Dec 282021
 
 December 28, 2021  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  62 Responses »


Diego Velázquez The Spinners 1655-60

 

Covid Vaccines: Why They Cannot Work, And Their Causative Role In Deaths (D4CE)
Calls for New Medical Approaches to Mute Autoimmunity Must Be Addressed (PR)
In Reply To The Facebook Factcheck On My Dana Loesch Interview (Vanden Bossche)
Israel Sets Precedent With Fourth Booster Shot (RT)
Pfizer Antiviral Pill Could Be Risky With Other Widely Used Medications (Hill)
Danish Doctors Decry Merck’s COVID Pills, Refuse to Use Them (Sp.)
Protective Effect of Melatonin Administration against SARS-CoV-2 (MDPI)
Study Reveals How Covid Affects The Brain (RT)
Outpatient Treatments for COVID-19 Reviewed (Mercola)
Stop and Assess (Kunstler)
Pfizer Still Distributes Covid Vaccine Version Not Fully Approved By FDA (JTN)
US officials recommend shorter COVID isolation, quarantine
NASA Hired 24 Theologians To Study Human Reaction To Aliens (NYP)

 

 

 

 

Underreported
https://twitter.com/i/status/1475450844661399552

 

 

 

 

They lied

 

 

The autoimmunity issue comes to the foreground.

Sucharit Bhakdi, MD and Arne Burkhardt, MD. [..] a written summary of Dr. Bhakdi’s and Dr. Burkhardt’s presentations at the Doctors for COVID Ethics symposium that was live-streamed by UKColumn on December 10th, 2021.

Covid Vaccines: Why They Cannot Work, And Their Causative Role In Deaths (D4CE)

Why the vaccines cannot protect against infection A fundamental mistake underlying the development of the COVID-19 vaccines was to neglect the functional distinction between the two major categories of antibodies which the body produces in order to protect itself from pathogenic microbes. The first category (secretory IgA) is produced by immune cells (lymphocytes) which are located directly underneath the mucous membranes that line the respiratory and intestinal tract. The antibodies produced by these lymphocytes are secreted through and to the surface of the mucous membranes. These antibodies are thus on site to meet air-borne viruses, and they may be able to prevent viral binding and infection of the cells.


The second category of antibodies (IgG and circulating IgA) occur in the bloodstream. These antibodies protect the internal organs of the body from infectious agents that try to spread via the bloodstream. Vaccines that are injected into the muscle – i.e., the interior of the body – will only induce IgG and circulating IgA, not secretory IgA. Such antibodies cannot and will not effectively protect the mucous membranes from infection by SARS-CoV-2. Thus, the currently observed “breakthrough infections” among vaccinated individuals merely confirm the fundamental design flaws of the vaccines. Measurements of antibodies in the blood can never yield any information on the true status of immunity against infection of the respiratory tract. The inability of vaccine-induced antibodies to prevent coronavirus infections has been reported in recent scientific publications.

The vaccines can trigger self-destruction A natural infection with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) will in most individuals remain localized to the respiratory tract. In contrast, the vaccines cause cells deep inside our body to express the viral spike protein, which they were never meant to do by nature. Any cell which expresses this foreign antigen will come under attack by the immune system, which will involve both IgG antibodies and cytotoxic T-lymphocytes. This may occur in any organ. We are seeing now that the heart is affected in many young people, leading to myocarditis or even sudden cardiac arrest and death. How and why such tragedies might causally be linked to vaccination has remained a matter of conjecture because scientific evidence has been lacking. This situation has now been rectified.


[..] Conclusion Histopathologic analysis show clear evidence of vaccine-induced autoimmune-like pathology in multiple organs. That myriad adverse events deriving from such auto-attack processes must be expected to very frequently occur in all individuals, particularly following booster injections, is self-evident. Beyond any doubt, injection of gene-based COVID-19 vaccines places lives under threat of illness and death. We note that both mRNA and vector-based vaccines are represented among these cases, as are all four major manufacturers.

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James Lyons-Weiler discusses the same issue.

Calls for New Medical Approaches to Mute Autoimmunity Must Be Addressed (PR)

Pathogenic priming, as originally described, is the act of exposing people (or animals) to epitopes that match human proteins, leading to the inducement of autoreactogenic antibodies that attack tissues anywhere in the body. I described pathogenic priming in April, 2020 and predicted that tissues across the body could become afflicted due to exposure to COVID-19 proteins. Evidence is mounting that points to pathogenic priming contributing morbidity and mortality among the vaccinated, including • Increased all-cause mortality • Histopathological evidence of autoimmunity across various organs. An important message, with data, came to me today on one of my many email threads. I am sharing this on Popular Rationalism with permission Ronald Kostoff, who fowarded the analysis below.

[..] Commenting on the above, Ronald wrote: “If the autopsy findings are confirmed by other pathologists with additional samples, and if they are combined with the findings of Dr. Hoffe (>60% inoculant recipients have elevated D-dimer tests and evidence of clotting) and Dr. Cole (increase in cancers after inoculation, including twenty-fold increase in uterine cancer), we are seeing a disaster of unimaginable proportions. The conclusion (if supported by further data) is that essentially EVERY inoculant recipient suffers damage, with more damage after each shot. The damage could be cumulative, and the shots may be synergistic. Given the seriousness of the types of damage (autoimmune diseases, cancer, re-emergent dormant infections, clotting/strokes, cardiac damage, etc.), these effects will translate into lifespan reduction, which should be counted as deaths from the inoculations.

So, in the USA, where ~200M people have been fully inoculated, the number of deaths will not be the 10,000 or so reported in VAERS, or 500,000-1,000,000 scaled-up deaths from VAERS, but could be closer to tens of millions (or more) when the inoculation effects play out! What the above three findings (Burkhart, Hoffe, Cole, and I suspect many others who have not yet come forward) show is that the post-inoculation effects are not rare events (as reported by the media-gov’t), but are in actuality frequent events. They may be, in fact, universal, with different degrees of severity and damage for each recipient. The question is whether it is possible to reverse these inoculation-based adverse events.

Can the innate immune system be fully restored? Can the microclotting be reversed? Can the autoimmunity be reversed? There is a wide spectrum of opinions on whether this is possible, none of which is overly convincing. Are we headed for the situation where the ~30% unvaxxed will be devoting their lives to operating whatever is left of the economic infrastructure and serving as caretakers for the vaxxed? The above sounds extreme, and maybe when more data are gathered from myriad credible sources the results and conclusions may change, but right now the above data seem to synchronize with the demonstrated underlying mechanisms of damage. Additionally, we seem to be doubling down on inoculations, with fourth booster being proposed for Israel, and UK suggesting quarterly boosters.”

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“I have always said that mass vaccination would cause more infectious variants to expand in prevalence and become dominant.”

In Reply To The Facebook Factcheck On My Dana Loesch Interview (Vanden Bossche)

Facebook wrote that my predictions of an ever-evolving virus, pressured by an ever-expanding population-level immune pressure caused by mass vaccination are wrong. I have always said that mass vaccination would cause more infectious variants to expand in prevalence and become dominant. Making it impossible for mass vaccination fanatics to ‘stay ahead of the virus’ as they always claim. The consecutive dominance of alpha, beta, gamma, delta and, more recently, the omicron variant is merely proof that my predictions have come true.

Even though the highly infectious Omicron does not seem to be highly virulent, there can be no doubt that continued mass vaccination campaigns that will soon use updated boosters against Omicron are at high risk of provoking ADE (antibody-dependent enhancement of disease) and will thereby dramatically enhance the incidence of severe disease in vaccinees. I have explained this in my most recent video message to the WHO, urging them not to allow vaccination against Omicron. (Second call to WHO: Please, don’t vaccinate against Omicron) Damania’s comments on my scientific analysis and predictions have already been proven void.

Furthermore, arguments he’s been trying to tease out from experts, like Paul Offit, have been seamlessly refuted in my interview with Del Bigtree (Geert Vanden Bossche Warns of Covid-19 Vaccination Catastrophe). Damania obviously has a big mouth, but has never been responsive to engaging in an open scientific debate, while being heavily paid to spout misinformation and misinterpretations on the evolutionary dynamics of this pandemic. Of which he clearly doesn’t understand due to his limited knowledge of virology, immunology and vaccinology. “Separating the wheat from the chaff” (Some guidance to separating the wheat from the chaff) is, therefore, a ‘must read’ for all those who are trying to find credible information enabling them to make informed decisions about their own health and that of their children. In that regard, cheap and hollow one-liners like those uttered by Damania are clearly not very helpful.

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Combine this with autoimmunity.

Israel Sets Precedent With Fourth Booster Shot (RT)

Israel has begun administering a fourth Covid-19 vaccine dose to triple-vaccinated test subjects. The Jewish state is already planning on offering an extra booster shot to the elderly and vulnerable. 150 medical workers at the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv began receiving a fourth dose of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine on Monday. These workers have all received three doses – an initial two plus a booster – already, and will be monitored for six months as researchers assess their antibody levels and monitor for potential side effects, CBS News reported. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to show here … that this fourth booster really provides protection against the Omicron,” Jacob Lavee, a professor at the prestigious hospital, told the Associated Press.


The trial is believed to be the first test of a fourth booster dose anywhere in the world, and comes at a time when the Omicron variant is rapidly becoming the dominant coronavirus strain worldwide. Although the new variant typically causes only mild to moderate symptoms in those it infects, it is believed to be highly transmissible, and studies have shown vaccines to be significantly less effective against it when compared to earlier variants. Israel was the first country on earth to vaccinate a majority of its citizens, and was one of the first countries in which the vaccines were shown to lose efficacy over time. Since then, the country has been an early trailblazer in administering booster shots, and around 45% of the Israeli population has received a third dose of the Pfizer shot.

Massie

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The Hill basically just posts Pfizer’s PR.

