Apr 092021
 
 April 9, 2021  Posted by at 8:52 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


James McNeill Whistler Nocturne Blue and Gold Southampton Water 1872

 

European Rights Court Backs Mandatory Pre-school Jabs (BBC)
Obligatory Jabs ‘Necessary In Democratic Society’ (RTL)
B.1.1.7. Now Dominant Strain In US (JTN)
Global Spread And Infection Fatality Rates Of Covid-19 (Ioannidis)
Men Make More Covid-19 Antibodies And Keep Them For Longer (RT)
War on Cash: The Next Phase (Jim Rickards)
No Way US Could Enforce Global Minimum Corporate Tax on Rest of the World (Sp.)
Ukraine’s NATO Fantasy Is A Suicide Pill In Disguise (RT)
A Full-Scale War In Donbass Will Mean The ‘End Of Ukraine’ (RT)
Russia’s Hermitage Receives Official Complaint Over Naked Sculptures (RT)
Fermilab Results Prove Something Strange Is Happening to Reality (IE)
Bitcoiners Should Stand Up For My Brother, Julian Assange (Gabriel Shipton)

 

 

It appears that the vaccinated are at high risk of dying.

 

 

 

 

 

This is not about COVID vaccines. But the timing is very curious, because of course the court knows it will be presented as being about them.

While the “vaccines” are elementary different. Those for measles etc. have been properly tested and approved, those for Covid have definitely not.

European Rights Court Backs Mandatory Pre-school Jabs (BBC)

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has backed the Czech Republic in its requirement for mandatory pre-school vaccinations. The case was brought by families who were fined or whose children were refused entry to pre-schools because they had not been vaccinated. In a landmark ruling, the court found that while the Czech policy interfered with the right to a private life, there was a need to protect public health. All the cases pre-date the pandemic. However, the issue of routine childhood vaccinations has come under increasing scrutiny due to the spread of Covid-19. This is the first ruling from the ECHR on compulsory vaccination against childhood diseases. The judges backed the Czech legislation by 16 to 1.

“The… measures could be regarded as being ‘necessary in a democratic society'” the court said, adding: “The objective has to be that every child is protected against serious diseases, through vaccination or by virtue of herd immunity.” Under the Czech rules, parents are legally obliged to vaccinate their children against a number of childhood diseases unless this is not possible for health reasons. However, the jabs cannot be forcibly given and unvaccinated children cannot be excluded on this basis once they reach primary school age. In one of the five cases involving pre-school exclusions, a family refused to allow their daughter to received the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jab.

The child joined the school in 2006 but her place was withdrawn two years later when the family doctor informed the headteacher that the child had not received the vaccination. A Czech court later backed the school’s decision on the grounds that allowing the child to continue to go to the pre-school could endanger others.Other parents had been refused pre-school places, while one father was fined for failing to fully vaccinate his children.

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A bit more on that court decision. And remember from The One Year Emergency, Feb 4::

1. Vaccination, like any medical action, requires citizen consent. Consent is not regarded as valid if it is not fully informed, nor “if it is the result of deceit, fraud or threat, or conflicts with the demands of decency” (Medical Code of Ethics, Greek law 3418/2005). Failing this, the consent is waived and the person/body who has exerted the pressure or extortion to vaccinate is subject to penal sanctions and/or civil damages in the event of harm.

2. Vaccination is not a prerequisite for the exercise of any other institutional requirement, such as education or otherwise recognized basic right such as the right to employment and free movement. Correspondingly, no private company has the legal authority to impose restrictions violating citizens’ constitutional rights. Discrimination and Stigmatization are forbidden (Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, UNESCO). Moreover, imposition of a medical action in any manner constitutes torture and is illegal.

