Jan 042022
 


Rembrandt van Rijn A woman bathing in a stream 1654

 

Denmark Health Chief: Omicron Is Bringing About The End Of The Pandemic (DM)
CDC: 61% of Teenagers Hospitalized for COVID-19 Had Severe Obesity (Reason)
Social Media Companies Shoot The Messenger (JTN)
Why I Resigned From The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Tara Henley)
Trump Calls Twitter, Facebook ‘Disgrace To Our Nation’ (JTN)
What If The Largest Experiment On Human Beings In History Is A Failure? (Malone)
McCullough: Outpatient Treatments for COVID-19 Have Been Suppressed (ET)
: The Collins and Fauci Attack on Traditional Public Health (ET)
COVID Activity Ramps Up In India, Middle East (Cidrap)
Federal Court Grants Injunction for Navy SEALs Challenging Vaccine Mandate (AP)
Elizabeth Holmes Found Guilty Of Four Charges In Fraud Case (DM)
The Biden Consultants Working To Sink His Agenda (DP)
The Big Lie and the Elastic Truth: How to Invent a Coup (Miele)

 

 

Ladapo

 

 

 

 

OZ adverse events

 

 

 

 

More people have been infected in 2 MONTHS since Halloween 2021 than in 20 MONTHS before Halloween 2021.

Denmark health chief: “we will have our lives back in two months”. Omicron will end the pandemic.

 

 

 

‘..we will have our normal lives back in two months..’

Denmark Health Chief: Omicron Is Bringing About The End Of The Pandemic (DM)

A Danish health chief has said the Covid-19 Omicron variant is bringing about the end of the pandemic, saying ‘we will have our normal lives back in two months’. Speaking to Danish TV 2, Tyra Grove Krause – the chief epidemiologist at Denmark’s State Serum Institute – said a new study from the organisation found that the risk of hospitalisation from Omicron is half that seen with the Delta variant. This, she said, has given Danish authorities hope that the Covid-19 pandemic in Denmark could be over in two months. ‘I think we will have that in the next two months, and then I hope the infection will start to subside and we get our normal lives back,’ she said on Monday.


Despite early fears that Omicron could prolong the pandemic due to its increased level of infection, Ms Krause said it actually could spell the end of the pandemic. According to the study: ‘Omicron is here to stay, and it will provide some massive spread of infection in the coming month. When it’s over, we’re in a better place than we were before.’ But while infection numbers in countries with the variant are soaring, the expert said that the highly infectious Omicron appears milder than the Delta variant, and therefore more people will be infected without having serious symptoms. As a result, she said, this will provide a good level of immunity in the population.

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Not just overweight, not just obese, severely obese. Teenagers.

“..the obesity rate was 61.4 percent. The severe obesity rate was 60.5 percent..”

CDC: 61% of Teenagers Hospitalized for COVID-19 Had Severe Obesity (Reason)

One of the only silver linings of the pandemic has been that young people are less affected by COVID-19 than the elderly. In fact, the most vital indicator of negative COVID-19 outcomes is age: Unlike the Spanish flu, which ravaged armies that were overwhelmingly comprised of otherwise healthy young people during World War I, COVID-19’s death toll is dramatically skewed toward those who have already lived many years. (For context, the average age of death from Spanish flu was 28.) That said, about 600 Americans under the age of 18 have died of COVID-19 during the pandemic. A new study from the CDC took a closer look at young people who were hospitalized for COVID-19 in July and August, while the delta variant wave took hold, and largely found that healthy young people continue to mostly evade the worst of COVID-19.

The study found that most young people who suffer severe COVID-19 outcomes had underlying health conditions. The most common, especially for teenagers, was obesity. “Among patients aged 12–17 years, 61.4 percent had obesity,” according to the study, “60.5 percent of whom had severe obesity.” The study looked at six U.S. hospitals—all of them in the American South—and evaluated 915 cases of COVID-19 in adolescents that required hospitalization. The vast majority were hospitalized for COVID-19, though some had other infections as well. Of the 713 patients who were primarily hospitalized for COVID-19, two-thirds had at least one underlying health condition. For the teenage cohort—patients at least 12 years of age—the obesity rate was 61.4 percent.

The severe obesity rate was 60.5 percent. Just one of the eligible patients had been vaccinated, and 11 patients died in total. What this means, of course, is that COVID-19 can be a fatal disease, even for young people—but vaccine status and general health are extremely important variables. It remains the case that healthy children who do not have underlying health conditions—particularly obesity—are by and large safe from negative COVID-19 health outcomes.

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They ARE the messengers, and shoot themselves.

Social Media Companies Shoot The Messenger (JTN)

YouTube removed full episodes of Joe Rogan’s podcast, posted by third parties, with mRNA vaccine pioneer-turned-critic Robert Malone and cardiologist Peter McCullough, formerly vice chief of internal medicine at Baylor University Medical Center. The page for the Malone video says it violated YouTube’s “community guidelines,” which include COVID medical misinformation but not copyright takedown requests. The uploader posted the video on a different platform as a backup. (Spotify holds the exclusive rights to Rogan’s podcast. A different full-length video with more than 100,000 views removed by YouTube has a copyright takedown notice.) GOP Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas responded by submitting the transcript of Malone’s interview to the Congressional Record and posting it on Nehls’ official website. “Twitter and YouTube are once again proving that they don’t work for their users but for big Pharma, big media, and the elites,” he wrote.

McCullough originally tweeted a YouTube video of his interview last month. Both the tweet and video are now gone, though McCullough’s Twitter account remains live. Sharing a clip from that interview, however, got conservative author Melissa Tate suspended by Twitter. Her account, with nearly half a million followers, remains suspended more than two weeks later. Fact-checker Health Feedback claimed that interview included “multiple false and unsubstantiated claims” about COVID vaccines and the pandemic. YouTube does not appear to be uniformly removing videos that summarize Rogan’s interviews with the two controversial figures. Physician Zubin Damania, who goes by “ZDoggMD” on social media, explained McCullough’s claims in a critical analysis with more than half a million views.


[..] University of California San Francisco medical professor Vinay Prasad summed up the argument for social media regulation of COVID-19 debates in a sarcastic blog post Monday: “We need a bunch of group-thinking ideologues with limited scientific experience and scant publications who work for big technology companies and live in coastal cities to police scientific disputes! Of course we do, what could go wrong!”

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The CBC is the English language part of Canada’s “state broadcaster”. It might as well be a social media platform.

“It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom [..] I am now easily the most conservative [..] This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change.

Why I Resigned From The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Tara Henley)

For months now, I’ve been getting complaints about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where I’ve worked as a TV and radio producer, and occasional on-air columnist, for much of the past decade. People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported. Or why our pop culture radio show’s coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive. Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as “brainstorm” and “lame.” Everyone asks the same thing: What is going on at the CBC?

When I started at the national public broadcaster in 2013, the network produced some of the best journalism in the country. By the time I resigned last month, it embodied some of the worst trends in mainstream media. In a short period of time, the CBC went from being a trusted source of news to churning out clickbait that reads like a parody of the student press. Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted. It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change.

To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity. It is to sign on, enthusiastically, to a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal divisions. It is to pretend that the “woke” worldview is near universal — even if it is far from popular with those you know, and speak to, and interview, and read. To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others.

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He’s back, Jan 6 is coming up.

Trump Calls Twitter, Facebook ‘Disgrace To Our Nation’ (JTN)

Former President Donald Trump, who is building his own social media solution, on Monday night called Twitter and Facebook a “disgrace to our Nation” for their continued censorship of conservative voices and implored Americans to abandon their platforms. Trump’s statement was released after a tumultuous 24-hour period in which freshman Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was banned permanently from Twitter and given a 24-hour timeout on Facebook for information she posted on COVID-19. “Twitter is a disgrace to democracy. They shouldn’t be allowed to do business in this Country,” the former president said.


“Marjorie Taylor Greene has a huge constituency of honest, patriotic, hard-working people. They don’t deserve what’s happened to them on places like low-life Twitter and Facebook.” He married his criticism with a call to action. “Everybody should drop off of Twitter and Facebook. They’re boring, have only a Radical Left point of view, and are hated by everyone,” he added. “They are a disgrace to our Nation. Keep fighting, Marjorie!” Trump’s new Truth social platform, being led by former congressman Devin Nunes, is set to debut later this year and has promised to be a censorship-free forum. Twitter and Facebook, which banned Trump a year ago, say their penalties on users are designed to protect Americans from misinformation.

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What if? There’s still a question mark?

What If The Largest Experiment On Human Beings In History Is A Failure? (Malone)

One farm visitor told me of his foreshadowing massive numbers of deaths within three years consequent to the genetic vaccines, and that this was all about the “Great Reset” and the depopulation agenda of the World Economic Forum (WEF). I tried to reassure him that, in my opinion, this was highly unlikely- while privately thinking about how easily people fall into this type of conspiracy ideation, and how I need to be careful to avoid going there when confronting so many public health decisions that appear either incompetent or nefarious. At the time, I only knew of the WEF as the host of a big annual party in Davos Switzerland where the uber rich and the hoi oligoi of the Western nations went to watch Ted talks, drink the best wine, see and be seen. Silly me. What a long, strange trip this has been. I doubt that even Hunter S. Thompson could have imagined it in his most drug and booze addled state. Suffice to say, I nominate Ralph Steadman as official illustrator of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Or a resurrected Hieronymus Bosch.

But I am wandering from a point that I am afraid to clearly state. It is starting to look to me like the largest experiment on human beings in recorded history has failed. And, if this rather dry report from a senior Indiana life insurance executive holds true, then Reiner Fuellmich’s “Crimes against Humanity” push for convening new Nuremberg trials starts to look a lot less quixotic and a lot more prophetic. Here is what lit me up in this report from The Center Square contributor Margaret Menge.

“The head of Indianapolis-based insurance company OneAmerica said the death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among working-age people. “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.” OneAmerica is a $100 billion insurance company that has had its headquarters in Indianapolis since 1877. The company has approximately 2,400 employees and sells life insurance, including group life insurance to employers in the state. Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica.

“And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said. “Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”” So, what is driving this unprecedented surge in all-cause mortality? “Most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths, Davison said.“What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.””

Take a moment to read the entire article. Now. Then let’s continue on, assuming that you have. AT A MINIMUM, based on my reading, one has to conclude that if this report holds and is confirmed by others in the dry world of life insurance actuaries, we have both a huge human tragedy and a profound public policy failure of the US Government and US HHS system to serve and protect the citizens that pay for this “service”. IF this holds true, then the genetic vaccines so aggressively promoted have failed, and the clear federal campaign to prevent early treatment with lifesaving drugs has contributed to a massive, avoidable loss of life. AT WORST, this report implies that the federal workplace vaccine mandates have driven what appear to be a true crime against humanity. Massive loss of life in (presumably) workers that have been forced to accept a toxic vaccine at higher frequency relative to the general population of Indiana.

FURTHERMORE, we have also been living through the most massive, globally coordinated propaganda and censorship campaign in the history of the human race. All major mass media and the social media technology companies have coordinated to stifle and suppress any discussion of the risks of the genetic vaccines AND/OR alternative early treatments.

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“..it has to get to a certain threshold and overcome the other organisms in the nose and overcome our own immune system to become a clinical infection. So, there’s about a three-to-five-day window to actually zap the virus directly.”

McCullough: Outpatient Treatments for COVID-19 Have Been Suppressed (ET)

Dr. Peter McCullough told The Epoch Times that the public should question why the governments and public health officials around the world have put little to no emphasis on outpatient treatments in their efforts to fight the COVID-19 virus, instead promoting a massive effort on vaccines. “Lots of messaging on the vaccine, but zero mentioning on treatment, none. And it’s been from the very beginning. There is a theme here, I hope everyone’s starting to get the theme. There is zero effort, interest, promotion, or care about early treatment, people who are sick with COVID-19,” said McCullough. “But there is a complete and total focus on people who don’t have COVID-19 and giving them a vaccine.”

McCullough is an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and lead author of the first paper on early COVID-19 outpatient treatment involving a multi-drug regimen. In a recent interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program, he discussed a wide range of evidence on COVID-19 preventative treatments that are being used around the world. He said that drug treatments must be prioritized in the effort to stamp out the threat of COVID-19. “So early treatment markedly changes spreads. So, we reduce new cases, we reduce the intensity and severity and duration of symptoms. And by that mechanism, we reduce hospitalization and death.” The doctor cited some recent treatments that have been effective in killing the virus at the early stage of infection:

Dr. Iqbal Mahmud Chowdhury conducted a protocol in Bangladesh that used a povidone-iodine rinse in the nose and eyes to kill the virus. Another treatment effort by a French doctor, Didier Raoult, who treated people using hydroxychloroquine, met with great success. “Chowdhury is the first author recognizing the fact that the virus is in the air, people breathe it in, it settles in the nose, and it begins to replicate. And it has to get to a certain threshold and overcome the other organisms in the nose and overcome our own immune system to become a clinical infection. So, there’s about a three-to-five-day window to actually zap the virus directly.”

Masks and hand sanitizer are illogical and the data does not show them to be effective means to prevent COVID-19 infections because the virus is spread through the air, not hands, and is too small to be blocked by most masks said, McCullough. McCullough said COVID creates “terrible inflammation” and hydroxychloroquine has been shown to be effective to reduce that, but instead of seeing an increase in using and studying the effectiveness of that drug, it has instead been restricted and in some countries, doctors can be jailed for using it to treat their patients.

Dr. #PeterMcCullough explains #MassFormationPsychosis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1478170207478816773

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Kulldorff & Bhattacharya from the Great Barrington Declaration.

: The Collins and Fauci Attack on Traditional Public Health (ET)

While tens of thousands of scientists and medical professionals signed the Great Barrington Declaration, why didn’t more speak up in the media? Some did, some tried but failed, while others were very cautious about doing so. When we wrote the Declaration, we knew that we were putting our professional careers at risk, as well as our ability to provide for our families. That was a conscious decision on our part, and we fully sympathize with people who instead decided to focus on maintaining their important research laboratories and activities. Scientists will naturally hesitate before putting themselves in a situation where the NIH Director, with an annual scientific research budget of $42.9 billion, wants to take them down.

It may also be unwise to upset the director of NIAID, with an annual budget of $6.1 billion for infectious disease research, or the director of the Wellcome Trust, with an annual budget of $1.5 billion. Sitting atop powerful funding agencies, Collins, Fauci, and Farrar channel research dollars to nearly every infectious disease epidemiologist, immunologist, and virologist of note in the United States and UK. Collins, Fauci, and Farrar got the pandemic strategy they advocated for, and they own the results together with other lockdown proponents. The GBD was and is inconvenient for them because it stands as clear evidence that a better, less deadly alternative was available.

We now have over 800,000 COVID deaths in the United States, plus the collateral damage. Sweden and other Scandinavian countries—less focused on lockdowns and more focused on protecting the old—have had fewer COVID deaths per population than the United States, the UK, and most other European countries. Florida, which avoided much of the collateral lockdown harms, currently ranks 22nd best in the United States in age-adjusted COVID mortality. In academic medicine, landing an NIH grant makes or breaks careers, so scientists have a strong incentive to stay on the right side of NIH and NIAID priorities. If we want scientists to speak freely in the future, we should avoid having the same people in charge of public health policy and medical research funding.

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Except Uttar Pradesh?!

COVID Activity Ramps Up In India, Middle East (Cidrap)

India today began vaccinating teens as its latest COVID-19 wave gained momentum, and some countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), reported new case rises. Ever since it battled a catastrophic COVID-19 surge last spring, India has been bracing for another round of infections and making preparations. Over the past few days, cases have sharply risen, but hospitalizations remain low, New Delhi health officials said yesterday, according to Reuters. Cases had dropped to about 6,000 a day, but daily totals have risen sharply for 5 days in a row, with 33,750 reported today, with much of the activity from New Delhi and Mumbai. So far, the country has reported 1,700 Omicron cases.

Today, India opened vaccination to teens ages 15 to 18, with campaigns at schools and health centers across the country, according to Reuters. India has the world’s largest adolescent population. So far, the country has immunized more than 3.8 million teens. [..] Despite case reporting delays over the holidays, many countries reported record daily cases over the past few days, including Australia, where hospitalizations are rising, but not at a level that is overwhelming facilities. Staff illnesses, however, are contributing to pressure on the health system.

Britain on Jan 1 reported a new daily record high of 162,572 cases, with hospitalizations and deaths at lower levels than earlier waves. Today, the country’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson said officials are closely watching the numbers and hospital trends, but so far, the virus appears milder and no new restrictions are warranted for now. He also acknowledged that hospitals are likely to face increasing pressure in the weeks ahead. Other European countries reported new daily record highs over the New Year’s holiday, including France, Greece, Italy, and Portugal. Meanwhile, United States on Dec 29 reported a world daily record high of more than 484,000 new cases.

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“The Navy servicemembers in this case seek to vindicate the very freedoms they have sacrificed so much to protect.”

Federal Court Grants Injunction for Navy SEALs Challenging Vaccine Mandate (AP)

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas today issued a preliminary injunction, stopping the Department of Defense from punishing military service members who have religious objections to the vaccine mandate. First Liberty Institute filed a federal lawsuit and motion for preliminary injunction on behalf of dozens of U.S. Navy SEALs and other Naval Special Warfare personnel against the Biden Administration and the Department of Defense for their refusal to grant religious accommodations to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. “Forcing a service member to choose between their faith and serving their country is abhorrent to the Constitution and America’s values,” said Mike Berry, General Counsel for First Liberty Institute.

“Punishing SEALs for simply asking for a religious accommodation is purely vindictive and punitive. We’re pleased that the court has acted to protect our brave warriors before more damage is done to our national security.” In his order, Judge Reed O’Connor said, “The Navy servicemembers in this case seek to vindicate the very freedoms they have sacrificed so much to protect. The COVID-19 pandemic provides the government no license to abrogate those freedoms. There is no COVID-19 exception to the First Amendment. There is no military exclusion from our Constitution.”

The SEALs, who presently serve at various classified and confidential locations, collectively have more than 350 years of military service, and more than 100 combat deployments. When they inquired about seeking religious accommodation for the vaccine, the Navy informed many of the plaintiffs that they could face court-martial or involuntary separation if they don’t receive the vaccine. Each of their religious accommodation denials appear to be identical, suggesting the Navy is not taking their requests seriously.

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On Theranos’ Board of Directors, 2014:

former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry
former Secretary of State George Shultz
former Senators Sam Nunn & Bill Frist
former Marine Corps General James Mattis
former Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich
former CDC Director William Foege

Elizabeth Holmes Found Guilty Of Four Charges In Fraud Case (DM)

• A jury has found Elizabeth Holmes guilty of four charges in fraud case that lasted 14 weeks
• Holmes, 37, is the disgraced founder of Theranos, a ‘breakthrough’ blood-testing startup that defrauded investors of $9billion and patients with inaccurate and unreliable results
• After the company went kaput in 2018, bizarre details of Holmes’ life have been made public: like how she styled herself after Steve Jobs, spoke in a fake baritone voice and claimed that her Husky dog was a wolf
• Former employees recalled how the office was overrun by the dog defecating and peeing in the boardroom
• The trial also revealed steamy texts between Holmes and the company’s COO Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani, with whom she had a secret affair and alleged that he abused her and forced her to have sex

Elizabeth Holmes, the 37-year-old disgraced founder of Theranos, has been convicted of four fraud charges for deceiving investors of $9billion and for bilking thousands of patients with inaccurate and false medical reports. Holmes, a Stanford University dropout who founded Theranos in 2003 at age 19, duped thousands of patients with bogus claims her biotech startup company could conduct a full range of medical tests using blood from a simple finger prick. She was convicted of four fraud counts on Monday night, and cleared of four others. Jurors were unable to decide verdicts on the three remaining charges she faced, with prosecutors now able to re-try Holmes on those counts if they wish to. She was, at one point, the youngest female billionaire in the United States and heralded as ‘the next Steve Jobs’ for revolutionizing lab testing with a proprietary blood analysis device nicknamed the ‘Edison.’

