Dec 122022
 


Vincent van Gogh Autumn landscape 1885

 

 

We’ve done quite a few episodes of commenter TAE Summary’s “Tales of Two Narratives” through time. Let’s add this one, why don’t we. Reading through -especially- Twitter, the past 24 hours or so, it struck me how fitting this is. We’re talking narratives that are so many light years apart, never the twain shall meet. Interested in time travel? This is for you.

On the one hand, lots of people react to the following tweet by Elon Musk, by claiming Fauci saved millions of lives. On the other hand, just as many people (or so it seems) claim Fauci killed millions of people. It’s hard to get a bigger, and more consequential, chasm, than that. And apparently this Musk tweet got the most likes in Twitter history. What does that tell us? This chasm is not just on Twitter, this is the entire country plus anywhere else on the planet where people follow this. Despite the enormous 24/7 pressure to accept “The Science”, get a shot and a mask, and shut up.

 

 

Of all people, John Brennan tried. The ex-CIA director who was caught lying to the Senate in 2014, and in 2017 to the House Intelligence Committee (Steele Dossier) about Russian interference during the 2016 election, still appears to think he has some form of moral high ground. Which is remarkable in and of itself. But at least Brennan has “class”.

 

 

Elon Musk’s reaction has been loud and clear (note: this tweet is not a direct reaction to Brennan):

 

 

Elon Musk has promised us a “full” record of the decision making process behind the censoring and banning by Twitter’s former staff, of renowned doctors like Peter McCullough, Robert Malone, Pierre Kory, Robert Marik, Richard Urso, and many more. Many of these distinguished scientists have seen their careers and livelihoods hampered, even destroyed by Fauci -and Twitter- over the past -almost- 3 years. And, of course, anyone else who dared question “The Science”.

This was (is?!) a highly concerted effort. How many people died who could have been saved with ivermectin? Or just Vitamin D3, for that matter? HCQ? So many lives were lost to FDA, Fauci et al banning anything but Pfizer. Many more will perish because they now have mRNA in their bodies, and will never be able to get rid of it anymore.

The “full record” will be a spectacle. Even if some things still remain hidden. Elon Musk may not be a saint, I very much hope he’s not, saints scare me, but I’d take him over Tony Fauci any day of the week.

Here’s TAE Summary:

 

 

TAE Summary:

The Mainstream Narrative

– As a worldwide ‘public square,’ Twitter should be heavily regulated for misinformation and spamming by hostile interests. Twitter bears a responsibility to take action against disinformation and hate. Content moderation on platforms like Twitter is absolutely necessary to safeguard our democracy. As a private company Twitter is under no legal obligation to protect free speech and everything Twitter has done is within the law. Twitter and other social media platforms were instrumental in combating disinformation about Covid 19, climate change, election integrity and the war in Ukraine.

– Elon Musk is an arrogant, toxic person. He doesn’t really care about free speech. His goals in purchasing Twitter are political. His takeover of Twitter is the most terrifying development in recent history. His purchase of Twitter will destroy it by driving away advertisers and providing a platform for Neo-Nazis and other hate-speechers. Under Musk, Twitter is a scammer’s paradise. Elon Musk decimated the staff of Twitter (breaking Federal labor laws) while restoring accounts that spread disinformation. Control of Twitter involves national security risks and Musk’s takeover should be investigated by the US Government.

– The so-called “Twitter Files” are a feast for conspiracy theorists and have re-enlivened the influence of entities like QAnon. Journalists like Matt Taibbi writing about the Twitter Files are selling their souls to do PR work for the richest man in the world. The Twitter Files entries are sloppy, anecdotal and devoid of context. They are a nothing event about nothing event. The hysteria surrounding the Twitter Files is being used by Republicans for political gain.

– The Hunter Biden laptop story was difficult and the truth was not known early and so caution was justified. There is no evidence in the Twitter Files that the government was involved in the suppression of the Hunter Biden Laptop story. There is nothing on Hunter Biden’s laptop that actually implicates Joe Biden. James Baker took the careful approach and urged Twitter to weigh both sides of the Hunter Biden Laptop story before proceeding.

– Hate speech has dramatically increased since Must took over Twitter and these hateful tweets will lead to violence against the already marginalized. Right wing accounts such as those of Donald Trump, Project Veritas and the Babylon Bee should continue to be banned.

 

 

The Counter Narrative

– Twitter management was openly against free speech and used techniques such as “Visibility Filtering” to limit the reach of some posts. Twitter had secret blacklist files to limit the distribution of certain tweets specifically targeting right wing users. Twitter and other social media platforms have been instrumental in distributing disinformation and hiding the truth about Covid 19, climate change, election integrity and the war in Ukraine. Twitter censorship was used by the Democrats for political gain

– Elon Musk is a hero. He bought Twitter to restore free speech. Twitter, pre-Musk, was a major accomplice and enabler in selling-out America’s future. Twitter was bloated with excess and left wing employees.

– The Twitter Files show that the DNC and FBI were directly involved in suppressing free speech and prove that the 2020 elections were not free and fair. Twitter was clearly involved in election interference. The government interactions with Twitter were similar to Nazi propaganda methods. Twitter employees and their government contacts should be made to answer for their actions before congress. So-called journalists criticizing Matt Taibbi for his work on the Twitter Files are embarrassing in their uniformity and mindless support of a corrupt system.

– The files on Hunter Biden’s laptop prove that Joe Biden used his office to make money and Twitter’s suppression of the laptop story was done to help get Joe Biden elected. It is a bigger scandal than Watergate. James Baker was involved in RussiaGate at the FBI and the Hunter Biden Laptop suppression at Twitter. Baker deleted some of the content that should have been in the Twitter Files.

– The claims that hate speech has increased on Twitter since Musk’s takeover are utterly false. Hate speech is not tolerated on Twitter. Twitter largely ignored child trafficking issues until Musk took over. Lifting the ban on Donald Trump, Project Veritas and the Babylon Bee on Twitter are victories for free speech.

 

 

 

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

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Sep 022022
 
 September 2, 2022  Posted by at 5:41 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  56 Responses »


El Greco Dormition of the Mother of God 1565-1566

 

 

Not the kind of thing I would do often, making a video the protagonist of an article, but here’s an exception. Now, I know that -thank God- most of my readers are familiar with the ivermectin topic, but you too, watch the 13:38 min of this. Take that time.

You see, I think we owe it to the doctors who have lost their jobs, their reputations, to this, and who nevertheless have kept on pushing. G-d knows how many people died because these doctors were banned and censored, maybe they would have a better estimate than me. We’re talking millions of human lives.

Personally, I have had ivermectin at my disposal since April 2020, ordered from India, and still use it now. But when I offer it to others, they are not sure. Because they don’t read what I do, they read the MSM, and wherever you are in the world, Pfizer et al have the MSM covered. It’s horse paste.

I’ve always written here that if you up your vit. D level enough, that is about 50% of the game (boost your immune system) . Zinc (+quercetin) is the next 25% (virus can’t enter cells) . And ivermectin will fill in the rest. There’s no guarantee that if you’re severely obese, or you’re 90 years old, or both, ivermectin will keep you from getting infected. But if you’re either -or all- of those, you have bigger issues.

Mike Yeadon, Paul Marik, Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, Robert Urso, Pierre Kory, Simone Gold, Tess Lawrie, and dozens of others (thank God), sorry for leaving many of you out. These doctors are very brave people, they have lost their jobs, their reputations, their pensions, everything, after mostly stellar careers, because Tony Fauci and his Big Pharma backers wanted it that way, because they wanted to make billions of off untested “vaccines”, for which there was never any need -let alone evidence-. And we owe the doctors a huge thank you. You guys deserve medals. And tons of recognition.

As we move into fall and winter, Big Pharma has already got their pills lined up, of course. They claim to have an “Omicron Special”. Don’t fall for that nonsense. Take Vit. D and zinc, and ivermectin if you can get it. In the US, the NIH just sneakily added ivermectin to its list of covid cures very recently, would you believe it.

At the same time, there are ever more reports of more people dying from the vaccines than from covid. You take your pick. As booster number 8(26) comes.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

Nov 072021
 


Pablo Picasso Sleeping peasants 1919

 

US Appeals Court Blocks Biden’s Federal Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate (NYP)
Federal Appeals Court Blocks Biden’s ‘Big-Company’ Vaxx-Mandate (ZH)
Pfizer “Vaccine”: Kill 200 To ‘Save’ One? (OffG)
How Long Does Vaccine Based Immunity Last? (SRMD)
Pfizer Board Member Gottlieb: Pandemic Could Be Over In US By January (CNBC)
Bootleggers, Baptists, and Vaccine Mandates (AIER)
Scientific Journals Censor Science: Removal of Myocarditis report in VAERS (TSN)
Feds Pay Zero Claims For COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries/Deaths (ZH)
When Pandemics Collide: The Interplay Of Obesity And Covid-19 (PMC)
Assange, Fiancee Sue Uk For ‘Preventing Them From Marrying In Prison’ (DM)

 

 

“Because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate, the Mandate is hereby STAYED pending further action by this court.”

 

 

 

 

“Something very dark is going on.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1457002810063609859
https://twitter.com/i/status/1457032388232597505

 

 

Big win. Key line:

“Because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate, the Mandate is hereby STAYED pending further action by this court.”

US Appeals Court Blocks Biden’s Federal Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate (NYP)

A federal appeals court in Louisiana has blocked the Biden administration’s latest COVID-19 vaccination mandate, giving the government until Monday afternoon to submit a response. An emergency stay, issued Saturday from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, prevents the White House from requiring all full and part-time workers at private-sector companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated or get tested weekly and wear face masks. In its decision, the court cited “grave statutory and constitutional” concerns about the government’s mandate, which is scheduled to take effect on January 4. The mandate — issued Thursday under a new rule by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) — would apply to some 84 million Americans.

It has been challenged in court by more than two dozen states, including Texas, Missouri and Louisiana. Employers who don’t comply could face fines of up to $14,000 per infraction, according to the government’s guidelines. “We will have our day in court to strike down Biden’s unconstitutional abuse of authority,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted after news of the stay was announced Saturday afternoon. A petition filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and representing 10 other states, declared the vaccine mandate is “unconstitutional, unlawful and unwise.” It also challenges OSHA authority, claiming the agency does not have the jurisdiction to implement the regulations.

“Its unlawful mandate will cause injuries and hardship to working families, inflict economic disruption and staffing shortages on the states and private employers,” reads the petition. In September, the president promised to impose a flurry of vaccine mandates after the Delta variant led to a spike in COVID-19 infections, ending what Biden called the “summer of freedom” from the deadly virus. “A distinct minority of Americans supported by a distinct minority of elected officials are keeping us from turning the corner,” Biden said in a White House address. “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.” The government has until Monday at 5 pm to challenge the stay.

Read more …

Will need to read a number of reports to get the relevant details. Note: there will be as many appeals as cases brought.

Federal Appeals Court Blocks Biden’s ‘Big-Company’ Vaxx-Mandate

A federal court has issued a temporary victory in a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s coronavirus vaccine mandate issuing a stay on the controversial federal government regulation in Texas. “Yesterday, I sued the Biden Admin over its unlawful OSHA vax mandate,” Texas’ Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton tweeted Saturday. “WE WON. Just this morning, citing “grave statutory and constitutional issues,” the 5th Circuit stayed the mandate. The fight is not over and I will never stop resisting this Admin’s unconstitutional overreach!” As Fox News reports, earlier in the week, Paxton sued the Biden administration over the mandate and argued that the move to force workers at companies with over 100 employees to be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing is “flatly unconstitutional.”

“Biden’s new vaccine mandate on private businesses is a breathtaking abuse of power,” Paxton tweeted Friday. “OSHA has only limited power & specific responsibilities. This latest move goes way outside those bounds. This ‘standard’ is flatly unconstitutional. I’m asking the Court to strike it down.” The Wall Street Journal reports that the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit said it would quickly consider whether to issue an injunction against the vaccine and testing requirements, ordering the Biden administration to file initial legal papers by late Monday afternoon. A number of trade groups have issued warnings about the mandate, saying that it would exacerbate supply chain bottlenecks and staffing shortages nationwide. The White House remains confident the mandate will stand up to legal challenges.

“We are very confident that it can,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “As for the legal side of this, let me be crystal clear to avoid what appears to be possible misinformation or disinformation around the emergency temporary standard being a vaccine mandate. That would be on its face incorrect as has been explicit for months. It is a standard for safe workplace to either comply with weekly testing or to be vaccinated.”

Read more …

“It’s literally the worst NNTV in the history of vaccination.”

Pfizer “Vaccine”: Kill 200 To ‘Save’ One? (OffG)

This is the absolute risk reduction for Pfizer/BioNtech (each group had over 18,000 people):
Injection Group: 8/18,198 = 0.04%
Placebo Group: 162/18,325 = 0.88%
Absolute risk reduction = 0.84%

From the “absolute risk reduction”, you can then calculate the “number needed to vaccinate” (NNTV). This is the rough number of people you need to inject in order to definitely prevent one case/death. To continue the example above, if your vaccine reduces the odds of infection from 10% to 1% (an ARR of 9%), you need to vaccinate eleven people to prevent one infection, giving you an NNTV of 11. Again, the NNTV of the Covid vaccines are much, much, MUCH higher than 11. Estimates range from between 88 and 700 to prevent a single case, and anything up to 100,000 to prevent one solitary death. And remember, all this data was for adults. Children are at a far lower risk from Covid – both in terms of hospitalisation and death. In the US, children aged 5-11 have a 99.992% chance of surviving “Covid” – so it naturally follows the NNTV for this group will be far, far higher than for adults.

But, now that the FDA has approved Pfizer’s “vaccine” for emergency use on children aged 5-11, “far, far higher” is not good enough. We need to calculate an actual figure for the “number needed to vaccinate” in order to hypothetically protect one child from dying “with Covid”. Fortunately for us, someone else has already done it. Writing on his Substack, economist Toby Rogers PhD has collated the numbers from Pfizer’s own trials, the FDA and the CDC and done a very thorough write up. You can read the whole thing here, we’ll just present you with some of the highlights: As of October 30, 2021, the CDC stated that 170 children ages 5 to 11 have died of COVID-19-related illness since the start of the pandemic. (That represents less than 0.1% of all coronavirus-related deaths nationwide even though children that age make up 8.7% of the U.S. population).

The Pfizer mRNA shot only “works” for about 6 months (it increases risk in the first month, provides moderate protection in months 2 through 4 and then effectiveness begins to wane, which is why all of the FDA modeling only used a 6 month time-frame). So any modeling would have to be based on vaccine effectiveness in connection with the 57 (170/3) children who might otherwise have died of COVID-related illness during a 6-month period.At best, the Pfizer mRNA shot might be 80% effective against hospitalizations and death. That number comes directly from the FDA modeling. I am bending over backwards to give Pfizer the benefit of considerable doubt because again, the Pfizer clinical trial showed NO reduction in hospitalizations or death in this age group.

So injecting all 28,384,878 children ages 5 to 11 with two doses of Pfizer (which is what the Biden administration wants to do) would save, at most, 45 lives (0.8 effectiveness x 57 fatalities that otherwise would have occurred during that time period = 45). So then the NNTV to prevent a single fatality in this age group is 630,775 (28,384,878 / 45). But it’s a two dose regimen so if one wants to calculate the NNTV per injection the number doubles to 1,261,550. It’s literally the worst NNTV in the history of vaccination. 630,000 children injected with 1.2 million doses to save one life. That’s incredibly inefficient. However, it could be even worse than that. As we covered last week, according to statistics cited at the VRBPAC meeting, only 94 children from the 5-11 age group have died. If this lower figure is correct, the NNTV to prevent a single death jumps up to 915,641.

In other words, in order to hypothetically prevent a single child from dying over a six month period, you would have to inject nearly one million children with almost two million doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

Read more …

We need solid research into this.

How Long Does Vaccine Based Immunity Last? (SRMD)

It’s unfortunate that the drug companies decided to end their trials early, by giving active covid vaccine to the members of the placebo group after just a few months. It means that there is no long term follow-up of the covid vaccines from randomized trials, and there never will be. This means that we are instead forced to rely entirely on observational data as we try to understand how safe and effective the vaccines are over the longer term. That is why a recent study out of Sweden is so very interesting. It is currenly available as a pre-print and can be found here. The purpose of the study was to determine how effective the vaccines are at protecting against covid over the longer term (i.e. after more than a few months). This was a registry based study, so it’s not surprising that it is coming out of Sweden. Sweden is generally acknowledged as being better than any other country at collecting and sorting large quantities of population data and using it to produce these types of studies.

The authors of the study began by identifying all people residing in Sweden who had been fully vaccinated against covid-19 by late May 2021. At that time, three different vaccines were being used in Sweden: Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca. The vaccinated people were then matched individually against people of the same age and gender, and living in the same municipality, who hadn’t been vaccinated. In total, 1,684,958 individuals were included in the study. They were followed until October to see if they developed covid-19. So, what did the study show? As would be expected, the vaccines were very effective at preventing symptomatic covid around two months out from vaccination. This is what the randomized trials showed, and it’s the reason the vaccines were approved for use. Overall, the reduction in relative risk at 31-60 days out from vaccination was 89%.

However, after those first two months, there was a rapid decline in efficacy. At four to six months, the vaccines were only reducing the relative risk of infection by 48%! This is pretty interesting when we consider that governments had initially set the bar for approving the vaccines at a 50% relative risk reduction. So, if the trials had been required to run for six months before presenting results instead of only running for two months, then the vaccines would have been considered too ineffective to be worth bothering with, an would never have been approved. Well, that’s not quite true. One vaccine did still provide a better than 50% relative risk reduction at six months – the Moderna vaccine. At four to six months, the relative risk reduction with the Moderna vaccine was 71%. Pfizer was at the same time point only offering a 47% reduction in risk, and AstraZeneca was at that point not doing anything whatsoever to lower risk.

It makes sense that the Moderna vaccine would offer better protection than the Pfizer vaccine. Although the vaccines are virtually identical, the dose in the Moderna vaccine is three times higher. This is likely the reason why Moderna has been associated with much higher rates of myocarditis, which is why it is no longer approved for use in people under the age of 30 here in Sweden.

Read more …

But only if you consume our products.

Pfizer Board Member Gottlieb: Pandemic Could Be Over In US By January (CNBC)

The Covid-19 pandemic could be over in the U.S. by the time President Joe Biden’s workplace vaccine mandates take effect in early January, Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday. The vaccine requirements from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration begin on Jan. 4 for any company with at least 100 employees. Some 84 million private sector workers must get either their second Moderna or Pfizer shot or one dose from Johnson & Johnson by that date or face regular testing for the virus. “These mandates that are going to be put in place by Jan. 4 really are coming on the tail end of this pandemic,” said Gottlieb, who’s also a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

“By Jan. 4, this pandemic may well be over, at least as it relates to the United States after we get through this delta wave of infection. And we’ll be in a more endemic phase of this virus.” All companies complying with OSHA’s new rules must also start enforcing indoor mask mandates for unvaccinated employees starting Dec. 5. Those personnel must also begin submitting weekly negative Covid tests after Jan. 4 to enter the workplace, and anyone who tests positive should quarantine. The federal mandate contains exemptions for religious and medical reasons. Employees who work exclusively outdoors, at home or in settings where others aren’t present are also exempt from the rules.

OSHA’s guidance doesn’t mandate that businesses pay for their employees’ Covid tests or masks, but any company caught dodging the rules could face fines of anywhere between $13,653 to $136,532 for intentional noncompliance. Gottlieb’s comments came in the wake of data from Pfizer that indicated its Covid antiviral pill, when paired with an HIV medication, slashed the potential for hospitalization or death by 89% in adults at risk for severe complications. Combining the pill with an HIV medication slowed the metabolism, allowing the Covid antiviral to work longer in the body. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in an interview Friday morning with “Squawk Box” before Gottlieb spoke that the company will submit data on the therapeutic to the FDA before Thanksgiving.

Read more …

“The Bootleggers supported the ban, too, but only because they would enjoy a thriving black market on those days and profit from illegal alcohol sales.”

Bootleggers, Baptists, and Vaccine Mandates (AIER)

In 1983, economist Bruce Yandle developed the Bootleggers and Baptists framework to explain his belief that durable government action tends to come about with the support of two types of interest groups: those with moral interests and those with financial interests. Yandle appeals to early twentieth-century blue laws, which prohibited the sale of alcohol on Sundays. Baptists, the moralists, were motivated by their beliefs that Sundays should be respected as a day of prayer and rest, not drinking. The Bootleggers supported the ban, too, but only because they would enjoy a thriving black market on those days and profit from illegal alcohol sales. Durable government action, according to Yandle, tends to emerge with the support of coalitions that share a common goal even if they don’t share common motivations.

In a global pandemic, it has not been difficult to find a plethora of public health pieties. Nor has it been hard to find profiteers, especially pharma. I doubt that Anthony Fauci has any financial interests in the Moderna/NIAID vaccine — though investigators should look. He’s in it for the glory. Still, the Moderna/NIAID partnership puts the Bootleggers and Baptists on the same team. Fauci, President Biden, and all the MSM sentinels are the moralists in this equation, that is, if Prof. Yandle will permit a not-so-bright line between moralism and savior complex. They want to be known as the ones who beat the pandemic. One might even say Fauci has been planning for this his whole career. Now he graces us with his presence daily on SAHM programs such as The View, basking in the lamps, reminding us to wear our masks and get our vaccines.

The decrepit Biden, though he needs help getting up on that high horse, once bestride it, holds his mighty executive pen aloft and commands the multitudes to get the jab or else. Waiting in the wings are shadowy corporate figures, such as Moderna’s Bancel, prepared to execute these technocratic plans using billions of dollars inked in red. Though howls against Big Pharma were once prominent in the Progressive Playbook, those have mysteriously been redacted like Anthony Fauci’s FOIA’d emails. When one stops to think that these billions will have to be repaid by the very children who won’t have a choice but to get these vaccines, much less likely Covid, she might find the idea nauseous. A considerably more disturbing thought, though, is that Fauci probably suspected all along that NIH funding led to the creation and (accidental) release of a virus that has killed 5 million people as of this writing.

Anthony Fauci is a monopsony on funding for infectious disease research. He clearly does not want to be known as the guy in charge of funding the pandemic, even inadvertently. His defensiveness, his untruths before Congress, and his moth like draw to camera lights — all seem to reveal a man who, in his moralism, refuses to acknowledge that his agency had any hand in the damage Covid dealt. He wants to be America’s doctor, and his grand plan has always been to vaccinate the world. In his favored scenario, he would not be viewed not as a negligent bureaucrat but a savior. And he wants to keep it that way. The researchers? The intermediaries? The pharma execs? They’re in it for the money upon which their careers depend.

My hypothesis, therefore, tentative but bold, is that economist Bruce Yandle must have seen this coming a mile away. The vaccine mandates of 2020-2021 is a story of Bootleggers colluding with Baptists. The only question that remains, then, is whether we’re going to let them get away with it.

Read more …

Cancelling McCullough.

Scientific Journals Censor Science: Removal of Myocarditis report in VAERS (TSN)

Dr Peter McCullough, MD, one of the most cited physicians in the world, an eminent practitioner of internal medicine, a cardiologist and epidemiologist, co-wrote a report with Dr Jessica Rose, Ph.D., a virologist and epidemiologist in Canada, called ‘A Report on Myocarditis Adverse Events in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in Association with COVID-19 Injectable Biological Products.’

Read more …

Paying means acknowledging damage. Look at the restrictions…

Feds Pay Zero Claims For COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries/Deaths (ZH)

In fiscal year 2021, the U.S. government paid $246.9 million in claims for vaccine-related injuries and deaths. Not a single payout was related to Covid-19 vaccines. Each person with a “provable” injury from a Covid vaccine could claim up to $379,000 from a special Covid vaccine fund set up by the federal government. The payout for death could be as high as $370,376. However, according to an OpenTheBooks.com investigation, the federal government didn’t pay a penny for Covid-vaccine claims. The special fund for these claims is called the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). There were only 1,357 claims filed that alleged “injuries/deaths from the Covid vaccines,” and 53 were listed as deaths, according to recent reporting by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

By contrast, the self-reporting Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS) lists 16,310 deaths related to Covid vaccines. Of these, “5,326 of the deaths occurred on Day 0, 1,or 2 following vaccination[.]” The low number of applicants to the CICP fund for injuries or death from the Covid vaccine suggests that people don’t know the special fund exists. The “normal” vaccine fund, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), has existed since 1988 and provides compensation for injuries or deaths associated with most vaccines routinely administered in the United States (such as pediatric and seasonal influenza vaccines), according to the Congressional Research Service. Last year, this fund paid out $246.9 million in vaccine-related injuries and deaths. Payouts include $250,000 for a vaccine-caused death and $250,000 “for pain and suffering and emotional distress.”

A special vaccine court handles these claims. However, in the case of Covid-19 vaccines developed and approved under Project Warp Speed, deaths resulting from a Covid vaccine would pay out through the CICP and would pay more money than a vaccine-related death in normal times. Since the benefit for a death caused by a Covid-19 vaccine is $370,376 for fiscal year 2021 and $50,000 per year for lost employment income (with a lifetime cap to be “generally $379,000”). So, the death benefit is $120,376 higher than for other vaccines ($250,000). However, there is no equivalent to the VICP’s $250,000 “for pain and suffering and emotional distress” under the current Covid-19 parameters. Here are some other differences between the two vaccine-injury funds:

• No attorney fees. The Covid fund is not authorized to provide reimbursement for attorneys’ fees. Therefore, lawyers have less incentive to represent claims.
• Injured children receive small payouts. A Covid vaccine-injured child would only be reimbursed for “reasonable medical expenses.” Since the child survived and isn’t employed, there’s no other compensation.
• Narrow window to file a claim. The Covid fund allows a one-year window to file a claim whereas the regular vaccine fund has a three-year window.
• And sure enough, the CICP fund hasn’t paid out a dime in Covid-vaccine claims. HHS bluntly states online, “As of October 1, 2021, the CICP has not compensated any Covid-19 countermeasures claims.”

Read more …

A good bit on inflammation, something I find sorely lacking in most reports. There’s no way chronic and systemic inflammation is not a huge factor in Covid.

When Pandemics Collide: The Interplay Of Obesity And Covid-19 (PMC)

Among 20,133 patients hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2 infection across 208 hospitals in the United Kingdom, obesity was identified in 10.5% [2]. Worse, obesity was a strong predictor of mortality (HR 1.33; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.19 to 1.49) after adjusting for other comorbidities. Between March 1 and April 8, 2020, 5279 patients at NYU Langone Health tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 [3]. Of these, 2741 (51.9%) required hospitalization, 990 (36.1%) developed critical illness requiring intensive care unit (ICU) services, and 665 (24.3%) died. In multi-variate analysis, obesity (especially a BMI>40 kg/m2) emerged as a risk factor for both hospital admission (OR 2.5; 95% CI:1.8 to 3.4) and critical illness requiring ICU services (OR 1.5; 1.0 to 2.2).