Obligatory Jabs ‘Necessary In Democratic Society’ (RTL)

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday ruled that obligatory vaccinations can be seen as necessary in democratic societies, in a landmark judgement after a complaint brought by Czech families over compulsory jabs for children. “The… measures could be regarded as being ‘necessary in a democratic society'” the court said in its judgement, saying that the Czech health policy was consistent with the “best interests” of children. “The objective has to be that every child is protected against serious diseases, through vaccination or by virtue of herd immunity,” it added. As a result, the court ruled there had been no violation of Article 8 on the right to respect for private life of the European Convention on Human Rights. This is the first time that the ECHR has delivered a judgement about compulsory vaccination against childhood diseases.


Experts say it could have implications for any policy of compulsory vaccinations against Covid-19 in the pandemic. This judgement “reinforces the possibility of a compulsory vaccination under conditions of the current Covid-19 epidemic,” Nicolas Hervieu, a legal expert specialising in the ECHR, told AFP. In the Czech Republic, there is a general legal duty to vaccinate children against nine diseases, including diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and measles. The case had been filed to the ECHR by Czech parents who were fined for failure to comply with this vaccination duty or whose children were denied admission to nursery school for the same reason. The need for a large level of herd immunity to quell the Covid-19 pandemic has prompted debate about the need for possible compulsory vaccinations in the face of scepticism among some populations worldwide about immunisation.

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“..60 times more contagious than the current strain and 67 percent more deadly..”

And these are merely the first variants.

B.1.1.7. Now Dominant Strain In US (JTN)

A highly infectious variant of COVID-19 is now the dominant strain of the virus in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The variant, B.1.1.7, began surging in the United Kingdom in December has since spread through Europe and to the United States, the federal agency said Wednesday. “Based on our most recent estimates from CDC surveillance, the B.1.1.7 variant is now the most common lineage circulating in the United States,” agency Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at the White House briefing.


Studies found the virus is 60 times more contagious than the current strain and 67 percent more deadly, according to the New York Times. In March, experts warned the variant would be the dominant strain by the end of the month. Now early into April, the CDC confirmed the hypothesis, according to CNN. Medical company Helix found that 58.9 percent of all new tests of COVID-19 were the new B.1.1.7 strain. Trends from Felix show that California and Florida have the two highest rates in the U.S. with 533 and 445 cases, respectively.

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“..average global IFR of ~0.15% and ~1.5-2.0 billion infections by February 2021..”

Global Spread And Infection Fatality Rates Of Covid-19 (Ioannidis)

Background – Estimates of community spread and infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID 19 have varied across studies. Efforts to synthesize the evidence reach seemingly discrepant conclusions.

Methods – Systematic evaluations of seroprevalence studies that had no restrictions based on country and which estimated either total number of people infected and/or aggregate IFRs were identified. Information was extracted and compared on eligibility criteria, searches, amount of evidence included, corrections/adjustments of seroprevalence and death counts, quantitative syntheses and handling of heterogeneity, main estimates, and global representativeness.

Results – Six systematic evaluations were eligible. Each combined data from 10-338 studies (9-50 countries), because of different eligibility criteria. Two evaluations had some overt flaws in data, violations of stated eligibility criteria, and biased eligibility criteria (e.g. excluding studies with few deaths) that consistently inflated IFR estimates. Perusal of quantitative synthesis methods also exhibited several challenges and biases. Global representativeness was low with 78-100% of the evidence coming from Europe or the Americas; the two most problematic evaluations considered only 1 study from other continents. Allowing for these caveats, 4 evaluations largely agreed in their main final estimates for global spread of the pandemic and the other two evaluations would also agree after correcting overt flaws and biases.

Conclusions – All systematic evaluations of seroprevalence data converge that SARS CoV 2 infection is widely spread globally. Acknowledging residual uncertainties, the available evidence suggests average global IFR of ~0.15% and ~1.5-2.0 billion infections by February 2021 with substantial differences in IFR and in infection spread across continents, countries, and locations.

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“..coronavirus antibody levels were three times higher in men than women, despite no difference in symptoms reported, implying no difference in severity of past infection.”