The Silicon Valley ‘unicorn’ startup raised $900million and had more than 800 employees. Her company was more valuable that Uber, Spotify and AirBnB. With her trademark heavy eyeliner rimmed eyes, bleached blonde hair, red lipstick and Steve Jobs-like black turtleneck, Elizabeth Holmes swanned through boardrooms, TED Talks and investor meetings as the new darling of Silicon Valley. Early investors included powerhouses like Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison, Jim Walton, Robert Kraft, and Betsy DeVos. Sitting on the Board of Directors were Former Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz alongside former Secretary of Defense, General Jim Mattis, the CEO of Wells Fargo, and CDC Director, William Foege.

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He doesn’t need any help.

The Biden Consultants Working To Sink His Agenda (DP)

President Joe Biden’s top media buying firm is helping Big Pharma’s efforts to kill his party’s watered-down drug pricing legislation and targeting Senate Democrats up for re-election this year. It’s the latest reminder that for the Beltway consultant class, money is far more important than ideology. While Big Pharma’s allies in Congress have already succeeded in scaling back the Democrats’ drug pricing plan, the provision in Biden’s Build Back Better legislation still represents the party’s most sincere effort to fulfill its longtime promise to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. The idea of allowing the government to negotiate drug prices — like most other high-income countries do — is one of the most popular items in the Biden social agenda bill.

Yet, a top Democratic Party media buying firm, Canal Partners Media, is placing ads for drug industry front groups that want to block Democrats from lowering drug prices as promised in the Biden reconciliation bill. One group argues that Democrats are putting rare disease patients at risk, and is targeting several incumbent Democratic senators by name. The other says Democrats are harming drug companies’ ability to respond to pandemics like COVID-19. These fearmongering ad campaigns conveniently ignore the fact that the federal government regularly subsidizes drug companies’ research and development costs and has spent tens of billions of dollars to fund COVID vaccines and treatments.

[..] “Today, vaccines and antivirals are helping fight the pandemic, because scientists and researchers in America’s biopharmaceutical industry acted fast, after investing billions over years to achieve breakthroughs,” says the new ad from CPA. “But now, Congress is threatening legislation that will devastate private industry’s ability to fund treatments just like these. What’s at stake isn’t corporate profits — it’s public preparedness. Tell Congress to oppose legislation that would harm our ability to fight pandemics.” PhRMA CEO Stephen Ubl made the same argument in November, claiming that Democrats’ drug pricing measure would “upend the same innovative ecosystem that brought us lifesaving vaccines and therapies to combat COVID-19.”

This is totally false: The federal government invests billions each year to subsidize pharmaceutical companies’ research and development costs, and the government has poured tens of billions of dollars into efforts to develop COVID vaccines and treatments. Indeed, a team of government scientists helped develop Moderna’s mRNA-based COVID vaccine — a fact the company fittingly decided to leave out of the patent application for its vaccine technology. Then there’s the newly-approved COVID antiviral treatment from Merck, which “was made possible by government-funded innovation,” according to Stat News. That didn’t stop the company from charging the U.S. government $712 per course of the treatment, or 40 times the $17.74 that it costs to produce.

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Question: How are the Steele dossier and the Mueller investigation NOT an attempted coup?

The Big Lie and the Elastic Truth: How to Invent a Coup (Miele)

I’ve taken a guilty pleasure recently in watching the faux intellectuals on MSNBC and CNN pass judgment on not just Donald Trump, but also on everyone who shares his disdain for authoritarian pronouncements on COVID-19, election integrity, climate change and a host of other issues. From what I can tell after studying Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, Jake Tapper and the late, lamented Chris Cuomo, liberalism today is characterized by a low regard for the intelligence of average Americans and a very high regard for the elastic nature of language. Essentially, words are expected to mean whatever Democrats and their media enablers want them to mean. This has been most evident in the war against Donald Trump since the 2020 election, but it was certainly in play earlier.

For example, saying that Donald Trump is a “racist” meant he supports border security. Saying Donald Trump is a Russian “colluder” meant that Hillary Clinton had paid a British spy to manufacture a phony dossier implicating Trump. But the campaign to destroy Trump really lifted into the stratosphere after the Nov. 3 election. When they called his claim that the election was stolen “the Big Lie,” what they meant was they don’t agree with him. When they said he made his claims “without evidence,” they meant “without evidence that they agree with” or that they would even look at.

Then — after the Jan. 6 House select committee voted to hold Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress — they pivoted and announced that the Big Lie was now “the Big Coup.” Meadows was chief of staff to President Trump, and since Trump clearly believed the election was stolen, it should be no surprise that Meadows was in constant communication with members of Congress and others who were working to prove that fraud had taken place. But in the Orwellian world of Democrats, trying to prove that fraud was committed by someone else means you are yourself guilty of fraud. Believing the election was stolen means that you yourself tried to steal the election. And worst of all, asking people to march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol means that you were instructing them to riot and overthrow the government.

Schiff

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Nov 292021
 


Ivan Kramskoy Christ in the desert 1920

 

 

It’s time for the world to come to its senses. Maybe Omicron is a good guide for doing that. Because it shows how something that is not a threat at all, as far as anyone knows from evidence, can still be blown out of all proportions in order to manipulate behavior. Kind of a mini version of the past 2 years, a play within a play.

For the past year, we have increasingly given our trust -and money- to Pfizer et al, to save us from the terrible virus. Many millions of people have been injected with their vaccines, and they have failed spectacularly. Of course, since Pfizer, and the governments they signed production and distribution contracts with, have captured the media almost 100%, you won’t read or hear about it, but it’s there for everyone to see in this US graph:

US COVID Deaths In 2021 Have Surpassed 2020’s Total

COVID-19 has killed more people in 2021 than 2020. The virus was reported as the underlying cause of death (or a contributing cause of death) for an estimated 377,883 people in 2020, accounting for 11.3% of deaths, according to the CDC. As of Monday, more than 770,000 people have died from the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University data. That means over 15,000 more people have died in 2021 than last year from COVID-19 – and there’s still more than a month left. his has happened despite the fact that last year no Americans were vaccinated (now 59% of all eligible Americans have had the “life-saving” jab) and some 17% have received booster shots…

 

In 2020, no American was vaccinated. In 2021, 60% of them were. If the vaccines had been effective, that should have meant 60% fewer positive tests, hospitalizations, and certainly deaths, or if not 60%, at least a substantial percentage. But the opposite happened: Covid deaths went up, and not a little bit. Between mid August and mid November 2021, they increased some … 60%.

That is all you need to know. The vaccines do not work. And not just “not as advertized”, they do not work at all. Granted, there appears to be a 2-3 month window in which they suppress something in the virus, but 2-3 months is not nearly enough to be labeled a “vaccine”. And the “something” may well be just an accumulation of binding antibodies that turn against the “patient”‘s immune system, certainly when boosters are applied.

Of course the media, politics and industry claim it’s because “the unvaccinated act as reservoirs of the virus” (someone actually said that), and it’s because of Delta. But no separate vaccine was ever launched for Delta, and the boosters people get now are the same substance that they claim made boosters necessary in the first place. The Science.

Forget it all. The vaccines don’t work, and we need to move on. But we can’t. Because our “leaders” signed deals with Pfizer et al that gave the latter complete immunity from any harm caused by their vaccines, and -more importantly- made it illegal to use, promote, research, any other drugs that could have worked against Covid. And those deals still stand now that the vaccines have failed.

Robert Bridge is one of the few people who addressed this issue in The EU Is Not Revealing The Details Of Its Contracts With Vaccine Makers. Why?, which details the fruitless efforts from European parliamentarians (!) to see the contracts signed by Brussels and Pfizer et al. They failed.

 

Still think the vaccines work? That maybe they don’t prevent transmission or infection, but at least they prevent severe disease and hospitalization? I personally don’t see how that can be enough to threaten forced vaccination, get people boosted, have toddlers injected, but yeah, that’s just me. But prevent severe disease and hospitalization? They don’t even do that. If only.

Instead, the vaccines make people more likely to be infected, and to transmit the disease, to have severe disease, and to die. I know that’s 180º different from what you hear every single grinding day, but hey, you yourself fed your body and your life to the machine, not me.

Here’s a few tidbits. First, a Google translate:

German States With Higher Vaccination Rates Have Highest Excess Mortality

The summary of the analysis states: Excess mortality can be found in all 16 states. The number of Covid deaths reported by the RKI in the period under review consistently only represents a relatively small part of the excess mortality and above all cannot explain the critical issue: • The higher the vaccination rate, the higher the excess mortality. The most direct explanation is: • Complete vaccination increases the likelihood of death.

Of course, more indirect explanations are possible: • The higher the proportion of old people, the higher the vaccination rate and excess mortality. Therefore, the vaccination rate and excess mortality also correlate. (This explanation is not very plausible, however, as the proportion of old people would have to have changed significantly between 2016-2020 on the one hand and 2021 on the other.) • Higher vaccination rates are achieved through increased stress and anxiety in the country concerned, and the latter lead to higher numbers of deaths.

[..] The correlation coefficient is +0.31. In the eyes of the two scientists this is “astonishingly high”. Especially since the sign is wrong. Actually, we expect a different relationship: the more vaccinations, the lower the mortality. After all, the intention of the “vaccination” is to protect people. Now the connection is positive: “The excess mortality increases with the increase in the vaccination rate”. This requires urgent clarification, demand the two statisticians.

Infection rates, excess mortality: the vaccines make everything worse.

Official UK Data Says COVID Infection Rates Higher in Vaxxed Than Unvaxxed

In every age group over 30 in the UK, the rates of Covid infection per 100,000 are now higher among the vaxxed than the unvaxxed. Indeed, in the cohorts aged between 40 and 79, infection rates among the vaccinated are more than twice as high as among the unvaccinated. PHE’s fruitlessly rechristened body, the UK Health Security Agency, frantically clarifies that the data ‘should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness’, a caveat which I include for the sake of accuracy. But the differences in the infection rates are drastic enough for you to draw your own conclusions.” Shriver then summarizes how that data demolishes the reason for implementing vaccine passport schemes.

“Gatekeeping of pleasure palaces promotes the wrong impression — statistically, the lie — that the unvaccinated riff-raff exiled to the pavement pose a far graver threat of communicable disease than the diners in the nearby banquette who, like you, have righteously got the shot. In truth, the double-jabbed airline passenger in 24A can be just as risky a seat-mate as the great unwashed banished from the flight.” Meanwhile, the Times reports the results of another study which “found the double-jabbed are just as likely to pass on Covid-19 as unvaccinated people.”

After Public Health England published the data, government bureaucrats begin to panic that people would use it to suggest vaccines were not that effective. Office for Statistics Regulation director Ed Humpherson called an urgent meeting with U.K. Health Security Agency during which he worried about the data having “the potential to mislead.” “We noted that these data have been used to argue that vaccines are ineffective,” Humpherson subsequently wrote.

Steve Kirsch interprets Aaron Siri’s stats:

Vaccinated Up To 9x More Likely To Be Hospitalized Than Unvaccinated

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. [..] here’s the part Aaron didn’t point out that needs to be stated very clearly: The only way you can get those numbers is if vaccinated people are 9 times more likely to be hospitalized than unvaccinated; It is mathematically impossible to get to those numbers any other way. Period. Full stop. This is known as an “inconvenient truth.”

 

Not clear yet? You think these people are all lying, while your politicians, media, Pfizer and Fauci all speak the truth and nothing but the truth?

Let’s try Dr. Geert VanDen Bossche, who’s been warning for over a year about mass vaccination breeding mutations. Hello, Omicron. Geert is more pessimistic than ever. He thinks even people who were not vaccinated, or ever had Covid, are at risk from the mutations caused by the vaccines.

My Opinion On The New African Variants

The world may be taken by surprise but that doesn’t include us. It remains to be seen whether Omicron can outcompete Delta (to be confirmed). If that’s the case, we’re definitely not in good shape. In case of CoV, innate immunity protects the individual and the ‘herd’ (sterilizing immunity, no natural selection pressure, herd immunity) whereas adaptive immunity induced with leaky vaccines has exactly the opposite effect. THE big Q is whether such an immune escape variant could even resist naturally acquired Abs in people who recovered from C19 disease. I am, indeed, cautious and worried about ADE, even in the unvaccinated who recovered from C-19 disease as they may no longer be able to control viral infection. ADE would equal ‘enhanced virulence’. Difficult to predict. Mass vaccination has compressed the evolutionary trajectory of the virus from a few hundred years (?) down to one year. Hope that naturally primed individuals can deal with that speed.

 

There are three ways in which people can die (and/or get sick) in relation to Covid19.

1/ Die of Covid

We need to say not WITH Covid, but OF Covid. Recent Italian research indicated that only 1% of what is currently labeled a Covid death actually died from it, the rest all have comorbidities (sometimes 5,6) that make that label impossible to assign.

2/ Die of the absence of prophylactics, early treatment

As I said above, the contracts “we” signed with Pfizer et al make it illegal to use, promote, research, any other drugs that could have worked against Covid. Because if anything would work, that would endanger the Emergency Use Authorization the vaccines operate under. Covid is the only disease where people with symptoms are told to go home and not come back until they need to be put on an intubator.

Meanwhile, just about everybody in the Northern hemisphere has Vitamin D levels that are far too low for their immune systems to work properly where and when needed. There is for instance the German study that suggests Mortality Rate Close to Zero Could Theoretically Be Achieved With [Sufficient Vitamin D]. As I said before, “I think that may be a bit much, I always conservatively said boosting vit. D levels can save the first 50%, zinc (+ quercetin) the next 25%, and then ivermectin can get you close to zero.”

But zinc and ivermectin, and quercetin, and hydroxychloroquine, and 100 other repurposed drugs, have all been swept under various carpets, and the highly skilled doctors who promote prophylactic, early treatment, or treatment protocols that involve them have been banned, censored, fired, sued, etc.

When I see a graph like this one, from WHO EU, proclaiming many lives were saved by the vaccines, I have 2 questions: 1/ What data is this based on?, and 2/ How many lives were lost to the lack of prophylactics and early treatment? Wait, there’s a third question: how many lives will be lost to the vaccines?

 

 

3/ Die of vaccines

The big unknown. But not entirely. Through adverse reactions registration systems like VAERS in the US, even though they are notorious for catching only between 1% and 10% of events, we know that 100s of thousands of people have died from the vaccines, and millions have had severe adverse effects, often diminishing their lives to a shadow of what they once were. Myocarditis is just one example.

But it’s what lies ahead that is more worrisome. The spike proteins that all popular vaccines induce in your body, can last inside you for a long time, and bond with your binding antibodies, which is where an auto-immune disease starts. Your immune system may be strong enough to ward of the first 1 or 2 shots, but once you move into the booster phase, the odds turn against you.

If you get a booster shot after 6 months (or 8, or 4, or 2), your body is prepared for the spike protein attack. Unfortunately, it may well end up helping the attackers, in some form of Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE), a form of auto-immune.

When you get the next booster, and the next, and be sure you will be told to get it, remember the vaccines only “work” for 2-3 months, the autoimmune risk continues to increase. That is also true if there is ever a Omicron vaccine, or pill, or whatever; it’s still all spike proteins.

 

Do you understand yet why vaccine mandates make no sense at all, at least not from a health point of view? They only serve the interests of Pfizer, and in their wake, your politicians and media.

We have one option left only: get rid of Pfizer, the vaccines, the mandates, the entire circus. It has failed spectacularly, and lost us millions of people and productive lives. Time’s up. This is our moment.

 

 

 

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Oct 082021
 


René Magritte Pandora’s box 1951

 

 

Pfizer Covid Jab ‘90% Effective Against Hospitalisation For At Least 6 Months’, says a recent Guardian headline. Do you remember 1 year ago or so, when these things were first reported on? We were told things like 95% effective against infection, nobody talked about hospitalization, and nobody ever mentioned a time limit.

I’m not sure if they are just moving goalposts or if maybe a whole new and different game has been started, but those changes in wording are stark. Effectively, we’ve been sold one narrative for a year and are now finding out that it was never true. It’s just that the propagandists, like the Guardian, are not yet ready to catch up with the changes. Here’s thinking that will change.

Meanwhile, a few billion people have been injected with substances that essentially don’t do what we were told they would. As for the effectiveness against hospitalization, that’s murky at best. For instance because in the US, as of August 7th 60% of hospitalizations were among fully-vaccinated individuals. But protection vs severe disease is the last leg the vaccine fanatics have to stand on, and they will protect that leg with all they got. Until they no longer can.

And even this article admits “Effectiveness against all Covid infections fell from 88% within a month of having two doses to 47% after six months..” OK, so after 6 months they’re useless. You wouldn’t get a EUA for 47%. But what do things look like after 3 months?

 


https://www.humetrix.com/powerpoint-vaccine.html

 

As you can see, things already get worse after a few weeks. Let’s be generous and say the substances are “effective” for 3 months. Of course, minus the first two weeks, when they are known to increase infection risk. That leaves 10 weeks of “effectiveness”. And after 6 months there’s nothing left. Says even Reuters.

Covid Vaccine Antibody Levels Drop ‘Nearly 10-Fold’ After About Six Months

A preliminary study this week claimed to have found a steep reduction in the number of coronavirus-fighting antibodies in patients roughly half a year after they received the COVID-19 vaccine. Researchers “analyzed blood samples from 46 healthy, mostly young or middle-aged adults after receipt of the two doses and again six months after the second dose,” Reuters reported this week. The study indicated that “vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine induces high levels of neutralizing antibodies against the original vaccine strain, but these levels drop by nearly 10-fold by seven months,” two of the researchers told the news wire.


The study, which has not yet been certified by peer review, comes amid growing talk of the possible need for a booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine to ensure a robust immune response. The study determined that “administering a booster dose at around 6 to 7 months following the initial immunization will likely enhance protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants.”

Enhance protection? Or kill it? You be the judge. The Exposé looked at the latest report available from the UK Health Security Agency, which has recently replaced Public Health England. Its conclusion:

Covid-19 Vaccine Negative Effectiveness As Low As Minus 86%

The efficacy of all available vaccines combined is as low as – 85.71% within the 40-49 age group, and as high as – 3.4% in the 30-39 age group. This shows that the Covid-19 vaccines are making people more susceptible to catching Covid-19, rather than preventing cases of Covid-19 by the claimed 95%. By combining the numbers provided for all age groups over the age of 30, we have been able to calculate an average vaccine effectiveness of – 47.69%, and we’re definitely seeing this in the number of confirmed cases by vaccination status.


Between week 36 and week 39 of 2021 there were 41,149 confirmed Covid-19 cases in the unvaccinated over 30’s, 14,649 confirmed cases in the partly vaccinated over 30’s, and a frightening 243,373 confirmed cases in the fully vaccinated over 30’s. The new UK Health Security Agency report proves without a shadow of a doubt that the Covid-19 vaccines do not work, and actually make the recipients worse.

 

 

So, as I asked, now what? For the moment, the push for the vaccines is only getting stronger. People are being fired left right and center, including long term and dedicated health care professionals. Freedoms and rights continue to be taken away, and increasingly so. But people will start to see some of the real numbers, no matter how hard you try to hide them.

So as a politician or media person, you better try and stay ahead of the game. A huge number of people have died because, in order to get the authorizations for the vaccines, all prophylactics and early treatments had to be banned. And now the vaccines begin to actively kill many more. There is no way you can keep that hidden. And there’s no way you can keep pushing the vaccines when they kill those who are inoculated.

 

 

In many countries, the campaigns for booster shots are getting fired up. They will only make things worse, and fast. Ever more people will become spike protein factories, as their immune systems are no longer capable of dealing with the increasing amounts of spikes their own bodies produce. While the time the boosters provide “protection” will shorten. If you get a booster today, you’re likely to need another one around Christmas.

If I were a politician, I would be getting very worried about this. And I would probably look for someone to blame it all on, so I don’t get blamed myself. Maybe I would say Pfizer and Moderna have misled me, or my own experts. But I wouldn’t wait till fingers inevitably begin to point in my direction. Just saying.

