH)

Tucker Carlson hits the bullseye in a late show segment discussing the framework of the Twitter social media company. Stunningly, Carlson is the first person to ask the question that we have outlined for years, it is the essence of how Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop evolved. “It’s all pretty weird. Could it be that while the rest of us imagined that Twitter was a social media site … could it be that Twitter was actually, maybe primarily, a propaganda tool and intelligence gathering apparatus for a variety of intel agencies?” ~ Tucker Carlson. Yes. Exactly this. Yes. It’s not that DHS had a portal into Twitter, it’s that DHS took over the operation of Twitter and controlled every element of it. That’s also why profits and losses were never part of the viability equation. DHS controls Twitter operations, that’s the essential baseline for Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop. Well done Tucker Carlson.

Once you change your reference point and review the data from a different perspective, things make sense. DHS doesn’t operate on the backbone of Twitter, Twitter operates on the backbone of DHS. The information and content on Twitter exist, or not, by the permission and authority of the national security state, DHS. Narratives can be enhanced or throttled. Public perceptions can be uplifted or deemphasized. Candidates can be boosted or dismissed. Control over the public conversation is not simply in the hands of Twitter executives, the platform content is shaped by the guiding hand of the controlling interest – the government. So why did they permit it to be sold? Again, control.

Every non-Twitter, non-DHS controlled, information and discussion site is a watering down of the influence of Twitter. The inability to influence a platform like Truth Social would be particularly troublesome. So, launder the handling of the DHS platform to Elon Musk and create the illusion of a refresh. Twitter 2.0 now rebrands with a renewed ability to influence. Not accidentally, a pro DeSantis shaping is part of the objective. In the eyes of the control state Rumble and Truth Social represent the threat that is Donald Trump, while Twitter and YouTube representing the controlled alternative, Ron DeSantis. There are trillions at stake.

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“As Twitter moves into a new phase, we are reevaluating how best to bring external insights into our product and policy development work…”

Twitter Disbands Trust and Safety Council Amid Child Abuse Criticism (ET)

Twitter has disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, according to an email, after new owner Elon Musk criticized members over a lack of action to rid the platform of child sexual abuse material. In an email to the council’s members, Twitter said the Trust and Safety Council was no longer deemed the best way for the social media platform to “bring external insights into our product and policy development work.” “As Twitter moves into a new phase, we are reevaluating how best to bring external insights into our product and policy development work. As part of this process, we have decided that the Trust and Safety Council is not the best structure to do this,” the email stated.

“Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal,” the email continued. “We will also continue to explore opportunities to provide focused and timely input into our work, whether through bilateral or small group meetings.” The council was informed of the change before it was scheduled to meet with Twitter representatives on Monday night, according to The Associated Press. The webpage for the Trust and Safety Council is now blank. The group was previously made up of around 100 stakeholders, including independent civil, human rights, and other organizations.

The Trust and Safety Council has been criticized by Musk for not taking action to remove child sexual abuse material from Twitter. The council was established in 2016 to address problems such as hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm, and other issues on the platform. After three members of the council resigned in protest over allegations of increased hate speech on the platform on Dec. 8, Musk declared on Dec. 10 that it was “a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!” Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey replied to Musk, saying: “This is false.” “No, it is not,” Musk replied, adding: “When Ella Irwin, who now runs Trust & Safety, joined Twitter earlier this year, almost no one was working on child safety.”

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“..the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society.”

Jack Dorsey Responds To Twitter Files (RT)

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has issued a response to the recently leaked ‘Twitter Files,’ admitting to a host of major mistakes during his time as chief executive while warning of “centralized control” of the internet by governments and corporations. The tech entrepreneur addressed the leaked internal documents in a Tuesday blog post, acknowledging that Twitter failed to uphold its guiding principles near the end of his tenure, and that he “completely gave up” on his own vision for the site after “activist” investors bought into the company sometime in 2020. Though he did not elaborate on the new investors or how they might have swayed the platform, Dorsey said Twitter’s focus on controlling public dialogue was ultimately one of its greatest errors.

He cited the decision to permanently suspend President Donald Trump in the wake of the riot at the US Capitol in January 2021, saying it was “the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society.” “The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves,” he said. “This burdened the company with too much power, and opened us to significant outside pressure (such as advertising budgets). I generally think companies have become far too powerful, and that became completely clear to me with our suspension of Trump’s account.”

Dorsey was reportedly on vacation at the time of the Trump ban and had delegated decision-making to executives Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde – as revealed in the Twitter Files – but nonetheless said he bears sole blame for the errors in judgment. “The current attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous and [don’t] solve anything. If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof,” he continued, also insisting “there was no ill intent or hidden agendas” behind Twitter’s more contentious decisions and that the company “acted according to the best information we had at the time.” Tuesday’s blog post also included a lengthy section warning of “centralized” power over the internet, stating that social media platforms should remain “resilient to corporate and government control” while suggesting Twitter had failed to do so under his watch.

The former CEO, who stepped down from the role in November 2021, went on to say that he welcomes the “fresh reset” brought by Twitter’s new owner, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, expressing hopes that the site will become “uncomfortably transparent.” However, he argued that the Twitter Files should have been released “Wikileaks-style,” or in full, rather than being leaked to select journalists by the site’s new management. Spearheaded by reporters Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, the documents have been published on a rolling basis with Musk’s blessing, shedding light on a number of controversial decisions made by the company. Five installments have gone public so far, including material surrounding Trump’s suspension, Twitter’s close cooperation with US intelligence agencies, the practice of ‘shadowbanning,’ as well as a site-wide ban on a New York Post report about the foreign business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.

Read more …

“..the biggest bot attack I’ve ever seen.”

Zelensky Aide Accused Musk Of Hiding ‘War’ From Twitter Trends (RT)

Mikhail Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, has accused Twitter of hiding trends related to the ongoing conflict in the country. The official took to the social media platform on Tuesday, blasting the platform’s CEO, billionaire Elon Musk, directly. ‘War in Ukraine’ disappearance from Twitter trends. Radical curtailment of tweets mentioning ru-aggression coverage. Users aren’t allowed to register or log into accounts with Ukrainian phone number,” Podolyak wrote. According to Twitter, its trends are “determined by an algorithm and, by default, are tailored for you based on who you follow, your interests, and your location.” The algorithm “identifies topics that are popular now, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis.”

The presidential aide was apparently referring to Ukrainian media reports that users with Ukrainian phone numbers were no longer able to log in or register on the platform. While the social media giant has not produced any statements on the issue yet, Musk cryptically warned Twitter “bots” were “in for a surprise tomorrow” on Sunday. Podolyak was also critical of the recent release of ‘Twitter files’, which disclosed censorship practices on the platform amid the 2020 US presidential campaign. The official apparently hinted that Twitter’s new leadership was now censoring coverage of the Ukraine crisis. “Elon Musk, I wonder if we will ever see ‘Twitter Files’ about Fall/Winter 2022?” Podolyak wrote. In recent weeks, Musk has repeatedly engaged in a bitter back-and-forth with the pro-Ukrainian crowd on the social media platform, including the country’s top officials.

The spat began with a peace plan, floated by the billionaire, who suggested Ukraine should commit to neutrality and relinquish its claim to Crimea, while Russia “redo” referendums in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as in Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions “under UN supervision.” The remarks angered Kiev officials, who raided Musk’s feed in order to vent. The poll on the peace plan itself was subjected to what the billionaire called the “biggest bot attack I’ve ever seen.” The spat has been aggravated by Musk, who threatened to stop payrolling Starlink’s services, which are actively used by the Ukrainian military. In early November, Twitter also began labeling tweets from Ukrainian state-run media – in the same way it does with a number of Russian government-owned outlets – causing a new meltdown among Kiev’s backers.

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“..Fauci told Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky in May 2021 that NIAID and the National Institutes of Health “categorically” never funded such research..”

White House Defends Fauci From Musk (RT)

The US government has come to the defense of President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 czar, saying that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a paragon of public service and that Elon Musk’s suggestions that the octogenarian bureaucrat should be prosecuted are dangerous “personal attacks” divorced from reality. The Tesla and SpaceX magnate took over Twitter in October and has been sharing details of the platform’s operations under the previous management. Teasing revelations about the pandemic-related censorship, Musk tweeted on Saturday that his pronouns are “Prosecute/Fauci.” The post went beyond viral, garnering more than 1.2 million likes so far – and attracting the attention of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

“These attacks, these personal attacks that we have been seeing, are dangerous – on Dr. Fauci and other public health professionals as well. They are disgusting, and they are divorced from reality,” Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday. Fauci has “given his almost entire career to civil service, public service, as a public servant. His work on infectious disease, from HIV/AIDS to Covid, has saved countless lives,” said Jean-Pierre, and America is fortunate he has devoted “his exceptional talent” to public health. “And that’s what should be discussed right now,” she concluded. Now 81, Fauci has been running the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. He will retire from his government job at the end of the year, just before Republicans – who promised to hold hearings about his handling of the pandemic – take over the House of Representatives.

Fauci became an idol of Democrats in 2020, advocating for longer and tougher lockdowns when President Donald Trump wanted to see them lifted. When Biden became president, he named Fauci his chief medical adviser and followed his strategy of “shutting down the virus” through mask and vaccine mandates. Several prominent Republicans have clashed with Fauci in congressional hearings, accusing him of funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, where the pandemic supposedly originated. Fauci told Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky in May 2021 that NIAID and the National Institutes of Health “categorically” never funded such research. Documents published in September showed NIH and NIAID giving money to the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, which funded experiments with bat coronaviruses in Wuhan. NIH has continued to fund EcoHealth, however.

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N’importe quoi..

Zelensky: Russia Must Withdraw All Forces By Christmas (ZH)

Ukraine now says that it has lost half of its energy system amid recent stepped-up Russian aerial attacks, which have continued to include suicide drones, some of which are believed supplied by Iran. President Volodymyr Zelensky communicated this in a Monday phone call with President Joe Biden, briefing the US leader on “the consequences of the Russian missile terror, as a result of which about 50% of the Ukrainian energy infrastructure was destroyed.” In the mid-afternoon on Tuesday (local time), air raid alerts have reportedly been issued all across Ukraine, with sirens blaring in the capital after Zelensky warned that the next major wave of Russian airstrikes are imminent.

Starting Friday Kyiv authorities began revising their estimate upward from the 40% they had been estimating in statements as of weeks ago. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmygal recently described, “Unfortunately, Russia continues missile strikes on Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure, fighting against the civilian population and depriving them of light, water, heat and communications during the winter… Nearly half of our energy system is disabled.” The past month has witnessed some of the largest missile barrages targeting energy infrastructure to date, which has left whole cities, including Odesa and a number of cities in the south without power amid frigid temperatures.

Also on Monday Zelensky gave a virtual address before G7 leaders, wherein he urged more arms including “modern tanks” and “rocket artillery and more long-range missiles” while acknowledging his military is running low in the face of the more superior-armed Russian forces. He asked G7 nations for “about 2 billion cubic meters” of additional gas to help the population get through winter. Among the more interesting things he said was that Moscow must withdraw all forces by Christmas. “The occupier must leave. It will certainly happen. I see no reason why Russia should not do it now – at Christmas.” Vowing the counteroffensive will not stop even as the ground freezes, he appealed for Russia to avoid “further confrontation with the world.”

“Very soon we’ll have holidays celebrated by billions of people. Christmas – according to the Gregorian calendar or the New Year and Christmas – according to the Julian calendar. This is the time for normal people to think about peace, not aggression. I suggest Russia to at least try to prove that it is capable of abandoning the aggression. It would be right to start the withdrawal of Russian troops from the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine this Christmas. If Russia withdraws its troops from Ukraine, it will ensure a lasting cessation of hostilities,” the President said, speaking at the G7 Summit.

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“..the continent’s “peace and freedom” would be threatened if Putin wins in Ukraine.”

NATO Chief Says Full-Blown War With Russia Is a ‘Real Possibility’ (Antiwar)

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned Friday that he fears a full-blown war between Russia and NATO is a “real possibility” in a rare acknowledgment of the dangers of backing Ukraine. “I fear that the war in Ukraine will get out of control, and spread into a major war between NATO and Russia,” he said, according to The Telegraph. “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong.” Russian officials have made clear that they believe they are fighting against NATO in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said recently that both the US and NATO are “directly participating” in the war in Ukraine, meaning Russia has the pretext for strikes on NATO bases in Europe if they choose to take that step. Despite the risk, Stoltenberg stressed that NATO countries should continue arming Ukraine and that the best way to deter Russia is to strengthen the alliance’s positions in Eastern Europe.


Stoltenberg said Russian President Vladimir Putin “knows it’s one for all, and all for one,” referring to NATO’s mutual defense commitments as outlined by Article 5. The risk of escalation rose last week after Ukrainian drones struck air bases hundreds of miles inside Russian territory, killing three Russian soldiers and damaging two Russian bombers. Citing unnamed US military sources, The Times reported Friday that the Pentagon has given Ukraine its tacit endorsement to launch such attacks. Stoltenberg said that he understands why some people in Europe are getting tired of supporting Ukraine as they face rising energy and food prices. But the NATO chief claimed that the continent’s “peace and freedom” would be threatened if Putin wins in Ukraine.

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“..It now seems apparent why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was so giddy after a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday.”

US Patriot Missiles to Ukraine: Peace Continues to be Banned in DC (Celente)

The U.S. is about to approve a Patriot missile battery to counter Russia’s recent missile bombardments despite Moscow’s previous threat that these systems would be “legitimate targets” for its forces. CNN first reported on the Biden administration’s plan that could be announced later this week. The Pentagon and State Department did not immediately respond to emails from The Trends Journal. Washington has already provided Ukraine with short-range NASAMS anti-air systems. Ukraine has been asking the U.S. for these systems for months, but Washington knows that it would be a major escalation and risk a confrontation with Russia. Germany understands the significance of providing these systems.

Berlin refused Poland’s push to put Patriot missiles in Ukraine instead of Warsaw after the Ukrainian missile killed two in the country a few weeks ago. Germany offered Poland the Patriot missile system, and Warsaw insisted that these missiles be sent to Ukraine instead. Germany ended up refusing the idea. Germany presented Poland with these systems on Monday. Michal Baranowski, the regional managing director of the German Marshall Fund in Warsaw, told The New York Times that the brief tussle between Berlin and Warsaw was “like an X-ray of miserable Polish-German relations.” “It’s worse than I thought, and I’ve watched it a long time,” Baranowski said. CNN noted that these missile systems, one of the most advanced from the U.S., are effective in nailing distant targets but it requires about a dozen troops to operate and months of training. Ukraine does not have anyone trained to used the system.

The system is widely considered one of the most capable long-range weapons to defend airspace against incoming ballistic and cruise missiles as well as some aircraft. Because of its long-range and high-altitude capability, it can potentially shoot down Russian missiles and aircraft far from their intended targets inside Ukraine. It now seems apparent why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was so giddy after a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday. He thanked Biden for the “unprecedented” support from the U.S. “I had a phone call with U.S. President Joseph Biden and thanked for the unprecedented defense and financial assistance that the U.S. provides to Ukraine,” Zelensky said. NATO has been trepidatious to provide these systems because of the risk that Kyiv uses them to fire deeper inside Russia. Ukraine has been blamed for several attacks on Russian territory.

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“..a “global war” between Russia and NATO, into which European leaders have been “drawn.”

Peace Advocates Seen As ‘Traitors’ In EU – Former Austrian Vice-chancellor (RT)

Former Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache has told RT that the EU’s sanctions policy has brought Ukraine no closer to peace, and those who complain are “branded and defamed” as traitors. Strache is a vocal critic of the EU’s sanctions on Russia, which he has repeatedly blamed for destroying the bloc’s economy, triggering rising inflation and unemployment, and potentially bringing a wave of “mass insolvencies and bankruptcies” in the new year. Speaking to RT on Tuesday after addressing a pro-neutrality rally in Vienna last weekend, Strache described the conflict in Ukraine as part of a “global war” between Russia and NATO, into which European leaders have been “drawn.”

“Unfortunately, I do not see any European political leaders who want to approach the negotiating table and call for a negotiated ceasefire agreement and a peaceful solution,” he lamented. “We Austrians in particular should adhere to our neutrality and our neutrality status could also play a decisive mediating role here. So far, this has not been practiced.” “Of course, the media in the European Union are silent about all this,” he continued. “And if you express criticism here today, you are often branded and defamed as a Putin and Russia sympathizer and also as a traitor to Europe.” While Strache condemned the lack of a “strong European peace movement,” he predicted that worsening economic conditions will eventually force citizens to demand an end to the Ukraine conflict.

“People are confronted with the catchphrase that they have to freeze for peace, and then you come to the conclusion: well, freezing doesn’t help, because unfortunately there is no peace…and then you become unemployed and unemployment has not brought peace because there are no negotiation initiatives – people naturally find [this] very, very repulsive and very questionable,” he stated. European leaders have presented the rising price of energy as a necessary cost of supporting Ukraine, with European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager famously telling people earlier this year to say “take that, Putin” as they turn off their hot water. Ultimately, Strache argued that the EU is bearing all the costs of the conflict while the US is “profiteering,” an assessment shared by European Council President Charles Michel and other senior Brussels officials. “More and more people are becoming aware of this,” Strache continued, adding that “Europe urgently needs to implement concrete peace initiatives.”

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“Generally, political operatives lay out scorched-earth campaigns in secret. But someone wanted this campaign to be public before the House can call any witnesses.”

Biden Operatives Plan “Swat Force” on Hunter Biden Scandal (Turley)

Just when you thought our politics could not get more poisonous, a recent meeting in California suggests the past is mere prelude. The Washington Post, which revealed the powwow, described it as Biden family “allies” planning an offensive to blunt any investigation into the Bidens’ alleged multimillion-dollar influence-peddling schemes. Republicans will see it more like the gathering of the Legion of (Democratic) Doom. Some of the most controversial political operatives are involved in the all-hands-on-deck effort to protect the Bidens. The California meeting’s host was none other than Hunter Biden’s friend, agent and lawyer Kevin Morris. After Hunter was placed under investigation for, among other possible charges, tax evasion, Morris reportedly paid off as much as $2.8 million in back taxes for Hunter.

Morris, per The Washington Post, called for a “more aggressive” response to those seeking to investigate the alleged influence peddling. That plan includes hitting critics, such as Fox News, with possible defamation lawsuits. (For full disclosure, I appear as a legal analyst on Fox News.) The paper also reported Morris “outlined extensive research on two potential witnesses against Hunter Biden — a spurned business partner named Tony Bobulinski and a computer repairman named John Paul Mac Isaac.” “Spurned” is hardly the sole or most relevant description of Bobulinski: The businessman was recruited by the Biden family to manage foreign deals and later directly contradicted President Joe Biden’s claims he knew nothing of those dealings. His testimony could present a serious threat in the coming House investigation in establishing not only the president’s knowledge but his possible receipt of proceeds from the deals.

Morris’ plan could easily be taken as a declaration of all-out war on potential witnesses against Hunter Biden. What’s most interesting about the piece is why The Washington Post was given such access and such a detailed account. Generally, political operatives lay out scorched-earth campaigns in secret. But someone wanted this campaign to be public before the House can call any witnesses. For key witnesses like Bobulinski, the message is about as subtle as a two-by-four to the head. The Washington Post is viewed as one of the most pro-Biden newspapers in the country and only recently admitted the Hunter Biden laptop was authentic after pushing the false Russian-disinformation claim. Now the paper is detailing a plan that could create an open season on those who might try to substantiate the Biden family’s influence peddling.

Notably, the article stresses this effort is “operating separately from the White House. [David] Brock said his organization also remains independent of Hunter Biden and his team and is following its own strategy.” The separation is important to deflect any allegations of witness intimidation. Media and political figures leveled such claims against the Trump White House when impeachment witnesses were attacked in the press. Congressional Democrats denounced criticism of the witnesses as an effort to silence or deter witnesses from coming forward. (For the record, I also criticized the targeting of witnesses against Trump even if it did not constitute chargeable witness intimidation).

Read more …

“US-exploited Kiev regime territory, 40% of the whole, will be taken back without compensation.”

After the Ukraine Is Over, Many a European Heart is Aching (Batiushka)

Northern Europe, as far south as northern Italy, is now in the grip of a wave of icy cold (no doubt, the result of global warming). As a result, observers are expecting the Russian winter offensive in the Ukraine to start all the sooner, though nobody knows when. This month or next? Maybe a dramatic entry from Belarus, cutting off NATO supplies? Nobody knows. For the moment, Allied forces are content to grind down the undersupplied and freezing Kiev regime conscripts and mercenaries in situ, hoping that perhaps they will simply surrender en masse, despite the regime’s guns poking in their backs. Conditions are such that this could happen with very few Russian losses. There is no hurry. Over 500,000 Allied soldiers and 500 winter camouflage tanks are waiting for their moment to move in and denazify the Ukraine. They will wait for the right moment.s

Russia could no longer allow a hostile, US-controlled, NATO-armed and soon-to-be-nuclear Ukraine to exist. Therefore, it is being liberated. It should have happened long before, but Russia was much too weak to do so before. When the Zelensky regime falls, billions of dollars of Western arms and supplies will fall into Russian hands. The Kiev regime’s Western-incurred indebtedness to the West for arms and supplies over the last nearly nine years will be cancelled. US-exploited Kiev regime territory, 40% of the whole, will be taken back without compensation. This will be a small measure of compensation for the destruction that the US and its European vassals, including the Minsk I and Minsk II liars of Germany and France, have caused in the Ukraine, especially in the much-tried Donbass.

Apart from completing the liberation of the four provinces that it has taken back so far, Russia may also take back four more Russian-speaking provinces, those of Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev and Odessa, so joining up with Russian Transdnestria. A coup in Kiev could take place, as the remnants of the Kiev Army collapse and the new Ukraine could then even become a Russian ally, like Belarus, part of the Union State. Whether the five far western provinces of the present Ukraine remain with the new Ukraine, or three of them return to Poland, and one each to Hungary and Romania, remains to be seen. It will all depend on what Russia allows. After this, the whole fragile Western European domino set, hastily stood up by the US-run NATO and its political wing the EU, could begin to tumble.

Read more …

“Pavelic, like Bandera, Franco or Petain, was a pure product of the Papacy, unlike Hitler and Mussolini who were, respectively, a pagan and an atheist..”

NATO Is Trying To Find A Pretext To Attack Serbia -Again- (Saker)

Once the NATO defeat in the Ukraine becomes undeniable, the organization will quickly become irrelevant and unable to agree on yet another military operation. As for the USA, having lost the “fig leaf” provided by NATO, they are unlikely to have what it takes to attack Serbia, not after having being comprehensively defeated in the Ukraine (the collapse of NATO will also trigger a major crisis inside the USA). The problem for Serbia is that it will take time (many months, probably a few years) to fully defang NATO while not triggering a fullscale continental war in Europe. And, let’s be honest here, if the Russians can now take their sweet time “demilitarizing” Banderastan, the Serbian minority in Kosovo cannot.

So what can the Serbs do in this situation? Do nothing would only empower the KLA terrorist and their western bosses and leave the long-suffering Serbian minority in Kosovo defenseless. Move in forces, even if fully allowed by the UNSC Resolution, would risk triggering a major economic and military US/NATO/EU attack on Serbia. Evacuate Serbian civilians from Kosovo? In theory that would be an option, but we have to understand that for the Serbian people Kosovo is truly sacred ground and that many would refuse to leave. Also, emptying Kosovo from its Serbian minority would only embolden the KLA and their patrons. Finally, when the Russians evacuated their civilians from Kherson it was at least credible that this was a temporary move and that the Russian military would be back, sooner rather than later. But in the case of Kosovo, Serbia is the weaker party and will remain so until:

1/ Serbia regains her sovereignty (right now Serbia is basically administered by the West, hence the threats from EU politicians like Baerbock) 2/Reunites with historically Serbian lands in Montenegro, Bosnia and Kosovo 3/ The US/NATO/EU are demilitarized and denazified, at least in Europe. This will all happen, the problem is *when*. I sure don’t know. What I do know is that the Serbian nation has survived absolutely horrific and even overtly demonic persecutions by both the Ottomans, the Anglos and the Latins (Pavelic, like Bandera, Franco or Petain, was a pure product of the Papacy, unlike Hitler and Mussolini who were, respectively, a pagan and an atheist).

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“..any price cap must aim to “ensure the stability of the financial markets.”

EU Fails To Agree On Gas Price Cap (RT)

EU nations have failed once again to finalize a bloc-wide gas price cap at a Council of Energy Ministers meeting, Hungarian FM Peter Szijjarto said on Tuesday. Some states want to lower the ceiling, while others say the measure could wreak havoc on the energy markets. “There was a lengthy debate at the Energy Council meeting. No agreement was reached at the plenary, so discussions will continue on a bilateral basis,” Szijjarto wrote on Facebook. Opinions regarding the measure proposed weeks ago differ greatly among the 27 EU member states, with some doubting its effectiveness in fighting the energy crisis, and others calling for the lowest cap possible.

Under the original plan put forward by the European Commission, the gas price cap should be triggered when prices on the TTF exchange, Europe’s gas benchmark, reach €275 ($292) per megawatt hour and are €58 higher than the LNG reference price for two weeks. The plan was met with criticism, with some member states worried it would only worsen market volatility, while others argued that the level was too high to be effective.

Last week, the EU Council proposed reducing the level of the cap to €220 and slashing the timeframe to five days, while also lowering the gap with global LNG prices to €35, according to a draft document seen by Reuters. However, 12 countries reportedly said this cap would still be too high, demanding it be lowered to €160 with a €20 spread. Earlier on Tuesday, France’s minister for energy transition, Agnes Pannier-Runacher, said that an agreement over the cap could be reached sooner rather than later. “I believe we have started to bring our positions closer,” she told the press ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, adding that any price cap must aim to “ensure the stability of the financial markets.”

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They’ve shut him down:

“Sam Bankman-Fried was denied bail. He will be held in this prison until February 8th, 2023 if he isn’t extradited to the US.”