In another report from New York City, among 3615 individuals who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, 775 (21%) had a BMI of 30 34 kg/m2 and 595 (16%) had a BMI of 35 kg/m2 or higher [4]. Among patients under 60 years old, those with a BMI of 30 34 kg/m2 were 2.0 (1.6 2.6) times as likely to be admitted to the hospital and 1.8 (1.2 2.7) times as likely to be admitted to the ICU, as compared to those with normal range BMI. In a cohort from Mexico of 51,633 SARS-CoV-2 positive cases and 5332 related deaths (10.3%), the obese, as compared to non-obese, had a higher rate of mortality (13.5% versus 9.4%), critical illness (5.0% versus 3.3%), and ventilator support (5.2% versus 3.3%) [5]. Data from France found a higher rate of obesity in those SARS-CoV-2 patients who were critically ill and required mechanical ventilation (Odds ratio of 7.36 [1.63 33.14] comparing BMI e”35 vs. <25) [6″ ].

These data highlight the devastating impact of one pandemic (obesity) on another (COVID-19). Obese individuals may have a compounded risk for acquiring more severe COVID-19 disease. First, individuals who are obese undergo gross structural and cellular level changes which puts them at greater risk for ischemic heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and respiratory disease, which are themselves risk-factors for acquiring COVID-19 disease. Second, obesity-specific structural changes can make caring for obese patients who acquire COVID-19 disease logistically challenging. Finally, there may be a link between obesity and SARS-CoV-2 specific receptors found in adipose tissue, possibly rendering obese individuals more susceptible to acquiring more severe disease.

Read more …

“The wedding stand-off began in May when Stella approached the prison chaplain to ask about arranging a ceremony. After an initial response, no further help was forthcoming. On October 7, Assange formally asked the Governor’s office to agree to a Belmarsh wedding, but he has had no reply.”

Assange, Fiancee Sue Uk For ‘Preventing Them From Marrying In Prison’ (DM)

Julian Assange and his fiancee Stella Moris are bringing legal action against Justice Secretary Dominic Raab and the Governor of Belmarsh Prison, accusing them of preventing the couple from marrying behind bars. They fear the obstacles put in the way of their wedding by UK authorities are linked to a US-backed political war against the Wikileaks publisher and campaigner. In September it was revealed the CIA had drawn up plans to kidnap or kill Assange during his seven years exiled in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. The agency also spied on his family and friends and led a campaign of misinformation against him. Stella, 38, a lawyer, said: ‘Those catch-or-kill plans were not implemented but other hostile measures were and this is the sting in the tail.

‘It’s part of an enormous conspiracy against Julian which makes itself felt in all that we try to do. ‘A wedding would be a moment of happiness, a bit of normality in insane circumstances. Julian needs things to hold on to because daily life is a struggle for him in Belmarsh and there is so much uncertainty about his future. ‘Our love for each other is the one thing which has carried us through and being married would be another bulwark in our emotional defences. ‘There is no reason for political interference in what is a basic human right. The CIA revelations show the lengths some agencies are willing to go to in their persecution of Julian.’ Assange, 50, and his fiancee have been engaged for five years, have two children and are both practising Catholics. They have been asking since May for help to arrange their wedding in Belmarsh.

[..] Stella is adamant their wedding ceremony would have no legal impact on extradition since his right to a family life in the UK is determined by the fact that their sons Gabriel, four, and Max, two, are British citizens. She also has rights of residency, having lived in Britain for 20 years, although she was born in South Africa. On Friday, the couple opened legal action paving the way for a judicial review. The case is brought against the Justice Secretary and Belmarsh Governor Jenny Louis. The wedding stand-off began in May when Stella approached the prison chaplain to ask about arranging a ceremony. After an initial response, no further help was forthcoming. On October 7, Assange formally asked the Governor’s office to agree to a Belmarsh wedding, but he has had no reply.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Any system you contrive without us will be brought down.”
— Leonard Cohen
https://twitter.com/i/status/1401284243733594119

 

 

The sights I have to look at every day.

 

 

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

 

Sep 212021
 
 September 21, 2021  Posted by at 9:05 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  70 Responses »


Salvador Dali The burning giraffe 1937
Dali: “The only difference between immortal Greece and our era is Sigmund Freud who discovered that the human body, which in Greek times was merely neoplatonical, is now filled with secret drawers only to be opened through psychoanalysis.”

 

Is A Covid Jab For Five-year-olds Next? (DM)
Baylor Gets Restraining Order Against COVID Vaccine Skeptic Doc (MS)
And Then Everything Happens at Once (Kunstler)
DELIBERATE Ignorance And Death by ‘Health Care’ (Denninger)
Alabama Hospital Ends COVID Vaccine Requirement for Staff (WJ)
1000s of Navy SEALS Told They Won’t Be Deployed If They Refuse Vaccine (JTN)
Louisiana State University Begins Disenrolling Unvaxxed Students (CR)
Biden Vaccine Mandate For Only Half The Nation’s Teachers? (Hill)
Victoria To Shut Down Construction Industry For Two Weeks (Sky)
New Zealand Covid Quarantine Waiting List Hits 30,000 (G.)
Two Men Arrested Trying To Enter Auckland With ‘Large Amount’ Of KFC (G.)
How Evergrande Became Too Big To Fail (ZH)

 

 

Veritas

 

 

IVM

 

 

 

 

NZ adverse events

 

 

What more can we say?

Is A Covid Jab For Five-year-olds Next? (DM)

Pfizer will push for its Covid vaccine to be approved for children as young as five, the company announced today — as Britain began injecting healthy 12 to 15-year-olds with the jab for the first time. The pharmaceutical giant said its trial of around 2,000 children aged five to 11 found a low dose of the vaccine generated a strong immune response and threw up no safety concerns. American officials are set to review the data in the coming weeks and decide whether to roll out the vaccine to pre-teens in October, with Pfizer also planning to seek authorisation in Europe and the UK. Pfizer’s trial looked at antibody levels in the blood of primary school-aged children to estimate their immune response, unlike larger trials of older participants which compared Covid cases in the vaccine and control groups.


A spokesperson said the company may later disclose vaccine efficacy from the trial but there had not been enough infections yet among the volunteers. Pfizer is also trialling its vaccines on babies as young as six months and expects the results of that study to be available by winter, in a move likely to cause international controversy. While the US is expected to open the vaccination programme to younger groups, at this stage the jab is unlikely to see the same sweeping approval in the UK, which only today started immunising healthy children aged 12 and above. Dr David Elliman, a consultant paediatrician at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, said he ‘cannot imagine’ the jab is approved for primary school-aged children in Britain. A single dose of Pfizer’s vaccine is currently being used on Britons aged 12 to 15 in the hope that the roll-out will prevent further disruptions to their education, even though UK officials say the direct health benefits are only ‘marginal’.

Read more …

McCullough.

Baylor Gets Restraining Order Against COVID Vaccine Skeptic Doc (MS)

Although McCullough does not appear to have any personal social media accounts, his broadcast and podcast interviews are tweeted by thousands daily around the world and featured on Facebook pages like “Pandemic Debate.” Some Facebook posts with McCullough’s pronouncements have been labeled as misinformation or removed. Some of his videos remain on YouTube, where they are posted by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a group that believes McCullough is “under fierce attack for speaking out about COVID-19 early treatment and vaccine safety.” McCullough’s March 2021 testimony to the Texas Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee — in which he claimed that COVID-19 patients are being denied what he called proven treatments like hydroxychloroquine — has been viewed more than 3.7 million times on YouTube. The appearance has also been tweeted repeatedly.

Most of McCullough’s interviews and presentations are aggregated on Rumble, an alternative to YouTube. In interviews, McCullough promotes the use of zinc, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, doxycycline, favipiravir, prednisone, and ivermectin as COVID-19 treatments — based on an outpatient treatment algorithm published in August 2020 in The American Journal of Medicine. The cardiologist was the lead author of that paper, which proposed treating people with COVID-like symptoms whether or not they had confirmed infection. McCullough and his colleagues published a follow-up paper that added colchicine to the mix in Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine. McCullough is editor-in-chief of the journal, but this was not noted in the disclosures.

Similarly, McCullough has not disclosed in his COVID-19 publications or any interviews that he has received consulting fees from a host of pharmaceutical manufacturers that produce COVID-19 drugs and vaccines, including AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. According to CMS’ Open Payments database, McCullough was paid about $300,000 annually by drug companies from 2014 to 2019, mostly for consulting on cardiovascular and diabetes medications. His payments dropped to $169,406.06 in 2020. McCullough appeared on “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News in December 2020, claiming that sequential, early treatment with “anti-infectives, corticosteroids, and then antithrombotics” could “reduce [COVID-19] hospitalizations by 85% and cut mortality in half.”

He repeated the claim on the Ingraham show in July and agreed with host Laura Ingraham that the vast majority of healthy people would do fine if they got COVID. He also made the claim that 84% of the COVID-19 cases in Israel were in people who had been vaccinated. “So it’s clear, we can’t vaccinate our way out of this,” he said. An Associated Press “fact check” report has pushed back on similar assertions about vaccine data from Israel. In a separate interview posted in June, McCullough called the pandemic the first phase of a bioterrorism event, which was “all about keeping the population in fear and in isolation and preparing them to accept the vaccine, which appears to be phase two of a bioterrorism operation.” In addition, he said, “good doctors are doing unthinkable things like injecting biologically active messenger RNA that produces this pathogenic spike protein into pregnant women.”

Read more …

“..with the number of people vaccinated, you have a population supposedly way beyond herd immunity. Who’s getting sick now? Mostly people who are all vaxed up.”

And Then Everything Happens at Once (Kunstler)

This is a very nervous country, and for a good reason: the collective sense of reality has commenced a momentous shift, the compass is spinning wildly, things are shaking loose in the national brain-pan, the gaslight has lost its sheen, and the once-solid narrative is turning to vapor, starting with the unspooling riddles of Covid-19. The numbers don’t add up, starting with the fact that when you combine the official registered Covid cases (people with acquired natural immunity) with the people who already had some kind of immunity from previous life-long coronavirus encounters, with the number of people vaccinated, you have a population supposedly way beyond herd immunity. Who’s getting sick now? Mostly people who are all vaxed up.

Contrary to the behavior and statements of public health officials and politicians, the news is out that the spike proteins produced by the vax’s mRNA genetic reprogramming are toxic agents that create disorder in the major organs and blood vessels. The news is also out, despite strenuous suppression, that early treatment of Covid-19 with a kit of cheap drugs defeats the disease. People must conclude that there is a malevolent purpose behind the suppression of early treatment. They may also conclude that the vaxes are poison. Mandating the vaxes was an easily-predicted tactical blunder. Did “Joe Biden” and company not realize that threatening the livelihoods of a hundred million people might generate a whole lot of anger and resentment? Especially since those people have good reasons to believe the vax is harmful to them? Last week, an FDA advisory panel ruled against distributing mRNA booster shots among the general population over age 16 — with exceptions for the vaguely-defined “high risk” individuals over 65.

In spite of that, Covid czar Dr. Anthony Fauci keeps pushing for boosters. On Sunday, he told NBC’s Jake Tapper: “We’re waiting for data on natural immunity. We know that if you have natural immunity and also get the shot, immunity dramatically increases.” Oh, really? Even though it’s known for sure (i.e., established in science) that natural immunity is way more potent, comprehensive, and permanent than anything the vaccine pretends to offer, while it is becoming clear that the vaxes disable people’s immune system — hence, the impressive number of the vaxed getting sick. Is Dr. Fauci desperate or just plain crazy? The question may be moot, because it looks like he’s out of running-room on his whole crusade, Covid-19, vaxes, authoritative bullshit, and all. The story has fallen apart. It looks an awful lot like the government is trying to harm people health-wise, while it destroys jobs and small business and ruins households financially, and that counter-story is spreading faster now than Covid-19. It’s fair to ask whether all that has destroyed the legitimacy of the people in charge — but that is only one of several issues converging to detonate the people’s faith in their own government.

Read more …

“..what sort of possible reason would there be to not autopsy some representative sample of those who die..”

DELIBERATE Ignorance And Death by ‘Health Care’ (Denninger)

Do we have a bunch of people dying of secondary bacterial pneumonia and not Covid-19 at all yet again, nobody is looking because there is a playbook and it does not include looking for and treating anything else if the person has a positive Covid-19 test? The use of steroids is shown to help dampen inflammatory response (and thus is common and helpful in hospitalized Covid patients) but systemic steroids also set up the potential for bacterial colonization by suppressing immune response. Is “The magic PCR 8-ball” saying “POSITIVE!” a barrier to looking for anything else that may be going on? Since nobody is doing autopsies you will never get caught if you don’t bother looking — is that why all these people are dying?

What the hell is going on here? Is it simply that we were stupid with our jabs because we couldn’t come up with a sterilizing vaccine for a coronavirus as there has never been a successful one before so the do something, even if it might harm in the interests of “Warp Speed” won and now we’re screwed and yet nobody can sue over that which, objectively examined, was STUPID? This sort of bull**** would never work absent the PREP Act’s liability shield and the actions of HHS in the first weeks of the pandemic that specifically exempted hospitals, physicians and others from liability provided they use drugs and protocols the FDA and CDC list as approved whether under regular order or EUA — and nothing else. I remind you that not only did Trump’s HHS do that but Biden has refused to rescind it — and he has the power to do so immediately by direct order.

But for that liability shield the relatives of the deceased would order an autopsy be performed and if in fact evidence was present Remedesivir and not Covid-19 killed Granny, or the hospital refused to look for anything else once the PCR test came back positive and in fact she died of bacterial pneumonia they didn’t look for and did not treat everyone involved would be sued to beyond the orbit of Mars. Would we have even gotten beyond publication of the SOLIDARITY trial when it was conclusively demonstrated across a very large data set that statistically speaking it did not keep anyone from dying before that the thrice-failed drug was labeled a four time loser and binned?

Given what we know about this drug and the history of using dangerous and net-harmful pharmaceuticals that our “wonderful” health care system, regulators and others all the way down to doctors and nurses running around with virtue-signaling bull**** on their T-shirts promote and even demand go into patients what sort of possible reason would there be to not autopsy some representative sample of those who die and find out with reasonably medical certainty what’s going on, especially when death rates for those hospitalized in certain areas have more than doubled in the last couple of months?

Other than “health care professionals” being made more self-absorbed in their virtue signaling while the hospital and drug company collects $3,000 per corpse for a drug that actually may have killed them, that is. The math on this is nasty, the basic biological functionality of the kidneys and this drug’s known harm to same strongly suggests serious trouble and yet I cannot find one hospital that has sought to discover the truth via autopsy and either prove or disprove that this drug is in fact killing and killed a huge percentage of those who died in the hospital with Covid-19 — or whether something other than the virus was responsible for their death. If you have said study and autopsies let’s see them. I’ve looked and can’t find any evidence they exist.

Read more …

Got a business to run.

Alabama Hospital Ends COVID Vaccine Requirement for Staff (WJ)

Bowing to the threat of legal action against it, one Alabama hospital has rescinded its requirement that all staff be vaccinated against the coronavirus. UAB Hospital in Birmingham said it will wait to learn how the federal vaccine mandates announced by President Joe Biden play out before imposing any requirement, according to WBRC-TV. Last week, the Alabama Center for Law and Liberty said the hospital was violating state law, according to Al.com. The letter said the state’s ban on vaccine passports means government entities cannot require anyone to disclose vaccine information. “As the Supreme Court of Alabama has recognized, UAB Hospital is a state-run hospital,” the letter said.

“Consequently, UAB Hospital may not require its employees to disclose whether they have been vaccinated or not. Likewise, the Alabama Attorney General has examined the law and concluded that ‘no government, school, or business in Alabama may demand that a constituent, or customer, respectively, be vaccinated for COVID-19 or show proof of his or her vaccination for COVID-19,’” the letter said. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall also questioned the legality of the Biden administration mandate, saying he had received complaints about privacy violations, according to the Alabama Political Reporter.

“The Attorney General’s Office has received complaints from healthcare employees who believe their COVID-19 immunization status was obtained by their employers through the ImmPRINT registry for the purpose of verifying compliance with the employer’s immunization requirement,” Marshall said, referring to a statewide immunization database. “In several of those cases, a shared employer specifically acknowledged accessing the state immunization database for this purpose. This privacy violation is unlawful,” he said. Marshall said other health care providers should also take note and not be asking employees about their immunization status.

Read more …

Take out the hospitals, take out the army.. Nice going.

1000s of Navy SEALS Told They Won’t Be Deployed If They Refuse Vaccine (JTN)

Several hundred elite Navy SEALs are in danger of being blocked from deploying with their special operator teams by the Pentagon after failing to get a mandatory COVID vaccine, according to a lawyer and pastor counseling them. The number involved in the dispute with the Pentagon amounts to as many as a quarter or more of all active duty SEALs, a loss that could impact military readiness since SEAL teams play an outsized role in modern military operations, their advocates told Just the News. Some SEALS were given a deadline this week for the vaccine and have sought a religious exemption. “My clients include several Navy SEALs who are a small part of a large group of SEALs and other military members who are being asked to choose between their faith and their ability to serve our nation,” said R. Davis Younts, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force reserves and a JAG lawyer who is representing several of the special operators as a private lawyer.

“They have been told that if they seek a religious accommodation, they likely will no longer be able to serve our country as Navy SEALs and been given an arbitrary deadline to comply with the vaccine mandate. “My clients need time, and we are seeking at least a 90-day extension to vaccine mandate compliance deadline they have been given.” Younts said the Pentagon has put its threat in writing that unvaccinated SEALs, including those who get a religious exemption or already have natural immunity, will be forbidden from deploying with their teams, all but ending their special operator careers. Some were given a deadline of this week, he said. Pastor Jeff Durbin, a prominent anti-abortion activist and evangelical pastor from Arizona who has been ministering to the special operators for several weeks as they navigated the decision, said between a quarter to a third of all active-duty SEALS are involved in the dispute with the Pentagon, including some who already have COVID-19 immunity because they recovered from the disease.

“There are hundreds of Navy SEALs who have not been vaccinated, do not want to take the vaccine, or who have had and recovered from COVID and have the benefit of natural immunity,” Durbin told Just the News. “A large number of SEALS that I am speaking on behalf of are facing the very difficult decision that even with a legitimate religious exemption that is based upon their commitments to Christ, the Gospel, God’s Law, and the Constitution, they will no longer be Navy SEALs.

Read more …

Perfectly legal.

Louisiana State University Begins Disenrolling Unvaxxed Students (CR)

Louisiana State University has begun unenrolling students who failed to comply with COVID-19 regulations. As Fox 23 reports, seventy-eight students were told that they had been “resigned” from the school and would be refunded 50 percent of their fees. Louisiana State media relations director Ernie Ballard confirmed on Twitter that the students are “being contacted that they are being unenrolled from the university.” “As a student, you were sent numerous notifications regarding the Entry Test Requirement and reminders to comply,” read an email sent to the students. “Should you want to re-enroll at the university, you must complete the Entry Test Verification Survey. You will then need to email the Office of Academic Affairs… stating your desire to be reinstated and added back to your courses.”

The university’s website states that all students had to “meet entry protocols” before September 10 in order to remain enrolled. The protocols included providing a negative COVID-19 test result no more than five days prior to arrival on campus, proof of a COVID-19 vaccination, or proof of a positive COVID-19 test result no more than 90 days prior to arrival. On Wednesday, Louisiana State University announced that its president, William Tate, was invited by the Biden administration to discuss the school’s COVID-19 regulations. Executives from Disney, Microsoft, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and other organizations were also present.

“It is an honor to present our successful COVID mitigation strategies to President Biden and the COVID Response Team, and we are proud that our multi-tiered approach to protecting our students, faculty and staff has been recognized at such an incredibly high level,” said Tate in the release. “Our strategies have worked, with more than 81 percent of our student body currently vaccinated, a monthly testing protocol that monitors the presence of the virus on our campus, wastewater testing that allows us to intervene before an outbreak occurs, and a vaccine/testing mandate at Tiger Stadium to keep our fans safe, too.”

Read more …

“..even if bizarre technicalities of the agency’s authority across states drastically limits coverage for schools.”

Biden Vaccine Mandate For Only Half The Nation’s Teachers? (Hill)

Biden recently announced forthcoming federal safety regulations mandating vaccines against COVID-19, or weekly testing, for an estimated 100 million Americans. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will draft the regulations over the coming weeks, which apply to employers with more than 100 employees. For one key group, the nation’s 3.5 million public school teachers, Biden’s vaccine mandate will cover only half. Why half? Because Biden’s only politically feasible path forward for this mandate was through OSHA, even if bizarre technicalities of the agency’s authority across states drastically limits coverage for schools. Counterintuitively, the way OSHA laws define “employer” means the new regulations will only apply to school districts with more than 100 employees in states that are not subject to direct oversight by OSHA.

Within the 24 states under OSHA’s direct jurisdiction, the term “employer” explicitly excludes state and local government employees, including public school teachers and staff. State and local government employees in those states — including 47 percent of the nation’s public school staff — would be subject to state-issued mandates only. State and local government employees in the remaining 26 states are outside of OSHA’s direct enforcement authority because they have OSHA-approved state occupational safety and health plans. However, those states’ plans must be “at least as effective” as OSHA standards, and they must include all state and local government employees. Ironically, it will be these states that, on paper, have direct control over their own health and safety regulations that will be subject to the forthcoming federal mandate.

How far reaching will this mandate be for public schools? Very far reaching, or not at all, depending on the state. Individual schools often have fewer than 100 employees, but teachers and staff are employees of school districts. In the 26 states covered by “state plans,” over 95 percent of public school employees work for districts with more than 100 employees. Half of the nation’s teachers work in those states, and will be required to get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. The mandate would cover no public school teachers in the remaining 24 states. Biden’s OSHA mandate will almost certainly be challenged in the courts, but chances are good that it will stand. The Federal legislation that created OSHA gives the Department of Labor authority to issue an “emergency temporary standard” (ETS), and the Biden administration issued one this June aimed at protecting healthcare workers from COVID. So far, that rule has withstood opposition.

Read more …

This ain’t over.

“The closure is estimated to cost the industry $455 million a day with the two-week shut down meaning the sector will lose $6.3 billion in revenue.”

Victoria To Shut Down Construction Industry For Two Weeks (Sky)

The Victorian construction industry will be shut down for two weeks, in what has been described as a “rest”, following the protests over mandatory vaccination on Monday. Work sites across Melbourne, Ballarat, Geelong, Mitchell Shire and the Surf Coast were closed from midnight on Monday in a bid to slow COVID-19 transmission, reduce movement and allow time for the industry to adapt to new changes. There will be minimal tradies permitted on sites for safety with only some projects given an exemption to continue work. Discussions went well into the night, with more details to be provided during Tuesday’s COVID-19 press conference. State Treasurer Tim Pallas confirmed the news about two hours before the shutdown came into force, citing “multiple outbreaks linked to work sites” and non-compliance within the sector.


“We’ve been clear: if you don’t follow the rules, we won’t hesitate to take action – we have seen widespread noncompliance across the industry and that’s why we’re taking necessary steps to protect every single Victorian,” he said. “We put the industry on notice just a week ago, we have seen appalling behaviour on site and on our streets, and now we’re acting decisively and without hesitation.” The government will work with the industry in the coming weeks to make sure workplaces are COVID-safe and to ensure workers have had at least one COVID-19 vaccine. The closure is estimated to cost the industry $455 million a day with the two-week shut down meaning the sector will lose $6.3 billion in revenue.

Read more …

Want to go home? Try next year.

New Zealand Covid Quarantine Waiting List Hits 30,000 (G.)

Overseas New Zealanders trying to return home are facing a queue tens of thousands of people long, as the country reopens bookings to cross the border. The country’s borders have been strictly controlled since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic – only citizens, permanent residents and a handful of essential workers can enter, and all of them must make a booking to spend two weeks in government-controlled quarantine (MIQ). Demand for those spaces has vastly outpaced demand, with some hopeful returnees spending weeks refreshing the site, employing “MIQ assistants” or using bots to assist them secure a space. The scale of the problem facing those trapped overseas has now been revealed for the first time, as the government opened a “lobby” system for booking quarantine spaces, showing where people are in the queue.


Many took to social media to express their frustration posting screenshots showing thousands of people ahead of them. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment confirmed that 31,800 people were in the queue on Monday, and 5,364 of them secured vouchers for rooms. The vouchers were released at 9am and all were gone within two and a half hours. “I know many thousands of people missed out on vouchers in today’s release,” the joint head of MIQ, Megan Main, said in a statement. “I want to reassure people that there are still several thousand vouchers still to be released through to the end of the year. They will get other chances. There will be another large release of a few thousand vouchers early next week and there may also be another smaller one later this week.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1438355670680539144

Read more …

“a car boot-full of Kentucky fried chicken”
“at least three buckets of chicken”

“..up to 10 tubs of coleslaw..”

Two Men Arrested Trying To Enter Auckland With ‘Large Amount’ Of KFC (G.)

Two men have been arrested after police said they found them with a car boot-full of Kentucky fried chicken and over $100,000 in cash as they tried to cross the border into Auckland despite New Zealand’s strict Covid-19 lockdown. The men were arrested after allegedly trying to flee from police near the Auckland border. When their car was searched, police said they found a large quantity of KFC, as well as the cash and a number of empty ounce bags. The arrest struck a chord with New Zealanders – especially Aucklanders, who have spent a month in a strict level four lockdown that does not allow restaurants to open or residents to order takeaway food.


In such an environment, fast food can take on the aura of a high-value illicit substance. Last week, a man was charged by police after posting a social media video of crossing the Auckland boundary in search of McDonald’s. After the KFC arrest, a police spokesperson said “officers noticed a suspicious looking vehicle travelling on a gravel road, and upon seeing the police car, the vehicle did a U-turn and sped off trying to evade police. “The vehicle was searched and police located the cash, alongside empty ounce bags and a large amount of takeaways.” Close examination of the police evidence photos revealed at least three buckets of chicken, up to 10 tubs of coleslaw, and an undisclosed quantity of fries.

Read more …

Pon Zi.

