Nov 192021
 


Elio Ciol Via Portica, Assisi 1958

 

Vaccinated Up To 9x More Likely To Be Hospitalized Than Unvaccinated (Kirsch)
29,934 Deaths, 2,804,900 Injuries in EU Database of Adverse Reactions (HIN)
US Government Pays $5.29 Billion to Pfizer for Anti-Covid Pills (GR)
AstraZeneca Covid-19 Antibody Drug Offers 83% Protection Over 6 Months (R.)
Another Major Red Flag About Covid Vaccines And Death (Berenson)
93%-Vaccinated Ireland Has Gone Back Into ‘Partial Lockdown’ (ZH)
Italian Governors Call For Unvaccinated to be Put Under Lockdown (SN)
The Covid Lab Leak Theory Just Got Even Stronger (Sp.)
Mood Darkens In New Zealand As Covid Restrictions Bite (G.)
Comprehensive Review of Face Mask Studies Finds No Evidence of Benefit (DS)
Mask Wearing Cuts New Covid-19 Cases By 53% (F.)
Greek Lawyer Arrested For Spreading Covid Misinformation (K.)
Greek PM: Unvaccinated Adults To Be Barred From All Indoor Public Venues (K.)
Private Doctors In Northern Greece Ordered To Pitch In For A Month (K.)

 

 

 

 

Atlas

 

 

 

 

9x may be a bit much. But hey, there’s an easy $1 million in it if you prove him wrong, or even just debate him and his team.

Vaccinated Up To 9x More Likely To Be Hospitalized Than Unvaccinated (Kirsch)

It is hard to get good, honest data out of hospitals nowadays for some reason. I have no clue as to why that is. You’d think things would be more transparent. But Aaron Siri discovered someone who convinced their hospital to do something really unusual: track the vaccination status of each admitted patient to the hospital. Tracking was based on whether you got the vaccine or not, not “two weeks after you got the vaccine” which is a major definition difference. In short, honest tracking. You’ll never guess what happened so I’ll tell you. Siri wrote on his substack:

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. As you might expect, the hospital rewarded Deborah Conrad for her courage and leadership to expose the truth by firing her.

The message is clear: If you speak the truth, you will be pay the price. It is imperative that information that doesn’t align with the “narrative” be suppressed. This is why doctors don’t speak out. And it’s why I had to quit my job in high tech to speak out as well. But 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.”

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Works as poorly as VAERS. Do they catch even 5%?

29,934 Deaths, 2,804,900 Injuries in EU Database of Adverse Reactions (HIN)

The European Union database of suspected drug reaction reports is EudraVigilance, and they are now reporting 29,934 fatalities, and 2,804,900 injuries, following COVID-19 injections. A Health Impact News subscriber from Europe reminded us that this database maintained at EudraVigilance is only for countries in Europe who are part of the European Union (EU), which comprises 27 countries. The total number of countries in Europe is much higher, almost twice as many, numbering around 50. (There are some differences of opinion as to which countries are technically part of Europe.) So as high as these numbers are, they do NOT reflect all of Europe. The actual number in Europe who are reported dead or injured following COVID-19 shots would be much higher than what we are reporting here.

The EudraVigilance database reports that through October 19, 2021 there are 29,934 deaths and 2,804,900 injuries reported following injections of four experimental COVID-19 shots. From the total of injuries recorded, almost half of them (1,311,861) are serious injuries. “Seriousness provides information on the suspected undesirable effect; it can be classified as ‘serious’ if it corresponds to a medical occurrence that results in death, is life-threatening, requires inpatient hospitalisation, results in another medically important condition, or prolongation of existing hospitalisation, results in persistent or significant disability or incapacity, or is a congenital anomaly/birth defect.”


A Health Impact News subscriber in Europe ran the reports for each of the four COVID-19 shots we are including here. It is a lot of work to tabulate each reaction with injuries and fatalities, since there is no place on the EudraVigilance system we have found that tabulates all the results. Since we have started publishing this, others from Europe have also calculated the numbers and confirmed the totals.*These totals are estimates based on reports submitted to EudraVigilance. Totals may be much higher based on percentage of adverse reactions that are reported. Some of these reports may also be reported to the individual country’s adverse reaction databases, such as the U.S. VAERS database and the UK Yellow Card system. The fatalities are grouped by symptoms, and some fatalities may have resulted from multiple symptoms.

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“..the cost of the oral medication is lower, to the tune of $530, as opposed to the $700 that one course of the Merck pills costs.”

US Government Pays $5.29 Billion to Pfizer for Anti-Covid Pills (GR)

The pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer has signed a $5.3 billion deal with the United States government to supply its anti-Covid Paxlovid pills to the American people, according to a statement released by the company on Thursday. This is enough to supply a total of 10 million courses of its antiviral drug, as the medication is placed before the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization. The Pfizer pill is the second one to be developed to fight the coronavirus, after Merck’s Molnupiravir, which was placed before the FDA for review on October 11. Molnupiravir is already approved for emergency use in the United Kingdom. The Pfizer deal is nearly double the amount of the contract that the US inked with Merck although the cost of the oral medication is lower, to the tune of $530, as opposed to the $700 that one course of the Merck pills costs.

After recently telling the press that his corporation would file for approval “before Thanksgiving,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla put the results of laboratory tests before the FDA this week. According to the pharmaceuticals firm, Paxlovid is 89% effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths in this who are at risk for severe Covid. President Joe Biden announced in a statement on Thursday “While this pill still requires a full review by the Food and Drug Administration, I have taken immediate steps to secure enough supply for the American people.” Like the coronavirus injections that hundreds of millions of Americans and other peoples around the world have received, the anti-Covid pills will also be easily accessible and free of any cost. Pfizer noted in its statement that it will begin deliveries of Paxlovid pills as soon before the year is out if it is authorized for emergency use by the FDA.

Market watchers noted on Thursday that Pfizer shares rose 1%, to $51.40 in early trading, while Merck shares were marginally lower. Reuters reports that Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra stated that becoming vaccinated should still be a priority for Americans, but the anti-covid pills that may allow at-risk individuals to stay out of the hospital “could be a lifesaver.” The Pharma behemoth says that it has the capacity to manufacture 180,000 courses of treatment by the end of December; possibly more than 50 million courses of the anti-covid pill may be produced by the end of next year.

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Antibody prophylaxis?!

AstraZeneca Covid-19 Antibody Drug Offers 83% Protection Over 6 Months (R.)

AstraZeneca on Thursday cemented its lead in bringing a preventative Covid-19 shot for the non-infected to market for people who do not respond well to vaccines, saying its antibody drug cocktail offered 83% protection over six months. The injected therapy, called AZD7442 or Evusheld, had previously been shown to confer 77% protection against symptomatic illness after three months, in an earlier readout of the late-stage PROVENT trial in August. The Anglo-Swedish company also said a separate study in patients with mild-to-moderate Covid-19 showed a higher dose of AZD7442 cut the risk of symptoms worsening by 88% when given within three days of first symptoms.


The latest results from longer-term follow-ups potentially position AstraZeneca, like rival Pfizer as a future supplier of both Covid-19 vaccines and treatments, with AstraZeneca having said the therapy’s “real advantage” was as a preventative shot. “These new data add to the growing body of evidence supporting AZD7442’s potential to make a significant difference in the prevention and treatment of Covid-19,” Executive Vice President Mene Pangalos said in a statement.

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“..3,939 of 4.03 million Swedes who received the second dose died less than two weeks later.”

Another Major Red Flag About Covid Vaccines And Death (Berenson)

People appear to die at rates 20 percent or more above normal for weeks after receiving their second Covid vaccine dose, according to data from a huge Swedish study. The figures are buried in a preprint paper on vaccine effectiveness released last month. The headline finding of the paper was that protection against Covid, including severe cases, plunged after six months. The researchers did not explicitly examine deaths from all causes – which have risen since the summer in many countries that have highly vaccinated populations. But on page 32 of the 34-page report, a chart shows that 3,939 of 4.03 million Swedes who received the second dose died less than two weeks later.

Over a one-year period, that rate of death would translate into an annual mortality rate of about 2.5 percent a year – 1 person in 40 – almost three times the overall Swedish average. In a typical year, about 1 in 115 Swedes dies. Of course, that huge gap does not account for an important confounding factor: younger people, who have a much lower risk of death, were less likely to be vaccinated. But Sweden also provides detailed data on overall deaths nationally, making a crude baseline comparison possible. That data shows that from an average of about 1,650 Swedes died every week between 2015 and 2019 between April 1 and early August, the period in which almost all of those 4 million Swedes in the study received their second dose. Death rates hardly varied over those years.

In other words, during the spring and summer, Sweden normally has about 3,300 deaths every two weeks – not just in the people who received vaccines, but in all 10.6 million of its people. So let’s make an incredibly conservative assumption, one that strongly favors the vaccines. (The next couple paragraphs are a bit tricky, but I hope the payoff is worth taking the time to read and think through them.) Assume that the group of people who received vaccines were so much older and unhealthier than those who didn’t that they would have accounted for every single death in Sweden whether or not they were vaccinated. In other words, assume that even if the vaccines did not exist, every person in Sweden who died would have been part of that group of 4.03 million people the researchers tracked – while not one other person would have died.

In that case, those 4.03 million people “should” have about 3,300 deaths every two weeks. They CANNOT HAVE MORE – because all of Sweden does not have more. But the vaccines do exist. Those 4.03 million people received them. And in the two weeks after receiving the second vaccine dose, as a group, the researchers reported they had not about 3,300 deaths, but 3,939. And 3,939 deaths is about 20 percent more deaths than “should” have occurred in those two post-vaccine weeks. Again, the 20 percent figure understates the real gap, because in the real world some deaths will occur in the 6.6 million unvaccinated people too, so the actual baseline number for the vaccinated group is not 3,300 deaths but somewhat lower.

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If this doesn’t spell “failure”, what does?

93%-Vaccinated Ireland Has Gone Back Into ‘Partial Lockdown’ (ZH)

Amid what’s being called a fourth wave of infections to hit highly vaccinated Ireland, the government on Tuesday unveiled new Covid-related restrictions at a moment many are now worried the country could be headed toward a full nationwide lockdown before Christmas. The new measures take effect Friday, despite government officials confirming that at least 93% of Ireland’s population of over 5 million people are fully vaccinated. This makes Ireland among the most vaccinated countries in the world, and yet similar to what the UK, Israel, and more recently Austria have experienced, infection rates are still exploding. The new Irish restrictions, which is being dubbed a semi-lockdown, include a nationwide midnight curfew, new ‘work from home’ guidelines encouraging all who are able to do their job from home, as well as stricter implementation of already existing Covid passes – which will now be required by law in cinemas and theaters.

Entering the holiday season, it’s the midnight curfew that’s especially controversial – given it will disproportionately hit pubs, restaurants, and entertainment venues the hardest. One bar industry organization, the Vintners’ Federation of Ireland (VFI), representing some 4,000 Irish pub-owners (or publicans), reacted as follows: “The news that restricted trading hours are set to be reintroduced is a hugely disappointing development for the many late-night pubs and night clubs many of whom will now be forced to shut just three weeks after reopening.” The statement spelled out that “The decision to introduce a new closing time of midnight will effectively close many late-night pubs and nightclubs. It will also seriously restrict other outlets at the most critical time of the year.

“Many of these have already survived over a year of on-and-off again forced closures since the start of pandemic, gutting the hospitality industry which is only just now starting to re-emerge. As has been the pattern, many Irish officials and pundits are blaming the unvaccinated, despite mainstream media outlets like Sky News pointing out the obvious: “The 14-day incidence of the disease currently stands at 959 per 100,000 people. This is despite having one of the most vaccinated populations, with around 93% of all adults fully vaccinated.” [..] So once again we are seeing an ultra-vaxxed society experiencing an uncontrollable surge in the virus, but the refrain of government leaders remains the same simplistic “solutions”: more restrictions, more vaccines, less freedom.

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“The death toll is rising; the situation is serious. Vaccination is the only solution, there is no other,” said Babis.”

Italian Governors Call For Unvaccinated to be Put Under Lockdown (SN)

Five Italian Governors have called for lockdown measures to be imposed on the unvaccinated, following the example of Austria, while Czech Republic and Slovakia are also moving to enforce similar measures. As we previously highlighted, after Austria placed the unjabbed under lockdown, preventing them from leaving their homes for anything other than “essential reasons,” police were seen patrolling supermarkets and highways checking resident’s vaccination status. Several states in Germany also announced that they would ban the unvaccinated from numerous venues. Now Italy’s unvaccinated population, which stands at around 7 million, could be about to face the same form of medical apartheid.


“Eventual new lockdowns should not have to be suffered by those who are vaccinated. Restrictions should only apply to those who are not immunized,” said Massimiliano Fedriga, the Governor of Friuli-Venezia Giulia in the northeast of the country. The Telegraph reports that, “His stance is supported by the governors of Tuscany, Calabria, Liguria and Piedmont.” Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi echoed the demand, tweeting, “You’re not vaccinated? Then stay at home.” Outgoing Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis has also announced that the the unvaccinated will be banned from shops and restaurants, with the option to provide a negative test removed (despite the fact that the vaccinated can still transmit the virus). “The death toll is rising; the situation is serious. Vaccination is the only solution, there is no other,” said Babis.

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“..to avoid the complication of signing up local subcontractors to their grants in those countries, they promised to send the samples to a laboratory they already funded. And where was this lab? Wuhan.”

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Just Got Even Stronger (Sp.)

Two years in, there is no doubt the Covid pandemic began in the Chinese city of Wuhan. But there is also little doubt that the bat carrying the progenitor of the virus lived somewhere else. Central to the mystery of Covid’s origin is how a virus normally found in horseshoe bats in caves in the far south of China or south-east Asia turned up in a city a thousand miles north. New evidence suggests that part of the answer might lie in Laos. The search for viruses closely related to Sars-CoV-2 took a new turn in September when a team of French and Laotian scientists found one in a horseshoe bat living in a cave in the west Laotian province of Vientiane. Other related viruses had been found in Cambodia, Thailand, Japan and elsewhere in China, but this one, Banal-52, was different.

For the first time since the pandemic began, this was a virus genetically closer to the human Sars-CoV-2 virus than one called RaTG13, collected in southern Yunnan in 2013. RaTG13, which had been stored for six years in a freezer in a lab in Wuhan itself, is genetically 96.1 per cent the same as Sars-CoV-2; Laos’s Banal-52 is 96.8 per cent. The discovery of Banal-52 was greeted with relief by champions of the theory that the virus must have jumped into people in a natural spillover event, not an accident inside a laboratory. If Covid’s closest cousins are flitting about in bats in south-east Asia, then that sample in the freezer in Wuhan looks less suspicious. ‘I am more convinced than ever that Sars-CoV-2 has a natural origin,’ said Linfa Wang of Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, a close collaborator of the Wuhan scientists.

True, the Laos virus lacked a critical feature in a key part of a key gene that makes Covid so infectious: a special 12-letter segment of genetic text called a furin cleavage site. It’s a feature that has never been seen in a Sars-like virus, except for Sars-CoV-2. Apart from that, it seemed that the Laotian virus might have knocked the burden of proof back across the philosophical net into the court of the proponents of lab-leak. Then last month a bunch of emails, uncovered by a lawsuit from the so-called White Coat Waste Project, returned the ball right back over the net. They comprised an exchange between the American virus–hunting foundation, the EcoHealth Alliance and its funders in the US government. The scientists discussed collecting viruses from bats in eight countries including Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos between 2016 and 2019. But to avoid the complication of signing up local subcontractors to their grants in those countries, they promised to send the samples to a laboratory they already funded. And where was this lab? Wuhan.

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“..a “wave” of disinformation tinged with violent rhetoric, QAnon-style conspiracy theories and far-right undertones.”

Ardern is just another Pfizer sales rep. She’s the one who provides the disinformation. Or does that graph look like a success to you?

Mood Darkens In New Zealand As Covid Restrictions Bite (G.)

For more than a year, New Zealand’s “team of 5 million” stood largely united in the face of Covid-19. This month, as the country expanded vaccine mandates and a tougher roadmap of restrictions for the unvaccinated, that mood has splintered and darkened. Among a small but vocal sliver of the population, dissent has been turning ugly, with death threats against MPs and journalists, increasing protests, warnings from security services about Covid-prompted terror threats, and what researchers have called a “wave” of disinformation tinged with violent rhetoric, QAnon-style conspiracy theories and far-right undertones.

“We’re talking … your aunt and uncle type-people using language like Nuremberg 2.0, common law trials, like ‘the prime minister is a Nazi’ – these are quite extreme terms and terminologies,” says Kate Hannah, a research fellow at Te Punaha Matatini’s disinformation project, a research institute that monitors online extremism and rhetoric. Hannah says the team observed an incredibly rapid shift in both the volume and tone of disinformation circulating in New Zealand’s online communities since the Delta outbreak and level 4 lockdown began. “Since August 2021 to now, there has been almost a day-on-day increase in both the volume of production of misinformation products or things being shared, the level of engagement by communities … and also the tone,” she said. An unregulated online environment, particularly on chat app Telegram, she said, had “normalised – very, very quickly – content which is extremely violent.”

Some of that online chatter manifested in the flesh last week in a series of anti-vaccine mandate protests, several-thousand strong. While the protests were broadly peaceful, one police officer was bitten by a demonstrator, and a news outlet reported that one of their journalists had been harassed and pushed by protesters. The signs and slogans proffered by the crowds presented an odd blend of factions and allegiances – tino rangatiratanga [Maori sovereignty] flags alongside Nazi imagery, anti-vaccine mottoes, evangelical preachers, those calling for the prime minister’s arrest and execution. Hannah says that same blend is what researchers are seeing online – where the rhetoric and networks of vaccine-scepticism are acting as a “Trojan horse” for more extreme ideologies.

“People genuinely feel excluded from society – there are genuine grievances and genuine fears,” Hannah said. And the shifts in political rhetoric have accompanied the country’s material change in pandemic fortunes. While the country rode out most of 2020 as a Covid-free idyll, now it has had to reckon with months-long lockdowns, steadily growing case numbers, near-daily deaths, and the threat of lost jobs and freedoms for those who refuse vaccination.


Cases in New Zealand are up 2,686% in the three months since their most recent mask mandate, despite 91% of the eligible population being at least partially vaccinated and strict lockdowns

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Weird that we’re still discussing the all-too-obvious.

Comprehensive Review of Face Mask Studies Finds No Evidence of Benefit (DS)

The Cato Institute has published its latest working paper, a critical review of the evidence for face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Entitled “Evidence for Community Cloth Face Masking to Limit the Spread of SARS- CoV-2: A Critical Review” and written by Ian Liu, Vinay Prasad and Jonathan Darrow, the paper is an admirably thorough and balanced overview of the published evidence on the efficacy of face masks. While even-handedly acknowledging and summarising the studies that show benefit, the authors overall conclusion is that: More than a century after the 1918 influenza pandemic, examination of the efficacy of masks has produced a large volume of mostly low- to moderate-quality evidence that has largely failed to demonstrate their value in most settings. At 61 pages in length, however, not everyone will make it through to the end, so here s a TL;DR, with some key quotes to serve as a handy overview. The paper is, of course, worth reading in full, though. Here’s the authors’ own summary in the form of the abstract:

“The use of cloth facemasks in community settings has become an accepted public policy response to decrease disease transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet evidence of facemask efficacy is based primarily on observational studies that are subject to confounding and on mechanistic studies that rely on surrogate endpoints (such as droplet dispersion) as proxies for disease transmission. The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomised controlled trials comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations. Of sixteen quantitative meta-analyses, eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle. Although weak evidence should not preclude precautionary actions in the face of unprecedented events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, ethical principles require that the strength of the evidence and best estimates of amount of benefit be truthfully communicated to the public.”

The authors open by recalling the initial advice on masks from the WHO and others and the pre-Covid evidence it was based on. “Until April 2020, World Health Organization COVID-19 guidelines stated that “[c]loth (e.g. cotton or gauze) masks are not recommended under any circumstance”, which were updated in June 2020 to state that “the widespread use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence”. In the surgical theatre context, a Cochrane review found “no statistically significant difference in infection rates between the masked and unmasked group in any of the trials”. Another Cochrane review, of influenza-like-illness, found “low certainty evidence from nine trials (3,507 participants) that wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the outcome of influenza-like illness (ILI) compared to not wearing a mask (risk ratio 0.99, CI 0.82 to 1.18).”

Considering mechanisms for transmission and thus modes of operation for masks, the authors review the evidence for aerosol transmission and find it very likely. They argue that the ability of masks to inhibit the passage of sufficient aerosols to protect the wearer or infect others, whether through tiny holes in the material or leaking round the sides, is limited. They write: [F]iltering capability is unlikely to be reliable surrogate for infection control, since exhaled air necessarily either leaks around a mask’s edges or passes through it. Such leakage has been shown to account for the vast majority (~5:1 ratio) of particle penetration of standardised surgical masks, and exhaled air easily passes around the edges of most cloth masks. One study of cloth masks simulated leakage and found that a hole equal to ~1% of the mask area decreased mask efficiency by over 60%…

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But like clockwork, there’s always a different report. Cato vs BMJ. Just got to wonder what the logic is to justify 180º turn.

Nice detail: handwashing reduces incidence by the exact same percentage as masks, 53%.

Mask Wearing Cuts New Covid-19 Cases By 53% (F.)

Mask wearing cuts the number of new Covid-19 infections by 53%, according to a new peer reviewed study in the British Medical Journal, which found the controversial and highly politicized precaution to be the single most effective tool against the coronavirus. Mask wearing, social distancing and handwashing are all effective at lowering the number of new Covid-19 cases, according to an analysis of evidence from 72 global studies that looked atg non-pharmaceutical public health measures. Mask wearing was the most effective public health measure at reducing the incidence of Covid-19, the study found, while physical distancing reduced incidence by 25%. Handwashing was found to reduce coronavirus incidence by 53%, though the researchers noted this finding was not statistically significant on account of the small number of studies that assessed handwashing.

The researchers said it was not possible to evaluate other public health measures—including quarantine, lockdowns and school closures—due to differences in the way studies assessing these interventions were designed and conducted. While evidence indicates the effectiveness of these more stringent measures, the researchers said the restrictions are not sustainable, have significant economic and social impacts and must be “carefully” assessed to weigh potential positives against negatives. Though masks have been a critical tool in curbing the spread of Covid-19 from early on in the pandemic, they have become a flashpoint in a culture war pitting individual liberties against the public good. In the U.S., mask mandates have spurred protests, conspiracies and been a hot button issue for politicians to jump on, even as cases and deaths soared.

Tensions have been so high that mask-related disputes have led to a number of violent altercations, some lethal, while some states have prevented local officials from putting their own rules requiring them in place. Getting the pandemic under control is likely to depend on both high vaccination coverage and ongoing adherence to effective and sustainable public health measures. More research will be needed to assess the effectiveness of public health measures in highly vaccinated populations, the researchers wrote. The lack of good research on public health measures to tackle Covid-19 is one of the “tragedies of the pandemic,” wrote professors Paul Glasziou, Susan Michie and Atle Fretheim in a linked editorial. “More and better research are needed.”

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One of the reasons for the arrest is claiming “that the vaccines against Covid-19 have side effects”. Go figure.

Greek Lawyer Arrested For Spreading Covid Misinformation (K.)

A Greek lawyer at the forefront of online anti-vaccination campaigns was arrested on Wednesday for spreading fake news about the pandemic on social media, in the first application of the new law passed in Parliament on November 12. Nikos Antoniadis is also accused of inciting disobedience — both of the charges are misdemeanors. The case file against Nikos Antoniadis was formed by the police’s cybercrime division after a complaint was filed containing evidence that allegedly showed the lawyer stating that there is no coronavirus, that the intubation of patients is done for no good reason and that the vaccines against Covid-19 have side effects. His arrest was ordered by the Athens Prosecutor’s Office, which has been conducting relevant investigations for a long time about the activities of anti-vaxxers. Antoniadis was later released and the prosecutor will decide whether to proceed with the prosecution or continue the preliminary investigation.

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Damn the science.

Greek PM: Unvaccinated Adults To Be Barred From All Indoor Public Venues (K.)

The government will impose more restrictions for those not vaccinated against Covid-19 from next week, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday following a steep rise in infections in recent weeks. The measures were announced by Mitsotakis in a televised address to the nation and include barring unvaccinated citizens from all indoor spaces including cinemas, museums and gyms as of Monday, November 22. Mitsotakis said his plan was for Greece “to have a better Christmas this year than last year.” The new measures mean unvaccinated adults will no longer be able to access indoor venues by presenting a negative Covid test result. At present, unvaccinated adults are only excluded from indoor eateries.


He also said that the vaccination certificate for vaccinated persons over 60 years of age would cease to be valid seven months after the administration of the vaccine. Thus, this age group will be given one month to receive the booster vaccine. Staggered working hours would also apply in the public and private sectors in order to avoid overcrowding, especially at rush hour times and on public transport. Special provisions will apply for parents with schoolchildren. Mitsotakis also said controls would be ramped up. Private doctors would be requisitioned to support the National Health System, he added. The premier also said that unvaccinated churchgoers should have a negative laboratory test, as the Synod of the Orthodox Church of Greece has already called for.

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They put 1000s of them on unpaid leave because of vaccine status, then say the system is overwhelmed.

Rumor has it that over 50% of police are unvaxxed. Wonder how they’ll deal with that.

Private Doctors In Northern Greece Ordered To Pitch In For A Month (K.)

A decision by the Greek Health Ministry requisitioning the services of doctors in the private sector to help in state-run hospitals struggling under the burden of the fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic was published in the Government Gazette on Thursday. The decision is directed at medics active in regions of northern Greece, where hospitals are at their limits: Western, Central and Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, as well as Thessaly in central Greece. Authorities are asking for pulmonologists, pathologists and general practitioners stating that their services will be needed, initially, for a period of one month.


Up until Nov. 16, the ministry had secured the voluntary participation of only around 40 private doctors through the medical associations, with at least half of them registered in the previous 24 hours, prompting the activation of the requisition procedures as this this number was deemed unsatisfactory based on the needs of the hospitals. According to ministry estimates, more than 100 doctors in specific specialties are needed to support the National Health System (ESY) at this point.

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Sep 102021
 
 September 10, 2021  Posted by at 8:29 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  69 Responses »


Johannes Vermeer Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window 1657-59 (newly restored)

 

One Flew Over the Kookaburra’s Nest (Bridge)
The Last Post (VanDen Bossche)
Vaccinated Account For 70% Of UK Covid-19 Deaths Since February (DE)
The Unvaccinated will be Punished (TFog)
The CDC Just Changed the Definition of ‘Vaccine’ and ‘Vaccination’ (PJM)
Biden Vaccine Mandates Could Affect 100 Million Americans (Cx)
17 Republican Governors Oppose Biden’s Federal Vaccine Mandate (Bn)
Biden Exempts Over 600,000 USPS Workers From Federal Vaccination Order (ZH)
Poll: 20%+ Of Unvaccinated People Want To Be Banned From Doing Things (Il)
Unvaccinated Officers ‘Huge Issue’ In Efforts To Build Immunity – Minister (K.)
Moderna Developing Two-in-One Booster Shot For Covid-19 And Flu (RT)
It Is Time To STRIKE (Denninger)
CDC Tightened Masking Guidelines After Threats From Teachers Union (Fox)
Critics Assail Widely Touted Study On Mask Effectiveness (JTN)

 

 

 

 

Fauci

 

 

Perfect title to open the day with.