Men Make More Covid-19 Antibodies And Keep Them For Longer (RT)

A Welsh study has found that men can create up to three times the number of coronavirus antibodies as women and tend to retain them for a longer period of time, complicating possible future Covid-19 immunity considerably. Researchers tested 739 asymptomatic staff at Cardiff Metropolitan University in July 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic and again three months later. Antibody production forms the foundation of immunity, and yet it remains unclear what quantity of coronavirus antibodies are produced across the population, how long they last and whether they provide adequate protection against reinfection, frustrating public policy initiatives and medical research alike.

Some 3.65% of the participants were found to have Covid-19 antibodies, slightly below the national average of between 4% and 6% at that time, and all participants reported feeling well and hadn’t been diagnosed with Covid-19. Participants reported only sporadic instances of some of the milder symptoms at various points in the previous three months. The researchers found no statistically significant difference between male or female participants who had antibodies at the initial point in the study, though men over the age of 40 did tend to have higher antibody prevalence than any other demographic. Among those who tested positive for Covid-19, however, coronavirus antibody levels were three times higher in men than women, despite no difference in symptoms reported, implying no difference in severity of past infection.

In the follow-up study three months later, among those previously found to have coronavirus antibodies, 21.7% no longer tested positive, suggesting that coronavirus antibodies are lost after six months. Some 80% of those who lost their antibodies entirely were women and tended to be, on average, ten years older than the women who managed to retain their antibody protection, suggesting some altered immune response related to the menopause.

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“..governments enjoy a monopoly on money creation, and they’re not about to surrender that monopoly to digital currencies like Bitcoin.”

War on Cash: The Next Phase (Jim Rickards)

With so much news about an economic reopening, a border crisis, massive government spending and exploding deficits, it’s easy to overlook the ongoing war on cash. That’s a mistake because it has serious implications not only for your money, but for your privacy and personal freedom, as you’ll see today. Cash prevents central banks from imposing negative interest rates because if they did, people would withdraw their cash from the banking system. If they stuff their cash in a mattress, they don’t earn anything on it; that’s true. But at least they’re not losing anything on it. Once all money is digital, you won’t have the option of withdrawing your cash and avoiding negative rates. You will be trapped in a digital pen with no way out. What about moving your money into cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin?

Let’s first understand that governments enjoy a monopoly on money creation, and they’re not about to surrender that monopoly to digital currencies like Bitcoin. Libertarian supporters of cryptos celebrate their decentralized nature and lack of government control. Yet, their belief in the sustainability of powerful systems outside government control is naïve. Blockchain does not exist in the ether (despite the name of one cryptocurrency), and it does not reside on Mars. Blockchain depends on critical infrastructure, including servers, telecommunications networks, the banking system, and the power grid, all of which are subject to government control. But governments know they cannot stop the technology platforms on which cryptocurrencies are based. The technology has come too far to turn back now.

So central governments don’t want to kill the distributed ledger technology behind cryptos. They’ve been patiently watching the technology develop and grow — so they could ultimately control it. Anyone who controls the money controls political power, the economy, and people’s lives. Enter the central bank digital currency, known as CBDC…

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Steve Keen.

No Way US Could Enforce Global Minimum Corporate Tax on Rest of the World (Sp.)

Although Janet Yellen’s plan to impose a global minimum corporate tax rate sounds like a good idea, it’s unlikely that she’ll succeed in getting a uniform law across the planet, says Steve Keen, honorary professor of economics at University College of London. On 5 April, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen advocated a global minimum corporate tax rate in order to stop multinational corporations from seeking tax havens as President Joe Biden plans to impose a 21 percent minimum tax on US companies’ foreign income, and raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent to fund his bold infrastructure and climate plan. The treasury secretary revealed that US administration officials are working with G20 nations to agree to a global minimum corporate tax plan. Yellen’s remarks come ahead of the semiannual meetings of the IMF and World Bank set for this week.