Pfizer Antiviral Pill Could Be Risky With Other Widely Used Medications (Hill)

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently authorized two antiviral pills, one from Pfizer and one from Merck, making them the first at-home treatment for COVID-19 that has been touted as a game changer in the fight against the pandemic. However, experts told NBC News that the pills will require careful monitoring by doctors and pharmacists. While Pfizer’s Paxlovid has been authorized for use in children 12 and over with underlying health conditions including heart disease or diabetes, a component of the antiviral cocktail could have serious and life- threatening interactions with drugs including blood thinners, statins and depressants, NBC reported.

“Some of these potential interactions are not trivial, and some pairings have to be avoided altogether,” Peter Anderson, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Colorado told NBC News. “Some are probably easily managed. But some we’re going to have to be very careful about,” he added. In a statement to The Hill, a Pfizer spokesperson said, “The potential for drug-drug interactions (DDI) for Paxlovid was examined in a series of in vitro studies, as well as clinical DDI studies.” The spokesperson further elaborated on the antiviral pill and said that Paxlovid is comprised of the active protease inhibitor Nirmatrelvir, as well as a low-dose of 100 mg of Ritonavir.

“Its effect on drug metabolism may result in drug interactions, and some drugs may be contra-indicated. However, in light of the fact that Paxlovid has a short duration of treatment of five days, combined with a low dose of Ritonavir of 100 milligrams, we believe that healthcare professionals should find most DDIs to be generally manageable,” the statement reads. “The product’s emergency use authorization fact sheets include information on drug interactions and contraindications. Healthcare providers should consider the potential for drug interactions prior to and during PAXLOVID therapy and review concomitant medications during PAXLOVID therapy,” the spokesperson added.

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“We think that the documentation basis is really, really flimsy. We are afraid that we will have to use a remedy that is ineffective at best and, at worst, jeopardises people’s treatment..”

Danish Doctors Decry Merck’s COVID Pills, Refuse to Use Them (Sp.)

Denmark has recently become the first EU country to approve a new COVID-19 treatment by the US pharmaceutical company Merck, but the decision has run into difficulties as the country’s general practitioners refuse to prescribe the treatment due to insufficient knowledge of how it works, calling it ineffective and potentially even harmful. The Danish Society for General Practice (DSAM), which is the professional community of general practitioners, has criticised the National Board of Health for its recommendations concerning COVID-19 treatment. Earlier, the Danish Health and Medicines Authority has approved the US drugmaker Merck’s anti-COVID pill molnupiravir, which also goes by the name Lagevrio, to treat at-risk patients with symptoms, making Denmark the first EU country to do so. So far, 50,000 pills have been purchased.

Explaining their reluctance to administer it, DSAM’s COVID-19 spokesman Anders Beich cited the drug’s poor documentation. “We think that the documentation basis is really, really flimsy. We are afraid that we will have to use a remedy that is ineffective at best and, at worst, jeopardises people’s treatment,” he told Danish Radio. According to him, patients may receive proper treatment too late. “There is a tendency to believe that once you have received your treatment, you will do well. It may be that both doctor and patient think that now the patient is in treatment. But if the treatment is ineffective, then you will waste time, and there is a risk that the disease will get worse without action being taken,” Beich mused.

The same criticism was echoed by Danish Medicines Agency, an independent council that makes recommendations to the regions on the use of various drugs. “We already have treatments that work for the group of patients where the pill is intended for use. Treatments that work much better and are documented much better than this pill,” chairman Steen Werner Hansen said. “So in the worst case, this would prevent some patients from getting a relevant treatment,” he concluded.

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I am not a fan of melatonin, but others are.

Protective Effect of Melatonin Administration against SARS-CoV-2 (MDPI)

Justification and Objectives: the serious health, social and economic consequences of COVID-19 have forced an urgent search for preventive methods, such as vaccines, among others, and therapeutic methods that could be alternatives to the drugs currently used. In this sense, it must be accepted that one of the most recommended has been the administration of melatonin. The present study proposes to carry out a systematic review of its possible role in the treatment and/or prevention of COVID-19.

Material and methods: a systematic review of the literature related to the prevention of COVID-19 through the administration of melatonin was carried out, following the sequence proposed by the Prisma Declaration regarding the identification and selection of documents, using the specialized health databases Trip Medical Database, Cochrane Library, PubMed, Medline Plus, BVS, Cuiden and generic databases such as Dialnet, Web of Science and Google Scholar for their retrieval. Appropriate inclusion and exclusion criteria are described for the articles assessed. The main limitation of the study has been the scarcity of works and the lack of defining a specific protocol in terms of dosage and administration schedule.

Results: once the selection process was completed, and after an in-depth critical analysis, 197 papers were selected, and 40 of them were finally used. The most relevant results were: (1) melatonin prevents SARS-CoV-2 infection, (2) although much remains to be clarified, at high doses, it seems to have a coadjuvant therapeutic effect in the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection and (3) melatonin is effective against SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Discussion: until group immunization is achieved in the population, it seems clear that we must continue to treat patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, and, in the absence of a specific and effective antiviral therapy, it is advisable to continue researching and providing drugs that demonstrate validity based on the scientific evidence. In this regard, we believe that the available studies recommend the administration of melatonin for its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, immunomodulatory, sleep-inducing, CD147, Mpro, p65 and MMP9 protein suppressing, nephrotoxicity-reducing and highly effective and safe effects.

Conclusions: (1) melatonin has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, immunomodulatory, and Mpro and MMP9 protein-inhibitory activity. (2) It has been shown to have a wide margin of safety. (3) The contributions reviewed make it an effective therapeutic alternative in the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection. (4) Further clinical trials are recommended to clearly define the administration protocol.

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“In some instances, the virus stayed in “regions throughout the brain” for up to 230 days following symptom onset.”

Study Reveals How Covid Affects The Brain (RT)

The SARS-CoV-2 virus can within days move from the respiratory system into the brain, heart, and nearly every organ system in the body, and stay there for months, a new study says. A team from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) described their research as the “most comprehensive analysis” to date of how the virus spreads through the human body. The results were published online on Saturday in a manuscript, which was submitted under review in the Nature journal. The scientists based their findings on autopsies of 44 patients who died after contracting Covid. The autopsies were performed between April 26, 2020 and March 2, 2021. “Our results collectively show while that the highest burden of SARS-CoV-2 is in the airways and lung, the virus can disseminate early during infection and infect cells throughout the entire body, including widely throughout the brain.”


The viral RNA was “widely distributed” even among patients who died with asymptomatic or mild cases of Covid, the researcher wrote. In some instances, the virus stayed in “regions throughout the brain” for up to 230 days following symptom onset. Ziyad Al-Aly, the director of the clinical epidemiology center at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri, told Bloomberg the study may provide an answer to why some patients suffer from so-called ‘long Covid’, when symptoms stay persistent for months. “For a long time now, we have been scratching our heads and asking why long Covid seems to affect so many organ systems. This paper sheds some light, and may help explain why long Covid can occur even in people who had mild or asymptomatic acute disease,” Al-Aly said.

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“You could draw blood and actually see the blood clotting very quickly in the tubes..”

“Since those early days, the disease seems to have changed considerably. We don’t see the high rates of blood clotting anymore..”

Outpatient Treatments for COVID-19 Reviewed (Mercola)

Dr. Pierre Kory is one of the leaders in the movement to provide early treatment for COVID infection. Kory is a critical care physician (ICU specialist), triple board certified in internal medicine, critical care and pulmonary medicine, and is part of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), which was among the first to publish COVID treatment guidance. Kory spent most of his career at the Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, New York, where he helped run the intensive care unit. He also had a busy outpatient practice. About six years ago, he was recruited to the University of Wisconsin Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he led the critical care service. “When COVID hit, I was in a leadership position,” he says. “I resigned, because of the way they were handling the pandemic.”

University of Wisconsin Medical Center, like most hospitals across the U.S., insisted on providing supportive care only, and Kory refused to remain in a leadership position under those circumstances. Patients were, for the first time in modern medical history, told to just suffer at home until they were near death, then go to the hospital where they were placed on deadly ventilator treatment. “I knew there was a variety of treatments that we could use [yet] we were using nothing,” he says. Doctors were even told to not use anticoagulants, even though blood clotting was “through the roof” in many patients. “You could draw blood and actually see the blood clotting very quickly in the tubes,” he says. Since those early days, the disease seems to have changed considerably. We don’t see the high rates of blood clotting anymore, for example, which is good news.

But for some reason, from the very start, “they were literally telling us that we needed randomized controlled trials to do anything,” Kory says, and to this day, health authorities are refusing to acknowledge any treatment protocol outside of the drug remdesivir, and COVID vaccins. “People were dying, [yet] all of my ideas were getting shouted down. My superiors were showing up [to my clinical meetings] and getting me to stand down, because I was entertaining the idea that we should do this, that and the other thing, and they didn’t want anything to be done. And so, I said, ‘I’m done.’ I resigned mid-April 2020. I then went to New York for five weeks and ran my old ICU in New York.”

In May 2020, Kory testified before the U.S. Senate, stressing how critical it was to use steroids during the hospital phase of this infection. At that time, he was still employed by the University of Wisconsin. His resignation date had not yet happened, and they “were livid that I was speaking in public, giving my opinion.” This is remarkable, because when you’re an expert in a field, “you’re actually responsible to share your insight and expertise,” Kory says. “Yet they were very unhappy that I was doing that.” Seven weeks later, Kory was vindicated when the British Recovery trial results came out, showing the benefits of corticosteroids. Since then, steroids have become part of standard of care in the hospital phase.

Steroids are an effective tool for reducing inflammation in general, but they appear particularly important for advanced COVID infection. I had a close friend who contracted a very serious case of COVID-19 and kept worsening despite taking everything I suggested. He knew Dr. Peter McCullough, so he texted him and was told to add prednisone and aspirin to his current regimen. As soon as he took the prednisone, he started getting better. As explained by Kory, this is a common experience. Importantly, the evidence shows that when used early, during mild infection, corticosteroids do more harm than good. But once you are entering into moderate illness, as soon as you start to see lung dysfunction or the need for oxygen, steroids are critical and are clearly lifesaving.