“..the act of expressing medical second opinions – a ‘luxury’ that doctors have enjoyed since at least the Middle Ages – has been outlawed..”

One Flew Over the Kookaburra’s Nest (Bridge)

Reminiscent of Nurse Ratched in Ken Kesey’s classic 1962 novel, Australian officials have completely lost the plot over the virus, as they rob citizens of their basic democratic and human rights in the name of protecting them.
Eight o’clock the walls whirr and hum into full swing. The speaker in the ceiling says, ‘Medications,’ using the Big Nurse’s voice. – ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ While George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’ remains the go-to work of literature for helping wrap one’s brain around these increasingly mental times, Kesey’s masterpiece ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ has been relegated to the back of society’s bookshelf. That’s unfortunate, especially in the case of Australia, which appears to be hard at work penning the sequel.

The role of ‘Big Nurse,’ Kesey’s tyrannical antagonist, who has an arsenal of medication at her disposal, would go to Australian health chief Dr. Kerry Chant. This medical authoritarian recently informed the 8.1 million locked-down subjects of New South Wales that Covid will be with us “forever” and people will have to just “get used to” rolling up their sleeves for endless booster shots. Chant’s grim assessment of Australia’s future faced no challenges from other professionals, which should come as no surprise, since the act of expressing medical second opinions – a ‘luxury’ that doctors have enjoyed since at least the Middle Ages – has been outlawed. While few would find fault with Chant’s wry observation that “we want diseases to be totally eliminated,” it is the total absence of democratic procedure in this wild goose chase that is alarming.

After all, it was Dr. Chant who advised citizens in the heat of summer not to “start up a conversation” with others in public spaces – a wonderful excuse to keep the populace squirming under the heel of bureaucracy. In the next chapter of this Keseyian tragedy, Australian leaders are passionately signaling – virtuously, of course – that the only way to escape from creeping medical apartheid is for everyone to submit to the jab. “There is going to be a vaccinated economy, and you get to participate in that if you are vaccinated,” Victoria Premier Dan ‘Big Brother’ Andrews informed a roomful of puzzled and muzzled reporters. “We’re going to move to a situation where, to protect the health system, we are going to lock out people who are not vaccinated and can be.”

Aside from ‘ape-shit crazy,’ there is really only one way to interpret that incredibly disturbing remark: either you agree to submit to a vaccination, or the “vaccinated economy” will be closed to you. Now, whether that lockout will only apply to the bread and circuses that make up Victoria’s vibrant cultural scene – nightclubs, concerts and sporting events, for example – or to the more indispensable venues, such as grocery stores and medical clinics, the Dear Leader would not say.

Gerald
https://twitter.com/i/status/1436103010019536917

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Do we see him as fully exonerated now?

The Last Post (VanDen Bossche)

The mass vaccination hype will undoubtedly enter history as the most reckless experiment in the history of medicine. It will be cited as the unequivocal proof of how overuse or misuse of man-made antimicrobials leads to antimicrobial resistance, regardless of whether the antimicrobial is an antibiotic or an antibody administered through passive immunization or elicited via active immunization. Mass vaccination campaigns conducted in the middle of a viral pandemic will, for generations to come, become the most sobering example of the boundaries of human intervention in nature in general and of the boundaries of conventional vaccinology in particular. This irrational experiment will unambiguously highlight the clear-cut limitations of conventional vaccine approaches.

It will convincingly illustrate that – unlike natural acute self-limiting infection or disease – ‘modern’ technologies alone do not suffice to develop vaccines that are capable of preventing viral transmission or immune escape. For that matter, even ‘modern’ vaccines will not allow conventional B or T cell-directed antigens to generate herd immunity when massively administered in the heat of a pandemic of a highly mutable virus. Because of the disastrous consequences the current mass vaccination campaign will entail, I cannot imagine that the word ‘vaccine’ will continue to persist in the medical vade-mecum. In order to highlight the short-comings of all vaccines eliciting conventional B- or T cell-centered immune responses I propose to coin a new term for these vaccines and refer to them as ‘conditionally immune protection-inducing formulations’ (CIPIFs).

While the word ‘vaccine’ may be banned, the word ‘fact checker’ will only gain traction as a general term used for any scientifically illiterate person who uses arrogance to vilify those who speak the truth and promotes – in exchange for dirty money – a narrative and groupthink mentality that are merely inspired by the interests of the stakeholders they blindly support.

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You might expect this over, say, the last two months. But not six; in February not many people were vaccinated.

Note: Case fatality rate among fully vaccinated is 5x higher than among unvaccinated.

Vaccinated Account For 70% Of UK Covid-19 Deaths Since February (DE)

Because of the threats now being made to give an experimental Covid-19 injection to children against the advice of the JCVI, and the confirmation that vaccine passports will be introduced in the United Kingdom from October, you’re probably not aware that Public Health England have released a report at precisely the same time which reveals 70% of Covid-19 deaths since February are people who had been vaccinated. The report titled ‘SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England’, is the 22nd technical briefing on alleged variants of concern in the United Kingdom and makes for extremely interesting reading once you realise what the statistics are actually telling us.

PHE have compiled a helpful table which shows the number of alleged confirmed Delta variant cases in the UK alongside the number of alleged deaths due to the variant. The table shows that since the 1st February 2021 up to the 29th August 2021 there have been 492,528 alleged confirmed cases of the Delta variant. Of these 144,067 had been confirmed in the past 28 days alone. The data shows that people who are not vaccinated account for just 44% of the alleged confirm Covid cases, whilst those who are fully vaccinated account for 23% of the alleged confirmed cases. A further 16% of the alleged cases are people who had received one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine at least 21 days prior to their alleged confirmed Covid-19 infection.

Unfortunately, it looks as if we have been lied to and instead of the Covid-19 vaccines being our route back to normal they are instead quite the opposite. Because the data published by Public Health England shows us that the number of alleged deaths due to the Delta variant are not just higher among those who have received two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, they are astronomically higher. The total number of deaths to have occurred since February 2021 involving the Delta Covid-19 variant that have been linked to vaccination status total 1,698. Of these just 30% have been among the unvaccinated population, despite the fact most second vaccinations were administered between April and June.

Whereas fully vaccinated account for 64.25% of Covid-19 deaths since February 2021, and when including the partly vaccinated in those numbers they account for 70%. However, it’s important to note that many of the deaths that occurred in the partly vaccinated population may have actually been people who had received two doses of a Covid-19 injection due to the fact PHE does not regard them as having had two doses if it has not been two weeks since they had the second dose. But what does this mean in terms of the risk of death if infected with the Delta Covid-19 variant? Well it means the risk of death increases significantly in those who have been fully vaccinated. 536 deaths have occurred among 219,716 confirmed cases in the unvaccinated population since February. This is a case fatality rate of 0.2%. Whereas 1,091 deaths have occurred among 113,823 cases among the fully vaccinated population. This is a case fatality rate of 1%.

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Tricks.

The Unvaccinated will be Punished (TFog)

It is official: the unvaccinated have become the scapegoats. As we said in August, “trust them at their word when they advocate restricting your rights and inflicting punishment if you remain unvaccinated.” This is the result (but not the end-result) of a creeping nastiness towards the unvaccinated that we warned about last month, after the NYC required a vaccine to “participate in society fully” and The Atlantic said the unvaccinated “belong on the no-fly list.” Others contributed and pushed things further. The call by the New York Times’ Ezra Klein to start “raising the costs of remaining vaccinated.” Dr. Fauci said the government needed to “do something to get them to be vaccinated.”

Biden listened. He is mandating that larger employers mandate vaccines or undergo weekly testing or be fined up to $14,000 per violation. As the AP reports: The requirement for large companies to mandate vaccinations or weekly testing for employees will be enacted through a forthcoming rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA] that carries penalties of $14,000 per violation, an administration official said. The White House did not immediately say when it would take effect, but said workers would have sufficient time to get vaccinated. This coincides with Biden mandating federal employees and contractors get the vaccine. All except USPS, whose workers somehow escaped this mandate.

I would guess the USPS union donations (which are almost all to Democrats) and their endorsement of Biden in 2020 might have something to do with this exemption. Anyway, the Biden Administration will attempt to implement the employer vaccine mandate and punishments through an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS). Think of this as a temporary measure that allows the agency to bypass normal rulemaking and regulatory procedures. The ETS is governed by 29 USC 655, which states:

Look closely at part (A), which requires the Secretary of Labor to determine that “employees are exposed to grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards.” How has OSHA determined ALL large employers are exposing their employees to “grave danger”? Here’s the answer: they haven’t. And they don’t think they have to. In using the ETS – which are temporary – the Biden Administration is bypassing statutory and caselaw requirements that govern permanent health and safety standards. Think of that for a moment: that they wish to use temporary regulations to mandate permanent vaccines.


If this were permanent, OSHA would have to make “a threshold finding that a place of employment is unsafe—in the sense that significant risks are present and can be eliminated or lessened by a change in practices.” This legal maneuvering, which lessens OSHA’s evidentiary and fact-finding burdens, should be no surprise. OSHA (like Biden himself) has a long history of unlawfulness and of ignoring its own regulations. Most recently, the agency is refusing to enforce its own rules (arguably) requiring employers who mandate vaccinations from recording the side effects.

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More tricks.

The CDC Just Changed the Definition of ‘Vaccine’ and ‘Vaccination’ (PJM)

For your entire life, you’ve known that when you get vaccinated, you’re protected from a particular disease. You’ve probably been vaccinated for such diseases as polio, tetanus, measles, diphtheria, and others, and you no longer have to worry about them, because the whole reason your parents took you to the doctor to get those shots was to protect you from those diseases. Polio, in particular, has been completely wiped out in the United States thanks to the immunity created by vaccination. This is why the CDC says that vaccines provide immunity, which means that we can be exposed to a disease without becoming infected by it. At least they used to. A recent change on the CDC website should disturb all of us because it appears that the CDC is trying to change how we understand vaccinations. Here’s the “Definition of Terms” for Immunization as captured on August 26, 2021. I’ve highlighted the key points.

These definitions have been in place since at least May 16, 2018. Here’s the “Definition of Terms” for immunizations now, which was updated on September 1, 2021, with changes highlighted.

So in a week, a vaccine went from being something that “produces immunity to a specific disease” to something that merely “stimulates the body’s immune response against diseases,” and a vaccination no longer “produces immunity” to a disease, just “protection” from a disease. Does anyone else find this disturbing? Why did the CDC suddenly redefine “vaccine” and “vaccination” to make them sound similar to your basic non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug or a prescription drug you have to keep taking regularly? No explanation for the change is given.


Is this part of the Biden administration’s efforts to make the public accept regular COVID-19 boosters by changing how we understand the purpose of vaccines? Vaccines, we’re now supposed to accept, don’t provide us with immunity, just protection from disease. This vague definition essentially makes it easier for the government to recommend endless boosters for COVID (or any other disease) because vaccines, they say, no longer make us “immune.” And yes, there are several vaccines that do need boosters, but that never changed our understanding or the definition of vaccines and vaccination.

@RepThomasMassie Check out @CDCgov ’s evolving definition of “vaccination.” They’ve been busy at the Ministry of Truth:

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It is reasonable to wonder what would have happened if Trump had announced this.

Biden Vaccine Mandates Could Affect 100 Million Americans (Cx)

In an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19’s Delta variant and boost the U.S.’s vaccination numbers, Joe Biden is set to enforce new federal vaccination requirements that could impact at least 100 million Americans. The Associated Press reports that the new guidelines require people who work for employers with at least 100 workers to be vaccinated, or get tested for the virus every week. Those who work at health facilities that get Medicare or Medicaid also have to be completely vaccinated. Additionally, a new executive order will mandate that people working for the executive branch and contractors who work with the federal government will have to be vaccinated and cannot be regularly tested instead.

While speaking Thursday, Biden touted the progress made on COVID since he took office. He also accused “elected officials” of undermining his administration’s fight against the virus. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Biden’s “overarching objective here is to reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans,” with around 80 million adult Americans still unvaccinated. The new “action plan” also includes further requirements, like doubling federal fines for airline passengers who decline to wear masks during flights, or those who refuse to cover their faces on federal property. Biden is also working to expand the supply of virus tests, boost federal support to schools as they are opening, and require large entertainment venues and arenas to check vaccination cards or proof of negative test upon entry.

While there are over 208 million Americans who have been vaccinated with at least one dose, the number of cases has surged by 300 percent a day. There are also now two-and-a-half times more hospitalizations and almost twice as many deaths as this time last year.

Pelosi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1436076978080292866

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“..get them out of the way..”

17 Republican Governors Oppose Biden’s Federal Vaccine Mandate (Bn)

President Joe Biden on Thursday delivered a tyrannical speech announcing the federal vaccine mandates that he was decreeing by executive order. Seventeen Republican governors thus far have issued statements in direct opposition to Biden’s federal vaccine mandate. “In his most forceful pandemic actions and words, President Joe Biden on Thursday announced sweeping new federal vaccine requirements affecting as many as 100 million Americans in an all-out effort to increase COVID-19 vaccinations and curb the surging delta variant,” the AP reported. “Speaking at the White House, Biden sharply criticized the roughly 80 million Americans who are not yet vaccinated, despite months of availability and incentives,” the report said. “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” Biden said. “And your refusal has cost all of us.”

President Biden also specifically threatened resistant Republican governors by saying that would he use his executive powers to “get them out of the way.” “Let me be blunt,” Biden said. “My plan also takes on elected officials in states that are undermining you in these life-saving actions. Right now local school officials are trying to keep children safe in a pandemic while their governor picks a fight with them and even threatens their salaries or their jobs. Talk about bullying the schools.” “If they’ll not help, if these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I will use my power as president to get them out of the way,” he added. “The Department of Education has already begun to take legal action against states undermining protection that local school officials have ordered.”

Republican governors have begun to issue their responses to the federal government’s overreach and the president’s threats. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis actually issued a statement in opposition to Biden’s executive order before it was officially issued. “How could we get to the point in this country where you would not let them earn a living because of their choice on the vaccine?” Gov. DeSantis said. “I just think that’s fundamentally wrong. I do not believe that people should lose their jobs over this issue, and we will fight that.”

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“..the Postal Service is an independent agency of the executive branch, and it is required to be specifically included in executive orders that apply to working conditions for federal employees.”

Biden Exempts Over 600,000 USPS Workers From Federal Vaccination Order (ZH)

All people are equal before “the scienceTM“, but some unions are more equal. We previously noted that in an unspoken footnote to Biden’s bombastic “no jab, no job” speech, various labor unions had quietly (and not so quietly) voiced their displeasure to the now official mandatory vaccinations including NYC teachers, California’s largest public sector union and of course, the US Postal Service. And now we know that while Biden was eager to frame his new vaxx policy as all inclusive and with no exception, that was not really true. According to the Washington Post citing a “White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss not-yet-public portions of the president’s plan”, U.S. Postal Service workers were not included in Biden’s executive order requiring all federal employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.


While Biden framed his mandate as one covering all federal workers and all companies with more than 100 staff, he forgot to mention that any labor union that is instrumental in keeping the Democrats in power would be granted a very “unscientific” exemption. The loophole in question, according to the report, according to the White House source, is that the “USPS has a separate statutory scheme and is traditionally independent of federal personnel actions like this” even though postal workers would be strongly encouraged to comply with the mandate. Paradoxically, the WaPo also notes that this “explainer” is in conflict with reality: after all, the Postal Service is an independent agency of the executive branch, and it is required to be specifically included in executive orders that apply to working conditions for federal employees.

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Gallup does an onion.

Poll: 20%+ Of Unvaccinated People Want To Be Banned From Doing Things (Il)

A new Gallup poll claiming a slim majority of Americans support vaccine passports also claims that nearly 1 in 4 unvaccinated Americans support banning themselves from flying and 1 in 5 support banning themselves from going to work, staying at a hotel, dining at a restaurant and attending events with large crowds. “Per Gallup, 20%+ of unvaccinated people want themselves banned from doing things,” columnist Phil Kerpen commented on Twitter. Here’s how Gallup’s “senior scientist” Frank Newport, Ph.D. tried to explain away the comically embarrassing results: The relationship between vaccination status and attitudes about vaccination requirements, however, is by no means perfect. As seen in the accompanying table, between 20% and 32% of Americans give seemingly contradictory opinions — vaccinated people who say there should be no vaccination requirements to do these activities, and unvaccinated people who say there should be.


The notion 20-25% of unvaccinated Americans want to be banned from leaving their home is not “seemingly contradictory,” it’s directly contradictory. On the flip side, people who took the shots not wanting to have an Orwellian vaccine passport control grid rolled out for everyone isn’t contradictory at all. Your poll is comically stupid and your analysis of it is even dumber. This is about as clear as it gets that Gallup polls are worthless garbage which are published to shape public opinion and influence government policy rather than reflect what the public actually thinks.

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Greece. 40% of officers unvaccinated. At least.

Unvaccinated Officers ‘Huge Issue’ In Efforts To Build Immunity – Minister (K.)

The percentage of unvaccinated police officers in Greece is a big problem for the government’s plan to build immunity, Alternate Interior Minister Stelios Petsas said on Thursday. “It is a huge issue which undermines the credibility of [police] checks to a great extent and creates reactions among the citizens who are being checked,” he told Skai TV, adding that he is in favour of mandating inoculations for security forces. “I have said many times in the past about several categories of public sector workers who are in contact with citizens that this needs to be addressed.” Skai reported that the current vaccination rate stood at 60-62% among officers. Late August data seen by Kathimerini put the number of vaccinated officers to just 58% in the Hellenic Police (ELAS). ELAS is the main body tasked with enforcing the various health restrictions imposed by the government and its officers come in close contact with the public.

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Moderna still hasn’t developed one single medicine that was approved.

Moderna Developing Two-in-One Booster Shot For Covid-19 And Flu (RT)

Moderna has announced that it is developing a single-dose vaccine to bring to the market that will combine a two-in-one booster shot that protects against both Covid-19 and flu. On Thursday, drugmaker Moderna unveiled its latest innovation in the fight against Covid-19 – a “pan-respiratory annual booster vaccine” that combines a booster against Covid-19 and one against regular flu. “Our number one priority as a company right now is to bring to market a pan-respiratory annual booster vaccine, which we plan to always customize and upgrade,” said CEO Stéphane Bancel. Moderna is not the first to have announced the creation of a combined jab for Covid-19 and flu.

American vaccine-maker Novavax announced on Wednesday that it has started an early stage trial in Australia to test its own two-in-one shot, having enrolled 640 healthy adult volunteers between the ages of 50 and 70. Last week, Moderna submitted data to the European Medicines Agency for conditional approval for its Covid-19 vaccine to be used as a booster shot. Meanwhile, the US Food and Drug Administration greenlighted top-up doses of mRNA vaccines manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna in mid-August for people with compromised immune systems. Moderna’s two-dose Covid-19 vaccine boasts a high efficacy rate of 93% six months after the administration of its second shot, barely waning from the 94.5% protection reported during its phase-three clinical trials.

The pharma company also said that it is “making progress on enrolling patients in our rare disease programs, and we are fully enrolled in our personalized cancer vaccine trial.” It also said its phase-two study of its authorized Covid-19 vaccine for children between 6 months and 12 years was ongoing. So far, the study is being carried out on 4,000 children between 6 and 12, while dosage selection studies are still underway for younger age groups.

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“Natural immunity from prior infection is 7-13x, and perhaps as much as 25x as effective as is a vaccine.”

It Is Time To STRIKE (Denninger)

The data is in folks, and the lies are collapsing. Biden is due to unleash his “six point” plan (the latest iteration) to alleged “Beat Delta.” You can bet it will contain more mandates. What it won’t do is recognize these key facts, and thus will fail and will kill Americans unless he is stopped. Natural immunity from prior infection is 7-13x, and perhaps as much as 25x as effective as is a vaccine. This is the data from Israel and multiple studies. A study from Cleveland Clinic, following more than a thousand of their employees who were infected, found zero reinfections. Think about that folks — zero so-called “breakthroughs” among previously-infected and not-vaccinated people.

The CDC ITSELF has published their own data that if infected while vaccinated you are equally contagious to someone who was not vaccinated. Further, contrary to the original claims of the CDC and vaccine makers that the vaccines reduce or eliminate symptomatic infections in virtually every case (95% of the time) they found that 79% of vaccinated people who got infected were symptomatic. This is statistically identical to unvaccinated persons who sometimes have fully-asymptomatic infections. If you are vaccinated and get infected you are just as likely to infect (and potentially sicken or kill) another person, vaccinated or not, as someone who is not vaccinated. This is formally-admissible evidence in court as it is a direct publication of the CDC! The CDC has admitted, in print, that there is no public-health benefit from the vaccines.

The vaccines are failures. This should not surprise as every previous coronavirus vaccine attempt also failed. Yes, they may provide personal protection against serious outcomes for a few months. The original trials may have been rigged to show that. The manufacturers deliberately set the dose to produce antibody levels much higher than natural infection. Why would you do that when, as with any drug, the higher the dose the greater the adverse effects? The logical reason is that you knew you had to keep protection levels adequate for the four months of the trial and then you intended to unblind the study which immediately destroys the ability to follow up and assess the effect of the vaccine over longer periods of time. Both Moderna and Pfizer did exactly that and the FDA let them.

Do not be deceived by outright lies in the media; if you don’t know someone who’s fully-vaccinated and got laid out flat on their back or killed by Covid-19, you will. In Texas at a monoclonal antibody infusion center (where you go if infected and at high risk) the case rate between vaccinated and unvaccinated is statistically identical to Texas’ vaccination rate. At Duke University where everyone must be vaccinated this year there have been multiple outbreaks. Cornell has a five times higher case rate now, with everyone vaccinated by mandate, than they did last fall. There are multiple such examples and they prove the vaccines rapidly become at best worthless. A “mandate” is thus a demand that you the take the risk of serious injury or death for no reason other than political demand.

JAMA, the official journal of the American Medical Association, has published proof that the vaccines are at best failures and at worst may be enhancing Covid-19 infections. Specifically, they published a study from blood donations showing the presence of alleged immunity in 83.3% of Americans. This is sufficient to suppress any virus with an R0 of up to just under 6, and obviously since May it has only climbed. They did differentiate between antibodies from infection and vaccination, which we can do in this case due to the design of the vaccines. This study found 20% of Americans have had Covid-19 and are presumptively immune; the balance was from vaccination. The problem is that if the vaccines worked the summer spike we have seen was impossible, yet it happened. This is hard proof the vaccines do not work over time; you have taken the risk of serious adverse events up to and including death for a benefit that lasts no more than six months.

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US ruled by unions..

CDC Tightened Masking Guidelines After Threats From Teachers Union (Fox)

The Biden administration tightened its masking guidance after a prominent teachers union threatened White House officials with publicly releasing harsh criticism, internal emails show. The National Education Association sent a draft statement to White House officials that included harsh criticism of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s masking guidance, the emails show. But the teachers union ultimately published a version with a much softer tone, and the CDC clarified its guidance to indicate that everyone should be masked in schools, regardless of vaccination status. The new emails show further coordination between the White House and teachers unions just months after reports highlighted the extent the unions had influenced the administration’s messaging on school reopenings.

The watchdog group Americans for Public Trust obtained the emails through a Freedom of Information Act request and provided them to Fox News. The CDC announced on May 13 that fully vaccinated Americans could stop wearing masks indoors and outside, which sparked confusion about how this policy would apply to schools. One day later, on May 14, Erika Dinkel-Smith, the White House director of labor engagement, said she stopped the NEA from releasing a critical statement that had called for immediate clarification. “Would you know when Dr. Wolensky would be able to call NEA-Pres. Becky Pringle?” Dinkel-Smith wrote in the email. “They’ve gotten significant incoming and are getting targeted for a response from the media. I’ve gotten them to hold on their statement calling for clarification.” That same day, Dinkel-Smith received the NEA’s draft statement, allowing them to weigh in on it.

“We appreciate the developing nature of the science and its implications for guidance, but releasing the guidance without accompanying school-related updates creates confusion and fuels the internal politicization of this basic health and safety issue,” the draft statement read. “CDC has consistently said, and studies support, that mitigation measures, including to protect the most vulnerable, remain necessary in schools and institutions of higher education – particularly because no elementary or middle school students, and few high school students, have been vaccinated.” “This will also make it hard for school boards and leaders of institutions of higher education to do the right thing by maintaining mitigation measures,” it continued. “We need CDC clarification right away.”

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“Based on the 95% confidence intervals, we do not even know if surgical mask efficacy is more than 0%..”

Critics Assail Widely Touted Study On Mask Effectiveness (JTN)

An acclaimed study on the effectiveness of masks in reducing symptomatic COVID-19 has been widely mischaracterized and suffers from serious design flaws, according to critics. They include Harvard Medical School epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, who was suspended from Twitter for a month for questioning the protective power of masks for unvaccinated elderly people. The randomized controlled trial (RCT) of 600 Bangladeshi villages from November through April was led by a management professor at Yale, Jason Abaluck, with participation from medical and public health researchers at Yale, Stanford and the University of California Berkeley, among other institutions.

The working paper was funded by a grant from charity assessment nonprofit GiveWell to the Institute for Poverty Action, which studies the effectiveness of programs to reduce global poverty, and has yet to be peer-reviewed. The nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research published a shorter and somewhat different version. Several variations were tried with the “treatment” villages. The researchers “cross-randomized mask promotion strategies at the village and household level, including cloth vs. surgical masks,” and some were given window signs indicating the household wears masks. A quarter of the villages were promised a “monetary incentive” for village leaders if they hit 75% mask compliance within the eight-week study. “Neither participants nor field staff were blinded to intervention assignment,” the study said.

About 335,000 people provided data on symptoms, if any, by the end of the eight-week period. In the villages that “received free masks, information on the importance of masking, role modeling by community leaders, and in-person reminders,” the interventions reduced “symptomatic seroprevalence” by 9.3% and the “prevalence of COVID-like symptoms” by 11.9%. Villages that got surgical masks reduced symptomatic infection by 11% — twice as high for those ages 50-60 and three times higher for those older than 60. Cloth masks, by contrast, had “an imprecise zero” effect. For surgical masks specifically, the differences between treatment and control groups were statistically insignificant for every age group under 50. This age-based finding was a red flag for some critics, as was the confounding variable of increased physical distancing observed among the masked group.

“Odd that mask advocates are excited by this study,” Kulldorff, a pioneer in vaccine safety research, tweeted last week. “As a vaccine advocate, I would be horrified if a vaccine trial showed 11% efficacy. Based on the 95% confidence intervals, we do not even know if surgical mask efficacy is more than 0%,” he wrote.