“There’s good reason to impose uniform taxes around the world to stop companies doing tax evasion, which throws the burden of taxation on the working class and the middle class. So that’s in its own right. That is to be applauded,” says Steve Keen, honorary professor of economics at University College of London and author of “Debunking Economics.” If implemented, the plan could help address the system in which the wealthy “basically evade tax and leave it to the lower classes to pay for the state,” he suggests. “So something like this, which stopped corporations also using tax advantages to go offshore, maybe bring some corporations back onshore because it makes more sense to be as close as you can to a larger market that might well help boost America’s competitiveness with the rest of the world,” Keen presumes.

Obviously, the global minimum tax idea will be opposed by multinational corporations, according to the professor: “They’ll be outraged to begin with,” he says. “But they’ve always been champions of creative accounting.” [..] Axios suggests that Yellen’s push for imposing a global minimum tax means that the administration sees “the risks to the American economy if it acts alone in raising corporate rates.” “Competitiveness is about more than how US-headquartered companies fare against other companies in global merger-and-acquisition bids,” she argues. “It’s about making sure that governments have stable tax systems that raise sufficient revenue to invest in essential public goods and respond to crises.”

Still, Keen remains skeptical over the US administration’s ability to convince global governments to adjust their working tax systems to the US needs. “I don’t think it’s likely to happen at the global level there,” he says. “Americans often think that imposing their rules on the rest of the world is the best thing that can happen to the rest of the world. Most of the time, the rest of the world disagrees. So I think she can try as much as she likes, but there’s no way to enforce something like this.” The best Yellen can hope for is getting countries to reduce the number of tax havens or to penalise corporations that use them, the professor believes.

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Ukraine and NATO deploy troops and material to Donbass, in response Russia send their own to the border. Then Merkel calls Putin to demand he withdraws them.

Ukraine’s NATO Fantasy Is A Suicide Pill In Disguise (RT)

Ukraine’s President Zelensky hopes that NATO will assist Kiev in forcefully expelling Russia from Crimea and re-taking control of the breakaway Donbass. This dangerous fiction could lead to the destruction of his troubled country. The following are the words and actions that the historians who may one day come to write how mankind blundered its way into a major conflict in 2021 will need to know, to understand its origins and the parts played by the shortcomings and strategic missteps of ill-suited leaders. On March 24, 2021, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed into law Decree 117/2021, “On the Strategy of de-occupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.”

While the stated primary goal of this decree is the “restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized state border, ensuring the state sovereignty of Ukraine,” the reality is that the issue of restoring Ukrainian “territorial integrity” is merely a vehicle toward “gaining full membership of Ukraine in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” According to Zelensky, there is only one pathway for resolving the ongoing dispute between his nation and Russia over the status of the Crimea and the ongoing fighting in the pro-Russian eastern Ukrainian region of the Donbass. “NATO is the only way to end the war in Donbass,” Zelensky declared in a recent phone call with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

Zelensky called for the immediate implementation of a ‘Membership Action Plan’ delineating Ukraine’s entry path into the NATO alliance. Such a move, Zelensky noted, “will be a real signal for Russia.” Zelensky’s militant directive and blatant appeal for NATO membership did not go unnoticed by Russia. Nor did the deployment by the Ukrainian military of hundreds of armored vehicles and thousands of troops into the region, a fact that has been “under-reported” in the west. [..] The tension between Russia and Ukraine has resulted in a series of conversations between Ukrainian officials and their counterparts in the West which have sought to portray the country as the victim of Russian threats of aggression, and to publicly underscore the West’s support for Ukraine.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin kicked this off, calling his Ukrainian counterpart on April 1 to express “unwavering U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty” while condemning “Russian aggression” in the country. This was followed the next day by one between Joe Biden and Zelensky, where the US president “affirmed the United States’ unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression in the Donbass and Crimea.”

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We better hope Ukraine is not made a full NATO member.