 

 

 

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Oct 072021
 


M. C. Escher Order and chaos 1950

 

Covid-19 Response and the Tyranny of Evidence-Based Medicine (Amerling)
Reverse-transcribed SARS-CoV-2 RNA Can Integrate Into The Genome (Pnas)
New Lancet Study Confirms Plummeting Vaccine Effectiveness (DS)
GOP Senators Demand More Early Treatment Options For Covid-19 (JTN)
Sweden Halts Use Of Moderna’s Covid Vaccine For Younger Adults (RT)
And… Here We Go (Denninger)
Covid Commissars Financially Squeezing, Blackballing Dissenting Doctors (JTN)
Ontario Doctor Resigns Over Forced Vaccines And Falsehoods (LSN)
Mandatory Vaccination Is A Human Rights Violation (Spec.au)
Colorado Hospital Set To Deny Kidney Transplant For Unvaxxed Woman (ZH)
That Untraversed Land (Greer)
The Anonymous Executioners of the Corporate State (Hedges)
Key US Witness Against Assange Arrested in Iceland (Lauria)

 

 

 

 

The protected
https://twitter.com/i/status/1445681587547299851

 

 

Yellow badges

 

 

“If hundreds of thousands of patients die unnecessarily, their doctors will not be held responsible. “I was just following the guidelines” has replaced “I was just following orders.”

Covid-19 Response and the Tyranny of Evidence-Based Medicine (Amerling)

When the first wave of what was then known as the Wuhan virus hit in March-April 2020, medical attention was almost completely focused on management of the acutely ill patient. This was notable for its very high failure rate, particularly post-intubation. A handful of intrepid doctors, including Zev Zelenko in upstate NY and Didier Raoult in Marseille, France, addressed early outpatient treatment using repurposed existing drugs such as hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). These physicians achieved remarkable clinical results, but instead of being embraced and emulated, they were censored and harassed. As should now be obvious to even the most naïve, Pharma and other stakeholders had to suppress successful, cheap remedies to pave the way for the rollout of the “vaccines” that were already developed.

How was this accomplished? By using the tyranny of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). “These treatments are not evidence-based!” they screamed. “Where are the randomized controlled trials (RCTs)?” they demanded. Kind of hard to have RCT data on a brand new disease, but so what. The authorities had spoken. In their excellent book, Tarnished Gold: The Sickness of Evidence-Based Medicine, Steve Hickey and Hillary Roberts write: “EBM encourages totalitarian medicine. It is displacing the doctor-patient unit as the ultimate decision-making authority. Peer review is used as censorship. EBM is a self-referential closed system, where critical appraisal means checking whether a study conforms to its rules. So-called evidence-based medicine wrongly claims the authority of medical and scientific gold-standards. EBM repackages and uses concepts from legal proof, in an attempt to impose a medical dictatorship.”

EBM is a movement that began in the early 1990s with the noble intention of incorporating high quality research into clinical practice. Over the last 20 years, EBM has steadily replaced traditional medicine, which depended on understanding pathophysiology and pathology (i.e. basic science), along with careful patient management including following response to treatments. EBM was quickly hijacked by industry to promote the use of their products through clinical practice guidelines, which are based on little more than a consensus of “experts,” the majority of whom receive financial support from industry. Ironically, many guideline recommendations are based on low quality, or no evidence.

EBM arrogantly claims for itself the mantle of “science,” but is actually pseudoscientific. It relies heavily on studies of large populations and therefore statistics, which are inherently unreliable and easy to manipulate. The conceit of EBM is that the results of large population studies can and should be used to dictate treatment of individual patients. It exalts metanalyses, statistical compilations of many studies, that can be created to support almost any pre-conceived idea. The vast majority of physicians are unable to understand, let alone deconstruct, the statistics used in most studies. “Evidence” is not science. Evidence can always be found to support any hypothesis, no matter how absurd. Remember that according to the “evidence,” Paul McCartney has been dead since 1966!

Whoever controls the “evidence” controls “the science” and through the bogus and corrupt guideline process, controls clinical practice. EBM creates an arbitrary hierarchy of evidence, with RCTs and metanalyses at the top and clinical experience, insultingly called ‘anecdotes,’ at the bottom. This is absurd on its face. The logical conclusion is that clinical experience is not needed to practice medicine! Just buy a guideline cookbook and go out there and heal! Perhaps that’s where things are headed. Or perhaps we are already there. If hundreds of thousands of patients die unnecessarily, their doctors will not be held responsible. “I was just following the guidelines” has replaced “I was just following orders.”

Read more …

Yes, scary. Very.

Reverse-transcribed SARS-CoV-2 RNA Can Integrate Into The Genome (Pnas)

Continuous or recurrent positive severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) PCR tests have been reported in samples taken from patients weeks or months after recovery from an initial infection. Although bona fide reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 after recovery has recently been reported, cohort-based studies with subjects held in strict quarantine after they recovered from COVID-19 suggested that at least some “re-positive” cases were not caused by reinfection. Furthermore, no replication-competent virus was isolated or spread from these PCR-positive patients, and the cause for the prolonged and recurrent production of viral RNA remains unknown. SARS-CoV-2 is a positive-stranded RNA virus.

Like other beta-coronaviruses (SARS-CoV-1 and Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus), SARS-CoV-2 employs an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase to replicate its genomic RNA and transcribe subgenomic RNAs. One possible explanation for the continued detection of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA in the absence of virus reproduction is that, in some cases, DNA copies of viral subgenomic RNAs may integrate into the DNA of the host cell by a reverse transcription mechanism. Transcription of the integrated DNA copies could be responsible for positive PCR tests long after the initial infection was cleared. Indeed, nonretroviral RNA virus sequences have been detected in the genomes of many vertebrate species with several integrations exhibiting signals consistent with the integration of DNA copies of viral mRNAs into the germline via ancient long interspersed nuclear element (LINE) retrotransposons.

Furthermore, nonretroviral RNA viruses such as vesicular stomatitis virus or lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) can be reverse transcribed into DNA copies by an endogenous reverse transcriptase (RT), and DNA copies of the viral sequences have been shown to integrate into the DNA of host cells.

Read more …

47% after five months. Better get back in that jab line.

New Lancet Study Confirms Plummeting Vaccine Effectiveness (DS)

A study appeared in the Lancet this week confirming that vaccine effectiveness against infection is fading fast. The study involved 3,436,957 people over the age of 12 who are members of the healthcare organisation Kaiser Permanente Southern California. It sought to assess the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19-related hospital admissions for up to six months, with a study period covering December 14th 2020 to August 8th 2021. Comparing fully vaccinated to unvaccinated, and controlling for confounders such as prior infection, the researchers found that effectiveness against infection plummeted from 88% (95% confidence interval 86-89%) during the first month after double-vaccination to 47% (43-51%) after five months. The variation by age (depicted above) was largely within the margins of error.

Among sequenced infections, the researchers found vaccine effectiveness against Delta infection was 93% (85-97%) during the first month after double-vaccination but dropped to 53% (39-65%) after four months. Effectiveness against infection from other variants the first month after double-vaccination was 97% (95-99%), but declined to 67% (45-80%) at 4-5 months. Vaccine effectiveness against hospital admissions for Delta infection held up at around 93% (84-96%) for the six months across all ages. However, the researchers note that the latest data from Israel “suggests that some reduction in effectiveness against hospital admissions has been observed among older people (65 years and over) roughly six months after receiving the second dose of [Pfizer]”.

One question that’s arisen recently is to what extent vaccine effectiveness estimates are affected by whether more people who have been previously infected decide not to be vaccinated. According to this study the answer is: not very much at all. Among the unvaccinated, 2.3% had one or more previous positive PCR tests, only slightly more than the 2% of the double-vaccinated who did.

Read more …

“..NIH’s ongoing compassionless guideline of doing virtually nothing until COVID-19 patients are so sick they require hospitalization..”

GOP Senators Demand More Early Treatment Options For Covid-19 (JTN)

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and 21 other Republicans are pressuring the Biden Administration to offer more early treatment options for COVID-19 to the American Public. “Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials have not only ignored potential early treatments, but at times seem to have participated in an aggressive campaign against the use of specific early treatment options,” the group’s letter to officials stated. The letter was addressed to Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Health and Human Services; Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Dr. Janet Woodcock, Acting Commissioner of Food and Drug Administration.

“Even though a basic tenet of medicine is: early detection allows for early treatment which produces better results; your agencies have overtly discouraged the use of cheap and widely-available early treatments like ivermectin in favor of expensive new drugs like Remdesivir (which costs more than $3,000 per treatment),” the letter said. The group charged that the Administration a “strong bias” against ivermectin and “other potential early treatment drugs.” The letter from the Republican senators comes as the Biden administration started capping how many doses of antibody treatments it would be giving to states.

“We strongly believe you should explain to the American people why your agencies have failed to sufficiently examine and ensure access to a growing list of drugs being used by doctors who have had the courage to ignore NIH’s ongoing compassionless guideline of doing virtually nothing until COVID-19 patients are so sick they require hospitalization,” the group wrote. Sen. Johnson previously held two hearings on early treatment of COVID-19.

Read more …

Sweden: people under 30. Denmark: people under 18.

Do they really think no-one will notice?

Sweden Halts Use Of Moderna’s Covid Vaccine For Younger Adults (RT)

The Swedish Public Health Agency has decided to suspend offering Moderna’s Covid vaccine to anyone born in 1991 and later for precautionary reasons, citing the slightly increased risk of heart inflammation following inoculation. On Wednesday, the agency issued a statement announcing that it will pause dishing out Moderna’s jab, marketed as Spikevax, to people under 30. Instead, the Comirnaty vaccine manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech will be offered to this age group. Announcing the suspension, the agency said data pointed to an “increased incidence” of heart inflammation diseases myocarditis and pericarditis – mainly in younger men and adolescent boys – “in connection with vaccination against Covid-19.”


The notice stated that “new preliminary analysis from Swedish and Nordic data sources indicate that the connection is especially clear when it comes to Moderna’s vaccine Spikevax, especially after the second dose.” Younger Swedes who have already received their first dose of the paused jab, estimated to be around 81,000 people, will now be unable to receive the second shot of that vaccine as per its usual delivery regimen. The health agency said it was looking for the best alternative to offer this group. Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, said that those who have been vaccinated recently, either with their first or second jab, should not worry about the risk, noting that it is very small. He added though that Swedes should be vigilant for symptoms of the two inflammatory conditions. Nordic neighbor Denmark also stopped the use of Spikevax on Wednesday, although only for minors under 18, citing similar concerns of rare side effects such as myocarditis.

Read more …

So you take that difference between 18 and 30 years above, and then ask: what age are most people in the army?

And… Here We Go (Denninger)

Ah, the rumor is real. “STOCKHOLM, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Sweden will pause the use of Moderna’s (MRNA.O) COVID-19 vaccine for people born 1991 and later after reports of possible rare side effects, such as myocarditis, the Swedish health agency said on Wednesday. The health agency said data pointed to an increase of myocarditis and pericarditis among youths and young adults that had been vaccinated.” That’s anyone under 30 years old. Ok folks, how many people did we screw here in the US with mandates, with “strong recommendations” and similar?


How many businesses, along with all of their directors and officers need to be completely destroyed as a consequence of mandates? Oh, and what percentage of the MILITARY active duty are under 30? Threatened with a dishonorable discharge for refusal to put your cardiac health at risk of permanent harm eh? Note that Sweden previously approved the Moderna shot for anyone over 12. That turns out to be wrong. They claim the risk of being affected is “very small.” Would you quantify “very small” please? No? Gee, why not? Incidentally on the data that we have available the Pfizer jab, which Sweden is still willing to use in young people, also has the same potential adverse effect.

Read more …

“[M]erely drawing different conclusions based on consideration of scientific evidence does not render the Vaccine Policy arbitrary and irrational..”

It should make it subject of discussion. And that’s what’s being suppressed.

Covid Commissars Financially Squeezing, Blackballing Dissenting Doctors (JTN)

Medical professionals are facing threats to their careers and livelihoods for challenging COVID-19 orthodoxy, while an oft-censored Harvard Medical School professor is facing his latest Big Tech kerfuffle. The University of California put psychiatrist and bioethics professor Aaron Kheriaty on “investigatory leave” after he sued the university system for refusing to recognize natural immunity such as his among exemptions to its COVID vaccine mandate. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kheriaty had previously invoked the post-Nazi Nuremberg code in urging universities to abandon their mandates. In his personal newsletter Wednesday, Kheriaty said he’ll lose half his income while on so-called paid leave, because he’s banned from “seeing my patients, supervising resident clinics, and engaging in weekend and holiday on-call duties.”

His contract also bans him from working as a physician outside the UC system to recoup his revenue loss. “The University may be hoping this pressure will lead me to resign ‘voluntarily,’ which would remove grounds for my lawsuit,” Kheriaty wrote. UC’s action came a day after a court refused to issue a preliminary injunction, functionally declaring a draw between each party’s scientific arguments about different forms of immunity and what risk vaccination poses for the recovered. “[M]erely drawing different conclusions based on consideration of scientific evidence does not render the Vaccine Policy arbitrary and irrational,” U.S. District Judge James Selna wrote. Protecting “a campus community of more than half a million students, faculty, and staff from a deadly infectious disease … far outweighs any harm Kheriaty may face” from choosing between vaccination or his job.

The only remaining defendant now is UC President Michael Drake, after Kheriaty agreed to drop the regents this week. The professor disclosed he filed another natural immunity federal lawsuit last week, this time against California’s vaccine mandate for health professionals. Just the News couldn’t find that lawsuit in the docket, and Kheriaty didn’t respond to a request to share it or explain how his investigatory leave may affect his UC lawsuit, such as a new retaliation claim. Canadian physician Charles Hoffe has also lost half his income while under investigation for sharing government data on the COVID recovery rate with patients, who are mostly First Nations members, according to his lawyers at the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF).

British Columbia’s Interior Health Authority had already warned Hoffe to stop promoting “vaccine hesitancy” after it learned he had been telling colleagues about his patients’ adverse reactions to the Moderna vaccine — one death and nine “disabling long-term side-effects.” A dozen European countries had pulled the AstraZeneca vaccine around that time for its association with blood clots, and Hoffe’s own investigation found “strong evidence” his patients had the same problems. A provincial health official referred Hoffe to a vaccine safety specialist who dismissed his concerns as “coincidences,” according to JCCF.

Read more …

How does this improve health care? 1000s of professionals are being thrown out.

Ontario Doctor Resigns Over Forced Vaccines And Falsehoods (LSN)

Dr. Rochagné Kilian recently resigned as an emergency room and family practice physician due to her concerns that the Ontario health system and Grey Bruce Health Services (GBHS) crossed ethical lines throughout the pandemic. In a virtual meeting that included GBHS CEO Gary Sims and other staff members, Dr. Kilian asked Sims a series of questions about what she believes is unethical behaviour on behalf of the Ontario health system at all levels. Sims appeared to be unprepared for difficult questions pertaining to the ongoing rollout of vaccination mandates and vaccine segregation restrictions the Ontario heath system is championing. Kilian estimated that 80 percent of the patients she saw in the ER during the past month who had inexplicable symptoms were “double vaxxed.”

Dr. Kilian relocated to Owen Sound – a small city in Grey County, Ontario – from South Africa after previously working in British Columbia. When she resettled in Owen Sound with her family, she expressed to a local paper how happy she was to live there: “Our recruitment to Owen Sound might have been by chance, but our choice to settle here was definitely not. Our four months in Owen Sound have been blessed. A little town with lots of soul, surrounded by beautiful landscapes, filled with welcoming residents and businesses, and exciting festivals, programs and activities. We truly feel fortunate to raise a family here.”

The first issue that Dr. Kilian brought up during the meeting was informed consent regarding the COVID jab and what she considered to be a coercive mentality of pressuring people to accept medications that she pointed out are still in “clinical trials.” An GBHS administrator did not answer her question directly, but instead passed the buck to the provincial government and stated they do not have “oversight or input” regarding consent mechanisms presented to patients. Kilian added that having more input into what patients are consenting to is something that GBHS “should consider,” especially in light of enacting the government-recommended vaccination mandates with their own staff. Referring to informed consent and mandating experimental vaccines that been linked to thousands of deaths and injuries, Sims explained that because of the “pandemic,” certain procedural normalities will not take place.

[..] Dr. Kilian pressed Sims about claims that protocols of informed consent can be skirted due to an emergency, and clarified that the Tri-Council Policy Statement stipulates that an emergency situation does not warrant skirting protocols that protect the population from being put at risk due to medical experimentation. The Tri-Council Policy Statement is a Canadian guideline for the ethical conduct of research involving humans and/or human biological materials. As the vaccinations are still technically under experimental trial, they are being implemented under a research-based framework on the population.

It was Kilian’s opinion that the ethical framework is being ignored, thus health workers and citizens are being forced to take something against their will that is not proven to be safe or effective in the long term, as a result of vaccination mandates. Sims reacted sharply to Kilian and said, “Nobody is forcing you to do this, you have a right to say no, but the reality is the government has the right to say that you’re not employed.” “When the law looks at it, the law is saying you have the right to do it [enforcing vaccine mandates],” he added.

Read more …

“Conscription didn’t end because it was a breach of human rights, it ended because the public pressure was just too much.”

Mandatory Vaccination Is A Human Rights Violation (Spec.au)

Mandating or coercing COVID vaccination is one of the most important civil liberties issues of my lifetime. It’s a fundamental breach of human rights allegedly guaranteed by a number of international conventions and Australian law, as well as our long tradition of liberal democracy. Nowhere is the legal case against put more clearly than in a judgment of the Fair Work Commission published on Monday. It says, in a dissenting judgment, that because the vaccines are part of a clinical trial, coercing someone to take them breaches The Nuremburg Code, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration of Helsinki, and the Siracusa Principles.

The judgement also holds that vaccine mandates also breach Australian law as the Australian Human Right Commission Act 1986 (Cth) gives effect to Australia’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 7 which provides “…no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation”. So the issue isn’t whether it is a breach, but how great a breach, and whether that will have any practical consequences. In my view, it is in the top tier of breaches – much worse than infringements on free speech, but not as bad as conscripting someone to war (the most serious breach I have seen). Unlike many abuses of human rights, in this case there are physical risks and benefits to taking the vaccines, some of which are “known unknowns”, or perhaps even “unknown unknowns” to borrow Donald Rumsfeld’s taxonomy of knowledge.

However, on “known knowns”, the US CDC estimates, using the VAERS database that the risk of death is .021 per thousand. That would be 525 deaths from the vaccine if everyone in Australia was vaccinated. And for what? We also know that a percentage of those vaccinated will also die from COVID. Another way of measuring the severity is to ask what individual Australians will put at risk to avoid the vax. The answer to that is that thousands have protested on the streets, risking fines in the thousands, and others are about to protest silently by losing their jobs and livelihoods, a price greater than any of the current fines.

What that adds up to one can only guess, but it will be significant, not only to the individuals but to the country as well as expertise is taken out of the system, perhaps never to return. Of particular concern must be that a significant proportion of these are health professionals. This will increase the stress on our hospitals at the moment when they are likely to be hit by a wave of illness from the Delta wave. In the end, the individual will is more important than the legalities. Conscription didn’t end because it was a breach of human rights, it ended because the public pressure was just too much.

Read more …

The sheer insanity. Move to a red state?!

Colorado Hospital Set To Deny Kidney Transplant For Unvaxxed Woman (ZH)

Now that vaccines are widely available and 56% of the US population is vaccinated (significantly missing President Biden’s Jul. 4 target of 70%), a little less than half of the country is unvaxxed and subjected to shocking and dehumanizing discrimination, making life very stressful. Across the country, the hot-button subject entering the fall is COVID vaccination passes for restaurants and football stadiums in certain cities, counties, and or even states. This has made life painful for the unvaxxed (as planned by the administration) who can’t go to their favorite eatery or cheer on their favorite sports team. However, the latest discrimination story of an unvaxxed person is terrifying.

A Colorado woman with stage 5 kidney failure is scrambling to find a new hospital because she and her donor are unvaxxed, and the hospital system has given them 30 days to get vaccinated or be taken off the transplant list. UCHealth, a healthcare system headquartered in Aurora, Colorado, adopted new transplant rules requiring patients to be fully vaccinated. “Here I am, willing to be a direct donor to her. It does not affect any other patient on the transplant list,” Jaimee Fougner, Leilani Lutali’s kidney donor, told Colorado-based news station CBS4. “How can I sit here and allow them to murder my friend when I’ve got a perfect kidney and can save her life?” Fougner said.