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“And Dr. Fauci is beseeching the twice-vaxxed to go get boostered? Is he determined to wreck absolutely every immune system in the land?”

Stop and Assess (Kunstler)

Reality is penetrating the fog and fury of propaganda spewed out over cable-TV news in what may be the last desperate full-out campaign to sell “vaccines” to the credulous. Omicron is a bust, despite the shrieking about overstuffed hospitals (they’re not) in The New York Times. Just as there is a crack-up boom in the final stage of a financial crisis, there is a climactic surge of hysteria in the Covid-19 war against Western Civ. Now, Dr. Anthony Fauci is pushing proof-of-vaxx for US air travel because, “[a] vaccine requirement for a person getting on the plane is just another level of getting people to have a mechanism that would spur them to get vaccinated…” he laid it out on ABC News’s This Week show Sunday with Jonathan Karl.

Monday morning on NPR, Dr. Fauci was beating the drum about the unvaxxed being a menace to society as maxi-spreaders of omicron. Is it possible he hasn’t heard that the vaxxed are catching it at a greater rate despite their vaxxes than the unvaxxed? Do you know why? Because their previous vaxxes have de-tuned their immune systems, that’s why. By the way, so far, one death has been attributed to omicron in the US — and even that case is a muddle. And Dr. Fauci is beseeching the twice-vaxxed to go get boostered? Is he determined to wreck absolutely every immune system in the land? Kind of looks that way, a little bit.

I confess I am torn between two views of this fiasco. The first is that the notoriously incompetent Dr. Fauci and his colleagues (read RFK, Jr.s book) simply blundered through the Covid-19 disaster making a series of reckless choices, and about halfway through the crisis made the dastardly decision to cover-up their errors by doubling and tripling down on these mistakes. For instance, the policy to suppress and ban cheap and effective treatments that would have un-horsed their stupendously profitable “vaccines” from the emergency use authorization that got the mRNA cocktails into the public’s arms without proper testing. Some months down the road we will learn that this Fauci combine caused millions of people to die unnecessarily both from treatments withheld and from the adverse effects of vaxxes themselves.

The other view — that is becoming ever-harder to disregard — is that the Covid-19 pandemic was a deliberate program by a gang of powerful international adventurers to install a regime of surveillance and extreme control over formerly free citizens — all in the service of “re-setting” the ailing global financial system, reducing the population of elder pensioners to relieve the West’s payment obligations, and stifling industrial economies as a cure for climate change. It has sounded a little preposterous to me that such manifest evil, as otherwise seen only in James Bond movies and newsreels of the Nazis, could actually be true.

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Which can’t be mandated.

Pfizer Still Distributes Covid Vaccine Version Not Fully Approved By FDA (JTN)

Despite there being no chemical or ethical differences between Comirnaty and Pfizer-BioNTech, however, the FDA acknowledges the two “are legally distinct.” The agency explained in a statement to the Ohio Star that statutory authorities governing EUAs and biologics license applications, which are necessary for official FDA approval, “provide different legal requirements.” Those requirements, such as more paperwork for a full approval, mean the two products are labeled differently. Labeling differences, while important for the company, mean little in practice for those receiving the vaccine, explained Riley. But legal differences between the EUA-sanctioned and FDA-approved vaccines have potentially significant implications for vaccine mandates.

The Department of Defense, for example, mandates that service members become fully vaccinated against COVID-19 but directs that only FDA-approved vaccines be used for mandatory vaccination. (Service members may also volunteer to receive a EUA vaccination to meet the requirement.) And in Ohio, a recently signed law states that “a public school or state institution of higher education shall not … require an individual to receive a vaccine for which the [FDA] has not granted full approval.” Such measures have led to debates over the precise nature of the legal differences between the two types of vaccines — and whether FDA approval should legally be a limitation for vaccine mandates. R. Davis Younts, an attorney based in Lemoyne, Penn., who represents dozens of clients resisting vaccine mandates, said the government can’t compel people to take vaccines that have only been authorized under EUA.

“Government agencies do not have the legal authority to mandate any of the EUA vaccines,” Younts told Just the News. He explained how Section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requires that vaccine recipients must be informed of “the option to accept or refuse” the product. Younts, focusing on military personnel, added that, in order to make an EUA drug mandatory, the president must issue a waiver under a certain federal statute. That statute states, “Administration of a product authorized for emergency use under section 564 … to members of the armed forces” requires informed consent absent a determination by the president that “complying with such requirement is not in the interests of national security.”

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The guidance just changes every day, on the fly.

US Officials Recommend Shorter Covid Isolation, Quarantine (AP)

U.S. health officials on Monday cut isolation restrictions for asymptomatic Americans who catch the coronavirus from 10 to five days, and similarly shortened the time that close contacts need to quarantine. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said the guidance is in keeping with growing evidence that people with the coronavirus are most infectious in the two days before and three days after symptoms develop. The decision also was driven by a recent surge in COVID-19 cases, propelled by the omicron variant. Early research suggests omicron may cause milder illnesses than earlier versions of the coronavirus. But the sheer number of people becoming infected — and therefore having to isolate or quarantine — threatens to crush the ability of hospitals, airlines and other businesses to stay open, experts say.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the country is about to see a lot of omicron cases. “Not all of those cases are going to be severe. In fact many are going to be asymptomatic,” she told The Associated Press on Monday. “We want to make sure there is a mechanism by which we can safely continue to keep society functioning while following the science.” Last week, the agency loosened rules that previously called on health care workers to stay out of work for 10 days if they test positive. The new recommendations said workers could go back to work after seven days if they test negative and don’t have symptoms. And the agency said isolation time could be cut to five days, or even fewer, if there are severe staffing shortages.

Now, the CDC is changing the isolation and quarantine guidance for the general public to be even less stringent. The change is aimed at people who are not experiencing symptoms. People with symptoms during isolation, or who develop symptoms during quarantine, are encouraged to stay home. The CDC’s isolation and quarantine guidance has confused the public, and the new recommendations are “happening at a time when more people are testing positive for the first time and looking for guidance,” said Lindsay Wiley, an American University public health law expert. Nevertheless, the guidance continues to be complex.

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Must be Christmas.

NASA Hired 24 Theologians To Study Human Reaction To Aliens (NYP)

Between heaven and Earth, where do aliens fit in? That’s the question that NASA hopes theologians at the Center for Theological Inquiry (CTI) in Princeton, New Jersey, can answer, in a recent effort to understand how humans will react to news that intelligent life exists on other planets. University of Cambridge religious scholar Rev. Dr. Andrew Davison, who also holds a doctorate in biochemistry from Oxford, is one of the 24 theologians enlisted to help with the project, the Times UK reported last week. In a recent statement on the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity blog, Davison says his research so far has already seen “just how frequently theology-and-astrobiology has been topic in popular writing” during the previous 150 years.

Davison’s upcoming book, “Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine,” due out in 2022, according to the Times, will cover part of CTI and NASA’s joint spiritual exploration, in which his “most significant question” is how theologians would respond to the notion “of there having been many incarnations [of Christ]” in the universe, he added in the blog post. This is the latest dispatch to come in a partnership between the US space agency and the religious institute. In 2014, NASA awarded CTI a $1.1 million grant to study worshippers’ interest in and openness to scientific inquiry called the Societal Implications of Astrobiology study. Studies have shown links between religiosity and belief in extraterrestrial intelligence.

Research published in 2017 found that people with a strong desire to find meaning, but a low adherence to a particular religion, are more likely to believe aliens exist — indicating that faith in either theory may come from the same human impulse. With NASA’s support, CTI’s director Will Storrar said they’d hoped to see “serious scholarship being published in books and journals” to come out on the subject, answering to the “profound wonder and mystery and implication of finding microbial life on another planet.” According to the Times, Davison’s book notes that a “large number of people would turn to their religions traditions for guidance” if extraterrestrials were found, and what that means “for the standing and dignity of human life.”

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A virus so strong that it can get past 3 vaccines but can’t get past your paw patrol mask.

 

 

Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.
– George Orwell, 1984

 

 

Billy Connolly – Politically correct – Was it something I said?

 

 

Elon Musk- Bill

 

 

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Oct 282021
 
 October 28, 2021  Posted by at 7:19 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  74 Responses »


M. C. Escher Drawing hands1948

 

Fauci’s NIH Also Funded Medical Experiments on AIDS Orphans in NYC (GP)
Congress Didn’t Give OSHA Authority to Impose Vaccine Mandates (HF)
Japan Drops Vax Rollout, Goes To Ivermectin, Ends Covid Almost Overnight (HTRS)
Two Indian Drugmakers to End Trials of Generic Merck Pill (R.)
Minnesota Surgeon Fired After Saying Parents Should Decide On Kids’ Masks (JTN)
Instagram Censors Popular Animal Rescuer for Slamming Fauci (GP)
Revolt of the Essential Workers (Tab)
Biden’s Nominee Omarova Wants to Move All Bank Deposits to the Fed (Martens)
China Cannot Offset Its Property Bubble Easily (Lacalle)
EU Fines Poland €1 Million Per Day Over Judicial Reforms (DW)
Pfizer Vaccine To Lower Child Deaths From Almost Zero To Almost Zero (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Wait, so we can’t use Ivermectin because “We don’t have enough data,” But..
“Let’s vaccinate children to see how safe the vaccine is because we don’t have enough data.”

 

 

Tucker FDA
https://twitter.com/i/status/1453180072937107456

 

 

 

 

Such a fine man.