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Aug 242021
 


George Caleb Bingham The verdict of the people 1854

 

Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine Becomes First To Win FDA’s Full Approval (USAT)
Does The FDA Think These Data Justify Approval Of A Covid-19 Vaccine? (BMJ)
Fully Vaccinated Healthcare Workers Carry 251 Times Viral Load (McCullough)
FDA Ignores Both Science and Law (Denninger)
Pfizer and Moderna Lost The Clinical Trial Control Group (CTH)
Everything You Need to Know About Informed Consent (21CW)
Statistical Fraud in the FDA Vaccine Approval Process (JoshM)
The More Masks Fail, The More We Need Them (Ian)
Pentagon To Mandate Covid-19 Vaccinations For All Military Personnel (RT)
NYC Orders 150,000 Teachers & School Staff To Get Vaccinated (ZH)
Truckers Threaten To Shut Down Australia Due to Covid Insanity (OI)
Keeping Fear Alive (Tierney)
Throwdowns and Showdowns (Kunstler)

 

 

It’s been an insane 24 hours. You’d think a full approval of a vaccine would be a straightforward event, but the FDA just made things more, and extremely, complicated. First, a few bits and pieces from what they issued:

 

 

“COMIRNATY is the first COVID-19 vaccine to be granted FDA approval ”
also:
“These may not be all the possible side effects of the vaccine. Serious and unexpected side effects may occur. THE VACCINE IS STILL BEING STUDIED IN CLINICAL TRIALS.”

 

 

On August 23, 2021, FDA approved the biologics license application (BLA) submitted by BioNTech Manufacturing GmbH for COMIRNATY (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 in individuals 16 years of age and older…

…the EUA will remain in place for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for the previously-authorized indication and uses, and to authorize use of COMIRNATY (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) under this EUA for certain uses that are not included in the approved BLA…

COMIRNATY (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) is the same formulation as the PfizerBioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine and can be used interchangeably with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to provide the COVID-19 vaccination series…

 

 

C. There is no adequate, approved, and available [see Note 9] alternative to the emergency use of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID 19 Vaccine to prevent COVID-19.

[Note 9:] Although COMIRNATY (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) is approved to prevent COVID-19 in individuals 16 years of age and older, there is not sufficient approved vaccine available for distribution to this population in its entirety at the time of reissuance of this EUA. Additionally, there are no products that are approved to prevent COVID-19 in individuals age 12 through 15, or that are approved to provide an additional dose to the immunocompromised population described in this EUA.

 

 

Conditions Related to Printed Matter, Advertising, and Promotion

X. All descriptive printed matter, advertising, and promotional material, relating to the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID 19 Vaccine shall be consistent with the authorized labeling, as well as the terms set forth in this EUA, and meet the requirements set forth in section 502(a) and (n) of the FD&C Act and FDA implementing regulations.

Y. All descriptive printed matter, advertising, and promotional material relating to the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID 19 Vaccine clearly and conspicuously shall state that:

” This product has not been approved or licensed by FDA, but has been authorized for emergency use by FDA, under an EUA to prevent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) for use in individuals 12 years of age and older; and

” The emergency use of this product is only authorized for the duration of the declaration that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of the medical product under Section 564(b)(1) of the FD&C Act unless the declaration is terminated or authorization revoked sooner.

 

 

The original documents. Just check the dates. What happened to those?

 

 

Two high vaccination rates: Iceland Full Vaxxed 74%, Israel 62%

 

 

“The Pfizer-BioNTech emergency use authorization was based on clinical trials involving about 37,000 people.”

Well, not really, because they stopped those trials.

Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine Becomes First To Win FDA’s Full Approval (USAT)

Eight months after authorizing the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in the USA, the Food and Drug Administration issued its full stamp of approval. Now that the companies’ detailed, so-called biologics license application has been granted, it’s likely that vaccination will be required by many companies, schools and other entities. The FDA decision clears the way for the companies to market their vaccine, which is not permitted without full licensure. And it may launch a race for booster shots, allowing doctors to prescribe extra Pfizer-BioNTech shots “off label” to anyone they think should get one. The FDA confirmed late last year through a more streamlined evaluation process that the vaccine, from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its partner, German startup BioNTech, was safe, effective and could be reliably produced.

The review of the 340,000-page license application was completed in just 97 days by FDA staff working “night and day,” said Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which approves vaccines “We completed this in about 40% of the normal clock time for a submission of this magnitude,” he said. The license application was three times the size of the emergency use authorization submission, which weighed in at 110,000 pages. The companies have manufactured more than 2 billion doses, more than 200 million of which were administered in the USA, the most of any of the three vaccines allowed for use in the country. The full license includes four more months of efficacy and safety data, confirming trial results and detailing manufacturing processes.

The Pfizer-BioNTech emergency use authorization was based on clinical trials involving about 37,000 people. The full approval was based on study results involving more than 44,000 people followed for six months. The license applies only to those 16 and over, but the vaccine is allowed for those 12 to 15 under the previous authorization. “Based on the longer-term follow-up data that we submitted, today’s approval for those aged 16 and over affirms the efficacy and safety profile of our vaccine at a time when it is urgently needed,” Pfizer chairman and CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement. “I am hopeful this approval will help increase confidence in our vaccine, as vaccination remains the best tool we have to help protect lives and achieve herd immunity.”

Read more …

Not sure it’s a great idea for the FDA to have pissed off Peter Doshi, senior editor at The BMJ, one of the most reputable magazines around. Much more at the original (link).

Does The FDA Think These Data Justify Approval Of A Covid-19 Vaccine? (BMJ)

On 28 July 2021, Pfizer and BioNTech posted updated results for their ongoing phase 3 covid-19 vaccine trial. The preprint came almost a year to the day after the historical trial commenced, and nearly four months since the companies announced vaccine efficacy estimates “up to six months.” But you won’t find 10 month follow-up data here. While the preprint is new, the results it contains aren’t particularly up to date. In fact, the paper is based on the same data cut-off date (13 March 2021) as the 1 April press release, and its topline efficacy result is identical: 91.3% (95% CI 89.0 to 93.2) vaccine efficacy against symptomatic covid-19 through “up to six months of follow-up.” The 20 page preprint matters because it represents the most detailed public account of the pivotal trial data Pfizer submitted in pursuit of the world’s first “full approval” of a coronavirus vaccine from the Food and Drug Administration. It deserves careful scrutiny.

[..] The elephant named “waning immunity”…“Waning immunity” is a known problem for influenza vaccines, with some studies showing near zero effectiveness after just three months, meaning a vaccine taken early may ultimately provide no protection by the time “flu season” arrives some months later. If vaccine efficacy wanes over time, the crucial question becomes what level of effectiveness will the vaccine provide when a person is actually exposed to the virus? Unlike covid vaccines, influenza vaccine performance has always been judged over a full season, not a couple months. And so the recent reports from Israel’s Ministry of Health caught my eye. In early July, they reported that efficacy against infection and symptomatic disease “fell to 64%.” By late July it had fallen to 39% where Delta is the dominant strain. This is very low. For context, the FDA’s expectation is of “at least 50%” efficacy for any approvable vaccine.

Delta may not be responsible Enter Pfizer’s preprint. As an RCT reporting “up to six months of follow-up,” it is notable that evidence of waning immunity was already visible in the data by the 13 March 2021 data cut-off… And it’s hard to imagine how the Delta variant could play a real role here, for 77% of trial participants were from the United States, where Delta was not established until months after data cut-off. Waning efficacy has the potential to be far more than a minor inconvenience; it can dramatically change the risk-benefit calculus.

The “six month” preprint based on the 7% of trial participants who remained blinded at six months Despite the reference to “six month safety and efficacy” in the preprint’s title, the paper only reports on vaccine efficacy “up to six months,” but not from six months. This is not semantics, as it turns out only 7% of trial participants actually reached six months of blinded follow-up (“8% of BNT162b2 recipients and 6% of placebo recipients had ≥6 months follow-up post-dose 2.”) So despite this preprint appearing a year after the trial began, it provides no data on vaccine efficacy past six months, which is the period Israel says vaccine efficacy has dropped to 39%. It is hard to imagine that the <10% of trial participants who remained blinded at six months (which presumably further dwindled after 13 March 2021) could constitute a reliable or valid sample to produce further findings.

Severe disease And on preventing death from covid-19, there are too few data to draw conclusions—a total of three covid-19 related deaths (one on vaccine, two on placebo). There were 29 total deaths during blinded follow-up (15 in the vaccine arm; 14 in placebo). The crucial question, however, is whether the waning efficacy seen in the primary endpoint data also applies to the vaccine’s efficacy against severe disease. Unfortunately, Pfizer’s new preprint does not report the results in a way that allows for evaluating this question.

Approval imminent without data transparency, or even an advisory committee meeting? …But here we are, with FDA reportedly on the verge of granting a marketing license 13 months into the still ongoing, two year pivotal trial, with no reported data past 13 March 2021, unclear efficacy after six months due to unblinding, evidence of waning protection irrespective of the Delta variant, and limited reporting of safety data. (The preprint reports “decreased appetite, lethargy, asthenia, malaise, night sweats, and hyperhidrosis were new adverse events attributable to BNT162b2 not previously identified in earlier reports,” but provides no data tables showing the frequency of these, or other, adverse events.) It’s not helping matters that FDA now says it won’t convene its advisory committee to discuss the data ahead of approving Pfizer’s vaccine. (Last August, to address vaccine hesitancy, the agency had “committed to use an advisory committee composed of independent experts to ensure deliberations about authorization or licensure are transparent for the public.”)

Read more …

“..the jab allows vaccinated individuals to carry unusually high viral loads without becoming ill at first, potentially transforming them into presymptomatic superspreaders.”

Fully Vaccinated Healthcare Workers Carry 251 Times Viral Load (McCullough)

A groundbreaking preprint paper by the prestigious Oxford University Clinical Research Group, published Aug. 10 in The Lancet, includes alarming findings devastating to the COVID vaccine rollout. The study found vaccinated individuals carry 251 times the load of COVID-19 viruses in their nostrils compared to the unvaccinated. While moderating the symptoms of infection, the jab allows vaccinated individuals to carry unusually high viral loads without becoming ill at first, potentially transforming them into presymptomatic superspreaders. This phenomenon may be the source of the shocking post-vaccination surges in heavily vaccinated populations globally. The paper’s authors, Chau et al, demonstrated widespread vaccine failure and transmission under tightly controlled circumstances in a hospital lockdown in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam.

The scientists studied healthcare workers who were unable to leave the hospital for two weeks. The data showed that fully vaccinated workers — about two months after injection with the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine (AZD1222) — acquired, carried and presumably transmitted the Delta variant to their vaccinated colleagues. They almost certainly also passed the Delta infection to susceptible unvaccinated people, including their patients. Sequencing of strains confirmed the workers transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to one another. = This is consistent with the observations in the U.S. from Farinholt and colleagues, and congruent with comments by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conceding COVID-19 vaccines have failed to stop transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

On Feb. 11, the World Health Organization indicated the AZD1222 vaccine efficacy of 63.09% against the development of symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection. The conclusions of the Chau paper support the warnings by leading medical experts that the partial, non-sterilizing immunity from the three notoriously “leaky” COVID-19 vaccines allow carriage of 251 times the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 as compared to samples from the pre-vaccination era in 2020. Thus, we have a key piece to the puzzle explaining why the Delta outbreak is so formidable — fully vaccinated are participating as COVID-19 patients and acting as powerful Typhoid Mary-style super-spreaders of the infection.

Vaccinated individuals are blasting out concentrated viral explosions into their communities and fueling new COVID surges. Vaccinated healthcare workers are almost certainly infecting their coworkers and patients, causing horrendous collateral damage. Continued vaccination will only make this problem worse, particularly among frontline doctors and nurses workers who are caring for vulnerable patients. Health systems should drop vaccine mandates immediately, take stock of COVID-19 recovered workers who are robustly immune to Delta and consider the ramifications of their current vaccinated healthcare workers as potential threats to high risk patients and coworkers.

Read more …

“..prior infection and recovery produces durable and stable immunity in essentially everyone who has a competent immune system..”

FDA Ignores Both Science and Law (Denninger)

So the FDA has “fully approved” the Pfizer jab for Covid. In doing so standing alone they have broken the law and thus have irrevocably destroyed their authority and any reason for anyone to ever do anything based on them ever again. Let me explain. Under black letter law an EUA is illegal if there is an alternative that is considered safe, effective and available. This was the reason the FDA did not (for 18 months!) run the studies and evaluate them on other early-intervention drugs for Covid-19. We all know what they are. I’m living proof they work too, as are millions of others worldwide. But, more-importantly, this “full approval” voids all other vaccine EUAs for Covid-19. That is, under the law the Moderna and J&J instantly became illegal to offer or use within the United States.

The makers can apply for full authorization, of course, but the EUAs are void as of this morning and under black letter law cannot be administered to anyone in the United States as they are now unlicensed and unlawful products in human beings until and unless they are given full approval themselves. No medical provider can offer or administer any other than the Pfizer Covid-19 shot in the United States as of the moment of that approval. You can bet the law will be ignored; note MRNAs stock price this morning. It should have instantly been cut in half. In addition the FDA broke the law itself when it issued the “approval.” The law requires a full hearing and the data from the full set of trials; the trials are not capable of being completed until early 2022 by the original submissions and they deliberately did not hold the hearing. This is a black letter violation of the law as well, but nobody cares.

As for me, I don’t give a crap. I’ve been infected, 98% certain it was Delta (because that’s all that’s circulating right now in the US where the index case I got infected by came from, and I know who it was) and am recovered. I hit it with meds immediately and I’m fine. I know, scientifically, it was Covid-19 and not some other virus as I now have IgG antibodies and did not for the previous 18 months which I know factually as I repeatedly tested myself. There is thus exactly zero medical benefit I can derive from the jabs. I will walk without fear into a Covid-19 ICU unit right now without any PPE on whatsoever.

I have no fear of this virus because as with every other viral infection of note including those that are much more-dangerous than Covid, such as measles, prior infection and recovery produces durable and stable immunity in essentially everyone who has a competent immune system, and I do. Those of you who trust the jabs to be equally effective to an active infection and recovery are free to come with me. I will bet my life that I’m sterile immune to the virus as a result of said infection and recovery. Are you willing to place the same bet, given the many known failures to protect by the shot, including Jesse Jackson and his wife, both of whom are in the hospital with Covid-19 despite being vaccinated in a very public spectacle in January of this year? There you have it.

Read more …

“..the FDA will grant approval on results that were intentionally constructed to produce only one outcome.”

Pfizer and Moderna Lost The Clinical Trial Control Group (CTH)

According to the New York Times and multiple media outlets, Pfizer is expected to get full FDA approval today. “The move would make it the first Covid vaccine to go from emergency use authorization to full FDA approval.” With that in mind, it is worth a reminder that both Pfizer and Moderna stopped the clinical trials the FDA was using in their review: The Moderna and Pfizer vaccine tests were conducted, as customary, with a control group; a group within the trial who were given a placebo and not the test vaccine. However, during the trial -and after the untested vaccines were given emergency use authorization- the vaccine companies conducting the trial decided to break protocol and notify the control group they were not vaccinated. Almost all the control group were then given the vaccine.

Purposefully dissolving the placebo group violates the scientific purpose to test whether the vaccine has any efficacy; any actual benefit and/or safety issues. Without a control group there is nothing to compare the vaccinated group against. According to NPR, the doctors lost the control group in the Johnson County Clinicial Trial (Lexena, Kansas) on purpose: “(Via NPR) […] “Dr. Carlos Fierro, who runs the study there, says every participant was called back after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccine. “During that visit we discussed the options, which included staying in the study without the vaccine,” he says, “and amazingly there were people — a couple of people — who chose that.” He suspects those individuals got spooked by rumors about the vaccine. But everybody else who had the placebo shot went ahead and got the actual vaccine. So now Fierro has essentially no comparison group left for the ongoing study. “It’s a loss from a scientific standpoint, but given the circumstances I think it’s the right thing to do,” he says.

People signing up for these studies were not promised special treatment, but once the FDA authorized the vaccines, their developers decided to offer the shots. Just so we are clear, the final FDA authorization and approval for the vaccines are based on the outcome of these trials. As noted in the example above, the control group was intentionally lost under the auspices of “the right thing to do”, so there is no way for the efficacy, effectiveness or safety of the vaccine itself to be measured. There’s no one left within the control group, of a statistically valid value, to give an adequate comparison of outcomes for vaxxed -vs- non-vaxxed. This is nuts. That NPR article is one to bookmark when people start claiming the vaccination is effective. How can the vaccine not be considered effective when there is no group of non-vaccinated people to compare the results to?

Good grief, the entire healthcare system is operating on a massive hive mindset where science, and the scientific method, is thrown out the window in favor of ideological outcomes and self-fulfilling prophecies. The fact that the researchers and doctors, apparently under the payroll of the pharmaceutical companies that have a vested financial interest in the vaccine outcome, lost the control group on purpose is alarming. Of course, Big Pharma will promote the vaccine as beneficial, and the controlled media will promote that message with a complete disconnect from the clinical trial details, and the FDA will grant approval on results that were intentionally constructed to produce only one outcome.

Read more …

Another video on informed consent is way below. Also from Canada.

Everything You Need to Know About Informed Consent (21CW)

In Canada, informed consent to medical interventions – including vaccines – is the law. The same is true in the US, UK, EU, Australia, and New Zealand. But these governments, along with corrupt drug regulators, are now running roughshod over what were once sacrosanct laws prohibiting misleading and coercive medical procedures, and instead have unleashed a multibillion dollar media campaign of fear and mass-panic designed to pave-over the right to informed consent.

Read more …

“Vaccine A is quite safe, and vaccine B is extremely dangerous. And yet the formula for PRR will produce the same result for vaccine A and B!”

Statistical Fraud in the FDA Vaccine Approval Process (JoshM)

There are several systems for reporting vaccine reactions, including deaths, but the only one available to the public is VAERS. It is incomplete, because it relies on voluntary reporting, there is no incentive to report to VAERS, and it is a cumbersome process. We may compare reports of the COVID vaccines to past years, when there were also hundreds of millions of vaccinations, including annual flu shots and childhood vaccine schedules. The comparison is dramatic. There were more than twice as many deaths related to the COVID vaccines this year as the sum total of all vaccine deaths in the 30-year history of VAERS. Given this safety record, how is there any possibility of approval? Here is where the statistical fraud comes in. [I am grateful to have been alerted to this situation by Matthew Crawford]

The safety criterion they have chosen is an obscure computation called PRR for Proportional Reporting Ratio. As the name implies, it is based on RATIOS of different event types and is utterly blind to the ABSOLUTE RATE of such events. PRR measures the distribution of different kinds of adverse events, e.g. blood clots, heart attacks, and deaths. If those ratios are severely out of line with the great variety of vaccine reactions in the past, PRR would detect that. For example, if the new vaccines caused an extraordinary risk of myocarditis, but everything else was low, then PRR would flag that. But if myocarditis was just one risk among many that have been reported from past vaccines, then PRR would not pick that up.

The real scandal is that PRR is blind to the absolute risk numbers. PRR is defined in such a way as to look for unusual PATTERNS of adverse events, but it is completely insensitive to unusual RATES of adverse events. Of course, it is the rates and not the patterns that are of primary concern, and the PRR is designed NOT to reflect that.

For example, suppose we have 2 vaccines:

Vaccine A has 1 reported death per million vaccinations, 3 reported heart attacks per million, and 20 reported headaches per million.

Vaccine B has 1 reported death per hundred vaccinations, 3 reported heart attacks per hundred, and 20 reported headaches per hundred.

Vaccine A is quite safe, and vaccine B is extremely dangerous. And yet the formula for PRR will produce the same result for vaccine A and B!

Clearly, PRR is not an appropriate criterion for evaluating safety of any particular vaccine. Someone has arranged to cook the books.

Read more …

“Regardless of the anti-science, despicable pieces regularly appearing in those outlets, such as suggesting that actually, masking kids is good for their learning ability.”

The More Masks Fail, The More We Need Them (Ian)

The push for masking, as always, boils down to a combination of incompetence, cowardice, fear, and political pressure. Experts enjoy the ability to be seen as “doing something,” and must never appear to be “anti-mask,” since it would immediately discredit them in the eyes of their peers, the greater scientific community and their ideological compatriots. Politicians want the “get out of jail free” card that masking provides; the opportunity to blame others for poor results. The “it would have worked if you’d all just listened to me” line of defense. The media simply outsources all critical thinking to like-minded ideologues and refuses to acknowledge or take seriously the few brave experts willing to tell the truth.

And as a result, corporations, whose decision makers are exclusively influenced by the same media sources, like The New York Times, follow right along. Regardless of the anti-science, despicable pieces regularly appearing in those outlets, such as suggesting that actually, masking kids is good for their learning ability. But everywhere you look, the cultural groupthink is dramatically failing. Counties and states following the CDC’s new guidance are not succeeding, and those ignoring it are faring no worse. Locations that never removed masks, such as Hawaii and Japan, are seeing their highest numbers of the pandemic, but manage to escape the vitriol and hatred leveled at Ron DeSantis because they’re following orders and implementing what the hive mind of acceptable opinion mandates.


The dramatic, predictable failure resulting from the CDC’s science-ending reversal would, in a sane world, be cause for intellectually honest experts to revisit their guidance and accept that their efforts to “control” infections is always doomed to fail. But naturally, we’re seeing the exact opposite. The more masks fail, the more we need them.

Read more …

One third has said they won’t comply. Maybe this is where the real fight will happen.

Pentagon To Mandate Covid-19 Vaccinations For All Military Personnel (RT)

The Pentagon has said it will update its own guidance on Covid-19 vaccinations, mandating the jab for all military personnel, following the US drug regulator’s decision to fully approve the Pfizer vaccine. Speaking on Monday, US Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby said the military was aware of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to fully approve the Pfizer vaccine for use in people over 16, and was preparing to issue updated guidance to all service personnel. “We’re going to move forward making that vaccine mandatory,” Kirby told reporters. “We’re preparing the guidance to the force right now,” he stated, adding that the exact timetable for mandating the jab was still being worked out. Earlier on Monday, the FDA announced that the Pfizer jab had been fully approved for use in the US.


The shot has been administered under emergency-use authorization since mid-December 2020. The FDA added that the Pfizer vaccine will retain its emergency-use authorization for use in adolescents and for those requiring a third dose due to other health conditions. Earlier in August, the Washington Post reported that around 65% of active-duty military personnel were fully vaccinated, compared to around 59% of eligible Americans. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has previously encouraged all military personnel to get vaccinated against Covid. “To defend this nation, we need a healthy and ready force. I strongly encourage all DoD military and civilian personnel – as well as contractor personnel – to get vaccinated now and for military service members to not wait for the mandate,” Austin stated earlier in August.

Read more …

“I do not expect a staffing shortage,” Porter said.”

NYC Orders 150,000 Teachers & School Staff To Get Vaccinated (ZH)

As the NYT explained, education staffers are the first group of city workers to face a full vaccine mandate. The announcement also opens the door to a broader vaccine mandate of city workers, which the mayor said Monday the city was considering. Last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio issued a mandate for city workers that allowed for those unvaccinated to submit for weekly coronavirus testing. “We know this is going to help ensure that everyone is safe,” Mr. de Blasio said during a news conference on Monday, adding that city schools had extremely low virus transmission last year. The mandate, the mayor said, will help the city “build on that success.”

While the mayor’s push is likely to prove unpopular with many rank-and-file members; the city’s teacher’s unions, and unions representing other DoE staff, have signed off on the new mandate (though they’re still negotiating about what might happen to workers who continue to refuse). UFT President Michael Mulgrew acknowledged that the city had the legal right to impose the mandate, but he told reporters details were still being hashed out. The city announced last month that any teacher who failed to comply with both the vaccination requirement, and the required weekly testing for those who didn’t get the jab, would be suspended without pay.

“While the city is asserting its legal authority to establish this mandate, there are many implementation details, including provisions for medical exceptions, that by law must be negotiated with the U.F.T. and other unions, and if necessary, resolved by arbitration,” Mr. Mulgrew said in a statement. Mayor de Blasio has insisted that even if negotiations stall, the mandate will still be implemented. Meisha Porter, the chancellor of NYC’s schools, said she expects a high level of compliance from school staff on the mandate. “I do not expect a staffing shortage,” Porter said.

Read more …

No clue how serious this is, but it’s a good idea.

Truckers Threaten To Shut Down Australia Due to Covid Insanity (OI)

Australia seems to be in the grips of COVID-induced insanity as people across the country are vigorously protesting against the lockdown measures imposed to curb the spread of the renewed bout of coronavirus outbreak. After violent ruckus witnessed on the streets of major Australian cities, including Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, and dogs shot dead by a rural council in New South Wales to prevent volunteers from travelling during Covid restrictions, Australian truck drivers have threatened to shut down major highways across the country as a mark of protest against Covid lockdowns. Social media websites are awash with a video of a truck driver who said in his video that truck drivers are ‘planning to shut down the country’ to ‘remove the s*** government’.


He further warned the Aussies that their demonstration could end up choking supply chains and urged them to stock up on groceries to get them through the next couple of weeks. “It’s on. The truckies are doing it. The truckies are going to shut down the country,’ the man says in the video. What that means is you need to go shopping now, get what you can for the next week or two, load your fridge, freezers,” the truck driver could be seen saying in the video.

Read more …

“The same progressives who regularly denounce “systemic racism” and “Western imperialism” are now enforcing policies that disproportionately punish minorities and the poor..”

Keeping Fear Alive (Tierney)

Throughout the pandemic, American political and public-health leaders have been following Rahm Emanuel’s classic dictum for power-seeking officials: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Now they’ve adopted a corollary: you never want a crisis to end. So they are prolonging the national misery instead of easing it, which could be done with a few simple strategies. Explain to the public that the virus will never disappear but is no longer a mortal threat to the vast majority of Americans. Encourage the minority still at risk to get vaccinated by honestly discussing who is in jeopardy and what scientists have learned about infections. Promote treatments proven to prevent infection and speed recovery while avoiding unproven treatments and mandates that cause collateral damage and generate mistrust.

Above all, make it clear to Americans that we finally have reason to celebrate: what once seemed an unprecedented danger is now just one of many pathogens that we know how to live with. But the nation’s crisismongers aren’t about to relinquish their hold over the public, so they’ve set new goals that are as unachievable as they are unnecessary and harmful. Making vaccines available to every American adult is no longer sufficient; now the crisis cannot end until the entire population has been vaccinated. Instead of focusing efforts on vaccinating the vulnerable, officials obsess on compelling universal obedience, even if that means squandering vaccines on people who already have acquired natural immunity or are at minimal risk of serious illness.

The same progressives who regularly denounce “systemic racism” and “Western imperialism” are now enforcing policies that disproportionately punish minorities and the poor, both in the United States (the majority of black teenagers and young adults in New York have been banished from much of public life by the city’s new vaccine-passport policy) and in the rest of the world. The hypocrisy was deftly captured in a tweet by Martin Kulldorff, the Harvard epidemiologist: “If you favor university vaccine mandates for low-risk American and European students, when there is not enough vaccine for older high-risk people in Asia, Africa and Latin America, please remove your #BLM tags from your Twitter/Facebook profiles.”