How Evergrande Became Too Big To Fail (ZH)

For the past two months, hundreds of people have been gathering at the 43-floor Zhuoyue Houhai Center in Shenzhen, where China Evergrande Group’s headquarters occupy 20 floors. They held banners demanding repayment of overdue loans and financial products. Police with riot shields had to be on site to keep things under control. The demonstrators are construction workers at the property developer’s housing projects, suppliers providing construction materials and investors in the company’s wealth management products (WMPs). From paint suppliers to decoration and construction companies, Evergrande owes more than 800 billion yuan ($124 billion) due within one year, while it has only a 10th of that amount of cash on hand. As of the end of June, Evergrande had nearly 2 trillion yuan ($309 billion) of debts on its books, plus an unknown amount of off-books debt.

The property giant is on the verge of a dramatic debt restructuring or even bankruptcy, many institutions believe. A bankruptcy would amount to a financial tsunami, or as some analysts put it, “China’s Lehman Brothers.” The venerable American investment bank’s 2008 collapse helped trigger a global financial crisis. Certainly Evergrande, one of China’s three biggest developers, has a giant footprint in China. Its liabilities are equivalent to about 2% of China’s GDP. It has more than 200,000 employees, who themselves and many of their families have invested billions of yuan in the company’s WMPs. The company has more than 800 projects under construction, more than half of them halted due to its cash crunch. There are thousands of upstream and downstream companies that rely on Evergrande for business, creating more than 3.8 million jobs every year.

[..] Over the years, Evergrande has faced liquidity pressure several times, but every time it dodged the bullet. This time, the crisis of cash flow and trust is unprecedented. Evergrande shares in Hong Kong plummeted to a 10-year low. Its onshore bonds fell to what investors call defaulted bond level. All three global credit rating companies and one domestic rating company have downgraded Evergrande’s debt. For many years, Chinese developers were driven by the “three carriages” — high turnover, high gross profit and high leverage. Developers use borrowed money to acquire land, collect presale cash before projects even start, and then borrow more money to invest in new projects. In 2018, Evergrande reported record profit of 72 billion yuan, more than double the previous year’s net. But behind that, it spent more than 100 billion yuan a year on interest.

Read more …

 

 

 

Josh Steimle
@joshsteimle

Speaking with nurses at the hospital I’m at in AZ. They’re not worried about covid, they’re worried about what happens when half the nurses at this hospital quit in a few days when their vaccine mandate goes into effect. None of the nurses are blaming the unvaccinated.

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Sep 142021
 


Claude Monet The Manneporte at Étretat 1886

 

Clearing Up Misinformation About The Spike Protein And Covid Vaccines (Joomi)
Risks of Vaccines for Those Recovered from COVID-19 (McCullough)
Do Many People Have Pre-Existing Immunity? (BMJ)
Yes, They Are Insane (Denninger)
Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? (Mercola)
Variant Heads-up To The Virologist Community (Roemer)
Biden’s Tax & Vax Plan May be The Final Straw (GRB)
New York City Teacher’s Union Wins Battle Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate (ET)
LA Cops Sue Over Vaccine Mandate, Police Across CA Threaten To Resign (G.)
FDA Senior Officials Say No Evidence Fully Vaccinated Need Booster Shots (DM)
Sweden Proposes Law to Compensate Those Injured by Covid Vaccines
Ivermectin Frenzy: The Advocates, Anti-vaxxers And Telehealth Companies (G.)
US Bankruptcy Judge Approves Purdue Pharma’s $7 Mln Executive Bonus Plan (R.)
Evergrande Hires Bankruptcy Advisors As Investors Protest Imminent Default (ZH)

 

 

Gestetner

 

 

India

 

 

Kory/Ivory

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great source that references tons of studies.

Clearing Up Misinformation About The Spike Protein And Covid Vaccines (Joomi)

The spike protein is a type of protein on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that helps the virus infect cells. The COVID vaccines available in the U.S. work by getting the body to produce this protein (with some modifications) so that the body will generate neutralizing antibodies to it. It turns out that the spike protein by itself, even without the rest of the virus present, has been shown to cause harm to the body. In Part I of this article I’ll summarize some of the studies that show this. This is not really controversial at this point. However, what is controversial is that some people have asked: if spike is dangerous, might we be endangering people by giving them vaccines that make the body produce spike?

Fact-checking articles that try to shoo away this concern usually refer to the fact that the spike encoded by the vaccines are different from “wild-type” spike (spike from the virus), and for this reason, they are safe. They also state that there is no evidence that the vaccine spike is harmful. In Part II, I’ll look into the evidence that shows that vaccine-encoded spike is not harmless. In Part III, I’ll discuss how most responses to concerns about vaccine-encoded spike usually misconstrue the concern, or don’t actually back up their statements with any real data. In Part IV, I’ll argue that we should consider the possibility that vaccine-encoded spike protein can cause lasting harm even in people that don’t have obvious or serious “adverse events” from the vaccine. In Part V, I’ll link to statements from other scientists or doctors who have concerns about the vaccines.

Before we go any further: I am not anti-vax. I am double-vaxed with Moderna. I used to be a biologist. I believe vaccines have saved many lives. However, not all vaccines are the same. And not all vaccines are equally safe, and we need to be able to have an open and honest discussion about this.

Read more …

“It is my opinion that SARS-CoV-2 causes an infection in humans that results in robust, complete, and durable immunity,..”

Risks of Vaccines for Those Recovered from COVID-19 (McCullough)

There is recent research on the fact that the COVID-19 vaccine is dangerous for those who have already had COVID-19 and have recovered with inferred robust, complete, and durable immunity. These patients were excluded from the FDA-approved clinical trials performed by Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J. From these trials, the safety profile was unknown when the products for approved for Emergency Use Authorization in 2020. There has been no study demonstrating clinical benefit with COVID-19 vaccination in those who have well documented or even suspected prior COVID-19 illness.

A medical study of United Kingdom healthcare workers who had already had COVID-19 and then received the vaccine found that they suffered higher rates of side effects than the average population. Rachel K. Raw, et al., Previous COVID-19 infection but not Long-COVID-19 is associated with increased adverse events following BNT162b2/Pfizer vaccination, medRxiv (preprint), (last visited June 21, 2021).

The test group experienced more moderate to severe symptoms than the study group that did not previously have COVID-19. The symptoms included fever, fatigue, myalgia-arthralgia, and lymphadenopathy. Id. Raw found that in 974 individuals who received the BNT162b2/Pfizer vaccine, those with a prior history of SARS-CoV-2 or those who had positive antibodies at baseline had a higher rate of vaccine reactions than those who were COVID-19 naive. Mathioudakis et al. reported that in 2020 patients who underwent vaccination with either mRNA-based or vector-based COVID-19 vaccines, COVID-19-recovered patients who were needlessly vaccinated had higher rates of vaccine reactions. Krammer et al. reported on 231 volunteers for COVID-19 vaccination, 83 of whom had positive SARS-CoV-2 antibodies at the time of immunization.

The authors found: “Vaccine recipients with preexisting immunity experience systemic side effects with a significantly higher frequency than antibody naïve vaccines (e.g., fatigue, headache, chills, fever, muscle or joint pains, in order of decreasing frequency, P < 0.001 for all listed symptoms, Fisher’s exact test, two-sided).” To my knowledge, there are no studies that demonstrate the clinical benefit of COVID-19 vaccination in COVID-19 survivors or those with suspected COVID-19 illness or subclinical disease who have laboratory evidence of prior infection. It is my opinion that SARS-CoV-2 causes an infection in humans that results in robust, complete, and durable immunity, and is superior to vaccine immunity which by comparison has demonstrated massive failure including over 10,000 well-documented vaccine failure cases as reported by the CDC before tracking was stopped on May 31, 2021.

There are no studies demonstrating the clinical benefit of COVID-19 vaccination in COVID-19 survivors, and there are three studies demonstrating harm in such individuals. Thus, it is my opinion that the COVID-19 vaccination is contraindicated in COVID-19 survivors, many of whom may be in the student population. Multiple laboratory studies conducted by highly respected U.S. and European academic research groups have reported that convalescent mildly or severely infected COVID-19 patients who are unvaccinated can have greater virus-neutralizing immunity—especially more versatile, long-enduring T- cell immunity—relative to vaccinated individuals who were never infected.

Read more …

BMJ, September 2020. T cells and vitamin D. A year later, the UK still recommends 400 IU per day, which guarantees people will get very sick. Fauci takes 6,000 IU.

“When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signalling device or ‘antenna’ known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D..”

Do Many People Have Pre-Existing Immunity? (BMJ)

All this should have shifted the focus of efforts towards T-cells at an early stage – the real question is why mainstream media and others continued to focus efforts and narrative on antibodies. Is it because vaccines are good at provoking antibody responses but not so great at generating T-cells? Some of the vaccines presently under trial do elicit some T-cells but it seems that neither the quantity nor variety are hugely impressive. Does this matter? Apparently so: Research establishments including Yale found that in mild or asymptomatic cases, many T-cells are produced. These were highly varied, responding not just to parts of the Spike, S protein or Receptor Binding Domain but to many other parts of the virus [1, 4-6]. Notably, in these mild cases there were few or no detectable antibodies.

Conversely, the severely ill produced few T-cells with less variety but had plenty of antibodies. What is also of interest is that men produced fewer T-cells than women, and unlike women, their T-cell response reduced with age [7]. So why are some people unable to mount a good protective T-cell response? The key to this question might be a 10-year-old Danish study led by Carsten Geisler, head of the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen [8]. Geisler noted that “When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signalling device or ‘antenna’ known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D,”, and if there is an inadequate vitamin D level, “they won’t even begin to mobilize.”

In other words, adequate vitamin D is critically important for the activation of T-cells from their inactive naïve state. The question of whether T-cells might also need a continuing supply of vitamin D to prevent the T-cell exhaustion and apoptosis observed in some serious COVID-19 cases [9] deserves further research. High levels of vitamin D are also critical for first line immune defences including physical mucosal defences, human antiviral production, modulating cytokines, reducing blood clotting and a whole host of other important immune system functions [10]. The obese, diabetics and people of BAME origin are far more deficient in vitamin D and men have lower levels than women.

Another intriguing clue is that Japan has the highest proportion of elderly on the planet but despite lack of lockdowns, little mask wearing and high population densities in cities, it escaped with few COVID deaths. Could this, at least in part, be because of extraordinarily high vitamin D levels of over 30 ng/ml in 95% of the active elderly [11]? By comparison, UK average levels are below 20ng/ml [10]. Vitamin D is made in the skin from the action of UV sunlight, food usually being a poor source, but the Japanese diet includes unusually high levels. Sunny countries near the equator (e.g. Nigeria, Singapore, Sri Lanka) also have very low COVID related deaths.

The results of the first vitamin D intervention double blind RCT for COVID was published on 29 August by researchers in Córdoba, Spain. This very well conducted study produced spectacular outcomes for the vitamin D group (n=50), virtually eliminating the need for ICU (reducing it by 96%) and eliminating deaths (8% in the n=26 control group). Although this was a small trial, the ICU results are so dramatic that they are statistically highly significant [12]. Substantially more vitamin D is required for optimal immune function than for bone health. It seems Dr Fauci is not ignorant of this, having apparently confirmed on TV and by email that he takes 6,000 IU daily! (see Dr John Campbell on YouTube Vitamin D and pandemic science, 16 September 2020). Meanwhile the US’s health body continues to recommend only 600-800 IU and the UK’s, only 400 IU.

Read more …

“By vaccinating the unvaccinated, increasing our testing and masking, and protecting the vaccinated, we can end the pandemic. That’s exactly what we are committed to doing.” – Kamala Harris

Never before in history has there been a need to “protect the vaccinated.” There isn’t one now unless the jabs not only don’t work, in some percentage of people who took them they make infection worse — and they know it.”

Yes, They Are Insane (Denninger)

While you can excuse Biden for being a demented old coot and unable to think before his mouth opens you can’t make that argument for Kamala. Her statement above is proof that what Biden said the other day was not an accident. Indeed, he was likely reading off a teleprompter and it is an official position of the US Federal Government at all levels. This in turn implies they know the vaccines not only have failed they are potentiating infections instead of protecting against them. Why else would you “protect the vaccinated”? But wait: Who caused all these people to be put in the position where they are more likely to get ****ed? That would be the CDC, NIH, Fauci personally and both the Trump and Biden Administrations. What might be scaring the crap out of them? Perhaps data like this:

Add to that anecdotal reports so far about people who were fully vaccinated not only winding up in the hospital and dying but crashing very rapidly — somethin that hasn’t happened throughout the time we’ve had Covid-19 here in the United States and which isn’t happening in unvaccinated persons. Gee, isn’t that something — especially when on the data we also know, and even Fauci has admitted it, that being previously infected and recovered is extraordinarily good protection — far better than that afforded by these vaccines. He refused to answer said question in a presser the other day. In other words for the previously-infected the jabs only offer risk, no benefit, exactly as does a HPV shot for a nun, who is in fact celibate and virginal, in a convent. Now that “potential risk” from not collecting the data before jabbing a huge number of Americans appears to be on the verge of turning into very real and lethal risk!


There is no way to know whether those currently-anecdotal reports will turn into an unavoidable cascade of cases that absolutely nobody will be able to ignore. Don’t you think we should have figured all of this out before we went on a stabby spree with lightly tested technology that you cannot turn around and undo if it goes badly? We would have found out and halted what may well be an incipient disaster if we didn’t proceed with “Warp Speed” and instead went through the regular process of gathering that long-term data while allowing the use of these jabs only by those at the highest degree of individual “bad outcome” infection risk (such as residents of nursing homes who have, on average, six months of remaining life and thus long-term risks are, for most of them, irrelevant.) They tried to kill you and got jabs into 200 million American arms — although whether it was intentional or simply stupidity and greed that drove what happened is up for debate — and now they’re trying to cover it up.

Read more …

Mercola has already taken this down again, as he does standard now, I’m sorry. We should save his pieces in their entirety.

Fleming: “The ultimate argument is that you can’t kill somebody more than dead … they can’t do worse than kill the patient. And we’ve already seen what doing nothing does. It kills the patient.”

Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? (Mercola)

In his book, “Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? A Scientific and Forensic Investigation,” Dr. Richard Fleming documents evidence showing SARS-CoV-2 is a bioweapon created over the past two decades. Once you conclude that SARS-CoV-2 is a bioweapon, you must also recognize that the COVID shots are nothing more than the genetic reproduction of that bioweapon. In other words, they are bioweapons too. The same people involved in the funding of this bioweapon are the same people who have interfered with doctors providing treatment to patients, and the same people who have been involved in the development of these COVID shots. Health care workers are injecting people with something they cannot possibly give informed consent for, which means health care workers are violating their Hippocratic Oath.

Health care workers who give these COVID shots are also violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Treaty, the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki and other legal statutes. Helping you take control of your health in these crazy times is Dr. Richard Fleming, a prolific author in addition to being a physicist, a nuclear cardiologist, researcher and attorney. Here, we discuss his latest book “Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? A Scientific and Forensic Investigation,” slated for release September 7, 2021. It’s currently available for preorder on Amazon. It’s an incredibly well-documented book and contains history that many of us aren’t aware of. As it turns out, the creation of this virus goes back not a year or two but two decades.

[..] “You see real efforts to produce viruses, coronaviruses, in particular. Spike proteins of coronaviruses to be even more specific, as I show in the book, paid for by the federal government by people who say they were not involved in gain-of-function research. Well, their fingerprints are on the documents, or on the published papers or on the grants or on the patents. You can’t say that you’re not involved in things when the documents show differently. They show the work and the money that came out of the federal government that went to Peter Daszak at EcoHealth, that went to Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina, Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other places. For me, as a researcher, obviously, once I start to investigate something, the only way you can stop me from doing that is to put a bullet in my head.

Otherwise, I’m going to stay after it. There are things that are not in the book that are going to come out in international criminal court, things I’m saving for that, because this virus is, by definition, a biological weapon. It violates the biological weapons convention treaty. You just have to look at the definitions. It provides nothing useful to humanity. It’s dangerous. When Fort Detrick is involved and the Department of Defense is involved … and you see these monies and you see the people that are involved, you realize that … the United States was playing China, China was playing the United States, and you saw who got caught in between. And they’re still playing the game. For lack of a better term, this book is an indictment.

That’s now my attorney hat going on saying that I have provided in this book evidence that I would take to a grand jury … I’m not somebody who is going to give up on having these people dealt with, because all the freedoms that we have lost, and the rights that we have lost as individuals, not to mention just the numbers of people who have died. My argument is … the reason why they died is because they didn’t get treatment for the inflammation and the blood clotting that I and other doctors have shown works. The ultimate argument is that you can’t kill somebody more than dead … they can’t do worse than kill the patient. And we’ve already seen what doing nothing does. It kills the patient.

At no other time in American history have doctors looked at patients and said, ‘We can’t do anything for you. Go home and come back when you get sicker.’ We have always treated people with breathing problems with medications for breathing problems. We’ve always treated people with clotting problems with medicines to stop the clotting. And so, the reason why this is so critical to understand is because the same people who were involved in the funding of this bioweapon are the same people who have interfered with doctors providing treatment to patients, and the same people who have been involved in the development of these vaccines.”

Read more …

Twitter thread. “Could this be a vax escape lineage?”

Variant Heads-up To The Virologist Community (Roemer)

A new delta sublineage AY.33 has been designated that (to me) appears to be the most critical delta sublineage designated so far. (journos please don’t yet write about it, this has not been scrutinised by the science community) The defining Spike mutation is S:Q613H, a mutation that has already been studied in the context of other variants due to it’s closeness to the mutation S:D614G which got fixed last summer. The other spike substitutions on top of standard Delta are S:T29A, S:T250I, S:T299I. This lineage grabbed my attention not because of its high growth rate but because of its high number of extra spike mutations that is a clear outlier on the current delta tree (see screenshot).

The lineage is most common in Belgium but also growing in Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland and has already been observed in more than 25 countries. The first observation was in Japan mid-June in a traveller from Morocco. The second observation was in Morocco. Using timetree, the lineage seems to have arisen in April/ May. Belgium has strong ties to Morocco so it’s plausible that the lineage is widespread in North Africa where unfortunately there is very little sequencing activity (last sequences is 3mo old and this precise lineage). At this point in time, it’s difficult to estimate growth advantage because in no country has this lineage reached more than 10% and we only have a few weeks of data. But using naive methods, it’s plausible that the transmission advantage could be between 10-70%.

Comparing transmission advantages it’s interesting to see that the growth rate seems to be higher in countries with higher vaccination rate Spain: advantage ~70% (left)
Denmark: ~30%
Belgium: ~30%
Germany: ~20%
Switzerland: ~10% (right)
Could this be a vax escape lineage?
If I was a lab scientist, I’d take a close look at this lineage and study neutralising antibody titers. Any comments are very welcome! If you think there’s something fishy going on that could explain this, please comment! 8/

Read more …

“..that will mean a lot more people have to be fired, adding to the soup lines at a time when soup shelves are growing bare..”

Biden’s Tax & Vax Plan May be The Final Straw (GRB)

Joe Biden is looking a little Grinchy, having decided to fire the unvaccinated across America as we head toward the holidays. Even though the end of enhanced unemployment benefits has not brought back millions of former employees who’ve held out since the COVID lockdown, Biden decided it would be wise to fire a lot more people, mandating last week that all businesses with more than 100 employees terminate any employees who continue to refuse the government’s experimental, warp-speed vaccine. While President Biden may think he’s going to strong-arm people who don’t want to get vaccinated into a strong shot in the arm by punishing them with poverty and the threat of losing their homes as we enter the holiday season, he may find he find he has just enraged them and increased their willingness to take a stand against forced medication.


If so, that will mean a lot more people have to be fired, adding to the soup lines at a time when soup shelves are growing bare. I don’t know about where you live, but where I live, I see a number of small businesses already running fewer hours due to lack of employees and running with reduced menus or partially empty shelves due to unattainable supply. Has Jumpin’ Joe not stopped to think that an additional major drain of employees to run shops and move products around the nation does not add up to the kind of holiday retail season that can put companies in the black and may be all it takes to shove an already fading economy into a black winter hole? Will major trucking companies like Swift being forced by the nation’s ruler-by-decree to lay off hundreds of Trump-loving truckers help the nation with its widespread shortages?

Read more …

Step 1.

New York City Teacher’s Union Wins Battle Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate (ET)

New York City’s largest teacher’s union has won a battle to keep teachers and other educators employed if they suffer from certain medical conditions and don’t want to comply as a result with the Big Apple’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. An arbitrator ruled late Friday that teachers with certain documented medical afflictions must be offered assignments outside of classrooms and be kept on the city’s payroll. Other educators who don’t want a COVID-19 vaccine must be offered unpaid leave that keeps in place their health coverage or a severance package. City officials announced last month that all 148,000 Department of Education employees would have to get a COVID-19 vaccine, with limited exemptions.

The city planned to remove people who were granted an exemption from the payroll, infuriating the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the city’s largest teacher’s union. “That was it for us,” Michael Mulgrew, the union’s president, said on NY 1 this week. That prompted pushback, which ultimately resulted in the arbitration decision, even after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio seemed to publicly reverse the stance in a press conference on Wednesday. De Blasio said that few cases of medical or religious exemptions being granted are expected, “but they will be honored” if approved. “Those folks will continue to work for us in some capacity, in some location. We got to work that through,” he added, referring to the arbitration.

Mulgrew said the pushback from the union resulted in the reversal. “After our demand for independent arbitration, the city backed off its initial position that all unvaccinated personnel be removed from payroll, and will offer out-of-classroom work for those with certified medical or other conditions,” he said in a statement after the arbitrator’s decision was released.

Read more …

Step 2.

LA Cops Sue Over Vaccine Mandate, Police Across CA Threaten To Resign (G.)

Los Angeles police department (LAPD) employees have sued over requirements they get vaccinated for Covid-19, alleging that the department has created a “hostile work environment” for the unvaccinated and that the mandate violates employees’ privacy and civil rights. The suit is one of several aggressive challenges to vaccine mandates by police unions and officers across California, some of whom have threatened mass resignations in response to new rules. It comes as staff at law enforcement agencies remain unvaccinated at disproportionately high rates. LA’s vaccine mandate requires city employees to be vaccinated by 20 October unless they are approved for a specific religious or medical exemption.

Six LAPD employees over the weekend asserted in a federal complaint that that policy and its implementation infringed on their rights to “bodily integrity” and constituted “coerced medical treatment”. The complaint says that officials have threatened to lay off thousands of officers who refuse to get the jab. The lawsuit comes amid increasingly fraught debates over employer vaccination mandates in America, which escalated last week after Joe Biden announced the government would temporarily mandate that employers with more than 100 employees require workers to get vaccinated or be tested weekly.

The federal government and California have had public sector mandates in place for months, but some cities have adopted stricter requirements – that employees must be vaccinated and cannot submit to regular testing as an alternative. The LA suit, which was brought against the city, the police chief and several other government officials, claims that weekly testing is “highly intrusive”. It alleges that officers have not been given enough time to apply for exemptions, after a Monday deadline.

Read more …

“Dr Marion Gruber is the director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER).”

As such, her voice was essential in approving the Pfizer vaccine. That happened on August 23. On August 30, she resigned. What’s going on?

FDA Senior Officials Say No Evidence Fully Vaccinated Need Booster Shots (DM)

A group of senior U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials – including two who announced they will soon resign – have authored a report disagreeing with the White House’s plan to roll out COVID-19 vaccine boosters next week. In a report published in in The Lancet on Monday, the 18 officials write that there is no evidence supporting the need for boosters because fully vaccinated people still have high levels of protection against hospitalization or death. Instead, they say, vaccine doses should be donated to areas with lower vaccination rates to prevent the emergence of more COVID-19 variants. Although the administration is ready to roll out boosters starting September 20, President Joe Biden said last week that any decisions – including when to authorize boosters and who should receive them – will be left up to the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The group of FDA authors of the new report include Dr Marion Gruber and Dr Philip Krause, who plan to step down in the coming months due to disagreements over the rollout of vaccines. ‘Although the idea of further reducing the number of COVID-19 cases by enhancing immunity in vaccinated people is appealing, any decision to do so should be evidence-based and consider the benefits and risks for individuals and society,’ the officials wrote in the report. ‘COVID-19 vaccines continue to be effective against severe disease, including that caused by the Delta variant. ‘Most of the observational studies on which this conclusion is based are, however, preliminary and difficult to interpret precisely due to potential confounding and selective reporting.’

[..] Last month, health officials announced the those who received the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine would be eligible for a third shot eight months after receiving their second, starting September 20. The move was pending approval from the regulators like the FDA, though, and it appears they will not be approved by the planned roll out date next Monday. Gruber and Krause were frustrated by the decision from the White House to make the public announcement for the shots before approval, leading to the pair – who are crucial to the FDA’s process of approval of vaccines – announcing they will soon resign. Gruber is the director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). Krause is the deputy director of CBER.

The office is responsible for regulating ‘biological products for human use under applicable federal laws,’ according to the FDA. In essence, the office is largely responsible for making final decisions regarding things like vaccines, and making sure they are safe for human consumption. Gruber is one of the most important figures in the approval of vaccines. Now with senior officials choosing to publicly oppose the measure, the White House’s plans could be in turmoil.

Read more …

100s of people and a $1 million fund.

Sweden Proposes Law to Compensate Those Injured by Covid Vaccines

The Swedish government has announced a new proposal that would see those who have taken coronavirus vaccines and have been injured as a result will be entitled to compensation. The Swedish government announced the new proposal on Thursday, with Social Minister Lena Hallengren commenting: “Serious side effects of vaccines against COVID-19 are uncommon, but as an individual, you should be sure that financial compensation is paid in the event of injury.” “With this bill, the state takes it upon itself to pay the compensation for damage due to approved vaccines against COVID-19, in cases where a vaccine is not covered by Pharmaceutical Insurance or if the Pharmaceutical Insurance money is not enough,” Hallengren added.

The new law comes after the Swedish Board of Pharmaceutical Insurance made moves in December of last year to limit insurance liability in the case of injuries caused by vaccines during the Wuhan virus pandemic. “Due to the limitation of Pharmaceutical Insurance, there is weaker protection for possible serial damage caused by vaccines against COVID-19 than for other medicines. The government, therefore, considers that there is a need for the State to supplement Pharmaceutical Insurance in this regard,” the government stated in a press release. The new law would come into force in December but retroactively grant compensation to anyone injured as a result of the vaccines prior to that date. The government has also proposed to set aside 10 million Swedish kronor (£837,761/$1,159,443) to fund the initiative.

Compensation for injuries related to the vaccine is harder to access in other countries — like the United States, where lawyers have told prospective clients they may be unable to claim any compensation. Lawyer Altom Maglio told news service Reuters in July that his firm had been contacted by around a hundred people but said that despite his firm representing many people with vaccine-related injuries in the past, those looking to get compensation regarding the coronavirus vaccines were out of luck. Earlier this year, the Canadian federal government opened a vaccine injury compensation programme but stated only those with “a serious and permanent injury” would be eligible for any compensation.