DOJ Faces Questions After Preventing SBF from Testifying in Congress (Turley)

The arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried yesterday was sudden and unexpected in light of Bankman-Fried’s plan to testify before Congress. As a criminal defense attorney, my reaction to the arrest last night remains unchanged: this is the first time that I can recall where prosecutors moved aggressively to stop a defendant from making self-incriminating statements. His testimony would have been entirely admissible and likely devastating at trial. I previously wrote how Bankman-Fried was doing harm to his case by speaking in the media and to Congress. So why would the Justice Department move to stop the self-inflicted damage? You have a major target who was about to voluntarily testify for hours.

That is ordinarily a dream for prosecutors, but the Justice Department moved quickly to prevent that from happening. At that stage, Bankman-Fried was not charged or in custody. He was not protected by Miranda or other constitutional rules from self-incriminating statements. Indeed, some of us had already warned that he was causing himself considerable damage in making such statements. This was a defendant with a large legal team facing possible criminal charges who seemed eager to speak about his actions and motivations. Most prosecutors would sit back, make popcorn, and watch this unfold. The curious move led many to question whether the Biden Administration was eager to prevent questions on Bankman-Fried’s political contributions and associations.

He was the second highest donor to Democratic causes in the last election cycle. His mother, a law professor at Stanford also heads a major Democratic campaign fund. It is also possible that the Justice Department simply wanted to show the public that it was moving aggressively despite his close Democratic ties. It may have secured sufficient evidence (including possible cooperating witnesses) to satisfy the basis for charges and an extradition request. Moreover, the charges are likely to make some Democratic figures uncomfortable as this matter enters the criminal process. Yet, that still does not explain why the Justice Department would not want to hear a full account from Bankman-Fried before effectively shutting him down as a criminal defendant. This is the first time that I can recall where the prosecutors, rather than defense counsel, moved effectively to muzzle a defendant.

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“..the body of Philip Haney, author of See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad, was “found deceased” in Amador County, California..”

The Seth Rich Case Gets Richer (Billingsley)

The FBI not only has possession of a laptop computer owned by slain Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich,” the Epoch Times reports, “but a report detailing forensic imaging of what’s being described as Rich’s work computer.” The revelation came in a three-page forensic report about an “outside entity” working on imaging Rich’s work computer, also a laptop. According to the Epoch Times, that report “was among four documents that had never been disclosed by the FBI in relation to Rich’s case.” Seth Rich was the DNC’s voter expansion data director. On July 10, 2016, the 27-year-old was gunned down in Washington, D.C. Police called it a street robbery gone wrong, but the shooters did not take Rich’s wallet, watch, or phone.

Weeks after the murder, as the BBC reported, “Wikileaks published 20,000 emails obtained from Democratic National Committee computers via an anonymous source.” According to prominent Democrats, that was all part of Donald Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia. With that ploy exposed as a hoax, the people have cause to wonder. With Rich’s personal laptop, the FBI wants 66 years—a proxy for “never”—to produce data the bureau previously denied it even possessed. With Rich’s work laptop, the bureau is taking obstructionism to a new level. FBI records boss Michael Seidel is claiming that the computer is only a physical object, not an “actual record,” and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act request from Texas resident Brian Huddleston.

His attorneys want the Obama-appointed Judge Amos Mazzant to order the release of the information from the personal and work computers of murder victim Rich. As it happens, those are not the only devices the FBI is harboring. On February 21, 2020, the body of Philip Haney, author of See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad, was “found deceased” in Amador County, California. He was killed by a gunshot to the chest. The Amador sheriff “reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist in analyzing documents, phone records, numerous thumb drives and a laptop that were recovered from the scene and Mr. Haney’s RV.

Those items and numerous other pieces of evidence were turned over to the FBI. The FBI has performed a forensic examination of these items. We expect to receive these reports within the next few weeks.” Two years later, the Amador sheriff reported no new information on the case, and the FBI has yet to reveal what was on Haney’s laptop, thumb drives, and such. As with Seth Rich, the material could be of great interest to the public. In early 2020, according to Kerry Picket of the Washington Examiner, Haney was “recently in contact with top officials about returning to work for the DHS.” So maybe he had new information on terrorists. The erudite Haney was good at finding such information, but it wasn’t always welcome at the Department of Homeland Security.

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Mountain goats
https://twitter.com/i/status/1602359257319575561

 

 


Panulirus ornatus is a large spiny lobster with 11 larval stages. It migrates annually from the Torres Strait to Yule Island in the Gulf of Papua in order to breed

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 222021
 
 December 22, 2021  Posted by at 9:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  94 Responses »


Berthe Morisot Julie and her boat1884

 

Omicron Could Be ‘A Christmas Present’ – Malone (WND)
BioNTech CEO Says ‘Even Triple-Vaccinated’ Transmit COVID (SAC)
How Fauci and Collins Shut Down Covid Debate (WSJ Ed.)
Fauci Says Unvaxxed Relatives Not Worthy of Family Christmas Gatherings (CTH)
An Interview With Fauci’s Nemesis (Beck)
Here’s A Reality Check (Denninger)
Prepare For Fourth Covid Jab, Tony Blair Institute Says (RT)
EU Sets Binding 9 Month Validity Of Covid-19 Travel Pass (R.)
Austria Hiring People to “Hunt Down Vaccine Refusers” (SN)
Ryanair CEO Calls For Unvaccinated “Idiots” To Be Ostracised From Society (SN)
Judge Blocks Biden’s Vaccine Mandate for Federal Contractors in 10 States (ET)
Covid Modelling Shows The Most Worrying Scenario, Not The Most Likely (G.)
A Letter from a Concerned Psychologist (Nicassio)
Americans Warned About Risk Of Russian Invasion Of Ukraine (RT)
The Fed Gets Its Ducks in a Row for the Next Wall Street Bailout (Martens)
“If You Could Die Of Irony, She Would Be Dead”: Musk Slams Liz Warren (ZH)

 

 

 

 

For context, in the UK:

• same time last year, 40,000 daily cases of Covid
• this year, 90,000

• same time last year, 21,000 hospitalised
• this year, 8,000

Additionally, hospital stays will likely be much shorter this year.

 

 

First US death

 

 

“..if you believe in a God,” the rise of the omicron variant “looks an awful lot like a Christmas present.”

Omicron Could Be ‘A Christmas Present’ – Malone (WND)

The new omicron variant that is causing renewed panic among government officials and media could turn out to be “a Christmas present,” says the inventor of the mRNA technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. Robert W. Malone, in a video interview Monday with WND, explained that while the original SARS-CoV-2 virus settled in the lungs, a new University of Hong Kong study that is still under peer review is among studies indicating omicron is settling in the upper respiratory tract. That makes it more transmissible but less virulent. Consequently, the new variant, which was first detected in South Africa on Nov. 25, could act similarly to a live attenuated virus vaccine, producing mild symptoms and natural immunity to COVID-19, Malone said.

He urged caution, noting a pre-print U.K. study by Imperial College of London reporting it is finding no difference in omicron hospitalizations compared to delta. However, the U.K. researchers acknowledged in their initial report that hospitalization data “remains very limited at this time.” In fact, South African officials reported last week that only 1.7% of identified COVID-19 cases were admitted to hospitals in the second week of infections in the fourth wave. That’s compared with 19% in the same week of the third delta-driven wave, South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla said at a press conference. [..] Malone also discussed in the WND interview a new study from Ontario, Canada, suggesting vaccination could predispose someone to a higher risk of infection by omicron.

“If so, that would be the clear indication of the vaccine-enhanced infection and disease risk that not just I had been concerned about, but that the FDA was concerned about,” he said. His main caution with the Ontario data is that there is no indication of how many cases were omicron and how many were delta.[..] Malone also commented on the new release of emails showing that outgoing National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins asked White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci to carry out a “quick and devastating published takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration in the fall of 2020. [..] “We have now clear, clear evidence of collusion by senior government officials to suppress scientific discussion and debate about one of the most crucial issues that we’ve addressed over the last two years, which is whether or not lockdowns make sense,” Malone said.

“And the data are overwhelming. They don’t.” And, he continued, “the worst part is the rest of the world looks to the U.S. for leadership.” “There’s a good chance that Australia wouldn’t be in this hellhole that they are now in if Francis Collins hadn’t substituted his opinions for actually looking at the data,” Malone said. On Friday, Malone told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that “if you believe in a God,” the rise of the omicron variant “looks an awful lot like a Christmas present.” He said that to “the experienced vaccinologist,” it looks “like a live attenuated virus vaccine that you might design for purpose.” “It’s going to elicit a strong mucosal immune response. This is about as good as we could possibly want right now, in terms of outcomes,” he said.

Yet, Ingraham noted, the media and political establishment are “freaking out,” calling for shutting things down again. “I think they’re disappointed with the good news,” Malone said.

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Admitting your product is worthless, in an attempt to make even more money. And people will fall for it.

BioNTech CEO Says ‘Even Triple-Vaccinated’ Transmit COVID (SAC)

While President Joe Biden and his coronavirus officials are bullying Americans into getting vaccinated or they will face a “deadly winter” for themselves and their families, “one of the scientists behind Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 show said Monday that he believes vaccines alone will not be enough to fight the Omicron variant.” BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told French newspaper Le Monde “even triple-vaccinated people can transmit the disease, and they will have to be tested, especially around vulnerable people.” “With the Omicron variant becoming dominant, protective measures will remain essential, especially this winter” he added, who says they are working on yet another version of the vaccine specifically tailored for the Omicron variant that could possibly be available by March.


So according to an actual scientist in an actual science-based company, even being “triple-vaccinated” will not stop people from the winter of death that Biden claims will happen to only those who are not vaccinated. Not only will vaccines and boosters not guarantee you can hug grandma, but there will be yet another vaccine created to push down our throats in the coming months. Sahin says unfortunately those who received the original Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will lose its efficacy over time. “It’s obvious we are far from the 95 percent effectiveness that we had against the initial virus. But after the third injection our vaccine seems to provide 70 percent or 75 percent protection against any form of the disease, which is still a good result for a vaccine in general — and I think we will be well beyond that for severe forms,” said Sahin.

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When the Wall Street Journal Editorial board turns on Fauci, maybe there’s still hope.

How Fauci and Collins Shut Down Covid Debate (WSJ Ed.)

In public, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins urge Americans to “follow the science.” In private, the two sainted public-health officials schemed to quash dissenting views from top scientists. That’s the troubling but fair conclusion from emails obtained recently via the Freedom of Information Act by the American Institute for Economic Research. The tale unfolded in October 2020 after the launch of the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement by Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff, Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya against blanket pandemic lockdowns. They favored a policy of what they called “focused protection” of high-risk populations such as the elderly or those with medical conditions. Thousands of scientists signed the declaration—if they were able to learn about it.

That didn’t please the lockdown consensus enforced by public-health officials and the press. Dr. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health until Sunday, sent an email on Oct. 8, 2020, to Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists . . . seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises,” Dr. Collins wrote. “Is it underway?” These researchers weren’t fringe and neither was their opposition to quarantining society. But in the panic over the virus, these two voices of science used their authority to stigmatize dissenters and crush debate.

A week after his email, Dr. Collins spoke to the Washington Post about the Great Barrington Declaration. “This is a fringe component of epidemiology,” he said. “This is not mainstream science. It’s dangerous.” His message spread and the alternative strategy was dismissed in most precincts. Dr. Fauci replied to Dr. Collins that the takedown was underway. An article in Wired, a tech-news site, denied there was any scientific divide and argued lockdowns were a straw man—they weren’t coming back. If only it were true. The next month cases rose and restrictions returned. Dr. Fauci also emailed an article from the Nation, a left-wing magazine, and his staff sent him several more. The emails suggest a feedback loop: The media cited Dr. Fauci as an unquestionable authority, and Dr. Fauci got his talking points from the media. Facebook censored mentions of the Great Barrington Declaration. This is how groupthink works.

On CBS last month, Dr. Fauci said Republicans who criticize him are “really criticizing science, because I represent science. That’s dangerous.” He isn’t “science.” And it’s also dangerous for scientific officials to mobilize to quash dissent, without which it’s easy to make tragic mistakes. A scientific debate over pandemic policy was and still is in the public interest, especially during a once-in-a-century plague. Focused protection of nursing homes and other high-risk populations remains the policy road not taken during the pandemic. Perhaps this strategy wouldn’t have prevailed if a debate had been allowed. But it isn’t enough to repeat, as Dr. Collins did on Fox News Sunday, that advocates are “fringe epidemiologists who really did not have the credentials,” and that “hundreds of thousands of people would have died if we had followed that strategy.”

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“These are very disturbed people who have allowed a taste of power and influence to fuel an underlying narcissism.”

Fauci Says Unvaxxed Relatives Not Worthy of Family Christmas Gatherings (CTH)

Dr. Anthony Fauci is a thin-skinned, unstable ideologue with visions of grandiosity. He has wreaked havoc on our nation and permeated a major crisis on the global stage with his poor advice on COVID-19. He personifies a mentally and emotionally unstable person within his worldview. Fauci is representative of a group of psychologically unstable people who need a career operating in government systems and institutions, because they could never be successful in the private sector. They can only succeed in academia and institutions without merit-based structures.


These are very disturbed people who have allowed a taste of power and influence to fuel an underlying narcissism. Their disorder exhibits as vengeful bitterness, the result of adolescent isolation and no emotional balance. History will not look well upon Anthony Fauci any more than history reflects well upon Josef Mengele. In this short Q&A snippet, Anthony Fauci reveals his bitter worldview by saying unvaccinated people should be told to stay away from family events this Christmas. Notice the reference point of the response is that people should appreciate being in his presence.

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“..they control 61 per cent of the biomedical research on earth, so they control pretty much what gets funded.”

An Interview With Fauci’s Nemesis (Beck)

SB: Have you received any legal challenges from Anthony Fauci or Bill Gates? RFK:There is nothing in that book that is untruthful. Secondly, I would welcome a lawsuit from Bill Gates and Tony Fauci, and they know that that would be a giant strategic mistake. Even if I did put something in that book that was defamatory, I don’t think they would challenge it. They’ve got so much to lose from the truth. Their only viable strategy is silence.

SB: What kind of reaction have you had from MSM? RFK: There’s no reviews in the papers [despite the book’s No 1 best-seller status]. I am now being targeted with a barrage of ad hominem articles about me, but they don’t even mention the book, which is weird. They do not want to talk about this book because it’s full of truth. The truth is their deadliest enemy.

SB: Have you ever met either Fauci or Gates? RFK:: I’ve met Tony Fauci. Our paths have crossed for many years. I’ve been working on vaccine issues since 2005 so I’ve seen him in action on many occasions. In 2016, President Trump asked me to run a vaccine safety commission. To do that I had a series of meetings with the regulatory leadership including Fauci and Gates. One of my challenges to them was to say: ‘You have never done a single double-blind placebo-controlled trial for any of the 72 recommended vaccines being given to children.’ Publicly, Fauci was saying I had not been telling the truth about this. I said to him: ‘Show me one trial for any of those 72 jabs.’ He made a show of looking through the files he’d brought with him. He said: ‘We don’t have them here; we’ll send them to you.’ He never did send them to me and a year later I sued them. We filed a suit asking them to show us any of those studies they had and after a year of litigation they came back and said we don’t have any. Ironically, Fauci is now saying that he can’t use ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid without back-up from a double-blind placebo-controlled trials.

SB: The impression I get of Fauci is that he knows what to say in public but he seems like he has a dark side to him. The only reason for providing toxic drugs to people, like remdesivir, that has been so harmful to people with Covid, is because you know many who receive it will die. Does he know that? RFK: Of course he does. He had remdesivir in a study in Africa to see if it worked against Ebola. In 2019, the Data and Safety Monitoring Review Board (DSMB) monitored his work. Two months later, the board was saying it’s not safe, it’s killing people. It’s produced by the pharmaceutical company Gilead which Bill Gates has a huge stake in. Coronavirus does not kill 50 per cent of people who get it whereas trials show that over 50 per cent of people treated with remdesivir died.

SB: In your book you talk about two types of scientists, those who allow Fauci to dictate their careers and those who don’t want to be compromised, but he seems to be very effective at crushing dissent. RFK: Between him, Gates and Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust [part of the Trust’s £29.1billion annual budget comes from Gates], they control 61 per cent of the biomedical research on earth, so they control pretty much what gets funded. Also, that funding power gives them the power to kill studies they do not want and to ruin scientists who are trying to do those studies and to bankrupt universities. I show how that works in the book. If you had a young scientist at let’s say UCLA Medical School, [University of California, Los Angeles] who says why don’t we study whether the vaccines are causing injury by doing a cluster analysis of medical records?

That’s an easy study to do. His dean will get a call from one of Tony Fauci’s flunkeys at the NIH [National Institutes of Health run by Fauci] saying you’d better stop that guy from doing the study, Tony doesn’t want it done. UCLA, like all the medical schools in this country, is getting hundreds of millions of dollars from Fauci and the NIH and are completely dependent on the royalties from pharmaceutical products that Fauci develops in his lab, farms out to the universities for phase 1 and phase 2 trials, then brings in a pharmaceutical company to produce the drug who then shares the patent with the university. Everybody is on the hook; everybody is making money and all of them have a huge incentive not to talk.

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Important to remember: “Every single attempt at vaccination against a coronavirus in the past in both man and beast has failed to produce durable immunity.”

Here’s A Reality Check (Denninger)

Pfizer has disclosed in their own data that for young people the shots are as dangerous, as measured in hospitalization, for ***** as they are for caused myocarditis. Since infection is never certain but inoculation, once you take it, is, there was never an argument for authorizing these jabs in healthy young people simply on the math. We did it anyway and we’re still advocating it. That is just one condition but let’s be clear: If you jab your kid you’re putting them at equal or greater risk of being hospitalized from one side effect of the ******* alone as from *****-19 itself. If you do that as a parent you’re a monster. If you do it as a young adult on your own absent some individualized risk you’re stupid.


Anyone who believes that an agent injected into the muscle of the arm that can and does sometimes cause inflammation of the heart will not also cause inflammation of other tissues and, through doing so, also cause damage to other tissues has rocks in their head. The scope of that additional damage is completely unknown because we’re not performing any surveillance nor did we originally. We have never, for example, taken a group of 100 people, pulled full blood work including markers for inflammation, cardiac damage and others, then vaccinated them and repeated said tests on a 2, 4, 8 and 16 week interval to determine if we got negative metabolic changes and if we did, whether they were transient or durable. Nobody knows because we never did the work.

But it is entirely reasonable to expect that additional risk of stroke, heart attack, pulmonary embolism and more, all of which are life-altering, produce permanent disability and can be fatal, would be made materially more-likely by an agent that causes myocarditis. Indeed that would be a reasonable medical presumption; inflammation in the body is a known contributing factor to strokes and VTE which encompasses pulmonary embolisms. Given the billions that these companies have made you’d think we would have required such in-detail tracing, collection of information and publication of the results. We did not then and still haven’t. Omicron has now thrown mud in everyone’s eye by doing exactly what every coronavirus has done through time — mutationally evaded the neutralization potential of vaccination.


Every single attempt at vaccination against a coronavirus in the past in both man and beast has failed to produce durable immunity. Several attempts have resulted in wildly-enhanced disease. We’re seeing the latter now with attack rates in vaccinated people exceeding that for unvaccinated with Omicron. The only good news is that it may be true that Omicron is less-virulent; there is some early evidence that it is much less replication-competent in the lungs. That’s a good thing because upper respiratory infection is not serious; it is the lung infection that gets you. In other words it may be that Omicron is a nasty cold. That it is more-able to infect vaccinated people than not is troubling but if its less-virulent it may not matter — indeed it may be a blessing. We don’t yet know and won’t for a few months, and that assumes we get honest data — which we may not.

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The moment such people say this, you better prepare for number six. Israel just officially announced number 4. Your country will follow soon.

Prepare For Fourth Covid Jab, Tony Blair Institute Says (RT)

The research institute founded by former UK prime minister Tony Blair has called on the government to create a command-and-control team that could help it remain “ahead of the curve” and quickly roll out more vaccines. In a paper published on Tuesday, the Tony Blair Institute said the British government should seek to develop infrastructure that would allow it to mobilize new vaccination campaigns within 48 hours. With the prospect of yet more Covid variants emerging, it highlighted that “a fourth dose of the vaccine may soon be needed.” The institute contended that the ability to respond to future Covid strain outbreaks would depend on whether administrations could implement “a better approach to ‘command and control’ through a strong and coherent public-health emergency operations center.”


The non-profit organization said the emergence of Omicron highlighted the fact that governments are often forced to react, rather than working to “stay ahead of the curve.” “To achieve this, we need to take decisions fast, take them in a coordinated manner, and execute effectively and at speed. Be prepared at all times,” the paper reads. Noting examples from other nations, the institute said the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation should be doing more, including “rapidly” approving the use of Covid-19 vaccines in children aged five to 11 in an effort to reduce transmission.

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As member countries ponder a 3 month gap between jabs/boosters, the EU goes for 9?!

Interesting that the “primary vaccination schedule” is still just 2 jabs.

EU Sets Binding 9 Month Validity Of Covid-19 Travel Pass (R.)

The European Commission on Tuesday adopted rules that will make the European Union Covid-19 certificate valid for travel nine months after the completion of the primary vaccination schedule. The proposal comes as several EU states introduce additional requirements on travellers in a bid to reduce the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant. EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders told Reuters the EU Commission was against additional requirements, and was assessing the measures. The new rules will be binding on the 27 EU states from Feb. 1. The rule can be blocked by a qualified majority of EU governments or a simple majority of European Parliament members, but officials have said there is sufficient support for it. The rule replaces a non-binding recommendation the EU Commission put forward in November.

Once the rule is effective, EU states will be obliged to let fully vaccinated travellers with a valid pass access their territory. However, as an exception justified by a deteriorating situation, they could still impose further requirements, such as negative tests or quarantines, as long as they are proportionate. Seven EU states are currently requiring fully vaccinated travellers from other EU countries to also show a negative Covid-19 test upon arrival, measures some see as damaging the credibility of the EU pass. The states are Italy, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Latvia, Cyprus and Austria. “We prefer to use for the free movement in Europe only the certificate without additional measures,” Reynders said. He noted that the additional requirements could be justified by concerns caused by the spread of the Omicron variant, but governments had to prove they were proportionate and necessary.

[..] A primary vaccination schedule for Covid-19 is currently composed in the EU of two shots of vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech , AstraZeneca and Moderna, or a single jab of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

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“The vaccine refusenik hunters will receive a wage of 2774 euros, which will be paid 14 times a year, making an annual income of 38,863 euros.”

Austria Hiring People to “Hunt Down Vaccine Refusers” (SN)

The Austrian government is hiring people to “hunt down vaccine refusers,” according to a report published by Blick. Yes, really. The burden for enforcing the fines unjabbed Austrians will have to pay as part of their punishment will fall to their employers, necessitating a new army of ‘inspectors’ to ensure that process is running smoothly. The city of Linz, which is home to 200,000 inhabitants, has a relatively low vaccination rate of 63 per cent. In response, “Linz now wants to hire people who are supposed to hunt down vaccine refusers,” reports Swiss news outlet Blick. The role of the inspectors will be to check on “whether those who do not get vaccinated really pay for it.” The vaccine refusenik hunters will receive a wage of 2774 euros, which will be paid 14 times a year, making an annual income of 38,863 euros.


Nice work if you can get it. “The job includes, among other things, the creation of penal orders as well as the processing of appeals,” according to the report, adding that workers need to be “resilient” and willing to work a lot of overtime. The jobs are only open to Austrian citizens, all of whom will either have to be vaccinated against or fully recovered from COVID. As we previously highlighted, the unvaccinated in Austria could find themselves imprisoned for a year under a new administrative law that would force them to pay for their own internment. Austrians who don’t get vaccinated by February face fines of up to €7,200 ($8,000) for non-compliance, and those who refuse to pay would also face a 12 month jail sentence.

Read more …

It’s clear who the idiot is here, but then again he’s just another propaganda victim, like 99.9% of people.

Ryanair CEO Calls For Unvaccinated “Idiots” To Be Ostracised From Society (SN)

Michael O’Leary, the CEO of Ryanair has declared that anyone who remains unvaccinated should be completely cut off from society, including not being allowed to travel, go to the supermarket to get food, or the pharmacy to get medicine. “If you’re not vaccinated, you shouldn’t be allowed in the hospital, you shouldn’t be allowed to fly, you shouldn’t be allowed on the London Underground, and you shouldn’t be allowed in the local supermarket or your pharmacy either,” the airline executive said, as reported by The Telegraph. “You can sit at home and you know, get your deliveries of medicines and food. But you should not, you know, go to work or go on public transport unless you have a vaccine certificate,” O’Leary clarified.

O’Leary admitted that making vaccines compulsory is “an infringement of your civil liberties,” but added that the way around it is “you simply make life so difficult. Or [make it that] there are lots of things that you can’t do unless you get vaccinated.” Calling the unvaccinated “idiots,” the Ryanir boss further stated “I don’t think that governments should permit those people who are not vaccinated to go and infect everybody else.” O’Leary sardonically stated “We recognise the rights of everybody to decide not to get vaccinated if you so want. If you personally object to vaccination, because it’s some huge government/big pharma conspiracy; apart from the fact that you would be plainly an idiot, we respect your right to be an idiot.”

Ryanair was previously punished by the advertising standards agency in the UK after running a campaign promoting the sale of summer flights with a “Jab & Go!” gimmick despite having previously stated that it wouldn’t require passengers to take a COVID vaccine before they fly. As we previously reported, other airlines have indicated they will not allow passengers who haven’t had the vaccine to fly, including Singapore Airlines, which became the first carrier to officially launch a COVID passport.

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I’ll admit, I’m getting confused.

Judge Blocks Biden’s Vaccine Mandate for Federal Contractors in 10 States (ET)

A federal judge in Missouri has issued a temporary hold on the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors in 10 U.S. states while litigation plays out. “We just beat the Biden Administration in court again,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced on Twitter late Monday. “This afternoon, we obtained a preliminary injunction against the vaccine mandate on federal contractors, halting enforcement of that mandate in Missouri and the other states in our coalition.” The preliminary injunction, issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge David Noce, applies to Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.


