Oct 202021
 
 October 20, 2021  Posted by at 12:19 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  31 Responses »


George Bellows The Lone Tenement 1909

 

 

Our resident physician John Day in Texas comes with an update on his situation. It seems his clinic no longer seeks to fire him for refusing to be vaccinated, they now claim it’s for cause (it’s not). A doctor who has been free to decide medical treatments for and with his patients for many years, all of a sudden cannot decide that for his own body.

And of course it’s not just America, and it’s not just doctors, it’s also pilots and nurses and soldiers and police men and women, and vaccine mandates are being introduced in many countries. That will deprive many fields in our societies of their leaders, and leave them occupied by followers only.

People who think for themselves, and wish to decide for themselves (as is their right), are being put out by the curb, and by the thousands. The resulting changes in society will be devastating. Losing all those years of experience and wisdom and kindness and intelligence will make us all a lot poorer. And why? It’s obviously not about logic, and it’s not about health. John:

 

 

John Day MD: Precariously Supported,

  Yesterday was an odd day in several aspects. I had worked a long Friday at the clinic again, which did not go badly. I left nothing unfinished. We drove to the Yoakum homestead Friday night and got a good night of sleep.

  Somehow, I felt very heavy and slow on Saturday and Sunday, so I trudged through three to four hours of pushing the little Honda mower, and did work in the garden, but ploddingly. I planted garlic for the winter/spring season, and tended the garden.

  I continued to feel a weight of unease, and as we started the drive back to Austin, Sunday afternoon, I had a sense that I should really buy winter veggies to put in at the clinic garden, which I started in 2016, and tend for my coworkers. Putting things off until the end of the month, in my last two weeks of work there, seemed awkward.

  We picked up a lot of winter greens and salad starts in little pots on our way into Austin, some for our Austin kitchen garden, but most for the clinic garden. I did a last harvest of the blackeyed pea row, then cut down the vines, and took them to some chickens that a friend of Jenny’s raises.

  Yesterday (Monday) morning I worked in our kitchen garden again, preparing the beds for fall and winter, cleaning up the summer debris, and also planting an orange seedling in the bed in front of the house, where the February freeze had killed the one fruitful tree. 

  After eating, I went over to the clinic with an orange seedling, to replace the two that the February freeze had killed, and all of the winter salad and cooking-green seedlings to fill a couple of rows. I went through the entrance, put on a mask, and went through to the garden in the break area, with shovels and clippers, saying “hi” to a few people and smiling with my eyes. I went out through the garden gate, and brought in the orange tree, then the veggie starts.

  The orange tree needed to go in the large bed, which has a Mexican avocado seedling tree, and a banana plant that actually survived February. Mainly it has a lot of sweet potatoes. It’s a fairly large bed, and this has been a very good year for sweet potatoes. I filled the three gallon bucket that the tree was in with sweet potatoes, from just a few square feet that I cleared and dug up, before planting it, maybe one percent of that bed.

  While I was digging up the sweet potatoes and digging the hole to put the orange tree in, my flip phone rang. I figured it was Jenny. I brushed some of the dirt off my hands and answered it. It was the nice and very well-mannered youngish man, who is currently Director of Human Resources, telling me that my last day of work had been changed from the last Friday of October to the Friday just passed, which was different from what I had been told last week, when the reason for my firing was changed from vaccine-mandate non-compliance, to all of the wrongs I have committed in the period of time since that mandate was announced.

   It was a lousy spot for him to be put in, and he seemed uncomfortable having to put it into polite words. He had been trying to call me while I was working on our home garden, but I had not been carrying the phone. I told him that I was at the clinic garden, putting in some things for winter, and that he could talk to me in person. My presence in the garden was unanticipated, though I have worked on my day off frequently in the past couple of months. 

  We talked as I planted the orange tree and put the big sweet potatoes in the pot, handing it over to a couple of nurses taking their lunch. They had helped dig sweet potatoes last year, and I knew they wanted some. He politely explained that I was not to re-enter the building, and that my desk would be cleared out and boxed for me. The explanation was so polite that I sought clarification. I did negotiate that I could pick up a few notes at my desk with his presence and supervision, which we then did. My badge didn’t let me in this time. He had to use his. As we walked through the clinic to my desk, most people had their eyes down. A few coworkers looked me in the eyes, and I smiled with my eyes. I was comfortable in myself, and emanated that (I think). 

  We grabbed a few boxes and made short work of the packing-up. I got everything, and we carried the three boxes to my little twenty four year old Ford Ranger pickup truck together. We went back to the garden and break-area through the gate, He thought it best that I just leave without planting the vegetables, but I prevailed upon him to keep his agreement to let me clean out the rows and do the planting.