Fauci’s NIH Also Funded Medical Experiments on AIDS Orphans in NYC (GP)

In August Gateway Pundit contributor Cassandra Fairbanks broke the story on Dr. Fauci’s use of taxpayer money to torture beagles in barbaric animal testing. Dr. Fauci funded a study in Tunisia where beagle dogs were eaten alive by parasite-infected flies. Dr. Fauci also spent over $16 million in taxpayer funds on disturbing “toxic brain injection” experiments on monkeys in 2018. And Dr. Fauci was more recently caught funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China laboratory blamed for the production and leak of the coronavirus. Fauci lied about his funding of the lab under oath numerous times. Now this… Dr. Fauci’s NIH was also caught funding experiments on AIDS orphans at a New York City hospital in 2004.

The Fauci NIH approved experiments on hundreds of New York City orphans. Government agencies and pharmaceutical companies used the orphans in deadly AIDS drug trials. In 2005, the city of New York hired the VERA Institute to form a final report on the drug trials. VERA was given no access to medical records for any of the children used in trials. Their report was published in 2008. They reported that twenty-five children died during the drug studies, that an additional fifty-five children died following the studies (in foster care), and, according to Tim Ross, Director of the Child Welfare program at VERA (as of 2009), 29% of the remaining 417 children who were used in drug studies had died (out of a total 532 children that are admitted to have been used). [LINK]

The WIKIPEDIA writers cover up all details, as is expected. No payment or compensation has been paid to any of the children used in the trials, or to their families. A hospital nurse later spoke out to reporters about the testing. She reported that children would immediately get sick, break out or throw up during the testing. They were orphans at the Incarnation Children’s Center in New York City. The ICC Investigation website offers several documents and interviews with children and childcare workers at the hospital who participated in the research.

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“OSHA will issue the order. And then get sued.”

Congress Didn’t Give OSHA Authority to Impose Vaccine Mandates (HF)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is about to require 80 million working Americans to get vaccinated. You may be among them. There’s just one catch: OSHA lacks the legal authority to impose a vaccine mandate. Declaring that his patience was “wearing thin” with unvaccinated Americans, President Joe Biden on Sept. 9 announced that OSHA would require companies with at least 100 employees to mandate that workers either get vaccinated or submit to weekly COVID-19 tests. OSHA sent a draft mandate to the White House on Oct. 8. Once the White House completes its review, OSHA will issue the order. And then get sued. As we detail in our legal analysis, the courts will almost certainly strike down the OSHA vaccine mandate. Here are a few reasons why:

Congress did not place vaccines within OSHA’s purview. OSHA is establishing the vaccine mandate through an “emergency temporary standard.” This highly unusual process allows OSHA to bypass public notice and comment. Federal agencies, including OSHA, typically must submit major rules to public scrutiny before finalizing them. To take the “emergency temporary standard” shortcut, the agency must persuade a court that workers are in “grave danger” and that it is “necessary” to protect them against that danger. The “grave danger” that an emergency temporary standard must address must come from “exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or new hazards.” A toxic substance or agent is a poisonous element or compound. A substance or agent can be “physically harmful” because it is flammable, explosive, or carcinogenic.

The danger a virus causes, by contrast, derives from its ability to replicate within a living organism. Congress created OSHA to promote workplace safety. OSHA inspectors look for hazards that can potentially harm employees, such as improperly stored chemicals, inadequately lighted or ventilated workstations, or lack of protective equipment (e.g., gloves and hard hats). Vaccines against viruses are an entirely different form of protection and are beyond the scope of OSHA’s mandate. Congress tasked the Department of Health and Human Services with determining the safety, efficacy, and appropriate use of vaccines. Congress authorized the Food and Drug Administration to determine whether vaccines should be allowed in interstate commerce. It empowered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend who should receive such vaccines. Both agencies are within HHS. OSHA resides in the Department of Labor. Congress has given neither OSHA nor the Labor Department authority over vaccines.

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Are US, EU even studying this?

Japan Drops Vax Rollout, Goes To Ivermectin, Ends Covid Almost Overnight (HTRS)

The European Medicines Agency said Thursday that new preliminary data from the Nordic countries supports a warning the agency adopted in July that inflammatory heart conditions called myocarditis and pericarditis can occur in very rare cases following vaccination with Covid-19 shots made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. By far, however, the absolute superstar among foreign nations dealing with COVID is Japan. Japan has PULLED the vaccines and substituted Ivermectin – and in one month, wiped COVID out in that country! [..] By September deaths from the COVID-19 Vaccine jabs were being investigated. At roughly that time, the vials were under scrutiny and metal “magnetic” material was found in them.


Very shortly thereafter, the Japanese minister of health announced doctors could prescribe Ivermectin. A month later, the Western press is shocked that COVID has all but disappeared from the island. [..] This is what it looks like in a country that still has rule of law. The governemnt responds to reports of death and contaminated vaxes, moves to real treatment, people get better, and the virus disappears. Now compare that to what is happening in the United States and in Australia and New Zealand. All three countries are in dismal failure in their handling of COVID-19, and that failure has resulted in staggering loss of freedom and destruction of commerce. This is the biggest news story right now Japan has ended COVID. It did it after it stopped the vax rollout and went to Ivermectin.

Rogan IVM

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Why do they call it generic?

Two Indian Drugmakers to End Trials of Generic Merck Pill (R.)

Two Indian drugmakers have requested permission to end late-stage trials of their generic versions of Merck & Co’s promising experimental oral antiviral drug molnupiravir to treat moderate COVID-19, a week after Merck said its own trial had succeeded for mild-to-moderate patients. Merck earlier this year suspended its own development of molnupiravir as a treatment for hospitalized COVID-19 patients since many of them have reached a phase of the disease that is too late for an antiviral drug to provide much help. The Indian companies – Aurobindo Pharma Ltd and MSN Laboratories – did not exclude hospitalized patients in designing their moderate COVID-19 trials, according to study documents, although it was not known if the trials ultimately included people in the hospital.

Merck spokesperson Melissa Moody said Merck and the Indian companies had defined “moderate” disease differently. Merck’s trials are based on U.S. Food and Drug Administration definitions, which for moderate COVID-19 describe blood oxygen levels as no lower than 93%. It defines blood oxygen levels for severe COVID-19 as 93% or lower. The trials in India define moderate COVID-19 blood oxygen levels as 90% to 93%, according to the trial documents for the two companies.Aurobindo and MSN are continuing to conduct studies of molnupiravir in patients with mild COVID-19 who have not been hospitalized, according to trial documents and the website of the Indian drug regulator’s internal expert committee.

Merck and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics last week said molnupiravir had nearly halved the risk of hospitalization or death in at-risk non-hospitalized patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19, results hailed by experts as potentially a major advance in fight against the illness. The Indian drug regulator’s committee also disclosed on its website that Aurobindo and MSN had presented interim clinical trial data for moderate COVID-19 patients and asked to end the trials.

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“.. it’s still their responsibility. It’s not yours. God gave it to them. Honor their wishes, either side of the fence.”

Minnesota Surgeon Fired After Saying Parents Should Decide On Kids’ Masks (JTN)

A Minnesota surgeon was fired from his job earlier this month for giving a speech to school officials in which he advocated for parents to decide whether their children should wear masks. According to Fox News, Dr. Jeffrey Horak spoke before the Fergus Falls School Board on Oct. 11, arguing that parents should have the final decision concerning the health of their children. Dr. Horak’s comments were in response to a district-wide mask mandate that went into effect the day prior. “Who does God put in charge of these kids? Their parents,” Horak said during the meeting. “God gave each one of these kids… to their parents and they speak for them. They may be wrong, they may be dumb, they may be perfect in their decisions. But it’s still their responsibility. It’s not yours. God gave it to them. Honor their wishes, either side of the fence.”


Horak reportedly said that more than a week later, he was dismissed from his position at Lake Region Healthcare because his “views were no longer congruent” with that of the hospital. A spokesperson for Lake Region confirmed that Horak no longer works there as of Wednesday. The spokesperson went on to say that Lake Region’s didn’t make the decision concerning Horak’s employment, rather it was the “Medical Group Board who made the decision about discontinuing Dr. Horak’s practice.”

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Fauci is a protected species.

Instagram Censors Popular Animal Rescuer for Slamming Fauci (GP)

Instagram has censored the founder of SPARTN Monkey Rescue for blasting Dr. Anthony Fauci over experimental COVID vaccines being injected into sanctuary primates. Michael Robison, a primate expert and rescuer, had stated that Fauci “just helped fund a $37M experimental vaccine trial on 77 chimps via a partnership with Zoetis/Pfizer at a Georgia sanctuary!” “Chimps that were rescued from this mess and other abuse… are now part of the largest animal testing trial in history at his guidance,” Robison continued. Robison added that the use of the experimental vaccines in these rescued primates is a violation of the Endangered Species Act and the CHIMPS Act, both of which are federal laws, “for a version of the vaccine meant for kids!”

The comments were flagged by Instagram for possibly “containing racist language or other content that goes against our community guidelines.” Robison is a well-respected rescuer who has developed quite a following on social media for his charming videos of monkeys and other animals that he has saved. Robison was also recently censored on Twitter for speaking out about his own regrets about getting the vaccine after suffering severe side effects — making his desire to defend the chimps even more urgent. As Gateway Pundit previously reported, one of the largest vaccine testing trials in history will be taking place at Project Chimps — a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals allied “sanctuary” for great apes. Project Chimps was founded in 2014 following the end of National Institutes of Health funding for biomedical research on these animals.

“About 70% of the chimpanzees at Project Chimps have been trained to receive voluntary injections, and the staff is working on preparing the rest,” Science Magazine reports. The nonhuman COVID-19 vaccine was created by Zoetis, a U.S. company that was originally the animal division of Pfizer. It has only been authorized for experimental use in animals. Testing experimental vaccines on these chimps, many of whom were already used for animal research in the past, does appear to be a direct violation of the Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Management and Protection (CHIMP) Act and the Endangered Species Act. Under the CHIMP Act, which passed in 2007, chimpanzees that are retired from biomedical research are prohibited from being returned to laboratories or used for experimentation.

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Wishful thinking. They don’t even protest a jab for their kids.