Lutali received a letter from UCHealth last week explaining she and Fougner had until the end of October to begin the vaccine process, or they would be removed from the transplant list. “I said I’ll sign a medical waiver. I have to sign a waiver anyway for the transplant itself, releasing them from anything that could possibly go wrong,” said Lutali. “It’s surgery, it’s invasive. I sign a waiver for my life. I’m not sure why I can’t sign a waiver for the COVID shot.” In August, UCHealth told Lutali that being vaxxed wouldn’t be a requirement for the surgery. “At the end of August, they confirmed that there was no COVID shot needed at that time,” she said. “Fast forward to Sept. 28. That’s when I found out. Jamie learned they have this policy around the COVID shot for both for the donor and the recipient.”

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“If you want people to put up patiently with long hours of drudgery at miserably low wages, subject to wretched conditions and humiliating policies, so that their self-proclaimed betters can enjoy lifestyles they will never be able to share, it’s a really bad idea to make them stop work and give them a good long period of solitude..”

That Untraversed Land (Greer)

I think that in retrospect, the decision to lock down entire societies to stop the coronavirus will end up in the history books as one of the most spectacular blunders ever committed by a ruling class. Partly, of course, the lockdowns didn’t work—look at graphs of case numbers over time from places that locked down vs. places that didn’t, and you’ll find that locking down societies and putting millions of people out of work didn’t do a thing to change the size and duration of the outbreak. Partly, the economic damage inflicted by the lockdowns would have taken years to heal even if the global industrial economy wasn’t already choking on excessive debt and running short of a galaxy of crucial raw materials. But there’s more to it than that.

If you want people to put up patiently with long hours of drudgery at miserably low wages, subject to wretched conditions and humiliating policies, so that their self-proclaimed betters can enjoy lifestyles they will never be able to share, it’s a really bad idea to make them stop work and give them a good long period of solitude, in which they can think about what they want out of life and how little of it they’re getting from the role you want them to play. It’s an especially bad idea to do it so that they have no way of knowing when, or if, they will ever be allowed to return to their former lives, thus forcing them to look for other options in order to stay fed, clothed, housed, and the like. (We can set aside the question of vaccine mandates for now—that’s another kettle of fish—but of course those feed into this same effect.)

So there’s a labor shortage, and it’s concentrated in exactly those jobs that are most essential to keeping the economy running. These are also the jobs most likely to have lousy pay and worse conditions. This isn’t accidental. It unfolds from one of the most pervasive and least discussed features of contemporary economic life: the metastatic growth of intermediation. Let’s unpack that phrase a bit. The simplest of all economic exchanges takes place between two people, each of whom has something the other wants. They make an exchange, and both go off happy. If what one of the people brings to the exchange is labor, and the other person brings something the first person wants or needs in exchange for labor, we call that “employment,” and the first person is an employee and the second an employer, but it’s still a simple exchange.

So long as there’s no overt or covert coercion involved on either side, it’s a fair trade. What happens as a society becomes more complex, however, is that people insert themselves into that transaction and demand a cut. Governments—national, local, and everything in between—tax income, sales, and everything else they can think of. Banks charge interest and fees on every scrap of money that passes through their hands. Real estate owners drive up the cost of land so that they can take an ever larger share of the proceeds in rent and mortgage payments. Then you have a long line of other industries lobbying government for their share of the take.

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“He has ordered me to pay millions to Chevron to cover their legal fees in attacking me, and then he let Chevron go into my bank accounts and take all my life’s savings because I did not have the funds to cover these costs. Chevron still has a pending motion to order me to pay them an additional $32 [million] in legal fees..”

The Anonymous Executioners of the Corporate State (Hedges)

Donziger and his lawyers have two weeks to appeal the judge’s order that Donziger be sent immediately to jail. Preska denied Donziger bail claiming he is a flight risk. If the Federal Court of Appeals turns down Donziger’s appeal he will go to jail for six months. The irony, not lost on Donziger and his lawyers, is that the higher court may overturn Preska’s ruling against him, but by the time that decision is made he will potentially have already spent six months in jail. “What Judge Preska is trying to do is force me to serve the entirety of my sentence before the appellate court can rule,” Donziger told me by phone on Monday. “If the appellate court rules in my favor, I will still have served my sentence, although I am innocent in the eyes of the law.”

Donziger, his lawyers have pointed out, is the first person under U.S. law charged with a “B” misdemeanor to be placed on home confinement, prior to trial, with an ankle monitor. He is the first person charged with any misdemeanor to be held under home confinement for over two years. He is the first attorney ever to be charged with criminal contempt over a discovery dispute in a civil case where the attorney went into voluntary contempt to pursue an appeal. He is the first person to be prosecuted under Rule 42 (criminal contempt) by a private prosecutor with financial ties to the entity and industry that was a litigant in the underlying civil dispute that gave rise to the orders. He is the first person tried by a private prosecutor who had ex parte communications with the charging judge while that judge remained (and remains) unrecused on the criminal case.

“No lawyer in New York for my level of offense ever has served more than 90 days and that was in home confinement,” Donziger told the court. “I have now been in home confinement eight times that period of time. I have been disbarred without a hearing where I have been unable to present factual evidence; thus, I am unable to earn an income in my profession. I have no passport. I can’t travel; can’t do human rights work the normal way which I believe I am reasonably good at; can’t see my clients in Ecuador; can’t visit the affected communities to hear the latest news of cancer deaths or struggles to maintain life in face of constant exposure to oil pollution. In addition, and this is little known, Judge [Lewis A.] Kaplan has imposed millions and millions of dollars of fines and courts costs on me. [Kaplan is the judge for Chevron’s lawsuit against Donziger; Preska is his handpicked judge for the contempt charges.]

He has ordered me to pay millions to Chevron to cover their legal fees in attacking me, and then he let Chevron go into my bank accounts and take all my life’s savings because I did not have the funds to cover these costs. Chevron still has a pending motion to order me to pay them an additional $32 [million] in legal fees. That’s where things stand today. I ask you humbly: might that be enough punishment already for a Class B misdemeanor?”

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“..a “rarely invoked” law that allows police in Iceland to detain someone considered to be in the middle of crime spree..”

Key US Witness Against Assange Arrested in Iceland (Lauria)

A key U.S. witness in the conspiracy to commit computer intrusion charge against imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who earlier this year admitted to fabricating evidence he gave to the FBI, has been arrested in Iceland, according to a report in the Icelandic newsmagazine Stundin. Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson was arrested in Reykjavík on Sept. 24 after returning from Spain under a “rarely invoked” law that allows police in Iceland to detain someone considered to be in the middle of crime spree, Stundin reported. Thordarson “was brought before a judge after police requested indefinite detention intended to halt an ongoing crime spree. The judge apparently agreed that Thordarson’s repeated, blatant and ongoing offences against the law put him at high risk for continued re-offending,” Stundin said.

Thordarson admitted in an interview with Stundin last month that he was engaged in ongoing criminal activity. Thordarson admitted in an earlier interview with Stundin in June that he lied to the FBI about Assange directly ordering hacking operations — a key element of the U.S. computer charge against the WikiLeaks founder. Thordarson was granted immunity by the FBI against prosecution in exchange for becoming an FBI informant in a sting against WikiLeaks in 2010. It is not clear if Thordarson recanting his testimony is related to his recent arrest. In his September interview Thordarson said the FBI promised not to reveal to Icelandic authorities any crimes he committed in Iceland in exchange for his cooperation.

Stundin reported: “It is not clear to what extent the Icelandic authorities were informed about these arrangements, if at all. Indeed Thordarson claims he was assured by the FBI that no information would be shared with the Icelandic police about crimes he committed in Iceland, particularly the hacking attempts against Icelandic institutions. Siggi: ‘My worry was that if I told them who was hacked and how, like Landsvirkjun and the government’s website and all that, I would become a target of Icelandic authorities.’ Reporter: ‘Why?’ Siggi: “Eventually I asked if they [Icelandic authorities] would get access to the data I talked about and they [the FBI] just said no, that would never happen. That was the only discussion I had with the FBI about Icelandic authorities.’” But Thordarson also said if he lied to the FBI the immunity deal would be off.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Celente

 

 

 

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Sep 172021
 


Thomas Cole The Course of Empire – The Consummation of Empire 1836

 

 

First of all, if you live in a place where politicians and experts have, after 20 months into Covid, still not propagated and executed policies aimed at prophylaxis (prevention) and early treatment, get rid of these people ASAP or move away to an area that does have these policies.

Yes, I know, it might be easier to get rid of them, because there are no areas to move to that do early care. Do it. All anyone appears to do is lock people down and put garments in front of their faces. But that has now cost too many lives, and it has to stop. The other thing all of them do, of course, is try to “vaccinate” everyone. That, too, has to stop, and for the same reason: it kills too many people.

After 20 months of reading into the topic for hours every single day, if there’s one thing I’m convinced of, it’s that a simple sufficient daily intake of vitamin D, zinc and ivermectin or chloroquine (and you can “fancy that up”, check the site below) would have stopped, and still can stop, at least 70% of cases. Ergo: no more overwhelmed heath care, no more lockdowns, no more economic damage. We could, should, have done this 20 months ago. get rid of them.

And then if someone does get sick -immune systems can be heavily compromised, for instance in obese people-, there are protocols aplenty for early treatment. There are entire series of them at c19early.com. 90% of deaths have been entirely preventable. And 90% of those in the future, will be, too. But not for the same reason.

The reason these treatments are being kept from you is that they would destroy the legal basis on which the vaccines operate. But that would be a good thing, because these substances have started to make a lot of victims, killing people or maiming them, and it is enough. It is also what I am afraid of, that those numbers will absolutely skyrocket.

Repeat: The vaccines do not protect you from infecting others or being infected, or from severe disease or death (though that last bit takes time to sink in). They MAY have some effect for a few months, but then their effect starts waning, and you will need more of the same. In the meantime, they appear to enhance the infectiousness of the vaccinated. Who are given vaccine passports and QR codes, for heaven’s sake, so they can go infect more people.

 

The problem is that you are not allowed to know about any of this. But the next problem is they will not be able to hide that fact, for much longer, that the vaccines are killing machines. For now, vaccine deaths are all hidden in Covid death numbers, especially the “Delta cases”, a very convenient grab bag, if not for the fact that Delta was supposed to be a much milder variant than Alpha. And wouldn’t you know, there’s plenty tricks to list vaccinated deaths as unvaccinated.

Was that supposition so far off the mark, or is something else going on? The decrepit adverse reaction tracking systems like VAERS and MHRA already name 10s of 1000s of vaccine deaths and millions of other reactions while tracking 1-10% of cases. We’ve reported numbers into the 100s of 1000s of deaths.

 

Let’s start with Dr. McCullough: “We are very certain about this, the vaccine is directly killing individuals”.

 

Then move on to Gato Malo and his graph from Israel booster (third) shots. Still find that graph scary as hell.

 

 

And then John Ward, who wrote: “The growing consensus among vaccination researchers is that exposure to 5-8 of these mRNA jabs over a relatively brief period of time will – dependent on the underlying health of the individual – result in death.”

What the graph appears to show is that the third shot -perhaps after some time has passed- has a much more lethal effect than the first two. Which would make sense, since you’re loading up your body with huge amounts of spike proteins -trillions of them-, and at some point your immune system will just give up.

The time between 2nd and 3rd shot may be a factor in that the body has had time to form a lot of antibodies -or the potential to create them fast-, which can then help the spike attack your cells by binding to them. And that in turn is a great recommendation for ivermectin -and probably HCQ-, even that late in the game, because it prevents that binding.

Mind you, the VAERS deaths and paralyzations etc. so far are all after 1 or 2 shots.

 

It all looks like an inevitable sequence of events to me. We had a Twitter thread from Walter Chesnut yesterday, The Spike Will Not Be Found In The Blood. It Travels “Incognito”, that said “The amount of spike protein in cells continues to increase for up to 30 min..”, which is insanely long in virustime, and “..the S1 unit has been found in monocytes 15 months post infection.., which is even more insane.

Once you have put that stuff in your body, there’s no getting rid of it anymore. The only thing you can do, once the effect starts waning (probably after 2-3 months), is to do more of the same, putting your body under ever more stress and ever more risk. And then by shot 5 or 8 or whatever, depending on your health, your body gives up no matter what. I said yesterday:

“100s of millions have been “vaccinated”. If just 1 in 1000 (0.1%) become victims, that means 100s of 1000s. I think it will be close to if not more than 1%, 10 times more. I’m so scared, I can’t find the words to write about this.”

And that’s how I still feel. The last few days have scared the heebees out of me, even if we knew something like this might start to happen. It’s here, and they’re still trying to force you to take these things. I called it Russian Roulette a while back, but it’s worse than that.

Listen to this undertaker from Milton Keynes, who is sure almost all Covid deaths coming in now are vaccine deaths (disguised as Delta), and then tell me I’m afraid of nothing:

 

 

 

 

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Aug 202021
 


Henri Matisse Music 1910

 

People With 2 COVID-19 Shots Fully Vaccinated Without Booster: Surgeon General (ET)
Top Doctor: Mass Vaccination Program One Of The Most Deadly Mistakes In History (LSN)
Now Is The Time To Use Ivermectin: Chairman Of Tokyo Met Medical Ass’n
Supreme Court Knocks Down ‘Covid Passport’ In Andalucia (EW)
Spain Court Orders End To Barcelona Virus Curfew (B’s)
Greek Gov’t Not Backing Down On Health Worker Vaccinations (K.)
US Promises Not To Charge Americans To Fly Out Of Afghanistan (RT)
Biden State Dept Halted A Trump-Era ‘Crisis Response’ Plan 2 Months Ago (NP)
Leaked State Department Memo Warned Of Afghanistan Collapse (ZH)
The Worst Presidential Dereliction in Memory (Noah Rothman)
The Ides of August (Sarah Chayes)
Assabiya Wins Every Time (Lee Smith)

 

 

 

 

In the EU, as of 14.8.21, 826,000 have had 2.07 million adverse reactions to the jab, of which 21,776 died.

 

 

It’s official: anything goes.

People With 2 COVID-19 Shots Fully Vaccinated Without Booster: Surgeon General (ET)

Americans who have received two COVID-19 vaccine doses are considered fully vaccinated, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said Wednesday. “I think what’s very important for people to know is that if you’ve gotten both shots of your mRNA vaccine, you are fully vaccinated right now; you have full—you have a high degree of protection against the worst outcomes of COVID-19,” Murthy told reporters during a virtual briefing. The definition of fully vaccinated could prove key in the coming months. More and more jurisdictions are requiring proof of vaccination to enter businesses. At some point, people could be required to show proof of having received three doses, especially if health officials signaled their support.

Murthy suggested that could come later, pending authorization from the FDAvand a recommendation from the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, known as ACIP. “Our recommendation down the line, pending the advice and the review of the FDA and ACIP … is that we believe that that third dose will ultimately be needed to provide the fullest and continual extent of protection that we think people need from the virus,” Murthy said. Experts are keeping a close watch on whether vaccine mandates will transition into requiring booster.

“Haven’t heard this debated yet… but in case the Covid events of the past month aren’t messy enough, wait for this one: When—and how—do vaccine mandates transition into booster mandates?” Bob Wachter, chair of the University of California San Francisco’s Department of Medicine, wrote on social media this week. Asked later on CNBC if CEOs should consider mandating boosters, Murthy said, “In my mind this doesn’t change what workplaces are doing.” “Right now, if you’re a business that’s thinking about putting in requirements for vaccines, if you’re a university that’s considering that, nothing in today’s announcement should change what you’re doing,” he added.

Read more …

“..about 88 percent of hospitalizations and deaths can be avoided with early treatment.”

But there still is no early treatment.

Mass Vaccination Program One Of The Most Deadly Mistakes In History (LSN)

The forced mass vaccination of Americans will be regarded as one of the most deadly and costly medical mistakes in history, renowned pioneer in the early treatment of COVID-19, Texas cardiologist and internist Dr. Peter McCullough, has said. Citing recent data from U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and from Israel and Britain, where COVID cases are multiplying among the vaccinated, McCullough, who is editor-in-chief of two medical journals and author of over 600 peer-reviewed studies, including 46 dedicated to COVID-19, said he is “deeply worried” about the future of America. “Americans are going to bear the brunt of what invariably is going to be a failed mass vaccination program that will go down as one of the most deadly, one of the most injurious and costly in human history,” McCullough said in a recent podcast.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced in April that it has stopped tracking COVID cases among the vaccinated that do not result in hospitalizations or deaths. The agency is now assuming that new cases are among the unvaccinated unless otherwise advised, which skews numbers to paint the unvaccinated as spreaders of disease. “This intentional misinformation and propaganda scheme has been used to drive an incredible fury of vaccine mandates” for government agencies, veterans administrations, and hundreds of schools and colleges, even though here have been no outbreaks in these places, McCullough said. Israel was the first country to mass vaccinate its population under an agreement with Pfizer to exchange vaccine supply for public health data in an experiment on the people “to evaluate whether herd immunity protection is observed during the Product vaccination program rollout.”

Eighty percent of adults are fully vaccinated there, yet COVID cases and serious hospitalizations have risen 20-fold since early July. The media has highlighted that most serious new cases have been among the unvaccinated, while neglecting to report that the majority (more than 80 percent) of new cases reported by the Israeli Health Ministry are among vaccinated individuals. In response, Israel introduced a third “booster shot” of Pfizer’s vaccine which has been administered to more than one million people as of August 16. In the United Kingdom, more than three-quarters of the adult population (76 percent) have received two doses of vaccine and almost 90 percent of adults have received at least one dose. Yet, the number of COVID patients hospitalized has soared sevenfold since early June this year.

The most recent U.K. report on “variants of concern” revealed that 54 percent of COVID deaths are among the fully vaccinated. A further 12 percent of deaths are among the partially vaccinated who have received one dose. That data, McCullough said, “is basically showing that the vaccines are failing.” Vaccinated individuals can acquire and transmit the pandemic coronavirus and become and die of COVID-19. “Completely vaccinated individuals are passing it to one another,” McCullough said. Nonetheless, citing the new, circulating Delta variant, the Biden administration is expected to follow Israel’s example and introduce a third booster shot for all nursing home residents and healthcare workers for September.

The vaccines were never tested for the Delta variant, and their protection has lasted only months. “It’s clear we can’t vaccinate our way out of this,” McCullough said. COVID-19, no matter what the variant, is easily treatable at home with simple, available drugs, according to McCullough, who has stated that “about 88 percent of hospitalizations and deaths can be avoided” with early treatment.

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Odd Google translate, but lots of info between the lines. IVM for Covid is legal, but not available.

Now Is The Time To Use Ivermectin: Chairman Of Tokyo Met Medical Ass’n

Why is Japan not trying to use ivermectin, which has few reports of side effects and has been reported to be effective in clinical trials in other countries? On August 5, we had an urgent interview with Mr. Ozaki, chairman of the Tokyo Metropolitan Medical Association, who had been proposing effective uses of ivermectin from early on.

[..] Ivermectin generic drugs are also manufactured in large quantities in China and India. If Merck doesn’t come out, there should be a way to import and supply it.

“That’s right. If the” Special Measures Bill for Designation and Use of Specified Drugs for the Treatment of New Influenza, etc. “(Japanese EUA * Maintenance Bill), which was submitted to the House of Representatives by Representative Nakajima, who is also a doctor, is passed, generic products But I think the government isn’t working at all at this point. ”

“The other problem is that ivermectin has already been used in many countries around the world, and its dosage, dosage, safety and efficacy have been confirmed, but it has not yet been done in clinical trials in Japan. For this reason, ivermectin is not covered by the drug side effect relief system. This makes it difficult for doctors to use. However, even in such anxiety and disadvantageous situations, doctors who are convinced of the effects of ivermectin. Some of us are prescribing ivermectin at our own risk. I hope that the Japanese version of the EUA maintenance law will be enacted as soon as possible. ”

EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) A system of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that permits the use of unapproved drugs in an emergency and expands the indications for approved drugs. The FDA is <1> a life-threatening disease <2> a certain degree of effectiveness is recognized in the treatment of diseases, etc. <3> The benefits of using it outweigh the potential risks of the product <4> Other diseases It is approved for use if it is determined that there is no suitable alternative to diagnose, prevent, or treat.

Since you admitted that it is not applicable, Japan is classified as an “Ivermectin user country” in the world, but it is a system that can not be used in reality.