   He actually had a fair number of gardening questions, which I answered as I cleared the rows and planted for winter.  I worked expeditiously, taking about twenty to thirty minutes, as I explained the quality of the soil, and how building soil is one of the main objectives in successful gardening. If you don’t have enough garden to out produce what the squirrels, birds and other critters can eat, they will eat it all.  You need a big enough garden patch.

  We walked back to the truck with shovels and clippers, talking about what’s next. The clinic will still pay me for these last two weeks of October, but my patients who are scheduled will not get to see me for a last visit. I have been doing everything possible to avoid leaving loose ends, and to write thorough chart notes, so it will be easy for the next doctor. I have tried to make suggestions for which doctor or practitioner might best match the needs and personality of each patient. I passed my list to give to the Director of Adult Medicine, who has been working hard and well on this transition. It’s not a complete list…

  I am left to wonder why the clinic took surprise action to remove me from patient-care, while still paying my salary for two weeks. I suspect there was free-floating anxiety about what I might say or do. I had been informing people of the actual circumstances of my leaving, being fired for non-compliance with mandatory vaccination. The management has been consulting with attorneys the whole time, and somebody else is contesting her firing for non-compliance with that mandate, I am told. Governor Abbott did say that vaccine mandates are not tolerable in Texas, Monday of last week. I suspect that my being fired-for-cause, other than non-compliance with COVID vaccination might be more plausible when the date of my firing is moved forward from the prior date of my termination for non-compliance

  I do not intend to contest my firing through recourse to the law. The only law I am really, currently concerned with is the Law of Karma, and I am very concerned with that law. I am constantly aware of the implications of Karma as we wade further into this rip-tide of history.

Human Horticulturist

 

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

Oct 192021
 
 October 19, 2021  Posted by at 9:02 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  30 Responses »


Ford Madox Brown Finding of Don Juan by Haidee 1873

 

Biden Threatens To Make Navy SEALs Resisting Vax Repay Their Training Cost (AT)
The Unvaccinated Are Looking Smarter Every Week (Thomas T. Siler MD)
Immune System Functions Are Dropping Around 5% Each Week In Vaccinated (NN)
Natural Immunity Is Just As Good As Being Jabbed (DM)
Rhode Island Covid Breakthrough Hospitalization and Mortality Rates (Bostom)
Covid-19 Treatments And Vaccines Must Be Evaluated In Pregnancy (BMJ)
FDA To Allow “Mixing and Matching” Of COVID Boosters (ZH)
Is Aspirin the New Horse Dewormer? (Brian C.Joondeph, MD)
The Age of Exterminations (V): Suicide (Ugo Bardi)
Let Us Count the Ways (Kunstler)
Jim Chanos: China’s “Leveraged Prosperity” Model is Doomed (Parramore)

 

 

< 1% of #COVID19 deaths had NO existing conditions
> 64% of deaths had 6 or more conditions
> 97% of deaths had 2 or more conditions

 

 

Bartiromo Ron Johnson IVM
https://twitter.com/i/status/1449799293578121217

 

 

 

 

 

 

SEALs put their lives in each other’s hands. Trying to set them against each other seems a bad idea.

Biden Threatens To Make Navy SEALs Resisting Vax Repay Their Training Cost (AT)

I can think of few better ways to ensure that fewer qualified people will apply to join the nation’s most elite fighting unit than the policy just announced by the U.S. Navy’s COVID Consolidated Disposition Authority. It has issued a directive that, as Hank Berrien reports, threatens “removing them from special warfare, reducing their salaries, and forcing them to repay training.” Since training a SEAL is very expensive, this amounts to financial ruin for the heroes who undergo incredibly harsh training and who offer their lives to protect us. President Trump’s interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, a former SEAL, appropriately criticized the plan on Facebook:

“Our Nation’s best don’t sign up to be a Navy SEAL to cash in on our training years later. We give a blood oath to fight for freedom and defend the Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. In doing so, we bear a burden of emotional, psychological, physical, and family stress of constant deployments and low pay because we love our Country. Shame Mr. President for not recognizing the service and sacrifice and further insulting SEALs by making this about money.”

Put aside any consideration of the effectiveness of the vaccines or of the side effects that may take years to become apparent. This escalation of bullying of the bravest and most self-sacrificing among us threatens national security. Physically fit young adults like the SEALS face a negligible threat from COVID, so why sacrifice the effectiveness of the nation’s elite fighting units? The price that is being inflicted on the nation far outweighs any benefit from the vaccines.

Read more …

“.. the European reporting system now associates 26,000 deaths in close proximity to administration of the vaccine. Whistleblower data from the CMS system (Medicare charts) showed close to 50,000 deaths in the Medicare group shortly after the vaccine.”