A Full-Scale War In Donbass Will Mean The ‘End Of Ukraine’ (RT)

Russia will be forced to protect the residents of Donbass if Ukraine launches full-scale hostilities against the region. That’s according to Dmitry Kozak, President Vladimir Putin’s deputy chief of staff, who is himself Ukrainian. Speaking on Thursday, Kozak claimed that a ramping-up of the conflict would lead to the end of Ukraine, with the Kremlin forced to stand up for its citizens living in the territory of Donbass. In recent years, Moscow has made it much simpler for those living in Ukraine to get a Russian passport, and many have taken up the offer. “Everything depends on what the scale of fighting will be. If there is, as the president says, a Srebrenica, we will be forced to stand up for ourselves,” he said, referring to Putin’s comment in 2019 that he fears a genocide in Donetsk and Lugansk, if Kiev regains control of Donbass.

The Srebrenica massacre, which took place in 1995, was Europe’s worst atrocity since the end of World War II, and led to the death of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims. The Donbass, made up of the Donetsk and Lugansk Oblasts, is located in the east of Ukraine, next to the border with Russia. It has been the location of a civil war since 2014, with separatists now controlling large swathes of territory. Despite Moscow not recognizing the legitimacy of the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Kiev accuses the Kremlin of supporting them. In recent days, videos shared on social media have shown a build-up of troops and military equipment on all borders of Donbass, causing an increase in fears that war may be around the corner. Both Ukraine and the self-proclaimed republics accuse each other of intensifying shelling.

“I support those assessments that exist within Ukraine that the start of hostilities is the beginning of the end for the country. This is a self-inflicted shot, a shot not in the leg, but in the temple,” Kozak said, noting that Kiev has refused to come to the table to negotiate peace. On Thursday morning, it was revealed by the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he is currently in the Donbass region, visiting troops on the front line, “where a comprehensive and sustainable ceasefire has been systematically violated.” According to Kozak, the visit by Zelensky is unlikely to lead to an escalation, but the Ukrainian leader is “playing with fire.”

On Thursday afternoon, Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Kiev had been purposely exacerbating the situation on the contact line. The Russian leader also said that Ukraine should stick to the peace agreement reached in 2015, and move towards implementing a special status for Donbass.

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Cancel culture goes global.

Russia’s Hermitage Receives Official Complaint Over Naked Sculptures (RT)

The Hermitage Museum in Russia’s Saint Petersburg has received an official complaint from a government agency suggesting that its nude sculptures may have a bad influence on children and might have to be put in an adult-only room. That’s according to Mikhail Piotrovsky, the museum’s general director, who refused to name which official body asked the institution to round up its naked figures. “I laughed once when someone told us: gather all your nude sculptures into one room and put up an ’18+’ sign so our children are not corrupted,” Piotrivsky said. “But now we have received an official complaint from an official body, so we are responding to it.”


The Hermitage, located in Saint Petersburg, is based in the Winter Palace, the former official residence of the Russian Emperors from 1762 to the revolution, in 1917. It is the second-largest art museum in the world. It has a world-class collection, including not only paintings by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt, but also a Michelangelo marble sculpture and many Egyptian antiquities. In response to new revelations, controversial United Russia MP and native Petersburger Vitaly Milonov blasted the proposal as idiotic. “This is outright stupidity, it is not even worth talking about,” Milonov said. “If we’re talking about classical works, Michelangelo and many others, they do not fall under the category of ’18+’ in any way.”

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“..the possibility of a new particle or force working behind the scenes..”

Fermilab Results Prove Something Strange Is Happening to Reality (IE)

Scientists just revealed new findings from an experiment called Muon g-2 — designed to give answers to a strange discrepancy between theoretical predictions and real-tests and theoretical expectations from 20 years ago, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab. Following decades of speculation, an experiment showing an inexplicable discrepancy from the Standard Model was raised to a confidence level of 4.2 sigma — which means it has a 1 in 40,000 chance of being a statistical quirk — lending more strength to the worry that some unexplained particle or force may be responsible for the excess wobbling of muons not predicted by theoretical particle physics.