“That’s right. In short, the government has not built a system that can supply ivermectin, so it is not a promotion system. If the Japanese version of EUA is prepared quickly and it becomes a system that can be used by doctors in the field, As Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Tamura replied in the Diet, it can actually be administered to patients who are waiting at home or undergoing medical treatment, but with the current system, virtually nothing can be done. However, if we remain cautious in the event of such an emergency, we can only understand that we are sacrificing the safety of the people. “

Read more …

Nice, but not on principal.

Supreme Court Knocks Down ‘Covid Passport’ In Andalucia (EW)

Supreme Court knocks down ‘covid passport’ to enter bars, restaurants and nightclubs in Andalucia The Supreme Court knocks down ‘covid passport’ to enter bars, restaurants and nightclubs in Andalucia. The Andalucian Government had hoped to use a COVID passport, but the Supreme Court has prevented this. The Andalucian Government had hoped to use a COVID passport control entry to hotels, nightlife venues and nightclubs across Andalucia. The Supreme Court has now rejected this request. The court believes that the proposed measure “does not pass the proportionality test” and that it shows a “justification deficit”. Therefore, it has decided to stand by the decision previously taken by the Superior Court of Justice of Andalucia.

This basically means that anyone in Andalucia will not have to show a vaccination certificate or a negative PCR test which was taken in the last 72 hours in order to enter nightclubs, restaurants and bars. The government of Moreno Bonilla had requested these measures, but Supreme Court have decided to overturn the request. The decision was made on two main arguments. The first is that the measure is not sufficiently justified. For the measure to be justified the government in Andalucia would need to prove “that the so-called fifth wave originates precisely in nightlife venues.” The second argument is one of being proportionate. The measure was intended to apply “over a large territory and in very different situations”.

This meant that the measure would be used across the whole of Andalucia, and the local coronavirus situation within each territory would not be considered. The measure failed the proportionality test. If applied the measure would have hit the hospitality sector without it ever having been proven that the main source of coronavirus infections came from this sector. As reported 20 minutes, “Finally, the court argues that it is not possible to restrict the fundamental rights of citizens with a preventive measure such as the ‘covid passport’: ‘It is not a measure that is punctually indispensable to safeguard public health (…), but rather a preventive measure when it happens that, for the restriction of fundamental rights, mere considerations of prudence or precaution are not sufficient’, the Supreme Court argues.”

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Same in Catalunya.

Spain Court Orders End To Barcelona Virus Curfew (B’s)

A Spanish court on Thursday lifted a coronavirus curfew imposed on most of Catalonia, including the capital Barcelona, leaving it in place in just a fraction of the northeastern region. Catalonia’s government in mid-July imposed a nightly curfew between 1:00 am and 6:00 am in most municipalities to fight a surge in virus cases, and the region’s top court then gave the green light to extend it three times. But on Friday, faced with a request by the regional government to keep the curfew in place in 148 municipalities, the High Court of Justice of Catalonia said the measure was “not justified” in 129 of them, because infection rates there had improved. “In these circumstances, the measures are not so much justified on health grounds, but for reasons of security or public order,” the court said in its ruling.

The Catalan government said in a statement it was “analysing” the court’s ruling, but added it “regrets that once again judges are acting as epidemiologists”. The curfew is intended to discourage social gatherings on beaches and in parks after nightclubs close at 12.30 am, which was suspected of fuelling a spike in cases of the highly-contagious Delta variant, especially among unvaccinated young people. Images of large groups of youths gathering on Barcelona’s beaches or in popular nightlife districts have become common since Spain lifted a nationwide night-time curfew in early May. The court did however keep in place for one more week a ban on public or private gatherings of more than 10 people throughout Catalonia.

Like the rest of Spain, the region which is popular with tourists has seen its number of infections drop in recent weeks. When Catalonia imposed the curfew in mid-July it had an infection rate double Spain’s national average, with more than 1,000 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over 14 days. But on Wednesday that figure had fallen to 328, lower than the national average of 378, according to the health ministry’s latest figures.

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Game of chicken alright. People keep telling me they think vacciation rate here is 10% or so, gov’t says over 60%.

So they threaten them with poverty and exclusion. And many Greeks say: Bring it! We’ve seen hard times before!

Greek Gov’t Not Backing Down On Health Worker Vaccinations (K.)

Deputy Health Minister Vassilis Kontozamanis insisted on Thursday there is no room for postponements, either official or informal, of the suspension of health workers who refuse to get vaccinated. “All of society is grateful and we appreciate the work of our health workers and the results so far in managing the pandemic. And we are optimistic that the small percentage of unvaccinated health workers will get their shots by the deadline,” said Kontazamanis. His announcement came 12 days before the expiration of the deadline given to hospital staff and workers at health facilities around the country to get inoculated with at least one dose of the vaccine. “For those who are not vaccinated, I want to be clear and unequivocal that the law will be implemented. The Greek Parliament has legislated… and the obligation of the state to implement the law is self-evident,” he said.

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ha ha ha

US Promises Not To Charge Americans To Fly Out Of Afghanistan (RT)

Americans looking to leave Afghanistan first have to promise to repay the government for the cost of their evacuations to the tune of “$2,000 or more per person,” but the State Department says it will waive the fee. It is estimated anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 American citizens, permanent residents and their family members may still be in Afghanistan, and presumably hoping to leave the country – under Taliban control since Sunday – via Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in Kabul before the end of August. Before they brave Taliban checkpoints and hope to get a seat on a US troop transport or chartered civilian jet, however, they must promise to repay the US government for the privilege of their rescue.

One journalist did some digging and found the website of the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), a State Department partnership with the “corporate, non-profit, academic, and faith-based groups.” OSAC’s security alert for Afghanistan, posted on August 14 – the very day the Taliban took over Kabul from the disintegrating US-backed government – clearly states that “repatriation flights are not free.” Passengers “will be required to sign a promissory loan agreement & may not be eligible to renew their US passports til the loan is repaid,” the advisory says, adding that the cost “may be $2,000 or more per person.”


The promissory note is apparently demanded in the Repatriation Assistance Request form, which is required for every single person hoping to get onto an evacuation flight, according to instructions sent out by the US embassy in Kabul – now operating out of HKIA. Anyone hoping to leave will need to fill out the form and wait for the embassy email, before braving Taliban checkpoints to reach the airport, at which point they will have to hope a seat will be found for them on a departing plane on a first-come, first-served basis. Hand luggage only, no pets allowed.

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They left behind over 2,000 U.S.-made armored vehicles, between 30 and 40 aircraft, and enough weaponry to start an army from scratch.

France started preparing an evacuation in April, and executing it in June. Everybody knew.

But rumors have it that some 15,000 Americans are still there. Once they start dying or being taken hostage, Biden’s problems go up by an order of magnitude.

Biden State Dept Halted A Trump-Era ‘Crisis Response’ Plan 2 Months Ago (NP)

Joe Biden’s State Department moved to cancel a critical State Department program aimed at providing swift and safe evacuations of Americans out of crisis zones just months prior to the fall of Kabul, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal. The “Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau” – which was designed to handle medical, diplomatic, and logistical support concerning Americans overseas was paused by Antony Blinken’s State Department earlier this year. Notification was officially signed just months before the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. “SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED,” an official State Department document from the Biden State Department begins, before outlining the following move the quash the Trump-era funding for the new bureau.

The document is from the desk of Deputy Secretary of State Brian P. McKeon, confirmed in March by the United States Senate. The document is dated June 11, 2021, though The National Pulse understands the decision to pause the program may have come as early as February, both undermining the original Trump-era date for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and certainly giving the Taliban time to threaten American assets and lives on the run up to Joe Biden’s September 11th date of withdrawal. The subject line reads: “(SBU) Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau,” and the body of the document recommends: “That you direct the discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR), and direct a further review of certain associated Department requirements and capabilities.”

It goes on: “That you direct the discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, CCR, consistent with the applicable legal requirements, necessary stakeholder engagement, and any applicable changes to the Foreign Affairs Manual and other requirements.” The document reveals the recommendations were approved on June 11th 2021. Speaking exclusively to The National Pulse, former President Donald J. Trump blasted Biden’s irresponsible move: “My Administration prioritized keeping Americans safe, Biden leaves them behind. Canceling this successful Trump Administration program before the withdrawal that would have helped tens of thousands Americans reach home is beyond disgraceful. Our withdrawal was conditions-based and perfect, it would have been flawlessly executed and nobody would have even known we left. The Biden execution and withdrawal is perhaps the greatest embarrassment to our Country in History, both as a military and humanitarian operation.”

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It’s not that they didn’t know.

Leaked State Department Memo Warned Of Afghanistan Collapse (ZH)

Around two dozen State Department officials at the US embassy in Kabul warned of a potential collapse following the Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing a ‘person familiar with the cable.’ Using a special ‘dissent channel’ within the State Department, the cable – sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and another top State Department official – warned of ‘rapid territorial gains by the Taliban and the subsequent collapse of Afghan security forces,’ and offered suggestions on how to speed up evacuation and mitigate the obvious crisis slated to ensue, two people told the WSJ. In total, 23 US Embassy staffers – all Americans, signed the July 13 cable, which was given a rush status ‘given the circumstances on the ground in Kabul.’ In addition to Blinken, it was sent to the Director of Policy Planning, Salman Ahmad.

Blinken received the cable and reviewed it shortly afterwards according to the report. The cable, dated July 13, also called for the State Department to use tougher language in describing the atrocities being committed by the Taliban, one of the people said. The classified cable represents the clearest evidence yet that the administration had been warned by its own officials on the ground that the Taliban’s advance was imminent and Afghanistan’s military may be unable to stop it. -WSJ According to the report, some 18,000 Afghans and their families who had applied for special US Immigrant Visas remained in Kabul in areas under Taliban control, while efforts to reach the airport have become increasingly difficult.

US intelligence officials have sparred with the White House over who was warning of what, and when. And as the Journal notes, the existence of this confidential State Department memo warning of impending doom adds a crucial piece to our knowledge of how this all went down. Why Blinken and Biden didn’t take immediate action despite receiving a ‘dissent channel’ emergency communication from their staff on the ground in Kabul is unknown, however Blinken is apparently so bad that John McCain called him “dangerous to America” in a 2014 Senate speech, adding that he was “one of the worst selections of a very bad lot” as Obama’s nominee for Secretary of State.

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“We are dependent on the beneficence of a theocratic militia that has demonstrated no capacity for mercy. And the U.S. government has no intention of remedying this condition.”

The Worst Presidential Dereliction in Memory (Noah Rothman)

Gen. Mark Milley is right. “There’ll be plenty of time to do AARs,” or after-action reports, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a Wednesday press conference alongside Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin. There will be time to learn why neither he nor “anyone else” anticipated the collapse of the Afghan “army and this government in 11 days.” We will one day have the luxury of looking back on this crisis to determine what led to the evacuation of the military before civilians and the surrender of versatile Afghan-based control points. Right now, a crisis of almost unprecedented proportions is upon us. And to judge from what Austin and Milley are telling us, they have neither the means nor the will to resolve it.

As the Washington Post reported on Tuesday night, an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. citizens are still in Afghanistan, and there was “no plan to evacuate the Americans who are outside Kabul.” And there still isn’t. In a most dispiriting display of resignation, Austin and Milley explained that the hellish circumstances to which they’d consigned American citizens and their allies in Afghanistan were all but irresolvable. While thousands of Americans and allied Afghans have been evacuated since Tuesday, we are at the mercy of the Taliban who have surrounded Kabul’s single-runway airport—the only means by which allied nations can evacuate their people. But you have to make it to the airport on your own and by whatever means possible. If you are not presently in U.S. custody in the airport—even inside Kabul—there is little the American military can do for you.

“We don’t have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people,” Sec. Austin confessed. Indeed, the U.S. military cannot even mount the kind of rescue operations in which British and French special forces are already engaged. “I don’t have the capability to go out and extend operations currently into Kabul,” Austin added. What’s more, there are no plans to address that deficiency. “We know that we got to have the right mix of capabilities on the ground,” Austin insisted. “We don’t want to put excessive materials on the ground that are not relevant to what we’re doing.” According to the Pentagon chief, our powerlessness in the face of a disorganized militia is by design.

We have placed the fate of untold thousands of Americans and our Afghan allies in the hands of the Taliban. They dictate the terms and tempo of our operations. We depend on the Taliban to allow foreign nationals and credentialed Afghans into Hamid Karzai International Airport. According to what remains of the American diplomatic presence in Kabul, “the United States government cannot ensure safe passage” into the airport. We are dependent on the beneficence of a theocratic militia that has demonstrated no capacity for mercy. And the U.S. government has no intention of remedying this condition.

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Some good background articles.

The Ides of August (Sarah Chayes)

I covered the fall of the Taliban for NPR, making my way into their former capital, Kandahar, in December 2001, a few days after the collapse of their regime. Descending the last great hill into the desert city, I saw a dusty ghost town. Pickup trucks with rocket-launchers strapped to the struts patrolled the streets. People pulled on my militia friends’ sleeves, telling them where to find a Taliban weapons cache, or a last hold-out. But most remained indoors. It was Ramadan. A few days later, at the holiday ending the month-long fast, the pent-up joy erupted. Kites took to the air. Horsemen on gorgeous, caparisoned chargers tore across a dusty common in sprint after sprint, with a festive audience cheering them on. This was Kandahar, the Taliban heartland. There was no panicked rush for the airport.

I reported for a month or so, then passed off to Steve Inskeep, now Morning Edition host. Within another couple of months, I was back, not as a reporter this time, but to try actually to do something. I stayed for a decade. I ran two non-profits in Kandahar, living in an ordinary house and speaking Pashtu, and eventually went to work for two commanders of the international troops, and then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (You can read about that time, and its lessons, in my first two books, The Punishment of Virtue and Thieves of State.) From that standpoint — speaking as an American, as an adoptive Kandahari, and as a former senior U.S. government official — here are the key factors I see in today’s climax of a two-decade long fiasco:

Afghan government corruption, and the U.S. role enabling and reinforcing it. The last speaker of the Afghan parliament, Rahman Rahmani, I recently learned, is a multimillionaire, thanks to monopoly contracts to provide fuel and security to U.S. forces at their main base, Bagram. Is this the type of government people are likely to risk their lives to defend? Two decades ago, young people in Kandahar were telling me how the proxy militias American forces had armed and provided with U.S. fatigues were shaking them down at checkpoints. By 2007, delegations of elders would visit me — the only American whose door was open and who spoke Pashtu so there would be no intermediaries to distort or report their words.

Over candied almonds and glasses of green tea, they would get to some version of this: “The Taliban hit us on this cheek, and the government hits us on that cheek.” The old man serving as the group’s spokesman would physically smack himself in the face. I and too many other people to count spent years of our lives trying to convince U.S. decision-makers that Afghans could not be expected to take risks on behalf of a government that was as hostile to their interests as the Taliban were. Note: it took me a while, and plenty of my own mistakes, to come to that realization. But I did.

For two decades, American leadership on the ground and in Washington proved unable to take in this simple message. I finally stopped trying to get it across when, in 2011, an interagency process reached the decision that the U.S. would not address corruption in Afghanistan. It was now explicit policy to ignore one of the two factors that would determine the fate of all our efforts. That’s when I knew today was inevitable. Americans like to think of ourselves as having valiantly tried to bring democracy to Afghanistan. Afghans, so the narrative goes, just weren’t ready for it, or didn’t care enough about democracy to bother defending it. Or we’ll repeat the cliche that Afghans have always rejected foreign intervention; we’re just the latest in a long line. I was there. Afghans did not reject us. They looked to us as exemplars of democracy and the rule of law. They thought that’s what we stood for.

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‘Assabiya’ is the engine of history. With it, the most primitive tribe can overturn the mightiest of civilizations; without it, a people will wither in the desert.”

Assabiya Wins Every Time (Lee Smith)

[..] military strategists, political pundits, foreign correspondents, and even historians will spend the next several decades wondering how a gang of rough Pashtun tribesmen galvanized by a fundamentalist version of Islam managed to defeat the most advanced military in the world. And that’s precisely the point: The problem with the American establishment is not simply that after 20 years in Afghanistan it did not understand the country or foresee what its opponents were likely to do after withdrawing forces. More importantly, our ruling class is so alienated from its own roots that it no longer understands the character of the country it purports to lead, and what makes it different, even exceptional.

The evidence is that our elites sought to graft the effects of a civilization built by and for its own people—democracy, a military and police force, girls’ schools, etc.—onto a primitive society that had to be bribed to accept what we were offering. There is no mystery about why the U.S. experience in Afghanistan ended in failure, embarrassment, and scandal. Nor is it a mystery why the Taliban took over Kabul so quickly. They were fighting for primacy. Their victory was foreordained. The medieval Arab historian Ibn Khaldun explains the dynamic in his 14th-century masterwork, Al Muqaddima. History, he shows, is a repetition of the same pattern seen throughout the ages—a group of nomadic tribesmen overturn an existing sedentary culture, a civilization that has become weak and luxurious.

What drives the success of the rising tribe is its group solidarity, or assabiya. Its awareness of itself as a coherent people with a drive for primacy is frequently augmented by religious ideology. The stronger the tribe’s assabiya, the stronger the group. Assimilating the conquered by imposing its will and worldview on them, the victor lays the foundations of a new civilization. But since, as Ibn Khaldun writes, “the goal of civilization is sedentary culture and luxury,” all groups carry the seeds of their own demise. And so the struggle begins anew.

Ibn Khaldun’s most important contribution to political theory was to show that assabiya is the engine of history. With it, the most primitive tribe can overturn the mightiest of civilizations; without it, a people will wither in the desert. As an Arab, and one who claimed as an ancestor a companion of the prophet of Islam, it was natural that his main focus was the physical and spiritual environment of the Bedouin. It was the harsh desert conditions that bred the Bedouin tribes and the ideological conviction, Islam, that bound them together, and which gave rise to the Arab empire, at its height one of the largest in world history. “Since desert life no doubt is the source of bravery, savage groups are braver than others,” he wrote. “They are, therefore, better able to achieve superiority and to take away the things that are in the hands of other nations.”

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Robert Malone: “OK – this video has a super powerful message and a lot of it rings true. I don’t agree with all of it – but it is worth watching and thinking hard about. Detangling the hyperbole from just how bad things actually are – is difficult now for me.”

THE NARRATIVE IS CRUMBLING. SOMETHING BAD AND BIG IS GOING ON.

 

 

 

 

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Aug 192021
 


Henri Matisse View of Nôtre Dame 1914

 

Early Covid-19 Therapy Significantly Improved Covid-19 Outcomes (SD)
Up To 100 May Already Be Infected In New Zealand Covid Outbreak (G.)
Jabbed Adults Infected With Delta ‘Can Match Virus Levels Of Unvaccinated’ (G.)
Get Ready for a Nationwide Eldercare Shortage (CTH)
Former Purdue Pharma Chair Denies Responsibility For US Opioid Crisis (AP)
How Americans View Government Restriction Of False Information (Pew)
New US Air Force Secretary Wants To “Scare” China (Antiwar)
Fire The Military And Intelligence Bigs Who Bungled Afghanistan – Now (NYP)
We Failed Afghanistan, Not the Other Way Around (Taibbi)
IMF Suspends Afghanistan’s Access To Resources (Hill)
Taliban To Reap $1 Trillion Mineral Wealth (DW)

 

 

 

 

Polysaccharides may work. I think I like the illustration.

 

 

Science Direct is an Elsevier publication. We’re getting serious. The shift is slow but real.

Early Covid-19 Therapy Significantly Improved Covid-19 Outcomes (SD)

In a prospective observational study (pre-AndroCoV Trial), the use of nitazoxanide, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine demonstrated unexpected improvements in COVID-19 outcomes when compared to untreated patients. The apparent yet likely positive results raised ethical concerns on the employment of further full placebo controlled studies in early-stage COVID-19. The present analysis aimed to elucidate, through a comparative analysis with two control groups, whether full placebo-control randomized clinical trials (RCTs) on early-stage COVID-19 are still ethically acceptable. The Active group (AG) consisted of patients enrolled in the Pre-AndroCoV-Trial (n = 585). Control Group 1 (CG1) consisted of a retrospectively obtained group of untreated patients of the same population (n = 137), and Control Group 2 (CG2) resulted from a precise prediction of clinical outcomes based on a thorough and structured review of indexed articles and official statements.