Schmitt and Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, both Republicans, on Oct. 29 co-led the 10 states in suing the Biden administration over the mandate, calling it “unconstitutional, unlawful, and unwise.” “It will not harm the federal government to maintain the status quo while the courts decide the issues of the President’s authority and the implications for federalism. The Court concludes that, on balance, consideration of the harms and the public interest weigh in favor of a preliminary injunction,” reads the Monday preliminary injunction order from U.S. Magistrate Judge David Noce. A nationwide preliminary injunction is already in place blocking the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors, after a federal court in Georgia on Dec. 7 granted the injunction in a separate seven-state lawsuit led by Georgia.

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This should be checked for every country.

Covid Modelling Shows The Most Worrying Scenario, Not The Most Likely (G.)

Much of the pandemic modelling to make news headlines since Covid-19 hit has depicted concerning scenarios involving high case numbers and hospitalisations. On Thursday, modelling from the University of NSW and cited by NSW health minister Brad Hazzard found Covid-19 cases in the state could reach 25,000 a day by the end of January. The latest modelling to raise alarm bells came from the Doherty Institute and was leaked to the media on Tuesday after being sent to politicians ahead of a meeting of national cabinet on Wednesday. It said Australia could see 200,000 new Covid cases a day by late January or early February. Early into the pandemic in 2020, other models predicted “hundreds of thousands” of Australian deaths, while health workers in NSW were told to prepare for 8,000 deaths in the first-wave.

But these are worst-case scenario models and are just one scenario out of dozens of different scenarios that are calculated by epidemiologists and biostatisticians. What is often lost in the reporting of these worst-case models is that they rarely ever eventuate, but are calculated to allow governments to see what might happen if they did nothing at all to control an outbreak, and to plan accordingly. The leaked Doherty Institute modelling projecting 200,000 cases came with an important caveat; this would only eventuate if nothing was done, including if people did not change their behaviour at all of their own accords. It also assumed no change to the pace of booster roll-outs, and that only very basic restrictions such as requiring masks in hospitals are maintained.

[..] Ahead of national cabinet meeting on Wednesday the chair of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, Prof. Paul Kelly, said of the 200,000 figure “presents one of the worst case of all potential scenarios including assumptions that the Omicron variant is as severe as the Delta variant, an absence of hospital surge capacity, a highly limited booster program, no change to baseline public health and social measures and an absence of spontaneous behaviour change in the face of rising case numbers”. “None of these five assumptions represent the likely state of events, let alone all of them together, therefore presenting that scenario as the likely scenario that will occur is highly misleading.”

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“One can only assume that the provincial health authorities’ relationship-splitting social engineering interventions will increase loneliness and isolation and associated risks for depression, anxiety, PTSD, self-harm, suicide, and drug toxicity for all. This is psychology 101.”

A Letter from a Concerned Psychologist (Nicassio)

Attachment and the need to belong refer to the fundamental human need to maintain close social bonds and stay connected in psychologically and physically safe relationships from cradle to grave. One of the major contributions of psychology research has been to demonstrate that maintaining healthy and secure attachment and belonging is more than a psychological need: Attachment and belonging are primary and critical determinants of mental and physical health. Research in social psychology and neuroscience demonstrates that human beings’ neurobiological response to social exclusion mirrors their response to physical pain and suggests that social exclusion is one of the most painful and threatening events a person can experience.

While it’s not surprising that social exclusion and disturbances in attachment lead to negative emotions and thoughts, what’s less intuitive is that a large body of research has demonstrated that social exclusion is toxic to humans, leading to enduring changes in the brain and biological systems that regulate stress, weakening of the immune system, mental and physical illness, and earlier death. To date the narrative around social restrictions has been, “Well yes, social isolation is hard but restrictions are for the greater good!” But let’s be clear: The newest restrictions are not your run-of-the-mill isolation requirements. These restrictions require British Columbians to selectively exclude and marginalize their unvaccinated friends and loved ones during the most significant season for social gatherings and celebrations.

This is painful for everyone involved, but especially those who will be excluded and spending the holidays alone. It is also qualitatively different from previous social isolation requirements where we were all in it together. Sadly, social exclusion is actually an extremely harmful form of bullying. It’s clear to anyone with an understanding of psychology that these restrictions will cause relational fracturing and personal suffering that will last well beyond the holiday season. Not only is there strong scientific evidence that social exclusion leads to increased morbidity and mortality, but research consistently demonstrates that social exclusion, loneliness, and isolation are predictors of self-harm and suicide. The latest data have also shown a huge escalation in drug toxicity deaths since social restrictions began and this is the tip of the iceberg. One can only assume that the provincial health authorities’ relationship-splitting social engineering interventions will increase loneliness and isolation and associated risks for depression, anxiety, PTSD, self-harm, suicide, and drug toxicity for all. This is psychology 101.

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As we prepare to get rid of Fauci, let’s do the same with Victoria Nuland. Make the world a better place.

Americans Warned About Risk Of Russian Invasion Of Ukraine (RT)

American citizens considering traveling to Ukraine have been advised by Washington to reconsider the trip, citing persistent claims that Russia could be planning an all-out offensive against its Eastern European neighbor. On Monday, the US State Department updated its recommendations for the country, warning that “citizens should be aware of reports that Russia is planning for significant military action against Ukraine.” Americans were informed that this “would severely impact the US Embassy’s ability to provide consular services,” including assisting people in departing from the region in an emergency. The travel notice also continued to advise against travel due to the Covid-19 risk in Ukraine, a recommendation in place for several months.


Guidance urging US citizens to rethink their journey to the former Soviet republic because of its high rates of coronavirus infection had been issued at the end of September. The advisory came after Kiev’s intelligence services and Western officials sounded the alarm in recent weeks, insisting that Moscow could soon launch an all-out offensive against its neighbor. However, the Kremlin has repeatedly rejected the accusations, instead arguing that the prospect of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO destabilizes the situation. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned at the beginning of December that the further expansion of the organization toward Russia is a red line, and that Ukraine’s hopes to be admitted were unacceptable. She accused the US of pulling Kiev into the orbit of the military bloc and turning it into a “bridgehead” of confrontation with Russia, which she warned could cause conflict on the European continent.

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“Goldman Sachs Bank USA had $387 billion in assets versus $48 trillion (yes, trillion) in notional (face amount) derivatives.”

The Fed Gets Its Ducks in a Row for the Next Wall Street Bailout (Martens)

Last Friday, with the public’s attention diverted to the surge in Omicron variant cases of COVID in the U.S. and holiday travelers’ attention focused on the safety of air travel and family gatherings, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York quietly announced, in a one sentence statement, that it was adding the following three federally-insured banks to its list of counterparties for its newly-minted $500 billion Standing Repo Facility: Citibank, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, and the New York Branch of Mizuho Bank. If you’re stunned that Goldman Sachs is allowed to own a federally-insured bank under existing U.S. law, see our previous report: Goldman Sachs’ Rich Man’s Bank Backstopped by You and Me. If you’re stunned that a New York branch of Mizuho Bank, part of the Japanese conglomerate Mizuho Financial Group, is able to have federal deposit insurance backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer, welcome to the world of borderless global banking for the one percent.

These three banks have a number of things in common: (1) each financial institution already has a broker-dealer affiliate that is already one of the Fed’s 24 primary dealers that participates in the Fed’s repo operations; (2) each of the three banks’ primary dealer affiliates took large, secret loans from the Fed’s repo facility when credit collapsed on Wall Street on September 17, 2019; (3) all three institutions have trillions of dollars in exposure to derivatives according to data from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). If all three banks already have broker-dealer affiliates participating in the Fed’s repo loan facility, why would another affiliate be added? The first thought that comes to mind is the fact that the Fed puts a daily cap on the dollar amount that each counterparty can borrow per day. By having two affiliates as counterparties, the amount that can be borrowed is doubled.

Why would these three banks need to have a sugar daddy at the Fed to loan them money in a financial crisis? Because all three banks have huge exposure to derivatives. According to the latest report from the OCC, as of September 30, 2021, Goldman Sachs Bank USA had $387 billion in assets versus $48 trillion (yes, trillion) in notional (face amount) derivatives. Citibank had $1.7 trillion in assets versus $44 trillion in notional derivatives. Mizuho’s bank holding company had $48.8 billion in assets versus $6 trillion in derivatives.

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Musk is … different, and that is refreshing.

“If You Could Die Of Irony, She Would Be Dead”: Musk Slams Liz Warren (ZH)

Elon Musk just sat down with the guys from the Babylon Bee for a 54-minute interview, where the Tesla and SpaceX founder savaged Sen. Liz Warren, and described woke culture as a “mind virus.” “You were pretty mean to Senator Warren there on Twitter recently,” said Babylon Bee EIC Kyle Mann. “Ya slammed her man.””Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen,” he continued – citing Musk’s December 14th response to Warren slamming him for not paying ‘enough’ taxes. To which Musk replied: “She struck first, obviously. She called me a freeloader and a grifter who doesn’t pay taxes, basically. And – I’m literally paying the most tax that any individual in history has ever paid, this year, ever. And she doesn’t pay tax… basically at all. And her salary is paid for by the taxpayer, like me.”

“Could you even use the term irony, would that work?” asked one of the Bee guys. “If you could die of irony, she would be dead.” Musk also opined on woke culture – calling it a “mind virus,” and “arguably one of the biggest threats to modern civilization.” “Wokeness wants to make comedy illegal,” Musk continued, adding “Do we want a humorless society that is simply rife with condemnation, and hate? At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary and hateful. It basically gives mean people a shield to be cruel, armored in false virtue.” When asked why Musk wasn’t appearing on, say, CNN, he replied: “I’m not perverted enough?” perhaps referencing their recent pedo outbreak.

Bee CEO Seth Dillon asked Musk if he gets sick of people badgering him about his wealth, to which he said that until he sold stock, he maintained relatively little cash balances – and that he happens to own 20% of a company that people decided was worth a trillion dollars. He also defended ‘not paying taxes,’ explaining that in 2017 he overpaid, which netted out in 2018, and that since the majority of his wealth is in stock anyway that he wasn’t incurring taxable events. “What am I supposed to do, send shares to the government, somehow?” said Musk.

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

 

Dec 212021
 
 December 21, 2021  Posted by at 9:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Edouard Manet Berthe Morisot with a bouquet of violets 1872

 

Omicron is Not Normal (eugyp)
Omicron Accounted For 73% Of New US Infections Last Week (AP)
No, 73% of US COVID-19 Cases Aren’t Omicron Yet (Prep.)
The Omicron Fake-out (Jim Kunstler)
Fauci’s War on Science: The Smoking Gun (Tucker)
5 Essential Truths About COVID-19 (McCullough)
Pfizer Vaccines Withheld From Vietnamese Children After Deaths & AEs (TSN)
26-Year-Old’s Death From Myocarditis ‘Probably’ Caused by Pfizer Vaccine (CHD)
How Biden Blew It (NR)
Two More House Democrats Not to Run for Reelection, Total Now 23 (CTH)
Alex Jones Sues Pelosi, US Capitol Riot Committee (RT)
It’s Official: Durham Is Investigating The Clinton Campaign (Technofog)

 

 

Massie

 

 

 

 

Biden: “For the unvaccinated, you can expect a winter of death”

DeSantis: “You’re free to get vaccinated or not, but if you get sick either way, you can get monoclonal antibodies to survive. And if you can’t get vaccinated, you can always get Evusheld for protection.”

 

 

Malone Big Bird

 

 

Jordan/Makary

 

 

“The balance of the evidence is that Omicron leaked from a lab engaged in SARS-2 vaccine research.”

Omicron is Not Normal (eugyp)

Omicron is not normal. No immediate progenitors are known; its closest relatives are viruses last seen in early- to mid-2020. The orthodox explanation for this awkward fact, is that it has spent the last 18 months lurking “in a geography with poor genomic surveillance … or … in a chronically infected individual.” The simpler explanation is that it leaked from a laboratory. As el gato malo and others have indicated, evidence is strong that Omicron circulates preferentially in the vaccinated. In all likelihood, it is the result of gain-of-function research, in which SARS-2 was passaged repeatedly through convalescent or vaccinated plasma, in the hopes of helping the virus evade acquired immunity. The purpose of this research would be to anticipate future immune-escape variants that vaccines might target.

Omicron carries a series of highly unlikely and suspicious mutations in its spike protein. It is hard to imagine that these mutations can have arisen via natural processes, because all but one of them are nonsynonymous – that is, they code for different amino acid sequences. Starkly mutated variants favoured by natural selection should have a great many meaningless synonymous mutations as well. Omicron’s ancestors may have spent a significant amount of time adapting to mouse cells, before re-entering human hosts. Omicron appears selected to replicate primarily in the bronchial tract. Deeper in the human lung, it functions far less efficiently than Delta or the first strains from Wuhan. This is probably why it causes mostly mild illness, and it is reminiscent of techniques used to make live attenuated influenza vaccines safer for use in humans.


Such vaccines are cold-adapted, that is, selected to circulate primarily in the cooler upper respiratory tract rather than in the warmer, more vulnerable lungs. The balance of the evidence is that Omicron leaked from a lab engaged in SARS-2 vaccine research. There are many possibilities: It might represent a live, attenuated virus vaccine used informally among researchers, that mutated back to virulence and escaped; it might have been released accidentally; it could even be an attempt to develop a self-spreading vaccine to immunise animals or third world populations.

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“..federal health officials said on Monday..”

Uh, no, they did not.

Omicron Accounted For 73% Of New US Infections Last Week (AP)

Omicron is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the US, federal health officials said on Monday, racing ahead of Delta and other variants and accounting for 73% of new infections last week. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showed nearly a six-fold increase in Omicron’s share of infections in only one week. In much of the country, omicron’s prevalence is even higher. It’s responsible for an estimated 90% of new infections in the New York area, the south-east, the industrial midwest and the Pacific north-west. Since the end of June, the Delta variant has been the main version causing US infections. As recently as the end of November, more than 99.5% of coronaviruses were Delta, according to CDC data.


Scientists in Africa first sounded the alarm about omicron less than a month ago and on 26 November the World Health Organization designated it as a “variant of concern”. The mutant has since shown up in about 90 countries. Much about the omicron variant remains unknown, including whether it causes more or less severe illness. Early studies suggest the vaccinated will need a booster shot for the best chance at preventing omicron infection but even without the extra dose, vaccination still should offer strong protection against severe illness and death. “All of us have a date with Omicron,” said Dr Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “If you’re going to interact with society, if you’re going to have any type of life, Omicron will be something you encounter, and the best way you can encounter this is to be fully vaccinated.”

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“..No humans at the CDC stood up in front of a podium and announced the 73% number, or wrote a press release. It came from the CDC’s automated COVID data tracker website.”

No, 73% of US COVID-19 Cases Aren’t Omicron Yet (Prep.)

Something extremely odd happened this afternoon. The press, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Axios, reported that the CDC had announced that 73% of US COVID-19 cases were now being caused by the Omicron variant, and major public health gurus like Ashish Jha, Eric Topol, Florian Krammer, Eric Feigl-Ding, and Scott Gottlieb circulated the reports at face value. But that’s not really what’s happening. There was some kind of bug in an automated statistical algorithm at the CDC, known as the variant proportions Nowcast. Omicron isn’t really dominant in most of the USA yet (although all evidence continues to indicate it will be soon). And the bug in Nowcast went from a quiet database update on a quiet CDC web page, to a national press sensation, in a matter of hours.

What actually happened? No humans at the CDC stood up in front of a podium and announced the 73% number, or wrote a press release. It came from the CDC’s automated COVID data tracker website. But it’s also not a statement of hard data, it’s the output of an algorithm called the Nowcast. The Nowcast algorithm is based on the CDC’s variant proportions data. Every week a small percentage of US COVID-19 cases are subjected to genome sequencing, which identifies them by strain. Right now it’s about 3.6%, but it varies by state. The CDC collates this data to produce weekly reports on the prevalence of each variant in each of ten regions of the continental USA. However, the genomic data takes time to generate and process, then get deposited into genomics databanks, then get analyzed by the CDC, so the newest data is about two weeks old at each weekly refresh (today, sixteen days old; the week ending December 4).

To display an estimate of current prevalence, the CDC uses an algorithm it calls a “Nowcast,” to project forward from two weeks ago and give an estimate of current prevalence for different strains. The Nowcast algorithm has been remarkably accurate and useful in the past; I followed it with great interest as Alpha, Gamma, Delta, Mu, and other strains washed across the USA from early 2021 until Delta attained total dominance in the summer. It’s a significant achievement for the CDC, and I celebrate them for it. But something is on the fritz now. In this week’s update, which dropped Monday afternoon, the Nowcast algorithm is presenting results that don’t make sense.

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“..the “Joe Biden” regime’s main chance for retaining any power is to keep the Covid panic going long enough to re-run the mail-in voting scams of 2020..”

The Omicron Fake-out (Jim Kunstler)

Omicron supposedly started in South Africa some weeks ago and Covid deaths there are at an 18-month low. The existing “vaccines” appear to be completely ineffective against omicron, so how is more of that stuff going to help? And then why all the hysteria about vaxxing up the vaxx-resistant? Insofar as the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines present not insignificant risks of harmful-to-fatal side effects, plus being ineffective, what is the prudent bet there? Speaking of which, will the public even be able to discern whether the alleged winter death surge is a result of Covid or of adverse reactions to the vaxxes? My money would be on adverse vaxx events. Why is there absolutely no talk — except in the state of Florida, run by Governor Ron DeSantis — about comprehensive early treatment of Covid?

Why is the CDC not setting up early treatment centers around the USA, where people with symptoms can receive monoclonal antibody infusions and kits of well-known, cheap, safe and effective oral medicines that can be used easily at home to defeat the virus? (Those medicines have been surreptitiously outlawed by our own CDC, you know.) Is it outlandish to suppose that the official “Joe Biden” government objective is to allow as many people to die as possible in order to keep the public terrorized? Meanwhile, they’ve provoked the public to line up for Covid tests using a PCR system so discredited for Covid detection that months ago the CDC scheduled it to go offline on December 31st, (And, uh, why the long time-lag between the decision and the action? Answer: it allows the CDC to falsely jack up case numbers until the year’s bitter end.)

With the apparent defeat of the Build Back Better boondoggle, following a long list of other failures, the “Joe Biden” regime’s main chance for retaining any power is to keep the Covid panic going long enough to re-run the mail-in voting scams of 2020 in the 2022 congressional elections. It’s a weak play, though, since the opposition is fully onto it. And if the Democratic Party loses as many seats in Congress and the Senate as it deserves to lose, not a single piece of their toxic legislation will see daylight until the mastodons come home in the next ice age. Also consider that Democratic Party operatives by the limousine-load will be hauled in to testify before opposition-controlled committees and many of these will be subject to criminal referrals.

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Sunetra Gupta (Oxford), Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), and Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford) are top scientists. Fauci labeled them “fringe epidemiologists”. That’s how much respect he has for science and scientists.

Fauci’s War on Science: The Smoking Gun (Tucker)

Those weeks following the release of the Great Barrington Declaration did feel odd. On the good side, medical doctors, scientists, public health workers, and citizens all over the world were thrilled that three top scholars in fields of public health and epidemiology had spoken out against lockdowns and for a reasoned approach to Covid. They eagerly signed the document. Yes, there were some attempts to sabotage it too, with fake names and so on, which should have been a clue about what was coming. The fakes were deleted in days and new methods of confirming signatures were deployed. The document, on the one hand, said nothing controversial. The right way to deal with this pandemic, it said, was to focus on those who could face severe outcomes from disease – a very plain point and nothing new.

There was nothing to be gained by locking down the whole of society because of a pathogen with such a huge differential in its demographic impact. The virus would have to become endemic in any case (including the realization of “herd immunity,” which is not a “strategy” but a descriptive term widely accepted in epidemiology) and certainly would not be stopped by destroying peoples’ lives and liberties. The hope of the Declaration was simply that journalists would pay attention to a different point of view and a debate would begin on the unprecedented experiment in lockdowns. Perhaps science could prevail, even in this climate. On the bad side, and at the very same time, following the release, the attacks began pouring in, and they were brutal, structured to destroy.

The three main signers – Sunetra Gupta (Oxford), Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), and Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford) – made the statement as a matter of principle. It was also born of frustration with the prevailing narrative. Mostly this declaration was intended as an educational effort. But the authors were being called vicious names and treated like heretics that should be burned. There certainly was no civil debate; quite the contrary. It was all quite shocking given that the Declaration was a statement concerning what almost everyone in these professional circles believed earlier in the year. They were merely stating the consensus based on science and experience. Nothing more.

Even on March 2, 2020, 850 scientists signed a letter to the White House warning against lockdowns, closures, and travel restrictions. It was sponsored by Yale University. Today it reads nearly like a first draft of the Great Barrington Declaration. Indeed on that same day, Fauci wrote to a Washington Post reporter: “The epidemic will gradually decline and stop on its own without a vaccine.” But following the March 13-16, 2020 lockdowns, the orthodoxy had evidently changed. And suddenly. The signers of the GBD had declined to change with it. Thus did they endure astonishingly brutal smears. What felt odd at the time was the sheer intensity of the attacks, as well as their dogmatism and ferocity. These attacks also had a strong political flavor that had little regard for science.

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” I’m calling for an immediate pause, a pause in the public program on Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson, until we can do a deep dive on the safety review.”

5 Essential Truths About COVID-19 (McCullough)

1) COVID-19 is ONLY spread when symptoms are present. “The virus cannot be spread unless someone has symptoms, unless someone’s sick,” McCullough said in an address on December 12. “They cannot spread COVID-19 They’re not contagious. That’s been shown now.” He elaborated: “It’s only symptoms that are related to the spread of illness and there is no asymptomatic spread. So, if there’s no asymptomatic spread, as long as nobody in this arena has symptoms, there will not be a single case that comes out of this auditorium. That is an important principle. Now, that means if you’re sick, if you’re sick, and you’re susceptible to COVID-19, please stay home. If your children are sick and they’re susceptible to COVID-19, that could be the case, stay home.”

2) Asymptomatic testing is not FDA cleared or supported by any regulatory bodies. “Because there’s no asymptomatic spread … we never needed to close down the schools,” McCullough continued. “That means we never needed to wear masks, right, because you can’t spread it asymptomatically. That means that there should be no asymptomatic testing.” McCullough observed the World Health Organization (WHO) has agreed with this assessment since the end of June. “Widespread screening of asymptomatic individuals is not a currently recommended strategy due to the significant costs associated with it and the lack of data on its operational effectiveness,” WHO stated.

3) Natural immunity is robust, complete, and durable–it’s “one and done.” “Once somebody is recovered from COVID-19 It’s one and done,” McCullough emphasized. “It’s one and done. You’re done.”New York Attorney Elizabeth Brehm asked the CDC for “documents reflecting any documented case of an individual who: (1) never received a COVID-19 vaccine; (2) was infected with COVID-19 once, recovered, and then later became infected again; and (3) transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to another person when reinfected.” The response from Roger Andoh at CDC was: “A search of our records failed to reveal any documents pertaining to your request. The CDC Emergency Operations Center (EOC) conveyed that this information is not collected.” “Now the CDC has got 41,000 cases, sadly, of full-blown vaccine failures that resulted in hospitalization and death,” McCullough went on, adding, “41,000 vaccine failures, they don’t have a single failure of natural immunity.”

4) COVID-19 is a treatable illness in high-risk patients with early sequenced multidrug therapy. “The illness is imminently treatable … we can treat COVID-19, and we can actually markedly influence the natural history of the disease by intercepting it early, and those innovations were discovered early in 2020,” McCullough noted. “Everybody should have a COVID-19 survival kit at home,” he stressed. “We should really take charge of this. This viral pandemic is a war. It’s a war and it’s up to us to step up and start to fight this thing.”

5) The genetic COVID-19 vaccines are not sufficiently safe or effective for the public. Vaccine mandates should be dropped, and the vaccine program should be paused for safety review. “I don’t think anybody had a problem with vaccines a year ago. But we now know as they’re broadly used in the general population, like many new products, it has not worked out and we have seen unacceptably high rates of death that occurs after vaccination. About 50% of the deaths that are recorded happen within 48 hours, 80% within a week. “In the U.S. CDC VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] we have 19,000 deaths, about half of those are domestic,” he observed, adding: “We have 31,000 now that are permanently disabled. That is unacceptable for a medicinal product in the United States.

And it’s unacceptable for our agencies not to review safety for us. And it’s unacceptable for our FDA or CDC or NIH and our White House Task Force. It’s unacceptable for them not to provide a safeguard for our citizens. “Moving forward, the vaccines are not enough to bring us out of the pandemic. I am going to close by calling for, at this point in time, a complete and total ban on any vaccine mandates. I’m calling for an immediate pause, a pause in the public program on Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson, until we can do a deep dive on the safety review.

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A batch?!

Pfizer Vaccines Withheld From Vietnamese Children After Deaths & AEs (TSN)

Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are approved for use on children by the Vietnamese government. Children are divided into three age groups for vaccination: 3-11, 12-15, and 16-17 years old. The Ministry of Health predicted that by the fourth quarter of 2021, 95% of the 8.1 million youngsters aged 12 to 17 would have had two COVID-19 vaccine doses. A girl in Hanoi’s Thuong Tin District died only one day after vaccination in November. The cause of death was Grade IV anaphylaxis, according to the Post-Vaccination Events Expert Panel. Anaphylaxis is a set of symptoms caused by an allergic reaction to a foreign substance. The most severe form of anaphylaxis is Grade IV, which includes respiratory and cardiac collapse. However, it was concluded the case had nothing to do with the quality of the vaccine or vaccination methods.

The Hanoi Department of Health consequently spoke with the Ministry of Health regarding two batches of Pfizer vaccines, no. 124001 and 123002, which had been used to vaccinate students. These two batches were initially printed with an expiry date of November 30, 2021, but had their expiry extended to February 28, 2022. After receiving feedback from parents, Hanoi stopped injecting the two vaccines and consulted the Ministry of Health, the other batches were injected normally,” said Director of the Hanoi Department of Health, Tran Thi Nhi Ha. The Hanoi Department of Health published a press release on December 1 verifying that the Covid-19 vaccine is still being administered to students in Hanoi. TrialSite reports that news media in North America and Europe kept far away from this story.