Children are being sentenced to another round of unnecessary mask mandates and probably more school closures based on evidence-free warnings from Anthony Fauci and others that the Delta variant will be more deadly to them than the original virus. While the variant is more infectious, the evidence does not show it to be any more lethal. In fact, the current mortality rate among American children with Covid is lower than it was last year—and last year many more children died of the flu than of Covid. One of the most thorough studies, in England, shows that the survival rate for those under 18 with Covid is 99.995 percent. But instead of emphasizing these reassuring statistics, public-health officials like Jerome Adams, the surgeon general, keep looking for new ways to scare parents and children.

“I’m an anesthesiologist,” he tweeted last weekend. “And a dad. And I can assure you in both capacities that your child will be far more comfortable if they’re in a face mask, than on a ventilator. If you’re making a choice on behalf of a child, please choose based on their comfort, vs yours.” He offered no new evidence that children are at heightened risk from the virus, much less any evidence that a mask would make any difference, but he did make sure to include a gruesome photograph of a child on a ventilator. It was a new low in public-health demagoguery, but unfortunately not so different from the fearmongering of other officials, the press, and social-media platforms. They lament that a minority of the public remains reluctant to get vaccinated without recognizing that their own tactics are a likely a chief cause of this reluctance. They have been misleading people for so long—and censoring challenges to their misinformation—that it’s no wonder polls show that an overwhelming majority of unvaccinated Americans say they don’t trust Fauci or the CDC.

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“Britain and France managed to get their nationals out last week, only to be rebuked by American brass for “making us look bad.” That helped, I’m sure.”

Throwdowns and Showdowns (Kunstler)

Notice, there are two sets of hostages in this phase of what looks like an engineered US collapse: the thousands of stranded Americans who can’t get out of Afghanistan thanks to the history-rockin’ ineptitude of “Joe Biden,” Tony Blinken, and General Mark Milley, and the millions of We-the-People back home whose minds are hostage to the narratives concocted in a shadowland of sinister governance. Welcome to a week of throwdowns and showdowns, a force majeure of mind change. A strange paralysis in the Pentagon has prevented the use of US power to clear an escape corridor to Kabul’s airport and establish order in the facility — this, after the tactically mystifying decision to abandon the US Bagram military airfield, a good twenty miles outside of festering Kabul, and surrounded by more easily-securable empty desert.

Britain and France managed to get their nationals out last week, only to be rebuked by American brass for “making us look bad.” That helped, I’m sure. And then how long can the stranded Americans even stay hidden and alive? They have to eat. Either they come out of their hidey-holes and get to some market, or they would (theoretically) have to send some Afghani servants to fetch them supplies, But, what Afghani in his right mind would want to be caught in service to the Americans by the Taliban? That quandary must have a pretty short time-horizon on it. Standing by to see how it works out….

Next in this week’s throwdown parade is the FDA’s imminent approval of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, without any of the usual extensive trials. How does that even happen, with an efficacy rate of 39 percent maximum and a runaway train of vicious side effects ranging from brain and heart damage to infertility? The so-called mRNA “vaccines” are also implicated in the ongoing mutation of the disease, producing a cavalcade of variants. Is that, perhaps, on-purpose, to keep the pandemic going, preventing it from burning-out?

Read more …

 

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Jul 302021
 
 July 30, 2021  Posted by at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  122 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Van Gogh painting sunflowers 1888

 

CDC: Delta Variant Spreads As Easily As Chickenpox, Causes More Severe Infection (CNN)
CDC Expected To Announce Friday That Vaccines Don’t Work on Delta Variant (CTH)
Health Officials Less Confident About Covid Vaccine Due To Delta Variant (JTN)
Gottlieb: Delta Surge May Be Reversing In Hot Spots (ZH)
Antibody Evolution after SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination (bioRxiv)
Why Is the FDA Attacking a Safe, Effective Drug? (WSJ)
US Capitol Police Walk Back Order To Arrest Those Without A Mask (JTN)
Biden Mandates All Federal Workers Must Be Vaccinated… Except Postal Workers (ZH)
CDC To Drop ‘Gold Standard’ PCR Test (JTN)
German Court Tells Facebook To Reinstate Deleted Posts (Pol.eu)

 

 

Things are shifting, and everyone’s busy saving their faulty faces. It’s about time to decree that only the vaccinated need to wear masks, but they’re not quite there yet.

 

 

Those tests? Whenever you feel like it, Pfizer. No hurry.

 

 

FDA approval in September? That’s 2024, right?!

 

 

 

 

Fleming vax or not risk reduction 0.8-1.25%

 

 

If true, it would be game changing (a first?!). A virus that becomes more transmissible and more lethal at the same time. For now, don’t buy it.

As for those MSNBC interviews, that’s where most people get “informed”. Tragic.

CDC: Delta Variant Spreads As Easily As Chickenpox, Causes More Severe Infection (CNN)

The Delta coronavirus variant surging across the United States appears to cause more severe illness and spread as easily as chickenpox, according to an internal document from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The document — a slide presentation — outlines unpublished data that shows fully vaccinated people might spread the Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky confirmed the authenticity of the document, which was first reported by The Washington Post. “I think people need to understand that we’re not crying wolf here. This is serious,” she told CNN. “It’s one of the most transmissible viruses we know about. Measles, chickenpox, this — they’re all up there.”

The CDC is scheduled to publish data Friday that will back Walensky’s controversial decision to change guidance for fully vaccinated people. She said Tuesday the CDC was recommending that even fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors in places where transmission of the virus is sustained or high.[..]The presentation also cites three reports that indicate the Delta variant — originally known as B.1.617.2 — might cause more severe disease. The CDC, the document advises, should “acknowledge the war has changed.” It recommends vaccine mandates and universal mask requirements. The virus is once against surging across the US — especially in areas where fewer people are vaccinated. The US averaged more than 61,300 new daily cases over the last week — an average that’s generally risen since the country hit a 2021 low of 11,299 daily cases on June 22, according to Johns Hopkins University data. “The number of cases we have now is higher than any number we had on any given day last summer,” Walensky told CNN.

WaPo

Read more …

Nothing to do with the very very effective vaccines of course.

CDC Expected To Announce Friday That Vaccines Don’t Work on Delta Variant (CTH)

The White House would never credit Donald Trump with the vaccine rollout unless there was something negative about the vaccine that is going to hit the newswires; that is a no-brainer. That baseline is why CTH said two months ago to watch for the moment when the White House credits Trump with the vaccine, because that’s the moment when: (1) the vaccine was going to be identified as dangerous; and/or (2) reports would show the vaccine did not work. Today the White House credited President Trump with the vaccine:

….And right on cue, the late-evening reporting indicates that tomorrow the CDC will announce the vaccine doesn’t work (against the Delta variant). Hence, the need for masks, social distancing and/or possibly lockdowns 2.0. Reminder, when the Intelligence Branch needs to get the public relations engaged, they use the New York Times. [New York Times] – […] New research showed that vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant carry tremendous amounts of the virus in the nose and throat, she said in an email responding to questions from The New York Times. The finding contradicts what scientists had observed in vaccinated people infected with previous versions of the virus, who mostly seemed incapable of infecting others. That conclusion dealt Americans a heavy blow: People with so-called breakthrough infections — cases that occur despite full vaccination — of the Delta variant may be just as contagious as unvaccinated people, even if they have no symptoms.”

Bottom line of this narrative shift… vaccinations don’t work. Everything goes back to square one. Blame Trump, not us. There is also data showing that COVID hospitalizations offer no distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated; and in the example of LA county, the percentage of vaccinated people hospitalized with COVID is identical to the percentage of vaccinated people in the general population. [70% of population vaccinated, 70% of COVID hospitalization patients are vaccinated.] The vaccine offers no benefit from the standing of hospitalization… or so it appears.

In San Francisco, 77% of the population is vaccinated and 83% of the COVID hospitalizations at University of California SF Hospital are previously vaccinated [link]. Again, highlighting the vaccine offers no benefit from the standpoint of hospitalization. Additionally, there’s data from a recent Pfizer study where 44,000 patients were studied. 22,000 were given the vaccine, and 22,000 received the placebo. The results amid both groups was almost identical.

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She keeps at it still: “..in rare occasions, some vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant after vaccination may be contagious..”

What will the message be tomorrow?

Health Officials Less Confident About Covid Vaccine Due To Delta Variant (JTN)

Public health confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine appears to be waning as officials warn of enhanced danger — even for vaccinated individuals — from the “Delta variant” of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. For most of the past year officials have claimed that vaccinations are the only viable path back to normalcy and away from lockdowns and other aggressive mitigation measures. “Look at the folks in your community who have gotten vaccinated and are getting back to living their lives — their full lives,” President Joe Biden said at a May press conference, arguing that the vaccine was “going to help them and their loved ones be safe, get our businesses open again, and get us back to normal.”

The rollout of the vaccines starting last year and continuing throughout the spring and summer of this year has been hailed as the driving force behind the reopening of the economy and the ending of masking mandates and similar restrictions. Yet over the past week the tone from public officials has grown increasingly grim, with leaders now appearing to doubt that the vaccine is sufficient to forestall COVID transmission and potential catastrophe due to the rise of the Delta variant. A marked shift was seen this week from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reversed its earlier masking guidance and claimed that fully vaccinated individuals should wear masks indoors in areas with high COVID transmission.

The Delta variant “behaves uniquely differently from past strains of the virus that cause COVID-19,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a press conference this week. “Information on the Delta variant from several states and other countries indicate that in rare occasions, some vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and spread the virus to others,” she claimed. “This new science is worrisome and unfortunately warrants an update to our recommendations.” White House coronavirus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci signaled a similar shift during an interview with NPR when he called the Delta variant “a different virus.” The Delta variant “is much more capable of transmitting from people to people,” Fauci claimed, stating that when even fully vaccinated people contract the virus “they are capable of transmitting the infection to someone else.”

The shift from strong confidence in the vaccine to the masking of fully vaccinated individuals comes after several weeks of steadily rising COVID-19 cases throughout the United States. Experts have feared that the Delta variant could cause a surge in hospitalizations and deaths, leading to catastrophic scenarios of the kinds hypothesized at the outset of the pandemic last year.

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But wait, wasn’t it as contagious as ebola?

Gottlieb: Delta Surge May Be Reversing In Hot Spots (ZH)

While hospitalizations and deaths are clearly higher in areas where vaccination rates are lower, rates are still well below their levels from just a few months ago. And although Dr. Anthony Fauci would have you believe that Delta might cause the end of the world as we know it, his isn’t the only view on the matter. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former director of the FDA, believes delta will peak within the next two to three weeks. And after breaking the data down to the regional level, Bloomberg has apparently spotted some trends that suggest as Delta’s global conquest has been characterized by “hyperspeed spikes in infections that eased dramatically after about two months.”

s The first US outbreaks that caught officials’ eye were in Missouri and Arkansas, and they both started in earnest around the end of May, per BBG. They noted that the rest of the country will be keeping a close eye on both states (along with a handful of others, including California). The rest of the US will be watching those states closely as infections spread. The cases are prompting authorities to reconsider masking and other public-health measures, but many state and local governments are doing so gingerly and only after outbreaks are well underway. In Florida’s Miami-Dade County, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Wednesday that she would require masks again at indoor county facilities such as libraries.

Bloomberg also cited the following tweet from Dr. Gottlieb where he explained how Rt, a virus’s effective reproductive number, plays into forecasts of the virus’s spread. The logic behind it is pretty simple: If Rt falls below 1, then the virus’s spread should start to slow. Gottlieb cited data from covidestim, a project with contributors from Yale School of Public Health, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Stanford Medicine, showing the Rt rate in the worst hit states is already trending toward 1. When the numbers did this in the UK, seen as being just a few weeks ahead of the US, cases quickly started falling off.

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The conclusion is simple: “..memory antibodies selected over time by natural infection have greater potency and breadth than antibodies elicited by vaccination.”.

But they still need to package it in jargon.

Antibody Evolution after SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination (bioRxiv)

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection produces B-cell responses that continue to evolve for at least one year. During that time, memory B cells express increasingly broad and potent antibodies that are resistant to mutations found in variants of concern. As a result, vaccination of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) convalescent individuals with currently available mRNA vaccines produces high levels of plasma neutralizing activity against all variants tested. Here, we examine memory B cell evolution 5 months after vaccination with either Moderna (mRNA-1273) or Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2) mRNA vaccines in a cohort of SARS-CoV-2 naive individuals.


Between prime and boost, memory B cells produce antibodies that evolve increased neutralizing activity, but there is no further increase in potency or breadth thereafter. Instead, memory B cells that emerge 5 months after vaccination of naive individuals express antibodies that are equivalent to those that dominate the initial response. We conclude that memory antibodies selected over time by natural infection have greater potency and breadth than antibodies elicited by vaccination. These results suggest that boosting vaccinated individuals with currently available mRNA vaccines would produce a quantitative increase in plasma neutralizing activity but not the qualitative advantage against variants obtained by vaccinating convalescent individuals.

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The WSJ goes ivermectin. Next up NYT, then CNN?

Why Is the FDA Attacking a Safe, Effective Drug? (WSJ)

The Food and Drug Administration claims to follow the science. So why is it attacking ivermectin, a medication it certified in 1996? Earlier this year the agency put out a special warning that “you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19.” The FDA’s statement included words and phrases such as “serious harm,” “hospitalized,” “dangerous,” “very dangerous,” “seizures,” “coma and even death” and “highly toxic.” Any reader would think the FDA was warning against poison pills. In fact, the drug is FDA-approved as a safe and effective antiparasitic. Ivermectin was developed and marketed by Merck & Co. while one of us (Mr. Hooper) worked there years ago.

William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering and developing avermectin, which Mr. Campbell and associates modified to create ivermectin. Ivermectin is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines. Merck has donated four billion doses to prevent river blindness and other diseases in Africa and other places where parasites are common. A group of 10 doctors who call themselves the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance have said ivermectin is “one of the safest, low-cost, and widely available drugs in the history of medicine.” Ivermectin fights 21 viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19. A single dose reduced the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in cells by 99.8% in 24 hours and 99.98% in 48 hours, according to a June 2020 study published in the journal Antiviral Research.

Some 70 clinical trials are evaluating the use of ivermectin for treating Covid-19. The statistically significant evidence suggests that it is safe and works for both treating and preventing the disease. In 115 patients with Covid-19 who received a single dose of ivermectin, none developed pneumonia or cardiovascular complications, while 11.4% of those in the control group did. Fewer ivermectin patients developed respiratory distress (2.6% vs. 15.8%); fewer required oxygen (9.6% vs. 45.9%); fewer required antibiotics (15.7% vs. 60.2%); and fewer entered intensive care (0.1% vs. 8.3%). Ivermectin-treated patients tested negative faster, in four days instead of 15, and stayed in the hospital nine days on average instead of 15. Ivermectin patients experienced 13.3% mortality compared with 24.5% in the control group.

Moreover, the drug can help prevent Covid-19. One 2020 article in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications looked at what happened after the drug was given to family members of confirmed Covid-19 patients. Less than 8% became infected, versus 58.4% of those untreated.Despite the FDA’s claims, ivermectin is safe at approved doses. Out of four billion doses administered since 1998, there have been only 28 cases of serious neurological adverse events, according to an article published this year in the American Journal of Therapeutics. The same study found that ivermectin has been used safely in pregnant women, children and infants.

Read more …

Fiddling with Nancy’s new hobby.

US Capitol Police Walk Back Order To Arrest Those Without A Mask (JTN)

Capitol police Thursday night walked back a memo that ordered officers to deny entry and possibly arrest those who enter the United States House of Representatives who are not wearing masks after mask mandates were reintroduced earlier this week. “Regarding the House mask rule, there is no reason it should ever come to someone being arrested. Anyone who does not follow the rule will be asked to wear a mask or leave the premises. The Department’s requirements for officers to wear masks is for their health and safety,” the USCP said in a statement Thursday night.


On Wednesday, newly appointed Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger ordered officers to enforce new mask mandates in the House, including denial of entry and even arrest. “If a visitor or staff member fails to wear a mask after a request is made to do so, the visitor or staff shall be denied entry to the House Office Buildings or House-side of the U.S. Capitol,” Manger said Wednesday. “Any person who fails to either comply or leave the premises after being asked to do so would be subject to an arrest for Unlawful Entry.”

Read more …

They must be vaccinated so they spread more virus. A Chinese study claims the viral load is 1,000 times higher.

Biden Mandates All Federal Workers Must Be Vaccinated… Except Postal Workers (ZH)

Earlier in the week Biden suggested that those who are yet to be vaccinated are “sowing enormous confusion.” “We have a pandemic because of the unvaccinated, and they’re sowing enormous confusion,” Biden said. “And there’s only one thing we know for sure, if those other 100 million people got vaccinated, we’d be in a very different world. So get vaccinated. If you haven’t, you’re not nearly as smart as I said you were.” And now he has gone to ’11’ on the ‘your body, no choice’ amplifier, saying tonight that he’ll require federal workers to prove they’ve been vaccinated against Covid-19 or wear masks and submit to frequent coronavirus testing. Additionally, the rules will cover millions of federal workers, including the military and on-site contractors.

“What I’m trying to do is keep people safe,” Biden said Thursday at the White House. “If in fact you’re unvaccinated, you present a problem to yourself, to your family and to those with whom you work.” Biden also asked his team to take steps to apply similar standards to all federal contractors and encourage private sector employers to follow the same approach. There’s just one thing… the federal worker mandate does not apply to postal workers? What do postal workers know about the science that Biden doesn’t? We don’t know, but dare we mention it could be related to the 220,000-member strong union’s leaders waiting to be negotiated with. As The Epoch Times’ Isabel van Brugen detailed earlier,

“The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) has said that it opposes mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, amid reports that the White House is considering so-called vaccine passports as a condition of employment for federal employees. The union, which represents over 220,000 postal workers, released a statement late Wednesday saying that while it will encourage postal workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19, it is “not the role of the federal government to mandate vaccinations for the employees we represent.” “Issues related to vaccinations and testing for COVID-19 in the workplace must be negotiated with the APWU. At this time the APWU opposes the mandating of COVID-19 vaccinations in relation to U.S. postal workers,” the statement said.

Read more …

Not a word about the flu.

CDC To Drop ‘Gold Standard’ PCR Test (JTN)

PCR tests, long hailed as the “gold standard” in detecting SARS-Cov-2 cases, will be dropped by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the beginning of next year. Polymerase chain reaction tests have been a mainstay of the U.S. and global response to COVID-19 since early in 2020, but health officials have warned the diagnostic tool poses a risk of false-positive results. The test works by amplifying a biological sample through successive cycles until a virus — if it’s present in the assay — can be detected by the testing machine. The CDC announced this month that it would be withdrawing its request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the emergency use authorization of the test. The agency urged laboratories to “begin their transition to another FDA-authorized COVID-19 test.”

CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund told Just the News that the agency was discontinuing its support for the test “given the availability of commercial options for clinical diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection, including multiplexed … and high-throughput options.” “Although the CDC 2019 Novel Coronavirus … Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel met an important unmet need when it was developed and deployed and has not demonstrated any performance issues, the demand for this test has declined with the emergence of other higher-throughput and multiplexed assays,” she said via email. Those risks have been acknowledged by multiple prominent public health figures, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

In a July 2020 interview on an infectious disease podcast, Fauci warned that the sensitive PCR tests might, if allowed to progress through too many amplification cycles, return a “positive” result when it was actually just detecting “dead nucleotides.” The World Health Organization earlier this year warned in a medical product alert that PCR tests carry with them the risk of “false positives” because the test might only be picking up small fragments of the virus via heavy amplification. “[D]isease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases,” the alert stated. “This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.”

Read more …

“We welcome the ruling of the Court, which upholds the principle that platforms like ours are allowed to remove hate speech according to company policies and block the respective user accounts,” said a Facebook spokesperson.

German Court Tells Facebook To Reinstate Deleted Posts (Pol.eu)

Germany’s Federal Court ruled Thursday that Facebook had to reinstate racist comments because it had improperly removed them. In its ruling, the Karlsruhe-based court said that while Facebook had the right to decide what stays on or off the platform, it needs to be more forthcoming with users on how it does so. The court found that the social media company did not inform two users that it had removed their posts. It added that the company should have also informed and given users an opportunity to respond before suspending them from its platform. The decision sets a major precedent for how social media companies police content on their platforms, likely giving a boost to EU lawmakers in Brussels, who are pushing to add further obligations on social media companies.

It also upends a years-long status quo whereby platforms were effectively free to develop and implement content moderation policies on their own, which critics say has resulted in a lack of transparency, information, and potential recourse for the users. The case in question is from 2018, when Facebook removed posts in which two German users attacked migrants because it said the posts violated its policy on hate speech, and then suspended the users’ accounts for several days. The users complained that the posts’ removal was a violation of free speech. The court said while Facebook was entitled to set strict content rules banning hateful speech and to block users, the way it implemented its content moderation policy was not proper.

“Provisions in general terms and conditions are ineffective if they unreasonably disadvantage the contractual partner of the user contrary to the requirements of good faith,” said the court. Facebook will not be allowed to delete the posts again after they are reinstated. “We welcome the ruling of the Court, which upholds the principle that platforms like ours are allowed to remove hate speech according to company policies and block the respective user accounts,” said a Facebook spokesperson.

Read more …

 

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Tucker Walensky

 

 

Fauci about delta variant and children…

 

 

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Jul 292021
 
 July 29, 2021  Posted by at 9:19 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  111 Responses »


Paul Gauguin The Vision after the Sermon (Jacob wrestling with the Angel) 1888

 

The Vaccine Causes The Virus To Be More Dangerous – Malone (WR)
USA Today Scrubs Passage Suggesting Vaccinated May Spread More Virus (Becker)
California COVID Cases Rising In Most Heavily Vaccinated Counties (ZH)
Ruin Them (Denninger)
Pfizer Suggests Third Dose Of Vaccine ‘Strongly’ Boosts Protection (CNN)
Latest Data Show Efficacy Of Pfizer Vaccine Falls To 84% After 6 Months (ZH)
New US Mask Guidance Prompted By Evidence Vaccinated Can Spread Delta (G.)
CDC Head Says New Mask Guidance Could Help Tame Delta Outbreak In ‘Weeks’ (F.)
Gottlieb: US Will Be Through Delta Wave In 2 Or 3 Weeks (Hill)
US Reports More Than 100,000 New Coronavirus Cases (BNO)
Dr. Pierre Kory’s Medical Lecture for Physicians and Citizens of Malaysia (O.)
Omaha Doctor Sees Tremendous Success with Ivermectin as Early Treatment (TSN)
The Noble Lies of COVID-19 (Slate)
The Vaccine Aristocrats (Taibbi)
NIH Dumped Millions Into Chinese Entities To Study Infectious Diseases (DC)
Will Washington Stop China From Buying Up Farmland? (JTN)
Assange Attorney Accuses Ecuador Of Foul Play (RT)

 

 

A tour of more mainstream news today. If only because it makes clear we’re wasting so much time talking about whatever the narrative is, but what has already been well debunked. We need our focus. If you need three shots of something, it’s not a vaccine. Doesn’t even matter if in the end it works. Which in this case it doesn’t. We’re getting dragged back into conversations we should have long left behind.

 

 

Vanden Bossche

 

 

 

 

Fleming Delta

 

 

 

 

Weinstein Long term plan

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take these 10 minutes. Yes, it’s Bannon, but at least he lets Malone speak.

The Vaccine Causes The Virus To Be More Dangerous – Malone (WR)

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It’s out.

USA Today Scrubs Passage Suggesting Vaccinated May Spread More Virus (Becker)

“NBC News, citing unnamed officials aware of the decision, reported it comes after new data suggests vaccinated individuals could have higher levels of virus and infect others amid the surge of cases driven by the delta variant of the coronavirus,” the USA Today reported in a passage that was later scrubbed from an article. A screenshot from the article and an online archive of the passage points out the surfacing evidence.The story from the USA Today drops the reference to NBC News, but nonetheless corroborates the news: “CDC says vaccinated people may transmit virus, recommends masks indoors.”


“CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said new data shows the delta variant, which accounts for more than 80% of the new infections in the U.S., behaves ‘uniquely differently’ from its predecessors and could make vaccinated people infectious,” the article notes. “Information on the delta variant from several states and other countries indicates that in rare occasions some vaccinated people infected with the delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and spread the virus to others,” Walensky said in announcing new guidance, which reverses a CDC recommendation in May. “This new science is worrisome and unfortunately warrants an update to our recommendation.”

NBC News reported on the CDC guidance reversal on Monday. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Tuesday that fully vaccinated people begin wearing masks indoors again in places with high Covid-19 transmission rates,” NBC News reported. “The agency is also recommending kids wear masks in schools this fall.” “Federal health officials still believe fully vaccinated individuals represent a very small amount of transmission,” the report continued. “Still, some vaccinated people could be carrying higher levels of the virus than previously understood and potentially transmit it to others.”

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It’s fun to see them all bend themselves into pretzels to “explain” how they were not wrong when they were.

California COVID Cases Rising In Most Heavily Vaccinated Counties (ZH)

Some might have been surprised to see California on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s map of high-risk areas where the new federal indoor mask mandates must be obeyed. The Golden State was deemed more high risk than Texas. Indeed, scientists are finding that despite its high vaccination rates, California is seeing more COVID cases than it should. California and its big coastal cities have embraced vaccines in their effort to beat back the COVID pandemic. But a Bay Area News Group analysis shows that not only are cases rising fast, they are rising in areas where there are more fully vaccinated people. Some of these counties have both among the highest vaccination rates, and the highest new-case rates.

Notice that five of these counties have both a higher percentage of their eligible residents fully vaccinated and a higher average daily case rate than the statewide average. They include: LA, San Diego, Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco. The five counties with falling case rates are Modoc, Glenn, Lassen, Del Norte, San Benito, and they, coincidentally, have below-average vaccination rates. As to what might be causing this, experts point to two things: the extraordinary ease with which the virus’ now-dominant delta strain spreads, and the fact that no vaccine offers complete protection.


“I am not so surprised that transmission rates are not neatly tracking immunization rates,” said Dr. Stephen Luby, a medical professor specializing in infectious diseases at Stanford University. “There are a number of issues that contribute to transmission,” Luby said. “In high density urban settings, for example, even with a higher level of vaccine coverage, there can still be a lot of exposure to unvaccinated folks and potentially to folks who are vaccinated but are asymptomatically shedding the delta variant.” Reports of the vaccines’ effectiveness against the delta variant have been mixed. In Israel, the Ministry of Health suspects the protection afforded by the Pfizer jab might be as low as 64%.

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“Unfortunately the so-called “public health” authorities have destroyed — not just damaged, but destroyed — their own credibility.”