Revolt of the Essential Workers (Tab)

Back before the COVID-19 pandemic started, the year 2019 saw anti-government demonstrations in Paris, Manila, La Paz, Port-au-Prince, Bogotá, Prague, Quito , Beirut, Hong Kong, London, Baghdad, Barcelona, Budapest, Santiago, New Delhi, Jakarta, Buenos Aires and more, earning the title “the year of the protest.” It was also a year of resurgent labor activity in the United States. After decades of declining union participation, the country saw 25 major work stoppages involving 425,500 workers, the highest number since 2001.

The economic discontent that propelled both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders to popularity had been building for many years. As a recent article in the journal American Affairs noted, $34 trillion of real equity wealth, in 2017 dollars, was created between 1989 and 2017. Nearly half that sum (44%) consisted of a reallocation of corporate equity to shareholders at the expense of worker compensation, while economic growth accounted for just 25% of that increase in wealth. In other words, despite the advent of seemingly near-miraculous, time- and space-saving digital technologies, the post-Cold War “economic boom” consisted mainly of America’s wealthy shareholders taking money from its increasingly insecure workforce.

America, and other Western societies, had moved from a model of real growth and expanding benefits for all to a model where the rich got richer by impoverishing the less wealthy orders of society—and the lower orders were fighting back. However, after lockdowns were imposed in March 2020, the balance of power abruptly shifted back toward billionaire oligarchs and large corporations. Tech-based U.S. monopolies widened their profit margins as workers and their children were confined to their homes and the Fed pumped money into Wall Street. As the Fed provided unlimited purchases of corporate debt and securities, millions of people filed for unemployment, nearly 1 in 4 households experienced food insecurity, and 200,000 small businesses closed. The result was an estimated loss of $1.3 trillion in household wealth for American workers. Meanwhile, U.S. billionaires gained $1 trillion.

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Have nothing and be happy.

Biden’s Nominee Omarova Wants to Move All Bank Deposits to the Fed (Martens)

This month, the Vanderbilt Law Review published a 69-page paper by Saule Omarova, President Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal regulator of the largest banks in the country that operate across state lines. The paper is titled “The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy.” The paper, in all seriousness, proposes the following: (1) Moving all commercial bank deposits from commercial banks to so-called FedAccounts at the Federal Reserve; (2) Allowing the Fed, in “extreme and rare circumstances, when the Fed is unable to control inflation by raising interest rates,” to confiscate deposits from these FedAccounts in order to tighten monetary policy;

(3) Allowing the most Wall Street-conflicted regional Fed bank in the country, the New York Fed, when there are “rises in market value at rates suggestive of a bubble trend,” such as with technology stocks today, to “short these securities, thereby putting downward pressure on their prices”; (4) Eliminate the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that insures bank deposits; (5) Consolidate all bank regulatory functions at the OCC – which Omarova has been nominated to head. Republican Senator Pat Toomey has been running a Red Scare campaign against Omarova, who was born in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (now Kazakhstan) and attended Moscow State University on a Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship.

The real threat that Omarova poses to U.S. financial stability, that Democrats should be calling out, is that she wants to further concentrate all major aspects of the U.S. banking system in the hands of the Federal Reserve, a captured regulator whose 12 regional bank tentacles are, literally, owned by the banks. Omarova offers not one scintilla of a suggestion about restructuring the Fed so that it is not owned by or controlled by the banks. In her paper, Omarova characterizes the current relationship between the Fed and the banks as the Fed running a “franchisor ledger” to assist its franchisee-banks.

But as the Fed’s secret $29 trillion bailout of the mega banks on Wall Street and their foreign derivative counterparties proved following the financial crash in 2008, it’s actually the banks that are cracking the whip and the Fed amicably doing their bidding. That means that the mega banks are the franchisor and they’ve shifted their faux bank examinations and faux stress tests to the Fed, for appearances sake. This point is further demonstrated by the fact that during the Fed’s 2007-2010 bailouts, most of the Fed’s emergency lending programs were farmed out in no-bid contracts to the very banks being bailed out. JPMorgan Chase, a five-count felon, continues to have a contract with the Fed to serve as custodian of more than $2 trillion of the Fed’s agency Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS).

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“..four times larger than China’s GDP.”

China Cannot Offset Its Property Bubble Easily (Lacalle)

No economy has been able to ignore a property bubble and, even less so, offset it and continue to grow, replacing the bust of the real estate sector with other parts of the economy. Heavily regulated economies from Iceland to Spain have failed to contain the negative impact of a real estate sector collapse. It will not be different in China. China has three real estate problems: the massive size of the sector, its excessive leverage, and the amount of developer debt in the hands of average households and retail investors. According to China researcher George Magnus, writing in The Guardian, “China’s real estate market has been called the most important sector in the world economy. Valued at about $55tn, it is now twice the size of its U.S. equivalent, and four times larger than China’s GDP.”

Considering construction and other real estate services, the sector accounts for more than 25 percent of China’s GDP. Just to consider other previous examples of property bubbles, the average size of the sector was somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of a country’s GDP. And none of those economies managed the excess of the property sector. Of course, the problem of a real estate bubble is always excessive leverage. Developers take on too much debt, and the smallest decrease in housing prices makes their equity vanish and their solvency ratios collapse. In the case of China, the level of debt is simply staggering. According to the Financial Times, the ratio of net debt of 19 of the largest Chinese developers stands at over 60 percent to equity. Evergrande is not even the most indebted.

Two developers stand at more than 120 percent net gearing. The top 10 most indebted Chinese developers amply surpass the level of debt-to-assets that made Spain’s Martinsa-Fadesa collapse. Chinese and foreign retail investors are also heavily exposed to the real estate and construction market. Evergrande was the biggest issuer of commercial paper, and developers’ debt was sold to small investors in different packages. Furthermore, Chinese families have around 78 percent of their wealth tied up in property, more than double the United States, according to a 2018 report by Chengdu’s Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and China Guangfa Bank.

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Bully. All your base are belong to us.

EU Fines Poland €1 Million Per Day Over Judicial Reforms (DW)

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ordered Poland to pay a fine of €1 million ($1.2 million) per day on Wednesday over its decision to ignore an EU ruling on Warsaw’s judicial reforms. The top EU court imposed the penalty as Poland has not suspended the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court. The ECJ had ruled in July that the chamber did not guarantee impartiality. The ECJ said in a press release the fine was “necessary in order to avoid serious and irreparable harm to the legal order of the European Union and to the values on which that Union is founded, in particular that of the rule of law.” The European Commission had requested “financial penalties” be levied on September 9 after Poland failed to comply with the July ruling. On Twitter, Poland’s Deputy Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta called the fine “usurpation and blackmail.”


The disciplinary chamber was set up in 2018 and is able to dismiss judges and prosecutors. The ECJ fears this could be abused to inflict punitive sanctions on those who show independence in not bowing to political will. Earlier this month, Poland’s constitutional court ruled Polish law supersedes EU law when there is a conflict between the two. Last week, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told the European Parliament the disciplinary chamber will be abolished, but he gave no timeline for when that would occur and no draft law has been introduced. Poland has been accused of backsliding when it comes to the independence of the judiciary and press freedom by other EU member states. The EU asserts Poland has politicized the judiciary with the placement of judges loyal to the ruling Law and Justice Party.

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“We’re excited to start giving it to them so we can find out.”

Pfizer Vaccine To Lower Child Deaths From Almost Zero To Almost Zero (BBee)

In a moment celebrated by all hard-working lobbyists, Pfizer announced that the COVID-19 vaccine will reduce average daily child COVID deaths from almost zero all the way down to almost zero. “These are phenomenal results. Our internal studies have proven a microscopic benefit to an even more microscopic risk to children,” stated Dee Pimbly, head of Pfizer’s Department of Propaganda to a crowd of journalists who have not allowed their own children to bask in the warm glow of sunlight, or interact with other children for almost no reason whatsoever.


FDA officials praised Pfizer for fighting a virus that is the leading killer of children after cancer, vehicular accidents, suicide, heart disease, drowning, suffocation, the flu, meteors from space, and slipping on a banana peel. Experts say the vaccine will probably kill more kids than it saves, but it’s ok because science. When asked about any safety concerns, an FDA official replied, “We’re excited to start giving it to them so we can find out.”

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


Salvador Dali City of drawers – The Anthropomorphic Cabinet 1936

 

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

 

 

October 15

 

 

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

 

 

The minus number is a nice detail.

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

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


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

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


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

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

But still you say they are unrelated?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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VanDen Bossche warned us.

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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Also an expert on immigration.

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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The Testimonies Project.

The Israeli Face Of Pain After Pfizer Shots (Farber)

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

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Your future.

How Democray Ends (Prasad)

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

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

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

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

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

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Brexit squared.

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

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

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

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

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She wants more censorship.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pandora Papers (RT)

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

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

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

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Australia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Oct 022021
 
 October 2, 2021  Posted by at 7:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  61 Responses »


M. C. Escher The Tower of Babel 1928

 

Molnupiravir: Coding For Catastrophe (Nature)
Molnupiravir Faces Execution Obstacles (CTA)
The Vaccine Death Report (Zelenko et al)
You CAN’T Use ‘Cases’ (Denninger)
In a Dark Wood (Kunstler)
Hospitals Should Hire, Not Fire, Nurses with Natural Immunity (Kulldorff)
72% Of Black NYC Residents Are Banned From Entering Restaurants (Fed.)
Fauci Confronted About CDC Claims About “Breakthrough” Infections (ZH)
Myocarditis in VAERS Linked To Covid-19 Injectable Biological Products (SD)
Fully Vaccinated Harvard Business School Shuts Down After Covid Outbreak (TE)
Newsom Makes Vaccines Mandatory For All School Children In California (PM)
Supreme Court Rejects NYC Teachers’ Request To Stop Vaccine Mandate (JTN)
The Looming Energy Crisis: People Are Going To Die This Winter (Blain)
The US Found A ‘Lawful’ Way To Disappear Assange (Cook)

 

 

Pierre Kory:

Merck’s news today is great since patients will have early Rx but also sad given the high cost and lives lost compared to IVM.