Mobile injection sites are set up at schools in Thanh Hoa, south of Hanoi in the far northern reaches of this Southeast Asian nation. They primarily provide the COVID-19 vaccination to children in high schools, as well as students in vocational and continuing education institutes. However, more than 120 youngsters were hospitalised in the province for post-injection treatment. The provincial health department has taken steps to prevent injection of the suspect batches of vaccines, according to the international version of the VN Express, a popular online news media owned by FPT Group, the largest information technology service company in Vietnam.

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At least New Zealand reports it.

26-Year-Old’s Death From Myocarditis ‘Probably’ Caused by Pfizer Vaccine (CHD)

Pfizer’s COVID vaccine “probably” caused the death of a healthy 26-year-old man, New Zealand health authorities said Monday. The health officials attributed Rory James Nairn’s death, 12 days after his first COVID shot, to myocarditis. “With the current available information, the board has considered that the myocarditis was probably due to vaccination in this individual,” a COVID-19 Vaccine Independent Safety Monitoring Board said in a statement. Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle that can lead to cardiac arrhythmia and death. It can also result from infections, but more commonly myocarditis is a result of the body’s immune reaction to initial heart damage. Nairn’s death is New Zealand’s second reported death linked to myocarditis.

Health authorities in August reported a woman died from heart inflammation likely due to the vaccine.The board said: “The circumstances of these cases do not impact or change the known information on myocarditis, and the benefits of vaccination with the Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19 continue to greatly outweigh the risk of such rare side effects. “The Board has recommended actions to be taken by the COVID-19 Vaccine and Immunization Program to continue to highlight myocarditis as a very rare side effect of the Pfizer vaccine.” A Pfizer spokesperson said the company was aware of the reported death in New Zealand, and that it monitors all reports of possible adverse events and continues to believe the benefit-risk profile for its vaccine is positive.

Nairn’s fiancée, Ashleigh Wilson, is searching for answers after the “traumatic” ordeal. In a video interview with Chantelle Baker from B-2020, Wilson said her fiancé passed away from what paramedics believe was a heart attack. Wilson said Nairn began experiencing heart palpitations on Nov. 5, the same day he received his first shot but that didn’t recognize the severity of his symptoms. Wilson told the NZ Herald Nairn went into the bathroom as the two were preparing to leave for the hospital. That’s when she heard a thud. “He had fallen, his body was blocking the door, his full weight was against it and I couldn’t get it open,” Wilson said. “I could just see him through a crack in the door, I could see that he was gone.” “I watched him die and I could not get to him,” she said.

Read more …

I don’t want to get into US party politics, but this is well written.

How Biden Blew It (NR)

If he had wanted to, President Biden could have fulfilled the promises that he made during his campaign and set himself and his party up for a successful 2022. He could have ignored the hollow passions of Twitter and cable TV, lowered the temperatures that so mar our quotidian politics, and delivered the quiet, limited, competent leadership that he promised during his inconspicuous run for the office. Recognizing that his party enjoyed only the barest of congressional majorities, he could have scaled back his lofty ambitions and ensured that his own focus and the focus of the public at large were as tightly aligned as possible. He could have narrowed his initial COVID bill, eschewing the entreaties to go big and limiting the scope of its relief to the desperate alone.

He could have made the bipartisan infrastructure bill a centerpiece, rather than an afterthought, of his first year. He could have grasped that, because federal power is so limited, his role in fighting the pandemic would be exclusively oratorical. He could have understood that people care deeply about illegal immigration and gotten serious about limiting it, even as he struck a kinder tone. Having realized that inflation was clearly not set to be “transitory,” he could have directed the sum of his efforts toward alleviating it. And, while he was doing all that, he could have paid attention to the details that his job throws up in abundance — particularly in the foreign-policy realm — and thereby avoided the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan that drove a stake through his presidency within six months of his taking his oath.

A little more humility, a greater willingness to say “no,” and a more acute understanding of why he won in the first instance would all have gone a long way. Instead? Well, instead he did precisely none of that. Instead, he ignored all evidence to the contrary and concluded that he was a world-historical figure. Instead, he began talking about “transforming” the country. Instead, he proposed the largest spending program in modern American history. Instead, he sent a welcome message to would-be border-hoppers. Instead, he embraced every ridiculous neologism that progressives saw fit to throw at him: “Latinx,” “BIPOC,” “birthing person,” the lot.

No sooner had Biden won the election, NPR reports, than a bunch of irresponsible voices had begun “flattering him with comparisons to two legendary Democratic presidents of the 20th century — Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson.” And Biden, fool that he is, believed them. In March, Axios confirmed to general derision that Biden was exhibiting a sincere “determination to be one of the most consequential presidents” in American history, and — euphemism alert! — to explore the “elasticity of presidential power.” The correct response to being told that he might be the next FDR would have been to laugh the speaker out of the Oval Office. Instead, flattered, Biden said, “Tell me more.”

Read more …

Rats and ships?

Two More House Democrats Not to Run for Reelection, Total Now 23 (CTH)

Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), the powerful chair of an Appropriations subcommittee overseeing immigration issues, becomes the 23rd House Democrat to announce she will not seek reelection in 2022. Roybal-Allard was first elected to the House in 1993 and was going to have a redistricting battle. Additionally: “Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), a leader of the moderate Blue Dog Democrats, announced earlier Monday that she was retiring in 2022 to spend more time with her young children.” Over the weekend, there were also reports Rep. Albio Sires (D-N.J.) plans to retire. The southern border is a mess, and border state Latino Democrats are switching to the Republican Party. Inflation is skyrocketing and will likely continue getting worse through 2022 due to fiscal and monetary policy.

Wage growth (3%) is nowhere near enough to keep up with food inflation (15%+). Making things worse, gas prices have doubled in most areas and will continue to increase into 2022 due to Biden energy policy. The Democrat regulatory environmental programs in coastal areas and ports are continuing to create massive supply chain issues. Home heating costs this winter will be 60 to 70 percent higher due to Biden energy policy. The Joe Biden vaccination mandate is creating a workforce crisis and escalating backlash created by toxic federal overreach. Several blue states (CA, NY, IL) are losing congressional seats due to population losses, while red states are gaining congressional districts due to population growth. Insane spending by Democrats continues without pause or consideration for the inflation they are creating.

The great ideological cleaving between Democrat communists and middle-class Americans continues. Polling indicates there is a major storm on the horizon for Democrats, as their ideological thirst for power is transparent and being rejected. Every single policy the Biden administration touches creates a crap storm of anxiety for the ‘Main Street’ American worker. The only group benefiting from JoeBama policies is the same group that funds them, Wall Street. Making matters worse, the political communists behind the policy execution are brazen in showcasing how the destruction of the American economy is their intent. Now the White House is promising “a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.” Not exactly an optimistic message.

Even the New York Times has gone from panic to ‘shock’: “The numbers are even worse for Democrats in the eight states expected to have the closest Senate elections, according to Langer — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Not only is Biden’s overall job approval rating in those states 33 percent, 10 points lower than it is in the rest of the country, but registered voters in those eight states say they are more likely to vote for Republican House candidates than for Democrats by 23 points (at 58 percent to 35 percent).”

Read more …

“Jones claimed that the committee is violating his 1st Amendment rights as a journalist, his 4th Amendment right of privacy in his papers, and his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.”

Alex Jones Sues Pelosi, US Capitol Riot Committee (RT)

Shock jock Alex Jones has sued US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the congressional committee that’s investigating last January’s US Capitol riot to block the panel from accessing his phone records and forcing him to testify. The lawsuit, which was filed on Monday in US District Court in Washington, alleges that Pelosi and the investigative committee that she appointed are trying to suspend constitutional liberties “in coercive secret proceedings specifically designed to satiate a political witch hunt.” The committee subpoenaed Jones in November, demanding documents related to his role in organizing an election-fraud protest that escalated into the Capitol riot, according to the lawsuit. The panel also ignored the radio host’s constitutional objections, insisting that he testify in Washington on January 10, and it sought to obtain his phone records through AT&T.


“The select committee’s members have made it abundantly clear that they are only interested in prosecuting political adversaries,” the lawsuit said, adding that Jones was put in the “unconscionable position” of facing imprisonment if he exercises his constitutional rights. Jones claimed that the committee is violating his 1st Amendment rights as a journalist, his 4th Amendment right of privacy in his papers, and his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. The lawsuit noted that committee chairman US Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) showed his disregard for those protections when he suggested in an MSNBC interview earlier this month that invoking the 5th Amendment may show that a witness is “part and parcel guilty to what occurred.”

Read more …

“If the Clinton Campaign was being informed of the work by Fusion GPS, what of the likelihood that the Clinton Campaign was informing the work of Fusion GPS?”

It’s Official: Durham Is Investigating The Clinton Campaign (Technofog)

Igor Danchenko, the primary subsource of Christopher Steele, was arrested on November 3, 2021 for giving multiple false statements to federal officials during his 2017 interviews with the FBI. These included lies about Danchenko’s sources, his travels to Russia, and his falsified contacts with Sergei Millian. We laid out Danchenko’s indictment here. Notably, Special Counsel John Durham alleges that one of Danchenko’s real “sources” was Charles Dolan, Jr. (perhaps first identified by Aaron Mate), who served in various leadership positions to elect Bill Clinton in the 1992 and 1996 campaigns and was an advisor to Hillary Clinton in her 2016 campaign for president. With Dolan’s involvement, the obvious question becomes whether he was the intermediary between the Clinton Campaign and Danchenko.

After all, we know that the Hillary Clinton Campaign paid for the Steele dossiers and the work by Fusion GPS. This was arranged through their attorneys (and the DNC attorneys) at Perkins Coie – notably Mark Elias and Michael Sussmann. Elias left the firm this summer. Sussmann was indicted in September 2021 by Special Counsel Durham for giving false statements relating to the Alfa Bank/Trump hoax. It is highly likely that the Clinton Campaign was receiving updates on the Fusion GPS/Christopher Steele work once they were hired by Perkins Coie in the spring of 2016. This is work the client – the Clinton Campaign – paid for. (The sharing of this info would be consistent with the Clinton Campaign – notably Jake Sullivan – receiving backchannel updates on the Alfa Bank hoax.)

If the Clinton Campaign was being informed of the work by Fusion GPS, what of the likelihood that the Clinton Campaign was informing the work of Fusion GPS? It was Clintons’ idea to link Trump and Russia in the first place. And associates of the Clinton Campaign (Sidney Blumenthal) were working to corroborate parts of the dossier. With that in mind, I leave you this bit of information provided by the New York Times in September (emphasis added) suggesting the complicity of the Clinton Campaign: “Some of the questions that Mr. Durham’s team has been asking in recent months — including of witnesses it subpoenaed before a grand jury, according to people familiar with some of the sessions — suggest he has been pursuing a theory that the Clinton campaign used Perkins Coie to submit dubious information to the F.B.I. about Russia and Mr. Trump in an effort to gin up investigative activity to hurt his 2016 campaign.”

Now let’s review what’s going on in Danchenko’s criminal case. He was originally represented by Chris Schafbuch and Mark Schamel. On December 6, 2021, Stuart Sears appeared on behalf of Danchenko. Schafbuch and Schamel dropped out of the case. According to Durham’s latest filing, Stuart Sears is a partner at the law firm Schertler Onorato Mead & Sears. Notably, the firm is currently representing the 2016 “Hillary for America” presidential campaign (the “Clinton Campaign”), as well as multiple former employees of that campaign, in matters before the Special Counsel.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

V for Vendetta virus

 

 

 

 

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Dec 202021
 
 December 20, 2021  Posted by at 2:43 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Jules Adler Panorama de Paris vu du Sacré Coeur 1935

 

 

Sometimes the best information comes from unexpected sources. That is certainly true this weekend. Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson had a very revealing Twitter talk with Graham Medley, chair of COVID modeling for UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). But first, to get in the mood, a graph on Omicron from South Africa, because that’s what they’re all talking about:

 

 

And if you don’t find that convincing (because it’s “only” South Africa), Robert Malone has your back with his take on a Danish study.

The First 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Cases In Denmark

Denmark, as of December 9, 2021. Denmark has one of the highest RT-PCR testing capacities in the world and screens all positive RT-PCR tests with an Omicron-specific PCR – allowing screening for Omicron. There have been 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant cases identified in Denmark. The earliest Omicron cases in Denmark occurred before South Africa announced the emergence of this variant. Most cases were fully (76%) or booster-vaccinated (7.1%); 34 (4.3%) had a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. The majority of cases with available information reported symptoms (509/666; 76%) and most were infected in Denmark (588/644; 91%). One in five cases cannot be linked to previous cases, indicating widespread community transmission. Nine cases have been hospitalized, one required intensive care and no deaths have been registered.

Highlights:
· 1.2% of cases have been hospitalized
· 0.3% in intensive care
· 0% deaths.

· 83% were fully or booster vaccinated, 17% not vaccinated (including 2.6 vaccine started)
· 4.3% had previous SARS-CoV-2 infection
· 91% have no travel history, 9% reported travel

My take: this study is important because although there are studies and spokespeople from South Africa stating similar results, the Danish population in terms of age, body weight, life expectancy, etc. is more similar demographically to the US population. This Danish study suggests that Omicron will affect the American population similarly.

I wrote earlier today: “Mild” is a four letter word. Well, for politicians and media and drugmakers, that is.

 

Then, the UK. Where word today is that 12 people have died WITH Omicron and 104 are in hospital WITH Omicron. Dying WITH Omicron is not the same as dying FROM Omicron, and being in hospital with it says nothing either, if you don’t know a patient’s age, history, comorbidities etc. And a “case”, as that word is abusively used all the time, is in reality just a positive test with the inherently flawed PCR procedure, and 99.7% of positive tests never go anywhere. Meaningless.

The UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, SAGE, predicts “anything from 200 to 6,000 deaths a day” (42,000 a week) from Omicron, and I read somewhere there’s a 2 million cases per week prediction. But there’s something about SAGE’s working methods that you really should know: they only focus on bad or worse scenarios. And it’s not even strictly their fault: good or mild scenarios are simply not their assignment.

Here are Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson and SAGE chair of COVID modeling Graham Medley:

My Twitter conversation with the chairman of the Sage Covid modelling committee

The latest Sage papers have been published, envisaging anything from 200 to 6,000 deaths a day from Omicron depending on how many more restrictions we’ll get – up to and very much including another lockdown. Earlier today I had an unexpected chance to ask questions of Graham Medley, the chair of the Sage modelling committee. He’s a professor at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) which last weekend published a study on Omicron with very gloomy scenarios and making the case for more restrictions. But JP Morgan had a close look at this study and spotted something big: all the way through, LSHTM assumes that the Omicron variant is just as deadly as Delta. ‘But evidence from South Africa suggests that Omicron infections are milder,’ JP Morgan pointed out in a note to clients. Adjust for this, it found, and the picture changes dramatically:-

“Bed occupancy by Covid-19 patients at the end of January would be 33% of the peak seen in January 2021. This would be manageable without further restrictions.’ So JP Morgan had shown that, if you tweak one assumption (on severity) then – suddenly – no need for lockdown. Why was this scenario left out? Why would this fairly-important and fairly-basic fact on Omicron modelling not presented by SAGE modellers like Prof Medley to ministers – and to the general public? I was thrilled for the chance to speak to him on Twitter. It was kind of him to make the time (he’s still going, as far as I can make out). The Spectator data hub has a page devoted to past Sage modelling vs actual, and I wanted to make sure I was not being unfair to Sage in my selection or presentation of those charts.

The latest Sage paper-drop – the 6,000-deaths-a-day one – refers to ‘scenarios,’ not predictions. Prof Medley emphasises the distinction: saying something could happen is not saying that there’s a realistic chance of it happening. But then why do SAGE modellers publish some scenarios and not others? I then jumped to ask Prof Medley.



Revealingly, he seemed to think my question odd: if it’s quite plausible that Omicron is mild and doesn’t the threaten the NHS, what would be the point of including that as a ‘scenario’? He seemed to suggest that he has been given a very limited brief, and asked to churn out worse-case scenarios without being asked to comment on how plausible they are. “We generally model what we are asked to model. There is a dialogue in which policy teams discuss with the modellers what they need to inform their policy.” Might this remit mean leaving out just-as-plausible, quite-important scenarios that would not require lockdown? “Decision-makers are generally on only interested in situations where decisions have to be made.”


Note how careful he is to stay vague on whether any of the various scenarios in the Sage document are likely or even plausible. What happened to the original system of presenting a ‘reasonable worse-case scenario’ together with a central scenario? And what’s the point of modelling if it doesn’t say how likely any these scenarios are? From what Prof Medley says, it’s unclear that the most-likely scenario is even being presented to ministers this time around. So how are they supposed to make good decisions? I highly doubt that Sajid Javid is only asking to churn out models that make the case for lockdown. That instruction, if it is being issued, will have come from somewhere else.

Isn’t that the craziest thing? I think Nelson may be right, and politicians may not be looking for deliberately misleading (to the downside) studies. But those are still all they get, and base their policies upon.

And for some people involved, I am not so sure. Like for Anthony Fauci, and for Pfizer. And of course, the problem with SAGE modeling is probably repeated in 100 other countries, by all the so-called experts, and they feed off each other. Count your blessings.

 

Meanwhile, the UK increased its PCR testing by some 65% recently, so what are we really talking about, if not apples and bananas?

Omicron Surge is Mostly Due to Ramping Up Testing

Reported infections in the U.K. have suddenly spiked in the last three days, up from 59,610 on Tuesday to 78,610 on Wednesday, 88,376 on Thursday and 93,045 on Friday. Looking at the data regionally, the spike is currently much more pronounced in London, the South East, the East of England, the East Midlands and the North West than it is in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, the South West and the West Midlands. It’s not clear at this point if it is going to continue to rise, though the last three days’ counts don’t appear to indicate continued sharp growth. It is also so far largely an artefact of massively increased testing, as the graph below with data for the U.K. up to December 16th shows. Similar is true for Scotland. Positive tests have spiked.

But positivity is up only a little due to the large increase in testing. How significant is it that the spike began on Monday December 13th, the day after Boris Johnson’s Sunday press conference when he warned everyone about Omicron and told them to get their booster jab? There was a huge surge in demand for booster doses starting that Monday and continuing throughout the week. Could the fact that this surge coincided with a similar surge in both testing and positive tests be more than coincidence? Perhaps people got tested before getting their booster, or just because of the dire warning of a new threat.

 

The CDC doesn’t like the term “mild”, and neither do the media. because it makes for poor clickbait. They all prefer terms like “grim”, “soar”, “rocket”, “leap”. And they love the words “patients” and “deaths”. As US deaths were down by, what, 30%? (Note in the graph how deaths decreased).

CDC issues grim forecast warning that weekly COVID cases will jump by 55% to 1.3 MILLION by Christmas Day and that deaths will surge by 73% to 15,600 a week as Omicron becomes dominant strain

Grim new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have predicted that US COVID-19 deaths will soar by 73 per cent to 15,600 a week by January 8, and that cases will rocket to 1.3 million a week by Christmas Day. The agency revealed projections on Wednesday afternoon that show America will suffer up to 15,600 new Covid deaths a week as of January 8 – or 2,228 deaths per day – a 58 per cent increase from 8,900 deaths currently being recorded each week, equivalent to 1,285 deaths a day. Another CDC prediction estimates that between 620,000 and 1.3 million Americans will have been diagnosed with Covid by the week that ends on December 25 – Christmas Day. That represents a 55% leap on the 840,000 cases that have been recorded over the last week.

Omicron will likely become the dominant Covid strain in the coming weeks, and cause a massive surge of cases shortly after Christmas, one expert has warned, likely fueling the surge the CDC predicts. Dr Gregory Poland, a top epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic told DailyMail.com that an Omicron-fueled surge in cases could be right around the corner. ‘As best any of us can model, we will have an explosion of cases after the holidays in the in the early-to-mid-January timeframe,’ he said. ‘This variant is hyper transmissible, it spreads exponentially in an environment of cold weather, massive holiday get togethers, no masking and insufficient immunization.’

He believes it will become the dominant strain in the UK – which recorded a record 78,610 cases on Wednesday – in the coming days, and that the U.S. will follow around two weeks later. Cornell University in upstate New York is suspected to be home to the first US Omicron cluster, after 930 students were diagnosed with the virus in recent days. The college says every one of the positive tests it has sequenced so far has been the Omicron variant. A Cornell spokesman hasn’t said exactly how many Omicron cases have been identified, but added that they expect most, if not all, the 930 cases to be caused by the new variant.

Read more …

And Tony Grinch Fauci is not about to be outdone by the CDC.

Fauci Foresees Potential Record Death Rate From Omicron

Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, said on Sunday that record-breaking death rates could occur as the COVID Omicron variant spreads across the U.S. Fauci made an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, where host Jake Tapper pressed the leading infectious disease expert on where he believes the pandemic is headed. Tapper asked, “Do you expect new record high numbers for cases? And what about hospitalizations and deaths?” “Yes, well, unfortunately, Jake, I think that that is going to happen,” Fauci replied.


“We are going to see a significant stress in some regions of the country on the hospital system, particularly in those areas where you have a low level of vaccination, which is one of the reasons why we continue to stress the importance of getting those unvaccinated people vaccinated.” [..] “It is going to be tough,” Fauci said. “We can’t walk away from that, Jake. We can’t, because, with Omicron that we’re dealing with, it is going to be a tough few weeks to months as we get deeper into the winter.”

If and when you’re suffering under yet another lockdown and/or any other restrictions, you should know they are for naught. There is no indication to date that Omicron will fill up hospitals, or ICUs, or that it will kill millions of people.

But that for now refuted scenario is still why those restrictions are being put in place, why you are being told not to hug your intensely lonely grandma for Christmas. Useless. And why everyone is told to get a booster, and soon another. Also useless.

It’s time for all of you to grow a spine and a pair of balls (sorry, ladies, just a manner of speech) and start living your lives again. Time to get rid of Fauci, and of Pfizer, and SAGE, and fill in your local/national bunch of experts. Because as long as they are there, they will hog the limelight, and you will never be able to start to live your life again.

A simple Christmas message.

 

 

 

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Dec 152021
 


Otto Dix Ice drift 1940

 

Latest VAERS Estimate: 388,000 Americans Killed By The Covid Vaccines (Kirsch)
Covid Boosters May Be Needed Every 6 Months To Protect Against Omicron (G.)
Minimal Cross-over Between Mutations Associated With Omicron Variant (bioRxiv)
Young People 40 Times More Likely To Die From Vaccines Than From COVID (GGI)
The FDA Approves Boosters For Minors Without Doing Any Testing (TF)
Why is Covid-19 Vaccination of Children an Unforgivable Sin (VanDen Bossche)
South Africa’s Omicron Outbreak Already “Running Out of Steam” (SN)
Spike-Only Vaccine a Colossal Blunder: Vaccine Escape Due to Vaccination (PR)
They’ll Use the Welfare State to Get Compliance on Vaccine Mandates (Mises)
Between the Forceps and the Stone (Malone)
Omicron Unleashes New Wave of Hysteria, With Rule by Decree in Force
The Pandemicists Must Be Stopped (eugyppius)
I Chart in your General Direction (Rudolph Rigger)
Pfizer Jab Prevents 70% Of Hospitalizations In South Africa (ZH)
Davos’ Last Stand Flops at the Box Office (Luongo)
Vatican Court Judge: Gates & Soros Use Covid To Impose ‘Total Control’ (RT)
UK Restaurants And Pubs Fear 40% Cut In Christmas Takings (G.)

 

 

“Isn’t it fascinating that the direction has always been towards more fear, and never towards calming things down?”

 

 

In South Africa “..the percentage of people who die from a COVID infection has dropped significantly since the arrival of Omicron…”

 

 

“Omicron may be, in fact, a better vaccine than anything cooked up by Pfizer, Moderna or even the Russians.”

 

 

A huge amount of material today. And a creeping feeling that we need to step up our game. We get held back all the time by the one-sided, one-dimensional “reporting” in the mainstream media, but it has become too dangerous not to counterbalance that.

When everyone starts inoculating kids, while the jabs are of no benefit to them, but a great risk, we have gone too far. And are very much responsible for them.

The real information is out there, and out here at TAE, but it’s prohibited from reaching people.

 

 

 

 

Louisiana nurse

 

 

Steve Kirsch bases his report on VAERS data: “As of Dec 14, 2021, there are 9,136 deaths reported into VAERS..”

However, OPENVAERS.com numbers for Dec 3: “19,886 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths”. (And 1,803,081 adverse events).

That means deaths could be twice what Kirsch says. Which accidentally would bring it to about 800,000, the exact number that is being reported for total US deaths from Covid. But that, we know, is bogus, it makes no difference between death FROM and death WITH Covid.

It’s time we sort this out.

Latest VAERS Estimate: 388,000 Americans Killed By The Covid Vaccines (Kirsch)

Wayne [at VAERS Analysis did an under-reporting factor (URF)] computation using death data in CMS. This overcomes any objections about the validity of using anaphylaxis rates as a proxy for death rates. The VAERS URF he computed was 44.64. This seems reasonable to me. It’s really not far from the 41 I calculated. Also, Wayne subsequently looked at the numbers for 9 states. The average value was 40, not far from the 41 I calculated from anaphylaxis. I had one of my team members double check his numbers. No mistake. Now, let’s see what that means. As of Dec 14, 2021, there are 9,136 deaths reported into VAERS. If we subtract out more than twice the total number of deaths reported in any previous year (to be super conservative about estimating background deaths):

So our new best estimate of the number of “excess deaths” caused by the vaccine is 388,000. Because there isn’t a plausible mechanism of excess death other than the vaccine (certainly our “always vigilant” CDC has never suggested an alternate cause), the process of elimination leads us to conclude the obvious: that these excess deaths were, in fact, caused by the vaccine. This should really be a surprise to anyone paying attention to the clinical trials. For example, in the Pfizer trial, you were much more likely to die if you got the vaccine than if you got the placebo. They simply forgot to mention that in the abstract of the paper (and they were incapable of accurately counting the number of deaths in each group as well). In short, the vaccine is a killing machine.