Ruin Them (Denninger)

If you go into the hospital for any reason they test you. Why? Because if you’re positive they want their magic $13,000 Biden Money (formerly Trump money) if you’re on Medicare and Medicaid for treating a “Covid case.” Biden is still continuing this bull**** no matter why you’re there. Chest pain? Covid! Oh, never mind the heart attack. So are the “hospitalized” actually hospitalized for Covid or is Tennessee counting anyone in the hospital who tested positive irrespective of the reason for their admission? This particular game has been run since March of 2020 and nobody has put a stop to it because they’re making money from it — lots of money. Never mind that these jabs are not behaving like a vaccine. US Code: “The term “vaccine” means any substance designed to be administered to a human being for the prevention of 1 or more diseases.”

The data is that these jabs do not prevent disease. They also do not prevent transmission of disease. In fact they appear to, if you get a breakthrough case, make transmission more likely in that the Ct data from these miners shows equal or lower values on balance in the vaccinated cohort with one sample at Ct22! Reminder: The lower the Ct the more virus you have in your body. Now granted this is a small group — very small. But it is extremely concerning that the lowest Ct recorded among these cases was a fully-vaccinated person. Where is the data from the state labs and CDC on these “breakthroughs” and their Ct numbers generally? It’s not being reported. I bet you can guess why not without needing more than one guess.

This appears to be confirmed as something that does indeed happen by the reported “super-spreading” person who (1) was fully-vaccinated, (2) infected more than 60 other people and (3) most of those whom he gave it to were also vaccinated. He obviously was an extremely-efficient emitter of virus! The only remaining argument for the jabs is that they make a personal severe outcome less likely. Here the data is somewhat more-reassuring but the adverse effect profile of the shots is not reassuring at all, it is being deliberately glossed over, and as a result the question as to whether or not to take them is a deeply personal decision that must be informed by your personal medical status coupled with intentional deception on those advocating for the jabs.

How in the hell do you make an informed decision under those circumstances? Unfortunately the so-called “public health” authorities have destroyed — not just damaged, but destroyed — their own credibility. Tennessee’s Department of Health proved themselves liars with nothing more than public data. So have others. I have multiple reported sets of data from individual practices where the percentage of unvaccinated people presenting with Covid-19 symptoms is lower than the percentage of unvaccinated people in the population of that specific area. In other words the data is that the jabs not only do not prevent you from getting the virus at all but in fact may ENHANCE the risk of infection and this, incidentally, voids the argument that the jabs are a vaccine from a LEGAL standpoint.

Read more …

As soon as you talk about a third -or even a second- dose, you’re no longer talking about a vaccine.

Pfizer Suggests Third Dose Of Vaccine ‘Strongly’ Boosts Protection (CNN)

A third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine can “strongly” boost protection against the Delta variant — beyond the protection afforded by the standard two doses, new data released by Pfizer on Wednesday suggests. The data posted online suggest that levels of antibodies that can target the Delta variant grow fivefold in people 18 to 55 who get a third dose of the vaccine.Among people ages 65 to 85, the Pfizer data suggest that antibody levels that should protect against Delta grow 11-fold more than following a second dose.The data, which involved tests of 23 people, have not yet been peer-reviewed or published. It’s not clear if boosted antibody levels actually correlate to better protection, or if that extra protection is even needed.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the current vaccines protect people well against all the common variants. During a company earnings call on Wednesday morning, Dr. Mikael Dolsten, who leads worldwide research, development and medical for Pfizer, called the new data on a third dose of vaccine “encouraging.” “Receiving a third dose more than six months after vaccination, when protection may be beginning to wane, was estimated to potentially boost the neutralizing antibody titers in participants in this study to up to 100 times higher post-dose three compared to pre-dose three,” Dolsten said in prepared remarks. “These preliminary data are very encouraging as Delta continues to spread.” The data also show that antibody levels are much higher against the original coronavirus variant and the Beta variant, first identified in South Africa, after a third dose.


Separately, Pfizer and its partner BioNtech released new safety and efficacy data for their coronavirus vaccine Wednesday, and said it shows protection holds up for at least six months, although it may start to wane slightly towards the end of that time. The pre-print paper, posted Wednesday to the online server medrxiv.org, updates results from Pfizer’s trial involving 44,000 volunteers around the world. It found the overall efficacy was about 91% during the six months. Vaccine efficacy against severe Covid-19 was about 97%, the data show. The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed nor published in a journal.

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Again, not a vaccine. And do remember RRR vs ARR numbers.

Latest Data Show Efficacy Of Pfizer Vaccine Falls To 84% After 6 Months (ZH)

As pressure builds for the FDA to simply ‘get on with it’ and issue full approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna jabs, it looks like the people responsible for deciding whether vaccines are safe and effective are finally coming around to the reality that those vaccines aren’t as effective against the delta strain as they had once hoped. Despite months of insisting that the opposite was true, the FDA has found that the efficacy of the jabs has fallen to 84% over six months, according to new data released Wednesday. Conveniently, STAT News, which broke the story about the data, reported that the lower efficacy would likely bolster Pfizer’s case for approval of a third dose.

Per the data, which has been released to outside scientists, the ongoing study, which enrolled more than 44K volunteers, found that the vaccine’s efficacy appeared to decline by an average of 6% every two months after administration. Efficacy peaked at more than 96% within two months of vaccination and slipped to 84% after six months. The overall efficacy against severe disease was a still considerable 97% (though that’s still not 100%). Unsurprisingly, STAT lined up a few talking heads to plug the numbers. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told STAT that the results were “very reassuring.” The potential need for booster shots is tied to the number of fully vaccinated people who develop severe disease, Offit said.


That number is just 3% lower after six months, suggesting two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine offers adequate protection. Earlier, Pfizer boosted its fiscal year revenue forecast for its vaccine business. Perhaps these data offer some insight into that decision. Of course, there’s reason to believe that number might be even lower than the 97%. Israel’s Ministry of Health recently found that the Pfizer vaccine is only 39% effective at combating delta, down from 64% according to earlier Israeli data intended to measure the efficacy against the delta variant. Pfizer is already shipping jabs to Israel, which is preparing to start doling out booster shots to residents deemed vulnerable to COVID. For whatever reason, the data released Wednesday doesn’t directly address the delta variant.

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Aka the vaccines don’t work. A spade, a spade.

New US Mask Guidance Prompted By Evidence Vaccinated Can Spread Delta (G.)

The CDC revised its mask guidance on Tuesday to recommend fully vaccinated Americans wear masks in “public indoor settings” with “substantial and high transmission”, a shift from its earlier guidance issued on 13 May, which said vaccinated individuals did not need to wear masks in most indoor settings. The move came as Joe Biden said requiring all federal workers to get a coronavirus vaccine is “under consideration” as the Delta variant surges in the US. Some local and state leaders, including New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, and the California governor, Gavin Newsom, have already announced such mandates for their government employees.

Walensky also spoke on Wednesday about the threat of Covid-19 to children. “If you look at the mortality rate of Covid, just this past year for children, it’s more than twice the mortality rate that we see in influenza in a given year,” she said. On Tuesday the CDC changed its advice and now recommends that fully vaccinated people living with vulnerable household members, such as those who are immunocompromised and children, wear masks in indoor public spaces. In addition, the agency recommended everyone in K-12 schools wear masks, “including teachers, staff, students and visitors, regardless of vaccination status”, Walensky said in a press briefing on Tuesday.

“In recent days I have seen new scientific data from recent outbreak investigations showing that the Delta variant behaves uniquely differently from past strains of the virus that cause Covid-19,” Walensky said on Tuesday, referring to scientists’ discovery of the Delta strain shedding as actively in breakthrough infections as it does in unvaccinated individuals, despite the rarity of breakthrough cases. For months Covid cases, deaths and hospitalizations were falling steadily, but the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus has fueled steep rises in case numbers, particularly among unvaccinated Americans and amid struggles with disinformation and resistance, particularly on the political right.

“Nobody wants to go backward but you have to deal with the facts on the ground, and the facts on the ground are that it’s a pretty scary time and there are a lot of vulnerable people,” Robert Wachter, chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told the Washington Post. “I think the biggest thing we got wrong was not anticipating that 30% of the country would choose not to be vaccinated.”

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Unfortunately, there are still plenty Americans who believe this nonsense.

CDC Head Says New Mask Guidance Could Help Tame Delta Outbreak In ‘Weeks’ (F.)

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CBS on Wednesday she believes the new mask guidance from her agency along with a rise in vaccinations could halt the current escalation of Covid-19 cases in the U.S. in “a couple of weeks,” though some critics are already expressing doubt that the CDC’s recommendations will be followed in the worst-hit places. Walensky appeared on CBS This Morning a day after her agency announced it was reversing course and recommending that all people wear masks—regardless of vaccination status—in parts of the country with “high” or “substantial” rates of transmission of coronavirus.


She touted the new guidance during her Wednesday interview as a crucial measure that follows new information about so-called breakthrough infections and has the potential to help with quickly mitigating the country’s current virus surge. “If we get people vaccinated who are not yet vaccinated, if we mask in the interim, we can halt this in just a couple of weeks,” said the CDC head. Walensky also said she hopes more stringent mask-wearing guidelines and other measures won’t be necessary in the coming weeks, but her agency “will follow the science.” “We can halt the chain of transmission,” Walensky said. “We can do something if we unify together.”

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What a coincidence. Also in weeks.

Note: Gottlieb is a Pfizer board member. But Delta waning will have nothing to do with their products.

Remember: “India, where Delta Variant began? Deaths down 92% since its May peak, cases down 91% since then, too. One of the lowest vaccination rates in the world, btw.”

Gottlieb: US Will Be Through Delta Wave In 2 Or 3 Weeks (Hill)

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb predicted early Wednesday that the United States could get through the worst of the delta variant surge of the coronavirus in a few weeks. “The bottom line is, the vaccine does not make you impervious to infection,” Gottlieb said during an appearance on CNBC. “There are some people who are developing mild and asymptomatic infections even after vaccination.” After acknowledging the delta variant of the coronavirus as “much more transmissible” than the first strain, Gottlieb questioned whether that fact should “translate into general guidance” on mask wearing and vaccine requirements in the United States.

“I don’t think that’s the case,” he said. “I don’t think we’re going to get enough bang for our buck by telling vaccinated people they have to wear masks at all times to make it worth our while. I think we’re further into this delta wave than we’re picking up. I think in another two or three weeks we’ll be through this.” Gottlieb added that the new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) could have a “negligible impact” on public health and that federal officials should instead focus on more targeted messaging on guidance for high-risk areas. The CDC announced new guidance Tuesday recommending that vaccinated Americans wear masks while in crowded indoor environments in certain areas of the country where the delta variant has caused a major increase in cases.


The delta variant is now accounting for the majority of new cases in the United States, almost entirely among the unvaccinated. President Biden’s administration is facing increased pressure to get more people vaccinated and require federal workers, teachers and people who work in health care industries to be vaccinated as a condition of their employment. “If you are vaccinated in a high-prevalence area, in contact with virus, you think you might have the virus because you have mild symptoms of it, be prudent, get tested, maybe wear a mask especially if you are around a vulnerable person,” Gottlieb said on CNBC. “That should be bottom-line guidance we give.”

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On Tuesday. Be gone in weeks. And then they’ll praise the “vaccines” again. Damned if you do, doomed if you don’t.

US Reports More Than 100,000 New Coronavirus Cases (BNO)

More than 100,000 new coronavirus cases have been reported in the U.S. amid a rapid surge in hospital admissions and new calls from federal officials to wear a mask in public. Data from health departments across the U.S. showed that 106,084 new cases were reported, including a two-day backlog from Florida which occurs every Tuesday. It represents an increase of 73% from last week. The states reporting the most new cases are: Florida (38,321 for a three-day period), Texas (8,642), California (7,731), Louisiana (6,818), Georgia (3,587), Utah (2,882), Alabama (2,667), and Missouri (2,414). The rolling 7-day average for daily cases is 62,411, up from 12,648 a month ago.


The surge is accompanied by a rapid rise in hospital admissions, particularly in Florida, which reported the biggest one-day increase on record. Nearly 40,000 coronavirus patients are currently hospitalized across the U.S., well below the peak in January but an increase of nearly 11% in one day. Earlier on Tuesday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky urged all Americans to wear a mask in public in high-risk areas. She said the new advice was based on evidence which shows that the Delta variant can spread among vaccinated people, even though the vast majority of people who become seriously ill are unvaccinated.

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He never gets tired.

Dr. Pierre Kory’s Medical Lecture for Physicians and Citizens of Malaysia (O.)

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Article’s a little incoherent, bu the idea is clear.

Omaha Doctor Sees Tremendous Success with Ivermectin as Early Treatment (TSN)

Physicians from around the United States continue to emerge, going public with their declaration of the benefits of ivermectin as an early onset, mild-to-moderate stage COVID-19 treatment. Most recently on KETV 7 Omaha, Dr. Louis Safranek came forth, declaring, “I typically use it in combination with other agents. But I do prescribe it for virtually all the patients who come to be, as part of a treatment regimen, which I think is effective for folks.” The Harvard Medical School graduate has been specializing in infectious diseases for four decades. Having treated nearly 200 COVID-19 patients at home and in the local hospitals here in Omaha, Nebraska, ivermectin is a key medicine tool in the medicine box targeting COVID-19.

TrialSite can assure that the National Institute of Health (NIH) formal policy in fighting the pandemic is to have a comprehensive mix of 1) safe and effective vaccines, 2) branded therapeutics, 3) generic repurposed therapeutics, and 4) sound and locationally relevant public health policy. Of course, industry bias has reared its ugly head in this pandemic as the NIH and the federal government have spent many billions on vaccines and novel investigational therapies while investing probably less than 5% of the portfolio investment in generic repurposed drugs—the NIH happens to be testing ivermectin now as part of the ACTIV-6 program.

In fact, Dr. Safranek shared that not one COVID-19 patient that he has treated with ivermectin and other regimens have ended up on a ventilator or dead. He reports out of about 200 patients, only one ended up hospitalized, making this a very high success. Here in the Midwest plains, Doctor Safranek had an 80-year old Omaha woman who survived two bouts of COVID-19, the second via a breakthrough infection. That is, she got infected even after being fully vaccinated. When she came to the doctor and he treated her with the anti-parasite, FDA-approved drug, she informed, “I was better the next day, not well but better.” She continued that while on the ivermectin regimen, “Each day, I got better, and now I am over it.”

Of course, the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, isn’t about to administer its COVID-19 patients with ivermectin. Their position: “Further studies needed to be done to show Ivermectin has utility in the treatment of COVID-19,” reports UNMC Medical Director of Infectious Disease Dr. Mark Rupp. Of course, Dr. Rupp will administer remdesivir to hospitalized patients, even though the drug has some concerning safety signals and the World Health Organization (WHO), on no uncertain terms, declared the drug wasn’t effective based on the results of the Solitary study. UNMC also makes monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) available for the care of COVID-19 patients, and these have shown some promise but they are highly investigational.

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Nothing noble about them. Don’t try to make them that, Slate.

The Noble Lies of COVID-19 (Slate)

The fourth noble lie from government agencies and/or officials occurred more recently. On June 4, using data from February to March, the agency made the case that hospitalizations were rising in adolescents. It tweeted, “The report shows the importance of #COVID19 vaccination for adolescents.” That tweet spurred a great deal of media attention and concern. It was true that hospitalization rates had risen. However, at the time of the press coverage, hospitalization rates in this age group had already fallen again. Numerous commenters immediately pointed out that the “rise” in hospitalization statistic promoted by the CDC was out of date the moment it was highlighted and raised questions about why the CDC would promote a dated statistic, when the organization had access to up-to-date information.

This obvious error was compounded weeks later during a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The committee met to discuss what we knew and did not know about heart inflammation, or myocarditis, that had been linked to mRNA vaccination, and most notable in young men who received the vaccine. During the course of the meeting, representatives of the CDC showed a model that claimed that vaccination of young adults was preferable to the disease itself. There were, however, several concerns with this model. First, it used rates of community SARS-CoV-2 spread that again were out of date. By the time of the meeting, the rates were lower, meaning the benefits of vaccination would be reduced, but the harms remain the same.

Second, it did not consider the risks separately for boys and girls, who appear to have substantially different risk of myocarditis (much higher in boys). Third, it did not consider any middle ground positions, such as only receiving one dose of the vaccine, which provides much of the benefit with far lower myocarditis risk. Instead, the CDC presented zero or two doses as the only options. Fourth, the modeling did not consider natural immunity—i.e., the vaccine’s risk to kids who already recovered from COVID-19 might be the same, but the benefits far lower (as these children have some natural immunity). Finally, the model did not consider the fact that young adults with preexisting medical conditions and those who are otherwise well might have different risk benefit profiles, as the former account for a disproportionate number of COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Together, these are all information choices made by government agencies and/or officials about vaccination of young adults. Amplifying out-of-date statistics and building a model to support vaccination that has questionable assumptions work to support rapid deployment of two doses of mRNA to all healthy kids aged 12 to 17. That may be the CDC’s policy pursuit, and one we are sympathetic to. However, distorting evidence to achieve this result is a form of a noble lie. Accurately reporting current risks to adolescents, and exploring other dosing possibilities, is part of the unbiased scientific exploration of data.

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I like Taibbi, but why does he have to vent an opinion about other people’s lives and choices? Does he simply not understand what he says?

I’m vaccinated. I think people should be vaccinated

The Vaccine Aristocrats (Taibbi)

On This Week With George Stephanopoulos this past Sunday, a bafflegab of Washington poo-bahs including Chris Christie, Rahm Emmanuel, Margaret Hoover, and Donna Brazile — Stephanopoulos calls the segment his “Powerhouse Roundtable,” which to my ear sounds like a Denny’s breakfast sampler, but I guess he couldn’t name it Four Hated Windbags — discussed vaccine holdouts. The former George W. Bush and Giuliani aide Hoover said it was time to stop playing nice. If you’re going to get government-provided health care, if you’re getting VA treatment, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, anything — and Social Security obviously isn’t health care — you should be getting the vaccine. Okay? Because we are going to have to take care of you on the back end. Brazile nodded sagely, but Emmanuel all but gushed cartoon hearts.

“You know, I’m having an out of body experience, because I agree with you,” said Obama’s former hatchet man, before adding, over the chyron, FRUSTRATION MOUNTS WITH UNVACCINATED AMERICANS: I would close the space in. Meaning if you want to participate in X or Y activity, you gotta show you’re vaccinated. So it becomes a reward-punishment type system, and you make your own calculation. This bipartisan love-in took place a few days after David Frum, famed Bush speechwriter and creator of the “Axis of Evil” slogan, wrote a column in The Atlantic entitled “Vaccinated America Has Had Enough.” In it, Frum wondered: Does Biden’s America have a breaking point? Biden’s America produces 70 percent of the country’s wealth — and then sees that wealth transferred to support Trump’s America. Which is fine; that’s what citizens of one nation do for one another… [But] the reciprocal part of the bargain is not being upheld…


Will Blue America ever decide it’s had enough of being put medically at risk by people and places whose bills it pays? Check yourself. Have you? I’m vaccinated. I think people should be vaccinated But this latest moral mania — and make no mistake about it, the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” PR campaign is the latest in a ceaseless series of such manias, dating back to late 2016 — lays bare everything that’s abhorrent and nonsensical in modern American politics, beginning with the no-longer-disguised aristocratic mien of the Washington consensus. If you want to convince people to get a vaccine, pretty much the worst way to go about it is a massive blame campaign, delivered by sneering bluenoses who have a richly deserved credibility problem with large chunks of the population, and now insist they’re owed financially besides.

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US banned gain of function, Fauci and Daszak exported it to China. Not a complicated story.

NIH Dumped Millions Into Chinese Entities To Study Infectious Diseases (DC)

The National Institutes of Health has doled out nearly $46 million in taxpayer funds to 100 Chinese institutions in the form of subgrants since the 2012 fiscal year to conduct research into infectious diseases, drug addiction, mental health and other scientific fields, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of federal spending data. The NIH’s ongoing funding of Chinese research institutions comes amid growing bipartisan concern in Washington D.C. over the fact that U.S. taxpayers support research in a country that has violated international health regulations, stonewalled a proper investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and that may be in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the NIH subagency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, provided $6.6 million in taxpayer-funded subgrants to 27 of the Chinese entities, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to conduct research into allergies and infectious diseases, subgrant data pulled from USASpending.gov shows. One of the NIAID-funded subgrants, which involved the transfer of $428,000 to a Chinese government-owned institution in 2020 to conduct research into emerging mosquito and tick-based infections, states unequivocally that the U.S. will only receive the research, funded in part by U.S. taxpayers, upon approval by Chinese government authorities.


“Following testing for common pathogens, and then, after approval by the relevant authorities of the Chinese government, a subset of samples will be sent to Washington University in St. Louis for further analysis,” the subgrant description to the Chinese National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention reads.[..] Another NIAID-funded project provided $600,000 in subgrants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the COVID-19 pandemic to conduct research that involved the genetic modification of bat-based coronaviruses.

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China 1/3, Bill Gates 1/3, Monsanto 1/3. American farmers: 0.

Will Washington Stop China From Buying Up Farmland? (JTN)

China’s effort to unseat America as the world’s economic superpower has a new tactic: It has bought up more than 200,000 acres of U.S. farmland. And while there is bipartisan support for legislation to slow down Beijing’s acquisitions, Democrats have added a new wrinkle. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), who is leading the legislative charge, says congressional Democrats have removed all references to the communist government of China in an amendment to an agricultural spending bill that originally prevented the Chinese Communist Party’s purchase of American farmland. “[O]ver the last decade, we’ve seen a huge increase in the acquisition of these kinds of assets — farming in particular — by the People’s Republic of China,” he said. “And that, to me, is just a direction that, while we can, we should do all we can to stop.”

With China purchasing the United States’ agricultural assets and becoming more ingrained in the U.S. economy, America might eventually “become dependent on Communist China for our agricultural production,” Newhouse warned. “We don’t want that to happen. We want to stop that in its tracks.” Only six states have agricultural restrictions on China, Newhouse said, “so this is something that I think is desperately needed in our country to prevent China, Communist China, from taking over our agricultural industry.” Newhouse added that the House Committee on Appropriations adopted the amendment through a unanimous voice vote, which is rare for two reasons: being unanimous and passing an amendment from the minority party.


“I think that that tells us that there’s concern across the board [over] the direction that people see China taking,” he said, adding that neither political party wants to see China taking over America’s critical assets, like it has with other countries. Democrats want to include North Korea, Iran, and Russia in addition to China in the amendment, Newhouse said. But North Korea has no money to buy farmland in the U.S., and the other countries haven’t purchased any land in recent years, unlike China.

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Apparently, revoking his citizenship is not final yet.

Assange Attorney Accuses Ecuador Of Foul Play (RT)

Ecuador has revoked Julian Assange’s citizenship, citing alleged inconsistencies with his naturalization documents. A lawyer for the imprisoned publisher claims the decision was made without due process. The WikiLeaks co-founder was informed that his citizenship had been nullified in a letter issued by Ecuador’s justice system, following a complaint issued by the South American nation’s Foreign Ministry. Ecuadorian officials claimed that Assange’s application for naturalization contained numerous inconsistencies, including different signatures, as well as possibly forged documents. Assange also failed to pay fees connected with his citizenship in the country, authorities alleged. Carlos Poveda, Assange’s lawyer, responded to the decision by accusing the Ecuadorian government of turning its back on due process.

The Australian was unable to contest the claims made against him because he is currently being “deprived of his liberty” and suffering from a “health crisis” while locked away at London’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison, Poveda told AP. The lawyer complained a week earlier that it was “impossible” for his client to properly defend himself under the circumstances, and expressed hope that the case would not be “judged by ‘public opinion’” alone. Poveda said he will petition the government to clarify its decision on the matter. “More than the importance of nationality, it is a matter of respecting rights and following due process in withdrawing nationality,” he said.


Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry insisted that it had “acted independently and followed due process,” claiming that similar concerns about Assange’s citizenship had been raised by the previous government. Assange was granted Ecuadorian citizenship in January 2018, as part of an attempt by then-President Lenin Moreno to help the journalist safely leave the country’s embassy in London, where he had been seeking asylum since June 2012.

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 July 26, 2021  Posted by at 9:08 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  134 Responses »


Henri Matisse Reading woman in violet dress 1898

 

CDC Withdraws PCR Tests: “They Can’t Tell SARS-CoV-2 from Influenza” (GN)
Bill Gates Primary Funder Of MHRA, Owns Major Shares In Pfizer & BioNTech (DE)
Little Known Osteopath In The Spotlight As An Anti-vaxx Superspreader (NYT)
CDC ‘Actively’ Considering Face Cover Advisory For Vaccinated: Fauci (RT)
The Other Side of the COVID Vaccination Argument (CTH)
159 Dead, 593 Hospitalized in Illinois Breakthrough COVID Cases (NBC)
Biden DOJ Drops Civil Rights Probe Of Gov. Cuomo Over Nursing Homes (NYP)
UK Economy Growing At Fastest Rate In 80 Years (G.)
Judge Refuses To Identify 5 Market Participants In VIX Manipulation (ZH)
The Insect Apocalypse: ‘Our World Will Grind To A Halt Without Them’ (G.)
CNN Airs Hour-Long Public Service Message On Dementia (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Seneff long term effects

 

 

Lee Merritt – Synthetic Spike Protein Affects Every Cell
– start at 50 min

 

 

In case you were wondering why there are no flu cases left.

Google translated.

Note: Bill Gates and George Soros bought UK testing firm Mologic just days ago.

CDC Withdraws PCR Tests: “They Can’t Tell SARS-CoV-2 from Influenza” (GN)

On 21 July 2021, the 18 lines that rewrite the history of the Covid-19 pandemic were published. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) of the USA, the highest health authority of the American government for monitoring diseases and in particular infectious ones, has launched an alert that assumes the range of a nuclear missile against the rubber wall of the international narrative on the emergency caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus ( believed to have been built in the laboratory by many scientific researches now ).

“After December 31, 2021, the CDC will withdraw the application to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel, the test first introduced in February 2020 for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 only. CDC provides this notice in advance to clinical laboratories to allow sufficient time to select and implement one of the many alternatives authorized by the FDA.”

This is the “Lab Alert” launched by the Division of Laboratory System (DLS), the specialized section of the CDC ( link at the bottom of the article ). Alone, it would already be enough to confirm all the investigations carried out in recent months on 97% unreliable tampons, as claimed by various scientific researches and international judicial authorities . But the official communication of the CDC (branched body in all the confederate states) states between the lines something already shocking, anticipated by Gospa News already last year: that is the risk that the nasopharyngeal swabs PCR, subject to cycles of variable amplifications , may not distinguish Covid-19 from a simple flu.