Read more …

“senator Ron Johnson, who has falsely claimed that natural immunity is better than vaccine immunity..”

The Guradian changes tack, from dewormer to a more ‘reasonable’ approach.

Ivermectin Frenzy: The Advocates, Anti-vaxxers And Telehealth Companies (G.)

Despite outstanding questions over Ivermectin’s efficacy, several advocacy organizations have been on a nearly year-long campaign to mainstream the drug. Two of the most prominent groups backing Ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment are the UK-based British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (Bird) and the US-based Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). The FLCCC started as a non-profit network of doctors attempting to establish protocols for Covid-19 patient care in the initial days of the pandemic. The group became an early advocate for the use of steroids in treatment, and in late 2020 shifted its focus to Ivermectin, arguing the drug was a low cost option that could both treat and prevent the virus while vaccines were not widely available.

Bird, a non-profit group of doctors in the UK, took on a similar advocacy role. Its members published analyses promoting the drug, and the group started a now-defunct GoFundMe to “help us get life-saving drug approved for Covid-19”. The fund had raised around $44,000 as of last month. The FLCCC also solicits donations on its website, and in July it received a $100,000 award from a Malaysian charitable trust. Doctors in both groups have been on a media blitz during the last year, publishing protocols and promotional material on Ivermectin, giving interviews to news outlets, holding panels and appearing on major podcasts. But other doctors have cautioned the groups have relied on weak data, ignored studies that show Ivermectin is not effective and made numerous misleading claims in their push for the drug – such as FLCCC tweeting last month that “this could all be over by the end of August” and one founding member comparing restrictions on Ivermectin to genocide.

[..] Co-founder and president of FLCCC, pulmonary care specialist Dr Pierre Kory, has also found allies among influential politicians and media figures who have spoken critically of Covid-19 vaccines. At a December 2020 hearing chaired by senator Ron Johnson, who has falsely claimed that natural immunity is better than vaccine immunity and made misleading statements about vaccinations causing death, Kory called Ivermectin “the solution to Covid-19”. The appearance boosted Kory’s online following and led to appearances on several popular podcasts that have questioned vaccinations. In June, Kory was a guest on Joe Rogan’s top-rated podcast, telling Rogan’s millions of listeners that his “dream is that every household has ivermectin in the cupboard” while suggesting that technology companies were censoring discussion of the drug.

Read more …

All I can see in this is utter madness.

US Bankruptcy Judge Approves Purdue Pharma’s $7 Mln Executive Bonus Plan (R.)

Purdue Pharma, the bankrupt maker of the OxyContin painkiller, on Monday obtained court approval to pay up to $7.1 million in incentive payments for five top executives if they meet certain goals, despite opposition from U.S. government lawyers. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York, signed off on the executive incentive plan at the conclusion of a virtual hearing. His ruling comes about two weeks after he said he would approve Purdue’s reorganization plan, which rests on a $10 billion settlement of opioid-related litigation. read more The judge said repeatedly during Monday’s hearing that he does not consider the incentive payments “bonuses” because even if they are paid out in full, the executives would still only fall in the middle of the total compensation range for executives at major pharmaceutical companies.

The incentive payments, he said, are essentially part of the executives’ salaries, he added. “It’s easy — too easy in fact — to say that an incentive program is always a bonus,” Drain said. “No doubt my ruling will be construed by some as authorizing large bonuses to executives. I do not believe that is in fact the case here,” he added. “A bonus is something you get over and above median compensation.” He rejected an argument from the U.S. Department of Justice’s bankruptcy watchdog, the U.S. Trustee, that Purdue failed to show that the 2021 incentive plan is truly incentivizing, rather than a bonus for executives who are simply showing up to work. The U.S. Trustee frequently objects to bonuses for executives of companies that are in bankruptcy.

[..] Drain approved Purdue’s reorganization plan on Sept. 1, but the process of implementing it is ongoing. The plan rests on a $10 billion settlement that resolves thousands of lawsuits accusing the company and its owners, the Sackler family, of fueling the opioid crisis through deceptive marketing of its products. The Sacklers contributed approximately $4.5 billion to the settlement in exchange for the release of future opioid-related litigation. Under the plan, Purdue will reorganize as a public-benefit company with profits steered toward victims of the crisis through opioid abatement programs. A handful of states that opposed the settlement have already filed appeals. More than 500,000 Americans have died since 1999 from opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Read more …

Xi is taking a big risk not bailing them out.

Evergrande Hires Bankruptcy Advisors As Investors Protest Imminent Default (ZH)

It took Evergrande less than a day to go from denying “rumors” of bankruptcy (as per a statement posted on its website earlier today), to confirming that a bankruptcy is imminent. In a filing on the Hong Kong stock exchange on Tuesday, Evergrande which was busy trying to convince angry Chinese mobs that they will get their money and/or apartments and that it has no plans of default, the company all but conceded that a bankruptcy is imminent when it said it has hired notable bankruptcy advisors Houlihan Lokey and Admiralty Harbour Capital as joint FAs to “assess the firm’s capital structure”, a well-known euphemism of “prepare to file for bankruptcy.” And just so there was no doubt as to what is coming next, the company said if it’s unable to repay debts on time or get creditors to agree to extensions or alternative arrangements, it may lead to cross-default.

It quickly went downhill from there, with the company saying that it expects “significant continuing decline” in contract sales in September, resulting in “continuous deterioration” of cash collection, according to the statement. That will place “tremendous pressure” on the group’s cashflow and liquidity. Finally, guaranteeing that a default is just a matter of days if not less, the company admitted that it has failed to make “material progress” on the sale of stakes in China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group Ltd. and Evergrande Property Services Group Ltd., while the sale of its office building in Hong Kong hasn’t been completed within the expected timetable.

In short a total disaster, and all this is happening a tens of thousands of Chinese are starting to feel insurrectiony – the real thing, not that January 6 tourist trap – and if they suffer losses, and in a company with $300BN in debt they will suffer major losses, their protests which have been largely peaceful to date will turn quite violent. As we reported this morning, police descended on Evergrande’s Shenzhen headquarters late Monday after dozens of people gathered to demand repayments on overdue wealth management products. Protesters numbered in the hundreds on Sunday, Caixin reported. In addition to equity investors who are about to lose everything, the company is also facing angry homebuyers, creditors and even its own employees… who are also about to lose everything.

“It looks like they are working on debt restructuring after no concrete results on asset disposals, and the first task is to stabilize the holders of wealth management products which could be a social issue,” said Daniel Fan, a credit analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “It seems the developer is working on rescheduling pretty much all onshore debt, and the next step is to do the same for offshore investors. Translation: a bond default is imminent, and the only question is what will creditors get in return.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Hesitancy

 

 

 

 

Cat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1437071028744867842

 

 

 

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

 

Aug 262021
 
 August 26, 2021  Posted by at 9:21 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  83 Responses »


Vasily Polenov Christ among the teachers (doctors) 1896

 

67% Of UK Covid-19 Deaths Since February 2021 Were Vaccinated (DE)
McCullough: ‘The Vaccines Are Failing’ (CHD)
2 Things MSM Didn’t Tell You About FDA’s Approval of Pfizer Vaccine (CHD)
Comparing SARS-CoV-2 Natural Immunity To Vaccine-induced Immunity (Medrxiv)
Safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine in a Nationwide Setting (NEJM)
Real-World Study Links Pfizer Vax to High Risk of Myocarditis (MPT)
Delta Will Charge Unvaccinated Employees $200 Per Month For Health Plan (AP)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Bans Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates (TT)
New Zealand Could Be Split Into North And South Island Bubbles (G.)
Origins of SARS-CoV-2: Window Is Closing For Key Scientific Studies (Nature)
Early Wuhan COVID Samples Contained Genetically Modified Viruses (ET)
Tucker Carlson Warns “Elitist Dems” Want You To “Shut Up And Obey” (SN)
“I Was Living Like Scarface” (MPN)
“Leftie” Is Now A Slur In Working-Class Towns (G.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comment on the same Public Health England (PHE) briefing the Daily Sceptic addressed yesterday, saying “Calculating the vaccine effectiveness against Delta infection in the over-50s [..] gives a figure of just 15%..”

67% Of UK Covid-19 Deaths Since February 2021 Were Vaccinated (DE)

The latest Public Health England report on Covid-19 infections, hospitalisations, and deaths show that the Covid-19 injections do not work, and quite possibly make the recipient worse if exposed to the alleged Covid-19 virus due to the fully vaccinated population accounting for 21% of all infections but 58% of all Covid-19 deaths. PHE release a technical briefing on Covid-19 variants of concern every two weeks, and the 21st update released on the 20th August 2021 provides further proof; just as previous reports have, that the Covid-19 vaccines are in fact increasing the risk of hospitalisation and death, rather than reducing it by the 95% claimed by the vaccine manufacturers.

According to the report since the 1st February 2021 and the 15th August 2021 there have been 183,133 confirmed cases among the unvaccinated population, an increase of 32,079 on the last count made in the previous report where the confirmed figure was 151,054 up to the 2nd August 2021. There have also been 26,194 confirmed cases among people who had received a single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, 21 days prior to their positive test, an increase of 2,176 on the last count made in the previous report where the confirmed figure was 24,018 up to the 2nd August 2021.

Confirmed cases among people who had received a single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine more than 21 days prior to their positive test total 62,763 up to the 15th August 2021. This is an increase of 17,674 on the previous report where the confirmed figure was 46,089 up to the 2nd August 2021. Finally, the latest report reveals that there have been 73,372 confirmed cases of the Delta Covid-19 variant among the fully vaccinated population, an increase of 26,364 on the last count made in the previous report where the confirmed figure was 47,008 up to the 2nd August 2021.

Read more …

Are we getting McCullough overkill?

McCullough: ‘The Vaccines Are Failing’ (CHD)

Why is the world experiencing such a “prominent outbreak” of the Delta variant when so many people have been vaccinated? Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough addressed those questions and more on the “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast.” New research shows people who are vaccinated against COVID are more susceptible to the Delta variant, said McCullough, pointing to a pre-print study by the prestigious Oxford University Clinical Research Group published Aug. 10 in The Lancet. The paper’s authors demonstrated widespread vaccine failure and transmission under tightly controlled circumstances in a hospital lockdown in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. The study found vaccinated people carry 251 times the load of COVID-19 viruses in their nostrils compared to the unvaccinated, the study found.

“They had an outbreak and they locked down the hospital where the workers could not get out,” said McCullough. “They were assiduously checking the workers and testing them for COVID, as well as doing sequencing.” The researchers found workers were still getting COVID during the lockdown period, said McCullough, and they were passing it to one another. The study’s big finding is their calculation of viral load, McCullough said: “This group had actually calculated viral load from oral and nasal secretions in the past. The viral load was 251 times that of the previous unvaccinated era where they had used the same methodology. So, they had previous workers and patients who had COVID-19 before any exposure to the vaccines. And now the vaccinated were carrying a massive viral load and passing it to one another.”

The efficacy for the Pfizer vaccine is measured as being anywhere from 17% to 42% effective. “These levels are far below the 50% regulatory standard to even have a vaccine on the market,” said McCullough. Regardless of the variant or the vaccine, McCullough said the bottom line is that “the vaccines are failing.”

Read more …

“If it doesn’t say Comirnaty, you have not been offered an approved vaccine.”

2 Things MSM Didn’t Tell You About FDA’s Approval of Pfizer Vaccine (CHD)

Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a biologics license application for the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine. The press reported that vaccine mandates are now legal for military, healthcare workers, college students and employees in many industries. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has now required the vaccine for all teachers and school staff. The Pentagon is proceeding with its mandate for all military service members.

[..] First, the FDA acknowledges that while Pfizer has “insufficient stocks” of the newly licensed Comirnaty vaccine available, there is “a significant amount” of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine — produced under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) — still available for use. The FDA decrees that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine under the EUA should remain unlicensed but can be used “interchangeably” (page 2, footnote 8) with the newly licensed Comirnaty product. Second, the FDA pointed out that the licensed Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine and the existing, EUA Pfizer vaccine are “legally distinct,” but proclaims that their differences do not “impact safety or effectiveness.”

[..] EUA products are experimental under U.S. law. Both the Nuremberg Code and federal regulations provide that no one can force a human being to participate in this experiment. Under 21 U.S. Code Sec.360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III), “authorization for medical products for use in emergencies,” it is unlawful to deny someone a job or an education because they refuse to be an experimental subject. Instead, potential recipients have an absolute right to refuse EUA vaccines. U.S. laws, however, permit employers and schools to require students and workers to take licensed vaccines. EUA-approved COVID vaccines have an extraordinary liability shield under the 2005 Public Readiness and Preparedness Act. [..] At least for the moment, the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine has no liability shield. Vials of the branded product, which say “Comirnaty” on the label, are subject to the same product liability laws as other U.S. products.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices places a vaccine on the mandatory schedule, a childhood vaccine benefits from a generous retinue of liability protections. But licensed adult vaccines, including the new Comirnaty, do not enjoy any liability shield. Just as with Ford’s exploding Pinto, or Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, people injured by the Comirnaty vaccine could potentially sue for damages. And because adults injured by the vaccine will be able to show that the manufacturer knew of the problems with the product, jury awards could be astronomical.

Pfizer is therefore unlikely to allow any American to take a Comirnaty vaccine until it can somehow arrange immunity for this product. Here’s what you need to know when somebody orders you to get the vaccine: Ask to see the vial. If it says “Comirnaty,” it’s a licensed product. If it says “Pfizer-BioNTech,” it’s an experimental product, and under 21 U.S. Code 360bbb, you have the right to refuse. If it comes from Moderna or Johnson & Johnson (marketed as Janssen), you have the right to refuse. The FDA is playing bait and switch with the American public — but we don’t have to play along. If it doesn’t say Comirnaty, you have not been offered an approved vaccine.

Read more …

Vaccinated people are 13x more likely to get infected than those with natural immunity.

Comparing SARS-CoV-2 Natural Immunity To Vaccine-induced Immunity (Medrxiv)

Reports of waning vaccine-induced immunity against COVID-19 have begun to surface. With that, the comparable long-term protection conferred by previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 remains unclear. Methods: We conducted a retrospective observational study comparing three groups: (1)SARS-CoV-2-naive individuals who received a two-dose regimen of the BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine, (2)previously infected individuals who have not been vaccinated, and (3)previously infected and single dose vaccinated individuals. Three multivariate logistic regression models were applied. In all models we evaluated four outcomes: SARS-CoV-2 infection, symptomatic disease, COVID-19-related hospitalization and death.


The follow-up period of June 1 to August 14, 2021, when the Delta variant was dominant in Israel. Results: SARS-CoV-2-naive vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021. The increased risk was significant (P<0.001) for symptomatic disease as well. When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naive vaccinees had a 5.96-fold (95% CI, 4.85 to 7.33) increased risk for breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold (95% CI, 5.51 to 9.21) increased risk for symptomatic disease.

SARS-CoV-2-naive vaccinees were also at a greater risk for COVID-19-related-hospitalizations compared to those that were previously infected. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.

Read more …

New England Journal of Medicine. Israel study. Drowning in numbers.

“Vaccination was most strongly associated with an elevated risk of myocarditis, lymphadenopathy, appendicitis, and herpes zoster infection”

Safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine in a Nationwide Setting (NEJM)

Table S6 shows the effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection on the incidence of various adverse events. Infection substantially increased the risk of many different adverse events, including myocarditis (risk ratio, 18.28; 95% CI, 3.95 to 25.12; risk difference, 11.0 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 5.6 to 15.8), acute kidney injury (risk ratio, 14.83; 95% CI, 9.24 to 28.75; risk difference, 125.4 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 107.0 to 142.6), pulmonary embolism (risk ratio, 12.14; 95% CI, 6.89 to 29.20; risk difference, 61.7 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 48.5 to 75.4), intracranial hemorrhage (risk ratio, 6.89; 95% CI, 1.90 to 19.16; risk difference, 7.6 events per 100,000 persons;


95% CI, 2.7 to 12.6), pericarditis (risk ratio, 5.39; 95% CI, 2.22 to 23.58; risk difference, 10.9 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 4.9 to 16.9), myocardial infarction (risk ratio, 4.47; 95% CI, 2.47 to 9.95; risk difference, 25.1 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 16.2 to 33.9), deep-vein thrombosis (risk ratio, 3.78; 95% CI, 2.50 to 6.59; risk difference, 43.0 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 29.9 to 56.6), and arrhythmia (risk ratio, 3.83; 95% CI, 3.07 to 4.95; risk difference, 166.1 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 139.6 to 193.2).

Read more …

About that same Israel study.

Real-World Study Links Pfizer Vax to High Risk of Myocarditis (MPT)

The Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine was found to be associated with a threefold increased risk of myocarditis, according to a real-world case-control study from Israel. Vaccination had a strong association with an increased risk of myocarditis (risk ratio [RR] 3.24, 95% CI 1.55-12.44), as well as increased risks of lymphadenopathy (RR 2.43, 95% CI 2.05-2.78), appendicitis (RR 1.40, 95% CI 1.02-2.01), and herpes zoster infection (RR 1.43, 95% CI 1.20-1.73), reported Ran Balicer, MD, of Clalit Health Services in Tel Aviv, and colleagues.

However, in a separate cohort, infection with SARS-CoV-2 was associated with a higher risk of myocarditis (RR 18.28, 95% CI 3.95-25.12), as well as other cardiovascular complications, including acute kidney injury (RR 14.83, 95% CI 9.24-28.75), pulmonary embolism (RR 12.14, 95% CI 6.89-29.20), and intracranial hemorrhage (RR 6.89, 95% CI 1.90-19.16), the authors wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine. They noted that vaccination was “substantially protective” against anemia, acute kidney injury, intracranial hemorrhage, and lymphopenia. Balicer’s group examined data from the largest healthcare organization in Israel to compare incidence of adverse events among vaccinated individuals versus unvaccinated individuals, and estimated the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection on these adverse events.

Participants in the vaccination cohorts were 16 years old and older, had been in the health organization for a full year, had no prior COVID-19 infection, and had no contact with the healthcare system in the last 7 days. Notably, populations with confounders, such as healthcare workers, long-term care facility residents, or people confined to their home for medical reasons, were excluded.

Read more …

As vaccinated people are 13x more likely to get infected than those with natural immunity. Logos.

Delta Will Charge Unvaccinated Employees $200 Per Month For Health Plan (AP)

Delta Air Lines will charge employees on the company health plan $200 a month if they fail to get vaccinated against COVID-19, a policy the airline’s top executive says is necessary because the average hospital stay for the virus costs the airline $50,000. CEO Ed Bastian said that all employees who have been hospitalized for the virus in recent weeks were not fully vaccinated. The airline said Wednesday that it also will stop extending pay protection to unvaccinated workers who contract COVID-19 on Sept. 30, and will require unvaccinated workers to be tested weekly beginning Sept. 12, although Delta will cover the cost. They will have to wear masks in all indoor company settings.

Delta stopped short of matching United Airlines, which will require employees to be vaccinated starting Sept. 27 or face termination. However, the $200 monthly surcharge, which starts in November, may have the same effect. “This surcharge will be necessary to address the financial risk the decision to not vaccinate is creating for our company,” Bastian said in a memo to employees. The surcharge will only apply to employees who don’t get vaccinated and won’t be levied for spouses or dependents, a Delta spokeswoman said. [..] Bastian said that 75% of Delta employees are vaccinated, up from 72% in mid-July. He said the aggressiveness of the leading strain of the virus “means we need to get many more of our people vaccinated, and as close to 100% as possible.”

“I know some of you may be taking a wait-and-see approach or waiting for full (Food and Drug Administration) approval,” he told employees. “With this week’s announcement that the FDA has granted full approval for the Pfizer vaccine, the time for you to get vaccinated is now.” A growing number of companies including Chevron Corp. and drugstore chain CVS announced they will require workers to get vaccinated after Monday’s FDA decision. United and Delta already require new hires to be vaccinated. Two smaller carriers, Hawaiian and Frontier, have said they will require either vaccination or regular testing for current employees. Other major U.S. airlines, including American and Southwest, said Wednesday that they are encouraging employees to get vaccinated but have not required it.

Read more …

“Vaccine requirements and exemptions have historically been determined by the legislature, and their involvement is particularly important to avoid a patchwork of vaccine mandates across Texas..”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Bans Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates (TT)

Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday announced an executive order banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates regardless of a vaccine’s approval status with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He also said he was adding the issue to the agenda for the current special session of the Texas Legislature. The order comes two days after the FDA granted full approval to the Pfizer vaccine. That raised questions about the fate of a previous Abbott order that prohibited vaccine mandates, but only for those under emergency authorization. Abbott’s latest order is simple, saying “no governmental entity can compel any individual to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.” The order preserves exceptions for places like nursing homes and state-supported living centers.

At the same time, Abbott asked lawmakers to consider legislation addressing whether state or local governments could issue vaccine mandates and, if so, which exemptions should apply. “Vaccine requirements and exemptions have historically been determined by the legislature, and their involvement is particularly important to avoid a patchwork of vaccine mandates across Texas,” Abbott said in a statement. Lawmakers are currently in their second special session, and time is limited to make progress on the 17-item agenda that Abbott previously announced. The House finally restored quorum last week after Democrats staged a nearly six-week protest of the GOP’s elections bill, and the current session is set to end Sept. 5.

Abbott’s last order regarding vaccine requirements, issued July 29, said “no governmental entity can compel any individual to receive a COVID-19 vaccine administered under an emergency use authorization.” While there is a new state law that acted as a backstop for Abbott’s previous order if a vaccine received full approval, it was not as sweeping as the order and left the door open to new mandates. There specifically appeared to be the fresh potential for cities, counties and school districts to require their employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19. San Antonio Independent School District had already announced mandatory employee vaccinations, prompting a lawsuit from Attorney General Ken Paxton. District officials said Wednesday they will move forward with the mandate — despite Abbott’s latest order.

Read more …

Says the “Covid modeller”. Get a life.

New Zealand Could Be Split Into North And South Island Bubbles (G.)

A Covid-19 modeller has suggested New Zealand’s North and South islands could become separate bubbles as the country grapples with a coronavirus outbreak, although South islanders with hopes of being fully released from lockdown should not hold their breath just yet. New Zealand is battling to contain an outbreak of the Delta variant that swiftly led to a nationwide, level four lockdown – the highest setting – which has been extended until at least the end of the week. There are now 210 cases in the community. Auckland – the largest city, where the majority of cases have been detected – will remain in lockdown until the end of the month.


There have been no cases in the South Island, but the 20,000-strong list of close contacts linked to the current outbreak extends across both islands. Around 120 people, who were potentially exposed to the virus at locations in Auckland, are isolating in the South Island. Auckland could expect to stay in lockdown for a number of weeks , but a North Island and South Island split could make sense, Covid-19 modeller at the University of Auckland, Shaun Hendy, told TVNZ. “I think at this stage, a North Island and South Island split is probably what we’d be looking at,” Hendy said. In order for the alert levels to drop in the South Island, any wastewater tests would need to come back clear, Hendy said.

Read more …

Daszak gets another shot at whitewashing Daszak, and Nature provides a podium to do it on.

Origins of SARS-CoV-2: Window Is Closing For Key Scientific Studies (Nature)

Our group was convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) in October 2020. We have been the designated independent international members of a joint WHO–China team tasked with understanding the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Our report was published this March1. It was meant to be the first step in a process that has stalled. Here we summarize the scientific process so far, and call for action to fast-track the follow-up scientific work required to identify how COVID-19 emerged, which we set out in this article.

The window of opportunity for conducting this crucial inquiry is closing fast: any delay will render some of the studies biologically impossible. Understanding the origins of a devastating pandemic is a global priority, grounded in science. We, all the members of the international expert team, each submitted detailed, confidential statements to the WHO on potential conflicts of interest, including funding, collaborative studies, public statements and other issues around the origins of COVID-19 that could be perceived as conflicts. After the WHO had reviewed these, team members were appointed in their individual capacity, not as representatives of their employers.

So far, our mission has been guided by terms of reference agreed between the WHO and China in 2020, before our involvement1. These terms tasked us with making a detailed reconstruction of the early phase of the pandemic, beginning in Wuhan, China, where the first known cases were reported. Our mandate was to conduct a collaborative study with leading scientists in China to review data they had generated on the basis of initial questions from the WHO. We refined the generic list of questions described in the mandate into a detailed workplan described in the mission report.

Read more …

Bet this is also Daszak.

“We found genetic manipulation of the Nipah virus, which is more lethal than Ebola.”

Early Wuhan COVID Samples Contained Genetically Modified Viruses (ET)

Samples from early Wuhan COVID-19 patients show the presence of genetically modified Henipah virus, an American scientist has found. Henipah was one of the two types of viruses sent to China by Chinese-born scientists from a Canadian laboratory at the centre of a controversy over the firing of the scientists and collaboration with Chinese military researchers. It is not clear whether the virus found in the Chinese samples is related to the virus samples sent by the Canadian lab, which were shipped in late March 2019. The finding was confirmed for The Epoch Times by another qualified scientist.

The evidence was first found by Dr. Steven Quay, a Seattle-based physician-scientist and former faculty member at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who looked at early COVID-19 samples uploaded by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) shortly after China informed the WHO about the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. The samples from the patients, who reportedly were found to have an “unidentified pneumonia disease” in December 2019, were uploaded to the genetic sequence database, GenBank, on the website of the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH). Quay says that while other scientists around the world were mostly interested in examining the genome of SARS-CoV-2 in the samples uploaded by the WIV scientists, he wanted to see what else was in the samples collected from the patients.

So he collaborated with a few other scientists to analyze sequences from the samples. “We started fishing inside for weird things,” Quay told The Epoch Times. What they found, he says, are the results of what could likely be contamination from different experiments in the lab making their way into the samples, as well as evidence of Henipah virus. “We found genetic manipulation of the Nipah virus, which is more lethal than Ebola.” Nipah is a type of Henipah virus. [..] Documents released by the Canadian government state that the WIV’s intended use of the virus samples sent by Canada was “stock virus culturing,” which in simpler terms means storing the viruses while keeping them alive. Genetic manipulation would not be within the scope of this description.

Read more …

Worth watching.

Tucker Carlson Warns “Elitist Dems” Want You To “Shut Up And Obey” (SN)

Fox News host Tucker Carlson issued a stark warning Tuesday, emphasising that “we’re seeing now what happens when countries tolerate authoritarians, even for a moment” as people worldwide are being told to submit to increasingly draconian “rules” in the wake of the pandemic. Carlson noted “Has there ever been a clearer window into the society they’re trying to build? Our formerly middle-class nation now has a serf class. They’re the ones wearing the masks, being forced to take drugs they don’t want, being told not to communicate with one another, except through digital channels the Democratic Party controls.”