Read more …

There is nothing that points to this. Instead, omicron may well be the booster that ends Covid.

We cannot be sure yet, but that’s at least as likely as it becoming some mass killer.

Covid Boosters May Be Needed Every 6 Months To Protect Against Omicron (G.)

A third booster Covid-19 vaccine dose will be essential to get high protection against symptoms from the Omicron variant and it appears likely the variant will become the dominant strain in Australia, virologists from the Kirby Institute say. The new data from the Kirby Institute comes as Covid-19 case numbers in New South Wales jumped again on Wednesday to 1,360, 25 of them are the Omicron variant. There are now 89 Omicron cases in NSW. The researchers also said Covid boosters may be required every six months to protect against the variant. Virologists from the Kirby Institute presented new data on Wednesday after growing the Omicron variant in a laboratory and testing how it responded to various samples, including from the fully vaccinated, from those who had recovered from the virus but were unvaccinated, and those who had recovered from the virus and also received two vaccine doses.

The data has now been sent to all chief health officers across Australia. An associate professor in the institute’s immunovirology and pathogenesis program at the University of NSW, Stuart Turville, said the laboratory obtained samples from the first two people identified with the Omicron variant in Australia. They had arrived into Sydney from Doha and were fully vaccinated. Despite their vaccination status, they were as infectious as unvaccinated people, Turville said. “We knew previously that Beta was the most [vaccine] evasive variant we have come across, in terms of potency at inhibiting infection,” he said. “Omicron was flatline … we saw zero protection with the antibodies from double-vaccinated donors … irrespective of the type of vaccine. We don’t need to talk about AstraZeneca or Pfizer, both of them are zero.”

However, he said it was likely those two travellers had a poor vaccine response and this did not mean two doses of the vaccines offered zero protection against any infection from Omicron. Data from South Africa released overnight suggested protection from infection was 33% for those who are double-dosed, similar to the Kirby data which predicts 37%.

Read more …

Marty Makary: “T-Cell immunity is strong and effective against Omicron. This is the most significant (and overlooked) scientific paper of the entire Omicron saga. The fixation on antibody levels has diverted attention away from comprehensive immunity, including cellular.”

Minimal Cross-over Between Mutations Associated With Omicron Variant (bioRxiv)

Abstract There is a growing concern that ongoing evolution of SARS-CoV-2 could lead to variants of concern (VOC) that are capable of avoiding some or all of the multi-faceted immune response generated by both prior infection or vaccination, with the recently described B.1.1.529 (Omicron) VOC being of particular interest. Peripheral blood mononuclear cell samples from PCR-confirmed, recovered COVID-19 convalescent patients (n=30) infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the United States collected in April and May 2020 who possessed at least one or more of six different HLA haplotypes were selected for examination of their anti-SARS-CoV-2 CD8+ T-cell responses using a multiplexed peptide-MHC tetramer staining approach.

This analysis examined if the previously identified viral epitopes targeted by CD8+ T-cells in these individuals (n=52 distinct epitopes) are mutated in the newly described Omicron VOC (n=50 mutations). Within this population, only one low-prevalence epitope from the Spike protein restricted to two HLA alleles and found in 2/30 (7%) individuals contained a single amino acid change associated with the Omicron VOC. These data suggest that virtually all individuals with existing anti-SARS-CoV-2 CD8+ T-cell responses should recognize the Omicron VOC, and that SARS-CoV-2 has not evolved extensive T-cell escape mutations at this time.

Importance The newly identified Omicron variant of concern contains more mutations than any of the previous variants described to date. In addition, many of the mutations associated with the Omicron variant are found in areas that are likely bound by neutralizing antibodies, suggesting that the first line of immunological defense against COVID-19 may be compromised. However, both natural infection and vaccination develop T-cell based responses, in addition to antibodies. This study examined if the parts of the virus, or epitopes, targeted by the CD8+ T-cell response in thirty individuals who recovered from COVID-19 in 2020 were mutated in the Omicron variant. Only one of 52 epitopes identified in this population contained an amino acid that was mutated in Omicron. These data suggest that the T-cell immune response in previously infected, and most likely vaccinated individuals, should still be effective against Omicron.

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“.. the risk of death from vaccination in people over the age of 20 can be up to 40 times greater than for Covid-19..”

Young People 40 Times More Likely To Die From Vaccines Than From COVID (GGI)

A major Japanese medical bulletin has warned that the risk of dying from the COVID-19 vaccine for people in their 20s maybe 40 times higher than the disease itself. It was found that the risk of death of the vaccine might even be as astronomically high as 40 times more for the young, This was claimed by a review in the latest issue of Med Check which is a bimonthly bulletin published by the Japan Institute of Pharmacovigilance (NOPJIP) as a member of the International Society of Drug Bulletins (ISDB). Regarding the reported deaths of individuals between the ages of 20 and 29 within one or two weeks after receiving the vaccination, Med Check estimates the death rate for that age at 3.2 deaths per each million doses administered.

One of the deaths apparently caused by the vaccine included the death of a 27-year-old professional baseball player. The player, after eight days of getting the COVID vaccine, collapsed and later died post a month long hospital battle. The bulletin suggested that the death toll could potentially be higher, partly because the Japanese government only requires reports of suspected injuries within 28 days of the vaccination. As of October 15, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare had received a total of 1,308 reports of deaths from COVID vaccination. According to Med Check, in Japan, the risk of a fatal reaction to the vaccine, despite having just three cases, is much higher than the risk of contracting the virus for young adults, who have a 0.6 to 0.8 per million chance of dying from the disease. As of June 2021, only 7 of the 11.8 million Japanese in their 20s had died from COVID-19, and by mid-August, 10 had died.

Med Check found that the risk of dying from the vaccine was seven times higher in June and almost five times higher by August 11 compared to the risk of coronavirus infection. Over the course of several years, the risk of death from vaccination in people over the age of 20 can be up to 40 times greater than for Covid-19. Med Check also noted that there had been no COVID-19 deaths under the age of 20 in Japan until September 2021. “If children in this age group are vaccinated, it may cause death,” the bulletin warned. “Even if children and adolescents and people in their 20s are infected, it is naturally mild or asymptomatic because they have less SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2 than adults especially old people. It is ridiculous to consider vaccination for school children.”

According to a disturbing new study, social distancing, facemaks and other such COVID rules are responsible for causing a 23% decline in children’s cognitive abilities. The study also found a similar reduction in the development of children’s communication skills, both verbal and nonverbal.

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They’ve been doing this for two years now. The consequences will be beyond devastating.

The FDA Approves Boosters For Minors Without Doing Any Testing (TF)

Late last week, on December 9, the FDA approved the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, “authorizing the use of a single booster dose for administration to individuals 16 and 17 years of age.” The booster is to be given at least 6 months after vaccination. Before we get to the data the FDA cited in the booster for kids aged 16-17, let’s go through the facts: COVID-19 is not a threat to teenagers aged 16-17. On October 25, we warned that the FDA was about to approve an experimental COVID-19 vaccine for children. It seemed unnecessary to give the EUA Pfizer vaccine to minors, as CDC data showed that for children aged 5-11 years-old, there have been 1.8 million COVID-19 cases and only 138 deaths. Even the CDC concedes that “children are less likely to develop severe illness or die from COVID-19.”

The Pfizer vaccine is particularly dangerous for young men aged 16-17. As we observed back in October, teenage boys are especially at risk for heart problems – like myocarditis – after getting the Pfizer vaccine: “Boys between 16 and 19 years of age had the highest incidence of myocarditis after the second dose . . . The risk of heart problems in boys of that age was about nine times higher than in unvaccinated boys of the same age.” New York Times. The risk of myocarditis for boys 16 – 19 years old is higher after the Pfizer second dose. What happens after the third dose?? That’s a good question. One would rightly assume that the third dose might present more danger of heart problems than the second dose. But FDA doesn’t have the answer to this question. And why doesn’t it have the answer?

Because the FDA didn’t look. Because the FDA conducted ZERO tests in this age bracket before approving the latest Pfizer booster for this age bracket. Instead, the FDA relied on prior (old) booster data from a study of “200 participants, 18 through 55 years of age.” Choosing to ignore the long-term data for the efficacy of the Pfizer booster shot, the FDA instead reviewed the old data showing “the antibody response against the SARS-CoV-2 virus one month after a booster dose of the vaccine.” That’s it. That’s the rigorous studies that now meet FDA standards. Given the self-imposed and purposeful limitations the FDA has placed on its own own information, it has the audacity to conclude:

“The benefits of a single booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine or Comirnaty outweigh the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis in individuals 16 and 17 years of age to provide continued protection against COVID-19 and the associated serious consequences that can occur including hospitalization and death.”

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Geert deserves much more scrutiny.

Why is Covid-19 Vaccination of Children an Unforgivable Sin (VanDen Bossche)

This is an extract of Geert Vanden Bossche’s interview with Doctors for Life Philippines, where he talks about the importance of the natural immune system for children, and why mass vaccination in children is unforgivable.

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“..the percentage of people who die from a COVID infection has dropped significantly since the arrival of Omicron…”

South Africa’s Omicron Outbreak Already “Running Out of Steam” (SN)

Data coming out of South Africa indicates that the Omicron outbreak of COVID-19 is already “running out of steam,” and according to one expert, “the world has nothing to fear.” “Cases in the province of Gauteng – which had surging infections from November – appear to be levelling off, while seven-day infections in Tshwane, one of the early epicentres, are now “relatively flat,” states a report written by the Telegraph’s science editor. “Case growth is steeper than last week but still has slowed down versus November,” said Louis Rossouw, of the Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group. Data also shows that the percentage of people who die from a COVID infection has dropped significantly since the arrival of Omicron.

“With the delta variant, around three per cent of infections – one in 33 – were resulting in death, but now that figure has slumped to 0.5 per cent – one in 200 – the lowest it has been throughout the pandemic in South Africa and 10 times lower than in September last year,” states the report. According to Peter Streicher, a research associate at the University of Johannesburg, death data has already caught up with infection data and there is no significant rise in deaths from Omicron. “Omicron is extremely mild. The rest of the world has nothing to fear,” said Streicher. As we highlighted earlier, the South African doctor who first discovered Omicron says “Britain is overreacting” by imposing more draconian restrictions and that the panic “is out of all proportion to the risks posed by this variant.”

Doctor Angelique Coetzee also suggested that lockdowns to stop the spread of the variant would harm the opportunity that Omicron provides to reach “herd immunity.” Authorities in the UK have also refused to reveal any further information behind what is believed to be the world’s first Omicron death. Professor Karol Sikora has accused the government of creating “unnecessary alarm,” while asserting the victim probably had co-morbidities and was elderly or died with Omicron and not from it.

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“..vaccine-breakthrough and antibody-resistant mutations will increase transmission once most people are carrying antibodies through either vaccination or infection..”

Spike-Only Vaccine a Colossal Blunder: Vaccine Escape Due to Vaccination (PR)

Now a new study has found the specific mutations by which the SARS-CoV-2 lineages have escaped the vaccine. The study, which is behind a paywall (US$40), reports that these mutations lead to less infectivity compared to the original SARS-CoV-2, but, according to the authors, “can disrupt existing antibodies that neutralize the virus”. That sounds like disease enhancement to me. “By tracking the evolutionary trajectories of vax-resistant mutations in more than 2.2 million SARS-CoV-2 genomes, we reveal that the occurrence & frequency of vax-resistant mutations correlate strongly with the vaccination rates in Europe and America.”

Their analysis went well beyond mere correlation of the rise of the vaccine-resistant variants and vaccination rates. Specifically, these authors had previously predicted the precise amino acid location in the receptor binding domain (RBD) at which vaccine escape variation would likely emerge as a result of targeting the spike protein with vaccines. Now that we see those specific amino acid residue positions changing, and, importantly, changing in ways that alter infectivity, the evidence is strong that the rise in these mutations was caused by the vaccination program.

They wrote: “(I)n early 2020, we successfully predicted that residues 452 and 501 ‘have high changes to mutate into significantly more infectious COVID-19 strains’. In the same work, we hypothesized that ‘natural selection favors those mutations that enhance the viral transmission’ and provided the first evidence for infectivity-based natural selection. In other words, we revealed the mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 evolution and transmission based on very limited genome data in June 2020. Additionally, we predicted three categories of RBD mutations: (1) most likely (1149 mutations), (2) likely (1912 mutations), and (3) unlikely (625 mutations).19 To date, almost all of the RBD mutations we detected fall into our first category.3,20 Moreover, all of the top 100 most observed RBD mutations have a BFE change greater than the average BFE changes of -0.28 kcal/mol.”

The BFE measurement is a very strong predictor of infectivity to the ACE2 receptor in humans. What this means to the authors is that vaccine-breakthrough and antibody-resistant mutations will increase transmission once most people are carrying antibodies through either vaccination or infection. The authors call for use of this information in vaccine programs (!). That, of course, will lead to further selection pressure. What this means to me is that the infamous “new variants” Delta and Omicron variants have the mutations in the RBD [to] now make all existing spike-only vaccines obsolete.

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Of course they will. Ryan McMaken at the Mises Institute presents this as a Democrat issue in the US, and it may be that to an extent, but in Europe, welfare states pur sang, left and right both use these tools to control people.

They’ll Use the Welfare State to Get Compliance on Vaccine Mandates (Mises)

A Democratic state lawmaker in Illinois has introduced legislation requiring unvaccinated residents to pay out-of-pocket for healthcare services. It’s all part of an effort to come up with new and creative ways to punish people who refuse to get the covid jab. WBBM Radio in Chicago reports: “[Jonathan] Carroll’s legislation would amend the state’s insurance code so that “a person who is eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and chooses not to be vaccinated shall pay for health care expenses out-of-pocket if the person becomes hospitalized because of COVID-19 symptoms.” In other words, Carroll is trying to ensure that the unvaccinated will be denied health insurance for covid treatments, even in cases where private insurance is already bought and paid for.

Moreover, intervening in private insurance won’t even be necessary in many cases, since one-third of the population is already receiving government-funded healthcare. This policy is quite remarkable coming from a progressive like Carroll. After all, for decades, we’ve been hearing from the Left that “healthcare is a human right” and that it must be provided to anyone and everyone at taxpayer expense. Anything short of universal state subsidized healthcare, we’ve been told, is unacceptable. Yet, apparently, the mandatory vaccine advocates—found largely on the left, of course—are so obsessed with forcing mandatory vaccines on the entire population that they’re now looking for ways to deny people healthcare.

But we should have seen this coming. Until recently, the Left has also claimed it wants universal employment and a “chicken in every pot.” But since the Biden administration hatched the idea of tying employment to vaccines earlier this year, advocates of vaccine mandates now want to you be destitute and jobless if you refuse the jab. The same mandate pushers have also cleverly engineered their vaccine mandates to ensure that should you be fired for refusing the shot, you’ll be ineligible for unemployment insurance. Although the mandates are being forced on employers in many cases, state policymakers have concluded that termination for refusing the vaccine constitutes being fired “for cause.” This makes it possible to deny unemployment insurance to these dissenters.

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“Please protect them, and do not ask them to make sacrifices with their health on your behalf. You know this is wrong. So do the right thing.”

Between the Forceps and the Stone (Malone)

According to the latest CDC data, more than 60% of the total US population has been vaccinated, and about 45% of the entire population has already been infected by the virus, recovered, and developed natural immunity. The elderly are heavily vaccinated. The vaccines do not prevent you from becoming infected, replicating high levels of virus, and spreading infection to others. I will say it again- the elderly are highly vaccinated. The problem is that the vaccines are not doing what they are supposed to do- prevent infection and spread of the virus. This is even more the case with the Omicron variant. So what to do? Start jabbing children who, unless they have other major problems, shrug off COVID-19 disease like they do most other RNA respiratory viruses?

Or start allowing physicians to treat COVID-19 patients in the outpatient setting to prevent them from ever getting to the hospital setting where (almost exclusively in USA alone) they are immunosuppressed with high levels of Dexamethasone, placed into a coma-like state and hooked up to a ventilator, and treated with Remdesivir (which is clearly toxic and mimics many of the toxicities of the virus)? This is madness. And it reflects a profound arrogance on the part of the Pharma-Govie-World Health elite. They assert that they understand immunology, virology, and evolutionary biology so well that they can freely tinker with the lives of our children using an experimental technology and rushed vaccine product which is neither safe nor effective based on standards and bioethical consensus that have been developed and applied over decades.


They believe that they can inject novel unproven technology and improve the highly evolved human immune system that has developed over millennia to resist respiratory RNA virus pressure. Arrogance is the kindest term I can think of. None of us are immortal. Despite the objectives of the transhumanism agenda. Death cannot be avoided. We pass through this world, and hopefully leave it a bit better when we are gone. Our children are the only true legacy, the only real form of immortality. Please protect them, and do not ask them to make sacrifices with their health on your behalf. You know this is wrong. So do the right thing. And take this seriously. Think long and hard before taking an action that can never be undone.

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“A ruling on Monday by an increasingly erratic Supreme Court that refused to block a New York State requirement that all health-care workers be vaccinated—even if they claim a religious exemption—will only add to the chaos.”

Omicron Unleashes New Wave of Hysteria, With Rule by Decree in Force

Just over a year ago, president-elect Joe Biden promised a “very dark winter” ahead in the face of COVID-19, and told the nation he would “spare no effort to turn this pandemic around once we’re sworn in on Jan. 20. It’s time to put aside the partisanship and the rhetoric designed to demonize one another,” Biden said. “It’s time to end the politicization of basic, responsible public health steps like mask-wearing and social distancing.” Now here we are, 13 months later, in the runup to the shortest day of the year and the start of a third season of “pandemic” panic: how’s that working out for you, America?

After a year of nothing to show for a fruitless battle against a bug that can’t be defeated, Biden has rolled out another more-of-the-same “plan” involving more vaccination mandates on private companies (even though the federal courts are shooting such mandates down on a regular basis), jabbing healthy, crying children, demanding more booster shots of vaccines already proven not to work as initially advertised, and re-instituting travel bans at the drop of a letter of the Greek alphabet. Bonus points: recent tests indicate that Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines are nearly useless against the latest new variant, Omicron. Speaking of which—thanks to an increasingly irresponsible media—Omicron has now terrified the civilized world, setting off cries for more lockdowns and general harum-scarum, even though the international “death toll” of this bug is so far a grand total of… one (maybe).

But that hasn’t stopped the hysterical British prime minster, Boris Johnson, from instantly decreeing “Plan B,” which include work-from-home orders, face-mask mandates, and proof of vaccination in large public venues. An even more oppressive “Plan C” is just around the corner. That Johnson is in the middle of his own scandal involving himself and his aides flouting and mocking the very rules they’re imposing on ordinary Britons is entirely coincidental. [..] And Hong Kong has just decreed that all travelers from the United States—who must be fully vaccinated Hong Kong residents in the first place—must first spend seven days at a quarantine camp followed by two weeks in hotel quarantine. This all thanks to the dreaded Omicron, of which so far there are five, count ‘em five, cases in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, hospitals are laying off the sensible staffers—hailed as heroes just a few months ago—who refuse to take part in history’s largest unsupervised medical experiment, thus necessitating the presence of American soldiers from the National Guard in U.S. hospitals to take up the slack in four states, including Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and New York. The staffing shortages are, of course, a direct result of the mandates; further, in an echo of the supply chain problems currently plaguing American business, they are also slowing down the processing and discharge of patients from hospitals, thus contributing to the hospital-bed shortage. A ruling on Monday by an increasingly erratic Supreme Court that refused to block a New York State requirement that all health-care workers be vaccinated—even if they claim a religious exemption—will only add to the chaos.

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“The pandemicists are truly dangerous, and they will grind human civilisation into the dust unless we find some way of putting all of them out of work..”

The Pandemicists Must Be Stopped (eugyppius)

Just a few words on “Omicron is a Dress Rehearsal for the Next Pandemic”, a New York Times article by Emily Anthes, a science journalist with ties to the World Economic Forum. It’s subtitled “America’s response to the variant highlights both how much progress we have made over the past two years — and how much work remains,” and it’s every inch as awful as you’d imagine. In the piece, Anthes laments that the United States is “woefully unprepared for the challenges ahead, starting with the most fundamental of tasks: detecting the virus.” She quotes a microbiologist to complain that “We had a delay of one to two months before we were even able to identify the presence of [Omicron] … And by that time, it had already circulated widely between multiple states and from coast to coast.” She wastes many words on the necessity of “Testing, testing, testing”; here, apparently, America still needs vastly more capacity.

She and her many scientist informants also want more gene sequencing to detect variants sooner. She’s sure that all of this is absolutely necessary, even though she doesn’t know why: “Scientists are finding more Omicron cases every day, and the variant could soon overtake Delta. What comes next — what we should aim for, even — is less clear. Should we spend the winter trying to stop every infection? Protecting the highest risk people from severe disease and death? Ensuring that hospitals are not overrun? “One thing that we’ve lacked continuously through the pandemic is a goal,” said Emily Gurley, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We still don’t have that. Certainly, we don’t have that for Omicron.”

No realistic public health goal underpins this diagnostic mania, of course. People who test positive for Corona are sent home to suffer in untreated silence by themselves. Endlessly testing, tracing, sequencing, panicking and closing is, however, a goal in itself for people like Emily Gurley and all the other pandemicists Anthes gleefully quotes, from Eric Topol to Trevor Bedford to Ezekiel J. Emanuel. All of them want the Corona Circus to play on, and after it ends they hope for a sequel sometime soon. Never before have they enjoyed such personal and professional prominence.

[..] The pandemicists are truly dangerous, and they will grind human civilisation into the dust unless we find some way of putting all of them out of work. They aren’t going to save anybody from the next pandemic; in the event it happens, they’ll just take advantage of the opportunity to expand their ranks still further and make all of our lives worse. And should novel viruses prove slow to materialise in the post-Corona era, they’ll get up to other tricks. Tricks like new and enhanced histrionics over every seasonal influenza outbreak. Tricks like the intentional release of more engineered viral pathogens to keep the grant funding flowing. Tricks like constant lunatic mass vaccination schemes against ever milder viruses. Still other tricks I haven’t considered. The pandemicists have to go.

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“Isn’t it fascinating that the direction has always been towards more fear, and never towards calming things down?”

I Chart in your General Direction (Rudolph Rigger)

1. The metastasization of modelling Most, if not all, of our governmental response to covid19 has been as a result of models. These models have been mostly of 2 kinds. (a) Technical and theoretical attempts to model what might occur. These have been almost universally incorrect – and sometimes incorrect by a couple of orders of magnitude. (b) A mental model of what might happen. “Omicron is more transmissible, therefore we need to do something in order to save ourselves from it” – a sort of pull some scenario out of your ass approach and use it to generate fear. Isn’t it fascinating that the direction has always been towards more fear, and never towards calming things down?


It’s kind of similar to thinking that we’re all in serious danger of being struck by meteorites and so we need to re-build everything underground, one mile down, in order to save ourselves from this event that might happen. (Of course, this might actually happen one day in the future if some humungous asteroid wings its way towards us – but I would like to think it would be based on some decent evidence, rather than just a generalized vague fear) The first one is a very recent chart used by The Telegraph to try to frighten us into thinking there might be 1 million cases of Omicron per day by Christmas in the UK (this is what the headline stated). I can’t even begin to describe how scientifically illiterate this asinine chart actually is.

If we follow the authors’ “logic” here, then just 20 days after this we’ll have over 256 million cases per day – so that everyone in the UK will have, on average, over 3 simultaneous infections with the same virus on that day. But how have the so-called experts fared? Here’s a chart showing how the expert predictions have described anything but reality

Alas, the “experts” can’t get it right either. I use models all the time in physics – they’re not necessarily a bad thing. They are great ways to get some insight, provided you check them against reality to see if they are a reasonable match. It’s very strange to me, as a physicist, to see these “experts” get it SO wrong, again and again and again. What the hell are they doing? Do they just keep sticking new numbers into the same old shit that didn’t work the first time? Don’t they ever stop to think there might be something wrong with their models and the assumptions used to build them?

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Zero Hedge is mostly on the ball, but this is not. South Africa’s Discovery Health, one of the country’s biggest health insurers, may claim this, but the exact same thing would occur if Omicron is simply mild, which we know it is. Doesn’t involve any Pfizer.

Pfizer Jab Prevents 70% Of Hospitalizations In South Africa (ZH)

South Africa’s Discovery Health, one of the country’s biggest health insurers, has just briefed the public on the results of its latest study, and it’s findings aren’t exactly a surprise. While the omicron variant, first discovered in South Africa, is efficient at surpassing protections afforded by the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the Discovery data showed that Pfizer’s jab is actually 70% effective at reducing hospitalizations. That might help explain why the omicron variant has coincided with a surge in cases in South Africa, even while the number of hospitalizations and the number of deaths have declined. The protection is maintained across age groups and in the face of a range of chronic illnesses, said Ryan Noach, the CEO of Discovery Health, during a briefing Tuesday.

All told, a course of Pfizer jabs conveys protection of approximately 33% against infection by the omicron variant, according to Bloomberg. The Discovery study included about 78K COVID test results for omicron infections from Nov. 15 to Dec. 7 in South Africa, the epicenter of the current omicron wave. Clinical records, vaccination records and pathology test results were also examined. Prior to omicron, the Pfizer vaccine provided Discovery Health’s clients with 93% protection against hospitalization (although many have also raised questions about that number). So far, as cases continue to climb, hospitalizations are a fraction of what they were during South Africa’s delta wave; meanwhile, deaths haven’t budged much.

Both Discovery and Glenda Gray, the chief executive of the South African Medical Research Council, cautioned that the lack of severe cases and deaths could be a result of the high number of infections in South Africa. In some parts of the country, 80% of the population has already been infected. Discovery’s data also showed that omicron is causing less respiratory distress than delta. Symptoms of the new variant include a scratchy throat, congestion and lower back pain, and illnesses generally last three days or less.