Visit the FDA website for a list of authorized COVID-19 diagnostic methods. For a summary of the performance of FDA-cleared molecular methods with an FDA reference panel. In preparation for this change, CDC recommends clinical laboratories and testing sites that have used the CDC 2019-nCoV RT-PCR assay to select and begin transitioning to another FDA-cleared COVID-19 assay. The CDC encourages laboratories to consider adopting a multiplex method that can facilitate the detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses.Such tests can facilitate the continuation of testing for both influenza and SARS-CoV-2 and can save time and resources as we head into the flu season. Laboratories and test sites must validate and verify the selected test within their facility before starting clinical trials. ”

The Real time PCR – also known as Quantitative PCR , abbreviated qPCR – is a method that simultaneously amplifies (polymerase chain reaction or PCR) and quantifies the DNA , similar but not to be confused with the RT-PCR method (Reverse Transcriptase -PCR ) . DNA is amplified by DNA-polymerase chain reactions. After each round of amplification, the DNA is quantified. Common methods of quantification include the use of fluorescent stains that intercalate with double-stranded (ds) DNA and modified DNA oligonucleotides (called probes) which are fluorescent when hybridized with a DNA. Real-time PCR is often combined with Retro Transcriptional PCR (RT-PCR) to quantify the expression levels of specific RNA: retro-transcription (or reverse transcription) produces single-stranded complementary DNA called cDNA (complementary DNA) keeping the relative concentration ratios of the different RNA species unchanged. In this way it is possible, for example, to measure the relative expression of a gene at a particular time, either in a cell or in a particular type of tissue.

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Fully impartial.

Bill Gates Primary Funder Of MHRA, Owns Major Shares In Pfizer & BioNTech (DE)

An investigation has revealed that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are the primary funders of the UK’s Medicine & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and that the Foundation also owns major shares in both Pfizer and BioNTech. The Medicine & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) extended the emergency authorisation of the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA jab in the UK to allow it to be given to children between the ages of 12 – 15 on the 4th June 2021. At the time, the Chief Executive of the MHRA, Dr June Raine said the MHRA had “carefully reviewed clinical trial data in children aged 12 to 15 years and have concluded that the Pfizer vaccine is safe and effective in this age group and that the benefits outweigh any risk”.

We are left wondering if Dr June Raine and the MHRA have even read the results of the extremely short and small study. If they have then they would have seen that 86% of children in the study suffered an adverse reaction ranging from mild to extremely serious. Just 1,127 children took part of the trial, however only 1,097 children completed the trial, with 30 of them not participating after being given the first dose of the Pfizer jab. The results do not state why the 30 children did not go on to complete the trial. The information is publicly available [..] There was never any doubt that the MHRA would give emergency authorisation for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be used in children when you consider that a certain Mr Bill Gates owns shares in both Pfizer and BioNTech and is the primary funder of the MHRA.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation bought shares in Pfizer back in 2002, and back in September 2020 Bill Gates ensured the value of his shares went up by announcing to the mainstream media in a CNBC interview that he viewed the Pfizer jab as the leader in the Covid-19 vaccine race. “The only vaccine that, if everything went perfectly, might seek the emergency use license by the end of October, would be Pfizer.” The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also “coincidentally” bought $55 million worth of shares in BioNTech in September 2019, just before the alleged Covid-19 pandemic struck.

The MHRA received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2017 to the tune of £980,000 for a “collaboration” with the foundation. However, a Freedom of Information request which the MHRA responded to in May 2021 revealed that the current level of grant funding received from the Gates Foundation amounts to $3 million and covers “a number of projects”.

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“More than 97% of people hospitalised for COVID-19 are unvaccinated..”

Because the vaccinated are no longer tested.

NYT going after Mercola big time. Who’s next? They’ll pick them off one by one.

Little Known Osteopath In The Spotlight As An Anti-vaxx Superspreader (NYT)

The article that appeared online February 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. Then over its next 3400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were “a medical fraud” and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease. Instead, the article claimed, the shots “alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch”. Its assertions were easily disprovable. No matter. Over the next few hours, the article was translated from English into Spanish and Polish. It appeared on dozens of blogs and was picked up by anti-vaccination activists, who repeated the false claims online. The article also made its way to Facebook, where it reached 400,000 people, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool.

The entire effort traced back to one person: Joseph Mercola. Mercola, 67, an osteopathic physician in Cape Coral, Florida, has long been a subject of criticism and government regulatory actions for his promotion of unproven or unapproved treatments. But most recently, he has become the chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online, according to researchers. An internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens, Mercola has published more than 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on COVID-19 vaccines since the pandemic began, reaching a far larger audience than other vaccine sceptics, an analysis by The New York Times found. His claims have been widely echoed on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

The activity has earned Mercola, a natural health proponent with an Everyman demeanour, the dubious distinction of the top spot in the “Disinformation Dozen,” a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65 per cent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, said the nonprofit Centre for Countering Digital Hate. Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy jnr, a longtime anti-vaccine activist; and Erin Elizabeth, founder of the website Health Nut News, who is also Mercola’s girlfriend. “Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement,” said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. “He’s a master of capitalising on periods of uncertainty, like the pandemic, to grow his movement.”

Some high-profile media figures have promoted scepticism of the vaccines — notably, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News, though other Fox personalities have urged viewers to get the shots. Now Mercola and others in the “Disinformation Dozen” are in the spotlight as vaccinations in the United States slow, just as the highly infectious delta variant has fuelled a resurgence in coronavirus cases. More than 97% of people hospitalised for COVID-19 are unvaccinated, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. President Joe Biden has blamed online falsehoods for causing people to refrain from getting the injections. But even as Biden has urged social media companies to “do something about the misinformation,” Mercola shows the difficulty of that task. Over the last decade, Mercola has built a vast operation to push natural health cures, disseminate anti-vaccination content and profit from all of it, said researchers who have studied his network. In 2017, he filed an affidavit claiming his net worth was “in excess of $US100 million”.

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In religion, credibility is not a factor.

CDC ‘Actively’ Considering Face Cover Advisory For Vaccinated: Fauci (RT)

White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has revealed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) could soon reconsider its guidelines, recommending vaccinated Americans to mask up again. Top health officials have reportedly been having preliminary talks about revising mask recommendations for vaccinated Americans due to a rise in cases and concerns over the more infectious Delta variant of Covid-19. According to current guidance, those vaccinated against the virus do not need to wear masks in most public spaces. The revision of the mask guidance is indeed “under active consideration,” Fauci confirmed to CNN on Sunday. The infectious disease expert did not give a timeframe for when the federal guidance could change, but he praised those state officials who had already rushed ahead to reinstate local mask mandates in response to rising coronavirus cases.


“If you look at what’s going on locally in the trenches, in places like L.A. County,” Fauci said, “the local officials have the discretion, and the CDC agrees with that ability and discretion capability to say, you know, you’re in a situation where we’re having a lot of dynamics of infection, so even if you are vaccinated, you should wear a mask.” Fauci and other White House officials have used the uptick in cases to continue pushing unvaccinated Americans to get inoculated. Recent polling, however, has signified that those who have refused getting vaccinated thus far have little to no interest in changing their minds.

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Great video.

The Other Side of the COVID Vaccination Argument (CTH)

There is a lot of incoming information from government and the private sector promoting the vaccine. Recently, there has been a significant uptick in compulsory demands for taking the COVID vaccine. This forced vaccination approach has made many people start to question why this coordinated pressure campaign has increased with such ferocity. As a result of such one-side information, people are increasingly skeptical. In this video below you can review the counter-position for why people do not want to take the vaccination shot.


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Very rare.

159 Dead, 593 Hospitalized in Illinois Breakthrough COVID Cases (NBC)

More than 150 people have died and nearly 600 have been hospitalized in Illinois due to COVID-19 in “breakthrough” cases after they were fully vaccinated, according to state health officials. According to data updated Wednesday by the Illinois Department of Public Health, 159 people in Illinois have died due to COVID-19 or complications after being fully vaccinated. That figure equates to 2.3% of COVID-19 deaths in the state since Jan. 1, officials said. At least 593 fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized in Illinois, IDPH said. The state only reports breakthrough infections among those who have been hospitalized or died, following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, IDPH said.


Those totals mean eight more fully vaccinated individuals have died and 30 more have been hospitalized in the past week since the state last updated its reported numbers. The state does not publicize the number of residents who tested positive after being fully vaccinated but did not die or require hospitalization in order to “help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance,” IDPH’s website reads.

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He’s a made man.

Biden DOJ Drops Civil Rights Probe Of Gov. Cuomo Over Nursing Homes (NYP)

The Department of Justice has decided not to investigate whether the civil rights of residents in New York’s government-run nursing homes were violated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s controversial admission policy related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a letter Friday, the DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs told US Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), ranking member of that House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, that New York was off the hook in connection with potential violations of the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. In August, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division requested information from New York in connection with a March 25, 2020, order from the state Department of Health that required nursing homes to admit “medically stable” COVID-19 patients discharged from hospitals.

It also sought records from Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey, which adopted similar rules that the DOJ said “may have resulted in the deaths of thousands of elderly nursing home residents.” “We have reviewed the information provided by these states along with additional information available to the Department,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joe Gaeta wrote Friday. “Based on that review, we have decided not to open a CRIPA investigation of any public nursing facility within New York, Pennsylvania, or Michigan at this time.” In a prepared statement, Scalise called it “outrageous that the Department of Justice refuses to investigate the deadly ‘must admit’ orders issued by governors in New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan that resulted in the deaths of thousands of senior citizens.”

“Where is the justice for nursing home victims and their grieving families? These deadly orders contradicted the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s] guidance, and needlessly endangered the most vulnerable among us to the deadly COVID-19 virus,” Scalise said. “Even worse, Governor Cuomo in New York intentionally tried to cover up the true death toll resulting from his mandate. Grieving families deserve answers and accountability. It’s unconscionable that Biden’s Department of Justice refuses to investigate the deadly actions that went against CDC’s medical guidance taken in these states.”

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Oh sure. As the media scream Armageddon.

UK Economy Growing At Fastest Rate In 80 Years (G.)

The British economy is growing at its fastest pace in 80 years and could recover its pre-pandemic size by the end of this year, according to a leading economic forecaster. Buoyed by the vaccine rollout and a bounce back in consumer spending, the EY Item Club said it now expected GDP to grow by 7.6% – which would be the fastest annual growth in national income since 1941. The UK economy shrank by 9.8% in 2020, the worst performance in the G7. The optimism comes despite the chaos caused by widespread staff shortages as workers self-isolate en masse after being pinged by NHS test and trace. The “pingdemic” is affecting the running of shops, restaurants, factories and even railway services as bosses struggle to find staff to cover shifts.

Although the economy has proved increasingly resilient through lockdowns, the EY Item Club report came with the health warning that the “future pattern of the pandemic and any renewed pandemic-related restrictions will have a significant bearing on whether the forecast is achieved”. The UK economy is more dependent on consumer spending on services, such as recreation and leisure activities, which meant that the lockdowns had a greater economic impact than in other countries, said Martin Beck, the EY Item Club’s senior economic adviser. The reopening of these “face-to-face parts of the economy means the UK should have a correspondingly faster recovery”, he said. In the spring, the group of economists, which is the only non-government forecasting organisation to use the Treasury’s modelling of the economy, pencilled in growth of 6.8%.

This is the second time this year it has upgraded its forecast, putting the economy on track to attain its pre-pandemic peak by the end of 2021. That milestone would now be reached some six months sooner than when it last crunched the numbers in April, with the UK’s successful vaccine programme a key factor. Recent surveys of economic activity have, however, been less encouraging, leading to concerns that the recovery is stalling. The IHS Markit and the Cips survey showed growth at its slowest since March, which was attributed to wide-ranging staff shortages, rising Covid cases and thousands of workers having to isolate owing to the pingdemic. It also highlighted a new mood of caution among the public triggered by the rapidly rising infection rates.

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Because the Fed is one? Because the market makers are?

Judge Refuses To Identify 5 Market Participants In VIX Manipulation (ZH)

[..] on Feb 5, 2018 the steamroller woke up with a vengeance, and shortly after the close, the infamous volmageddon event took place when a handful of the most popular inverse VIX strategies crashed from near record highs to zero in a manner of minutes as ETN liquidation triggers were activated, sending the VIX briefly to record highs and wiping out billions in value and leaving countless retail investors stunned and facing total losses. Yet while to retail investors losses were in the hundreds or, at most, thousands of dollars (recall this was in the pre-stimmy stage when people cared about their money), some hedge funds got completely wiped out. One among them was LJM Partners, a Chicago-based fund that lost $446.8 million in one day from the market moves, wiping out 86.5% of its assets in seconds.

And so LJM and more than two dozen other investors and fund managers sued over the next year to recover losses, claiming unidentified market participants that rigged the index “repeatedly posted and immediately canceled” tens of thousands of quotes for S&P 500 options, whose prices are used to calculate the VIX. The plaintiffs, understandably furious at the events of Feb 5, claiming that unidentified market participants manipulated the VIX by posting S&P 500 options quotes that only stayed in the order book for milliseconds, not long enough for anyone to trade against but enough time for them to be incorporated into the value of the VIX.

That technique, known as “flashing” and popularized back in 2009 first by this website, was unrelated to any legitimate positions the unidentified market participants held or wished to hold, but successfully manipulated the price of S&P 500 options and futures contracts, LJM claimed, even though the CBOE which is the Chicago-based owner of the VIX and the exchange where S&P 500 options trade, has repeatedly dismissed claims of manipulation of the index. And while LJM has yet to recover any funds, on Friday the defunct fund suffered another setback, when a federal judge refused to identify five market participants accused in the lawsuit of manipulating the VIX index.

US District Judge Manish S. Shah, during a telephone conference Friday in Chicago, said the plaintiffs had failed to provide enough evidence of actual manipulation to justify revealing the names of the market participants, who were identified only by code names in exchange records. “Plaintiffs have not demonstrated good cause” for the disclosure, said Shah, who had earlier authorized the release of exchange data to help them make their case. “Rather than specific allegations of manipulation, plaintiffs’ complaints offer a menu of what they characterize as potentially manipulative conduct that may have occurred on February 5 and 6, 2018,” the market participants said in a court filing.

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Many people asking where the bugs on their windshields went. Which is a typical “connection” with nature.

The Insect Apocalypse: ‘Our World Will Grind To A Halt Without Them’ (G.)

In 2015 I was contacted by the Krefeld Society, a group of entomologists who, since the late 1980s, had been trapping flying insects on nature reserves scattered across Germany. They had amassed insects from nearly 17,000 days of trapping across 63 sites and 27 years, a total of 53kg of insects. They sent me their data to ask for my help in preparing it for publication in a scientific journal. In the 27 years from 1989 to 2016 the overall biomass (ie weight) of insects caught in their traps fell by 75%. In midsummer, when in Europe we see the peak of insect activity, the decline was even more marked, at 82%. I thought initially that there must have been some sort of mistake, because this seemed too dramatic a drop to be credible. We knew that wildlife in general was in decline, but for three-quarters of insects to have disappeared so rapidly suggested a pace and scale of decline that had previously not been imagined.

In October 2019 a different group of German scientists published their findings from a study of insect populations in German forests and grasslands over 10 years from 2008 to 2017. The study’s results were deeply troubling. Grasslands fared worst, losing on average two-thirds of their arthropod biomass (the insects, spiders, woodlice and more). In woodlands, biomass dropped by 40%. What about elsewhere? Is there something peculiar going on in Germany? It seems highly unlikely. Perhaps the best-studied insect populations in the world are the UK’s butterflies. They are recorded by volunteers as part of the Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, the largest and longest-running scheme of its kind in the world. The trends it reveals are worrying. Butterflies of the “wider countryside” – common species found in farmland, gardens and so on, such as meadow browns and peacocks – fell in abundance by 46% between 1976 and 2017.

Meanwhile, habitat specialists, fussier species that tend to be much rarer, such as fritillaries and hairstreaks, fell by 77%, despite concerted conservation efforts directed at many of them. Worldwide, although the bulk of insect species – the flies, beetles, grasshoppers, wasps, mayflies, froghoppers and so on – are not systematically monitored, we often have good data on population trends for birds that depend on insects for food, and these are mostly in decline. For example, populations of insectivorous birds that hunt their prey in the air (ie the flying insects that have decreased so much in biomass in Germany) have fallen by more than any other bird group in North America, by about 40% between 1966 and 2013. Bank swallows, common nighthawks (nightjars), chimney swifts and barn swallows have all fallen in numbers by more than 70% in the past 20 years.

In England, populations of the spotted flycatcher fell by 93% between 1967 and 2016. Other once-common insectivores have suffered similarly, including the grey partridge (-92%), nightingale (-93%) and cuckoo (-77%). The red-backed shrike, a specialist predator of large insects, went extinct in the UK in the 1990s. Overall, the British Trust for Ornithology estimates that the UK had 44m fewer wild birds in 2012 compared with 1970. All the evidence above relates to populations of insects and their predators in highly industrialised, developed countries. Information about insect populations in the tropics, where most insects live, is sparse. We can only guess what impacts deforestation of the Amazon, the Congo, or south-east Asian rainforests has had on insect life in those regions. We will never know how many species went extinct before we could discover them.

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“The strawberries. The strawberries. The strawberries. That’s what makes it work! Airplanes!”

CNN Airs Hour-Long Public Service Message On Dementia (BBee)

As part of a campaign to raise awareness and improve public knowledge on treatment options, CNN aired an hour-long public service announcement on the warning signs of dementia Wednesday night. The PSA, which ran over an hour, showed tragic footage of an old man ranting and making nonsensical, confusing statements. CNN says they hope the footage will encourage family members of the elderly to get them tested for the early warning signs of dementia. The cable news channel displayed a phone number for a hotline people can call if they believe someone they know might be suffering from symptoms of the condition.


“If you or a loved one act like this man,” said Don Lemon, “please, we beg you, get help. Slurred speech, inaccurate statements, an inability to remember where you are—these are all signs that your loved one might be suffering from dementia, whether he’s retired or the president of the United States.” “… and we’d take the rhubarb and we’d put it in the pie, right in the ol’ pie,” the old man said suddenly, in a rare moment of lucidity. “It was incredible. You wouldn’t think rhubarb would taste good, but it’s the sweetness. The strawberries. The strawberries. The strawberries. That’s what makes it work! Airplanes! Airplanes are neat, you know, but they’re a myth. How do they get them up there? They don’t—d-d-don’t even have feathers.” Many of the attendees were touched by both the PSA and the old man.

Read more …

 

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The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it
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Melenchon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1419092425226678276

 

 

 

 

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Jun 212021
 


Theodoor Rombouts (1597-1637) Prometheus

 

The Pandemic Is Over; Shots are Worthless (Denninger)
The Failure of PCR Mass Testing (SPR)
Is a COVID Vaccine for Children Still Necessary? (WebMD)
What I Know (And Don’t Know) About SARS-CoV-2 (Curtin)
Study On The Electromagnetism Of People Vaccinated In Luxembourg (D.fr)
Manufacturing (New Normal) “Reality” (CJ Hopkins)
Have The Great Reset Technocrats Really Thought This Through? (SCF)
Meet the Censored: Bret Weinstein (Taibbi)
Assange Receives A Visit From His Family For The First Time In 8 Months (Welt)

 

 

 

 

McCullough

 

 

“That was a risk we ran but fortunately the shots were both too late and there are too many hold-outs for this to happen.”

The Pandemic Is Over; Shots are Worthless (Denninger)

Sorry folks, the screamers lose. As I pointed out when this began the natural evolutionary pressure on a virus causes more-easily transmitted and less-virulent strains to “win.” The reason for this is not that a virus has intelligence, but simply mathematics: Each person can get infected once, after which they have immunity. Even if that immunity is not perfect it prevents nearly all serious harm on re-infection; ergo, whatever strain gets you first is the only one you have to worry about. A more-transmissible mutation makes it more-likely for you to get that mutation first. However, a more-virulent strain makes it more-likely that a thinking organism, that is, a human, will shun the person in question because they are visibly ill.

Nobody deliberately exposes themselves to a possibly-deadly pathogen if they see someone who is ill; ergo, once it is established that some disease can kill rather than inconvenience (e.g. the sniffles) anyone displaying symptoms is actively avoided. This makes it less-likely for the virus to “succeed” in infecting the next person. If you tamper with this process with non-sterilizing vaccines that have nearly-universal coverage you can cause highly-virulent strains to circulate without being suppressed since the vaccinated person is both unlikely to be visibly ill and being vaccinated, if you make a public spectacle of it, means people won’t be afraid of them if they display symptoms even though they should be. This is how you get a break-through of a highly-virulent strain that has many times higher fatality rates, and if it happens you’re ****ed.

That was a risk we ran but fortunately the shots were both too late and there are too many hold-outs for this to happen. When uptake started to slow in the US I pointed out that a Marek’s disease nightmare, which was originally one of my concerns, was almost impossible because there was a large reservoir of people who refused the shots (myself included); their side effect profile bothered me a lot, they looked more dangerous compared to my risk from the virus and, in addition, I knew of and had early treatment options the media, government and pharma wanted suppressed and did suppress including HCQ, Ivermectin and now, it appears, some SSRIs.

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“..by the time someone gets a ‘positive’ test result, the infectious virus is already being neutralized, or in some cases is already long gone.”

The Failure of PCR Mass Testing (SPR)

In March 2020, SPR warned that PCR mass testing in the general population (“test, test, test”) would be a serious mistake. The issue never was that PCR tests didn’t work or that the Drosten PCR paper was “peer-reviewed” in just one day. The issue is that PCR tests cannot determine an acute infection, ongoing infectiousness, and actual disease, especially if ct values are not taken into account. Several studies have since shown that national PCR testing rates have had no influence at all on covid mortality. In addition, a new German study re-analyzed PCR tests of 160,000 people and concluded: “In light of our findings that more than half of individuals with positive PCR test results are unlikely to have been infectious, RT-PCR test positivity should not be taken as an accurate measure of infectious SARS-CoV-2 incidence. Our results confirm the findings of others that the routine use of ‘positive’ RT-PCR test results as the gold standard for assessing and controlling infectiousness fails to reflect the fact ‘that 50-75% of the time an individual is PCR positive, they are likely to be post-infectious.’” (Stang et al, Journal of Infection, May 2021)


Why has mass PCR testing failed so badly? Most likely because of the role of pre-symptomatic transmission: by the time someone gets a ‘positive’ test result, the infectious virus is already being neutralized, or in some cases is already long gone. Hence PCR testing really only makes sense in targeted, preemptive high-risk settings, such as hospitals, nursing homes or early border controls, or possibly in Chinese-style preemptive, pooled mass testings of entire 10-million-people cities. Overall, PCR mass testing has achieved essentially nothing but hundreds of billions in unnecessary costs and large-scale psychological trauma, especially in children. Nevertheless, with millions of deaths, covid was not just a “casedemic” or a “fake pandemic” (as the 2009 swine flu), but a PCR-driven “casedemic” on top of a real pandemic – or in other words: a “strange pandemic”.

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Was it ever?

Is a COVID Vaccine for Children Still Necessary? (WebMD)

Testing COVID-19 vaccines in young children is going to be tricky. Deciding how to approve them and who should get them may be even more difficult. So far, the vaccines available to Americans ages 12 and up have sailed through the FDA’s regulatory checks, taking advantage of an accelerated clearance process called an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). EUAs set a lower bar for effectiveness, saying the vaccines may be safe and effective based on just a few months of data. But with COVID cases plummeting in the United States and children historically seeing far less serious cases than adults, a panel of expert advisors to the FDA was asked to discuss whether the agency could consider vaccines for this age group under the same standard.

Said another way: Is COVID an emergency for kids? There’s another wrinkle in the mix, too — heart inflammation, which appears to be a very rare side effect tied to vaccination. It seems to happen more often in teens and young adults. To date, cases of myocarditis and pericarditis appear to be happening in 16 to 30 people for every 1 million doses given. But if it is conclusively linked to the shots, some wonder whether it might tip the balance between benefits and risks for kids. That left some of the experts who sit on the FDA’s advisory committee for vaccines and related biological products urging the FDA to take its time and more thoroughly study the shots before they’re given to millions of children.

Clinical studies of the vaccines in teens and adults have relied on some straightforward math. Researchers take two groups of similar people, giving half of them the vaccine and the other half a placebo, then wait to see which group has more symptomatic infections. To date, the vaccines have dramatically cut the risk of getting severely ill with COVID for every age group tested. But COVID infections are falling rapidly in the US, and that may make it more difficult for researchers to conduct a similar kind of experiment in children. The FDA is considering different approaches to decide whether a vaccine would be effective in kids, including something called an “immunobridging trial.”

In bridging trials, researchers don’t look for infections; rather, they look for proven signs that someone has developed immunity, like antibody levels. Those biomarkers are then compared to the immune responses of younger adults who have demonstrated good protection against infection. The main advantage of bridging studies is speed. It’s possible to get a snapshot of how the immune system responds to a vaccine within weeks of the final dose. The drawback? Researchers don’t know exactly what to look for to judge how well the shots are generating protection.

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” I do not know if the alleged virus has ever been isolated in the sense of being purified or detached from everything else aside from being cultured in a lab. Therefore I do not know if the virus exists.”

What I Know (And Don’t Know) About SARS-CoV-2 (Curtin)

I know that vast numbers of people have been hypnotized by fear, threats, and bribes to accept the corporate mainstream media’s version of COVID-19. I have concluded that many millions are moving in a trance state and do not know this. They have been induced into this state by a well-organized, very sophisticated propaganda campaign that has drawn on the human fear of death and disease. Those behind this have no doubt studied the high incidence of hypochondriasis in the general population and the fear of an invisible “virus” in societies where belief in God and the spiritual invisible has been replaced by faith in science. Knowing their audience well, they have concocted a campaign of fear and confusion to induce obedience.

I do not know, but suspect, that those who have been so hypnotized tend to be mainly members of the middle to the upper classes, those who have invested so much belief in the system. This includes the highly schooled. I know that to lockdown hundreds of millions of healthy people, to insist they wear useless masks, to tell them to avoid human contacts, to destroy the economic lives of regular people have created vast suffering that was meant to teach people a lesson about who was in control and that they better revise their understanding of human relations to adjust to the new digital unreality that the producers of this masquerade are trying to put in place of flesh and blood, face to face human reality. I know that the PCR test invented by Kary Mullis cannot test for the alleged virus or any virus and therefore all the numbers of cases and deaths are based on nothing. They are conjured out of thin air in a massive act of magic.

I know that the belief that it can so test began with the unscientific PCR Corona protocol created by Christian Drosten in Germany in January 2020 that became the standard method for testing for SARS-CoV-2 worldwide. I am sure this was preplanned and part of a high-level conspiracy. This protocol set the cycle threshold (amplification) at 45 which could only result in false positive results. These were then called cases: An act of fraud on a massive scale. I do not know if the alleged virus has ever been isolated in the sense of being purified or detached from everything else aside from being cultured in a lab. Therefore I do not know if the virus exists.

I know that the experimental mRNA “vaccines” that are being pushed on everyone are not traditional vaccines but dangerous experiments whose long-term consequences are unknown. And I know that Moderna says its messenger RNA (mRNA) non-vaccine “vaccine” functions “like an operating system on a computer” and that Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, says that the lipid nanoparticles from the injections travel throughout the body and settle in large quantities in multiple organs where the spike protein, being biologically active, can cause massive damage and that the FDA has known this.