Molnupiravir=47% reduction in hospitalization/death while IVM=88% reduction.

 

 

Delta?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1443988637503348737

 

 

Palast

 

 

Published: 13 September 2021

Molnupiravir: Coding For Catastrophe (Nature)

Molnupiravir, a wide-spectrum antiviral that is currently in phase 2/3 clinical trials for the treatment of COVID-19, is proposed to inhibit viral replication by a mechanism known as ‘lethal mutagenesis’. Two recently published studies reveal the biochemical and structural bases of how molnupiravir disrupts the fidelity of SARS-CoV-2 genome replication and prevents viral propagation by fostering error accumulation in a process referred to as ‘error catastrophe’. Despite the reprieve from COVID-19 granted by vaccination programs, SARS-CoV-2 continues to ravage many communities worldwide. Vaccine shortages, public hesitancy and the emergence of new virus variants have hindered public health efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19.


Furthermore, SARS-CoV-2 is likely to become endemic1, leading to the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants and reinforcing the need to develop antiviral therapeutic agents. Molnupiravir (MK-4482, EIDD-2801) is a candidate antiviral that inhibits viral propagation through lethal mutagenesis by introducing errors in the viral genome. The biochemical and structural basis of how molnupiravir induces lethal mutagenesis has remained largely unexplored. Recently, Götte and colleagues reported biochemical results exploring the antiviral activity of molnupiravir and provided a compelling model to explain the mutagenic patterns observed in coronaviruses exposed to molnupiravir in cell culture2. In this issue of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Cramer and colleagues further our understanding of this process by providing biochemical and structural data that reveal how molnupiravir introduces transition mutations into the SARS-CoV-2 genome. Together, the two studies offer complementary and comprehensive views of the mechanism of lethal mutagenesis and provide a platform for rational drug design.

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January 2021. “..molnupiravir could be metabolised into a precursor of DNA ..”

Molnupiravir Faces Execution Obstacles (CTA)

Ridgeback Biotherapeutics/Merck’s Phase IIa molnupiravir is attractive for outpatient and recently hospitalised Covid-19 patients due to its mechanism and oral administration, experts said. However, many trial success blind spots persist, limiting efficacy judgment, they added. Encouraging preclinical data is yet to translate into humans, and there is potential for lingering severe side effects due to molnupiravir’s mutagenic mechanism, experts noted. While targeting Covid-19 patients in the earlier part of the disease spectrum is logical, the trial designs may blur molnupiravir’s clinical value, they said. In July 2020, Miami, Florida-based Ridgeback and Merck announced they had partnered to advance molnupiravir in Covid-19.

[..]Comparing molnupiravir and Veklury may be inappropriate as they are intended for different patients, Brown added. Veklury is FDA approved in hospitalised patients, although it has a wider emergency use authorisation. Even if molnupiravir is only as potent as Veklury, its oral formulation will boost its clinical value, as it could be used by more people, Shafer said. As much as 80% of all Covid-19 cases are either asymptomatic or mild, with only 20% of patients sick enough to be hospitalised, added Dr Yvonne Maldonado, professor, infectious diseases in pediatrics and health research and policy, Stanford University, California, and a Phase II Avigan trial investigator in asymptomatic or mild Covid-19 patients. Another oral Covid-19 therapy under investigation is Fujifilm Toyama Chemical’s Avigan (favirpiravir), which is also an oral mutagen, Shafer said, but added Avigan’s preclinical and clinical data in Covid-19 are underwhelming so far.

Due to limited data with highly active viral mutagens like molnupiravir, there is concern its mechanism would negatively impact the host, leading to side effects, Swanstrom said. When considering widespread deployment, toxicity is a major issue, said Dr Saye Khoo, professor, pharmacology and therapeutics, University of Liverpool, UK. How it is utilised will depend on its overall toxicity data, added Khoo, who is studying molnupiravir in a Phase I/II basket trial investigating various Covid-19 treatments.

Side effect concerns have been raised about whether molnupiravir could be metabolised into a precursor of DNA, Swanstrom said, explaining it could enter the host cell nucleus, leading to oncogenesis. Mitochondrial toxicity with such a mechanism has been raised in previous investigations in hepatitis B and HIV, added an investigator in a Covid-19 trial recruiting outpatients and recently hospitalised patients. In the 20-day Phase I molnupiravir trial recruiting healthy volunteers, 93.3% of adverse events were mild, with one patient discontinuing due to rash (Painter, W., et al., Medrxiv. 14 December. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.10.20235747).

Molnupiravir is only used in the short term, twice-daily for five days, as opposed to chronic use, Shafer added. Polymerase inhibitor side effects have improved over the years, and while mutagen side effects were a concern in early development in HIV, they have eased in available hepatitis treatments, Brown added. However, due to the need for longer-term safety data, molnupiravir may be limited to patients at high risk of developing severe disease, Swanstrom said.

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“..the British Office for National Statistics inadvertently revealed that 30,305 people have died within 21 days of having the injection, during the first 6 months of 2021.”

The Vaccine Death Report (Zelenko et al)

In The Netherlands, one of the smallest nations in the European Union, an extraparliamentary research commitee set up a platform for citizens to report vaccine adverse events. This is no initiative from the government and has received no attention whatsoever in the media. The vast majority of the Dutch population is therefore unaware of its existence. Yet, dispite its narrow scope of influence, this private initiative has already received reports of 1,600 deaths and 1,200 health damages, often permanently disabling the people. 3 What if the entire vaccinated population knew about this platform and filed a report? And what if this was also available in the other E.U. countries, that are much larger than The Netherlands?

UK: Shortly before the national vaccination campaign started, the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) published the following request: ‘The MHRA urgently seeks an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software tool to process the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction (ADRs) and ensure that no details from the ADRs’ reaction text are missed.’ The British government published a report of the first series of adverse events, including blindness, strokes, miscarriages, heart failure, paralysis, auto immune disease, and more. Shortly after the first wave of immunization over 100,000 adverse events were reported, including 1260 cases of loss of eyesight (including total blindness). The first part of the report praises the vaccines to be the best way to protect people from COVID-19, and then continues to show the incredible destruction these vaccines are causing. The hypocrisy is mindboggling. Also in the United Kingdom the number of miscarriages increased by 366% in only six weeks, for vaccinated mothers.

Furthermore the British Office for National Statistics inadvertently revealed that 30,305 people have died within 21 days of having the injection, during the first 6 months of 2021. And a British scientist with 35 years of experience did an in depth analysis of the British Yellow Card reporting system and found it to be unreliable. ‘We can conclude that the Yellow Card reporting scheme can provide some limited information that may be useful for alerting the UK public to possible adverse effects of the COVID-19 vaccines. However, the initial conception of the scheme as a purely descriptive rather than as an experimental undertaking means that it cannot address the real issues that are of crucial importance to the UK public. These issues are whether there are causal relationships between vaccination with the PF and AZ vaccines and serious adverse effects such as death, and if so, what are the size of these effects.’

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3 more months of PCR in the US. And what then?

You CAN’T Use ‘Cases’ (Denninger)

Not one lab has ever returned Ct numbers to the tested person. Not even in Florida, where DeSantis issued an Executive Order requiring it. Was there ever any enforcement of that? No. Why did we know this was entirely bogus? Simple: On the CDC’s own math the fall surge — which turned into the Winter Disaster — was epidemiologically impossible. Specifically, look at their mean ratio of infections to case counts and you see the problem; at 6x enough people had the virus for there be no surge. But there was. By the summer this was even more beclowned as on that same data everyone had been infected. But…. there was a surge. Do remember the admitted truth on PCR: A Ct test of 35 or more almost never results in culturable virus.


It breaks down something like this:
Ct<20 = Nearly always you can culture virus.
Ct25 = 50 – 70% of the time you can culture virus.
Ct30 = ~25-30% of the time you can culture virus.
Ct35 = ~4-8% of the time you can culture virus.
Ct40 = Statistically never can you culture virus.

Why is this important? Many people have claimed that viral debris from your infection still means you had it, thus, positive is positive. Nope. This is the worst sort of fraud. At very high Ct numbers the debris could be from contamination at the lab, or between samples. But it could also be from your prior, non-Covid-19 immunity and anyone who is even slightly competent in understanding the immune system knows it. The virus enters through the nose and mouth. The upper respiratory tract is where it first gets into cells — if it gets into cells. Your body has a bevvy of defensive mechanisms to prevent that from happening. Remember that unlike bacteria a virus cannot replicate outside of a living cell. The mucosa in your mouth and nose is not alive. The cells under it are, but it is not.

So if a virus lands in your nose but never gets through the mucosa it will register positive on a PCR test — because it is positive — if the Ct is cranked up high enough. Technically you “got” the virus (you “caught” it) but you were never infected. It is certainly true that some of the people who are “positive” with high Ct numbers are infected and you got them “early”; they will go on to have clinical disease and, if you test them again you will get another positive in a day or two with a much lower Ct. But nobody does that. In addition exactly zero health departments have validated their claimed “infected” counts by coming back to those people with a $5 antibody test two weeks later and looking for IgA, IgM and/or IgG antibodies. IgA may be present and both IgM and likely a weak read of IgG will be present if the person was actually infected at that time. If only IgG is present that infection was not Covid-19; they previously were infected and you lied; their body beat off the incipient infection without impact.

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“..large numbers of health care workers getting kicked out of their jobs will only make it more difficult to care for patients..”

In a Dark Wood (Kunstler)

In upstate New York, WNYT-TV reported yesterday that 200 employees of Albany Med, a large, regional teaching hospital, are placed on seven day’s unpaid leave prior to getting fired for refusing the vaccine. Andrew Cuomo’s replacement, new Governor Kathy Hochul, has blocked unemployment benefits for fired nurses and technicians if they persist in evading the vax. Doctors are included in the mix, too. Of course, large numbers of health care workers getting kicked out of their jobs will only make it more difficult to care for patients — with Covid or any other health problem — so how does this policy help anyone? (Unless you consider that, with fewer staff on-duty, fewer Covid in-patients will be subjected to the medical malpractice of being placed on ventilators and treated with the killer drug Remdesivir.)