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“Omicron may be, in fact, a better vaccine than anything cooked up by Pfizer, Moderna or even the Russians.”

Davos’ Last Stand Flops at the Box Office (Luongo)

So Davos’ Last Stand hit theatres a couple of weeks ago. Starring OmicronVID-9/11 as the latest unseen killer this was supposed to be the horror movie of a generation. Geopolitically, this is the worst opening for a movie since Ishtar. Sure the overnight preview box office was good. The Dow off 1100 on Opening Day. Gold thwapped. Bitcoin crushed. But then people started talking about the train wreck they’d seen. The response to OmicronVID-9/11’s performance has been nothing short of hilarious. The early reviews pointed to an overblown ‘whisper number’ on box office receipts. The hits just kept coming. The first scathing review came from no less than Goldman Sachs which screamed that they were not informed of the release of Omicron. They compared OmicronVID’s acting ability to the best on PornHub.

I’ve read a lot of Goldman notes over the years and they generally sound like someone desperately trying to convince you to take the opposite side of the trade from them…so they can fleece you. That one was different. It was one that made it clear that they had no idea during production that Omicron was so bad. Translation: Where the hell did this shit come from and why weren’t we allowed to front-run it? Two days later, JPM’s Marco Kolanovic went on CNBC BubbleVision with his review, to blow up the idea that we should remain glued to our screens over the latest release from the Maus Haus, scared for our lives. Kolanovic was the first of many to say the quiet part out loud; that OmicronVID was so unaffecting as a serial killer it may wind up doing the exact opposite, immunizing the world from the next sequel in the series.

That if anything, Omicron may be, in fact, a better vaccine than anything cooked up by Pfizer, Moderna or even the Russians. It was, as reviews go, as devastating as anything written about that horrific Hoffman/Beatty fiasco from 40 years ago. I know, I read them all. They were a hoot. These were the first shots across the bow at Davos’ Last Stand. And were clear signals to the markets that Wall St. was completely done with this COVID-19 nonsense and are in a political position to make that stick in the U.S. Congress. The result has been the fastest week-to-week drop off in box office I’ve seen of a Davos narrative ever.

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“..a wave of criticism from German media outlets, which quickly branded his words “conspiracy theories.”

Vatican Court Judge: Gates & Soros Use Covid To Impose ‘Total Control’ (RT)

A German cardinal has sparked controversy by claiming that the coronavirus pandemic has been used by the likes of George Soros and Bill Gates to create a global “surveillance state.” The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked “chaos” and “turmoil” stemming not only from the “lacking knowledge” about the transmissibility and danger of the virus itself, but from the will of the super-rich to “snatch an opportunity to bring people in line,” Gerhard Ludwig Mueller said in an interview with Austria’s St. Boniface Institute last week. He is a high-ranking judge at the Vatican court. The world’s financial elites are now using the pandemic and the measures governments take to fight the spread of the virus to subject people to “total control” and establish a global “surveillance state,” he added.

The St. Boniface published a video showing a small part of the interview and the cardinal has since confirmed to the German dpa news agency that the footage is genuine. “People, who sit on the throne of their wealth,” see an “opportunity to push through their agenda,” the cardinal said, naming Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, billionaire George Soros and the head of the Davos Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, among those behind the alleged global control scheme. The cardinal then accused the global financial elites of an attempt to bring forth “a new man” created “in their own image and likeness,” adding that he would not wish such a fate on himself. “That has nothing to do with democracy,” the former Regensburg bishop, who once headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said.

The cardinal’s statements, which only recently surfaced in the media, sparked a wave of criticism from German media outlets, which quickly branded his words “conspiracy theories.” Some experts invited by Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine and other media said his words can be interpreted as a comparison between the actions of the modern government and those of the Nazis, whose crimes are thus “played down.” They also said that a mere mention of Soros in such a context can be seen as anti-Semitic.

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Christmas in Athens will be terrible for restaurants. The unvaxxed 50% or so of the people can’t enter, and their friends and families won’t leave them alone. So people will celebrate at home. Rapid tested people can sit outside restaurants, but really, grandma outside in late December?

UK Restaurants And Pubs Fear 40% Cut In Christmas Takings (G.)

Pubs and restaurants predict that Christmas cancellations made following the introduction of measures to limit the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in England will cut their festive takings by 40%. While hospitality venues have not yet been forced to reimpose measures such as social distancing or mandatory mask-wearing, industry leaders said tougher restrictions had already caused irreparable damage to trade, especially in city centres. Trade body UK Hospitality has forecast that takings will be down by as much as 40% for December, usually the most lucrative month for venues by far, after hard data from last week revealed early signs that customers were staying away.

Data from the trade body for Monday to Sunday of last week showed a 13% drop in trade and a 15% increase in cancellations, compared with pre-pandemic levels. In central London, which is particularly affected by office workers following government guidance to stay at home, takings were down 40%, while there was a 25% surge in Christmas bookings being cancelled. The figures cover a week that followed the identification of the Omicron variant and included the announcement of tougher Covid-19 restrictions, known as “plan B”. With the evaporation of consumer confidence thought to have accelerated since then, bosses called for more assistance from the government to help them survive the effects of a second successive nightmare Christmas.

“The damage has been done,” said Phil Urban, the chief executive of Mitchells & Butlers, which owns 1,700 pubs and restaurants, including the O’Neill’s and Harvester chains. He said customers had begun calling off events last week after the government announced measures including guidance to work from home if possible. “We immediately saw cancellations. Anybody who was at all nervous, or any company that was planning a do was likely to cancel,” Urban said. “We saw the impact on Friday and Saturday but we’ll really start to see the damage this week, particularly in city centres where historically we’d have lots of corporate events. That’s gone now and there’s nothing anyone can do to put it back.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dec 132021
 


Frans Masereel Montmartre 1925

 

Another Reason Not To Jab The Children: Omicron (Malone)
Will Omicron Kill Christmas? (O.)
UK Booster Rollout To Increase To 1m A Day To Battle Omicron ‘Tidal Wave’ (G.)
Pfizer Jab Is Only 22.5% Effective Against Omicron (ZH)
Fauci: Americans May ‘Just Have To Deal With’ More Covid Boosters (Fox)
Hospitalizations, Mortality Cut In Half With Ivermectin In Brazilian City (ZH)
2022 Trends, Predictions, Collapse, Covid & Wars – Gerald Celente (USAW)
Four States Enlist National Guard To Battle Health Care Staffing Crisis (JTN)
A $40 Million Gates Foundation Grant vs A Half Million Human Lives (WT)
Twitter To Ban Users Who Repeatly Claim Vaxxed People Can Spread Covid (RTN)
China Banking Assets Are $52 Trillion, Up By $40 Trillion Since 2008 (Peters)

 

 

It is scary to see that the only thing that holds our societies together at this point is fear.
People can no longer think.

• In the entire world there are still no deaths reported from Omicron
• US: 110 total Omicron infections (UK has more)
• 1 person in US infected with Omicron hospitalized (may well be for something different)

But: UK prediction from scientists at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine:
• Best case: 175,000 hospital admissions and 24,700 deaths from Omicron by the end of April.
• Worst case: 74,800 deaths and 492,000 hospital admissions

“Pfizer Jab Is Only 22.5% Effective Against Omicron”: South Africa study.
So obviously the UK wants 1 million jabs per day. And Fauci wants more.

 

 

 

 

Two top soccer players, Napoli midfielder Piotr Zielinski and Man United defender Viktor Lindelof both left their game Sunday due to chest pain/breathing problems.

 

 

Ardern fund

 

 

The media: Omicron is vaccine resistant.
Also the media: We may need to lock down again because of all the unvaccinated.

 

 

“This is madness promoted by frightened psychotic chickens and Globalists with a pro-totalitarian bias. Just stop. Now.”

Another Reason Not To Jab The Children: Omicron (Malone)

The data are clear. Officials have reported110 Omicron cases as of Saturday in the USA. Of the 66 people for whom vaccination status has been reported, 52 were fully vaccinated and many of those had been boosted. What we don’t know is whether or not those people who have already had COVID-19 actually caught Omicron, but it was so mild that they weren’t aware of it or if prior infection conferred complete immunity. What we do know is that 78% of the people in the USA/CDC report who have contracted Omicron were vaccinated. These data also directly contradict the public relations “data” press release from Pfizer that the third jab would protect against Omicron. Clinical data ALWAYS trumps lab test data.


This appears to be yet another case illustrating that Fauci/Biden parrot the Big Pharma narrative whenever possible rather than doing the job that we are paying them to do – independently analyze “The Science” and act with integrity and objectivity to protect American citizens rather than American Big Business and Big Investment firms. There have been NO DEATHS reported anywhere in the world with Omicron, including in the USA. Now there will be, because older people, people with high co-morbidities will catch Omicron and will die. People die from the common cold too. We can expect this – do not be swayed by the fear-porn that is sure to come when these deaths happen. Hospital rates in areas with a high percent of the Omicron variant are experiencing a drop off in hospitalizations. Due to low vaccination rates in some countries, this strongly implies that vaccination status is irrelevant with Omicron. Omicron is a more mild disease, more similar in symptoms to the common cold. [..] Assuming that Omicron is now the dominant variant in Botswana, lets look at the death rate in that country: It has literally gone to zero over the past month.

Omicron is 10 times more infectious than the original variant and two times more infectious than Delta. Omicron will become the predominant strain in the USA very shortly. So, whether vaccinated or not, Omicron is more mild and will spread throughout the land. Let me write that again, all evidence shows that Omicron is much more mild and vaccinated or unvaccinated will catch this variant. Now, let’s talk children. For all the reasons listed above, it is clear that vaccinating children now is a very bad idea. 146 million people in the USA have had SARS-CoV-2 , that is about 45% of the total population. This means 45% of children have had SARS-CoV-2, that is the virus – because children rarely get severe disease from the virus. It is the severe disease that is COVID-19. COVID-19 is the severe disease caused by the virus. Historically, children get infected by the virus.

Now that Omicron will become dominant very quickly and we know that there is a very good chance that natural infection confers better protection against Omicron and that for everyone this new variant is mild, why would we want to mandate vaccination for our healthy children? Remember, this is what we know already before Omicron emerged: • 1 in 2700 male adolescents will get pericarditis/myocarditis from the Pfizer vaccine and the event rate appears to be even higher for Moderna. • 1 in 2200 will get some sort of neurological event from the vaccine (based on the curious case of Pfizer clinical trial participant Maddie de Gary). • That the adverse events in children are much higher than originally reported in the phase 3 clinical trials. • That the long term sides effects for this vaccine are unknown. • That after vaccination, there is a 3-4 week period of immunosuppression, where children (and adults) are susceptible to latent viral infections and other viruses.

Now smash these facts together with what we know about Omicron. The evidence becomes overwhelming. Not only are mandates a bad idea, but vaccinating children and young adults is too. This is madness promoted by frightened psychotic chickens and Globalists with a pro-totalitarian bias. Just stop. Now.

Read more …

No, but the fear of it will.

Will Omicron Kill Christmas? (O.)

Two competing forces will determine Omicron’s impact on the nation over the next few weeks. The power of booster jabs to give last-minute protection against Covid-19 will be pitted against the new variant’s ability to elude existing immunity. The outcome will decide whether our festive season is going to be muted or miserable. If enough arms are jabbed with booster vaccines, while Omicron turns out to have poor powers to evade immunity, then there is hope hospital cases will be contained and the NHS will be protected. Severe restrictions in the new year – including the prospect of lockdowns – could be avoided. But if Omicron is found to evade existing immunity quite easily, while booster campaigns provide poor overall protection, then the country faces a very grim winter with strict restrictions needed for some time.

According to a study by scientists at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the first scenario – poor Omicron escape from immunity matched by effective booster jab protection – would trigger a wave of infection that could lead to 175,000 hospital admissions and 24,700 deaths by the end of April. Closure of some entertainment venues and restrictions on indoor hospitality would be enough to control case numbers. By contrast, the most pessimistic scenario – high immune escape from vaccines and low effectiveness of booster jabs – would see 74,800 deaths while there would be 492,000 hospital admissions, a figure twice as high as the peak seen in January 2021. Far stricter restrictions, including lockdowns, would then have to be considered.

“These results suggest that Omicron has the potential to cause substantial surges in cases, hospital admissions and deaths in populations with high levels of immunity, including England,” the team state in their paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. Nicholas Davies, co-leader of the study team, described Omicron’s threat to the UK as “worrying”. Presented with evidence like this, many scientists have warned that urgent action should now be taken to hold back infections while booster campaigns are accelerated and given time to take effect. “Cases are doubling every two to three days which means there is a real risk the curve is going to get very steep around Christmas and New Year,” said the vaccine expert Peter English.

“That means panic measures could be brought in at the last minute and disrupt people’s festive plans. I am also desperately sad for my colleagues in clinical practice who face a January that is going to be worse than anything we’ve seen so far and at a time when they are now exhausted.”

Read more …

“Boris Johnson is gambling..”

UK Booster Rollout To Increase To 1m A Day To Battle Omicron ‘Tidal Wave’ (G.)

Boris Johnson is gambling on an unprecedented ramping up of vaccinations, rolling out 1m booster jabs a day to stem an incoming “tidal wave of Omicron” and avoid imposing further restrictions. The army will be deployed across the country to help rapidly accelerate the vaccine programme and GPs will be told to cancel appointments to dedicate resources to offering vaccines to every UK adult by the end of December. In a televised address to the nation on Sunday night, the prime minister said he was “afraid we are now facing an emergency in our battle with the new variant, Omicron, and we must urgently reinforce our wall of vaccine protection to keep our friends and loved ones safe.”

Johnson, who is facing a major test of his authority this week as MPs rebel against new Covid restrictions, called the target “a national mission unlike anything we have done before in the vaccination programme”. It means vaccinating around 1 million people a day, up from 530,000 on Saturday. The UK record is 844,000 in March. All over-18s will be eligible from Monday, and NHS booking will open to that age group from Wednesday. Until now eligibility has been limited to over-40s. Jabs will be available on Christmas Day, though demand is expected to be low.

On Sunday the Covid alert level was raised from 3 to 4, indicating substantial pressure on the NHS, after a further 1,239 UK cases of Omicron were confirmed, nearly double the number reported the previous day. Omicron is expected to become Britain’s dominant variant within days, and Johnson warned it could “overwhelm the NHS and lead to very many deaths”. Announcing the booster offensive, Johnson said: “We know from bitter experience how these exponential curves develop. No one should be in any doubt: there is a tidal wave of Omicron coming.” He said two doses of vaccine were not enough, but scientists were confident that three would make a huge difference. On Friday UK data suggested that three jabs provide 70-75% protection against infection with Omicron, while two doses given three or more months ago give 30% to 40% or less.

Read more …

Throw it away.

Pfizer Jab Is Only 22.5% Effective Against Omicron (ZH)

A few days ago, researchers in South Africa shared data from a preliminary study showing that the Pfizer vaccine is less effective at blocking the omicron variant than earlier variants like beta and delta. Now, the team is telling us exactly how much less effective the vaccine is. According to the same data gleaned from the blood plasma taken from 12 patients who tested positive for omicron, the team found that a two-shot course of Pfizer’s vaccine has just 22.5% efficacy against symptomatic infection with the omicron variant, though it can thwart severe disease, according to laboratory experiments in South Africa, according to Bloomberg.

The data comes courtesy of a team of researchers at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban. Though data has been pouring out about omicron, and sometimes individual studies reach opposing findings, the general consensus is that omicron will be able to more easily evade protection afforded from the first generation of vaccines – however, the scientists say that people will still be protected against severe disease and death. But it matters less anyway, since any patient – even an unvaccinated one – has less to fear from omicron. The reason being is that it’s believed to cause a more mild, “flu-like” infection. As we’ve said before, when you hear politicians like Joe Biden talking about an omicron takeover as if it were already a certainty (only a couple thousand cases have been confirmed around the world, if that), it’s because they wish it were true.

The same is true for the CEOs of Moderna and Pfizer, who have been out sharing FUD about omicron with the news media on an almost non-stop rotation. They say their companies can have a new batch of vaccines available in 90-100 days. It’s almost as if they’ve been waiting for the opportunity, and if you look back at their comments, it’s clear that they have. Still, in the US, the CDC has confirmed that only 1 of 43 patients infected with the variant has been hospitalized.

Read more …

Tony Fauci is more deadly than Tony Soprano.

Fauci: Americans May ‘Just Have To Deal With’ More Covid Boosters (Fox)

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci said that Americans will “just have to deal with” the prospect of getting more coronavirus booster shots. Fauci made the statement on Sunday morning and said that the level of protection that the current coronavirus booster shots give to individuals will have to be monitored closely over the next several months. “If it becomes necessary to get yet another boost, then we’ll just have to deal with it when that occurs,” Fauci said. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director also said that he’s “hoping” that a third mRNA shot will give longer-lasting protection. “


I’m hoping from an immunological standpoint that that third shot of an mRNA and the second shot of a J&J will give a much greater durability of protection than just the six months or so that we’re seeing right now,” Dr. Fauci said. He added that it’s possible that the booster shot could “dramatically” increase the level of protection. “It’s tough to tell because the third shot of an mRNA could not only do what we absolutely know it does, is it dramatically increased the level of protection. But from an immunological standpoint, it could very well increase the durability of protection by things that you can’t readily measure by the level of antibodies that you might have a maturation of the immune system that would prolong the durability,” Dr. Fauci said.

Read more …

“..it was found effective 70% of the time as an early treatment, and just 39% of the time as a late treatment.”

Better than the vaccines with Omicron.

Hospitalizations, Mortality Cut In Half With Ivermectin In Brazilian City (ZH)

Early on in the pandemic, before the vaccines were available, the Southern Brazilian city of Itajai offered Ivermectin as a prophylaxis against the disease. Between July and December of 2020, roughly 220,000 people were offered a dose of 0.2mg/kg/day (roughly 18mg for a 200lb person) as an optional treatment for 2 days, once every two weeks. 133,051 people took them up on it, while 87,466 did not. After analyzing the data, a team of researchers spanning several Brazilian institutes, the University of Toronto, and Columbia’s EAFIT concluded in a December pre-print study that hospitalization and mortality rates were cut in half over the seven month period among the Ivermectin group.

The authors adjusted for relevant confounding variables, including age, sex, medical history, previous diseases, and other conditions. The analysis contradicts an October report by Business Insider which claims, based on a Brazilian ICU doctor’s anecdotal evidence, that the experiment was a failure. Study limitations: The authors note, “Being a retrospective observational analysis, it is uncertain whether results would be reproducible in a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trial, but likely, since groups of ivermectin users and non-users had similar demographic characteristics, and rates were adjusted for the relevant confounding variables.”


We’re sure the ‘fact checkers’ are already hard at work trying to debunk the pre-print, however they may also want to take a look at ivmmeta.com – a real-time meta analysis of 70 studies which found that Ivermectin works as a prophylaxis 83% of the time. In peer-reviewed studies, it was found effective 70% of the time as an early treatment, and just 39% of the time as a late treatment. As we noted during the whole ‘horse paste’ controversy: Ivermectin This widely prescribed anti-parasitic which is also used in horses has shown meaningful efficacy worldwide in the treatment of mild and moderate cases of Covid-19, plus as a prophylactic. India’s Uttar Pradesh province, with a population of over 200 million, says that widespread early use of Ivermectin ‘helped keep positivity [and] deaths low.’

Read more …

“The only way this war will be won is if people unify under one umbrella and don’t leave.”

2022 Trends, Predictions, Collapse, Covid & Wars – Gerald Celente (USAW)

Gerald Celente, a renowned trends researcher, is back this time to talk about what he is sees coming in 2022. There is the never ending Covid, Vax Wars, military wars, economic upheaval, and even new predictions on the future of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Ron DeSantis. We start with what needs to be done to defeat the tyranny of the vax war on the global population. Celente says, “Vax War,’ look at the protests going on in Austria. Look at the protests going on in Germany, Italy, in France and the UK. . . . The only way this war will be won is if people unify under one umbrella and don’t leave.”

On the economy, Celente warns, “How about that bankster, that Fed Head Powell? He said inflation was going to be ‘temporary.’ Oh no, it’s going to be ‘transitory.’ They were shooting out that BS one after another, and we said from the beginning, inflation is real and it’s going to keep going. Guess what? It’s not the supply chains–it’s all the cheap money they keep dumping into the system to artificially prop it up.” Celente predicts, “The Fed is going to have to raise interest rates,” to stop what he is calling 1980’s style inflation. And he warns, “The higher interest rates go up, the further the economy is going to go down, and that’s what they are not talking about.”

Celente says get ready for what he is calling “Dragflation.” Meaning, the economy is going to drag lower as inflation surges higher. Celente also predicts that if the Fed Funds Interest Rate, which is now at .25%, “goes to 1.5%, the entire economy could collapse.” Celente is predicting new political parties that are anti-immigration and anti-establishment to form next year. Celente also gives what his assessment of Donald J. Trump, Hillary Clinton and Ron DeSantis are for the year 2022 and beyond. Celente also makes a bold prediction on the so-called CV19 mandates that should make the unvaxed feel more secure. The negative effects of vaccines are going to stay in the news, but Celente expects the mainstream media (MSM) to do everything possible to cover up the deaths and injuries caused by the CV19 injections. Will the numbers be overpowering to the MSM?

Read more …

Mandate fall-out.

Four States Enlist National Guard To Battle Health Care Staffing Crisis (JTN)

Four states – Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire and New York – are deploying the National Guard to battle the COVID-19 healthcare staffing shortage. The staffing shortage rose sharply following the implementation of a vaccine mandate. Vaccination rates in New York, New Hampshire and Maine are some of the highest in the nation. More than 80% of people in these states have received at least one dose. In New York, thousands of healthcare workers were placed on unpaid leave after refusing to get the shot. The Guard, under the direction of Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) will send about 120 medical workers to 12 long-term care facilities, according to the Epoch Times. About 75 Guard members from Maine were deployed by Gov. Janet Mills (D). Over the past week, the largest hospital in Maine has not had any available critical care beds.


The New York Times reports that cases in Maine reached their pandemic peak recently. In New Hampshire, about 70 National Guard members are providing medical support across the state. “If unfortunately during the winter months, the hospitalization rates continue to increase, we’ll be more than happy to provide additional resources,” National Guard Maj. Gen. David Mikolaities said according to Epoch Times. Indiana called in the Guard last week to 13 facilities throughout the state following a request from Indiana University Health. The facility fired about 125 people who refused to comply with the school’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The Hoosier State has a vaccination rate of 56.7 percent of residents having received at least one dose.

Maine

Read more …

Someone needs to sue him.

A $40 Million Gates Foundation Grant vs A Half Million Human Lives (WT)

In a stunning admission, virologist Dr. Andrew Hill acknowledged in a zoom call that publication of his study could lead to the deaths of at least a half million people. In defending his reversal on the effectiveness of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, he discussed his “difficult situation” and said, “I’ve got this role where I’m supposed to produce this paper and we’re in a very difficult, delicate balance.” The incident is recounted in Robert Kennedy Jr’s New York Times Bestseller, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the global war on Democracy and Public Health. Andrew Hill, PhD, is a senior visiting Research Fellow in Pharmacology at Liverpool University. He is also an advisor for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation.

As a researcher for the WHO evaluating ivermectin, Hill wielded enormous influence over international guidance for the drug’s use. Hill had previously authored a analysis of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 that found the drug overwhelmingly effective. On Jan. 6 of 2021, Hill testified enthusiastically before the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidlelines Panel in support of ivermectin’s use. Within a month, however, Hill found himself in what he describes as a “tricky situation.” Under pressure from his funding sponsors, Hill then published an unfavorable study. Ironically, he used the same sources as in the original study. Only the conclusions had changed.

Shortly before he published, Dr. Tess Lawrie, Director of the Evidence-based Medicine Consultancy in Bath, England, and one of the world’s leading medical research analysts, contacted Hill via Zoom and recorded the call (transcript below). Lawrie had learned of his new position and reached out to try to rectify the situation. In a remarkable exchange, Hill admitted his manipulated study would likely delay the uptake of ivermectin in the UK and United States, but said he hoped his doing so would only set the lifesaving drug’s acceptance back by about “six weeks,” after which he was willing to give his support for its use. Hill affirmed that the rate of death at that time was 15,000 people per day. At the 80 percent recovery rate using the drug, which Hill and Lawrie discussed earlier in the call, the number of preventable deaths incurred by such a delay would be staggering — as many as 504,000.

Read more …

But that’s what the science says?!

Twitter To Ban Users Who Repeatly Claim Vaxxed People Can Spread Covid (RTN)

Twitter has quietly updated its “COVID-19 misleading information policy” to impose new sanctions on tweets about vaccines, PCR tests, and health authorities. These sanctions include removing and labeling tweets. Both types of sanctions also result in Twitter users accruing strikes on their account which can lead to a permanent suspension. While the top of Twitter’s COVID-19 misleading information policy page currently states “Overview November 2021,” a December 2 archive of the page shows that the page was updated and the “Overview November 2021” text was added after December 2. One of the most notable changes to this “COVID-19 misleading information policy” we noticed is related to claims about whether vaccinated people can spread the coronavirus.

The policy now states that Twitter will label tweets with “corrective information” and give users a strike if they: • Claim that “the vaccines will cause you to be sick, spread the virus, or would be more harmful than getting COVID-19”. • Post what Twitter describes as “false or misleading claims that people who have received the vaccine can spread or shed the virus (or symptoms, or immunity) to unvaccinated people”. This means Twitter users could now be sanctioned for sharing or discussing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) admission that “vaccinated people can still become infected and have the potential to spread the virus to others.”

Another change is that Twitter will start giving a strike to and labeling the tweets of users that use research and statistical findings to “make claims contrary to health authorities,” if it decides that their claims “misrepresent research or statistical findings pertaining to the severity of the disease, prevalence of the virus, or effectiveness of widely accepted preventative measures, treatments, or vaccines.” Previously, Twitter would sanction what it deemed to be “false or misleading” information about research findings but there was no provision about contradicting health authorities.