The Unvaccinated Are Looking Smarter Every Week (Thomas T. Siler MD)

[..] as time has passed with this pandemic and more data accumulates about the virus and the vaccine, the unvaccinated are looking smarter and smarter with each passing week. It has been shown now that the vaccinated equally catch and spread the virus. Vaccine side effect data continues to accumulate that make the risk of taking the vaccine prohibitive as the pandemic wanes. Oral and IV medications (flccc.net) that work early in the treatment of COVID-19 are much more attractive to take now as the vaccine risks are becoming known, especially because the vaccinated will need endless boosters every six months. First, let’s address the intelligence of the unvaccinated. Vaccine hesitancy is multi-factorial and has little to do with level of education or intelligence.

Carnegie Mellon University did a study assessing vaccine hesitancy across educational levels. According to the study, what’s the educational level with the most vaccine hesitancy? Ph.D. level! Those can’t all have been awarded to liberal arts majors. Clearly, scientists who can read the data and assess risk are among the least likely to take the mRNA vaccines. The claim that there’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated is, therefore, patently untrue. As a retired nurse from California recently asked, “Why do the protected need to be protected from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that did not protect the protected in the first place?” If the vaccine works to prevent infection, then the vaccinated have nothing to worry about. If the vaccine does not prevent infection, then the vaccinated remain at some risk, and the unvaccinated would be less likely to choose a vaccine that does not work well.

The mRNA vaccine efficacy is very narrow and focused on the original alpha strain of COVID-19. By targeting one antigen group on the spike protein, it does help for the original alpha strain, but it is clear now it does not protect against Delta strain and is likely not protective against any future strains that might circulate. It also appears that the efficacy wanes in 4-6 months, leading to discussions about boosters. Several authors have pointed out that vaccinating with a “leaky” vaccine during a pandemic is driving the virus to escape by creating variants. If the booster is just another iteration of the same vaccine, it likely won’t help against the new strain but will, instead, produce evolutionary pressure on the virus to produce even more variants and expose us to more side effects. Why, then, is this booster strategy for everyone being pursued?

This vast Phase 3 clinical trial of mRNA vaccines in which Americans are participating mostly out of fear is not going well. It is abundantly clear for anyone advocating for public health that the vaccination program should be stopped. Iceland has just stopped giving the Moderna vaccine to anyone which is a good step in the right direction. Sweden, Denmark, and Finland have banned the Moderna vaccine for anyone under the age of 30. Eudravigilance, the European reporting system now associates 26,000 deaths in close proximity to administration of the vaccine. Whistleblower data from the CMS system (Medicare charts) showed close to 50,000 deaths in the Medicare group shortly after the vaccine.

An AI-powered tracking program called Project Salus also follows the Medicare population and shows vaccinated Medicare recipients are having worse outcomes week by week of the type consistent with Antibody Dependent Enhancement. This occurs when the vaccine antibodies actually accelerate the infection leading to worsening COVID-19 infection outcomes. Antibody Dependent Enhancement has occurred previously with trials of other coronavirus vaccines in animals. The CDC and the FDA are suppressing this data and no one who receives the vaccine has true informed consent.

Read more …

“..fully vaccinated people now suffer from what appears to be acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, more popularly known as AIDS.”

Immune System Functions Are Dropping Around 5% Each Week In Vaccinated (NN)

The latest data from the United Kingdom’s PHE Vaccine Surveillance Report suggests that people who have been “fully vaccinated” for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) are losing about five percent of their immune systems per week. Doubly injected people between the ages of 40 and 70 have already lost about 40 percent of the immune system capacity from the moment they get injected. They then progressively lose more of it over time, with peak immune system loss for many expected to arrive by Christmas. “If this continues then 30-50 year-olds will have 100% immune system degradation, zero viral defence by Christmas and all doubly vaccinated people over 30 will have lost their immune systems by March next year,” reports The Exposé.

There is no denying, based on the data, that fully vaccinated people now suffer from what appears to be acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, more popularly known as AIDS. Their immune systems are fading away, which many have been warning would be the case. “People aged 40-69 have already lost 40% of their immune system capability and are losing it progressively at 3.3% to 6.4% per week,” The Exposé says. Interestingly, the worst-off demographic is people aged 40-49, who are suffering total immune system loss in about nine weeks. The best-off group is younger people aged 18-29, who tend to last around 44 weeks. Elderly people over the age of 80 last about 20 weeks, while the 50-59 age category only gets about 15 weeks. The other remaining age groups last anywhere from 12 to 25 weeks.