He continued, “We now have two groups of Americans, not a broad middle. The favored and the unfavored. The saved and the damned. The vaccinated and the unvaccinated. That’s how the architects of all this see the country.” Carlson also pointed to former NSA head Michael Hayden’s assertion that Trump supporters should be sent to Afghanistan to die. “That’s how contemptuous they feel about you,” Carlson noted, adding “Shut up and fetch another glass of Riesling, serf. And be sure not to breathe on me, or you’ll be deported.” “These are bad attitudes and are accelerating. How far can this go, you wonder?” he questioned. Carlson also described some of the insane policies being put into place in Australia and New Zealand, describing them as akin to North Korea.

Read more …

“Holy cow, I was living like Scarface…I was paying out anywhere between $300-400,000 per week to $5 million per week at times. All in cash.” Matthew Hoh, U.S. Marine Corps Captain and former State Department official

“I Was Living Like Scarface” (MPN)

The conflict in Afghanistan — for the U.S. at least — appears to be over. Essentially admitting defeat, American planes are beating a hasty and ignominious retreat from Kabul, with images of the withdrawal bearing a striking resemblance to those from the fall of Saigon 46 years previously. As the Taliban complete their takeover, many Americans are wondering what it was all about. For what, and on what, did the United States spend more than $2 trillion? A newly published study from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) — a U.S. government body — lays bare the waste and corruption of the whole affair, drawing parallels with famous satires such as “Catch 22” and “M*A*S*H*.” Uncompromising in its frankness, the 124-page report outlines the incompetence, venality and dark absurdity of the whole endeavor.

“When you look at how much we spent and what we got for it, it’s mind boggling,” one senior Department of Defense administrator admitted to SIGAR in 2015. Congress founded SIGAR in 2008 to provide neutral and objective oversight into the U.S.’ handling of Afghan reconstruction programs. The new report is the latest — and perhaps most critical — of 13 yearly offerings analyzing U.S. efforts in the country. At no point did the U.S. truly control all of Afghanistan. But officials in Washington wanted to see quantifiable results. In a region where American troops were barely able to leave their bases without being attacked, “cash spent” became one of the few concrete metrics commanders could report back with any accuracy. As the report concluded:

Perversely, because it was the easiest thing to monitor, the amount of money spent by a program often became the most important measure of success. A USAID official told SIGAR, ‘The Hill was always asking, ‘Did you spend the money?’…I didn’t hear many questions about what the effects were. Program budgets were massively expanded, often over the objections of USAID and others on the ground, who argued that inundating the country with dollars was not truly winning hearts and minds, and was a wasteful and ineffective strategy. There was no incentive to report on financial excesses, fraud or abuse, and barely any oversight over where the money was actually going. Contractors, NGOs and others who were aboard the seemingly endless gravy train also kept quiet as they stuffed their pockets with billions of dollars of public money.

MintPress spoke to a person who had been a central part of this bizarre story. Matthew Hoh was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps and an official with both the Department of Defense and the State Department, spending almost 12 years in the U.S. military and government focusing on Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2009, he resigned from his position in the State Department in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, over U.S. policy in the country. “The way to prove that you were doing your job was by spending money,” Hoh told MintPress, continuing: Money being spent on an institutional level was a metric of success. Somehow in the minds of the U.S. political leaders, in Iraq and Afghanistan, dollars spent equated to things being constructed and effective counterinsurgency [against the Taliban]…But the Taliban themselves were taking the money! The Taliban guys were doing the construction work. It was absolutely nuts!”

Read more …

I don’t have time for the very few.

“Leftie” Is Now A Slur In Working-Class Towns (G.)

In 2011, Sam Fender was, by his own admission, “a little stoner” who had flunked out of his A-Levels in his hometown of North Shields, living with his mother in a flat with black mould on the walls. A decade later, he’s one of the UK’s best and most successful singer-songwriters: his 2019 debut album Hypersonic Missiles went to No 1, he won a Brit award, and his knack for writing songs about 21st-century disaffections marked him out from cheerier peers such as Ed Sheeran and George Ezra. His second album Seventeen Going Under, a superb record that channels the sound of Bruce Springsteen and the War on Drugs into an examination of his family, youth and frailty, is out in October.

[..] You’ve also written about politics – Aye, from the new album, is probably the angriest song you’ve ever written.

Because of the polarity between the left and the right, I don’t feel I have an identity with politicians on either side. The left wing have abandoned the working classes, and with a lot of the left – I don’t want to sound like Piers Morgan when I say this – I feel like there is too much nitpicking and stupid fights, especially online. But I hate the Tories with a passion. I was raised to hate them, I still hate them, and I always will. They clearly know who they stand for and they don’t represent people like us. A quarter of the kids in working families in my region are in poverty. Nobody sticks their neck out for the north-east. The line in Aye – “I don’t have time for the very few” – that’s the one thing that always going to be my main gripe on this planet, the sheer disparity between the 1% and the rest of the world. These culture wars are valid wars that need to be fought – there’s a lot of bigotry, a lot of racism and homophobia. But in order to get the Tories out, you’ve got to start representing the working class people of this country.

The right are sitting back and laughing, sweeping up every election. Blyth Valley up here went Tory. It’s a shipbuilding town. That’s insanity. Working-class people up here think the Tories are on their side – which shows how completely the left have fucked themselves. I’ve had arguments with people who say Jeremy Corbyn’s a twat, regurgitating Daily Mail headlines that he’s a terrorist sympathiser. I’m like: how? Tell me in your own words. And they go, “Ah you’re just one of them lefties”. “Leftie” is now a slur in working-class towns – what happened there? It upsets me that we’re in a place where the media have so much control over these blokes who have grafted all their life in a system that would benefit them if someone like Corbyn was in.

Read more …

 

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

 

 

 

New South Wales. New World Order.

 

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Aug 212021
 


Salvador Dali Swans reflecting elephants 1937

 

FDA Aiming To Give Full Approval To Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine Next Week (RT)
FDA To Grant Full Approval To Pfizer Vaccine Without Public Discussion (BMJ)
Development Of Safe And Effective Covid-19 Vaccines (Nature)
Vaccinated Man Dies In Florida, Daughters Urge People To Get Vaccinated (Hill)
World First Plasmid DNA Covid-19 Vaccine Gets Emergency Approval In India (RT)
Director Of Yale University Research Center About Ivermectin (CdS)
French Businesses Are Refusing to Enforce Vaccine Passport (SN)
Almost 9 In 10 Britons Likely Or Very Likely To Go For Covid Booster Shot (RT)
The Heebie-Jeebies of August (Kunstler)
2020: A Propaganda Masterpiece 2: Divide and Conquer (Perspectives on the Pandemic)
Dr. Peter McCullough (1 of 2) | Episode #19 (Perspectives on the Pandemic)

 

 

Quite the paradox. That not even everybody recognizes.

 

 

 

 

In Canada, 15 people <19 have died with Covid. So 10 million must be jabbed.

And remember what Yeadon said:

 

 

 

 

How little managers become mass murderers.

FDA Aiming To Give Full Approval To Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine Next Week (RT)

The FDA will give full authorization to Pfizer’s Covid jab sometime next week, according to multiple reports, putting it on track to be the first in the US to get approval and likely paving the way for additional vaccine mandates. The US regulator is expected to give the greenlight for Pfizer’s immunization in the coming days, the New York Times and Politico reported on Friday, citing several “people familiar” with the agency’s planning. Though the FDA still has a “substantial amount of paperwork and negotiation with the company” to get through, it could give full approval as soon as Monday, the Times added. It was previously reported that the FDA hoped to grant authorization before Labor Day on September 6, and now appears set to meet that informal deadline.

With a number of hospital systems and universities around the US signaling plans to mandate vaccinations against Covid-19 upon full approval, the move is likely to trigger a spate of new requirements around the country. The US military, moreover, has also said it would compel immunizations for its 1.3 million active-duty troops by the middle of next month, but could do so sooner should the FDA give its blessing to Pfizer. While the Joe Biden administration previously suggested the president would issue a waiver to allow vaccine mandates for soldiers, it decided to hold off until regulators signed off.

Reports of the FDA’s plans come soon after the White House began promoting booster shots for all fully vaccinated adults, citing US health agencies, which noted the immunizations are losing effectiveness over time, particularly against more infectious Delta mutation. While the FDA hasn’t yet approved third doses for all healthy Americans, the agency did give the go-ahead for those with compromised immune systems, while Pfizer recently submitted its initial trial data for universal boosters. Health officials have voiced hopes that full approval for the Covid jabs could improve vaccination numbers in the US, which have been losing pace since hitting a peak in April. Recent polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that more than 30% of respondents would be “more likely” to be vaccinated if the FDA authorized the shots, suggesting the move could indeed spur immunizations.

On August 5 (last update), this was still up on clinicaltrials.gov for the Pfizer trials:

Read more …

They don’t want anyone to see the paperwork.

FDA To Grant Full Approval To Pfizer Vaccine Without Public Discussion (BMJ)

Transparency advocates have criticised the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision not to hold a formal advisory committee meeting to discuss Pfizer’s application for full approval of its covid-19 vaccine. Last year the FDA said it was “committed to use an advisory committee composed of independent experts to ensure deliberations about authorisation or licensure are transparent for the public.”1 But in a statement, the FDA told The BMJ that it did not believe a meeting was necessary ahead of the expected granting of full approval. “The FDA has held numerous meetings of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) related to covid-19 vaccines, including a 22 October 2020 meeting to discuss, in general, the development, authorisation, and licensure of covid-19 vaccines,” an FDA spokesperson said.

“The FDA also has held meetings of the VRBPAC on all three covid-19 vaccines authorised for emergency use and does not believe a meeting is needed related to this biologics license application.” The spokesperson added, “The Pfizer BioNTech covid-19 vaccine was discussed at the VRBPAC meeting on 10 December 2020.3 If the agency had any questions or concerns that required input from the advisory committee members we would have scheduled a meeting to discuss.” The vaccine has already been rolled out to millions of Americans through an emergency use authorisation. Companies typically apply for full approval after a longer period has elapsed so that more data are available for review.

But with the US government indicating this week that it plans to start making booster shots widely available next month, experts said the decision not to meet to discuss the data was politically driven. Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who serves as a consumer representative on the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee,4 said the decision removed an important mechanism for scrutinising the data. “These public meetings are imperative in building trust and confidence especially when the vaccines came to market at lightning speed under emergency use authorisation,” she said. “The public deserves a transparent process, especially as the call for boosters and mandates are rapidly increasing. These meetings offer a platform where questions can be raised, problems tackled, and data scrutinised in advance of an approval.”

Witczak is one of the more than 30 signatories of a citizen petition5 calling on the FDA to refrain from fully approving any covid-19 vaccine this year to gather more data. She warned that without a meeting “we have no idea what the data looks like.” “It is already concerning that full approval is being based on 6 months’ worth of data despite the clinical trials designed for two years,” she said. “There is no control group after Pfizer offered the product to placebo participants before the trials were completed. “Full approval of covid-19 vaccines must be done in an open public forum for all to see. It could set a precedent of lowered standards for future vaccine approvals.”

Read more …

October 2020.

Development Of Safe And Effective Covid-19 Vaccines (Nature)

In the 1960s, scientists found that antiviral antisera might result in an exceptional increase in viral infectivity of animal viruses. This phenomenon that viral infection can be enhanced by internalization associated with antibody Fc receptors (FcRs), denoted as ‘antibody-dependent enhancement’ (ADE; Box 1), was then widely reported in infections with flaviviruses and other viruses. Later, more antibody FcR-mediated effects, such as complement activation and release of inflammatory cytokines, were reported to be involved in severer disease. ADE has also been observed in vaccinated animals after viral challenge with the corresponding virus.

For example, cats immunized with a vaccine expressing the feline infectious peritonitis virus (FIPV) S protein on a recombinant pox virus vector died earlier than control animals when challenged with FIPV25. Given that passive immunization with feline serum containing high-titre antibodies reactive with feline FIPV also resulted in a more rapid disease after FIPV challenge, the vaccine-induced disease exacerbation may be attributed to ADE. Apart from ADE, type 2 T helper cell (TH2 cell)-based immunopathologic responses induced by homologous viral challenge after vaccination could also result in disease exacerbation.

In this Perspective, we use the term ‘vaccine-associated disease enhancement’ (VADE; Box 1) to describe both antibody-dependent and TH2 cell-dependent disease exacerbation (Fig. 1). We summarize examples of VADE in the history of the development of vaccines against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), dengue virus (DENV), SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), each of which provides clues for safe COVID-19 vaccine development and highlights the need for rigorous preclinical and clinical safety testing.

There have been warnings that ADE should be fully evaluated for coronavirus vaccines to avoid repeating the tragic failure of the RSV vaccine. The first RSV vaccine, based on formalin-inactivated RSV (FI-RSV), entered a clinical trial in 1965, a time when several other inactivated or attenuated virus-based vaccines had already been successfully developed, such as vaccines against smallpox and polio. The FI-RSV vaccine was well tolerated and appeared to be moderately immunogenic at first. However, instead of protecting study participants, the FI-RSV vaccine exhibited a paradoxical disease-strengthening effect (enhanced respiratory disease (ERD); Box 1) during subsequent natural RSV infection. Among the 20 infants who received the FI-RSV vaccine, 16 required hospitalization, including two who subsequently died, whereas only one of the 21 participants in the control group was hospitalized. The FDA then urgently suspended all clinical studies of RSV vaccines.

Vaccination induces humoral and cellular immune response in immunized individuals. In the normal condition, when the homologous virus enters an immunized body, it will be neutralized or cleared by vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies (Abs) or specific T cells, respectively. In the context of vaccine-associated disease enhancement, vaccines mainly induce non-neutralizing Abs or low titres of neutralizing Abs (suboptimal concentration) or type 2 T helper cell (TH2 cell)-biased T cell responses. When these vaccinated individuals are challenged by homotypic or heterotypic serotype viruses, the antibodies will immediately recognize the viruses and mediate antibody-dependent disease exacerbation in two ways. First, virus–antibody complexes might enter Fc receptor (FcR)-bearing cells, such as dendritic cells and monocytes, by FcR-mediated internalization, which is termed ‘antibody-dependent enhancement’ (ADE). For viruses with innate tropism for FcR-bearing cells, such as dengue virus, ADE will result in higher viral loads than in conditions without antibodies.

a | After entry, the virus, no matter whether it replicates or does not replicate, may activate a harmful immune response, resulting in the release of proinflammatory cytokines. b | Aside from ADE, antibody–antigen complexes can stimulate the complement pathway through activation of the C1q pathway, thus further strengthening the inflammatory responses c | Vaccine-associated disease enhancement can also involve a TH2 cell-biased immune response. The activated TH2 cells contribute to the activation of antibody production. However, they release interleukin-4 (IL-4), IL-13 and IL-5, as well as eosinophil chemoattractant, thus resulting in eosinophil infiltration and proinflammatory cytokine production in the lung. d | Natural killer (NK) cells and CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) are poorly stimulated in TH2 cell-skewed immune responses. The exaggerated cytokine release (part b), activation of the complement pathway (part c) and the excessive mobilization of eosinophils all contribute to the infiltration of the lung by eosinophils, neutrophils and lymphocytes, and production of inflammatory cytokines (part d), leading to acute lung injury or acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Read more …

Tragic, of course it is. But:

Blame unvaccinated people, blame Florida all you want. The vaccine still didn’t work. How do you not reach that conclusion?

And his doctor is a doofus who says there’s a “one-in-a-million” chance of a “breaktrough” infection. He should get informed. There’s an every hour, if not more.

Vaccinated Man Dies In Florida, Daughters Urge People To Get Vaccinated (Hill)

A fully vaccinated man who resided in a Florida retirement home died from COVID-19. His daughters wrote an obituary urging people to get vaccinated and blame the state for his life ending. Clark Allen died on July 22 after contracting a breakthrough case of COVID-19, a “one-in-a-million” chance, according to the man’s doctor. The surviving daughters of Clark Allen, Danielle and Nicole Allen-Gentile, expressed their anger in an obituary about how their father could have been infected and said his death was preventable, The Washington Post reported. America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

“He was infected by someone who chose to not get vaccinated and his death was preventable,” the obituary reads. “It is the wish of his family that everyone get vaccinated in order to prevent further death, sickness and heartbreak.” The daughters also told The Washington Post that if their father were in a different state, they believe he wouldn’t have died. During the pandemic, Clark Allen’s two daughters — along with their five siblings — debated whether their father should be in an assisted living home in Florida or Connecticut. The daughters received a blunt message from a Connecticut home: “You need to get him out of Florida. He will die in Florida,” The Washington Post reports. The daughters speculate that he contracted the virus from an unvaccinated person at Carlisle Palm Beach, an assisted living facility in Lantana, Fla.

Allen reportedly took the virus very seriously, paying close attention to public health measures as he had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that could make a possible infection more severe, according to the Tampa Bay Times, which first shared the story. “It was a relief when he got vaccinated, but the reality was he was around a lot of unvaccinated people,” Danielle Allen, who lives in Portland, Ore., told The Post. “I’m attempting to not be very angry at unvaccinated people and it’s become extremely difficult. We’re all really angry and struggling.” In response to the claim, a spokesperson for Senior Lifestyle, the company that operates Carlisle Palm Beach, told The Post that its facility implements safety measures provided by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and “other expert sources and health authorities.”

Read more …

“The system delivers medicine to intramuscular and subcutaneous tissue depths without needles, which may prove particularly useful in a world competing for needles and syringes.”

World First Plasmid DNA Covid-19 Vaccine Gets Emergency Approval In India (RT)

India’s drug regulator has approved a three-dose Covid-19 vaccine which uses plasmid DNA technology developed by indigenous drugmaker Zydus Cadila, after trials indicated it was 66.6% effective. On Friday, the Drug Controller General of India gave the green light to Zydus Cadila’s Covid-19 vaccine. The inoculation, now the sixth such to be approved in India, has received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for use in adults and children aged 12 and above. The generic drugmaker, which applied for authorization of its three-dose vaccine in July, enlisted 28,000 volunteers into its trial. Data from the late-stage trial suggested the jab was 66.6% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19.

The vaccine, known as ZyCoV-D, is the world’s first vaccine against Covid-19 that uses plasmid DNA technology. It works by injecting genetically-engineered plasmid containing the DNA sequence of the pathogen. Cadila’s vaccine was developed in partnership with India’s Department of Biotechnology and is the second home-grown shot to be approved for use against Covid-19; the first being Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin jab. Instead of traditional syringes, the vaccine is administered using a needle-free applicator. The system delivers medicine to intramuscular and subcutaneous tissue depths without needles, which may prove particularly useful in a world competing for needles and syringes.

Cadila has already started stockpiling its vaccine and hopes to make 100 million to 120 million doses every year, enough for 40 million people, the company’s managing director told Reuters in April. Despite being one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers, India’s Covid-19 inoculation program has fallen flat amid a shortage of shots. Delhi has been pushing for ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, a Hindi phrase roughly translating as ‘self-reliant India’, in a number of fields, including defense technology and medical products. The vaccination program was meant to reflect India’s self-reliance and burgeoning manufacturing capacity in the medical and pharmaceutical industry.

Read more …

Google translate. Like his description of the “mechanisms” of both the virus and IVM.

Director Of Yale University Research Center About Ivermectin (CdS)

Ivermectin has more than one potentially effective mechanism of action against Covid 19. A major one is its ability to adhere to the Coronavirus Spike1 protein at various strategic points used by the virus to bind and enter our cells. For this reason, unlike monoclonal antibodies, it can act against all variants. By doing so, you prevent the virus from attaching itself to ACE2, which is the main gateway for the virus to enter our cells, and this allows it to reduce the virus’s ability to enter our body. If Covid stays outside of our cells, it becomes easy prey for our immune system, which can get rid of it much more easily. It is important to note that the protein docking region of the virus, the spike spikes, binds not only to our ACE2 receptors, but also to other docking receptors that are very important to the virus, those that depend on sialic acid, Receptor CD147 and on a cholinergic receptor called a7nAChr. I don’t want to get into technicalities, but this premise helps us understand how Covid attacks our body.

Once it has entered our lungs and damaged them, the virus enters the blood and travels through our body carried by red blood cells and platelets that are found in large quantities in our blood. Today we know that the virus attaches itself to red blood cells and platelets because both are coated with sialic acid receptors and CD147 and thanks to this it invades all blood vessels until it is “released” into the endothelium (the inner part of our blood vessels ). ) and then causes systemic vasculitis, which is why most of us are ultimately unable to overcome the infection. When the virus replicates within the endothelial cells of the vessels, it inflames them and creates sticky aggregates of red blood cells and platelets – dense masses,Small clots that initially hamper cause circulation in small vessels (capillaries), but then progressively swell and block larger and larger vessels. When this happens in the lungs, it causes a lack of oxygen that therefore damages all our organs such as the brain, liver, kidneys and heart, especially in the elderly, diabetics and people with previous diseases.

The mechanism by which the virus moves in the blood also explains why Covid is more lethal in people with high glucose levels, such as diabetics and prediabetics. The reason is because the receptors made of sialic acid and CD147 are basically zuccheri. In a diabetic, these sialic acids are richer in sugar (glucose) and the virus sticks better and its systemic spread is even easier. This selectivity of the virus for the characteristics of some subjects is also given by blood groups, for example those with blood group A or B have red blood cells with a greater presence of sialic acid / sugars on the surface, while those with a Type 0 blood group, on the other hand, is less susceptible to the virus as it has less sialic acid / receptor that lines red blood cells and,therefore, the virus sticks less. Patients with diabetes or those with these blood groups (A and B) have a statistically more severe course of the disease.

One of the fundamental mechanisms by which ivermectin acts in patients is because it “puts a wall” (a shield) between our body (red blood cells, platelets and vessels) and the virus, and therefore no longer allows it to latch on in our cells. thus facilitating the flow of red blood cells that carry oxygen in the blood vessels. Ivermectin appears to be able to quickly break the link between the virus (Spike’s key) and its receptors (the ACE2 gate, sialic acids, the CD147 receptor, and a7nAChr), so patients miraculously begin to breathe and oxygenate properly again normally within 24- 48 hours. This is also what happens in the rest of the microcirculation of the whole body and leads to the rapid improvement of the functionality of the various organs.

Read more …

The protests will now grow fast. In many countries.

French Businesses Are Refusing to Enforce Vaccine Passport (SN)

Anecdotal evidence detailed by former Google software engineer Mike Hearn strongly suggests that most restaurants, cafes and other businesses in France are not enforcing the country’s controversial vaccine passport system. As we highlighted last week, on the first day the new program was in place, police were visibly patrolling bars and cafes demanding customers show proof they’ve had the jab. However, this seems to have largely been a bluff as just days later, businesses and venues have become very lax at checking people’s papers despite the threat of large fines. “I decided to do a simple experiment to find out: always present an expired test even though I had a valid negative one, and see what happens,” writes Hearn.

“Over a four day stay I was required to show a valid pass exactly zero times; that includes at the airports in both directions. Compliance is absolutely min viable and often lower.” “At small businesses enforcement was non-existent: sometimes the pass requirement was ignored entirely, other times we were asked “do you have a pass” and our answer wasn’t checked. One restaurant had come up with a clever way to detect police stings without requiring customers to actually present a pass. As expected, enforcement was stricter by larger firms, however even there we saw the following:

– Test certificates being checked once and then swapped for a token that doesn’t expire.
– Expired tests being accepted.
– People accepting paper test certificates without scanning them.
– Scanning tests and then not looking at the screen to see the results.
– Accepting QR codes that failed to scan.”

Hearn also reveals how mask mandates in theme parks and other venues are also not being followed, despite signs everywhere ordering people to cover their faces, while social distancing is also a “forgotten memory.” Images showing empty cafes and bars on the first day the system was introduced may have spooked venues into taking a hands off approach. In passing the law but failing to ensure that it is enforced, France is following the same model as Israel, where the point of introducing the system wasn’t really to enforce it, but merely as a means of bullying young people into getting the vaccine. As we highlighted last week, despite the odious and draconian nature of the vaccine passport system, President Macron asserted that the it was actually introduced to protect people’s “freedom,” which is like saying putting you in prison is for your own safety.


French Health Pass has space for 8 shots

Read more …

A country inhabited by spike protein reservoirs.

Almost 9 In 10 Britons Likely Or Very Likely To Go For Covid Booster Shot (RT)

Nearly 90% of people across the UK are “likely or very likely” to accept a third Covid-19 jab if offered, a new survey released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed. On Friday, the ONS released the latest data from its ongoing Opinions and Lifestyle Survey project, which found that a whopping 87% of respondents would be in favour of receiving a Covid booster shot. Older members of the population expressed more enthusiasm at the prospect of a third jab, with almost 96% of those aged 70 or over saying they would be “likely or very likely” to do so. The survey figure was lower for younger Britons in the 16 to 29 age-bracket, standing at 78%. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Britain’s Health Secretary Sajid Javid said that the proposed booster scheme will likely start in September. Javid, however, did not pinpoint an exact date, citing that the government first needs final advice on the matter from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Inoculation (JCVI).


A handful of countries have already introduced a booster dose as part of their vaccination regimens. Serbia and Hungary began offering its citizens a third Covid shot earlier this month, while Israel continues to lower the eligible age for its booster jabs after rolling out the scheme at the end of July. The head of the WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged nations to pause or delay issuing third shots in a bid to alleviate vaccine inequity between high and low income states. “WHO is calling for a moratorium on boosters until at least the end of September, to enable at least 10% of the population of every country to be vaccinated,” he implored the governments of richer nations. The JCVI last month recommended that all adults in the UK aged 50 and over, pensioners living in care homes, frontline workers, and anyone aged 16 and higher who is clinically vulnerable or immunocompromised should be offered a vaccine top-up this autumn.

Read more …

“Nobody is at the controls of this outfit as we sail into the fog.”

The Heebie-Jeebies of August (Kunstler)

Jimmy Carter was undone by a mere fifty-two hostages in Iran, 1979, but this fiasco is orders of magnitude greater. The Taliban could easily put an end to the whole question of extracting the thousands of Americans stuck in Af-stan just by firing a few RPG rounds onto the runway of Hamid Karzai International Airport. After that, would they go about the grisly business of beheading any Afghani who so much as took a stick of gum from an American?