In addition to this, Twitter will give users two strikes and remove their tweets if they claim that “vaccines approved by health agencies (such as Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine in the United States) did not actually receive full approval/authorization, and therefore that the vaccines are untested, ‘experimental’ or somehow unsafe.” This appears to be a reference to criticism of a footnote in the Federal Drug Administration (FDA’s) “full authorization” documents for the Pfizer-BioNTech (Comirnaty) vaccine which revealed that the FDA had extended the emergency-use authorization for the same vaccine. Furthermore, users that claim that vaccines are part of a “global surveillance” effort will have their tweets removed and be given two strikes. The introduction of this provision follows vaccine-related surveillance tech, such as vaccine passports, being introduced in many countries.

Read more …

The Refrigeration Mode.

China Banking Assets Are $52 Trillion, Up By $40 Trillion Since 2008 (Peters)

“China’s rapid industrialization and hunger for global market share kept deflationary pressure on durable goods prices for thirty years, helping to keep consumer price inflation and interest rates lower in the West. And the beauty of the Magic Money Tree was that China could insulate its highly cyclical industry from any default cycle. It monetized bad debt and preserved unprotected, deflationary capacity. The stock of money ballooned. Banking assets are now around $52 trillion. They’ve grown by about $40 trillion since 2008. They’re now twice the size of the US banking system and China’s banks have added the equivalent of the US banking systems in just eight years. This is what hyper MMT looks like.”

“The net result is that western monetary policy and China’s mercantile model fed off one another to give us this Alice in Wonderland ‘through-the-looking-glass’ transformation of massive monetary growth into a deflationary mechanism: The Refrigeration Mode. Both sides got what they wanted: China leapfrogging industrial development, and the US got low inflation in the great moderation. But it had side effects. A massive monetary overhang in China, hyper financialization in the US. These extremes are now biting back on the system through the political economy.” “The Deflationary D’s may still be with us (debt, demographics, disruption, digitization), but the system dynamic is becoming inflationary and there are some new supply side shocks that aren’t deflationary for a change.

“Both sides are in (re)flux. On the macro policy side, we are seeing powerful social reactions to the extremes produced by The Refrigeration Mode. These extremes are feeding into the political economy. Whether it’s the ‘Tax the Rich’ dress at the Met Gala, politicians and celebrities at climate change marches around the world, or bipartisan support for China containment, the challenge to the status quo is clear and present. The COVID crisis merely poured petrol on it.” “It means fiscal policy is back in the driver’s seat – just as central banks put an inflationary bias into their reaction functions. Future bailouts are coming via Main Street, as much as Wall Street. And when monetary and fiscal policy combine, policy becomes more directly inflationary in CPI terms, not simply in asset price terms.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Georgia

 

 

Germany distances

 

 

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Dec 122021
 
 December 12, 2021  Posted by at 2:25 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Giovanni Bellini The Feast of the Gods c1514 (completed by his disciple, Titian, 1529)

 

 

Yes, it’s high time again for an update on the Monastiraki kitchen, which the Automatic Earth has been – in various iterations- supporting since June 2015. One issue I have is that the main activity of the kitchen, cooking food, is the same all the time, so how do you write an interesting story about it several times a year, for 6,5 years now?

Let’s see how far we get this time. The kitchen runs more than ever, it is thriving, and expanding too. One thing that stood out this year was the wildfires that hit near Athens in 2021 in the first half of August. The Monastiraki kitchen was very active in the fall-out of those fires, in several different locations around the city.

A lot of food needed to be prepared, not only for the direct victims, people who lost their homes etc., but also for the firemen- and women who came from all over Europe to help fight the fires. The Greek government doesn’t appear to be very adept at tackling the logistics such an event brings along, so it relies on charity movements to fill in for it.

There were a number of groups, not just our kitchen, involved, the Love Van/ Scouts Of New Eritrea/ 4×4 Ekalis, and even our old friend Konstantinos and O Allos Anthropos. Together they were preparing 10,000 meals per day, plus salads and fruits, and cooking 16 hours a day. It looked something like this (I think I count 8 pots running simultaneously):

 

 

That photo was taken on the large island of Evia, northeast of Athens, 180 km long and 50 km wide at its widest point, which sustained enormous damage from the fires. It will take many years, perhaps decades, to recover.

Cooking on Evia also looked something like this. In Filothei’s own words: “After 16 hours cooking non stop, the gypsy was with out shoes, like that”.

 


 

That photo is a nice lead-in to my next topic. Look at the size of that pot. We have since bought a much bigger one, because we had to. The old 100 liter pot was simply not big enough anymore, the law of supply and demand. It took a while to find one at a good price, for a few months the best deal we could find was €700. But eventually we got one for €175. It lacks a protective layer above the bottom, but I understand that is not strictly necessary (bit more cleaning).

Turned out the guy we bought it from knew about the kitchen, and was very happy to help; he delivered it personally, gave us a lid for free, all good. If you compare the size of the pot in Filothei’s barefoot photo above with this next one, you get an idea of how big that thing is.

 

 

We went from a 100 liter pot to a 220 liter one, from 200+ meals tot 440+ meals per cooking. We still use the smaller one as well, of course, if the need is there. Two weeks ago, for instance, the kitchen made 641 meals in one cooking. Part of that was for a “sister-kitchen” in the port city of Piraeus, where there are also a lot of homeless people.

Piraeus is not only a very large commercial port, it is also home to all the ferries that service the Greek islands, and therefore a major tourism hub. And of course the authorities don’t want the tourists to see the homeless, so they have a hard life out there.

The pots side by side look like this, to give you another comparison:

 

 

And yes, it must obviously be thoroughly cleaned after each cooking:

 

 

Just as obviously, making 2-3 times more food is also going to cost a lot more. In summer, most of the vegetables will come from Filothei’s massive garden, but right now, that is a lot less. On top of that, prices at the supermarket for vegetables as well as the staples we buy there with the checks I purchase with your donations, pasta, canned tomatoes, meat, cheese, we checked it vs a year ago, are up by about 35% overall. So are the plates we use. Sign of the times.

We still have some money left from donations, thanks mainly to Ms. Barefoot Penny-Pincher, but I will still appeal to your Christmas spirit, so we can start 2022 in good spirits too.

In other words, the Monastiraki kitchen is thriving like never before, and your help will be needed to let it continue to do that. We expect to ultimately double the output to at least 400 meals twice a week, and if the Greek government insists on taking away €100 a month from everyone over 60 who has not been vaxxed, while a pension is €730 monthly, who knows how much more we will need to do?

I haven’t talked at all about the Covid restrictions and mandates that are being implemented here all the time, but they are pretty strict, and as always, it is guaranteed that a society’s weakest members, the homeless, will in the end bear the brunt of them.

I’m not going to vent my own view on the entire situation, either here abroad, we do that enough every day, but this is an aspect I think we should all keep in mind: the main victims of any such event are always the same: the children, the elderly and the poorest. And in the case of Covid, that risks remaining hidden by the complaints of everyone else, because everyone feels like a victim.

 

 

One more thing: at some point in spring, the crew wanted to make me a T-shirt, like they made for themselves, the ones you can see in some of the photos, and here:

 

 

And I said: why don’t we make T-shirts for all the homeless clients too? They have more use for it than I do, and the visibility is good. The idea died because Ms. Penny-Pincher thought it was too expensive at €4 a piece, but I will make sure it is revived at some point. Make 200 for the homeless, and 200 to sell on the Automatic Earth site, with revenue going to the kitchen. Sounds pretty good. It must be organized, and I’m not going to be the one packaging and sending them, but we’ll find a solution for that.

 

 

Merry Christmas to you all from everyone at the Monastiraki kitchen -there’s often about 20 of them-. And once again: we couldn’t do it without you. I’ll end with the same bit I did last time, the donation details.

 

 

 

 

Most of you will know the drill of this by now: any Paypal donations ending in $0.99 or $0.37 go straight to the Monastiraki kitchen, while other donations go to the Automatic Earth -which also badly needs them. (Note: a lot of Automatic Earth donations also end up at the kitchen).

I dislike few things more than asking people for money, even though the Automatic Earth now runs primarily on donations, and there’s some sweet justice in that as well, in depending on people’s appreciation of what we do, instead of ad revenues.

But I cannot do this on my own right now. The Monastiraki kitchen will realistically need about €1,500 per month. I don’t have that to spare. So I’m calling on you. Unashamedly, because I know there is no reason to be ashamed of the cause.

I love all you people, and I’m sorry I can’t thank you all individually who have supported -and still do- the Monastiraki kitchen and the Automatic Earth all this time, and I ask you to keep on doing just that. The details for donations on Paypal and Patreon, for both causes, are in the top of the two sidebars of this site. Could not be much easier. If you’d rather send a check, go to our Store and Donations page. Bitcoin: 1HYLLUR2JFs24X1zTS4XbNJidGo2XNHiTT.

Love you. Thank you. This kitchen would not exist without you, these people would not get fed.

 

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

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

 

Oct 182021
 
 October 18, 2021  Posted by at 7:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  55 Responses »


M. C. Escher Meeting (Encounter) 1940

 

Covid Infection In Vaxxed 40-49 Yr Olds Double The Unvaxxed Rate (DS)
Over 90% Of A Hospital’s Admissions Were Vaccinated For Covid-19 (Siri)
What Happens If Israel Fails The Stress Test? (Geert)
White House Tells Governors to Get Ready to Vaccinate Young Kids (CHD)
40% Of California State Workers Are Unvaccinated Despite Newsom’s Order (ZH)
Pentagon Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Vaccine Mandates (ET)
Ron Johnson Slams DOJ Probe Of Parents’ School Board Protests (JTN)
Facebook Announces 10,000 EU Jobs To Build ‘Metaverse’ (Y!)
MPs Back Challenge To Boris Johnson On Vaccine Passports (Exp.)
Bare Shelves, No Holidays… At Last, A Biblical Kind Of Christmas (Cumming)
Who Do You Blame When You’ve Killed The Scapegoat? (Fintan O’Toole)

 

 

Ivermectin works in Tokyo..

 

 

And in Indonesia.


Indonesia ramped up ivermectin production and the government assured national distribution and fair prices. IVM is considered by the government a COVID medicine.

 

 

But Singapore has the same pattern as Taiwan: very low infection rates, but then the vaccines came…

 

 

McCullough
https://twitter.com/i/status/1448336581358665733

 

 

Effectiveness Hits Minus-109%

Covid Infection In Vaxxed 40-49 Yr Olds Double The Unvaxxed Rate (DS)

In the latest Vaccine Surveillance report from Public Health England (PHE) the Covid infection rate in double-vaccinated people in their 40s went above 100 per cent higher than in the unvaccinated for the first time, reaching 109 per cent. This translates to an unadjusted vaccine effectiveness of minus 109 per cent.

Vaccine effectiveness continues to drop fast in all over-18s, hitting minus 85 per cent for those in their 50s, minus 88 per cent for those in their 60s and minus 79 per cent for those in their 70s. Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation and death continues to hold up in all age groups, though with some signs of decline, particularly among older people. There is still nothing from Government sources acknowledging this failure of the vaccines against infection, its implications for policy and analysing what might be behind it.

Read more …

We’ve seen Deborah Conrad.

Over 90% Of A Hospital’s Admissions Were Vaccinated For Covid-19 (Siri)

A concerned Physician Assistant, Deborah Conrad, convinced her hospital to carefully track the Covid-19 vaccination status of every patient admitted to her hospital. The result is shocking. As Ms. Conrad has detailed, her hospital serves a community in which less than 50% of the individuals were vaccinated for Covid-19 but yet, during the same time period, approximately 90% of the individuals admitted to her hospital were documented to have received this vaccine. These patients were admitted for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to COVID-19 infections. Even more troubling is that there were many individuals who were young, many who presented with unusual or unexpected health events, and many who were admitted months after vaccination.


One would think that after an association was identified by a healthcare professional, our health authorities would at least review this finding, right? Sadly, when Ms. Conrad reached out to health authorities herself, she was ignored. My firm then sent a letter to the CDC and FDA on July 19, 2021 on Ms. Conrad’s behalf (see letter below), yet neither agency has responded. Even worse, when doctors came to Ms. Conrad for assistance with filing VAERS report for their patients, the hospital prohibited her from filing these reports. That the CDC and FDA failed to respond is arguably not surprising – they have been cheerleading this vaccine for months. Admitting almost any harm now would be akin to asking them to turn a gun on themselves. This again highlights the importance of never permitting government coercion and mandates when it comes to medical procedures.

Read more …

“..it is reasonable to expect booster injections to only enable the virus to more rapidly evolve resistance to the vaccines..”

What Happens If Israel Fails The Stress Test? (Geert)

It is well known that, regardless of any induced antigen (Ag)-specific adaptive immune response, all vaccines (including mRNA vaccines) have an adjuvant effect: they stimulate innate immune effectors, some of which have antiviral activity and/or facilitate adaptive immunity (2, 3, 4). Without going into mechanistic detail, there is no doubt that some of these innate, nonAg-specific immune responses have a short-lived antiviral effect. This could already explain why booster doses in the population described above can prevent viral infection while recalling anti-spike Abs. It may also be tempting to assume that these recalled Abs are now responsible for enhanced protection from both infection and disease.

However, from an immunological viewpoint, it is difficult to understand how a rapid recall of the very same anti-S Abs in a previously vaccine-primed population would now all of a sudden enable better protection from infection and disease. If innate immunity is indeed the confounder, then the outcome of long-term surveillance studies would look very different. Given the more potent neutralizing Abs booster shots are generating against variants (5), the S(pike)-directed immune pressure in the population will only continue to rise while still failing to curtail the spread of the predominantly circulating highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 variant (e.g., Delta variant). On the contrary, it would be reasonable to assume that upon an additional booster shot the more potent Abs further contribute to selecting S-directed immune escape variants and, therefore, turn the previously primed population in an even more fertile breeding ground for the highly infectious Delta variant.

As vaccine-elicited Ab responses have a much longer duration (and can be memorized) than that induced by short-term innate immune activation, and as vaccinal Abs suppress the functional capacity of pre-existing CoV-reactive innate Abs, short-term vaccine-mediated innate immune protection against viral infection or disease does not automatically imply a positive effect of the vaccine on viral infection or morbidity rates in the longer term. Interpretations from scientists who only conduct short-term surveillance studies in vaccinees, the majority of whom are adults or elderly, lead to erroneous, although peer-reviewed conclusions such as: ‘Although vaccines are less effective against asymptomatic disease (*) or against transmission than against severe disease, even in populations with fairly high vaccination rates the unvaccinated are still the major drivers of transmission and are themselves at the highest risk of serious disease’ (6).

This clearly illustrates their lack of understanding of the contribution of innate immunity in providing short-term protection after vaccination, and in the more durable protection of young and healthy unvaccinated age groups. Based on all of the above, it is reasonable to expect booster injections to only enable the virus to more rapidly evolve resistance to the vaccines. This evolution would be dramatically expedited by vaccinating and boosting more and more younger age groups.

Read more …

No FDA approval, but “..the Biden administration has already purchased 65 million doses of pediatric COVID vaccines..”

White House Tells Governors to Get Ready to Vaccinate Young Kids (CHD)

In a private phone call Tuesday with the nation’s governors, the White House told states to prepare to vaccinate children as young as 5 by early November. A White House official said the call was made in anticipation of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine being cleared for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in the coming weeks for children ages 5 to 11. According to NBC News, the Biden administration purchased 65 million pediatric doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine — enough to vaccinate an estimated 28 million children who would be eligible should the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approve Pfizer’s request to vaccinate the younger age group. In anticipation of a green light from the FDA, the administration began planning vaccination efforts with states, pharmacies and medical groups.

The administration told providers in a planning document last week the vaccine for children will be delivered to thousands of sites within one week of FDA authorization. The pediatric Pfizer vaccine will be distributed in 100-dose packs. Each dose is one-third of what is given to adults, and will be free through sites enrolled in a federal program that guarantees the shots are provided at no cost. Some states are planning to provide the vaccine through schools. “We’ve secured plenty of supply, and we’ll be putting in place an allocation, ordering and distribution system similar to what we’ve used for the other vaccines,” said Biden’s White House COVID coordinator, Jeff Zients, on a phone call, obtained by ABC News, with governors.

“It is distressing to hear that the Biden administration has already purchased 65 million doses of pediatric COVID vaccines,” said Dr. Elizabeth Mumper, pediatric physician and CEO of the Rimland Center for Integrative Medicine. “Vaccinating children is not the way out of the pandemic.” In an email to The Defender, Mumper said she hopes the White House will consider the following data:

• 99.998% of patients under the age of 18 survive COVID
• COVID “vaccines” have not undergone adequate long-term safety studies
• According to the latest available data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, as of Oct. 1, there have been a total of 21,298 reports of adverse events, including 1,284 rated as serious and 22 reported deaths (two of the 22 deaths were suicides) in the 12- to 17-year-old age group
• healthy adolescents given COVID “vaccines” have experienced blood clots, myocarditis, abnormal menses, neurologic symptoms and extreme fatigue
• most COVID cases are spread from adults to children — children are not a significant threat to the elderly and vulnerable

Read more …

“..a third of all hospitals in the state are experiencing critical staffing shortages because engineers, janitorial staff, respiratory therapists, nurses, midwives, physical therapists, and technicians have either staged strikes or have left the job over the mandate.”

40% Of California State Workers Are Unvaccinated Despite Newsom’s Order (ZH)

This might come as a surprise, but 40% of California state employees are unvaccinated despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s directive to mandate the jab or be subjected to regular testing. Newsom issued this new directive in July following a surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. At the time, he said, “We are now dealing with a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and it’s going to take renewed efforts to protect Californians from the dangerous Delta variant.” Still months later, less than two-thirds of state workers, or 62%, were vaccinated, according to The Sacramento Bee. The figure is much lower than the state’s overall rate of 72%. Human Resources Department spokeswoman Camille Travis said her agency has only compiled 89% of state employee vaccination status.

She said the data so far suggests some state employees weren’t compelled to get jabbed after Newsom’s directive. Some of the state’s largest departments shared vaccination rates: 52% of California Highway Patrol employees, 60% of Department of Motor Vehicles employees, and 60% of prison employees have received the shots. California Department of Transportation has the highest with 70%. Newsom’s mandatory jab, or be forced to regular testing for state employees, is less stringent than those of health care workers who have been forced to get the vaccine unless they had a medical exemption or religious claim.

One emerging drawback of mandatory jabs, with no consideration for regular testing nor naturally-acquired immunity, are reports that a third of all hospitals in the state are experiencing critical staffing shortages because engineers, janitorial staff, respiratory therapists, nurses, midwives, physical therapists, and technicians have either staged strikes or have left the job over the mandate. Director of Medical Ethics, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty of the University of California, Irvine, challenged the constitutionality of the hospital’s vaccine mandate regarding individuals who have recovered from COVID and have naturally acquired immunity and was immediately placed on leave. There’s no room to debate science as only the government can decide what’s best for state employees.

Read more …

“..Attorneys argued in the suit that no COVID-19 vaccine is available in the United States that has received full licensing and approval..”

Pentagon Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Vaccine Mandates (ET)

Service members from all five branches of the U.S. military, federal employees, and federal civilian contractors have joined in a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Defense over its COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The 24 plaintiffs “face a deadline under the Federal COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate to receive a COVID-19 vaccine that violates their sincerely held religious beliefs, and have been refused any religious exemption or accommodation,” according to Liberty Counsel, the Christian legal firm that filed the lawsuit. The lawsuit (pdf), filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, lists President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as defendants.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to issue a temporary restraining order (pdf) to prevent the COVID-19 vaccine mandates from taking effect, and ultimately issue an injunction to prevent the Pentagon from enforcing the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Biden on Sept. 9 issued an executive order requiring almost all federal employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of employment. Regular testing isn’t an option. Civilian federal employees and contractors have until Nov. 22 to be fully vaccinated. Austin issued a memorandum on Aug. 24 saying that all military service members must receive a COVID-19 vaccine, after which all the branches of the military announced various deadlines for its troops to be fully vaccinated, regardless of whether they had previously survived a bout of COVID-19, and threatening suspensions or other disciplinary actions if service members don’t have a pending exemption request or fail to comply.

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps have set a Nov. 28 deadline for their active-duty service members; reservists have until Dec. 28. For the Army and the Air Force, the deadlines for active-duty service members are Dec. 15 and Nov. 2, respectively, and deadlines for National Guard and Reserve members are June 30, 2022, and Dec. 2, 2021, respectively. U.S. Coast Guard members have until Nov. 22 to be fully vaccinated. [..] Attorneys argued in the suit that no COVID-19 vaccine is available in the United States that has received full licensing and approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and as such, cannot be mandated.

Austin, in his memo on Aug. 24 (pdf), stated that the mandatory vaccinations “will only use COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the [FDA] in accordance with FDA-approved labeling and guidance,” attorneys noted, arguing that “additional military documents reveal that the Department of Defense is not following its own directive” and is using vaccines under emergency use authorization [EUA] “because there is no FDA approved vaccine available.” Austin’s memo came a day after the FDA issued full approval for future Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, which will bear the Comirnaty label. The latter vaccine wasn’t available in the United States as of Oct. 12, The Epoch Times reported previously.

Read more …

“Show up peacefully. Be respectful. But be insistent. Demand that the school boards follow your wishes. Not the wishes of Joe Biden and his cast of characters.”

Ron Johnson Slams DOJ Probe Of Parents’ School Board Protests (JTN)

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin says Attorney General Merrick Garland‘s order to have the FBI investigate parent protests of school policies is “outrageous” and a “method of intimidation.” “He is saying they are intimidating school board members. No, it is the attorney general of the United States that is intimidating people exercising their rights to free speech and the right to petition their government,” Johnson said in an interview aired Sunday on the Cats Roundtable with John Catsimatidis show on WABC radio in New York. Garland announced recently the FBI would be investigating comments made by parents during contentious school board meetings over curriculum issues such as critical race theory and transgender pronouns.


The Wisconsin Republican, who is up for reelection next year, encouraged parents not to be intimidated and to continue to press for the policies they want for their children. “I tell people in Wisconsin, if you don’t want critical race theory; if you don’t want the 1619 project taught to your children, don’t let it be,” he said. “Show up peacefully. Be respectful. But be insistent. Demand that the school boards follow your wishes. Not the wishes of Joe Biden and his cast of characters.”

Read more …

“..meetings in a virtual room where they all appear as cartoonish 3D versions of themselves..”

Facebook Announces 10,000 EU Jobs To Build ‘Metaverse’ (Y!)

Facebook on Monday announced plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build the “metaverse”, a virtual reality version of the internet that the tech giant sees as the future. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been a leading voice in Silicon Valley hype around the idea of the metaverse, which would blur the lines between the physical world and the digital one. The technology might, for example, allow someone to don virtual reality glasses that make it feel as if they’re face-to-face with a friend — when in fact they are thousands of miles apart and connected via the internet. “The metaverse has the potential to help unlock access to new creative, social, and economic opportunities. And Europeans will be shaping it right from the start,” Facebook said in a blog post.


“Today, we are announcing a plan to create 10,000 new high skilled jobs within the EU over the next five years.” The European hires will include “highly specialised engineers”, but the company otherwise gave few details of its plans for the new metaverse team. “The EU has a number of advantages that make it a great place for tech companies to invest — a large consumer market, first class universities and, crucially, top quality talent,” the blog post said. [..] Facebook bought Oculus, a company that makes virtual reality headsets, for $2 billion in 2014 and has since been developing Horizon, a digital world where people can interact using VR technology. In August it unveiled Horizon Workrooms, a feature where co-workers wearing VR headsets can hold meetings in a virtual room where they all appear as cartoonish 3D versions of themselves.

Read more …

“If we start down this road the future is dark.”

MPs Back Challenge To Boris Johnson On Vaccine Passports (Exp.)

Campaigners for the Together Declaration petition, already signed by almost 110,000 people including more than 200 church leaders and representatives of businesses and groups, fear that the UK Government will be pushed into agreeing to a so-called plan B to bring in new restrictions over the winter. It follows warnings by chief medical officer Chris Whitty last week that the NHS will “experience an exceptionally difficult winter” this year. Already this has been taken as an indication that pro-lockdown scientists working for the government will push for vaccine passports which have been introduced by Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland and the Labour government in Wales. Already, Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, which represents backbench Conservative MPs has signed the declaration.

He said: “‘Vaccine passports would set an alarming precedent where our medical records become public and some people are subjected to discrimination as they seek to go about their everyday lives. Surely that isn’t the kind of society that we want to create?” Another senior Tory MP, Sir Desmond Swayne added: “It is contrary to all our values and traditions to have to prove that we have undergone a medical procedure to go about our lawful business. “It is coercive and discriminatory, the abandonment of liberal values; a frightful precedent to set. I am appalled that a Conservative government could contemplate such a measure. If we start down this road the future is dark.” Campaigners will meet former minister Steve Baker, deputy chairman of the powerful Covid Recovery Group (CRG), and other Parliamentarians tomorrow before unfurling a 40m banner in Parliament Square.

[..] Robert Dingwall, former government advisor, and professor of sociology from Nottingham Trent University, who has carried out extensive research on the use of vaccine passports said: “Vaccine passports are a tech industry idea in search of a problem. In terms of public safety, they have little to offer. “Vaccinated people have a high degree of protection from their own vaccination. They also still have a potential to infect other people. By now, anyone who wants to be vaccinated has had an opportunity to do so.

Read more …

“There won’t be any turkeys, or at least not dead ones.”

Bare Shelves, No Holidays… At Last, A Biblical Kind Of Christmas (Cumming)

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” says Jo at the start of Little Women. BoJo is going one better. This Christmas, not only will there be no presents, but there will be no anything. After cancelling Christmas altogether last year, this time around he is creating a kind of half-Christmas, Christmas methadone, to ease us back into the festival. There is nothing the man will not do to get himself compared to Churchill. Thanks to his foresight and the happy accidents of the global economy, we will be able to wallow in our beloved blitz spirit, making do and mending, with a safe low dosage of consumerism to tide us over.