Not only has effective early treatment with other drugs been banned from the official medical standards-of-practice across the USA, but mere talk about it has been banned, notably by Google’s YouTube app. This coercion of health care workers is going on all over the country, of course, not just in New York state. These nurses and techs have been working around Covid patients for going on two years, and many of them have gotten the disease, with symptoms or without, conferring natural immunity. So, what is the point of forcing the vaxes on them? It is also a fact that vaccinated people are susceptible to catching the disease, and that, in any case, the vaccinated carry heavier viral loads than the un-vaxed, making them more efficient spreaders. It is also a fact that mass vaccination in the midst of a pandemic promotes the mutation of new variant viruses that increasingly are not affected by the vaccines.

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“By instituting vaccine mandates, university hospitals are now also questioning the existence of natural immunity after Covid disease. This is astonishing.”

Hospitals Should Hire, Not Fire, Nurses with Natural Immunity (Kulldorff)

Among many surprising developments during this pandemic, the most stunning has been the questioning of naturally acquired immunity after a person has had the Covid disease. We have understood natural immunity since at least the Athenian Plague in 430 BC. Here is Thucydides: ‘Yet it was with those who had recovered from the disease that the sick and the dying found most compassion. These knew what it was from experience and had no fear for themselves; for the same man was never attacked twice—never at least fatally.’ – Thucydides We have lived with endemic coronaviruses for at least a hundred years, for which we have long-lasting natural immunity. As expected, we also have natural immunity after Covid-19 disease, as there have been exceedingly few reinfections with serious illness or death, despite a widely circulating virus.

For most viruses, natural immunity is better than vaccine-induced immunity, and that is also true for Covid. In the best study to date, the vaccinated were around 27 times more likely to have symptomatic disease than those with natural immunity, with an estimated range between 13 and 57. With no Covid deaths in either group, both natural and vaccine immunity protect well against death. During the last decade, I have worked closely with hospital epidemiologists. While the role of physicians is to treat patients and make them well, the task of the hospital epidemiologist is to ensure that patients do not get sick while in the hospital, such as catching a deadly virus from another patient or a caretaker. For that purpose, hospitals employ a variety of measures, from frequent hand washing to full infection control regalia when caring for an Ebola patient.

Vaccinations are a key component of these control efforts. For example, two weeks before spleen surgery, patients are given the pneumococcal vaccine to minimize postoperative infections, and most clinical staff are immunized against influenza every year. Infection control measures are especially critical for older frail hospital patients with a weakened immune system. They can become infected and die from a virus that most people would easily survive. A key rationale for immunizing nurses and physicians against influenza is to ensure that they do not infect such patients. How can hospitals best protect their patients from Covid disease? It is an enormously important question, also relevant for nursing homes. There are some obvious standard solutions, such as separating Covid patients from other patients, minimizing staff rotation, and providing generous sick leave for staff with Covid-like symptoms.

Another goal should be to employ staff with the strongest possible immunity against Covid, as they are less likely to catch it and spread it to their patients. This means that hospitals and nursing homes should actively seek to hire staff that have natural immunity from prior Covid disease and use such staff for their most vulnerable patients. Hence, we are now seeing a fierce competition where hospitals and nursing homes are desperately trying to hire people with natural immunity. Well, actually, not. Instead, hospitals are firing nurses and other staff with superior natural immunity while retaining those with weaker vaccine-induced immunity. By doing so, they are betraying their patients, increasing their risk for hospital-acquired infections.

By pushing vaccine mandates, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci is questioning the existence of natural immunity after Covid disease. In doing so, he is following the lead of CDC director Rochelle Walensky, who questioned natural immunity in a 2020 Memorandum published by The Lancet. By instituting vaccine mandates, university hospitals are now also questioning the existence of natural immunity after Covid disease. This is astonishing.

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“Most of the time, the changes they made hurt blacks more than whites, but that’s beside the point; in liberalism, it’s the effort that counts.”

72% Of Black NYC Residents Are Banned From Entering Restaurants (Fed.)

Democrats’ summer of Black Lives Matter is over. Front-line nurses’ year in the sun has passed. Gone are the COVID cries to evict no one ever for any reason at all. Disparate impact? Never heard of her. It’s 2021 now; we’ve advanced. These aren’t simple proclamations. Go and read a newspaper from September 2020, and then glance at one from this past month. The political debates are nearly unrecognizable, it’s almost impossible to believe that the same people were often making both policies. New York City is a leader in world liberalism. For years — and especially since May 2020 — its politicians have mangled their schools, their parks, their police force, and their courts, all in the name of fighting racism. Most of the time, the changes they made hurt blacks more than whites, but that’s beside the point; in liberalism, it’s the effort that counts.

New York City is also a leader of the world’s COVID cult. New Gov. Kathy Hochul says that if you want to serve God, you must receive the sacrament of vaccination. Mayor Bill de Blasio has decreed that all restaurants must see proof of vaccination before service. There’s the snag: Today in New York City, roughly 72 percent of black residents aged 18-44 have not taken the novel vaccine, meaning now roughly 72 percent of black residents aged 18-44 are banned — banned — from entering dining establishments. Statewide, 53 percent of black residents aren’t vaccinated, compared to only 44 percent of white residents who have declined the shots; yet this week, the state’s governor announced she would use the powers of this unending emergency to fire and replace as many as 72,000 health workers for refusing the vaccine.

In New York City, health-care workers were lauded as both heroes and COVID experts just weeks ago. Most of those workers are women, a plurality are black, and now, thousands of them might be out of jobs. The hospital system never collapsed due to COVID, but it might collapse due to Hochul’s measures to fight it. New York City is not alone in reversing course: Down south in Florida earlier this month, one apartment owner promised to evict any tenants who decline the vaccine. It’s unsafe to be near the unclean, he said. So black mother Jasmine Erby and her two children were given the boot. “There was no loophole, no working with me, no extensions and I literally had to walk away,” Irby told Fox News. “It was either get the shot or get out.”

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“.. the CDC doesn’t even track the breakthrough infections so how do we know that they’re only a small portion and that they’re relatively mild?”

Fauci Confronted About CDC Claims About “Breakthrough” Infections (ZH)

Finally, Eisen Hit Dr. Fauci with a surprise hard ball: She cited “data” collected within her own family, whereby three vaccinated people got COVID and immediately passed it on to two unvaccinated children. Eisen then suggested that the CDC might be “too casual” about breakthough infections, and also questioned “How can the CDC keep saying COVID “breakthrough” infections are rare if they have no data?” To this, Dr. Fauci replied that the CDC is scrambling to change this, and even hinted that more data on the true rate of breakthrough infections would likely soon arrive. “Three vaccinated people got Covid in my house two unvaccinated children got it…are you too casual about the limitations of the vaccine? It seems to me these breakthroughs are happening and they’re happening regularly. You can get it and transmit it and the government hasn’t been warning about that,” Eisen said.

“Oh yes we have and let me get you the facts. If you are an unvaccinated person you have 11x the likelihood of hospitalization…if you look at the people who have died from COVID-19, overwhelmingly they have been unvaccinated,” Dr Fauci Fauci adds that “over 90%” who have been unvaccinated – but of course that vast majority of deaths occurred before the vaccine rollout even started, making this statement slightly misleading. As for determining how many unvaccinated have died since the program began, it’s not exactly clear since this data wasn’t being tracked. Though deaths and hospitalizations have fallen since vaccination rates have risen, but there’s still many questions about whether the young and health actually benefit. Fortunately, CNBC released this clip.

As for the CDC tracking breakthrough infections, Eisen also pressed Dr. Fauci about the fact that “the CDC says on its website that infections occur among…unvaccinated…but the CDC doesn’t even track the breakthrough infections so how do we know that they’re only a small portion and that they’re relatively mild?” Dr. Fauci had nothing really to say to this except to admit she was of course correct while offering a flimsy excuse about the CDC working on it. “Well in the past the CDC has not tracked real or asymptomatic infections, but there are studies being done that would give the kind of data you’re talking about.” “And with the booster program we’re rolling out, we hope to see an improved effect. Israeli data have shown that when you give an at risk person a booster shot, they’re chances of being hospitalizations drop.”

The interview with a question from CNBC host Wilfred Frost about the risks of any future variants, to which Dr. Fauci responded with the typical fear-mongering. “I’ll give an answer that’s totally consistent with what I’ve said before, is the likelihood of seeing something worse…is completely in our own control…if we allow the virus to freely circulate, particularly among unvaccinated people, you give the virus a greater possibility of producing a variant that could create some trouble for our vaccines.” But overall, the interview makes clear: the media is starting to get curious about the growing reports of breakthrough infections of public officials like Brett Kavanaugh (whose diagnosis was announced today) to family members and friends. Whatever it is, the 90%+ rate they insist on seems increasingly like a stretch.

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JessicaRosePhD, MSc, BSc1; Peter A.McCulloughMD, MPH1

Myocarditis in VAERS Linked To Covid-19 Injectable Biological Products (SD)

Following the global rollout and administration of the Pfizer Inc./BioNTech BNT162b2 and Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccines on December 17, 2020, in the United States, and of the Janssen Ad26.COV2.S product on April 1st, 2021, in an unprecedented manner, hundreds of thousands of individuals have reported adverse events (AEs) using the Vaccine Adverse Events Reports System (VAERS). We used VAERS data to examine cardiac AEs, primarily myocarditis, reported following injection of the first or second dose of the COVID-19 injectable products. Myocarditis rates reported in VAERS were significantly higher in youths between the ages of 13 to 23 (p<0.0001) with 80% occurring in males.