“Graveyard of Empires,” indeed. Rome waited a few centuries to collapse but America seems to be demonstrating we can git’er done in just a couple of years. And, beyond these questions of global hegemony, there is the matter of what happens here in the so-called Homeland. The Covid-19 vaccine-and-masking hysteria is coming to a head. The school boards are getting an earful about race-based everything in the curriculum. Certain state governors and mayors seem determined to destroy what remains of small business. A mutiny is brewing against Bill de Blasio’s new semi-lockdown in New York City. Gavin Newsom is about to be tossed into the North Pacific Gyre.

Any moment, the Arizona election audit will issue a preliminary report, said to be shocking. Financial markets are in the wobble-zone. Supply lines are down for many parts of things needed to run daily life in this land. And millions are wondering anxiously now: what really are the latent effects of those jabs? Things are shaking loose all over the place. As Bob Dylan once said, the order is rapidly fading (and he’s even older than “Joe Biden.”) Everyone I know has got the heebie-jeebies. Nobody is at the controls of this outfit as we sail into the fog.

Read more …

Part 1 of this interview is in the August 4 Debt Rattle. Interesting voice.

2020: A Propaganda Masterpiece 2: Divide and Conquer (Perspectives on the Pandemic)

Mark Crispin Miller is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. His research interests include modern propaganda, history and tactics of advertising, American film, and media ownership. He is the author of Boxed In: The Culture of TV; Seeing Through Movies; Mad Scientists: The Secret History of Modern Propaganda; Spectacle: Operation Desert Storm and the Triumph of Illusion; and The Bush Dyslexicon.

Read more …

And since we’re with Perspectives on the Pandemic, here’s part 1 of their piece with Peter McCullough.

Dr. Peter McCullough (1 of 2) | Episode #19 (Perspectives on the Pandemic)

Renowned physician and professor of medicine Dr. Peter McCullough describes early treatment protocols for COVID-19 that have saved countless lives… and the forces that have aligned themselves against their widespread adoption.

Read more …

 

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

 

 

Just totally not

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Aug 142021
 


Pablo Picasso The old guitarist 1903-4

 

Biden Admin Warns Of Threat From Anti-Lockdown ‘Extremists’ and More (RT)
Ex-Pfizer VP Urges Pregnant, Childbearing Age Women Not To Get Vaccine (CP)
Dr. Peter McCullough – Ends The Pandemic With 5 COVID Facts (LS)
Pfizer CEO to Public: Just Trust Us on the Covid Booster (KHN)
Renowned German Pathologist Urges More Autopsies of Vaccinated People (NA)
Israel Predicts Thousands Of Seriously Ill Covid Patients Within Month (ToI)
Japanese Doctors Recommend Ivermectin to Cure Corona (Tribun)
Why Won’t Our Government Even Inform People About Vitamin D? (Horowitz)
Head Of WHO Covid Origin Team Admits China Ordered Them What To Write (SN)
Drug Firms Poised To Make Billions Of Dollars From Covid Booster Jabs (G.)
Low-Cost Test Could Detect Delta Variant In Saliva (MNT)
Brace for Impact (Kunstler)
The Vanishing Legacy of Barack Obama (Taibbi)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The right thing
https://twitter.com/i/status/1422286221015982082

 

 

 

 

The storyline is being written right before your eyes:

Unvaccinated = Anti-Lockdown Extremist = Conspiracy Theorist = Domestic Terrorist = Jihadist = Al-Qaeda.

“..though there are currently no credible or imminent threats identified.”

Biden Admin Warns Of Threat From Anti-Lockdown ‘Extremists’ and More (RT)

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a terror warning that appears to put Americans pushing back against Covid-19 restrictions on par with jihadists who might strike on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. A DHS bulletin published Friday said that “anti-government, anti-authority violent extremists” may try to “exploit the emergence of Covid-19 variants by viewing the potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the US as a rationale to conduct attacks.” The Covid-19 pandemic has stoked “societal strains and tensions,” the DHS said, “driving several plots by domestic violent extremists, and they may contribute to more violence this year.”

The terrorism warning, which runs through November 11, cited a host of other potential threats, including violent bigots who may perpetrate mass-casualty attacks, “though there are currently no credible or imminent threats identified.” Other potential attackers include “domestic violent extremists” and other “ideologically-motivated” individuals who may be triggered by “conspiracy theories” on such issues as “perceived election fraud,” DHS said. “Law enforcement have expressed concerns that the broader sharing of false narratives and conspiracy theories will gain traction in mainstream environments, resulting in individuals or small groups embracing violent attacks to achieve their desired objectives,” the bulletin claimed.

President Joe Biden’s administration has elevated domestic “extremism” as a top security threat in the wake of the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. Democrat politicians have hyped the riot as a racially motivated “insurrection,” and Biden in April called it “the worst attack on our Democracy since the Civil War.” Critics pushed back against the claim, noting such previous tragedies as the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, four presidential assassinations and – more recently – race riots that torched cities and left dozens of people dead last summer.

On Friday, however, the DHS again raised the specter of January 6. DHS intelligence chief John Cohen told CNN that online rhetoric is similar to the chatter seen before the Capitol riot. He cited such “extremist” comments as “the system is broken,” “take action into their own hands,” and “bring out the gallows.” DHS also noted that, with the 20-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaching, Al-Qaeda recently published the first issue of its English-language magazine in more than four years. That move “demonstrates that foreign terrorist organizations continue efforts to inspire US-based individuals susceptible to violent extremist influences,” the agency said.

Read more …

It really has never been tested. Some things are still hard to believe.

“Our government is urging pregnant women, and women of childbearing age, to get vaccinated. And they’re telling them they’re safe. And that’s a lie because those studies have simply not been done.“

Ex-Pfizer VP Urges Pregnant, Childbearing Age Women Not To Get Vaccine (CP)

A former Pfizer executive recently advised that women of childbearing age and those who are already pregnant should consider opting out of taking the COVID-19 vaccine. “We never, ever give experimental medicines to pregnant women,” said Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., in a presentation for Life Site News’ “Stop the Shot” conference held on Aug. 4 that featured physicians, scientists, attorneys and religious leaders. Yeadon, who holds degrees in biochemistry and toxicology, and a Ph.D. in respiratory pharmacology, served as vice president and chief scientist for allergy and respiratory at Pfizer until 2011, when he retired to launch his own biotech company after working in the pharmaceutical industry for 32 years.

The British pharmacologist, who has attracted media attention for questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, criticized those in power for not providing the public with adequate information about vaccine risks. “You’re being lied to,” he said to pregnant women who’ve been told that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe for them and their preborn babies. “That’s bad enough because what that tells me is that there’s recklessness. No one cares. The authorities do not care what happens,” Yeadon asserted. “You never ever give inadequately tested medicines, medicinal products, to a pregnant woman,” he continued. “And that is exactly what is happening. Our government is urging pregnant women, and women of childbearing age, to get vaccinated. And they’re telling them they’re safe. And that’s a lie because those studies have simply not been done.”

Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, advise that pregnant women can get the COVID-19 vaccine. Similarly, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine have urged pregnant women to get vaccinated. The CDC states that pregnant women are at increased risk for severe illness with COVID-19 compared to non-pregnant women, adding that they’re also at increased risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes. CDC adds that experts believe the vaccines are “unlikely to pose a risk for people who are pregnant,” but “there are currently limited data on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant people.”

During his presentation, Yeadon listed three concerns he has with COVID-19 vaccines that he said haven’t undergone adequate toxicology testing to assess their effects on the reproductive system. Thousands of birth malformations resulted from pregnant women taking thalidomide to treat morning sickness 60 years ago, he said, because studies at the time did not assess that thalidomide was toxic for babies in the womb. “So here we are. There’s been potentially hundreds of millions of women of child-bearing potential [injected] with products which are untested in terms of impacts on fertilization and development of the baby,” he continued. Yeadon added that a study out of Japan found high concentrations of the spike protein in the ovaries, organs and tissue when tested on rats.

“What we find is the vaccine [in rats] doesn’t just distribute around the body and then wash out again, which is what you’d hope,” he said. “It concentrates in ovaries of rats, and it concentrates at least 20-fold over the concentration in other background tissues like muscles.” “You don’t want this product in your ovaries. It’s simply not necessary to induce immunity to have a vaccine in your ovaries. And, as it’s concentrating in the ovaries, getting higher concentrations over time, they have not even defined what the maximum levels are or when that occurs,” he added.

Read more …

And this man is being sued for $1 million.

Dr. Peter McCullough – Ends The Pandemic With 5 COVID Facts (LS)

Dr. Peter McCullough – Ends The Pandemic With 5 COVID Facts

1. The virus does not spread asymptomatically.

2. We should never test asymptomatic people.

3. Natural immunity is robust, complete, and durable.

4. COVID-19 is easily treatable at home.

5. The current vaccines are obsolete, unsafe, and unfit for human use.

Read more …

“Pfizer announced its global phase 3 trial on a third dose in mid-July. That trial’s completion date is in 2022.”

But they will give it to you in September. Already have in Israel. Trials are for pussies.

Pfizer CEO to Public: Just Trust Us on the Covid Booster (KHN)

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was confident in June about the ability of his company’s vaccine to protect against the highly contagious delta variant, as it marched across the globe and filled U.S. hospitals with patients. “I feel quite comfortable that we cover it,” Bourla said. Just weeks later, Pfizer said it would seek authorization for a booster shot, after early trial results showed a third dose potentially increased protection. At the end of July, Pfizer and BioNTech announced findings that four to six months after a second dose, their vaccine’s efficacy dropped to about 84%. Bourla was quick to promote a third dose after the discouraging news, saying he was “very, very confident” that a booster would increase immunity levels in the vaccinated. There’s one hitch: Pfizer has not yet delivered conclusive proof to back up that confidence.

The company lacks late-stage clinical trial results to confirm a booster will work against covid variants including delta, which now accounts for 93% of new infections across the U.S. Pfizer announced its global phase 3 trial on a third dose in mid-July. That trial’s completion date is in 2022. Phase 3 results generally are required before regulatory approval. “We are confident in this vaccine and the third dose, but you have to remember the vaccine efficacy study is still going on, so we need all the evidence to back up that,” Jerica Pitts, Pfizer’s director of global media relations, said Monday. The financial stakes are enormous: Pfizer announced in July that it expects $33.5 billion in covid-19 vaccine revenue this year. Meanwhile, Pfizer recently said that if a third dose couldn’t combat the delta or other variants, the drugmaker is poised to come up with a “tailor-made” vaccine within 100 days.

All of this has sown a sense of confusion about what exactly will work, and when. The pharmaceutical industry’s rush to recommend boosters for the public is “a little frustrating,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an adviser to the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration. Even if a booster is found to be safe, he said, the U.S. effort should focus on “vaccinating people who are unvaccinated.” In any case, decisions about boosters do not rest with vaccine makers, he said. “Pharmaceutical companies aren’t public health agencies, it’s really not theirs to determine when or whether there should be booster dosing,” Offit said. “That is the purview of the CDC.”

Read more …

“..if we had had a data and safety monitoring board, they would have shut down the vaccine in February of 2021..”

Renowned German Pathologist Urges More Autopsies of Vaccinated People (NA)

A renowned German pathologist has sounded the alarm on the number of fatal consequences of COVID-19 vaccinations being drastically underestimated, according to his findings. Peter Schirmacher, the director of the Pathological Institute of the University of Heidelberg, who was admired by The Pathologist magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential professionals in the field, stated that 30 to 40 percent of people who died within two weeks after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine and whom he performed an autopsy on died from the vaccination, according to the local outlet Augsburger Allgemeine.

The pathologist argues that just like cadavers of people who died from COVID-19, corpses of people who die within the short period of time after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine should be examined more frequently and meticulously. He added that currently, pathologists do not study possible connections between inoculation and a development of deadly health implications such as cerebral vein thrombosis or autoimmune diseases. Since vaccinated people usually do not die under clinical observation, Schirmacher explains, “The doctor examining the corpse does not establish a context with the vaccination and certifies a natural death and the patient is buried. Or he certifies an unclear type of death, and the public prosecutor sees no third-party fault and releases the corpse for burial.”

Schirmacher said that in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, his autopsy group worked closely with public prosecutors, the police, and resident doctors to study the phenomenon, and that the vaccine-related morbidity rate that they established is a “politically explosive statement in times when the vaccination campaign is losing momentum, the delta variant is spreading rapidly and restrictions on non-vaccinated people are being discussed.” [..]The administration of German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected Schirmacher’s conclusions and seemingly declined his calls, stating that vaccines are safe. The Paul Ehrlich Institute, a German federal agency, medical regulatory body, and research institution for vaccines and biomedicines, announced that Schirmacher’s statements were “incomprehensible.”

Thomas Mertens, chairman of the Standing Committee on Vaccination (Stiko), dismissed the findings: “I don’t know of any data that would allow a justifiable statement to be made here and I am not assuming an unreported number.” Schirmacher defends his opinion and calls for further study into the issue. “My colleagues are definitely wrong because they cannot assess this specific question competently,” he responded. Schirmacher added that while he has no intention to spread panic or discourage vaccination, he believes that “individual protection consideration” had been overlooked in the attempt to mass-vaccinate the general public.

[..] The underreporting of vaccine-related deaths and adverse effects is becoming an issue in the United States as well. As reported by the New American, a lawsuit filed in federal court in Alabama is alleging that the federal government is hiding, as of the beginning of July, “at least 45,000” deaths related to COVID-19 vaccines. According to the testimony from whistleblower working at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and who has access to government servers including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service, there is evidence that the Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System (VAERS), which collects data on vaccine-related deaths, is under-reporting such deaths “by a conservative factor of at least five.” According to Dr. Peter McCullough, since typically only 10 percent of vaccine-injury cases make it to VAERS, the death toll from the vaccines may actually be 10-fold higher than the official number. Still, he said, a vaccine that leads to 150 deaths is usually withdrawn from use. “I think if we had had a data and safety monitoring board, they would have shut down the vaccine in February of 2021,” McCullough said.

Read more …

Berenson: “Israel, with a nearly entirely vaccinated adult population, now expects this coronavirus wave to be the worst yet – up to 2,500 serious cases compared to 1,200 in January.


Note: the article doesn’t mention vaccines once. It’s like they never even happened.”

Israel Predicts Thousands Of Seriously Ill Covid Patients Within Month (ToI)

Israeli hospitals have to prepare for an influx of nearly 5,000 coronavirus patients within weeks, half of whom will need acute care to deal with severe bouts of COVID-19, health officials have warned Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, according to reports Wednesday. The dire predictions came during a Tuesday meeting between Bennett and senior health experts amid a major influx of new cases, prompting the premier to back a plan to expand hospital capacity, a signal that the government will look to absorb the crush of severe cases head-on rather than attempt to swerve out of its way. Senior Health Ministry officials and other experts presented Bennett with data forecasting some 4,800 coronavirus patients requiring hospitalization by September 10.


The experts expect half of the patients to be seriously ill, putting a major strain on Israel’s health system, according to Hebrew-language media reports on the closed-door meeting. Israel has seen new case numbers skyrocket in recent weeks from a few dozen a day to over 6,000 on Monday. Another 5,755 were diagnosed on Tuesday, the Health Ministry said Wednesday morning, bringing the number of active cases to 38,942. Ministry numbers showed 694 patients hospitalized as of Wednesday morning, 400 of whom were listed in serious condition. Sixty-two people were being treated on ventilators. Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz agreed to pump money into the health system to bring in 100 more doctors, 500 nurses and 200 paramedical and support staff every 10 days to keep up with growing demand, according to a summary of the meeting drafted by the Prime Minister’s Office and published by the Ynet news site.

Read more …

More Israel. This one is a bit strange, a Google doc as a pic in Hebrew, no access. But the details, via Ran Israeli, are interesting:

New Concerning Results, Israel 2021 (Prof. Retsef Levi)

MDA Emergency calls:

25% increase in Cardiac arrests & Heart attacks (16-29).

83.6% increase in Heart attacks (Women 20-29).

According to the study, this increase was correlated with Mass vaccination.

Read more …

Google translate from Indonesia.

Japanese Doctors Recommend Ivermectin to Cure Corona (Tribun)

Dr. Kazuhiro Nagao (63) Chairman of medical company Yuwakai, director (Head) of Nagao Amagasaki Clinic, Hyogo prefecture, and visiting professor at Kansai University of International Studies highly recommend Ivermectin as a drug that can cure early patients infected with the corona virus. “Medical situation we are currently in a state of almost critical and many patients can not be accommodated in the hospital. For patients who are exposed to the corona early is highly recommended to drink the drug Ivermectin . I’ve tried a lot to me and heal patients,” said Dr. Nagao this afternoon (12/8/2021) on NTV. Professor Nagao also sees this (the drug Ivermectin ) as one of the solutions among many efforts to suppress the increasing number of people infected with the corona and at risk of becoming severe.

“In the early stages it’s good to take the drug . I always give my patients the drug , of course it’s made in Japan and the next day it gets better. I ask them to report to me every day the effects of the drug and it turns out to be good, they get well immediately,” he continued again. . In addition, Dr. Nagao also appealed to the Minister of Health and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to immediately promote the drug Ivermectin to the public so that it would be widely used among those infected with the early corona virus. “So far, all of my patients are good, recovering without any problems with the drug . In addition, the drug is also guaranteed and included in insurance coverage in Japan . So I think it’s not a problem and light, not too burdensome for the Japanese people ,” he added.

Until now, the Japanese government, especially the ministry of health, is still monitoring the use of the drug Ivermectin in Japan , and there has been no decision to promote the drug in the midst of the current pandemic. Tokyo itself this Thursday (12/8/2021) drastically increased the number of infected nearly 5000 people per day. Last week a doctor predicted that around August 18 the number of patients infected with the corona virus in Tokyo could reach 10,000 people per day. Professor Yoshihito Niki, Deputy Director of the Respiratory Center, Kurashiki Daiichi Hospital, Professor of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Japan’s Showa University School of Medicine estimates the number of infections could reach 10,000 people in Tokyo around August 18, he explained last August 6.

Read more …

Basics.

Why Won’t Our Government Even Inform People About Vitamin D? (Horowitz)

Imagine if rather than running out to buy worthless Chinese face diapers or toilet paper last March, there had been a mad rush to stock up on vitamin D. What would our hospitalization rate have been after the initial wave, and after the early science was clear about the efficacy of vitamin D, had government mailed out free vitamin D to every American (especially in nursing homes)? For a fraction of the cost of a shutdown, waning vaccines, remdesivir, and endless welfare, government could have offered free blood tests of everyone’s vitamin D, C, and zinc levels and advised a plan to bulk up those levels?

Well, we have a new study that demonstrates a good number of hospitalizations could have been avoided. Government agencies that are censoring information on vitamin D can no longer say the same thing about the vaccines, given how Israel is now showing that the vaccine wears off and the country is preparing for the worst run on hospitals ever, despite nearly every adult having been vaccinated. And unlike the vaccines and everything else our government promoted and mandated, vitamin D comes with no risk, numerous other vital benefits, and empowers rather than controls people. There is a misnomer that those promoting vitamin D for COVID somehow believe that all people have to do after getting the virus is to take vitamin D and they will suddenly get better (although there is evidence it works in the active form).

That is obviously an easy straw man for those who oppose preventives and early treatment to knock down. In reality, while vitamin D is definitely important post-infection, it takes several months to bulk up one’s level if it is deficient. A new study recently published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice demonstrates that had Fauci and Co. simply told Americans, especially the vulnerable, to take high doses of Vitamin D (like he does), most of the hospitalizations could have been avoided. The meta-analysis of 23 published studies containing 11,901 participants found the following: One who is vitamin D deficient was 3.3 times more likely to get infected with SARS-CoV-2 than one who is not deficient.

The serum vitamin D concentration, on average, was 20.3 ng/mL among all COVID19 patients but was 16.0 ng/mL among those with severe cases. It’s recommended that one’s levels be at least over 40. “The chance of developing severe COVID-19 is about five times higher in patients with vitamin D deficiency.” A total of 84% of COVID patients in the study were either deficient or insufficient in vitamin D. In other words, whether your vitamin D level is 15, 30, or 50 will make all the difference in terms of getting a mild, moderate, or severe case of the virus, or perhaps getting it at all. How is it that, to this very day, there is no effort to inform people about such a painless, cheap, and effective fix?

Read more …

Horse, door, barn.

Head Of WHO Covid Origin Team Admits China Ordered Them What To Write (SN)

The head of the World Health Organization’s origin investigation into COVID-19 has admitted that China basically ordered his team on what to write in their report and allowed them to mention the lab leak theory, but only on the condition that they didn’t recommend following it up. Revealing what is clear evidence of a cover up, the Washington Post reports that Danish WHO chief Ben Embarek made the admission after also commenting that he believes patient zero was a worker at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where experiments on coronaviruses were being carried out. Embarek noted that “human error” could have ultimately led to the virus jumping to humans, but that “the Chinese political system does not allow authorities to acknowledge that.”

Embarek commented that “Somebody could also wish to hide something.” As we have previously noted, the Communist Chinese government, along with Dr. Peter Daszak, President of the EcoHealth Alliance, steered the course of the pathetic WHO “investigation”, which had already dismissed the lab leak notion after only a three hour visit to the facility in February. In addition, China has refused to cooperate with the renewed WHO probe, declaring that any attempt to look into the lab leak theory goes “against science” and claiming, contrary to U.S. intelligence and the WHO’s own conclusions, that workers in the lab were hospitalised with COVID in the autumn of 2020.

Read more …

The Guardian has two different articles on this. Must be important.

Drug Firms Poised To Make Billions Of Dollars From Covid Booster Jabs (G.)

The drug companies Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are poised to make billions of dollars from Covid-19 booster jabs this autumn, with analysts estimating that sales could rival the $6bn-a-year market for seasonal flu vaccines. The UK government is expected to announce details of its booster programme in the coming days, based on formal advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, but the health secretary, Sajid Javid, has suggested the over-50s could be offered a dose along with their winter flu jabs. The UK is expected to join France and Germany in offering follow-up doses from September. The US authorities on Friday approved a third dose for those with compromised immune systems, and Israel and Chile have begun administering boosters to their elderly citizens.


However, health experts are warning that many more people around the world will die of Covid if western countries prioritise boosters for their own populations instead of sharing them with the rest of the world. Moderna, Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, have already inked over $60bn in sales for this year and next, in deals for supplying follow up shots and also the initial two doses for those being inoculated for the first time in less wealthy countries. Analysts polled by data group Refinitiv have forecast revenue of more than $6.6bn for the Pfizer/BioNTech shot and $7.6bn for Moderna in 2023, mostly from booster sales. They expect the annual market to settle at about $5bn or higher eventually, with additional drugmakers competing for those sales.

Read more …

CAN you test for Delta? Yes, but only through genome sequencing, and that doesn’t happen all the time. Instead, as an MD explains: “The CDC does intermittent sequencing of the virus to determine what strain/variant is predominant in a particular region at any given time. The PCR tests do not differentiate.”

In other words: “There is not a specific test for the delta variant. However, since the vast majority of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are the delta variant, it’s likely a positive test result indicates you could be infected with the delta variant, according to Human and Health Services of Texas.”

Low-Cost Test Could Detect Delta Variant In Saliva (MNT)

Scientists from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), both in Cambridge, MA, and several Boston-area hospitals, recently created miSHERLOCK. miSHERLOCK is an inexpensive, CRISPR-based diagnostic test that allows users to self-test for variants of SARS-CoV-2 at home, using their saliva. “Simple things that used to be ubiquitous in the hospital, like nasopharyngeal swabs, were suddenly hard to get, so routine sample processing procedures were disrupted, which is a big problem in a pandemic setting,” said co-first author of the study, Dr. Rose Lee, who is a visiting fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at MIT. “Our team’s motivation for this project was to eliminate these bottlenecks and provide accurate diagnostics for COVID-19 with less reliance on global supply chains, and could also accurately detect the variants that were starting to emerge,” she notes.


“miSHERLOCK is a low-cost point-of-care [COVID-19] test that is capable of detecting and differentiating specific SARS-CoV-2 variants, which could be used to guide patient care as well as for infection control or epidemiological purposes,” lead author Helena de Puig Guixe, a postdoctoral researcher at the Collins lab at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, told Medical News Today. “Our device is low-cost, provides a simple visual answer in 1 hour, and only requires saliva from a patient with no additional equipment separate from the device itself (including its standard battery). […] Our full device, including all testing components, costs $15, down to $6 with reuse of the housing and electronics, but could be as low as $2–3 per test if produced at scale,” she added.

Read more …

“General David Berger, Commandant of the US Marine Corps, briskly told the SecDef, in effect, to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. What do you make of that?”

Brace for Impact (Kunstler)

My Pillow man Mike Lindell’s three-day Cyber Symposium demonstrated a couple of things about the current depraved state of our nation: You could prove pretty conclusively that the national election of 2020 was saturated with fraud; and that no one in the news business would either care or dare to report it. Otherwise, it’s a little early to tell whether the exercise will have any effect on the country’s mood, though it is apparently a fact that millions tuned into the event on the few Internet sites that evaded the efforts to hack it out of existence.

The presentations by physicist Douglas Frank, law professor (New Mexico State U) David Clements, and retired army intelligence analyst Seth Keshel made a multi-dimensional case that the Dominion vote tallying machines were both pre-programmed with insidious algorithms and were also run remotely by Internet connection through servers in Senegal tied to China the night of Nov. 3, 2020. Even so, the vote in favor of Donald Trump so overwhelmed the programming that oafish mopping-up operations with bogus write-in paper ballots had to be conducted on-the-fly to make sure the election came out in “Joe Biden’s” favor.

It was interesting to be reminded that four key states — Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — all claimed to have stopped counting votes around 10:30 eastern time, and nobody reporting the tally on TV (a national ritual going back seventy years) seemed to consider anything irregular about it. But since when in US elections do officials not work through the whole of election night to reach a result? The answer, of course, is never before. It is, as they say, not a thing. Shouldn’t that have been a national WTF moment?

And so began the secret after-hours hijinks, such as in the Fulton County, GA, arena, where poll watchers were shooed out of the joint and then ballot-counters supplied by a Stacey Abrams-owned temp worker company got foolishly caught on a security camera running reams of paper ballots multiple times through their machines… and the arrival in Philadelphia of a truck from Long Island delivering tens of thousands of fresh paper ballots… and so on through the long night of supposedly no vote counting.

[..] The regime is trying to soften up the public for mandatory vaxes now, using its propaganda arms to turn up the volume on pandemic fear and new variants, using phony statistics and threats to turn the unvaxed into social pariahs, including schoolchildren. The regime is playing with nitroglycerine there. How desperate and crazy are they, really? Is something wicked coming their way? I think so, and I think they know it’s so, and I think they have just about run out of tricks for avoiding it. A crack in the edifice of tyrannical coercion materialized a few days ago when SecDef Lloyd Austin declared his intention to vax-up the whole military. General David Berger, Commandant of the US Marine Corps, briskly told the SecDef, in effect, to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. What do you make of that?