Patients were matched for sex, age, comorbidities and disease severity at baseline. Compared to CG1 and CG2, AG showed reduction of 31.5–36.5% in viral shedding (p < 0.0001), 70–85% in disease duration (p < 0.0001), and 100% in respiratory complications, hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, deaths and post-COVID manifestations (p < 0.0001 for all). For every 1000 confirmed cases for COVID-19, at least 70 hospitalizations, 50 mechanical ventilations and five deaths were prevented. Benefits from the combination of early COVID-19 detection and early pharmacological approaches were consistent and overwhelming when compared to untreated groups, which, together with the well-established safety profile of the drug combinations tested in the Pre-AndroCoV Trial, precluded our study from continuing employing full placebo in early COVID-19.

[..] Drugs offered included azithromycin 500mg daily for five days for all patients, in association with one of the following: hydroxychloroquine 400mg daily for five days, nitazoxanide 500mg twice a day for six days, or ivermectin 0.2mg/kg/day in a single daily dose for three days, In addition, repurposed drugs, including dutasteride 0.5mg/day for 15 days and spironolactone 100mg twice a day for 15 days, were optionally offered. Vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, apibaxan, rivaroxaban, enoxaparin and glucocorticoids were added according to clinical judgement, the risk for thrombosis and progression of the disease to the inflammatory stage. Patients that decided to adhere to any treatment were included in the AG. All patients of AG and CG1 groups were followed longitudinally for 90 days for the occurrence of a new-onset or persistence of physical or mental manifestations.

Of the 585 subjects, all patients used azithromycin. A total of 357 patients used NIT, 159 used HCQ and 110 patients used IVE, alone with azithromycin or in combination with other drugs. Of the 357 patients that used NIT, 69 used the same in combination with HCQ, 46 used in combination with IVE, 146 used in combination with SPIRO, and 27 males used in combination with DUTA. Of the 110 patients that used IVE, 22 used in combination with HCQ, 82 used in combination with NIT, 66 used in combination with SPIRO and four males used in combination with DUTA. Of the 159 patients that used HCQ, 21 used in combination with IVE, 113 used in combination with NIT, 86 used in combination with SPIRO and seven males used in combination with DUTA.

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Not one word on how severe their cases are. Typical.

Up To 100 May Already Be Infected In New Zealand Covid Outbreak (G.)

New Zealand’s coronavirus cluster has grown to 21, with a strong link discovered to a case at the border, as the country began day two of a national lockdown. On Thursday, New Zealand reported another 11 cases of the Delta variant in the community, all in Auckland. The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, also announced that children between the ages of 12-15 would now also be eligible for the vaccine, from 1 September. “My message to parents who will need to of course provide consent for the children, is that I would not have been a part of a process and approving this, unless I believed it was safe, because around that table, we are parents too, all affected by these decisions, so we take them very seriously,” she said. The first case, a 58-year-old man from Auckland, emerged on Tuesday, prompting the government to put the entire country into a level 4 lockdown – the highest level of restrictions.

Ardern said genome sequencing has linked the cluster to a returnee from Australia. A New Zealander returned from Sydney on a managed red-zone flight and tested positive for the Delta variant on 7 August before being moved to quarantine the next day. After becoming unwell, they were transferred to Middlemore hospital, on 16 August. “This is a significant development and means now we can be fairly certain how, and when, the virus entered the country, and that based on timelines, there are minimal, possibly only one, or maybe two, missing links between this returnee and cases in our current outbreak,” Ardern said. The period in which cases were in the community is relatively short, she said, adding that it was unlikely the virus was spread at the hospital because the case was transferred there just one day prior to the first positive local case being discovered.

Ardern thanked the 58-year-old man for getting tested when he did. “If it wasn’t for you getting tested when you did, this could be a much, much more difficult situation. Having said that, I know we’re all prepared for cases to get worse before they get better. There is always a pattern with these outbreaks.” The prime minister cautioned that the country would need to remain open to other possibilities, but that the new information gives officials the confidence to focus on how the virus was transmitted, with a particular focus on the isolation and quarantine facilities. “Today we believe we have uncovered the piece of the puzzle we were looking for, and that means our ability to circle the virus, lock it down and stamp it out generally has greatly improved.”

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In real life, we’ve seen levels of 4-5 times higher (get me a booster!). But the Guardian brings it to you gently.

And stupidly: “But the fact that they can have high levels of virus suggests that people who aren’t yet vaccinated may not be as protected from the Delta variant as we hoped.”

Jabbed Adults Infected With Delta ‘Can Match Virus Levels Of Unvaccinated’ (G.)

Fully vaccinated adults can harbour virus levels as high as unvaccinated people if infected with the Delta variant, according to a sweeping analysis of UK data, which supports the idea that hitting the threshold for herd immunity is unlikely. There is abundant evidence that Covid vaccines in the UK continue to offer significant protection against hospitalisations and death. But this new analysis shows that although being fully vaccinated means the risk of getting infected is lower, once infected by Delta a person can carry similar virus levels as unvaccinated people. The implications of this on transmission remain unclear, the researchers have cautioned.

“We don’t yet know how much transmission can happen from people who get Covid-19 after being vaccinated – for example, they may have high levels of virus for shorter periods of time,” said Sarah Walker, a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at the University of Oxford. “But the fact that they can have high levels of virus suggests that people who aren’t yet vaccinated may not be as protected from the Delta variant as we hoped.” Positive tests, hospitalisations and deaths linked to Covid have been rising slowly in the UK recently. In the week to 18 August, 211,238 people had a confirmed positive test result, an increase of 7.6% compared with the previous seven days. Over the same period, there have been 655 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, a rise of 7.9% versus the previous seven days.

Hospitalisations have also risen slightly, with 5,623 going into hospital with coronavirus between 8 August 2021 and 14 August 2021, a rise of 4.3% compared with the previous seven days. The study, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, found vaccine performance has waned against Delta versus the previously dominant Alpha variant. The analysis did not directly investigate whether the lower level of vaccine protection against Delta affected jabs’ ability to prevent severe disease. However, Dr Penny Ward, a visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King’s College London, noted: “The low incidence of hospitalisation seen to date suggests that in this respect at least the vaccines are protecting individuals from developing severe Covid.”

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“.. as Biden Forces Mandatory Vaccines For Any Worker Paid by Medicare and Medicaid Money..”

Get Ready for a Nationwide Eldercare Shortage (CTH)

…As predicted, and the ‘next step’ will be colleges, universities, students and anyone receiving federal education funding, loans or grants. Today, the White House occupant announced a federal regulatory requirement that all nurses and healthcare workers who work in facilities funded by Medicaid and/or Medicare will be required to be vaccinated. Ironically Joe Biden noted that nurses, those professionally trained in healthcare systems – who understand the issues of vaccination, are at a lower vaccination rate than the less trained and educated population. “Vaccination rates among nursing home staff significantly trail the rest of the country“, Biden said; while never questioning ‘why’. As pointed out recently, a large subset of the vaccine resistant population are the most educated.


[Speech Transcript] – […] “Today, I’m announcing a new step. If you work in a nursing home and serve people on Medicare or Medicaid, you will also be required to get vaccinated. More than 130,000 residents in nursing homes have sa- — have sadly, over the period of this virus, passed away. At the same time, vaccination rates among nursing home staff significantly trail the rest of the country.” The downstream consequence from this action will be a shortage of healthcare providers in nursing homes. This has already become an issue for hospitals coast to coast who require vaccinations of their staff. CTH has been warning about the Chicago network behind Biden and their objective. We have accurately predicted their moves, but what we cannot determine is how the larger American electorate will respond to these encroachments.

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As go the Sacklers, so goes Pfizer.

Former Purdue Pharma Chair Denies Responsibility For US Opioid Crisis (AP)

The former president and board chair of Purdue Pharma told a court Wednesday that he, his family and the company are not responsible for the opioid crisis in the United States. Richard Sackler, a member of the family who owns the company, was asked whether each bears responsibility during a federal bankruptcy hearing in White Plains, New York, over whether a judge should accept the OxyContin maker’s plan to settle thousands of lawsuits. For each, he gave a one-word answer: “No.” Richard Sackler’s denial of responsibility for the opioid crisis comes a day after another Sackler family member said the group wouldn’t accept a settlement without guarantees of immunity from further legal action.

The previous words of Richard Sackler, now 76, are at the heart of lawsuits accusing the Stamford, Connecticut-based company of an outsized role in sparking a nationwide opioid epidemic. In the 1996 event to launch sales of OxyContin, he told the company’s sales force that there would be “a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition”. Five years later, as it was apparent that the powerful prescription pain drug was being misused in some cases, he said in an email that Purdue would have to “hammer on the abusers in every way possible”, describing them as “the culprits and the problem”. For those reasons, the activists crusading against companies involved in selling opioids often see Richard Sackler – who was president of the company from 1999 to 2003, chair of its board from 2004 through 2007, and a board member from 1990 until 2018 – as a prime villain.

[..] Sackler, whose father was one of three brothers who nearly 70 years ago bought the company that later became Purdue Pharma, didn’t recall emails he wrote a decade or more ago; whether Purdue’s board approved certain sales strategies; whether a company owned by Sackler family members sold opioids in Argentina; or whether he paid any of his own money as part of a settlement with Oklahoma to which the Sackler family contributed $75m. Often, he answered questions with more questions, asking for precision. When Edmunds asked him if he knew how many people in the US had died from using opioids, Sackler asked him to specify over which time period. Edmunds did: 2005 to 2017. “I don’t know,” Sackler said. He said that he had looked at some data on deaths in the past, though. (The US Centers for Disease Control has tallied more than 500,000 deaths in the US to opioid overdose, including both prescription drugs and illicit ones such as heroin and illegally produced fentanyl, since 2000.)

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How did that country get so scary so fast?

And how can a government or Big Tech restrict false information when they are the biggest source of it? You know, just in theory …..

How Americans View Government Restriction Of False Information (Pew)

Amid rising concerns over misinformation online – including surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, especially vaccines – Americans are now a bit more open to the idea of the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online. And a majority of the public continues to favor technology companies taking such action, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Roughly half of U.S. adults (48%) now say the government should take steps to restrict false information, even if it means losing some freedom to access and publish content, according to the survey of 11,178 adults conducted July 26-Aug. 8, 2021. That is up from 39% in 2018. At the same time, the share of adults who say freedom of information should be protected – even if it means some misinformation is published online – has decreased from 58% to 50%.

When it comes to whether technology companies should take steps to address misinformation online, more are in agreement. A majority of adults (59%) continue to say technology companies should take steps to restrict misinformation online, even if it puts some restrictions on Americans’ ability to access and publish content. Around four-in-ten (39%) take the opposite view that protecting freedom of information should take precedence, even if it means false claims can spread. The balance of opinion on this question has changed little since 2018. Partisan divisions on the role of government in addressing online misinformation have emerged since 2018. Three years ago, around six-in-ten in each partisan coalition – 60% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents and 57% of Democrats and Democratic leaners – agreed that freedom of information should be prioritized over the government taking steps to restrict false information online.


Today, 70% of Republicans say those freedoms should be protected, even it if means some false information is published. Nearly as many Democrats (65%) instead say the government should take steps to restrict false information, even if it means limiting freedom of information. Partisan views on whether technology companies should take such steps have also grown further apart. Roughly three-quarters of Democrats (76%) now say tech companies should take steps to restrict false information online, even at the risk of limiting information freedoms. A majority of Republicans (61%) express the opposite view – that those freedoms should be protected, even if it means false information can be published online. In 2018, the parties were closer together on this question, though most Democrats still supported action by tech firms.

Read more …

Washington hasn’t processed its defeat yet.

New US Air Force Secretary Wants To “Scare” China (Antiwar)

Researching and developing new weapons technologies is a key part of the Pentagon’s strategy to counter China. In an interview with Defense News, President Biden’s new Air Force secretary said he’d like to see the US military field the type of new technologies that “scare China.” Frank Kendall, who was sworn in as Air Force secretary on July 28th, made it clear in the interview that he is focused on China. “I’ve been obsessed, if you will, with China for quite a long time now — and its military modernization, what that implies for the US and for security,” he said. Hyping up the threat of China’s military serves the Pentagon to justify more spending, and Kendall hinted that he believes the Air Force doesn’t have a sufficient budget. “The Air Force has been overly constrained,” he said.


“I think we’ve not been allowed to do things we really need to do to free up resources for things that are higher priority. We’ve had a very hard time getting the Congress to allow us to retire older aircraft.” One project that Kendall discussed is the B-21 bomber, which is currently being developed. “I think that’s going to be something that will be intimidating, it’s going to be very capable. And there are a few others like that that are coming down the pipeline. … But I think we have to be continuously thinking about other things that will be intimidating to our future enemies.” The Pentagon budget requested by President Biden prioritized spending on new weapons technology. The budget request asked for over $112 billion for research, development, testing, and evaluation, known as RDT&E. Besides new long-range bombers, US military leaders are calling for investment in technology like artificial intelligence, robotics, space and cyber capabilities, and hypersonic missiles.

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And then you will have what?

Fire The Military And Intelligence Bigs Who Bungled Afghanistan – Now (NYP)

This is the biggest foreign failure in most Americans’ lifetimes, and there needs to be an accounting. The normal course of business after government bungling nowadays is that everyone involved tut-tuts a bit, then gets a raise and a promotion, while the government goes back to business as usual. But in a sane nation, failure would be punished. To begin with, Milley must resign or be fired. And the same for our triple-masking defense secretary, Lloyd Austin. This was a failure that happened on their watch, and it happened through bad management. We could have pulled out without nearly the level of chaos, confusion and terror.

But Milley and Austin weren’t on top of their jobs. They may feel that firing is unfair, but they’d be getting off light by the standards of military history: In the 18th century, the British executed an admiral, John Byng, for failing to “do his utmost” in combat. It was harsh, but the Royal Navy became more aggressive. Likewise, the intel agencies and officers who provided the bad, er, intelligence need to go. Many others who failed, from contractors to lower-level officers and bureaucrats, need to go, too. You punish a bureaucracy by shrinking its staff and cutting its budget. That needs to happen here. The brass and agencies will complain that it was Biden who ultimately made the call. Indeed, they are already furiously leaking to that effect to the press.

Maybe they’re right. But it’s up to voters to fire the president at the ballot box. If they thought what Biden planned was disastrous, they should have resigned in protest. But they didn’t. Meanwhile, we also need a probe, with independent investigators with strong powers. That should be followed by deep structural changes in a military that hasn’t really won a war since well before I was born. Bottom line: Our military must be disciplined to win wars, rather than promote gender ideology and postmodern race theories (at home or abroad). None of this will transpire, of course. Our society is run by a technocratic-managerial class that never pays a price for failure. Democracy is a glossy finish over an unelected administrative state that isn’t really accountable to anyone and measures success or failure in terms of budgets, p.r. and power, not results.

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$300 million per day for 20 years.

We Failed Afghanistan, Not the Other Way Around (Taibbi)

On MSNBC the other night, Rachel Maddow told a story about visiting Afghanistan a decade ago. She described being taken on a tour of a new neighborhood in Kabul of “narco-palaces,” what she called, “big garish, gigantic, rococo, strange-looking places” that hadn’t existed before the Americans arrived. This was said to be symbolic of the “fantastically corrupt elites” among the Afghan political class who put themselves into position to siphon off big chunks of the “billions of dollars per month” we sent into the country. Noting that, “the U.S. effort and expenditure in that country did build some stuff, roads and waterways and schools,” Maddow decried the fact that “so much of what we put in by the boatload was shoveled off by a fantastically corrupt elite.”

She showed video of Taliban conquerors lounging around in the tackily furnished homes of former Afghan officials in Kabul, pointing out that, “dictator chic is the same the world over.” In a not-so-subtle dig at Donald Trump, she added, “And they really like gold fixtures.” From Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, the pattern of American officials showering questionable political allies abroad with armfuls of cash is a long-established practice. However, the idea that this is the reason the “missions” fail in such places is just a continuation of the original propaganda lines that get us into these messes. It’s a way of saying the subject populations are to blame for undermining our noble efforts, when the missions themselves are often preposterous and, moreover, the lion’s share of the looting is usually done by our own marauding contracting community.

It’s bad enough that Maddow/MSNBC played a big part in delaying the withdrawal last year with hype of the bogus Bountygate story, which gave one last (false) dying breath to the war rationale. This latest criticism of theirs ignores the massive amounts of corruption that were endemic to the American side of the mission. Contractors made fortunes monstrously overcharging the taxpayer for everything from private security, to dysfunctional or unnecessary construction projects, to social programs that either had no chance for success, or for which metrics for measuring success didn’t exist. The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) some years ago identified “$15.5 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse… in our published reports and closed investigations between SIGAR’s inception in 2008 and December 31, 2017,” and added an additional $3.4 billion in a subsequent review.

All told, “SIGAR reviewed approximately $63 billion and concluded that a total of approximately $19 billion or 30 percent of the amount reviewed was lost to waste, fraud, and abuse.” Thirty percent! If the overall cost of the war was, as reported, $2 trillion (about $300 million per day for 20 years), a crude back of the envelope calculation for the amount lost to fraud during the entire period might be $600 billion, an awesome sum. It could even be worse than that. SIGAR for instance also looked at a $7.8 billion sum spent on buildings and vehicles from 2008 on, and reported that of that, only $343.2 million worth “were maintained in good condition.” They added that just $1.2 billion of the original expenditure was used as intended. By that metric, the majority of the monies spent in Afghanistan might simply have gone up in smoke in bogus or ineffectual contracting schemes.

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Either the IMF distances itself from the US, or it becomes irrelevant.

IMF Suspends Afghanistan’s Access To Resources (Hill)

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday announced it was suspending Afghanistan’s access to its resources due to what it called a “lack of clarity” surrounding the recognition of the country’s government after the Taliban took control of the capital city of Kabul. “As is always the case, the IMF is guided by the views of the international community,” a spokesperson for the IMF said in a statement, according to Reuters. “There is currently a lack of clarity within the international community regarding recognition of a government in Afghanistan, as a consequence of which the country cannot access SDRs or other IMF resources.” This move by the IMF comes after the Biden administration reportedly froze Afghan government reserves held in U.S. banks, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions in funds.

“Any Central Bank assets the Afghan government have in the United States will not be made available to the Taliban,” one administration official told The Washington Post. It is currently unclear whether the Taliban will be recognized by the international community, though China has indicated that it is open to establishing formal relations, being one of the few countries that did not evacuate its embassy when the Afghan government fell. Shortly after the Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if the U.S. would ever recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government. “A future Afghan government that upholds the basic rights of its people and that doesn’t harbor terrorists is a government we can work with and recognize,” Blinken said.

“Conversely, a government that doesn’t do that, that doesn’t uphold the basic rights of its people, including women and girls, that harbors terrorist groups that have designs on the United States, our allies and partners, certainly, that’s not going to happen,” he added.

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No boycott possible. There will always be customers.

Taliban To Reap $1 Trillion Mineral Wealth (DW)

The Taliban have been handed a huge financial and geopolitical edge in relations with the world’s biggest powers as the militant group seizes control of Afghanistan for a second time. In 2010, a report by US military experts and geologists estimated that Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest countries, was sitting on nearly $1 trillion (€850 billion) in mineral wealth, thanks to huge iron, copper, lithium, cobalt and rare-earth deposits. In the subsequent decade, most of those resources remained untouched due to ongoing violence in the country. Meanwhile, the value of many of those minerals has skyrocketed, sparked by the global transition to green energy. A follow-up report by the Afghan government in 2017 estimated that Kabul’s new mineral wealth may be as high as $3 trillion, including fossil fuels.


Lithium, which is used in batteries for electric cars, smartphones and laptops, is facing unprecedented demand, with annual growth of 20% compared to just 5-6% a few years ago. The Pentagon memo called Afghanistan the Saudi Arabia of lithium and projected that the country’s lithium deposits could equal Bolivia’s — one of the world’s largest. Copper, too, is benefiting from the post-COVID global economic recovery — up 43% over the past year. More than a quarter of Afghanistan’s future mineral wealth could be realized by expanding copper mining activities. While the West has threatened not to work with the Taliban after it effectively seized control of Kabul over the weekend, China, Russia and Pakistan are lining up to do business with the militant group — further adding to the US and Europe’s humiliation over the fall of the country.