[..] The experiment involves particles called muons — which are much like electrons but 200 times the mass. Both electrons and muons have magnetic fields capable of revealing new and fundamental information about particle physics — and thus the universe itself. For decades, scientists have worked to build a viable theory in particle physics called the Standard Model — capable of explaining several of the forces and interactions that determine the motion and behavior of matter on the tiniest scales. But sometimes, gaps appear between the experimental findings and the Standard Model.

When scientists introduce muons to an external magnetic field, the internal magnet of muons begins to “wobble,” for which the Standard Model accounts. But a 2001 experiment from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) proved that a muon’s magnet wobbles a lot more than theory predicted — which hinted at the possibility of a new particle or force working behind the scenes and creating this unforeseen property.

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Sunday it will be 2 years since Julian was dragged out of the embassy.

Bitcoiners Should Stand Up For My Brother, Julian Assange (Gabriel Shipton)

WikiLeaks and Bitcoin were both born of the cypherpunk movement. And it was in those embryonic days of the Cypherpunks Mailing List that Julian began his long intellectual interest and curiosity in Bitcoin. Julian participated in discussions and debate that cemented the cypherpunk movements values around freedom, privacy, mastery of technology and codified curiosity. Most of the suspected creators and earliest backers of Bitcoin belonged to or were inspired by this community of thinkers and tinkerers. In 2010, after publishing tranches of material on Bush- and Obama-era wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rules of engagement, Guantanamo Bay detainee files and U.S. diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks was subjected to an extra-legal international banking blockade.

Under intense political pressure, Visa and Mastercard refused to process donations and banks and PayPal closed WikiLeaks’ and Julian’s accounts. It was under these circumstances that Satoshi (whoever they may be) made a plea to WikiLeaks to hold off on accepting this nascent digital currency for donations and thereby forgoing the attention that it could draw. Satoshi feared that Bitcoin would not be able to survive if the protocol faced the same scrutiny and political pressure that WikiLeaks was dealing with. Julian and WikiLeaks heeded Satoshi’s calls. After giving bitcoin six months to strengthen, in June 2011 WikiLeaks became the first large organization to adopt Bitcoin. That alignment saw bitcoin realize part of its founding principal as a financial tool, free from centralized political and institutional control.

Over the last 10 years, WikiLeaks has used its bitcoin donations to fend off attacks and blockades, both illegal and legal, by governments and corporations, to overcome the extra-legal banking blockade and be able to keep its archive online, continue to publish and remain censorship resistant. [..] Bitcoin and WikiLeaks are inherently anti-establishment. Both projects ask us to temper our faith in people and institutions and rely instead on publicly-verifiable information, on the basis that a better-informed population creates a freer and fairer society — it has championed those who share these ideals. “The hornets,” as Satoshi referred to them, have not been able to take down Bitcoin or WikiLeaks. They have, however, used other tools at their disposal. A decade of individual reputational attacks, plots to poison Julian and target his newborn baby, abuse of process in order to restrict his movement and speech.

[..] The U.S. appeal could be heard by the U.K. high court as early as May 2021. Another rejection of the extradition in the high court will be heard loud and clear by the U.S. Department of Justice and will be a rejection of censorship, regulations and the clandestine attacks that Julian has suffered over the last 10 years. Bitcoin and WikiLeaks are the utilities of a free internet. They are necessary for it to develop and thrive in a meaningful way. Both born out of the cypherpunk movement, Bitcoin and WikiLeaks have stayed true to their visions of decentralization and transparency. The power of the cryptocurrency community has grown exponentially. With that power comes a responsibility to defend Bitcoin’s core beliefs in the face of looming institutionalization.

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Oz vax

 

 

 

 

Calvin Robinson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1379797221785341962

 

 

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