Read more …

Barack and Hunter, the new elites.

The Vanishing Legacy of Barack Obama (Taibbi)

“Even Scaled Back,” wrote Vanity Fair, “Barack Obama’s Birthday Bash Is the Event of the Season.” Not even the famed glossy Bible of the unapologetic rich seemed sure of whether to write Obama’s Birthday bash straight or as an Onion headline: what did the “Event of the Season” mean during a pandemic? A former president flying half the world’s celebrities to spend three days in a maskless ring-kissing romp at a $12 million Martha’s Vineyard mansion, at a moment when only a federal eviction ban prevented the outbreak of a national homelessness crisis, was already an all-time “Fuck the Optics” news event, and that was before the curveball.

Because of what even the New York Times called “growing concerns” over how gross the mega-party looked, not least for the Joe Biden administration burdened with asking the nation for sober sacrifice while his ex-boss raised the roof with movie stars in tropical shirts, advisers prevailed upon the 44th president to reconsider the bacchanal. But characteristically, hilariously, Obama didn’t cancel his party, he merely uninvited those he considered less important, who happened to be almost entirely his most trusted former aides.

Cast out, the Times said, were “the majority of former Obama administration officials… who generally credit themselves with helping create the Obama legacy,” including former top aide David Axelrod, who’d just called Obama an “apostle of hope” in the Washington Post and sat for a three-hour HBO documentary deep-throat of his ex-boss. Remaining on the list were celeb couples Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, as well as Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union, along with Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen, Questlove, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Don Cheadle, and other Fabulous People, who drank “top shelf liquor,” puffed stogies, and hit the links at the Vineyard Golf Club (membership fee: $350,000). An early report that Pearl Jam had been hired to perform was later refuted. Eddie Vedder would just be there, but not to play.

Read more …

 

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

 

 

If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read “Vietnam.”
– Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967

 

 

 

 

Oz

 

 

@LilithAssyria
My Russian friends told me – it was a very strict compliance about vax passports in Moscow.

Nobody would be allowed to come into the restaurant without a vax.

That lasted about 3 weeks. Why? Because nobody went to the restaurants anymore.

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Aug 042021
 


René Magritte The son of man 1946

 

Fauci and the NIH Knew Covid-19 “Vaccines” Could Lead to ADE (Ghion)
Informed Consent Disclosure To Vaccine Trial Subjects Of ADE Risk (Wiley)
How Much Spike Protein Is Being Made (Lincoln)
Unvaccinated People Need to Bear the Burden (Atl.)
Covid-19 Natural Immunity Compared To Vaccine-induced Immunity (Attkisson)
My Own Country Kicked Me Out Because My Immunity Was Acquired Naturally (RT)
A Plea To Allow The Use Of Ivermectin As Covid-19 Treatment (Biz)
Biden Message For DeSantis On Covid Mask Opposition: ‘Get Out Of The Way’ (MH)
Mayor De Blasio And Governor Cuomo Are Pushing Hard For Vaccinations (F.)
Vaccine Cards Are Just The Beginning (Whitehead)
We Stand in Solidarity with Dr. Peter McCullough MD (Change)
Julian Assange: Peering Through The Murk (Rozenberg)
America Has Become Its Own Worst Enemy (Unherd)
Meet Your New Feudal Overlords (Weems)
2020: A Propaganda Masterpiece (Perspectives on the Pandemic)

 

 

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles—this they name empire;
and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

— Tacitus (quoting Calgacus), Agricola 30.

 

 

Vaccine safety under Trump

 

 

 

 

“..over 160 million Americans and more than 2 billion people around the world were never told about the distinct possibility that they could end up developing a disease called Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE).”

Fauci and the NIH Knew Covid-19 “Vaccines” Could Lead to ADE (Ghion)

Late last night, an anonymous source forwarded a screenshot of a report attributed to Timothy Cardozo and Ronald Veazey that is found at the bottom of NIH’s website. The report specifically warned of the distinct possibility that people who are injected with Covid-19 “vaccines” could develop the very Antibody-Dependent Enhancement that Dr. Malone keeps ringing the alarm about. Not only was this information suppressed from the public, the government-media-corporate complex went out of their way to censor—in the case of Dr. Malone destroy—anyone who questions the safety and efficacy of these boosters that are still undergoing clinical trials. Even though I knew all along that the US government, and governments around the world, were lying through their teeth about the origins of Covid-19 and were likewise peddling medical misinformation about the scientific integrity of the “vaccines”, it was still shocking to read the following paragraph right on NIH’s website:

“The specific and significant COVID-19 risk of ADE should have been and should be prominently and independently disclosed to research subjects currently in vaccine trials, as well as those being recruited for the trials and future patients after vaccine approval, in order to meet the medical ethics standard of patient comprehension for informed consent.” [source NIH] Despite Cardozo and Veazey’s explicit instruction that NIH must disclose the full risks of the “vaccines” to test subjects in the clinical trials that were conducted last year as well as to all recipients once the “vaccines” garnered approval for general use, over 160 million Americans and more than 2 billion people around the world were never told about the distinct possibility that they could end up developing a disease called Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE).

A significant percentage of the world’s population is now at risk of contracting an ailment that could lead to their body’s natural immune system getting compromised and attacking their vital organs. If that sounds familiar, that is because ADE is an autoimmune disease that is very similar to HIV/AIDs. [..] This is not some fluke occurrence that could not have been foreseen, “vaccines” that produce spiked proteins by way of mRNA or adenovirus were studied on lab animals—specifically ferrets and cats because they are more susceptible to Coronavirus—for over twenty years. Though the test subjects initially acquired synthetic antibodies, once their immunization window expired and they were challenged with SARS-CoV-1, the lab animals that were injected with the “vaccines” were wiped out.

The warning on NIH’s website was alluding to this very real possibility but the very authorities we entrust to protect us instead concealed this information and conditioned billions of people to get jabbed without informed consent. Every plutocrat, politician and opinion leader who took part in this conspiracy of silence should be frogmarched and tried before an international tribunal similar to the trials Nazis faced after World War II for violating the Nuremberg codes and committing brutalities that will once day be judged to exceed the evils of Hitler.

Read more …

This from October 2020 is the basis for the article above, both referenced by Dr. Robert Malone.

Informed Consent Disclosure To Vaccine Trial Subjects Of ADE Risk (Wiley)

Vaccine-elicited enhancement of disease was previously observed in human subjects with vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), dengue virus and measles.1 Vaccine-elicited enhancement of disease was also observed with the SARS and MERS viruses and with feline coronavirus, which are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, the causative pathogen of COVID-19 disease. The immune mechanisms of this enhancement have invariably involved antibodies, from direct antibody-dependent enhancement, to immune complex formation by antibodies, albeit accompanied by various coordinated cellular responses, such as Th2 T-cell skewing. Notably, both neutralising and non-neutralising antibodies have been implicated.

A recent study revealed IgG-mediated acute lung injury in vivo in macaques infected with SARS that correlated with a vaccine-elicited, neutralising antibody response.8 Inflammation and tissue damage in the lung in this animal model recapitulated the inflammation and tissue damage in the lungs of SARS-infected patients who succumbed to the disease. The time course was also similar, with the worst damage occurring in delayed fashion in synchrony with ramping up of the immune response. Remarkably, neutralising antibodies controlled the virus in the animal, but then would precipitate a severe, tissue-damaging, inflammatory response in the lung.

This is a similar profile to immune complex-mediated disease seen with RSV vaccines in the past, wherein vaccinees succumbed to fatal enhanced RSV disease because of the formation of antibody-virus immune complexes that precipitated harmful, inflammatory immune responses. It is also similar to the clinical course of COVID-19 patients, in whom severe COVID-19 disease is associated with the development of anti-SARS-CoV-2 serum antibodies, with titres correlating directly with the severity of disease. Conversely, subjects who recover quickly may have low or no anti-SARS-CoV-2 serum antibodies.

The elicitation of antibodies, specifically neutralising antibodies, is the goal of nearly every current SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate. The prior evidence that vaccine-elicited, antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of disease is likely to occur to some degree with COVID-19 vaccines is vertically consistent from controlled SARS studies in primates to clinical observations in SARS and COVID-19. Thus, a finite, non-theoretical risk is evident in the medical literature that vaccine candidates composed of the SARS-CoV-2 viral spike and eliciting anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, be they neutralising or not, place vaccinees at higher risk for more severe COVID-19 disease when they encounter circulating viruses.

Read more …

Fun with numbers. Much more at the link.

How Much Spike Protein Is Being Made (Lincoln)

This thread is to shed a bit of light on the mysteries of how much spike protein is being made, where it is going and how is it going there. Sadly our captured regulatory agencies did not insist the mfr do so
1/ I start by estimating how much spike protein is being created by the mRNA vaccines
2/We know there is 30 microgram for Pfizer
3/Molecular weight is estimated at > 1.25 x10^6 gm/mole. (~330 gm per mole of nucleotide). This comes out to 30 x 10^-6 grams/ 1.25 x 10^6 gm/mole =24 x 10^-12 moles. 6 x 10^23 molecules/mole x 24 x 10^-12 moles =14.4x 10^12 molecules mRNA (14.4trillion)
4/14.4 trillion spike protein if 1 mRNA produces 1 spike protein. A more reasonable number is 1000 spike per mRNA X1000 14,400 trillion spikes
5/So basically 30 micrograms of mRNA will theoretically produce about 14,400 trillion individual spike proteins (if 100% efficient)
6/Now we ask this. How many cells are transfected by the vaccines. In other words, how many mRNA molecules are in each LNP
7/Since we can estimate how many mRNA molecules there are (14.4 trillion for Pfizer), we must estimate how many LNP’s
8/First we must estimate the size of LNP “Together with the mRNA, these components form particles of about 60–100 nm in size by using a rapid mixing production technique (Evers et al., 2018).”
9/So lets call it 80 nm and assume a spherical shape.
10/So LNP particles of 80 nm have a total weight of about 0.5 mg. Lipids are typically less dense than water but using the density of water we may estimate the volume of 0.5 mg as 5 x 10^17 cubic nm

Read more …

These people have lost their connection to the world. This girl wants unvaccinated on a no-fly list. But not because of the flying, no, the problem occurs when they leave the airport:

“..air-filtration systems and mask requirements make transmission of the coronavirus unlikely during any given passenger flight, infected people can spread it when they leave the airport and take off their mask…”

Unvaccinated People Need to Bear the Burden (Atl.)

When you go to the airport, you see two kinds of security rules. Some apply equally to everyone; no one can carry weapons through the TSA checkpoint. But other protocols divide passengers into categories according to how much of a threat the government thinks they pose. If you submit to heightened scrutiny in advance, TSA PreCheck lets you go through security without taking off your shoes; a no-fly list keeps certain people off the plane entirely. Not everyone poses an equal threat. Rifling through the bags of every business traveler and patting down every preschooler and octogenarian would waste the TSA’s time and needlessly burden many passengers. The same principle applies to limiting the spread of the coronavirus.

The number of COVID-19 cases keeps growing, even though remarkably safe, effective vaccines are widely available, at least to adults. Many public agencies are responding by reimposing masking rules on everyone. But at this stage of the pandemic, tougher universal restrictions are not the solution to continuing viral spread. While flying, vaccinated people should no longer carry the burden for unvaccinated people. The White House has rejected a nationwide vaccine mandate—a sweeping suggestion that the Biden administration could not easily enact if it wanted to—but a no-fly list for unvaccinated adults is an obvious step that the federal government should take. It will help limit the risk of transmission at destinations where unvaccinated people travel—and, by setting norms that restrict certain privileges to vaccinated people, will also help raise the stagnant vaccination rates that are keeping both the economy and society from fully recovering.

Flying is not a right, and the case for restricting it to vaccinated people is straightforward: The federal government is the sole entity that can regulate the terms and conditions of airline safety. And although air-filtration systems and mask requirements make transmission of the coronavirus unlikely during any given passenger flight, infected people can spread it when they leave the airport and take off their mask. The whole point of international-travel bans is to curb infections in the destination country; to protect itself, the United States still has many such restrictions in place. Beyond limiting the virus’s flow from hot spots to the rest of the country, allowing only vaccinated people on domestic flights will change minds, too.

Read more …

A long list of articles about natural immunity.

Covid-19 Natural Immunity Compared To Vaccine-induced Immunity (Attkisson)

Hard data counters widespread public misinformation that claimed “virtually all” patients hospitalized and dying of Covid-19 are unvaccinated. Pfizer and Moderna had claimed their vaccines were “100% effective” at preventing serious illness. Many in the media even popularized a propaganda phrase designed to push more people to get vaccinated: “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Not so, says CDC and other data. Recent CDC data found that 74% of those who tested positive for Covid-19 in a Massachusetts analysis had been fully-vaccinated. Equally as troubling for those advocating vaccination-for-all: four out of five people hospitalized with Covid were fully-vaccinated. And CDC said “viral load” — indicating how able the human host is to spread Covid-19 — is about the same among the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Contrary to the infamous misinformation by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky last May, vaccinated people can— and are— spreading Covid. (CDC officials later corrected Walensky’s false claim.) CDC’s newest findings on so-called “breakthrough” infections in vaccinated people are mirrored by other data releases. Illinois health officials recently announced more than 160 fully-vaccinated people have died of Covid-19, and at least 644 been hospitalized; ten deaths and 51 hospitalizations counted in the prior week. Israel’s Health Ministry recently said effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has fallen to 40 percent. Last month, 100 vaccinated British sailors isolated on a ship at sea reportedly came down with Covid seven weeks into their deployment.

In July, New Jersey reported 49 fully vaccinated residents had died of Covid; 27 in Louisiana; 80 in Massachusetts. Nationally, as of July 12, CDC said it was aware of more than 4,400 people who got Covid-19 after being fully vaccinated and had to be hospitalized; and 1,063 fully vaccinated people who died of Covid. But health officials still argue that vaccinated people make up only a small fraction of the seriously ill. Critics counter that CDC’s recent Massachusetts data calls that into question.

[..] As of May 29, CDC estimated more than 120 million Americans— more than one in three— had already battled Covid. While an estimated six-tenths of one-percent died, the other 99.4% of those infected survived with a presumed immune status that appears to be superior to that which comes with vaccination. If doctors could routinely test to confirm who has fought off and become immune to Covid-19, it would eliminate the practical need or rationale for those protected millions to get vaccinated. It would also allow them to avoid even the slight risk of serious vaccine side effects. Unfortunately, virologists say no commonly-used test can detect with certainty whether a person is immune.

A common misconception is that antibody tests can make that determination. But experts say immunity after infection or exposure often comes without a person producing or maintaining measurable antibodies. Because of that reality, people who have had asymptomatic infections — infections where they suffered no symptoms — have no easy way to know that they’re immune. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that the millions who know they got Covid can be assured they’re unlikely to suffer reinfection, for at least as long of a time period that scientists have been able to measure. Possibly far beyond.

Read more …

Rachel Marsden. Canada. Vying for first place in idiocy with Australia.

My Own Country Kicked Me Out Because My Immunity Was Acquired Naturally (RT)

I went home to visit my mother. Canada tried to force me into a Covid detention facility threatening fines and police action as they don’t recognize my natural immunity. I had no choice but to immediately fly back to Europe.
At the time of writing, I’m at an altitude of exactly 11,277m, 5,230km away from Vancouver, Canada, and 3,159km from my stopover in Munich, Germany, en route back to Paris, France. Where I really should be is relaxing on the backyard patio or in the jacuzzi at my home near Vancouver with a cold drink on a hot summer day. Instead, I’m on a Lufthansa flight heading back to Paris – just a few hours after arriving across the ocean on a 10-hour flight – because my own country’s officials kicked me out.

All because I committed the apparent violation of trying to re-enter my own country with proof of naturally acquired Covid-19 antibodies made by my own immune system post-recovery rather than those generated by the manmade Covid-19 vaccine about which much is still to be learned. Daily life for a Covid-19 survivor with natural immunity from the disease is not for the faint of heart. As someone with a high level of laboratory tested antibodies whose levels have yet to drop even after several months post-illness, my doctor has advised against vaccination. Much is obviously still to be learned about the Covid jabs, still in stage 3 of clinical trials and considered experimental by health authorities – particularly with reports abounding of breakthrough cases of vaccinated people catching and spreading Covid.

To protect and preserve my acquired immunity by opting out of vaccination that risks interfering with it or causing a risk to my health, France now requires me to succumb to nasal swab antigen tests every 48 hours if I wish to continue accessing everyday venues like public transit, gyms, restaurants, some shopping malls, and bars. But it’s a price that I’m willing to pay for my health.

Read more …

From South Africa.

A Plea To Allow The Use Of Ivermectin As Covid-19 Treatment (Biz)

Twenty countries are using Ivermectin to treat Covid-19. They include Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Nigeria, and Egypt. In South Africa doctors are allowed to prescribe Ivermectin, but it is not being rolled out everywhere and in hospitals and clinics. According to Jackie Stone, a doctor in Zimbabwe, since January – when Ivermectin began to be used – it has cut COVID hospital admissions and deaths over 70%. “The death rate rose sharply in January and peaked on the 25th at 70 deaths per day. Official authorisation for the use of Ivermectin was granted on 26th January. Just one month later, on 26th February, the COVID death rate had fallen to zero”.

A meta-analysis gold standard review of 24 randomised trials conducted in 15 countries among more than 3400 people worldwide of clinical trials – just released by the BIRD group in the UK – showed that deaths are dramatically reduced when Ivermectin is administered. Published in the American Journal of Therapeutics the most rigorous statistical standards were applied by world-leading biostatistician, Mr Andrew Bryant, and medical doctor and researcher Dr Tess Lawrie. The results concluded that Ivermectin has an over 70% success in preventing deaths in hospitalised patients. Mexico City authorities created a home-treatment-kit, including Ivermectin, for its 22 million-strong population in December 2020 and cut hospitalisations by over 70%.

Those Indian states that adopted Ivermectin policies saw their cases fall far more than 80%; Uttar Pradesh – down 98% [37,944 to 596], Uttarakhand – down 97% [9642 to 287] and Goa – down 90% [4195 to 423]. Delhi saw a 99% drop [28,395 to 238]. The bottom line is that Ivermectin works, and it works extraordinarily well. You do not need to be a scientist to understand these numbers, as they are self-evident. If South Africa had a policy of testing and treating – as does Mexico City, which has emptied its hospitals since they implemented it, does – and of using Ivermectin for prevention for health workers and those not vaccinated – we could end the effects of the pandemic here.

Besides cutting hospitalisations and deaths Ivermectin can also be used as a preventative. In Argentina, 788 health workers took Ivermectin weekly and 407 did not. After ten weeks, 58% of those not taking Ivermectin had become sick – but not one of those who took it became sick. The use of Ivermectin has been restricted because the WHO says that further clinical trials are needed before they can recommend it. When asked about this, Dr Stone replied, “I find it very hard to understand how they can say that there is not sufficient evidence. There are three thousand patients plus in, I think, twenty-four trials where they demonstrate an over 75% reduction in mortality. Those figures fit exactly with what we have seen.”

Read more …

Of course Florida is mostly fine, but you already guessed that. This is about raw power, and about DeSantis being popular.

Biden Message For DeSantis On Covid Mask Opposition: ‘Get Out Of The Way’ (MH)

President Joe Biden delivered a stern message on Tuesday to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over the Republican’s opposition to mask mandates: “Get out of the way.” DeSantis has attributed the state’s uptick in COVID-19 cases to seasonal factors and rejected calls to impose a mask mandate. He last week signed an executive order threatening to withhold state funds from school districts that put mask mandates in place to follow federal health guidance for areas experiencing a surge in coronavirus cases.

“Look, we need leadership from everyone. If some governors aren’t willing to do the right thing to beat this pandemic, then they should allow businesses and universities who want to do the right thing to be able to do it,” Biden said in remarks about the pandemic. “I say to these governors please help. But if you are not going to help, at least get out of the way of the people who are trying to do the right thing. Use your power to save lives.” For the third consecutive day, COVID-19 hospitalizations in Florida reached a pandemic high at 11,863 patients. Federal health officials said on Monday that one in three cases of coronavirus nationwide occurred in Florida and Texas last week. [..] DeSantis has likened the recent surge to the spike in cases last summer.

“These things have a pattern,” he said last month. “We saw the pattern last summer. It’s similar. I think it started a little later. I think people should just be prepared for that.” At a news conference in the Everglades on Tuesday, DeSantis repeated his belief that the surge will subside soon, saying: “These things come — you know we have summer season for whatever reason in the Sunbelt and particularly Florida, you know. It will probably come back in the winter, just like last year, not as much as the Northeast, but we’ll see.” DeSantis also downplayed the surge in hospitalizations and did not address the increasing strain on hospital staff. “Our hospitals are open for business,” he said, adding that in hospitals with high COVID cases, those patients “represent a fraction of the overall hospital beds.”

Read more …

They should both go.

Mayor De Blasio And Governor Cuomo Are Pushing Hard For Vaccinations (F.)

The surge of the Delta variant has prompted New York City and state officials to take swift action. This week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recommended that residents of the city wear masks when inside with crowds, even if you’re vaccinated. De Blasio said, “We want to strongly recommend that people wear a mask in indoor settings, even if you’re vaccinated.” The mayor added, “This is particularly true of course if you might be around anyone unvaccinated.” De Blasio emphasized, “Vaccination, vaccination, vaccination, that’s the ballgame.” He offered a $100 financial incentive for people to get their shots. City workers won’t have a choice, and will be mandated to get vaccinated. Additionally, all new government hires will have to show proof of vaccination or else they can’t start their jobs.

The Mayor will also be initiating a “Key to NYC Pass,” which is like the Covid-19 passport talked about a few months ago. It’s a carrot-and-stick approach, as people will be required to show that they are vaccinated if they want to go to restaurants, gyms and other events. No vaccinations, no entrance. “If you want to participate in society fully, you’ve got to get vaccinated,” de Blasio proclaimed. “If we’re going to stop the Delta variant, the time is now,” said the mayor. “This is going to make clear, you want to enjoy everything great in this summer of New York City? Go get vaccinated.”

In an interview with MSNBC, de Blasio dialed up his frustration over the unvaccinated. “We’ve got to shake people at this point and say, ‘Come on now.’ We tried voluntary. We could not have been more kind and compassionate. Free testing, everywhere you turn, incentives, friendly, warm embrace. The voluntary phase is over,” de Blasio said last week. “It’s time for mandates, because it’s the only way to protect our people.” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, similar to de Blasio, is pushing for people to get vaccinated. He’s requesting private businesses, such as bars and restaurants, to show proof of vaccination against Covid-19, as a condition for admission to their establishments. The governor also called for a vaccine mandate for employees of the state’s MTA and Port Authority, similar to his previous order for state hospital employees.

Read more …

Once you do them, they’re impossible to undo.

Vaccine Cards Are Just The Beginning (Whitehead)

It used to be that “we the people” had the right to come and go as we please without the fear of being stopped, questioned by police or forced to identify ourselves. In other words, unless police had a reasonable suspicion that a person was guilty of wrongdoing, they had no legal authority to stop the person and require identification. Unfortunately, in this age of COVID-19, that unrestricted right to move about freely is being pitted against the government’s power to lock down communities at a moment’s notice. And in this tug-of-war between individual freedoms and government power, “we the people” have been on the losing end of the deal.

Now vaccine passports, vaccine admission requirements, and travel restrictions may seem like small, necessary steps in winning the war against the COVID-19 virus, but that’s just so much propaganda. They’re only necessary to the police state in its efforts to further brainwash the populace into believing that the government legitimately has the power to enforce such blatant acts of authoritarianism. This is how you imprison a populace and lock down a nation. It makes no difference if such police state tactics are carried out in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America healthy again: the philosophy remains the same, and it is a mindset that is not friendly to freedom.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state. You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship. You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law. If you’re tempted to justify these draconian measures for whatever reason—for the sake of health concerns, the economy, or national security—beware: there’s always a boomerang effect. Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now, rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

Read more …

Click link, sign petition.

We Stand in Solidarity with Dr. Peter McCullough MD (Change)

We the undersigned stand in deep support and gratitude of Dr. Peter McCullough MD. We recognize his unwavering commitment to upholding his fiduciary responsibility to his patients, the highest standards of science and to the Hippocratic Oath. Most notably Dr. McCullough has and continues to be a forerunner and promoter of early ambulatory treatment of covid symptoms. Due to Dr. McCullough’s contribution, protocols such as those described in Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection, countless lives have been saved. Going further, Dr. McCullough, with other respected researchers and physicians developed an early treatment plan for senior care facilities as well as raised valid concerns over both the safety and efficacy of the covid vaccines, especially considering the increasing number of breakthrough cases being experienced the world over, as well as the number of adverse events reported.


Instead of commending Dr. McCullough and backing these lifesaving discoveries, Baylor Scott and White has initiated a law suit, claiming that Dr. McCullough is falsely associating with their organization, and is demanding 1,000,000 in monetary aid as well as non monetary aid. We the undersigned strongly and emphatically urge that the individuals working on behalf of Baylor Scott and White dismiss this case. Your time and energies are much better spent in supporting Dr. McCullough in saving lives. Let it be known that the scientific, medical and lay communities are watching this development very closely and resolutely stand with Dr. McCullough.

Read more …

Murky indeed, even the article itself.

Julian Assange: Peering Through The Murk (Rozenberg)

Assange remains in prison. The district judge refused him bail after the US government said it would seek to appeal to the High Court against her decision. And on 5 July Mr Justice Swift granted the US permission on three of the five grounds set out in its application for permission to appeal. What were those? This is where the story becomes murky. The judge’s two-page order, which has not been published but is readily available from the court, explains briefly why he refused the US permission to appeal on grounds 3 and 4. It says nothing about Swift’s reasons for granting permission on grounds 1, 2 and 5. That’s not a problem as far as the parties are concerned: they know what the grounds of appeal were. And when the appeal is heard – this autumn or next year – we shall find out too.

But if, as Swift has held, the US has raised ‘arguable issues that should be considered at a final hearing’, lawyers with clients currently facing extradition to the US need to know – now – precisely what these are. Foreign governments seeking extradition are represented by the Crown Prosecution Service. I asked the CPS for a copy of the application they had filed for permission to appeal. They refused to let me see it. Instead, they suggested I asked the High Court. The court told me I needed to make a written application to the judge and pay a fee of £255. I was not willing to do so – it raises concerns about access to justice data that were the subject of an important report by the Legal Education Foundation last month – and I have not been able to get hold of a copy in any other way.