As the manufacturer of almost half of the world’s industrial goods, China is stoking much of the global demand for commodities. Beijing — already Afghanistan’s largest foreign investor — is seen as likely to lead the race to help the country build an efficient mining system to meet its insatiable needs for minerals. “Taliban control comes at a time when there is a supply crunch for these minerals for the foreseeable future and China needs them,” Michael Tanchum, a senior fellow at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy, told DW. “China is already in position in Afghanistan to mine these minerals.”


One of the Asian powerhouse’s mining giants, the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC), already has a 30-year lease to mine copper in Afghanistan’s barren Logar province. Some analysts, however, question whether the Taliban have the competence and willingness to exploit the country’s natural resources given the income they generate from the drug trade. “These resources were in the ground in the 90s too and they [the Taliban] weren’t able to extract them,” Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director at the Counter Extremism Project, told DW. “One has to remain very skeptical of their ability to grow the Afghan economy or even their interest in doing so.”

Read more …

 

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Jul 082021
 


Paul Gauguin Why are you angry? 1896

 

Early Covid-19 Therapy With Azithromycin+Nitazoxanide, Ivermectin Or HCQ (SD)
Oh Look, Fraud In Medicine! (Denninger)
WHO Recommends Life-Saving Interleukin-6 Receptor Blockers For Covid-19 (WHO)
California ‘Epsilon’ Covid Variant Contains Three Mutations (DM)
The Nasty Trade-Off (Denninger)
New Zealand Children Falling Ill In High Numbers Due To ‘Immunity Debt’ (G.)
Why Won’t The Lancet Admit It Was Wrong? (Unherd)
Science, Not Speculation, Essential To Find How SARS-CoV-2 Reached Us (Lancet)
The Chinese Miracle, Revisited (Escobar)
Majority Do Not Believe Biden Mentally Capable Of Executing Presidential Duties
Workers Are Funding The War On Themselves (DP)
Pressure Builds For Julian Assange To Be Released (ES)

 

 

I assure you, if it requires coercion, manipulation, gaslighting, 24/7 advertising, fear-mongering, silencing of dissenting opinions and experts, slandering of alternative options, tons of incentives, and indemnification from liability, then it isn’t required for health.

 

 

 

 

It’s safe
https://twitter.com/i/status/1412928096483745793

 

 

Note: Goldman puts this down to vaccinations (what do they know, they’re bankers). How about it’s because Delta is more transmissible and also much less dangerous?

 

 

“For every 1,000 confirmed cases for COVID-19, at least 140 hospitalizations, 50 mechanical ventilations and 5 deaths were prevented with treatment.”

US 34 million cases, 621,000 deaths. Ergo: at 5 deaths per 1000 prevented, this alone could have saved 170,000 lives.

Early Covid-19 Therapy With Azithromycin+Nitazoxanide, Ivermectin Or HCQ (SD)

In a prospective observational study (pre-AndroCoV Trial), the use of nitazoxanide, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine demonstrated unexpected improvements in COVID-19 outcomes, when compared to untreated patients. The apparent yet likely positive results raised ethical concerns on the employment of further full placebo84 controlled studies in early stage COVID-19. The present analysis aimed to elucidate whether full placebo-control randomized clinical trials (RCTs) on early-stage COVID-19 are still ethically acceptable, through a comparative analysis with two control87 groups.


Active group (AG) consisted of patients enrolled in the Pre AndroCoV-Trial (n = 585). Control Group 1 (CG1) consisted of a retrospectively obtained group of untreated patients of the same population (n = 137), and Control Group 2 (CG2) resulted from a precise prediction of clinical outcomes based on a thorough and structured review of indexed articles and official statements. Patients were matched for sex, age, comorbidities and disease severity at baseline. Compared to CG1 and CG2 AG showed reduction of 31.5-36.5% in viral shedding (p < 0.0001), 70-85% in disease duration (p < 0.0001), and 100% in respiratory complications, hospitalization, mechanical ventilations, and deaths (p < 0.0001 for all).

For every 1,000 confirmed cases for COVID-19, at least 70 hospitalizations, 50 mechanical ventilations and five deaths were prevented. Benefits from the combination of early COVID-19 detection and early pharmacological approaches were consistent and overwhelming when compared to untreated groups, which, together with and well-established safety profile of the drug combinations tested in the Pre-AndroCoV Trial, precluded our study to continue employing full placebo in early COVID-19.

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“..let’s assume the 600,000 figure is accurate as the “base” across the country. If it’s 22% that’s 132,000 people who did not actually die of Covid-19.”

That’s 170,000 -see above- that need not have died from Covid, plus 130,000 that did not die from it. Roughly half of all US deaths right there.

Oh Look, Fraud In Medicine! (Denninger)

When you pay people to do something without proof the event occurred the outcome is simple: You get institutionalized, mass-fraud. Remember, this is from official “fact checking” sites: “We rate the claim that hospitals get paid more if patients are listed as COVID-19 and on ventilators as TRUE.” Hospitals and doctors do get paid more for Medicare patients diagnosed with COVID-19 or if it’s considered presumed they have COVID-19 absent a laboratory-confirmed test, and three times more if the patients are placed on a ventilator to cover the cost of care and loss of business resulting from a shift in focus to treat COVID-19 cases. Of course USA Today said that there was no evidence that hospitals would game this.

Except…. now there is evidence that not only did they game it, they committed mass-fraud in that they got paid for Covid-19 cases that never existed and deaths that were not Covid-19 caused. “A county in northern California announced last week that it revised the method in how it registered coronavirus deaths that led to a 22% drop in its death toll, a report said.” 22% eh? This is the second one, by the way. Alameda county did the same thing; their drop was 25%. So around 1/4 of all alleged “Covid-19” deaths, if this is representative (and it probably is) weren’t actually Covid-19 related at all. But the hospitals all got paid for them as if they were, and exactly zero of that money will be recovered — right? How much is that?

Well, let’s assume the 600,000 figure is accurate as the “base” across the country. If it’s 22% that’s 132,000 people who did not actually die of Covid-19. More to the point if none of them had ventilators used, and of course we know many of them did, the medical providers BILKED you and I, as we fund the government, out of some $1.716 BILLION in payments and, if half of them were put on vents that figure more than doubles.

Oh, and wait…. what does that do to the claimed “excess death”? I do recall writing an article or three on that in which it was quite clear that in fact uncorrelated data sets, that is, Social Security and the labor numbers, made clear that while there was excess death it was nowhere near what the government and CDC had claimed. Yes, “excess” people died, but many were pulled forward by six months to a year, mostly in nursing homes where 53% of those admitted die within six months. Note that this statistic is from 2010 which means that statistically-speaking those in nursing homes that Covid-19 “got” were highly-likely to have been dead from something within six months anyway. Said deaths were not “excess.”

All death is sad but falsely coding a gunshot or motorcycle wreck victim as Covid-19 in order to grab an extra $19,000 from the taxpayer is fraud, and inflating such statistics to inculcate fear ought to generate decades-long prison terms. We now have hard proof that in fact both happened in size and were not rare. WHERE ARE THE HANDCUFFS AND WHY DON’T JOE-N-HO SEND THEIR TEAMS AROUND TO GO “DOOR TO DOOR” LOCKING UP EVERY HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATOR AND CLINICIAN WHO DID THIS?

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Hydroxychloroquine is an excellent Interleukin-6 receptor blocker. But there’s no profit in it. So we must re-invent it.

WHO Recommends Life-Saving Interleukin-6 Receptor Blockers For Covid-19 (WHO)

The World Health Organization (WHO) has updated its patient care guidelines to include interleukin-6 receptor blockers, a class of medicines that are lifesaving in patients who are severely or critically ill with COVID-19, especially when administered alongside corticosteroids. These were the findings from a prospective and a living network meta-analysis initiated by WHO, the largest such analysis on the drugs to date. Data from over 10 000 patients enrolled in 27 clinical trials were considered. These are the first drugs found to be effective against COVID-19 since corticosteroids were recommended by WHO in September 2020.

Patients severely or critically ill with COVID-19 often suffer from an overreaction of the immune system, which can be very harmful to the patient’s health. Interleukin-6 blocking drugs – tocilizumab and sarilumab – act to suppress this overreaction. The prospective and living network meta-analyses showed that in severely or critically ill patients, administering these drugs reduce the odds of death by 13%, compared to standard care. This means that there will be 15 fewer deaths per thousand patients, and as many as 28 fewer deaths for every thousand critically ill patients. The odds of mechanical ventilation among severe and critical patients are reduced by 28%, compared with standard care. This translates to 23 fewer patients out of a thousand needing mechanical ventilation.

Clinical trial investigators in 28 countries shared data with WHO, including pre-publication data. Researchers worldwide compiled and analyzed the data. With the support of these critical partnerships, WHO has been able to issue a rapid and trustworthy recommendation for the use of interleukin-6 receptor blockers in severe and critical COVID-19 patients. “These drugs offer hope for patients and families who are suffering from the devastating impact of severe and critical COVID-19. But IL-6 receptor blockers remain inaccessible and unaffordable for the majority of the world,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

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Catch up on your Greek alphabet, it’ll come in handy.

California ‘Epsilon’ Covid Variant Contains Three Mutations (DM)

Fully vaccinated people may still be at risk of infection from the California ‘Epsilon’ coronavirus variant, a new study finds. Researchers from the University of Washington and Vir Biotechnology, based in San Francisco, found that the variant had three mutations on the spike protein, which the virus uses to enter and infect human cells. These mutations could provide resistance to neutralizing antibodies generated by the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
What’s more, the mutations may be able to evade natural antibodies a person forms after being infected with the virus. Health experts say neutralizing antibodies are what protect people from the virus, and the variant’s ability to resist them could leave people in danger. The Epsilon variant is not believed to be more infectious than the original virus, though.

The Epsilon variant was first identified in May 2020 and was virtually nonexistent until October. It would later split into two separate versions, the B.1.427 and the more common B.1.429 mutation. It has remained a relatively quiet variant of the virus outside of California, not causing an outbreak similar to the Indian ‘Delta’ variant. Epsilon still managed to find its way into at least 44 countries, though 97 percent of the 49,221 cases worldwide have been recorded in the U.S. Of the 47,987 cases recorded in the U.S., more than 22,000 have been detected in California. Hawaii and Nevada also dealt with smaller outbreaks of the B.1.429 mutation of the virus. Researchers, who published their data in the journal Science on July 1, found that both types of the variant had the ability to evade the neutralizing antibodies found in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which use messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

Effectiveness of the neutralizing antibodies was reduced by 50 to 70 percent. They also found that neutralizing activity was reduced in 14 of 34 of the antibodies responsible for it. The data is worrying, and is an early sign that the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines may not be enough to permanently protect from the virus. Experts have long believed that a third ‘booster shot’ of the mRNA vaccines – produced by Pfizer and Moderna – would be needed in the future to protect from variants. Both companies have launched clinical trials for a booster shot as well.

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“If you refuse the “booster” you are at much higher risk of getting sick and dying. If you take the booster you are at much higher risk of the booster making you sick or killing you.”

The Nasty Trade-Off (Denninger)

All viruses mutate over time. All non-sterilizing vaccines potentiate mutation because they prohibit neither infection or transmission — they only suppress the severity of disease. We’ve known this for decades and in fact we know this is why Marek’s disease happened in poultry. Of course we ignored all of this because, well, Warp Speed. We now see evidence of more transmissible variation coming to the forefront. This is the natural evolution of a virus; the more-transmissible variant “wins”; the less loses. Whichever gets the person who can contract it (vaccinated or not, if the vaccine is non-sterilizing) that’s the variant that “wins” and gets to infect someone else. What isn’t yet solidly in evidence is whether those mutations have rendered the stabs effectively worthless.

But what’s bad news whether they are or aren’t is that if the spike protein, which we know is pathogenic, has ‘greater’ binding affinity and thus you want a “booster” to fight it said booster will also have a higher risk of causing nasty adverse effects because it is the spike that causes the problem and if it binds more in the virus so will the version of it used for the “booster.” In other words on the evidence you would expect a variation that produces more transmission to also produce more-serious adverse reactions from jabs that are designed to “protect” against it, all other things being equal. Now add to this that as titers wane you may have no choice if you took the original stabs because as that happens you may wind up with plenty of binding antibodies (which enhance the infection) but not enough neutralizing ones.

If you refuse the “booster” you are at much higher risk of getting sick and dying. If you take the booster you are at much higher risk of the booster making you sick or killing you. Meanwhile those who refused originally sneeze when infected, especially if they employ immediate countermeasures using existing drugs. Yeah, it’ll get some of those folks — but probably not all that many, as the “easy to kill” are already dead from the previous round. That sucks. Is this yet in evidence? No, because thus far boosters don’t exist. But it is exactly what I expect to happen.

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When a new and dangerous disease appears, what do you do? Why, you weaken the immune system of course! It may take a while, but after the first whole year you should definitely see the first results.

New Zealand Children Falling Ill In High Numbers Due To ‘Immunity Debt’ (G.)

New Zealand hospitals are experiencing the payoff of “immunity debt” created by Covid-19 lockdowns, with wards flooded by babies with a potentially-deadly respiratory virus, doctors have warned. Wellington has 46 children currently hospitalised for respiratory illnesses including respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. A number are infants, and many are on oxygen. Other hospitals are also experiencing a rise in cases that are straining their resources – with some delaying surgeries or converting playrooms into clinical space. RSV is a common respiratory illness. In adults, it generally only produces very mild symptoms – but it can make young children extremely ill, or even be fatal.

The size and seriousness of New Zealand’s outbreak is likely being fed by what some paediatric doctors have called an “immunity debt” – where people don’t develop immunity to other viruses suppressed by Covid lockdowns, causing cases to explode down the line. Epidemiologist and public health professor Michael Baker used the metaphor of forest brushfires: if a year or two have passed without fire, there is more fuel on the ground to feed the flames. When a fire finally comes, it burns much more fiercely. “What we’re seeing now is we’ve accumulated a whole lot of susceptible children that have missed out on exposure – so now they’re seeing it for the first time,” Baker said.

The “immunity debt” phenomenon occurs because measures like lockdowns, hand-washing, social distancing and masks are not only effective at controlling Covid-19. They also suppress the spread of other illnesses that transmit in a similar way, including the flu, common cold, and lesser-known respiratory illnesses like RSA. In New Zealand, lockdowns last winter led to a 99.9% reduction in flu cases and a 98% reduction in RSV – and near-eliminated the spike of excess deaths New Zealand usually experiences during winter. “This positive collateral effect in the short term is welcome, as it prevents additional overload of the healthcare system,” a collective of French doctors wrote in a May 2021 study of immunity debt.

But in the long term, it can create problems of its own: if bacterial and viral infections aren’t circulating among children, they don’t develop immunity, which leads to larger outbreaks down the line. “The lack of immune stimulation… induced an “immunity debt” which could have negative consequences when the pandemic is under control and [public health intervientions] are lifted,” the doctors wrote. “The longer these periods of ‘viral or bacterial low-exposure’ are, the greater the likelihood of future epidemics.”

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Because they’re in bed with Daszak and Fauci.

Why Won’t The Lancet Admit It Was Wrong? (Unherd)

Someone needs to tell The Lancet the most basic tenet of crisis management: when in a hole, stop digging. Instead, this world-renowned medical journal seems determined to keep shredding its reputation, in tandem with a group of experts ignorant to the damage they have caused the scientific community as they have stifled debate regarding the pandemic’s origins. Early last year, just as the world was starting to grapple with the trauma of Covid, The Lancet published a highly-controversial statement in support of Chinese scientists, attacking “conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin” and praising Beijing’s “rapid, open and transparent sharing of data”.

Clearly this was absurd given China’s cover-up, silencing of doctors and deletion of key data. But the statement, signed by 27 prominent experts, played a key role in shutting down suggestions the pandemic might have started with a lab incident, rather than spilling over naturally from animals. Scandalously, we later learned it was covertly drafted by British scientist Peter Daszak, £300,000-a-year president of Eco-Health Alliance charity and long-term partner of researchers at Wuhan Institute of Virology. Despite the global furore, Daszak’s gang has gone back into battle with a follow-up statement, as I revealed they were planning to do 10 days ago. Even the headline on The Lancet article — Science, not speculation, is essential to determine how SARS-CoV-2 reached humans — seems designed to gaslight their critics, given their previous stance.

This latest statement is more nuanced but again disingenuous. It claims “the strongest clue” is that the virus evolved in nature, while saying suggestions of a lab leak “remain without scientifically validated evidence”. Yet there is zero firm evidence for natural spillover, and significant circumstantial evidence to raise suspicions of a lab incident. Besides, any leak could have involved a virus sampled from nature. Other scientists, such as Alina Chan from the Broad Institute, have pointed out also that none of the linked articles claiming to support their claims actually provides any evidence of how SARS-CoV-2 might have naturally emerged in Wuhan.

Laughably, the article excuses Daszak’s incredible role in the World Health Organisation mission to probe the origins by saying this was done “as an independent expert in a private capacity” — as though he would have disregarded his personal, professional and financial ties to Wuhan scientists carrying out risky experiments in labs with known safety concerns. The statement even dares argue it is “time to turn down the heat of the rhetoric and turn up the light of scientific inquiry” when no one has been more forceful in pushing the idea that a possible lab leak was “baloney” and a “conspiracy theory” than Daszak.

Once again, regrettably, The Lancet has failed to detail all the conflicts of interest of these signatories such as a trio with recent or current Eco-Health affiliations. It is a shame also to see Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, and two of his colleagues tarnishing one of science’s finest brands by adding their names again. Yet the most significant aspect of this latest stunt are that three of the more distinguished signatories of the first statement opted not to sign the follow-up. The reason is simple: they symbolise how this debate has shifted in recent months despite the best efforts of Daszak and his allies.

Read more …

Daszak’s lame retort.

Science, Not Speculation, Essential To Find How SARS-CoV-2 Reached Us (Lancet)

On Feb 19, 2020, we, a group of physicians, veterinarians, epidemiologists, virologists, biologists, ecologists, and public health experts from around the world, joined together to express solidarity with our professional colleagues in China.1 Unsubstantiated allegations were being raised about the source of the COVID-19 outbreak and the integrity of our peers who were diligently working to learn more about the newly recognised virus, SARS-CoV-2, while struggling to care for the many patients admitted to hospital with severe illness in Wuhan and elsewhere in China. It was the beginning of a global tragedy, the COVID-19 pandemic. According to WHO, as of July 2, 2021, the pandemic has resulted in 182 101 209 confirmed cases and 3 950 876 deaths, both undoubtedly underestimates of the real toll.

The impact of the pandemic virtually everywhere in the world has been far worse than even these numbers suggest, with unprecedented additional social, cultural, political, and economic consequences that have exposed numerous flaws in our epidemic and pandemic preparedness and in local and global political and economic systems. We have observed escalations of conflicts that pit many parties against one another, including central government versus local government, young versus old, rich versus poor, people of colour versus white people, and health priorities versus the economy. The crisis has highlighted the urgent need to build a better understanding of how science proceeds and the complex, but critical, links science has with health, public health, and politics.

Recently, many of us have individually received inquiries asking whether we still support what we said in early 2020.1 The answer is clear: we reaffirm our expression of solidarity with those in China who confronted the outbreak then, and the many health professionals around the world who have since worked to exhaustion, and at personal risk, in the relentless and continuing battle against this virus. Our respect and gratitude have only grown with time. The second intent of our original Correspondence was to express our working view that SARS-CoV-2 most likely originated in nature and not in a laboratory, on the basis of early genetic analysis of the new virus and well established evidence from previous emerging infectious diseases, including the coronaviruses that cause the common cold as well as the original SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV.

Read more …

No need to fall in love outright, Pepe.

The Chinese Miracle, Revisited (Escobar)

At the start of 2021, before the onset of the Year of the Metal Ox, President Xi Jinping emphasized that “favorable social conditions” should be in place for the CCP centennial celebrations. Oblivious to waves of demonization coming from the West, for Chinese public opinion what matters is whether the CCP delivered. And deliver it did (over 85% popular approval). China controlled Covid-19 in record time; economic growth is back; poverty alleviation was achieved; and the civilization-state became a “moderately prosperous society” – right on schedule for the CCP centennial. Since 1949, the size of the Chinese economy soared by a whopping 189 times. Over the past two decades, China’s GDP grew 11-fold. Since 2010, it more than doubled, from $6 trillion to $15 trillion, and now accounts for 17% of global economic output.