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Google translated. Just for the fun of it.

Study On The Electromagnetism Of People Vaccinated In Luxembourg (D.fr)

Summary presentation of results for the week of study 1 st June to 5 June 2021: Only 30 vaccinated people and 30 unvaccinated people were finally interviewed while the objective was to interview 100 for the first group and 100 for the second. The condition of gender distribution has been respected. In each group, 15 women and 15 men were interviewed. In the non-vaccinated group, out of the 30 individuals questioned, the number of people with magnet attraction is 0 (zero). The experience therefore stops there for this group. In the vaccinated group, on the other hand, out of the 30 individuals questioned, 29 showed attraction to the magnet. That is, the magnet adheres to their skin without difficulty. All of them are vaccinated at the vaccinodrome. NB : The 30 th person, which does not grip the magnet, has not made vaccinate vaccinodrome like any other. She was vaccinated by a nurse with whom she has worked for many years.

Of these 29 individuals, 22 had the magnet adhering to only one shoulder and only to the area of the injection. These 22 people are the ones who only received one injection. The 7 other people of this same group have the magnet which adheres on the two shoulders.

In this group called vaccinated, domiciled or working in Luxembourg, it appears that: 17 received at least one injection from the Pfizer laboratory 7 received at least one injection from the Astra Zeneca laboratory 3 received at least one injection from the Moderna laboratory 3 received the single injection of Johnson & Johnson 6 received the 2 injections from the Pfizer laboratory 1 received the 2 injections from the Astra Zeneca laboratory 1 received the 2 injections from the Moderna laboratory 2 of the individuals in this group, a nurse working at the CHL and having been one of the first to be vaccinated, and a financial analyst, presented totally abnormal electric field emissions.

For the nurse, a video was even made which shows the values emitted by the tester around his left shoulder. For the analyst, the values issued by the tester were approximately the same but the individual abruptly ended his participation in panic. Of the 30 people questioned who were part of the vaccinated group, 29 live or work in Strassen. Only 1 lives in Metz but works in Strassen. It would appear that people who were vaccinated earlier in the government immunization schedule are much more electromagnetic than people who were more recently. The magnet adheres faster and holds much better than in newly vaccinated people.

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“This is the crucial period for the totalitarian movement. It needs to negate the old “reality” in order to implement the new one, and it cannot do that with reason and facts, so it has to do it with fear and brute force. ”

Manufacturing (New Normal) “Reality” (CJ Hopkins)

The global capitalist ruling classes are implementing a new official ideology, in other words, a new “reality.” That’s what an official ideology is. It’s more than just a set of beliefs. Anyone can have any beliefs they want. Your personal beliefs do not constitute “reality.” In order to make your beliefs “reality,” you need to have the power to impose them on society. You need the power of the police, the military, the media, scientific “experts,” academia, the culture industry, the entire ideology-manufacturing machine. There is nothing subtle about this process. Decommissioning one “reality” and replacing it with another is a brutal business. Societies grow accustomed to their “realities.” We do not surrender them willingly or easily. Normally, what’s required to get us to do so is a crisis, a war, a state of emergency, or … you know, a deadly global pandemic.

During the changeover from the old “reality” to the new “reality,” the society is torn apart. The old “reality” is being disassembled and the new one has not yet taken its place. It feels like madness, and, in a way, it is. For a time, the society is split in two, as the two “realities” battle it out for dominance. “Reality” being what it is (i.e., monolithic), this is a fight to the death. In the end, only one “reality” can prevail.

This is the crucial period for the totalitarian movement. It needs to negate the old “reality” in order to implement the new one, and it cannot do that with reason and facts, so it has to do it with fear and brute force. It needs to terrorize the majority of society into a state of mindless mass hysteria that can be turned against those resisting the new “reality.” It is not a matter of persuading or convincing people to accept the new “reality.” It’s more like how you drive a herd of cattle. You scare them enough to get them moving, then you steer them wherever you want them to go. The cattle do not know or understand where they are going. They are simply reacting to a physical stimulus. Facts and reason have nothing to do with it.

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“It would seem that the desire to dominate others does not simply come to an end on its own. ”

Have The Great Reset Technocrats Really Thought This Through? (SCF)

The only thing left to destroy in a world populated by elites alone, are other elites. It would seem that the desire to dominate others does not simply come to an end on its own. With the UN World Food Program announcing that some 270 million people worldwide now face starvation, the ongoing debate about the real aims of the technocracy is profound. The question is whether their aim tends more towards major population reduction, or more towards a new type of slavery. It appears that philosophical and long-term practical questions remain a mystery. We will argue that evil, not simply the influence of the base upon the superstructure, is at the core of this endeavor. We have defined evil as inflicting the highest degree of pain upon the greatest number of resisting subjects. In short, we have defined evil as sadism, inflicting evil because it brings satisfaction to those inflicting it.

Because evil is fundamentally a destructive force, it cannot create anything: nothing in it is truly novel nor of use to humanity. Its pleasures are short-lived and spurious. It is unsustainable, self-defeating, ultimately leading to self-destruction. We have adequately assessed from any number of sources that nefarious interests are behind this process, who seek to make the process also about the exercise of power, in addition to several other aims (remaining in power, exercising power in ways consistent with their occult beliefs about evil, etc.). We understand that they are ‘evil’ because they involve a type of ‘power-over’ (as opposed to power-with/consent) which derives this power from fear-mongering and terrorism upon the population. Terrorism here is defined as the operationalized use of fear, pain, and other injury towards socio-political aims.

Had their plans not been rooted in evil, they would have used soft-power tactics like manufacturing consent, to arrive at their ends. The aim of the Great Reset is to transition the ruling plutocratic oligarchy into a technocratic one. The basis of plutocracy is finance, and the introduction of AI and automation eliminates the basis for finance as the foundation of an economy of scale. This is because automation and deflation move in tandem, making new technologies net losers. Therefore a new paradigm accounting for this post-financial ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, must be introduced. But the ideology of the Great Reset is based within the old financialist paradigm, which is one of cost externalization. When human beings are no longer involved in the valorization process in the production of goods and services, then humanity itself is the cost that requires externalization – elimination.

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“We are, for instance, vaccinated against yellow fever, typhoid, and rabies. We are not vaccinated against Covid..”

Meet the Censored: Bret Weinstein (Taibbi)

TK: Tech company executives have consistently said they intervene on this subject only for safety reasons, to prevent misleading information that might cause someone to avoid a lifesaving treatment. What is your answer to that? Are you an anti-vaxxer? Could a reasonable person infer from your broadcasts that you’re recommending that adults not get vaccinated?

Weinstein: We are biologists engaging material that is inherently evolutionary. Our upcoming book is on the problem caused by the interface of people with novel technology for which we are not evolutionarily prepared. No one is trained in even a majority of the disciplines relevant to the COVID Pandemic. Virologists aren’t clinicians, aren’t epidemiologists, aren’t evolutionary biologists, aren’t pharmacologists, aren’t data scientists. We state repeatedly that we are not medical doctors and are not making recommendations, but we are sharing our view of scientific material that we are qualified to analyze. It is true that some may become hesitant about the Covid vaccines from our discussions. That may cost lives, as we have taken pains to point out repeatedly. We also surely save lives. For example, it is especially likely that DarkHorse viewers who have had COVID would skip being vaccinated, greatly reducing their risk of adverse reactions without increasing their risk of future COVID.

The question is one of net effect. We have been way ahead of official guidance throughout the pandemic, and we have been very sharp in our criticism of those who have treated SARS-CoV2 casually. We have clearly sobered many up about the issue. Our refrain has been that although the case fatality rate from COVID is moderate, the damage to the body from a case of COVID—even if mild—is often substantial and likely implies reduced longevity. And we have given prescient advice on prevention. We were extremely early in recognizing that conducting business outside, opening windows (especially in cars), keeping conversation with strangers brief, wearing masks, removing masks outside, spending time in the sun, supplementing with vitamin-D, all have protective effects.

The best defense of what we have done on DarkHorse is simply to compare our prevention model with the official guidance. It is the low quality and slow improvement in the official model that constitutes the greatest danger. It takes far too long for official guidance to catch up to the evidence. As to the questions of whether we are vaccinated and/or would get vaccinated again: we (and our children) are more fully vaccinated than most people, in part due to the exposures that our (former) jobs as tropical biologists gave us. We are, for instance, vaccinated against yellow fever, typhoid, and rabies. We are not vaccinated against Covid, and do not intend to get vaccinated against Covid (unless, perhaps, a traditional vaccine were to be produced).

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Google translated.

Assange Receives A Visit From His Family For The First Time In 8 Months (Welt)

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange received a visit from his fiancée and two young sons for the first time in eight months in the British maximum security prison in Belmarsh. 38-year-old Stella Morris said after Saturday’s visit that Assange’s situation was “utterly unbearable and grotesque.” “It can’t go on like this,” said Morris. Assange torments himself, the detention drives him into a “deep depression and despair”. 49-year-old Assange has been in the maximum security prison in south London for more than two years. He was arrested in the UK in April 2019 after holing up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years.


In January, a court in London rejected a US extradition request for Assange. The judge justified her decision with the mental state of the Australian and the strict prison conditions that would await him in a trial in the USA. There is a “considerable” risk that Assange would commit suicide while in US custody, she said. Because the US government appealed the verdict, Assange was not released for the time being. It is still unclear whether the US application will be granted. She hoped, said Morris to the British news agency PA, that the government in Washington would give in and refrain from extradition. The US administration under President Joe Biden has shown signs that it is committed to freedom of expression, said Morris, adding: “The only logical step would be to drop this entire prosecution (…)”.

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May 162021
 


John French Sloan Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair 1912

 

COVID Deaths Plummet As Excess Mortality Falls To Pre-Pandemic Levels (McMaken)
Harvard Epidemiologist Locked Out Of Twitter For Criticizing Masks (JTN)
CDC Chief Moves From ‘Impending Doom’ To No Masks In 45 Days (Fox)
Multiple Governors Drop Mask Mandates As CDC Rewrites Guidance (JTN)
CDC Tells Schools To Keep Students In Masks For Another Year (JTN)
Disquiet In UK Schools As Easing Of Mask Restrictions Nears (G.)
Sweden Records 30,000 Suspected Side Effects From Covid Vaccines (RT)
More Than 60,000 Ex-Corona Patients At The Physio (AD)
Toronto Cancels Entire Summer Of Events (ZH)
A Glorified Drug Cartel: How Big Pharma Made Americans Addicted To Opioids (RT)
Liz Cheney Lied About Her Role in Spreading “Russian Bounty” Story (Greenwald)
Circling the Wagons (Jim Kunstler)

 

 

 

 

Joe Biden Clarence Thomas
https://twitter.com/i/status/1393543000211562496

 

 

“..excess mortality began to plummet in early January and is now back to levels below the 2015-2019 average..”

COVID Deaths Plummet As Excess Mortality Falls To Pre-Pandemic Levels (McMaken)

In any given year during the past decade in the United States, more than 2.5 million Americans have died – from all causes. The number has grown in recent years, climbing from 2.59 million in 2013 to 2.85 million in 2019. This has been due partially to the US’s aging population, and also due to rising obesity levels and drug overdoses. In fact, since 2010, growth rates in total deaths has exceeded population growth in every year. In 2020, preliminary numbers suggest a jump of more than 17 percent in all-cause total deaths, rising from 2.85 million in 2019 to 3.35 million in 2020. The increase was not all due to covid. At least one-quarter to one-third appear to be from other causes.

In some cases, more than half of “excess deaths” were attributed to “underlying causes” other than covid. But whether due to untreated medical conditions (thanks to covid lockdowns), or drug overdoses, or homicides, total death increased in 2020. In other words, total excess mortality is a partial proxy for covid deaths. Whatever proportion of total deaths covid cases may comprise, it stands to reason that if total deaths decline, then covid deaths are declining also. Moreover, looking at total deaths helps cut through any controversies over whether or not deaths are properly attributed to covid. What has been the trend with these “excess deaths” in recent months? Well, according to data through mid-March reported by Our World in Data and by the Human Mortality Database, excess mortality began to plummet in early January and is now back to levels below the 2015-2019 average:

Excess mortality peaked the week of January 3 and then it began to collapse, dropping back to summer 2020 levels by mid February. By March 14, excess mortality was at 1 percent above the 2015-2019 average. All this occurred even as very few Americans were vaccinated. When excess deaths began to drop, less than one percent of Americans had been fully vaccinated. At the end of January, less than two percent of Americans had been fully vaccinated. By the end of March, when excess mortality returned to 2019 levels, 15 percent of the population had been fully vaccinated. As of May 11, only one-third of Americans had been fully vaccinated, although “experts” insist 60 to 70 percent of the population must be vaccinated before we can expect to see a drop-off in deaths like that which occurred earlier this year. Yet, as of the week of March 22—excess mortality was below both the 2015-2019 average and below the total for the last year before the official beginning of the covid pandemic (2019).

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Twitter knows better than Harvard.

Harvard Epidemiologist Locked Out Of Twitter For Criticizing Masks (JTN)

A high-profile Harvard epidemiologist this week was locked out of his Twitter account after publicly challenging the mainstream pandemic orthodoxy on face masks. Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a biostatician and epidemiologist, on Friday wrote that “some older high-risk people” had been “naively fooled to think that masks would protect them,” leading some of them to “not socially distance properly” and consequently die from COVID-19. “Tragic,” he wrote further. “Public health officials/scientists must always be honest with the public.” Kulldorff was subsequently locked out of his account. Pictures circulated on Twitter of an apparent message from the company informing him the tweet had “violat[ed] the policy on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”

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It’s mask day today, and confusion reigns.

CDC Chief Moves From ‘Impending Doom’ To No Masks In 45 Days (Fox)

In just about a month and a half, the leader of The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dramatically changed her tone on COVID-19 and mask mandates. Today, the CDC announced it has revised its mask guidance again, now enabling those who are fully vaccinated to forgo wearing masks both indoors and outdoors. “Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities — large or small — without wearing a mask or physically distancing,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. “Based on the continuing downward trajectory of cases, the scientific data on the performance of our vaccines and our understanding of how the virus spreads, that moment has come for those who are fully vaccinated,” she continued.

Just 45 days ago, on March 29, Walensky warned the nation of dire days ahead. “I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” she said during a White House Covid-19 Response Team briefing. “But right now I’m scared. I know what it’s like, as a physician, to stand in that patient room gowned, gloved, masked, shielded, and to be the last person to touch someone else’s loved ones, because their loved ones couldn’t be there.” Walensky continued in the March livestream. The fearful sentiment from a top player in the response team sent a clear signal that though the rising vaccination rates were a positive indicator, there was not enough confidence to ditch the mask or change protocol.

In the weeks following Walensky’s March 29 comment, there was a surge in people running to get their vaccines. A month after her doom comments, and with a bump in new vaccination numbers, Walensky announced a mask revision on April 27 to allow people who are fully vaccinated to do most things outdoors, with some precautions. “We continue to recommend masking in crowded outdoor settings and venues such as packed stadiums and concerts where there is decreased ability to maintain physical distance, and where many unvaccinated people may also be present.”

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Shouldn’t they all do the same thing when reading the same guidance?

Multiple Governors Drop Mask Mandates As CDC Rewrites Guidance (JTN)

Several state governors this week scrambled to drop the mask mandates they had unilaterally imposed last year following reissued CDC guidance stating that vaccinated individuals largely do not have to wear them. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on Friday announced the rollback of his mask mandate, stating that current case numbers compelled him to “move up the timeline for lifting mitigation measures in Virginia.” “Virginians have been working hard, and we are seeing the results in our strong vaccine numbers and dramatically lowered case counts,” Northam claimed.


Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Friday also announced the impending removal of his own mask mandate. “Our long, hard-fought battle against the worst global pandemic in more than a century is finally nearing an end,” Hogan declared in the announcement, also announcing the end to the capacity limits he had imposed on the state. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper also declared on Friday he would remove his mask mandate “for most settings” in the state. “We can take this step today because the science shows our focus on getting people vaccinated is working,” Cooper said.

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Only masks for those least at risk. Makes sense.

CDC Tells Schools To Keep Students In Masks For Another Year (JTN)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told schools nationwide on Saturday they should plan to keep students in masks for the 2021-22 school year because of the limited vaccinations of children. “CDC recommends schools continue to use the current COVID-19 prevention strategies for the 2020-2021 school year,” the agency said in new guidance for students issued just days after it cleared vaccinated adults to ditch their masks in most instances.


“All schools should implement and layer prevention strategies and should prioritize universal and correct use of masks and physical distancing,” it added. The agency also recommended regular testing in schools to “identify individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination for teachers and staff.” While vaccines are widely available for adults, they have not been distributed for most children. The Biden administration only in the last few days authorized Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines be administered for children as young as 12.

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Those poor kids. “Evie Hickman, 13, from Dorking, liked wearing a mask to avoid “talking to people“.

Disquiet In UK Schools As Easing Of Mask Restrictions Nears (G.)

Teachers, pupils and parents have greeted the easing of coronavirus safety measures in schools from Monday with a mixture of relief and, in the light of concern over the Indian variant, dismay and confusion. The government has announced that students will no longer need to wear face coverings in schools. But some areas in the north of England are being advised to continue measures, following rising numbers of cases of the new variant, known as B.1.617.2. For many pupils, wearing a face mask is one of many sacrifices they have made in the fight against the pandemic, and they are pleased the rules have changed. Jessie Wright, 12, from High Wycombe, said she would be “relieved” not to have to wear one in the classroom. “

The masks would get in the way of our learning. They are nice to wear when the weather is cold, but they’re uncomfortable when it’s hot.” Some teachers, she said, would let you “pull down your mask sometimes” at the end of the school day to allow yourself to “get your breath back”. “But other teachers would give you detention if you don’t wear your mask. It’s their decision,” she added. Evie Hickman, 13, from Dorking, liked wearing a mask to avoid “talking to people”. “I’m not going to wear a mask from Monday, but they were useful,” she said. “I’m quite anxious to not cough on others. I do wonder if people will get bullied if they continue to wear masks after next week, though.”

The Department for Education said on Saturday that “the latest data shows infection rates continuing to decrease” and that not having to wear masks would “improve interaction between teachers and students”. However, Bury and Bolton councils have written to parents, advising schoolchildren to “retain the use of face coverings as per the current arrangements, until further notice”, while Bedford borough council has called for all residents aged 16 and over to be vaccinated due to a rise of the variant first discovered in India.

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That would be about a million in the US?!

Sweden Records 30,000 Suspected Side Effects From Covid Vaccines (RT)

An official tally of suspected side effects resulting from Covid vaccination in Sweden has surpassed 30,000, with the majority of cases occurring in people inoculated with AstraZeneca’s shot. According to the Swedish Medical Products Agency, as of last week, the Scandinavian nation had received 31,844 reports of adverse reactions linked to the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines. Sweden is currently offering three variants of the drug. There are currently 2,103 reports of side effects from the Moderna shot, while the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been associated with 9,117 health issues. But the number of suspected adverse reactions from the two shots seems relatively small when compared to the 19,961 reports linked to AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria.

The most common side effects for all three drugs were fever and headache. Other reported adverse reactions included nausea, joint pain, and dizziness. Notably, the AstraZeneca shot only accounts for about 26% of the roughly 2.7 million vaccines that have been administered so far in Sweden, but makes up around 63% of the side effects reports. Of the nearly 32,000 reports, 663 cases have been registered where it’s unclear which vaccine was administered. Two-thirds of the reports have been submitted by the general public. The agency cautioned that individual reports do not necessarily demonstrate a correlation between the medical episode and the vaccine.

Ebba Hallberg, an official with the Medical Products Agency, told Swedish media that it was unusual to receive so many reports of side effects, but noted that the figure was likely high because of public focus on the new vaccines. Healthcare providers are likely only reporting more “serious” side effects, the official theorized. Hallberg also said that it was possible that AstraZeneca was overrepresented in the data because the shot was given to many young people and healthcare workers, who are more tech-savvy and would therefore be more likely to report an issue. According to one Swedish outlet, the agency has received more reports of suspected side effects over the past several months than it typically does over four years.

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Google translate from Dutch.

More Than 60,000 Ex-Corona Patients At The Physio (AD)

Sixty to seventy-five thousand Dutch people with long-term corona complaints are being treated by a physiotherapist. Their number has more than doubled since the turn of the year. This is evident from a calculation based on data from the National Physiotherapy Database, in which some of the Dutch physiotherapists keep track of which treatments they perform. At the end of last year, an estimated 28,000 ex-Covid patients received help from a physical therapist. The treatment duration is an average of eighty days. According to the professional association, this means that a treatment period of several hundred days is no exception. The complaints for which people are treated, according to the KNGF, range from breathing problems, fatigue and loss of muscle mass to psychological problems, or a combination thereof.

Some of them are no longer able to work or participate in social activities. This site recently reported that many ex-Covid patients experience many problems with their brain in addition to physical discomfort. Physiotherapists therefore often work together with, for example, occupational therapists and psychologists. Some people who are being treated with corona have been in hospital, but according to physiotherapist Anne-Loes van der Valk it is 80 percent of people who went through their infection at home. “They are of all ages. I also see students aged 17, 18 who have to temporarily stop their studies. ” Van Woerkom says he expects that the number of ex-Covid patients needing physiotherapy will increase even further. Many people who became infected during the third wave have yet to turn to for help.

Due to the large increase in the number of patients, the pressure on physiotherapy practices is also high. Patients often require longer and more frequent treatment than regular patients, the KNGF warns. The professional association calls on the cabinet to extend the temporary rehabilitation care scheme with which these treatments are reimbursed. Van Woerkom: “The figures show that a lot of physiotherapy is still needed. An arrangement that would expire in three months would leave a huge number of patients out in the cold. ”

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So you go somewhere else

Toronto Cancels Entire Summer Of Events (ZH)

Despite widespread vaccination availability and even the U.S. CDC saying that vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks, Toronto has decided to cancel an entire summer’s worth of social functions. The city has cancelled “all major in-person events for a second straight summer,” CBC reported on Friday. As the city continues to fight off large numbers of Covid cases during the pandemic’s third wave (whatever that even means at this point), it has made cancellations all the way through Labour Day. Previously, provincial officials had been hoping for normalcy beginning in July or August. That doesn’t look like it’s going to be the case. The city has cancelled events like the Canadian National Exhibition, Taste of the Danforth, the Caribbean Carnival and Salsa in Toronto.

The city is making the decision in May because organizers asked for “as much advanced notification as possible”. So now they have it: Toronto will officially have nothing going on during the summer. Mayor John Tory said that he thought the city would be in better shape by late summer, but he wasn’t sure it would be safe to be “shoulder to shoulder” with large groups of people. Darrell Brown, Executive Director of the Canadian National Exhibition called the news “devastating for the community and staff” who will now face layoffs. “At this point in time we’re living on borrowed money in the short-term and will be completely out of funds by December,” he said. The event has lost more than $70 million in revenue over the course of the pandemic and it generates $128 million for the Ontario economy each year.

Last year was the first time the event was closed since World War II. Despite asking the government for relief, it has only gotten $20,000 from Ontario’s small business relief fund. Tory said: “I am working with the Canadian National Exhibition to help the fair through this difficult year and prepare for a bigger and better in-person event in 2022.” Toronto, meanwhile, has delivered 1.6 million doses of Covid vaccines. The city’s population stands at about 3 million. Despite this, the city’s stay at home order will remain in place until “at least” June.

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Pluck them clean.

A Glorified Drug Cartel: How Big Pharma Made Americans Addicted To Opioids (RT)

A new HBO documentary called ‘The Crime of the Century’ lays bare how firms like Purdue used bribery, dodgy marketing, and shady political deals to make fortunes by getting millions hooked on super-strong painkillers. What would it look like if an illegal international drug cartel were allowed to advertise? Perhaps it might take the form of slick music videos and glossy magazine ads promising an ‘end to pain’. Certainly, they would minimise the negative effects of their drugs on your life, your future, and your loved ones. If questioned about what they were doing, we can imagine them blaming those who use their drugs, not themselves for providing them. It sounds mad – madder still that anyone would believe them – but this is exactly what has been allowed to happen with large pharmaceutical companies and their marketing of highly addictive opioid drugs.

At least, this is the argument put forward in a new two-part HBO documentary series released this week entitled, ‘The Crime of the Century’. Across its nearly four-hour run-time, director Alex Gibney lays bare the bribery, underhanded marketing tactics, and shady political dealings that enabled the devastating overproduction and over-distribution of synthetic opiates. In devastating detail, the documentary portrays American pharmaceutical companies and the doctors who recklessly doled out prescriptions as elements of a glorified drug cartel – dealers in lab coats, suits and ties. Systematically overselling the benefits of synthetic opioids and downplaying the risk of addiction, the documentary traces how drug companies are driven to pursue ever stronger and more exotic medications as patents on old treatments run out and profits dry up.

In many ways, it traverses territory that is already well known, but is no less useful for highlighting in shocking detail just how much these companies have become a major risk to public health. This is particularly true in their penchant for ‘discovering’ and treating ever more chronic conditions. While the efficacy of opioids for treatment of acute pain and end-of-life care has been well known, there is little incentive to develop and provide drugs solely for such patients, who tend to be few and far between and whose needs are often short-term. No, the real money is in long-term use in greater numbers. And this is where the dangers of pushing these drugs on patients with any kind of pain became increasingly clear.

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Family recipe.

Liz Cheney Lied About Her Role in Spreading “Russian Bounty” Story (Greenwald)

In an interview on Tuesday with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) denied that she spread the discredited CIA “Russian bounty” story. That CIA tale, claiming Russia was paying Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, was cooked up by the CIA and then published by The New York Times on June 27 of last year, right as former President Trump announced his plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The Times story, citing anonymous intelligence officials, was then continually invoked by pro-war Republicans and Democrats — led by Cheney — to justify their blocking of that troop withdrawal. The story was discredited when the U.S. intelligence community admitted last month that it had only “low to moderate confidence” that any of this even happened.

When Baier asked Cheney about her role in spreading this debunked CIA story, Cheney blatantly lied to him, claiming “if you go back and look at what I said — every single thing I said: I said if those stories are true, we need to know why the President and Vice President were not briefed on them.” After Baier pressed her on the fact that she vested this story with credibility, Cheney insisted a second time that she never endorsed the claim but merely spoke conditionally, always using the “if these reports are true” formulation.

Liz Cheney, as she so often does, blatantly lied. That she merely spoke of the Russian bounty story in the conditional — “every single thing I said: I said if those stories are true” — is completely and demonstrably false. Indeed, other than Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), there are few if any members of Congress who did more to spread this Russian bounty story as proven truth, all in order to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. In so doing, she borrowed from a pro-war playbook pioneered by her dad, to whom she owes her career: the former Vice President would leak CIA claims to The New York Times to justify war, then go on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, as he did on September 8, 2002, and cite those New York Times reports as though they were independent confirmation of his views coming from that paper rather than from him.

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Still not over.