After further requests, the CPS agreed to send me an informal briefing note that had been supplied to other journalists shortly after Swift’s ruling. This note, which includes a minor inaccuracy, is the source of all media reports and legal commentaries on the judge’s ruling. The first arguable ground, according to this note, was that Baraitser had made errors of law in applying the test under section 91 of the Extradition Act 2003. This says that if the physical or mental condition of a suspect ‘is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him’, the judge must either order his or her discharge or adjourn the hearing until he or she is better. We don’t know what Baraitser’s alleged errors were. The second arguable ground is that, having decided that the threshold for discharge was met, Baraitser should have notified the requesting state of her provisional view and given the US a chance to offer assurances.

Read more …

Following the Soviet model of falling apart.

America Has Become Its Own Worst Enemy (Unherd)

Back in the 1970s, Russian women marvelled at how their American equivalents could afford to leave work while they had children. As the New York Times reported, they “express astonishment when they learn that an American father can support a family of two, three or four children without his wife’s working. Many are also surprised that American women would willingly have more than one child.” For them, it was a huge struggle to raise just one. The Soviet Union’s main adversary in the Cold War was also defined by ideology, to some extent. Many western nations had embraced liberalism, but no other was created with the words of John Locke enshrined in its foundation. Yet liberalism, too, faced its challenges in the late 20th century, not from the obviously failing Soviet Communism, but from rival ideas within the democratic tradition.

Starting in the 1960s, a new way of thinking began to predominate in the US that was not really liberal, although its opponents confusingly still referred to it as such. This new way of thinking was more hostile to freedom of speech, and its adherents began the process of chasing deviant thinkers out of academia that began in the late 1960s and would massively reduce political diversity by the 21st century; it supported not just personal sexual freedom, as did liberalism, but radical ideas about sex, including hostility to the family; it was anti-religion and would become more so when religion clashed with sexual rights. As for freedom of association, the “master freedom” in Christopher Caldwell’s words, this was also incompatible with a worldview that prioritised equality over liberty.

This new way of thinking — progressivism is probably the fairest term — is far less tolerant than liberalism. Indeed, in its hostility to freedom of speech, its Manichean worldview, its suspicion that its opponents are fascists, and the belief that politics should be inserted into everything — from science to children’s books — it is closer to the totalitarian tradition. American progressivism is not communism, obviously, anymore than its opponents are Nazis; the market is perfectly capable of achieving most progressive goals, and America has become more culturally Left-wing as Right-wing economic policies have dominated, globalisation being the common theme that links the two. But globalisation came with a price, with millions of jobs lost after the 2001 trade deal with China, made two months after George W. Bush had followed the Soviet example by invading Afghanistan.

It was in those former industrial heartlands where people first began to notice an epidemic of drug-related deaths that now constitutes one of the greatest social disasters in history. Four decades on from its superpower rival, the United States had now become a country in which people were dying younger, driven by overdoses and suicides. That this epidemic took so long to register may have been the solitary and often legal nature of the drug problem; unlike Aids, it did not affect too many celebrities, Prince being the exception. But it could also be who the victims were — predominantly rural white Americans, neither powerful themselves nor championed by powerful supporters.

Read more …

All your base do belong to us.

Meet Your New Feudal Overlords (Weems)

Classic feudalism was a system where a wealthy land-owning nobility (the 1%) controlled the peasant class of workers known as serfs (everyone else). The elites provided serfs with a small piece of land on which to live. Although they paid taxes, generally, serfs owned no property, had no economic power or upward mobility. During the Middle Ages, as much as 90% of Europe’s population fell into this category. Sound familiar? I admit it’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s something worth considering — especially given what’s happening not just with housing but with land ownership in general. In our system, owning real estate is the most common vehicle for wealth accumulation. So what happens when only the wealthiest Americans can afford to own property?

Before you answer, you should know that billionaires are buying up land like it’s going out of style. Do you know who owns the most farmland in the United States? Bill Gates and his soon-to-be ex-wife Melinda, that’s who. With 242,000 acres of cropland plus nearly 30,000 additional acres of land in their real estate portfolio, they’re playing real-life monopoly. According to The Land Report, 100 families own 42 million acres across the country. The Gates family barely breaks the top 50. Former TCI chief John Malone is at the top of the list with 2.2 million acres. While billionaires snatch up the country’s ranches and farmland, Wall Street is buying up all the houses they can get their hands on.

I wrote last August about my personal experience with renting a house in North Carolina. In 2013, we searched for a home in a town just outside of Raleigh. We noticed corporations owned almost all the houses. Every rental sign had a QR code in one neighborhood, so you never actually saw a real estate agent. The company, American Homes 4 Rent (AMR), was the landlord for most of the single-family rental properties in the area, including the one we ultimately rented. Interestingly, the same billionaire, an investor named B. Wayne Hughes controls both the company where we stored our furniture and American Homes 4 Rent. At the time, tapping Wall Street investors made sense. In the wake of the housing crisis of the early aughts, a wave of foreclosures devastated the real estate markets.

By 2010, the housing market was in free fall. Across the country, the glut of empty homes numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Faced with the risk of stalling an already sluggish economic recovery, the government looked to Wall Street. In 2012, the Obama administration launched a program making it easier for private investors like AMR and Blackrock to acquire foreclosed homes by the hundreds. The plan worked. According to The Atlantic, institutional investors jumped into the housing market, buying foreclosed properties then renting them out. The billions in transferred middle-class wealth made inequality worse. At the time, there were few good options.

In the same piece last August, I wrote about how hedge funds and private equity firms like Blackrock and AMH scooped up single-family foreclosures left and right: From 2011 to 2017, the largest global investors bought over 200,000 homes in the U.S., spending over $30 billion. In Atlanta, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and hedge funds bought almost 90% of homes sold from January 2011 to June 2012. By February of last year, institutional investors owned one-fifth of all single-family rentals in the Atlanta area. Until late 2019, Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, owned 40% of Invitation Homes (INVH), capitalizing on the glut of foreclosures following the housing crisis. American Homes 4 Rent (AMH), a REIT founded by billionaire B. Wayne Hughes, currently owns 52,052 homes across the country. AMH owns nearly 10% percent of all single-family homes in Atlanta.

Read more …

Very interesting man.

2020: A Propaganda Masterpiece (Perspectives on the Pandemic)

“Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government,” wrote Edward Bernays, the father of modern propaganda. In part one of Episode 17, Mark Crispin Miller, professor of Media Studies at New York University, discusses the propaganda onslaught that defined the year 2020, when what was dismissed one week is confirmed the next, and why questioning official narratives “necessarily means taking ‘conspiracy theory’ seriously.”

Read more …

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

May 242021
 


Edvard Munch Separation 1896

 

Hodkinson – “When The History Of This Madness Is Written..” (DE)
The Covid Scandal, With Tucker Carlson: Part 2 (CW)
Wuhan Lab Workers Were ‘So Sick They Sought Hospitalization’ (ZH)
How Hard Will Biden Press For A Probe Of Wuhan? (Peters)
CDC Studies Cases Of Heart Inflammation Among Vaccinated Young People (RT)
Faster Than A PCR Test: Dogs Detect Covid In Under A Second (G.)
Rand Paul First Senator To Announce He Won’t Get COVID-19 Vaccine (ZH)
Oxford Secretly Used Cell Phone Data To Track Millions In Vaccination Study (RT)
‘War’ Footing Needed On Climate Change – Steve Keen (CNBC)
US & EU Denounce Emergency Plane Landing In Belarus (RT)
Operation Likely Carried Out With Help Of Foreign Secret Agents In Greece (K.)

 

 

 

 

In case you weren’t worried enough yet…

Hodkinson – “When The History Of This Madness Is Written..” (DE)

He said: “I’m a serious evidence-based career pathologist who has done everything in pathology at national and provincial levels and I take evidence-based science very, very seriously. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I’m not an anti-vaxxer, I’m none of the above. But when I see certain things in the literature that could – underlined – have serious potential long-term sequelae, I think it’s my duty to stand up and blow the whistle and say ‘hey, stop the train, have you seen this? It needs to be looked at. I hope it’s wrong but show me the data’.

“The data I’m talking about is well-described in the literature, that of the significant expression of the ACE 2 receptor in both the placenta and the testes. And more importantly, in the testes it’s the cells that actually produce the spermatozoa, the precursors, called spermatogonia. Clearly there is an excess of spike protein circulating as a result of an unexpected surge in some people who get the vaccine. “And that circulation takes the spike protein everywhere, including the placenta of women who happen to be pregnant at the time, which is a one-time hit for that particular pregnancy, probably not for subsequent ones. But there is also potential for a hit on the testes, which of course is not a one-time hit, it could be a permanent hit.

“In a world where we know that sperm counts have dropped 40 per cent over the last 10 or 20 years – a massive unexplained drop in sperm counts – we don’t need some additional hits on male fertility. “There have been disturbing reports, to be verified, of increased miscarriages following vaccination. I’m concerned about that for sure but I’m more concerned of the potential of male infertility which could be permanent. A lot of this is could, maybe etc, etc, it’s merely appropriate caution given the scientific literature. “You cannot test for fertility in a trial that lasts six months. Last time I checked, pregnancy lasts nine months. And in order to test for sequential pregnancies and the need for longer-term fertility studies, it cannot be done outside of a two-to-four years window, which is the normal time frame for a new vaccine trial.”

Read more …

Tucker Carlson and Dr Peter McCullough

The Covid Scandal, With Tucker Carlson: Part 2 (CW)

P McC: Well, for very good grounds. Covid-recovered patients so far are racking up a terrific track record of freedom from reinfection. It’s nearly airtight. Think about SARS-CoV-1 is 80 per cent homologous to SARS-CoV-2 . . . SARS-CoV-1 and 2 are 80 per cent the same. The first SARS pandemic, people had durable and complete immunity. Seventeen years so far. You don’t get it twice. We’ve had 111million people in the world who’ve gotten this infection. If there was a chance for double and triple infections in the same person, we would have seen it by the millions. Millions. If you look in the literature, maybe you can find a hundred cases, where someone says, ‘You know, I think they got reinfected.’ And we look and almost always it’s a misinterpretation of one of these PCR tests, which is commonly false positive. (Unclear) One of the false narratives out there is you can get the infection twice. It’s a false narrative.

And the FDA and the sponsors knew that, of course, they excluded Covid-recovered patients. They know you can’t get it again. They’re not going to have them in a clinical trial and have the clinical trial go to the null. They knew that. But when it came out, I think in an air of caution, this would be the innocent explanation, air of caution. They said, ‘You know what, we’ll make it available to everybody’. But quickly making it available to everybody started to become a coercive thing.

[…]

I think America needs to take a deep breath and understand we’re treating Covid. We’ve got it under control. It’s manageable. Let’s see some deep dives on safety. I think we need an independent data safety monitoring board to look at all the safety events being reported to the CDC. America can see them. It’s in the VAERS programme, if you go to VAERS.com, it’s right there, America can see the numbers racking up in the categories. And they ought to ask, let’s have an independent data safety monitor board, look at all the events with the eye of risk mitigation.

The idea that we’re going to roll out products and get it right the first time, how often does that happen in medicine? We always got to tweak things. Maybe there’s certain groups that shouldn’t get it. Maybe the doses are too high. Maybe the doses ought to be weight-based. There’s all kinds of things to consider.

[…]

P McC: The Covid patients who recover, they have antibodies, they have T cell protection and innate emission. The antibodies are a pretty nice indication that you’re protected. But these T cell tests are terrific. This T cell direct test, that’s actually next generation sequencing. That is permanent protection. That’s your microbiological evidence of permanent protection.

TC: Can you get that test? Can a civilian get that test?

P McC: Somebody can go online, order it, and their medical director approves it, go to the lab and get it. No doctor needed. It’s wonderful. I think what parents ought to know is that children who are Covid-recovered, the clinical diagnosis is good enough to confer immunity. I think the big question is suspected Covid-recovered, you don’t know. You never got a test or you’re not sure. Then get the antibodies or the T cell test or both and show proof of immunity. I hope some rational thinking comes down on America to say, ‘Listen, proof of having Covid or proof of being a survivor recovered will be good enough,’ because otherwise this is getting out of control. I’ve said for these passports, people are talking about green passports, I say, ‘Why don’t you give a gold passport for the Covid-recovered? They should get first class. They can’t give it.’ Remember, the vaccines are not perfect. But that’s not even under consideration. That’s not even a public conversation.

McCullough

Read more …

What role does the WHO play in this?

Wuhan Lab Workers Were ‘So Sick They Sought Hospitalization’ (ZH)

Three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were so sick in November of 2019 that they sought hospitalization, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing a previously undisclosed US intelligence report “that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the COVID-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory.” “The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”

The disclosure of the number of researchers, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into Covid-19’s origins.” -WSJ. “The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality. It was very precise. What it didn’t tell you was exactly why they got sick,” one source told the Journal, while another person said the information, provided by an “international partner,” was potentially significant but still in need of further investigation and corroboration.

The Wuhan lab has notably refused to share raw data, safety logs and lab records of its extensive experiments with bat coronaviruses, which a US-funded NGO, EcoHealth Alliance, collaborated with. Beijing, meanwhile, has repeatedly denied that COVID-19 escaped from one of its labs – going as far on Sunday as to cite a WHO-led team’s conclusion that a lab leak was unlikely. A WHO team, mind you, which included EcoHealth’s Peter Daszak, the guy paid $666,000 per year by Anthony Fauci’s NIH to collaborate with the Wuhan lab. “The U.S. continues to hype the lab leak theory,” China’s foreign ministry told the Journal in response to a request for comment. “Is it actually concerned about tracing the source or trying to divert attention?”

Trump

Read more …

“..how hard will Western leaders press for a thorough investigation knowing that if it were to conclude a lab leak, it would require a political response that could turn the world upside down?”

How Hard Will Biden Press For A Probe Of Wuhan? (Peters)

The world’s worst disaster in a century killed 7.1mm-12.7mm across the planet. The total continued rising. No one knew exactly when it would end, only that the poorest nations would bear the brunt. They always do. European and Asian countries lost more citizens than they had since WWII. The US lost more than in any war. Children fell behind. Economic costs spiraled, leaving each nation’s finances forever changed. Monetary and fiscal policy merged in the West. Inflation reappeared. Despots tightened their grip. America’s president was voted out.

In the emergency of the moment, the world’s leaders mostly kept their nations focused on dealing with the disaster. But as the crisis in the developed world subsided, focus turned to the origin of it all. The world’s leading biologists felt that the preliminary analysis lacked scientific rigor and appeared incomplete. To prevent a repeat of such tragedy, they insisted on doing what they are trained to do. And in this search for the truth, they had to seriously explore the possibility that the disaster was not of natural origin, but an accident.

Having suffered the consequences, people throughout the world rightly sought the truth. But the hunt for truth in epidemiology is a rather different matter than the search for truth in geopolitics. The former is infinitely cleaner and easier than the latter. And to compound that difficulty, the geopolitical consequences of this disaster having been a laboratory accident are so vast that it is difficult to quite imagine. Would nations hold China to account? If so, how? War reparations? How would international debts be treated? Equity? These barely scratch the surface.

Every person on the planet should hope the truth is the virus struck humanity naturally, unluckily (I sure do). Beijing certainly wants this to remain the explanation. They rebuked Australia for questioning it. So how hard will Western leaders press for a thorough investigation knowing that if it were to conclude a lab leak, it would require a political response that could turn the world upside down? And yet, if they do not press hard, how will Western governments retain their already diminished credibility when it comes to national security?

Read more …

Playing it down.

CDC Studies Cases Of Heart Inflammation Among Vaccinated Young People (RT)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced they are investigating reports of heart issues in young patients who have received a Covid-19 vaccine. There have been “relatively few” cases of young people developing heart symptoms following their inoculations, but the CDC is requesting that “information about this potential adverse event” be provided to clinicians to “enhance early recognition and appropriate management of persons who develop myocarditis symptoms.” Myocarditis is an inflammation in the heart muscle. The few dozen cases so far have involved teenagers and young adults, mostly males, who have received either the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. The CDC’s vaccine safety group has not determined whether the condition is directly related to the vaccinations, and said the cases have been “mild” thus far.


Patients have reported their symptoms within four days of receiving a vaccine dose. Follow-up cases are currently ongoing. The agency has not specified the exact ages of the patients reporting symptoms, but the Pfizer-BioNTech has been approved for people 16 years or older since December, and to people between the ages of 12 and 15 since last month. In April, Israel’s Health Ministry also announced it was looking into a handful of cases of heart inflammation, possibly linked to the Pfizer vaccine. The cases reported had been from people aged 30 or below. “Adverse events are regularly and thoroughly reviewed and we have not observed a higher rate of myocarditis than what would be expected in the general population. A causal link to the vaccine has not been established,” Pfizer said at the time in a statement.

Read more …

There’s more money in PCR, we suspect.

Faster Than A PCR Test: Dogs Detect Covid In Under A Second (G.)

Faster than PCR and more accurate than lateral flow tests, the latest weapons against Covid-19 have four legs and a wet nose. A study published on Monday found that people who are infected with coronavirus give off a distinct odour, which these highly trained dogs can detect with pinpoint precision. Tala, a golden labrador in a red work jacket, greets me with a cursory sniff, before returning to his handler. I’m relieved to have passed the test, but feel a wet train of mucus on my hand where I petted him. This mucus fulfils an important purpose: dissolving odour molecules from the air and transporting them to olfactory receptors in the top of their nose, where the magic happens. Whereas humans have about 5m of these receptors, dogs have up to 300m.

Dr Claire Guest has always been fascinated by dogs, and humans’ relationship with them. After studying psychology, she worked for Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, where she met a woman who said her pet dalmatian had diagnosed a malignant melanoma on her calf. “She kept saying, ‘The dog sniffed it,’” Guest recalled. In 2002, Guest joined forces with an orthopaedic surgeon, John Church, to test whether dogs could be trained to distinguish between urine from healthy people and those with bladder cancer. The research, published in the BMJ, showed that they could. Medical Detection Dogs was formed in 2008. The charity trains companion dogs that can detect odour changes in people with type 1 diabetes and other severe disorders, emitted shortly before their health deteriorates, alerting them to take action.

It also researches dogs’ abilities to detect cancers, and other diseases, including Parkinson’s. When the pandemic hit it had just completed a study with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), demonstrating that dogs can detect malaria. Tala is one of six dogs who took part in the Covid study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. It found that dogs could detect Covid-19 on clothing worn by infected people with up to 94.3% sensitivity: they would correctly identify 94 out of every 100 infected people. This compares with a sensitivity of 58-77% for lateral flow tests, and 97.2% for PCR tests. However, dogs beat PCR tests on speed, making a diagnosis in under a second. “This includes people who are asymptomatic and also people with a low viral load,” said Prof James Logan of LSHTM, who co-led the study.

Tala was the most accurate sniffer, achieving 94.5% sensitivity, and a specificity of 92% – the proportion of uninfected people that he would correctly identify.

Read more …

Ron Johnson was the first?!

Rand Paul First Senator To Announce He Won’t Get COVID-19 Vaccine (ZH)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced this weekend that he will not get vaccinated against COVID-19, explaining that he already contracted the virus last year and has “natural immunity.” Paul, who is an ophthalmologist, said that he has not seen evidence proving the vaccine is more effective than having survived the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, otherwise known as the novel coronavirus, so he won’t get the shot. “Until they show me evidence that people who have already had the infection are dying in large numbers, or being hospitalized or getting very sick, I just made my own personal decision that I’m not getting vaccinated because I’ve already had the disease and I have natural immunity,” Paul, who appears to be the first senator to announce he won’t get vaccinated, told WABC 770 AM on Sunday, according to news reports.

Paul has made similar remarks in the past when interviewed about vaccines. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who also recovered from COVID-19, suggested he wouldn’t get vaccine earlier this year. Paul tested positive for COVID-19 in March 2020, becoming the first senator to contract the virus. At the time, Paul said he did not develop any notable symptoms and wasn’t hospitalized. The senator also noted that the pressure from various institutions to get vaccinated flies in the face of individual liberty. “In a free country you would think people would honor the idea that each individual would get to make the medical decision, that it wouldn’t be a big brother coming to tell me what I have to do,” Paul said in the interview, suggesting that the pressure campaign around vaccines could be an attempt to manufacture consent for other power grabs.

“Are they also going to tell me I can’t have a cheeseburger for lunch? Are they going to tell me that I have to eat carrots only and cut my calories?” the Kentucky senator said. “All that would probably be good for me, but I don’t think big brother ought to tell me to do it.”

Read more …

What are these people thinking?

Oxford Secretly Used Cell Phone Data To Track Millions In Vaccination Study (RT)

The UK government has admitted it used phone data to analyse people’s movement patterns without their knowledge as part of a vaccination study, a new report claims. Officials are said to have preserved the subjects’ anonymity. The Telegraph cited a report by the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) which said researchers from the University of Oxford discretely used data from mobile phones as part of their study into how vaccination affects people’s lifestyles. SPI-B advises the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), which in turn advises the government. The University of Oxford, which developed the Covid-19 vaccine along with the British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, conducted the study on SPI-B’s behalf.


The scientists were said to have dug through the “cell phone mobility data for 10 per cent of the British population” in February and singled out 4,254 people that were vaccinated. They then monitored the group’s movement patterns for the week before and the week after vaccination. The researchers did “various robustness checks,” sorted by age, and measured “distance from home to vaccination point,” among other things, according to the Telegraph. By comparing the movement of the vaccinated people to a different group, the scientists found that their “average pre-vaccination mobility increased by 218 meters [sic].” Privacy group Big Brother Watch says the findings are “deeply chilling and extremely damaging to public trust in medical confidentiality.”

Read more …

““I think we should throw the economists completely out of this discussion..”

‘War’ Footing Needed On Climate Change – Steve Keen (CNBC)

Economic forecasts predicting the potential impact of climate change have grossly underestimated the reality and delayed global recovery efforts by decades, according to a leading professor. Mainstream economists “deliberately and completely” ignored scientific data and instead “made up their own numbers” to suit their market models, Steve Keen, a fellow at University College London’s Institute for Strategy, Resilience and Security, told CNBC on Friday. Now, a “war-level footing” is required to have any hope of repairing the damage, he said. “Fundamentally, the economists have totally misrepresented the science and ignored it where it contradicts their bias that climate change is not a big deal because, in their opinion, capitalism can handle anything,” Keen told “Street Signs Asia.”

Keen said the repercussions of climate change were foretold in the 1972 publication “The Limits to Growth” — a divisive report on the destructive consequences of global expansion — but economists then and since failed to heed its warnings, preferring instead to rely on market mechanisms. “If their warnings had been taken seriously and we’d done as they’d suggested, changing our trajectory from 1975 on, we could have done it gradually using things like carbon tax and so on,” he said. “Because economists have delayed it by another half century, we are, as a species, putting three to four times the pressure on the biosphere.” As a result, he said, “the only way we can (reverse) this is effectively a war level footing of motive mobilisation to reverse the amount of carbon we’ve put into the atmosphere to drastically reduce our consumption.”

Referring specifically to a report produced by economists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was instrumental in outlining global climate targets including those presented at the Paris Agreement COP21, Keen said even their most severe estimates were a “trivial underestimate of the damage we expect.” That is because they “completely and deliberately ignore the possibility of tipping points,” a point at which climate change can cause irreversible shifts in the environment. “I think we should throw the economists completely out of this discussion and sit the politicians down with the scientists and say these are the potential outcomes of that much of a change to the biosphere; we are toying with forces far in excess of ones we can actually address,” he said.

Read more …

I seem to remember a similar story with a plane the US thought Snowden was on.

Also, this guy was picked on for doing what Assange did.

US & EU Denounce Emergency Plane Landing In Belarus (RT)

The US joined the EU Commission in condemning the forced landing of a Vilnius-bound Ryanair flight in Belarus, reportedly over a bomb threat, which resulted in the arrest of the editor of an opposition Telegram channel. In a statement on Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanded an international investigation into the diversion of a Ryanair flight that made an emergency landing in Minsk shortly before leaving Belarusian airspace due to reports of a bomb threat. After the plane landed, the exiled editor of Telegram channel Belamova, Roman Protasevich, who was on board, was arrested by the Belarusian authorities.

Protasevich, who previously worked as editor-in-chief of Polish-based opposition Telegram channel NEXTA Live, is wanted in Belarus on charges of inciting mass unrest, social enmity and discord. The accusations stem from mass anti-government protests that rocked Belarus in the wake of the August presidential election, which were extensively covered by Warsaw-based NEXTA. [..] Blinken suggested that the diversion of the plane was “based on false pretenses,” demanding Protasevich’s “immediate release.” “This shocking act perpetrated by the Lukashenka regime endangered the lives of more than 120 passengers, including U.S. citizens,” the statement read.

Senator Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined in the condemnation, calling for more sanctions to be imposed on Belarus after the incident. “Enough is enough. The US and EU must significantly expand sanctions on Lukashenka’s dictatorship,” he said. The remarks by the US politicians echoed those of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who referred to the emergency landing as a “hijacking.” “The outrageous and illegal behaviour of the regime in Belarus will have consequences,” she tweeted, hinting at possible sanctions for those responsible for the plane’s emergency stop.

[..] Adding fuel to the fire, there were reports carried by a Telegram channel considered to be close to the Belarusian government that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko personally ordered a MiG-29 fighter jet to escort the plane to the Minsk airport. In its statement, Ryanair made no mention of the reported escort, noting only that “the aircraft landed safely” and that “security checks were completed by local authorities” after the passengers disembarked. The company said the decision to divert to the Minsk airport was made after Belarusian air traffic control (ATC) notified the crew of “a potential security threat on board.”

Read more …

But an insane story nevertheless.

Operation Likely Carried Out With Help Of Foreign Secret Agents In Greece (K.)

The arrest of a prominent opponent of Belarus’ authoritarian president on Sunday after the airplane in which he was traveling was diverted to the country following a bomb threat appears to have been carried out with the help of secret agents operating on Greek territory, Kathimerini understands. 26-year-old Raman Pratasevich, who faces charges that could bring 15 years in prison, was aboard the Ryanair flight from Athens, to the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius when it changed course to head for Minsk. The incident was described by some EU leaders as a hijacking.


While still at Athens International Airport, Pratasevich is said to have informed colleagues via the Telegram messaging application that he was approached by an unknown Russian-speaking man who took a snap of him. If the information is confirmed, then there is reason to believe that foreign secret agents were operating at the Greek airport. According to reports, 170 passengers were aboard the Ryanair flight from Athens. After seven hours on the ground in Minsk, the plane took off without six of the passengers: Pratasevich, his partner and four Russian nationals. It is likely that these four men took part in the operation.

Read more …

 

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

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.