No wonder Western grumbling is irrelevant. Shanghai Capital investment boss Eric Li succinctly describes the governance gap; in the U.S., government changes but not policy. In China, government doesn’t change; policy does. This is the background for the next development stage – where the CCP will in fact double down on its unique hybrid model of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. The key point is that the Chinese leadership, via non-stop policy adjustments (trial and error, always) has evolved a model of “peaceful rise” – their own terminology – that essentially respects China’s immense historical and cultural experiences. In this case, Chinese exceptionalism means respecting Confucianism – which privileges harmony and abhors conflict – as well as Daoism – which privileges balance – over the boisterous, warring, hegemonic Western model.

This is reflected in major policy adjustments such as the new “dual circulation” drive, which places greater emphasis on the domestic market compared to China as the “factory of the world”. Past and future are totally intertwined in China; what was done in previous dynasties echoes in the future. The best contemporary example is the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – the overarching Chinese foreign policy concept for the foreseeable future. As detailed by Renmin University Professor Wang Yiwei, BRI is about to reshape geopolitics, “bringing Eurasia back to its historical place at the center of human civilization.” Wang has shown how “the two great civilizations of the East and the West were linked until the rise of the Ottoman Empire cut off the Ancient Silk Road”.

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“.. probably couldn’t find his way home after dark.”

Majority Do Not Believe Biden Mentally Capable Of Executing Presidential Duties

A survey conducted by the Convention of States Action in partnership with The Trafalgar Group has found that an overall majority of Americans do not believe that Joe Biden is executing the duties of his office or running policy, and that “others” are doing it in his place. The poll found that 56.5% of American voters do not believe Biden is fully executing the duties of his office, with only 36.4% saying they believe he is directing all policy and agenda. Even close to one third of Democrats (31.7%) said they don’t think Biden is in charge of anything. A whopping 83.6% of Republicans are adamant that Biden isn’t running the show, with 58.4% of Independent voters in agreement.

Mark Meckler, President of Convention of States Action proclaimed that “The American people deserve transparency from the Biden Administration as to the true state of the President’s mental and physical health, and leaders in both parties in Congress need to follow through on this immediately.” “The continued failure to ask hard questions and demand real answers is a disgrace to the foundation of our democracy,” Meckler added. Questions over Biden’s mental health continue to swirl as it is clear he cannot speak for extended periods of time and is often heard asking aides “what am I doing?”

A separate poll by Rasmussen earlier in the year found that 50 percent of Americans are “not confident” Biden is physically and mentally up to the job of being president of the United States. The clear cognitive decline of Biden has caught the attention of foreign media, with Sky News in Australia pointing out earlier this week that Biden “probably couldn’t find his way home after dark.” “Suddenly, the world’s greatest power is in the hands of a slightly dazed bloke who looks like he’s always waking up from heavy anesthesia,” said host Alan Jones.

Alan Jones

Read more …

Pensions and 401(k)’s are the only legit claims on actual money left. Make that “were”.

Workers Are Funding The War On Themselves (DP)

As the private equity industry launches ads to protect its lucrative tax preferences, we should remember that this industry is the unseen man behind the curtain driving many social ills — from high hospital prices to surprise medical bills to nursing home deaths to media layoffs to a housing crisis that has become a human rights emergency. A Businessweek cover put it best: You live in private equity’s world, even if you don’t know it. But a series of new reports remind us that there is another person behind the monocled, mustache-twirling oligarch running the Emerald City’s secret control panel — and that person isn’t a billionaire. It is the faceless pension official in a state capital or city hall who is using workers’ retirement savings to finance the Wall Street takeover of Oz.

In the process, teachers, firefighters, sanitation workers, and other government employees are being fleeced. Their retirement savings are being skimmed by finance industry executives, who are using the cash to lobby for self-enriching tax breaks while waging a class war on everyone else. All that money could end up bankrolling a new round of housing profiteering and infrastructure privatization, using workers’ money to wage a war on workers themselves. [..] In the popular imagination, a pension is known, if at all, as a shitty European hotel, a pool of extra cash that Gordon Gekko tried to pilfer in the Bluestar Airlines deal, or a small bit of subsistence pay that grandpa used to get back in the day, when times were different. But here’s the thing you need to know: Public pensions are a huge business and quite exciting to the world’s richest people in the here and now.

That’s because while fewer and fewer workers today get pension benefits, there is now $5 trillion in public pension systems that have accrued government workers’ retirement savings over decades. That giant pool of capital, overseen by appointees tied to Wall Street-bankrolled politicians, is the fuel behind the finance industry’s conquest of America. Pension money is deferred compensation: Millions of public-sector workers — who are often paid less than their private-sector counterparts — have accepted lower up-front wages in exchange for pension contributions to fund their future retirement benefits. Two decades after pension officials began funneling more of that money into private equity, hedge funds, and real estate, roughly one fifth, or about $1 trillion, of the cash is now in these opaque “alternative” investments.

These investments generate outsized fees for financial firms, bankroll the Wall Street’s political machine, and capitalize the corporations that are pillaging the middle class.

Read more …

But not hard or fast enough.

Pressure Builds For Julian Assange To Be Released (ES)

Pleas for Julian Assange to be freed from prison are being stepped up amid warnings that the WikiLeaks founder is suffering “severe psychological abuse”. The United States administration is appealing against a UK court decision in January not to extradite him, but no date has been set for the hearing, so Mr Assange remains in Belmarsh prison. His legal team said on Wednesday that permission to appeal has been granted by the High Court on a limited basis, allowing only “narrow, technical grounds”. Mr Assange’s fiancee, Stella Moris, said: “Six months ago, Judge Vanessa Baraitser blocked the extradition of my partner, Julian Assange, because consigning him to the US prison system would have amounted to signing his death warrant. That should have been the end of it.

“The case is rotten to the core, and nothing that the US government can say about his future treatment is worth the paper it is written on. This is a country whose agents plotted to kill Julian on British soil, who harried his solicitors and stole legal documents; who even targeted our six-month-old baby. “I am appealing directly to the Biden government to do the right thing, even at this late stage. This case should not be dragged out for a moment longer. End this prosecution, protect free speech and let Julian come home to his family. “The current administration admits that the Trump Department of Justice lacked independence. It seems inconceivable that President Biden would want to continue with this case – because Julian’s freedom is coupled to all our freedoms, and no democratic society can ever make journalism a crime.

“If the Biden Administration does not end this now, the case will limp through the courts while Julian remains in prison indefinitely, unconvicted, suffering and isolated, while our young children are denied their father.” Speaking to journalists outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday, having visited Mr Assange in Belmarsh earlier in the day, Ms Moris said: “The High Court delivered its decision that it will allow limited permission for the US Government to appeal January’s decision to block Julian’s extradition. “That means he is still at risk of extradition where he faces a 175-year prison sentence and, according to (Judge Baraitser), is certain to lose his life if he is extradited. “The US Government should have accepted the Magistrates’ Court’s decision – instead, it keeps this case going.

“The case is itself falling apart. The lead witness of the US Department of Justice now admits that he lied in exchange for immunity from US prosecutors. The lawyers of Julian were spied on, their offices were broken in to. Even our six-month-old baby was targeted while he was in the embassy. “And now the High Court has limited the grounds on which they are to appeal, so the case is falling apart.”

Read more …

 

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The milky way perfectly aligned with the temple of Karnak in Egypt

 

 

Tucker NSA

 

 

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Jul 042021
 


Edward John Poynter Erato, Muse of Poetry 1870

 

 

 

Why the Delta scare? As a virus mutates, it becomes more contagious and less lethal. And then eventually it mostly disappears. Many voices claim that Delta will be with us for a very long time, but we should be so lucky. It’s way more likely that it will soon be followed by a next variant that will in turn become dominant. And more contagious and less lethal.

And no, that’s not because of unvaccinated people, or at least there’s no logic in that. If most people are not vaccinated, the virus has no reason to mutate. If many people are, it does. So this CNN piece is suspect. Vaccinated people are potential variant factories, just as much, if and when the vaccines used don’t stop them from being infectious, as the present vaccines don’t, far as we know.

Unvaccinated People Are “Variant Factories,” Infectious Diseases Expert

Unvaccinated people do more than merely risk their own health. They’re also a risk to everyone if they become infected with coronavirus, infectious disease specialists say. That’s because the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person. “Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN Friday. “The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply,” Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said. “When it does, it mutates, and it could throw off a variant mutation that is even more serious down the road.”

“Even more serious”? Well, yes, it can become more contagious, but then it loses lethality. Maybe that’s what we want. Maybe we want a virus that everyone can be infected by, and build resistance to, without serious consequences. Maybe that’s even what we should aim for. And also, maybe that’s what we already have, with survival rates of 99.99% among most people.

And maybe, just maybe, a one-dimensional “solution” in the shape of an experimental vaccine is the worst response of all. Because it doesn’t protect from anything other than more severe disease, while unleashing potential adverse effects for decades to come in the inoculated. Maybe one dimension simply doesn’t cut it. Maybe we should not refuse to prevent people from becoming infected, or to treat them in the early stages of the disease.

Maybe the traumatic effects of lockdowns and facemasks should be part of “benefits and risks” models. And maybe we should start trying vitamin D, ivermectin and HCQ on a very large scale. No research, you say? There’s more research for those approaches than for the vaccines. But it’s largely been halted in the west to maintain the viability of the one-dimension “solution”; the medical Siamese twin of the Trusted News Initiative, one might say. Of which The Atlantic is also a valued member, look at this gem:

 

The 3 Simple Rules That Underscore the Danger of Delta

2. The variants are pummeling unvaccinated people.

Vaccinated people are safer than ever despite the variants. But unvaccinated people are in more danger than ever because of the variants. Even though they’ll gain some protection from the immunity of others, they also tend to cluster socially and geographically, seeding outbreaks even within highly vaccinated communities.

The U.K., where half the population is fully vaccinated, “can be a cautionary tale,” Hanage told me. Since Delta’s ascendancy, the country’s cases have increased sixfold. Long-COVID cases will likely follow. Hospitalizations have almost doubled. That’s not a sign that the vaccines are failing. It is a sign that even highly vaccinated countries host plenty of vulnerable people.

[..] And new variants are still emerging. Lambda, the latest to be recognized by the WHO, is dominant in Peru and spreading rapidly in South America. Many nations that excelled at protecting their citizens are now facing a triple threat: They controlled COVID-19 so well that they have little natural immunity; they don’t have access to vaccines; and they’re besieged by Delta.

First, the vaccines don’t confer immunity on the jabbed, there is no evidence of that. Second, a large majority of healthy people have an immune system strong enough to fight off the infection, even without ever being infected. So to suggest that unvaccinated people might “gain some protection from the immunity of” the vaccinated is simply nonsense.

As for “Delta’s ascendancy”, yes, cases are rising in the UK and Israel, two highly vaccinated countries. Not that anyone would acknowledge a possible connection there: it’s all despite the vaccines, not because of them. But as the graph below shows, while cases there are up a lot, hospitalization and deaths are not over the past month. They barely register.

On January 20, the UK had 1,823 deaths. Today, they had 15.

 

 

I even enlarged the hospitalizations a bit, or you wouldn’t see anything.

 

“Hospitalizations have almost doubled”, says The Atlantic. Yeah, but they’re still very low, as are deaths. And perhaps that’s not all that surprising, because the Delta variant doesn’t appear to be the big killer that everyone wants to close their borders and restaurants for again. There’s no conclusive evidence, it’s too early, but this is what we know today.

 

Rand Paul Cites 0.08% Delta Variant Death Rate Among Unvaccinated

Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul is telling Twitter followers to not let the ‘fearmongers’ win, amid growing concerns about the newest delta variant of the coronavirus. Paul, who is a doctor with a degree in medicine from Duke University, cited a study of the strain that shows only a 0.08% death rate among unvaccinated people. “Don’t let the fearmongers win. New public England study of delta variant shows 44 deaths out of 53,822 (.08%) in unvaccinated group. Hmmm,” he tweeted Tuesday to his 3.2 million followers. The variant, which has caused virus outbreaks in Australia and other countries, has resulted in officials reimposing recently lifted health-safety orders including mask-wearing.

In another graph, the Delta variant Case Fatality Rate in the UK even appears 8 times higher among the fully vaccinated than the unvaccinated. Maybe the press should pay a little more attention to that, instead of the Great Big Delta Scare. All they do today is sell fear and vaccines, but that will backfire, promise.

 

 

And what goes for the press is also valid for politicians and their “experts”: there will come a day that people realize you could have focused on prophylactics and early treatment, but chose not to. And that this cost a lot of lives and other misery. What are you going to do then? Apologize?

 

 

Let’s not miss this from the past week: strong immune systems kill the virus before antibodies are formed. Which means an antibody test won’t show anything, but a PCR test will come back positive because there are dead virus bits. And everyone will cry: vaccinate! vaccinate!

Maybe it’s finally time for some real science, instead of clickbait and fear and gene therapy.

Pre-existing polymerase-specific T cells expand in abortive seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection

Individuals with likely exposure to the highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 do not necessarily develop PCR or antibody positivity, suggesting some may clear sub-clinical infection before seroconversion. T cells can contribute to the rapid clearance of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronavirus infections1–5 . We hypothesised that pre-existing memory T cell responses, with cross-protective potential against SARS-CoV-26–12, would expand in vivo to mediate rapid viral control, potentially aborting infection.

We studied T cells against the replication transcription complex (RTC) of SARS-CoV-2 since this is transcribed first in the viral life cycle13–15 and should be highly conserved. We measured SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells in a cohort of intensively monitored healthcare workers (HCW) who remained repeatedly negative by PCR, antibody binding, and neutralisation for SARS-CoV-2 (exposed seronegative, ES).

16-weeks postrecruitment, ES had memory T cells that were stronger and more multispecific than an unexposed pre-pandemic cohort, and more frequently directed against the RTC than the structural protein-dominated responses seen post-detectable infection (matched concurrent cohort). The postulate that HCW with the strongest RTC-specific T cells had an abortive infection was supported by a low-level increase in IFI27 transcript, a robust early innate signature of SARS-CoV-2 infection16.

We showed that the RNA-polymerase within RTC was the largest region of high sequence conservation across human seasonal coronaviruses (HCoV) and was preferentially targeted by T cells from UK and Singapore pre-pandemic cohorts and from ES. RTC epitope-specific T cells capable of cross-recognising HCoV variants were identified in ES. Longitudinal samples from ES and an additional validation cohort, showed pre-existing RNA-polymerase-specific T cells expanded in vivo following SARS-CoV-2 exposure, becoming enriched in the memory response of those with abortive compared to overt infection. In summary, we provide evidence of abortive seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection with expansion of cross-reactive RTC-specific T cells, highlighting these highly conserved proteins as targets for future vaccines against endemic and emerging Coronaviridae.

 

 

 

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Oct 062020
 


Jacob Lawrence Struggle: From the History of the American People, Panel 8 1954

 

 

From the Automatic Earth’s most vocal resident physician, Dr. John Day, in Texas. Who thinks Trump’s meeting with COVID should start a change in America (back) towards preventive healthcare. Why is Trump doing so well so fast? Because his treatment started much earlier.

 

 

John Day: The Trumpster was never taken out of action by the virus that has been ravaging Big-Mac consumers his age all year. Uh, how come?

 

After Returning To White House, Trump Implores Americans Not To Let COVID-19 “Dominate Your Life”

Update (1515ET): Dr. Conley has confirmed that although President Trump isn’t out of the woods yet, he has recovered enough to warrant his safe return back to the West Wing, as the president announced via tweet.

Doctors said that Trump has maintained a full work schedule at Walter Reed. He will receive his fourth dose of remdesivir Monday evening, before taking the fifth and final dose on Tuesday. When pressed by a reporter about the safety risks to the Secret Service agents during Trump’s ride outside Walter Reed Sunday evening, Dr. Conley said that the agents wore PPE, as they have in recent days, and that the trip took place over a “very short period of time”.

Circling back to Trump’s mental acuity, reporters asked whether there had been any fogginess as a result of the medication, or the virus, Dr. Conley assured reporters that “he’s back” and that Trump has been a “great” patient.

Looking ahead, Dr. Conley said advanced diagnostic techniques will be used to detect when the last traces of ‘live’ virus have left the president. Dr. Conley said that people are most at risk of shedding the live virus during the first 5 days of infection, but usually by ten days the last traces have left.

 

Trump got treated with antiviral medicines shortly after he was diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, based upon a screening test. A super-spreader cluster was identified at the White House, with 29 people now positive, from that event. The unmasking in the Rose Garden for Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination is blamed, but the people who got sick were all inside without masks for the reception afterward.

I think that’s where the viral cloud got ’em.

 

 

We have all been told that the only advantage to early and frequent testing is early isolation to reduce spread. All the drugs the Chinese used, and the rest of the world uses, have not been shown to save lives in America, where nobody is allowed to have them until they are almost dying. These antiviral drugs only worked in cell cultures, China which is to blame, and fakes results, and poor countries like India.

Just stay at home until you need a ventilator. Do NOT use drugs from India and Bangladesh! Are you CRAZY?! Trump announced in May that he was taking hydroxychloroquine/zinc prophylaxis, but no mention is made of it now. None. Was it stopped sometime in the summer? Anyway, nobody says he was taking it last week and he’s not taking it now. Hydroxychloroquine/Zn does seem to work as prophylaxis in studies.

There is a progression in the attack of SARS-CoV-2 upon the human body. It’s moderately well understood now, but understandings are broadly misrepresented to the public by the national medical bureaucracy. Many treating physicians have been mocked and belittled in the press for saying that there are treatments to reduce morbidity and mortality from COVID.

Rheumatic fever, from untreated Strep Throat used to be a major cause of death and morbidity in the US. That stopped when strep throat started to be treated promptly with penicillin. Now it’s unheard of. In HIV, we discovered that all the “AIDS-defining-illnesses” like pneumocystis pneumonia, and Kaposis’s Sarcoma would just never happen if viral infection was detected early and antivirals were started before the virus had caused widespread injury. Even Tony Fauci knows that.

 

Now, with the way Donald Trump is being treated, with antivirals reserved for the hopelessly ill, and getting a rapid recovery from early symptoms, when we know he’s exactly the target this virus likes to find, maybe we can get a national reprieve and Make-America-Average-Intelligent-Again.

What if everybody took a little saliva test every Monday and Thursday? What if people at higher risk or even higher anxiety level, got treated as soon as the test was confirmed, like President Trump did, and some of the other party-goers probably are? Hey, what if all the people who tested positive before elective surgery got treated that way for starters? I bet we could set up a study proposal to do that in about 3 months, and have it reviewed for possible approval by next spring!

To have convincing scientific evidence you have to go through the process. It takes a lot of time. Just treating people, like in the old days, can’t give you convincing evidence that it is better to take ordinary drugs for a life threatening infection, before your life is already threatened. Some people might want to do that if they test positive, of course, but it’s not to be condoned, is it?

 

What if it was somebody in your family? You know how stressful that can be, right? What if great-aunt, or grandma isolated at home and took some safe, purportedly antiviral combination like ivermectin, zinc and doxycycline, or hydroxychloroquine and zinc if her EKG was ok? Would you go for that? Would it seem OK to you? If auntie-grandma just got a positive screening test after 3 visits to the ER , and couldn’t get the surgery she needed, would you think she should take some treatment, even before she got sick with fever, diarrhea, hurting all over, and gasping for air?

How would you know the medicine really worked if she never got sick enough to be sure? Can’t have that, can you?

Our family is treating Auntie-Grandma. Judge us if you must, but we are weak and subject to temptation. We fear the guilt which would come from inaction if she did get badly sick and suffered, and maybe died. She has started ivermectin, doxycycline, and will get the zinc in a couple of hours when the family-courier gets it to her. We’ll letcha know how it works out. Maybe she can get her surgery without too long of a wait.

We may be on the cusp of paradigm shift. I sure hope we are. Take 5000 units per day of vitamin-D. “Auntie Grandma” is taking 5000 units 3 times a day with her zinc, vitamin-C and NAC 600 mg for the next 10 days.

 

 

 

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