There will be no PlayStation 5 under where the Christmas tree used to be. There will be no jokes in Mrs Brown’s Boys, as usual, but none in the Christmas crackers either. There’s no petrol or HGV drivers, of course, but correspondents also report shortages of tennis balls, merlot, white bread, sardines, M&S chicken kievs, fish sauce, frozen apple strudel, tinned sardines, spring onions, fire alarms, an effective opposition, chocolate Hobnobs, cat vaccines, cat worming pills, bubble bath, Leon fish-finger wraps, marmalade, butter beans, dog-poo bags, goats, crisps, decaf coffee, bulbs (plant), bulbs (light), pigs, blankets, pigs-in-blankets, roofing lead and Harry Potter merchandise, especially wands. The last is hard to take; usually there are more wands than you can shake a stick at.

On the off-chance you manage to get to 25 December with a full tank and are able to dodge Insulate Britain’s armed roadblocks, you’ll arrive at houses that are too expensive to heat. The environmentalists ought to be encouraging the free movement of cars this Christmas; there are few people more persuasive on the subject of double-glazing than a chilly mother-in-law. There won’t be any turkeys, or at least not dead ones. There are plenty waddling around in barns, but there’s nobody to slaughter them. For the handful that do make it to Bernard Matthews’ big barn in the sky, there’s nobody to drive them to the shops. In a delicious irony, there are shortages of everything except shortages. Like it or not, this is what leadership looks like.

Read more …

“Frost demanded that the EU agree to rewrite completely the Northern Ireland protocol of the withdrawal treaty that Johnson hailed in October 2019 as a “fantastic deal for all of the UK”.

Who Do You Blame When You’ve Killed The Scapegoat? (Fintan O’Toole)

Last week, Boris Johnson, with his paintbrush and easel at his holiday villa in Marbella, touched up his self-portrait as the reincarnation of Winston Churchill. Meanwhile, another bodysnatcher, Johnson’s Brexit tsar, David Frost, was also in sunny Iberia. In Lisbon on Tuesday evening, he channelled the intellectual father of modern conservatism, the 18th-century Irish writer and politician Edmund Burke. Frost demanded that the EU agree to rewrite completely the Northern Ireland protocol of the withdrawal treaty that Johnson hailed in October 2019 as a “fantastic deal for all of the UK”. His speech was entitled, in imitation of a famous Burke pamphlet, “Observations on the present state of the nation”.

In case his audience somehow failed to make the connection between the former chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association and one of the greatest political thinkers these islands has produced, Frost reminded them – how could they have forgotten? – that he had previously given a speech entitled “Reflections on the Revolutions in Europe”. Geddit? For those who did indeed get it, the first response was surely to sigh, like the ghost in Shakespeare’s tragedy, “O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there”. The second was the dizzying feeling that the “present state of the nation” is that of a skydiver, free-falling downwards from Burkean conservatism into pure Tory anarchism. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke wrote that “good order is the foundation of all good things”.

Somehow, when his soul was transmigrating to be born again in Brexit Britain, that bit got lost in translation. Disorder is now the royal road to all the good things that will come to those who keep the Brexit faith. Tearing up international treaties is, like the mass culling of pigs and fruit rotting in the fields, merely a manifestation of the creative chaos from which the new universe of “Global Britain” will emerge. It is rather unfortunate that the ground on which this big bang is set to explode, Northern Ireland, is a place that knows all about big bangs and the misery of chaos. And even more so that it is a place held together by one of those documents that Johnson and his government now hold in such contempt: an international treaty, the Belfast agreement of 1998.

Before Frost gave his speech on Tuesday, he knew full well that the EU was about to put forward a generous, sensible and very helpful set of proposals to deal with the difficulties in the practical implementation of the protocol. These proposals, unveiled on Wednesday, give civic and business leaders in Northern Ireland pretty much everything they have asked for to make the new arrangements work smoothly. Anticipating this EU move to calm everything down, however, Frost and Johnson chose to pre-empt the solutions by creating a new problem, one they know to be insoluble. They have hyped up an issue that no one in business or trade in Northern Ireland gives a damn about: the role of the European court of justice (ECJ) in any potential disputes about the interpretation of EU law. Deprived of the movement of sausages as a casus belli, they grasped another dubious foodstuff – the red herring.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Earplugs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1449965542916374529

 

 

 

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Oct 042021
 
 October 4, 2021  Posted by at 7:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  56 Responses »


Salvador Dali City of drawers – The Anthropomorphic Cabinet 1936

 

Vaccine Effectiveness Hits as Low as Minus-66% in the Over 40s (DS)
Increases In Covid-19 Are Unrelated To Levels Of Vaccination (Springer)
Merck’s New Drug – A Wonder Or Incipient Slaughter?
Predominance of Antibody-Resistant Covid Variants In Breakthrough Cases (Mxiv)
Antihistamines And Azithromycin As A Treatment For Covid-19 (PMC)
‘Grinch’ Fauci Mulls Canceling Christmas Due To Covid (RT)
Israel Tightens Covid ‘Green Pass’ Rules, Sparking Protest (AP)
The Israeli Face Of Pain After Pfizer Shots (Farber)
How Democray Ends (Prasad)
Staff Shortages Spreading To All Corners Of UK Business (G.)
Whistleblower Blasts Facebook For Prioritizing Profits Over ‘Democracy’ (RT)
Electricity Bills In Italy Rise By Almost 30 Percent From Friday (ZH)
Pandora Papers (RT)

 

 

October 15

 

 

Nails It
https://twitter.com/i/status/1444683972789817348

 

 

The minus number is a nice detail.

Vaccine Effectiveness Hits as Low as Minus-66% in the Over 40s (DS)

Following last week’s ‘fact check‘ from Full Fatuous – ostensibly of my piece but with some words of admonition for PHE as well, particularly over the accuracy of the population data – a new note appeared in the report: “Interpretation of the case rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated population is particularly susceptible to changes in denominators and should be interpreted with extra caution.” So there you go. All estimates in this post are based on the data PHE uses and are valid insofar as that data is accurate. As before, the data is just for a four-week period, which, given that the early part of the Delta surge was dominated by the unvaccinated and the latter part has seen infections rise in the vaccinated, seems to me a mistake. A fairer view would cover the whole Delta surge (as with the estimates I make from the data in the Technical Briefings), but in any case the report gives a snapshot of current relative infection rates.


As Full Fatuous pointed out, PHE don’t recommend using this data to estimate vaccine effectiveness, saying it’s “not the most appropriate method” because it’s unadjusted for risk factors (and, inevitably, they don’t provide the data you’d need to adjust it). However, even if not recommended by PHE, it is certainly a valid method of calculating vaccine effectiveness, which is just a figure which states the relative risk reduction in the vaccinated group, as long as you bear in mind its limitations. All vaccine effectiveness estimates have limitations, and while adjusting for confounding factors is in principle important, it is helpful only if done well, and many studies do not do it well. Unadjusted estimates from raw data are a necessary starting point.

Perhaps the key confounder for the estimates of vaccine effectiveness against infection given here is whether people have been previously infected, with a common assumption being that a higher proportion of the unvaccinated will be previously infected, due to it being a potential factor in people’s decision not to be vaccinated. This may well artificially lower the vaccine effectiveness estimates, but since no one has yet produced data showing how antibodies-from-infection split between vaccinated and unvaccinated it is hard to know how far this is the case. Unvaccinated here means actually unvaccinated, not partially vaccinated or post-jab. Hospitalisation means “cases presenting to emergency care (within 28 days of a positive specimen) resulting in an overnight inpatient admission”.


As England’s drawn-out Delta outbreak drags on, the infection rates in the vaccinated continue to outpace those in the unvaccinated, reducing (unadjusted) vaccine effectiveness further. For the 60s age group, infection rates are 63% higher in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated, up from 53% last week, giving an (unadjusted) vaccine effectiveness of minus-63%. But that has been topped this week by the 40s age group, the vaccinated among whom now have an infection rate no less than 66% higher than the unvaccinated, up from 46% in last week’s report and 27% in the report for the month ending September 5th. Vaccine effectiveness has been heading downward in the 30s age group as well, now just 8%, though interestingly it has actually been increasing in the under 18s.

Read more …

“..Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated.”

But still you say they are unrelated?

Increases In Covid-19 Are Unrelated To Levels Of Vaccination (Springer)

At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days. In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people. Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days. The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated.

Across the US counties too, the median new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in the last 7 days is largely similar across the categories of percent population fully vaccinated (Fig. 2). Notably there is also substantial county variation in new COVID-19 cases within categories of percentage population fully vaccinated. There also appears to be no significant signaling of COVID-19 cases decreasing with higher percentages of population fully vaccinated. Of the top 5 counties that have the highest percentage of population fully vaccinated (99.9–84.3%), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies 4 of them as “High” Transmission counties. Chattahoochee (Georgia), McKinley (New Mexico), and Arecibo (Puerto Rico) counties have above 90% of their population fully vaccinated with all three being classified as “High” transmission.

Conversely, of the 57 counties that have been classified as “low” transmission counties by the CDC, 26.3% (15) have percentage of population fully vaccinated below 20%. Since full immunity from the vaccine is believed to take about 2 weeks after the second dose, we conducted sensitivity analyses by using a 1-month lag on the percentage population fully vaccinated for countries and US counties. The above findings of no discernable association between COVID-19 cases and levels of fully vaccinated was also observed when we considered a 1-month lag on the levels of fully vaccinated. We should note that the COVID-19 case data is of confirmed cases, which is a function of both supply (e.g., variation in testing capacities or reporting practices) and demand-side (e.g., variation in people’s decision on when to get tested) factors.

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“The problem with developing drugs like this is that if they get into other cells, not virally-infected ones, they can also cause those errors in the DNA replication and thus terminate the cell’s propagation and cellular line.”

Merck’s New Drug – A Wonder Or Incipient Slaughter?

This drug is an analog (in other words, “looks the same to a living cell”) of cytosine. That’s one of four chemical “bases” that make up DNA. What Merck has done is “damage” it in a way that a cell still thinks its cytosine. Thus when it gets taken up in the synthesis of RNA it produces an error; the replication process doesn’t know how to deal with that and, after a few of those accumulate the process fails and thus the virus (in this case Covid-19) cannot reproduce in the cell. That’s how it works, basically. I was incorrect, by the way, in calling this a potential protease inhibitor, much like those used for HIV. Pfizer has one of those in test for Covid-19 as well. This is not — it is a nucleoside (the four primary chemical bases that make up DNA) analog that has been deliberately damaged so as to screw up the replication machinery.

There are a few of these used today in humans, with most targeting HIV in “combination therapy.” Covid-19 in most people produces transient, self-limiting illness. In some people it causes dysregulation of the immune system, organizing viral pneumonia and if not stopped there can kill you either through direct spread into other organs or the dysfunction that comes from the body’s response to that. We greatly increase the risk of that happening by telling you to go home and eat chicken soup until you’re choking; by the time you are choking anything you could have done, including using drugs that might partially block replication or suppress excess inflammatory response (e.g. antihistamines, drugs such as HCQ or Ivermectin, etc.) or put a stop to the organizing pneumonia (e.g. inhaled steroids such as budesonide) may not work at all or have greatly-reduced effectiveness.

That’s stupid but its what damn near every so-called “medical professional” has told you to do for the last 18 months. That advice may be valid for a cold virus but it definitely is not when the virus in question can and sometimes does result in wildly-inappropriate systemic inflammation and immune dysregulation. HIV, on the other hand, progressively destroys your immune system and then a whole bunch of things that usually don’t kill people at all (like PCP) get going in your body and finish you off. In other words HIV is akin to cancer, which if not stopped will kill you with near 100% certainty by screwing things up to the point that your body cannot fix it anymore, whereas Covid-19, in most people, is a self-limiting respiratory infection.

The problem with developing drugs like this is that if they get into other cells, not virally-infected ones, they can also cause those errors in the DNA replication and thus terminate the cell’s propagation and cellular line. Depending on how quickly those cells replicate in the human body that might be a small and self-limiting problem (e.g. they replicate fast and only a few of them get “polluted”) or it might be a ticking time bomb that ultimately screws you in hard-to-predict and impossible to treat ways (e.g. slowly-replicating types of cells where a lot of them get polluted.) It’s even worse if you’re a person of reproductive age as cellular replication happens very rapidly in a developing fetus and thus any such impact has a high probability of over-expressing in that circumstance. This is exactly how thalidomide babies happened and its not necessarily limited to women either since half the genetic material comes from the man and unlike women who start with all of the eggs they will ever have men are continually producing new sperm cells which conceivably could carry that damage into the zygote.

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VanDen Bossche warned us.

Predominance of Antibody-Resistant Covid Variants In Breakthrough Cases (Mxiv)

Associations between vaccine breakthrough cases and infection by SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants have remained largely unexplored. Here we analyzed SARS-CoV-2 whole-genome sequences and viral loads from 1,373 persons with COVID-19 from the San Francisco Bay Area from February 1 to June 30, 2021, of which 125 (9.1%) were vaccine breakthrough infections. Fully vaccinated were more likely than unvaccinated persons to be infected by variants carrying mutations associated with decreased antibody neutralization (L452R, L452Q, E484K, and/or F490S) (78% versus 48%, p = 1.96e-08), but not by those associated with increased infectivity (L452R and/or N501Y) (85% versus 77%, p = 0.092). Differences in viral loads were non-significant between unvaccinated and fully vaccinated persons overall (p = 0.99) and according to lineage (p = 0.09 – 0.78).


Viral loads were significantly higher in symptomatic as compared to asymptomatic vaccine breakthrough cases (p < 0.0001), and symptomatic vaccine breakthrough infections had similar viral loads to unvaccinated infections (p = 0.64). In 5 cases with available longitudinal samples for serologic analyses, vaccine breakthrough infections were found to be associated with low or undetectable neutralizing antibody levels attributable to immunocompromised state or infection by an antibody-resistant lineage. These findings suggest that vaccine breakthrough cases are preferentially caused by circulating antibody-resistant SARS-CoV-2 variants, and that symptomatic breakthrough infections may potentially transmit COVID-19 as efficiently as unvaccinated infections, regardless of the infecting lineage.

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“No hospital admissions, deaths, nor adverse drug effects were reported in our patient population.”

Antihistamines And Azithromycin As A Treatment For Covid-19 (PMC)

Between March and April 2020, 84 elderly patients with suspected COVID-19 living in two nursing homes of Yepes, Toledo (Spain) were treated early with antihistamines (dexchlorpheniramine, cetirizine or loratadine), adding azithromycin in the 25 symptomatic cases. The outcomes are retrospectively reported. The primary endpoint is the fatality rate of COVID-19. The secondary endpoints are the hospital and ICU admission rates. Endpoints were compared with the official Spanish rates for the elderly. The mean age of our population was 85 and 48% were over 80 years old.


No hospital admissions, deaths, nor adverse drug effects were reported in our patient population. By the end of June, 100% of the residents had positive serology for COVID-19. Although clinical trials are needed to determine the efficacy of both drugs in the treatment of COVID-19, this analysis suggests that primary care diagnosis and treatment with antihistamines, plus azithromycin in selected cases, may treat COVID-19 and prevent progression to severe disease in elderly patients.

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Also an expert on immigration.

‘Grinch’ Fauci Mulls Canceling Christmas Due To Covid (RT)

White House health adviser Anthony Fauci has insisted that Covid-19 is not being spread by untested immigrants. He also claims the virus remains such a threat that traditional Christmas celebrations might need to be canceled. During a Sunday interview on CNN, Fauci was asked about a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll that found 55% of Republicans partially blame the spread of Covid-19 on immigrants and tourism. The survey follows scrutiny of the Biden administration over tactics at the US-Mexico border, where White House officials have admitted many migrants are not required to be tested for coronavirus and are subsequently released into the US with a notice to attend court at a later date.


Fauci said he did not see any connection between the spread of the virus and immigration. “This is not driven by immigrants. This is a problem within our country, the same way it’s a problem within other countries throughout the world,” the infectious-diseases expert said. “They are not the driving force of this,” he added. “Let’s face reality here.” Fauci was also asked about Title 42 – a Trump-era policy that permits the expulsion of migrants caught illegally crossing the border during the coronavirus pandemic. In response, the doctor said that “expelling” immigrants was “not the solution to an outbreak.” Fauci’s comments were met with plenty of criticism on social media, though many others agreed and echoed his view that there was scant connection between untested migrants and Covid-19 cases.

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We have an idea what the problem is with endless booster shots.

Israel Tightens Covid ‘Green Pass’ Rules, Sparking Protest (AP)

Israel restricted its COVID Green Pass on Sunday to allow only those who have received a vaccine booster dose or recently recuperated from coronavirus to enter indoor venues. The new criteria mean that nearly 2 million people will lose their vaccination passport in the coming days. Israel is the first country to make a booster shot a requirement for its digital vaccination passport. The move is widely seen as a step to encourage booster vaccination among those who have yet to receive a third dose. Under the new guidelines, people must have received a booster shot to be eligible for a green pass. Those who have received two vaccine doses, and those who have recovered from coronavirus, will be issued passes valid for six months after the date of their vaccination or recovery.


The government’s advisory cabinet on coronavirus was set to convene Sunday to discuss existing restrictions and guidelines. Technical problems hamstrung the Health Ministry’s rollout of the updated green pass as millions of Israelis tried to reissue digital documentation that would allow entry to shops, restaurants, cultural events, gyms and other indoor venues. Scores of Israelis staged demonstrations around the country in protest of the green pass system, with convoys of cars clogging morning commutes as many Israelis returned to work Sunday after September’s Jewish High Holidays. Opponents of the system said it is a form of forced vaccination. “We are totally against any forced vaccinations, or any forced medications, and we are totally against doing anything to our children and grandchildren that we don’t agree with,” said Sarah Felt, who protested along the main highway connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

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The Testimonies Project.

The Israeli Face Of Pain After Pfizer Shots (Farber)

When you see real people, faces, voices, against the ordinary backdrops of their homes, and you see the sorrow in their eyes, it becomes impossible to keep wild sorrow at bay any longer. Words become displaced by tears. Even rage, you realize, is a waiting room, a stalling place where you numb the sorrow, where you keep it slightly away from your heart. And the outpost thought, looping constantly, the train’s last station: “This can’t be happening.”

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Your future.

How Democray Ends (Prasad)

The pandemic events of 2020-2021 outline a potential pathway for a future democratically elected President of the United States to systematically end democracy. The course of events leading to this outcome need not be a repeat of the direct assault on the Capitol, but a distortion of risk of illness as a justification for military force and suspension of democratic norms. Sometime over the next quarter century, it is inevitable that America, and all nations, will experience a cold and flu season above average. In a typical season approximately 40,000 Americans may die, but it is possible an above average season may see 80,000 or more deaths.

Inevitably some location(s) in the country will experience a surge in cases. Television news will show overworked hospital workers, and report that Intensive Care Unit beds have nearly run out– of course, ICU’s often operate near capacity, so this finding alone may not be that noteworthy, but in our attention economy, it may be sensationalized. Some afflicted individuals will be young children– typical for the flu, and these anecdotes will surely be emotionally salient. A video of a young boy or girl on life support machines may be used to show how dire things are. These events will then serve as an opportunity for a strong federal response.

A future US president may declare that the crisis in the region from influenza is unprecedented. Too many children are dying, and hospitals are near capacity. Citing the lessons of COVID19—that if anything we acted too late—the President may call upon the governor to issue a shelter in place warning. A week later, citing a continued rise in case, and “non-compliance” of the local people, the President could order the national guard or army troops in to secure the region. Notably, military force was applied in Australia during COVID19.

During the COVID19 pandemic, some of the most ardent calls for strong restrictions came from members of the political left. If a future president is on the political right; this would serve as a natural opportunity to remind the public that strong tactics were precisely what the other side demanded more of during COVID19. Life and safety, particularly that of children, is of paramount importance, and strong lockdowns must ensue. In many regions across the world, one political party preferred stronger countermeasures to COVID19, in all those nations, the opposing party that has the advantage for misusing force in the future.

Eventually, inevitably, disagreements with the policies will arise. Social media may see small explosions of dialog critical of prolonged lockdown or skeptical of hospital volumes. A future leader can seize this opportunity for a forced takeover of media or social media companies. Misinformation that compromises a national attempt at safety must be shut down. The future leader can remind the public that during COVID19 many were critical that we did not do enough to ban dangerous and misleading speech, and now we are doing just that.

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Brexit squared.

Staff Shortages Spreading To All Corners Of UK Business (G.)

Staff shortages are rippling out from the haulage, farming and hospitality sectors to almost all parts of the economy, putting “severe pressure” on medium-sized business across the UK, a new survey has warned. More than a quarter of the 500 firms polled said the lack of staff was putting pressure on their ability to operate at normal levels, with reduced stock – due to the resulting supply chain disruption – hurting their business. While some firms had considered cutting production, others were planning to raise prices, leading to concerns over rising inflation as the Christmas trading period approaches. Nearly a fifth said they were increasing wages to attract new staff, while others were introducing extra perks to lure workers.

But the report, released by accountancy and advisory firm BDO, said the knock-on effects for consumers could be “significant”, with nearly one-third of businesses saying the prices would need to rise in the next three to six months to make up for the disruption. More than one-third of firms in the survey said they had also cut down on the kinds of products and services on offer, with a further third planned to do the same over the coming month unless the situation radically improves. A similar proportion expect stock ranges to be affected long-term.

Businesses blamed the pandemic and Brexit for the shortage of overseas workers, with 38% saying a lack of regional talent was hurting their ability to recruit much-needed staff. “Brexit, global supply chain issues and the long tail of Covid-19 has created a perfect storm for UK businesses,” BDO partner Ed Dwan said. “After navigating the challenges of the pandemic and hoping for some respite, businesses have found themselves facing more major disruption, with those across almost all sectors reporting staff shortages.

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She wants more censorship.

Whistleblower Blasts Facebook For Prioritizing Profits Over ‘Democracy’ (RT)

A former Facebook data scientist, responsible for censoring “dangerous” and “misleading” information during the 2020 US election, has all but accused the social media giant of facilitating the January 6 “insurrection.” In the ‘60 Minutes’ interview with CBS on Sunday, Frances Haugen, 37, came forward as the whistleblower behind a recent WSJ investigation and a Senate hearing. But while her Tuesday subcommittee appearance, titled ‘Protecting Kids Online’, will be focused on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of teens, in her interview Haugen touched upon another aspect of why she believes unregulated Facebook poses a danger to “democracy.” Haugen was recruited into Facebook’s Civic Integrity unit back in 2019, and gladly joined because she personally “lost a friend to online conspiracy theories.”

She had helped battle misinformation during the US presidential elections, but the moment Facebook rolled back its safeguards became a turning point when she told herself: “I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous.” “As soon as the election was over, they turned them back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritize growth over safety. And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me.” Hagen said there was a constant conflict of interests “between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” accusing the company of always prioritizing profits.

“Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money,” she said. “Like, they basically said, ‘Oh good, we made it through the election. There wasn’t riots. We can get rid of Civic Integrity now.’ Fast forward a couple months, we got the insurrection.”

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France capped the rise at 12.6%, and said no more hikes until March/April. But Bulgarian prices rose 36% last week. Be careful out there.

Electricity Bills In Italy Rise By Almost 30 Percent From Friday (ZH)

Household electricity bills will rise by 29.8% for the typical family and gas bills will go up by 14.4%, Italy’s energy regulatory authority Arera confirmed in a press release last week. The new national tariffs came into effect on Friday, the start of the fourth quarter of 2021. The increase comes amid surging energy costs across Europe, and beyond. The price rise passed on to Italian consumers could’ve reached 45 percent, Arera said, if the government had not stepped in to cap the new rise in rates. The Italian government last week announced measures costing three billion euros aimed at limiting a steeper rise in energy prices for consumers.

As well as keeping the cost to most families below 30 percent and 15 percent, the government measures will keep additional costs at zero for those least well-off, including households with an income under 8,265 euros, families with at least 4 dependent children with an income of less than 20,000 euros, those who receive a state pension or unemployment benefit, and people who are seriously ill, Sky TG24 reports. The measures also cut the ‘general charge’ from gas bills for all throughout the last quarter of 2021, and on electricity for families and some small businesses. Last quarter, the retail cost of electricity rose by 9.9% and gas by 15.3% from July 1st. The government also stepped in that time to cap costs, with 1.2 billion euros in state aid.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said last week that many of the reasons for the energy price increases were temporary but called for long-term action, including at a European level, to address the problem, including through diversifying supplies. Italy is highly dependent on imports and consumes a large amount of gas. Some 40% of its primary energy consumption is gas, compared with about 15 percent in France, according to official statistics for both countries.

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When I saw Luke Harding listed as the main author for the Guardian, I stopped reading. That was before I saw there are no American names mentioned. What a bunch of BS.

Pandora Papers (RT)

Leaked papers appear to show how some of the world’s elites accumulate property empires while avoiding millions in taxes, with reports focusing on European, Middle Eastern and South American leaders, and world-famous celebrities. Obtained from 14 offshore banking institutions and analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the ‘Pandora Papers’ reveal the financial chicanery of more than 100 billionaires, 35 current and former world leaders, and 300 public officials. The first round of information, handed to a select list of international outlets and studied by “600 journalists,” was published on Sunday.

According to the ICIJ, King Abdullah II of Jordan is a prolific user of shell corporations to manage his global property empire. The monarch reportedly used 36 of these companies from 1995 to 2017 to purchase 14 luxury properties in the US and UK worth more than $106 million. The king’s lawyers say he used these stand-in companies to maintain his privacy rather than to dodge any taxes. Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family has traded almost $500 million worth of British property in recent years, according to the leaks. One of these properties was sold by an Aliyev-owned front company to the Queen’s crown estate for a sizable $90 million.

[..] Despite featuring an image of Vladimir Putin front and center on their introductory piece, and mentioning Putin nearly 50 times in a spin-off article about the “hidden riches of Putin’s inner circle,” The Guardian had to admit in its reporting that the Russian president “does not appear in the files by name.” Instead, the paper focused on Putin’s “friends,” including billionaire businessman Gennady Timchenko, and Putin’s rumored past “girlfriend.”

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