Within 8 weeks of the public offering of COVID-19 products to the 12-15-year-old age group, we found 19 times the expected number of myocarditis cases in the vaccination volunteers over background myocarditis rates for this age group. In addition, a 5-fold increase in myocarditis rate was observed subsequent to dose 2 as opposed to dose 1 in 15-year-old males. A total of 67% of all cases occurred with BNT162b2. Of the total myocarditis AE reports, 6 individuals died (1.1%) and of these, 2 were under 20 years of age – 1 was 13. These findings suggest a markedly higher risk for myocarditis subsequent to COVID-19 injectable product use than for other known vaccines, and this is well above known background rates for myocarditis.

COVID-19 injectable products are novel and have a genetic, pathogenic mechanism of action causing uncontrolled expression of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein within human cells. When you combine this fact with the temporal relationship of AE occurrence and reporting, biological plausibility of cause and effect, and the fact that these data are internally and externally consistent with emerging sources of clinical data, it supports a conclusion that the COVID-19 biological products are deterministic for the myocarditis cases observed after injection.

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At least now we know where The Science does not live.

Fully Vaccinated Harvard Business School Shuts Down After Covid Outbreak (TE)

Harvard Business School (HBS) in Boston, Massachusetts has just experienced a large coronavirus outbreak despite more than 90 percent of students and staff being fully vaccinated. The school, which has a population of more than 1700 students, had a significant Covid-19 outbreak after cases started rising in September. This news comes as 95 percent of students and 96 percent of staff at the school being reported as fully vaccinated, yet this did not appear to stop Covid from making its way through those on campus. Two-thirds of all cases recorded in September came from students. A statement from the HBS said that Covid-19 cases among MBA students surged by 20 per cent in just three days.

Dean Srikant Datar of HBS said: “Our positivity rate is 12 times that of the rest of Harvard. These distressing figures are so high that they have attracted the scrutiny of local public health officials.” To avoid further scrutiny from the public and to preserve Harvard’s image, Datar and several of the university’s administrators have announced that teaching will be conducted online for almost all students until the end of October. This change affects almost all first-year and some second-year courses. This is one of the first instances of a major university halting in-person teaching due to Covid-19 outbreaks. The university made its decision after receiving advice from public health officials employed by the city and state.

HBS also announced that it will be increasing the number of Covid tests it forces upon students to three per week. Previously, the university’s requirement was for fully vaccinated students to get tested once per week and unvaccinated students to get tested twice per week. Mark Cautela, spokesman and head of communication for HBS, said in a statement that Harvard is also requesting students to avoid participating in social gatherings with anybody outside of their households and instead socialise with friends online.

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The Science has died.

Newsom Makes Vaccines Mandatory For All School Children In California (PM)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Friday that all California school children will be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19 as soon as soon as the FDA approval process is complete. “CA will require our kids to get the COVID-19 vaccine to come to school,” Newsom announced on Twitter. “This will go into effect following full FDA approval.” “Our schools already require vaccines for measles, mumps and more. Why? Because vaccines work.” “This is about keeping our kids safe & healthy,” the governor said. This is the first vaccine mandate for K-12 school children in the US. Currently, the FDA allows for children 12 years old and up to receive one of the COVID-19 vaccines which have been approved for use in the US. Teachers and staff will not be required to be vaccinated. Children are at substantially lower risk to COVID than any other demographic. While there have been concerns noted about the risks of vaccines for young people, the FDA has moved ahead with approvals, and is likely to approve lower doses for the under 11 age group.

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Headline is a little misleading. Sotomayor, on her own, decided the Court will not take up the case. There was no vote. Pass the hot potato?

You would think with all these mandates flying around, they should rule on the legality.

Supreme Court Rejects NYC Teachers’ Request To Stop Vaccine Mandate (JTN)

The Supreme Court on Friday declined to block New York City’s vaccine mandate for public schools following a petition brought by a group of teachers. According to The Hill, the group of New York City teachers asked for an emergency injunction on Thursday, following a lower court’s ruling that permitted the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate to take effect this coming Monday. The group argued that many teachers would lose their jobs if the Supreme Court didn’t intervene. Justice Sonia Sotomayor—who is responsible for emergency matters originating from New York—denied the request without comment.


According to USA Today, teachers had until 5 p.m. on Friday to provide proof of at least one shot of the vaccine. Failure to do so could result in suspension without pay or potential termination on Monday, Oct. 4. This marks the second time the court has refused to take up a vaccine mandate case. The first one was from a group of students who sued Indiana University over its vaccine requirements. Justice Amy Coney Barret rejected the student’s petition and declined their request for emergency relief. More lawsuits from teachers are expected [..]

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Nordstream 2.

The Looming Energy Crisis: People Are Going To Die This Winter (Blain)

For many months myself and many of the investors I work with have become increasingly concerned at the growing instability and insecurity of energy markets. The 4 times spike in Gas prices this year has been a shocking wake-up call, highlighting energy insecurity in Europe and particularly the UK. Gas prices will remain elevated for months to come. The consequences are going to be brutal – and fatal for some. Energy – whether derived from fossil fuels, nuclear or renewables – is a commodity and the critical thing about commodities is: “You can’t print commodities like you can print money. The rules are not the same,” says my good friend and head of commodities at Shard, Ashley Boolell. Commodities are volatile and dangerous. Oil has doubled in recent months. But the thing about Gold, Silver, Palladium and copper prices is; no matter how volatile they are, they are simply investment opportunities or traps, and are unlikely to kill us.

Energy is different. It can kill us. That was conclusively demonstrated earlier this year in Texas. A swift series of winter storms crashed the Texan grid when gas infrastructure failed in the cold, renewables weren’t delivering, and the deregulation of its energy system had delinked Texas from both US power Grids – making it difficult to import energy. Over 200 people died as a result of power outages. Fast forward to this winter, and the UK and Europe are in the direct firing line of the coming energy storm. The security of energy supplies has never looked less certain. In the UK, neglected storage means we have the capacity to story 3-4 days of Gas. The recent collapse in sterling has been linked to the panic over Petrol supplies, escalating and cascading supply chain failures impacting industry and growing woes blamed on Brexit. I would add questions about how the UK’s status as a first world economy with zero energy security will line up.

How has this happened? Why? Well… that’s a long tale… But, it will be mightily embarrassing for the Boris Johnson Government if the first UK power outages occur during the COP26 Climate Circus in Glasgow in November. COP26 has driven the Government’s agenda and ambition to be seen as more green, more carbon neutral and more ESG than anyone else. I’ve heard tales of cabinet ministers throwing sweary hissy fits when asked to support policies that don’t immediately square with green policies perceived as vote winners. As I’ve written many times – ESG is well intentioned, but perhaps the most dangerous force in Economics today.

Investment managers rely on people giving them money to manage. That is why every single fund manager on the planet is fixated on polishing their green credentials, demonstrating how they are funding ESG compliant investments, and eschewing anything even vaguely linked to hydrocarbons. It is also why Saudi Arabia is polishing its credentials by improbably launching and successfully selling a Green Bond. The result is a chronic failure of common sense across the investment industry. Fund managers claim to be investing in our futures. If that is true – how do they expect the world can transition seamlessly from dirty hydrocarbons to clean renewables overnight? It takes 20 years to get planning and build a nuclear power station – while wind is proving fickle, unreliable, far less efficient and difficult to maintain.

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“Given the many years, spent under both Obama and Trump, trying to shore up this claim by the most digitally advanced states in the world, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that they came up with nothing.”

The US Found A ‘Lawful’ Way To Disappear Assange (Cook)

The Yahoo report makes clear too that the surveillance operation against Assange and Wikileaks intensified dramatically after Snowden released his confidential documents in 2013 in collaboration with reporter Glenn Greenwald. The Snowden files showed that the US had begun expanding its ambition to use new digital technology to covertly surveil the rest of the world. Now it was increasingly turning that technological prowess inwards to covertly surveil its own population. A transparency organisation like Wikileaks, it quickly became obvious, was a major threat to the US intelligence services’ plans. According to Yahoo’s sources, it was the Obama administration that began surveilling Wikileaks more intensively and threw the net wider to expose its networks.

The CIA was already centrally involved, creating a special “Wikileaks team” that worked closely with other friendly spy agencies – including one can presume the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing states that also comprise Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. (One official, William Evanina, who recently retired as a top US counterintelligence official, notes the key role the Five Eyes group played in Assange’s case.) The goal, Yahoo was told by Evanina, its main named source, was to “tie [Wikileaks] back to hostile state intelligence services”. In other words, the aim was to suggest not that Assange was interested in transparency or acting out of principle but that he wanted to undermine the US on behalf of a hostile foreign power.

Assange’s fate was sealed within the Obama administration in summer 2016 when Wikileaks released a cache of Democratic party emails that cast Obama’s chosen successor, Hillary Clinton, in a damning light and showed that the party had rigged its election procedures to stop her main challenger, Bernie Sanders, from winning. As an aside, the Yahoo report notes that the idea of kidnapping Assange – in violation of Ecuador and the UK’s sovereignty – actually preceded Pompeo’s arrival at the CIA. Despite Yahoo’s focus on Pompeo, it was actually Obama and the Democratic party’s thirst for vengeance that paved the way for Trump’s appointee to have viable options of either prosecuting Assange for espionage or abducting him. Obama’s officials immediately tarred Assange as conspiring with Donald Trump, Clinton’s rival for the presidential election.

He was thereby dragged into an establishment conspiracy theory, Russiagate, that claimed Trump was serving as a puppet of the Kremlin. Given the many years, spent under both Obama and Trump, trying to shore up this claim by the most digitally advanced states in the world, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that they came up with nothing. Evidence of Wikileaks collusion with Russia appears never to have surfaced, even though it became an implicit, driving assumption behind the Russiagate claims. One unusually honest official, Robert Litt, a former general counsel of the Office of the Director for National Intelligence, observed to Yahoo of the claims made by Pompeo that Assange was acting on behalf of the Russians: “Based on the information that I had seen, I thought he was out over his skis on that.”

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Red Pill

 

 

 

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