Circling the Wagons (Jim Kunstler)

Perhaps Arizona can adopt California’s new minority-friendly math curriculum before the election audit ordered by the Arizona State Senate is completed in a month or two. Under that new system of math, or maff, two plus two doesn’t equal four, it equals more, five plus five equals a lot more, and 1,672,143 minus X equals don’t-bother-me-with-your-racist-numbers. It’ll take some kind of math or maff to unravel the mystery of Arizona’s 2020 election results, and the people who run Maricopa County — that is, Phoenix and its suburban asteroid belt, or about 60 percent of the AZ population — don’t want that mystery solved. So, they are not responding to a court-ordered subpoena to produce the evidence, namely, the vote tabulation files from their Dominion Systems voting machines, the county’s server routers, or the chain-of-custody records of the precinct batches of paper ballots.

The county’s servers indicate that the folder containing the database of election results was deleted sometime after the election, so the county has no record of the vote. Hmmmm…. By a previous subpoena, the state Senate took possession of 2.1 million ballots and nearly 400 Dominion election machines and turned them over to the company, Cyber Ninjas, hired to do the audit. Problem was, the county didn’t hand over the passwords to the Dominion machines. Officials claim they never had the passwords, which suggests that the County Board of Elections never had control over their own elections, for which they are legally responsible. A curious situation, because the county says it conducted a previous examination of its voting machines weeks after the election. How’d they do that without the Dominion passwords?

Maybe the data was not stored on the Dominion machines but booted onto external hard drives, which would be against the rules. Or maybe the Dominion machines were connected to the Internet and information was booted into the Dominion machines from somewhere else on Planet Earth. That would be very very against the rules. If that was so, the log files on the machines would show time-stamps and where the outside information originated. Would that be enough for the State Senate to de-certify the Arizona election results? Or prompt audits in other states where the outcome is still contested: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin?

Read more …

 

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May 152021
 


Claude Monet Misty Morning on the Seine 1897

 

 

When the covid virustime started, we were told by everyone with a microphone to “follow the science”. But 16 months or so in, we’re not following the science, yet no-one calls us on it. What happened? Where did we lose the thread, where did we lose our heads, where did the science go?

Did we lose it because the vaccine makers got too greedy, or because politicians became too panicky, or because the media realized that scaring the living daylights out of people 24/7 is great for ratings? Or just because we ourselves lost track of what was really going on?

Injecting hundreds of millions of people with substances that have never been properly tested – for which long-established protocols have existed for a long time – is about as unscientific as it gets. Then when you realize there’s no evidence that they keep injectees from being infected or infecting others, but only makes them -hopefully- a little less sick, you might as well stop right there.

From a science point of view, you’re engaging in either a useless enterprise or a giant gamble with people’s health. Both utterly unscientific endeavors, any scientist can tell you that.

Then, when you hear, from the UK government, no less, that only 66% of people can ever be successfully vaccinated and may be protected with the present vaccines, which still leaves out those who don’t want these vaccines, what are you going to think and do?

Shouldn’t you perhaps focus on the fact that over 4 out of 5 people have an immune system that provides them with “adaptive cross-immunity”, meaning they are not at risk of dying or even serious disease? Why would you instead turn to experimental substances that risk putting those immune systems themselves at risk?

Which part of this is us following the science? Why haven’t we seen huge campaigns aimed at making us healthier, and boosting our immune systems? What part of that would be “not following the science”? It’s not as if we don’t know how to boost our immune systems, or for that matter how to make us overall healthier then we are today.

Moreover, the effect of lockdowns is highly debatable -even if such debates are stifled-, as is the effect of facemasks always and everywhere. And, obviously, that of untested “vaccines”. We have the science, mankind has been through epidemics through its entire history, and it’s not as if scientists have never learned anything from that history.

It’s just that we seem to be changing the meaning of the word “science” to mean an industry, and corporations, that produce novel chemicals, as well as societies that do things, lockdowns, masks, that have never been used in the way they have been the past year.

And that is very risky. If people like Geert VanDenBossche are only half right when they say mass-vaccination during a pandemic will only -and inevitably- speed up the ability of an endemic virus to mutate into forms that evade the vaccines, it’s woman and children first. Well, either that or old and overweight men.

I’ve written a lot on the topic over the past year and a half, obviously, and it doesn’t feel all that great to repeat talking points, but I keep finding it difficult to understand why our 21st century world calls for us to follow the science, only to turn its back on that science the very next moment.

And for simply asking that, I risk being vilified. Like some kind of heretic. But as someone said, I think it was Roger Hodkinson, we cannot afford to stifle dissenting voices in this situation, because the discussion they start might be the very step we need to find a way out. We can’t afford to not ask questions.

To just say get your jab and don’t say or ask a word appears to be the most reckless thing we can do. Even if the alleged “vaccines” would do better at protecting us than the present science has evidence for, that would still be only in -the richer- part of the world, while the virus can run rampage in the rest.

As we can still, though you won’t hear anything about this from your media -local or global- or your politicians, strengthen immune systems sufficiently to make the worst threat of Covid go away.

The virus may kill the some of weakest amongst us, the obese, those with co-morbidities, and the elderly, but many other things, like the flu, can -and do- do that too, yet we have never paralyzed our societies and social lives because of those things. While we have zero evidence that the present vaccines, or whatever you call them, will solve these issues.

It doesn’t look to me like we are following the science at all. We’re following something alright, but not that. If and when the vaccine makers themselves state they have no proof their chemicals protect against infection, yet everyone starts opening up their stores and theaters and what have you, but only to the “vaccinated”, I’m at a loss for words.

 

 

 

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May 072021
 


Edgar Degas At the Milliner’s 1905-10

 

CDC Predicts Sharp Decline In Covid-19 Activity By July (Cidrap)
Why Masks Are Still Mandatory (AT)
CDC Uses Different PCR Test Rules For Vaccinated, Non-Vaccinated (AVV)
Experts Say It’s Vital That Parents Get Their Kids Vaccinated For Covid (F.)
Gates-Backed Institute Claims Covid Deaths Over Double Official Number (RT)
Merkel Opposes Biden’s Call To Waive Covid-19 Vaccine Patent Protections (RT)
Russia Authorizes Single-dose ‘Sputnik Light’ (RT)
Australia Borders Could Be Shut Until Late 2022 (Y!)
Gundlach Warns America’s “Unfunded Liabilities” Are $163 Trillion (ZH)
Big Tech Has Turned The Internet Into A Prison (Malic)
White House Says “We Support” Ukraine’s Ambitions To Join NATO (ZH)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tucker VAERS

 

 

This will be claimed as a vaccine victory, though it was predicted long before. Seasonal.

CDC Predicts Sharp Decline In Covid-19 Activity By July (Cidrap)

New modeling from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) predicts the United States will see a sharp drop off of COVID-19 infections and deaths by July, if high vaccination coverage is achieved and most of the country maintains a moderate adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), including physical distancing. The data from six models were published yesterday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Researchers predicted different outcomes based on four scenarios with different vaccination coverage rates and effectiveness estimates and strength and implementation of NPIs for a 6-month period (April–September 2021) using data available through Mar 27, 2021, the authors said.

The four scenarios included: high vaccination with moderate NPI use, high vaccination with low NPI use, low vaccination with moderate NPI use, and low vaccination with low NPI use. “All scenarios included the spread of the B.1.1.7 variant, with the assumption that it was 50% more transmissible than were previously circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants,” the authors said. “In all four scenarios, COVID-19 cases were projected to increase through May 2021 at the national level because of increased prevalence of the B.1.1.7 variant and decreased NPI mandates and compliance,” the authors found. “A sharp decline in cases was projected by July 2021, with a faster decline in the high-vaccination scenarios.”

The United States reported 44,51[0] new COVID-19 cases yesterday, and 776 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 tracker. In total, 32,580,188 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in the United States, including 579,653 deaths. The country is currently averaging 46,656 new COVID-19 cases and 686 deaths per day, according to a CNN analysis of Johns Hopkins data. The United States has not seen the 7-day average of deaths this low since July. The CDC COVID Data Tracker shows 321,549,335 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been delivered in the United States, and 249,556,820 have been administered, with 107,346,533 Americans fully vaccinated.

[..] As early as next week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is poised to issue an emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 12 to 15. But according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 3 in 10 parents polled of children in that age group said they would get their child vaccinated as soon they are able. One quarter say they will wait and see how the vaccine is working, 18% say they will wait to see if school requires it, and one quarter say they will not get their child vaccinated.

Read more …

“People would actually begin to associate non-masking people with safety, while mask-wearing people would signal danger.”

Why Masks Are Still Mandatory (AT)

Joe Biden is in a pickle. He wants to continue to convince Americans they should get the experimental biological agent (AKA “the vaccine”), but, as Tucker Carlson pointed out last week, the administration and the CDC have offered no explanation as to why you need to continue to wear a mask after you have taken “the vaccine.” Why would they want us to doubt the efficacy of the vaccine? Why would any sane person who is not in a high-risk group contemplate becoming a lab experiment subject if you are not allowed (yes, our rights are now derived from government and will be doled out based on compliance) to burn your mask and return to a pre-pandemic way of life?

That’s just bad salesmanship…until you think about the alternative. Think about what would happen if they allowed (there’s that word again) people not to wear masks after being vaccinated. Here’s a typical scenario. The vaccinated test subject enters the supermarket. The vigilante mob of leftists can’t wait to accost and demand compliance to their edict, using physical violence if necessary. The test subject then proclaims that he has put his mask in his pocket. A short time later, the test subject hears the man claim the same immunity.

In this fictional example, you can begin to see what the ramifications of this policy would be. Within weeks, the majority of Americans would stop wearing masks. (Along with social distancing, and lockdowns, and getting the vaccine). People would actually begin to associate non-masking people with safety, while mask-wearing people would signal danger. The danger of the unvaccinated. The government has just lost all control. Do you really think these people will give up their newfound power so easily? I’m afraid not. I imagine that their Big Tech partners are working furiously building a mandatory vaccine passport system as you read this. Until that is up and running, you can expect the regime to continue requiring all people to wear masks, especially those who have been “vaccinated.”

Read more …

Google translated from a Belgian doctors’ site. Odd.

CDC Uses Different PCR Test Rules For Vaccinated, Non-Vaccinated (AVV)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has changed the rules for the PCR test so that vaccinees are less likely to be tested as infected than those who are not vaccinated. They have lowered the CT value from 40 to 28. The PCR test, on which the entire corona policy was based, is extremely unreliable and yields up to 90% false positives. So say Nature, WHO, The Lancet and many others. Without all those false positives, we wouldn’t have had this whole “crisis”. The current PCR test analyzes genetic material from the virus using 37 or 40 cycles, but health experts say that is too high because it detects even small amounts of the virus that do not pose a risk of contamination.

“Tests with such high thresholds can detect not only live virus, but also genetic fragments, remnants of infections that pose no particular risk – similar to finding hair in a room long after a person has left,” said Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, New York Times. “If you adjust that down to a more reasonable CT threshold of 30, anywhere from 40% -90% of lab results * are no longer positive. * The rest is well beyond the point of infectivity,” Mandavilli wrote on Twitter. The problem is that high CT threshold.

PCR tests are a very smart method to specifically amplify the smallest DNA fragments so often that they can be easily detected, TKP reports. As each cycle is doubled, very high gain percentages are achieved. How high this percentage must be in order to be able to detect an infection as such with any probability has been the subject of discussion for some time. The US agency CDC is now lowering the cycle threshold for detecting infections after vaccination from 37 to 40 to 28. A number of studies have shown that more than 24 to 27 cycles can certainly no longer detect infectious viruses. If you need more than 28 cycles, you have proof that there is no longer a reproducible virus.

But it goes beyond that, because in fact PCR cannot basically detect whether or not there is reproducible virus in the smear, because it only first converts small particles of it into DNA and then amplifies them. This is how the Swedish health authority Folkhälsomyndigheten describes it: “The PCR technology used in tests to detect viruses cannot differentiate between viruses capable of infecting cells and viruses that have been rendered harmless by the immune system, and therefore these tests cannot be used to detect viruses. whether or not someone is contagious.

Read more …

Vaccine porn.

Experts Say It’s Vital That Parents Get Their Kids Vaccinated For Covid (F.)

Children and teenagers might soon be the next focus of the U.S. Covid-19 pandemic. By the last week of April, cases among children and teens accounted for more than 22% of new cases in the U.S, and there was a 4% increase in the total number of cases in kids. Almost 4 million kids have been diagnosed with Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. Luckily, vaccines for kids are arriving soon. On May 4th, Pfizer said the vaccine it co-developed with BioNTech will likely get an FDA authorization for use in kids aged 12-15. The companies hope to get the vaccines authorized for kids aged 2-11 by September. Moderna is just behind, having started its phase 2 / 3 clinical trial in children less than 12 years old in March.

While polls show that adults are increasingly willing to get vaccinated, if they haven’t already, some parents have expressed doubts about vaccinating their kids. These concerns range from a lack of data to the quick pace of production. That said, a recent poll showed that 30% of parents are enthusiastic about vaccinations. As vaccines become available for those under 18, pediatricians and researchers argue that it is essential to immunize kids against Covid-19, both for their own protection as well as the protection of everyone else. Usually, Covid-19 symptoms aren’t as severe for kids when compared to adults, but that doesn’t mean that kids feel no effect from the virus. The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that between 0.1% and 2% of Covid-19 cases affecting those under age 18 require hospitalization..

Additionally, more than 250 children in the U.S. have died from the disease in the past year. Children who have been infected with Covid-19 can see other complications. A multisystem inflammatory syndrome, called MIS-C, can cause fever, rash, and damage to the heart and other organs in children who had even asymptomatic cases of Covid-19. And just like adults, children can also get symptoms of “long-haul” Covid-19, which can include severe fatigue, headaches, and abdominal pain. Paul Offit, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, says that he’s seen a number of cases of both severe Covid-19 and MIS-C in children. “I’m sure all of those parents would have preferred the vaccine to the disease,” he says.

[..] “Reaching a level of immunity in the community is even more important as these more transmissible variants are circulating,” says Ted Chaconas, the chief medical officer of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. And vaccinating kids won’t just help prevent them from getting the disease; it will also make the whole community safer. The more opportunity that the Covid-19 virus has to replicate in human bodies, the higher the likelihood that new mutations will emerge. Children make up almost 25% of the U.S. population, a huge group “that possibly has no preexisting immunity to this virus, that could become infected and produce new variants,” says Jennifer Nayak, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Read more …

Covid porn.

Gates-Backed Institute Claims Covid Deaths Over Double Official Number (RT)

An outfit whose statistical models were used to justify early Covid-19 lockdowns is now arguing that the true death toll of the pandemic is far higher than the official numbers – and closer to their own apocalyptic predictions.
Covid-19 has killed more than 900,000 Americans and over 6.9 million people worldwide, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) claimed on Thursday, citing their own statistical models based on excess mortality. By contrast, official figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University list 3.24 million deaths globally, of which 580,000 are in the US, as of May 6. IHME chief Dr. Christopher Murray explained in a series of videos that they used a “variety of statistical methods” to determine excess mortality, which was then weighed against six other factors to calculate whether it would have been due to the coronavirus or other causes.

They compared “anticipated deaths from all causes based on pre-pandemic trends with the actual number of all-cause deaths during the pandemic,” then removed the deaths both “indirectly attributable” to the pandemic and “averted” by the lockdowns. “When you put all that together, we conclude that the best way, the closest estimate, for the true Covid death is still excess mortality, because some of those things are on the positive side, other factors are on the negative side,” Murray said. The institute apparently suggests that official Covid data is not to be trusted – and their extrapolated “statistics” imply that some nations are even more untrustworthy than the others. For instance, they claim that Russia had almost six times more coronavirus deaths than its official numbers – almost as many as Brazil, whose official numbers are supposedly off by a third, again by IHME metrics.

By contrast, the UK “undercounted” its deaths by only 60,000 or so. The bombshell claim, while promptly parroted by major media outlets, was met with some skepticism by other scientists. William Hanage of Harvard University told NPR in an email that IHME’s claim that Covid-19 deaths have been “substantially undercounted” in some places more than others “is likely sound, but the absolute numbers are less so for a lot of reasons.” “Their estimate of excess deaths is enormous and inconsistent with our research and others,” said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University. “There are a lot of assumptions and educated guesses built into their model.”

Read more …

Intellectual property covers a lot of things, not just vaccines.

Merkel Opposes Biden’s Call To Waive Covid-19 Vaccine Patent Protections (RT)

The Biden administration’s endorsement of a proposal to waive intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines is facing new opposition from German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “The limiting factor for the production of vaccines are manufacturing capacities and high quality standards, not the patents,” a spokesperson for Merkel said Thursday, according to Bloomberg. “The protection of intellectual property is a source of innovation and this has to remain so in the future.” US Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced this week that the Biden administration was supporting a proposal in the World Trade Organization to open up patents on Covid-19 vaccines.

Tai said the “extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures.” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the announcement a “monumental moment in the fight against Covid-19. Supporters of the measure have said removing intellectual property protections will help low-income countries produce and distribute vaccines faster. Critics, however, like vaccine advocate Bill Gates, have argued that such a move presents difficulties and could hinder the safety of future vaccines. After Biden’s endorsement of the proposal, stock for companies like Pfizer and Moderna fell. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on Thursday he is “not at all” in favor of the US’ stance.

“The problem is that there are no facilities in the world outside the ones that we can build ourselves,” he told AFP. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said earlier on Thursday that the EU is ready to have discussions on the proposal to remove patent protections from vaccines. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also expressed its support for waiving patents.

Read more …

Russia’s doing better but not great.

Russia Authorizes Single-dose ‘Sputnik Light’ (RT)

The Russian Health Ministry has authorized the use of Sputnik Light, a one-shot coronavirus vaccine said to be even more efficient than some two-dose jabs currently on the market. Sputnik Light is the first component of the widely used Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, its researchers explained. However, the single dose has shown 79.4% efficacy, which “is higher than that of many two-dose vaccines,” the developers said in a statement. Researchers have analyzed the efficacy rate based on data received from Russia’s mass vaccination program between December 2020 and April 2021. Having studied data taken 28 days after a single injection was administered, they said the infection rate among one-time vaccinated people was just 0.277%. The unvaccinated adult population showed 1.349% infection rate over the same period.


The scientists behind the vaccine say it’s effective against new Covid-19 strains. Antibodies neutralizing the deadly virus were activated in over 91% of recipients on the 28th day post shot. It is also said to provide absolute protection against severe cases of the disease. Following the trials, no serious side effects have been registered, Sputnik Light researchers report. Developers hope the single dose will help provide faster immunization among larger numbers of people. “The single-dose regimen solves the challenge of immunizing large groups in a shorter time, which is especially important during the acute phase of the spread of coronavirus, achieving herd immunity faster,” said Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which funds the vaccine. He also pointed out that Sputnik Light “has an affordable price of less than $10,” and can be easily transported and stored.

Read more …

How is that not a prison?

Australia Borders Could Be Shut Until Late 2022 (Y!)

Australia is likely to remain shut to visitors until late 2022, the country’s trade and tourism minister said Friday, as another global coronavirus surge smashed hopes of a quick reopening. Minister Dan Tehan said a wave of cases on the Indian sub-continent showed Australia’s near blanket ban on arrivals was still essential to keep the country Covid-free. Since March 20, 2020, Australians have been barred from travelling overseas and a hard-to-get individual exemption is needed for foreign visitors to enter the country. It is “very hard to determine” when borders could reopen, Tehan told Sky News, “the best guess would be in the middle to the second half of next year”.


Before the pandemic, around one million short-term visitors entered the country each month. That figure is now around 7,000. Anyone who does enter must undergo 14 days strict hotel quarantine. A recently established travel bubble with New Zealand has had mixed success, being paused for cities where the virus jumped from quarantine facilities before being contained. Australia has recorded 29,886 cases since the pandemic began. A large proportion were detected in hotel quarantine. Vaccination rollout has been slow, with just 2.5 million vaccines administered in a country of 25 million people, each needing two doses.

Read more …

“..amount of unfunded liabilities is 775% of our current total economic output..”

Gundlach Warns America’s “Unfunded Liabilities” Are $163 Trillion (ZH)

DoubleLine’s Jeffrey Gundlach called the Fed’s bluff late last month, telling investors during an interview that he suspected the central bank was merely “guessing” about the impact of inflation being “transitory”. Since then, we have only received more signs that inflationary pressures are growing in the US economy, while a growing number of investors have been persuaded to agree with Gundlach. The other day, DoubleLine released a recording of another talk given by Gundlach where he elaborated on the inflation theme, while also discussing other issues like the outlook for the US dollar in the face of President Biden’s tax-and-spend agenda.

During the course of an hour-plus conversation, much of it accompanied by a slide deck with some of Gundlach’s favorite charts, Gundlach tackled a few key topics that he feels could threaten the Fed’s ability to backstop financial markets. He started by slamming Biden’s plan to hike capital gains taxes on taxpayers with more than $1 million in earnings, arguing that fears of higher capital gains taxes is already weighing in the market. Gundlach argued that high-beta stocks and other speculative investments like bitcoin have the most to lose due to a hike in capital gains. After all, who is going to want to take a risk on a long shot if they need to give half of their winnings to the government?

“Today is an important day because the president has made good if you want to call it that on his promise to begin raising taxes and the capital gains tax if you make more than a million dollars a year in California the capital gains tax if the proposal goes through that was launched today will be 57 capital gains tax that’s the federal tax plus the California tax so it’s getting pretty ugly and i think it’s going to have some very significant effects which we started to see the minute that this tax proposal was was launched today we’ve seen bitcoin a very speculative darling investment these days go down about 20 from its high in the last couple of weeks and obviously a lot of people would think twice about speculating on something like bitcoin if they felt that if they won meaning the price went up from their cost that 57 percent of a highly speculative gamble if it hits if it hits would go to the federal government but the stock market also fell pretty sharply upon that no wonder it’s surprising that people haven’t been contemplating this already.”

[..] Gundlach also pointed out that the surge in the debt doesn’t fully capture how much money the federal government owes. There are also unfunded liabilities which, when combined with all local, state and federal debt, leave US citizens on the hook for $163 trillion. That’s more than 5x the $28 trillion national debt. “The government giveaway programs and the programs that we put in place to battle the economic impact especially to people who were suddenly unemployed and there were about 20 20 uh 20 million people that were suddenly unemployed those stimulus packages were originally thought to be temporary but now they’ve become a fixture and we can see that the blue line in recent months has needed uh as has grown again as a requirement in funding these non-stop stimulus programs so the US government is now has over 28 trillion dollars in debt and the US government has $163 trillion in unfunded liabilities when you roll it all together federal state and local level that amount of unfunded liabilities is 775% of our current total economic output,” Gundlach said.

Read more …

No kidding.

Big Tech Has Turned The Internet Into A Prison (Malic)

I once thought the internet would have the same effect on corporate media gatekeepers as the AK-47 had on colonial empires in Africa. That was before Big Tech turned that promise of freedom into the second coming of feudalism. Wednesday’s decision by Facebook’s “oversight board” – a transparent attempt to outsource responsibility for censorship to an international committee – to extend the ban on 45th US President Donald Trump is just the latest example, but by no means the most egregious. Earlier this week, the banhammer descended on RT’s digital project Redfish over posts criticizing… Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini and the Holocaust, of all things.

How did it come to this? Years ago, in an argument over media censorship, I had brought up the internet as the modern version of the AK-47. While the European colonial armies were able to conquer Africa in the 19th century, using machine guns and repeating rifles, they became unable to hold it once the Kalashnikov automatic rifle put the peasants in places like Congo, Angola and Vietnam on equal footing with Western armies seeking to keep them down. Or, if you want a more peaceful metaphor, it was the promise of open pasture extended to people who had previously been treated like cattle, penned up in factory barns and fed slop from a trough.

That was in March 2011. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were already around, but they were challenging the gatekeepers and offering their platforms to the common people like myself. In 2016, everything changed. That was the year Trump was able to bypass the corporate gatekeepers, using those platforms to speak to the American people directly. Having consolidated the internet between them, and under pressure from politicians they already supported, the corporations running these platforms began censoring content and users – first gradually, then suddenly. The pretext for this was “Russiagate,” the conspiracy theory pushed by Democrats and their corporate media allies to explain Hillary Clinton’s 2016 fiasco, delegitimize Trump’s presidency, and – as it turns out – justify censorship.

As demonstrated by the recent example of Twitter’s clash with Russia over illegal content, or Facebook’s standoff with Australia over paying for news, these mega-corporations aren’t opposed to censorship or committed to property on principle. Rather, their only “principle” is the Who-Whom reductionism, a world in which they and those they agree with can do no wrong, while anyone else can do no right. The long march from banning Alex Jones in 2018 to banning the sitting president of the United States in 2021 was completed with surprising alacrity. The collusion within Silicon Valley to ban Trump on the blatantly false pretext of “inciting insurrection” on January 6 may have been the political Rubicon, but Big Tech had begun putting their finger, fist and even elbow on the political scales long before.

Read more …

Let them try.

White House Says “We Support” Ukraine’s Ambitions To Join NATO (ZH)

While traveling aboard Air Force One for President Joe Biden’s visit to Louisiana on Thursday, White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre bluntly stated that “we support” Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO. When she was asked by a press pool reporter if the White House “supports Ukraine joining NATO” – the deputy press secretary responded with “We supported it… yeah” – but then quickly sought to clarify that certain “commitments” have to be met. She explained, “The Biden administration remains committed to ensuring that NATO’s door remains open to aspirants when they are ready and able to meet the commitments.” “Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken is in Kiev right now to affirm our support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence. His trip also emphasizes the importance of Ukraine passing key legislation to advance rule of law, anticorruption and economic reforms that will strengthen Ukraine’s democracy and economy, and further Euro-Atlantic integration,” Jean-Pierre said.

“The Biden administration is committed to ensuring that NATO’s door remains open to aspirants when they are ready and able to meet the commitments and obligations of membership and contribute to security in the Euro-Atlantic area,” she later clarified. Rarely has the White House answered the controversial question so directly, especially given NATO’s clear requirements for entry stipulating that a country engaged in territorial disputes with neighbors, including internal civil conflict, is not eligible for membership. This is because of the obvious reality that the inevitable quick invocation of NATO’s Article 5 would immediately result in war. Last month’s renewed crisis and Russian troop build-up which thrust the Russia-Ukraine-Crimea dispute back in international headlines saw Kiev officials renew their vocal push for entry into NATO. Kiev had after the Maidan coup in 2014 cooled its NATO pursuit rhetoric given the obvious hurdles for entry and the conflict with Russian-backed separatists in the country’s east.

Crucially in the Thursday comments, which are sure to raise the alarm in Moscow, the White House spokeswoman additionally emphasized that the US “supports” Ukraine’s reforms (the very reforms which are meant to secure its future NATO membership) as well as “its border fight against Russia aggression.” The NATO question will likely be raised by Vladimir Putin assuming the much anticipated Biden-Putin summit actually materializes in June. Russia has long considered Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO pursuits to be a “red line” which the Kremlin says would make war all but certain.

Read more …

 

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