“Everybody over 30 will have lost 100% of their entire immune capability (for viruses and certain cancers) within 6 months,” warns The Exposé. “30-50 year-olds will have lost it by Christmas. These people will then effectively have full blown acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and destroy the NHS (National Health Service).” [..] It is not just that the jabs do not provide the claimed amount of protection against the Fauci Flu. The fact of the matter is that they provide no protection at all in the long term and actually destroy a person’s immune system. “Pfizer originally claimed a 95% efficiency for their vaccine (calculated as in the last column above). The figures above indicate that their figures may well have been correct immediately after vaccination (the younger age groups have had the vaccine for the shortest time),” The Exposé explains.

“But the figures above also show that the vaccines do NOT merely lose efficiency over time down to zero efficiency, they progressively damage the immune system until a negative efficiency is realised. They presently leave anybody over 30 in a worse position than they were before vaccination.” People who take the Biden “Booster” shots will only accelerate this process by adding even more immune-destroying chemicals to their bodies. The downward spiral will move even faster, in other words, the more shots a person gets. “If we do nothing about this, it will only get much worse than we ever could have imagined,” wrote one Exposé commenter. “I, for one, appreciate all who have stood against and continue to stand against this tyranny.”

Read more …

If the jabs “wane” 5% a week, they’re much worse.

Natural Immunity Is Just As Good As Being Jabbed (DM)

Recovering from Covid offers just as good protection as getting two doses of any vaccine, official figures suggest. An Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) report published today found unvaccinated Britons who catch the Delta variant are around 71 per cent less likely to test positive for a second time. It estimated the risk of infection is slashed by approximately 67 per cent in people given two doses of Pfizer or AstraZeneca’s jabs. The ONS said there was ‘no evidence’ vaccines offered more immunity than catching Covid itself, despite a number of other studies showing the opposite. The findings are based on more than 8,000 positive tests across Britain between May and August, when the Delta variant became dominant.

Scientists are still trying to untangle exactly how long naturally-acquired and vaccine immunity lasts. Protection from the jabs appears to dip at around five months, which is why Britons over the age of 50 are being offered booster doses this autumn. But the duration of natural immunity remains somewhat of a mystery, made more complicated by the rise of new variants. The ONS looked at 8,306 positive PCR results between May 17 and August 14. Samples were collected from unvaccinated, fully vaccinated and double-jabbed volunteers, some who had previously had the virus already. Using a statistical analysis, the report found those who were double-jabbed had a reduced the risk of testing positive by between 64 and 70 per cent, giving the headline figure of 67 per cent. In people who were unvaccinated but previously positive, the risk was cut by between 65 per cent to 77 per cent.

The overlap in confidence intervals meant that there was no statistical difference between the results. Writing in the report, the ONS said: ‘There was no evidence that the reduction in risk of infection from two vaccine doses differed from that of previous natural infection.’ The ONS found that two doses of Pfizer’s jab offered slightly higher protection against infection than two of AstraZeneca. But the ONS said it was not statistically significant and added that any slight difference may be due to the fact Pfizer’s was rolled out to the masses slightly later than AstraZeneca’s. The report does not look at the negative effects of catching the virus, including long Covid, which blights a significant number of adult sufferers. But critics of the Government’s decision to vaccinate healthy school pupils as young as 12 have argued that natural immunity is better for children because it removes the small risk of side effects from the jabs.

Read more …

Clear numbers.

Rhode Island Covid Breakthrough Hospitalization and Mortality Rates (Bostom)

A 10/12.21 story in the Rhode Island Patch maintained that the “vast majority” of the state’s covid-19 infections during September 2021 (essentially; 9/4/21 to 10/2/21) occurred amongst those who were not fully vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. The story added, “ (covid-19) deaths show the same trend.” This latter statement is patently false as demonstrated by data on September 2021 hospitalizations and deaths just released from The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) to Rhode Island state representative Mike Chippendale. These actual RIDOH data for September, 2021 reveal that 136 covid-19 hospitalizations were recorded in those fully vaccinated, versus 27 among those who were not fully vaccinated (note: RIDOH pools the unvaccinated and partially vaccinated, and dubs them all “unvaccinated”).

Similarly, 22 covid-19 deaths were tallied among those who were fully vaccinated, compared to 5 in the not fully vaccinated. Regardless of vaccination status, in those with a history of prior infection, i.e., “natural immunity,” only 12 covid-19 hospitalizations were recorded, and zero covid-19 deaths. Calculating simple, unadjusted population-based rates (per 100,000) puts these September 2021 Rhode Island covid-19 mortality and hospitalization data in clearer, more meaningful perspective. To do so, requires estimates of the number of Rhode Islanders fully vaccinated, or not fully vaccinated, and the number with a history of prior infection. I chose the September 15, 2021 midpoint of the month to estimate the both the numbers fully vaccinated, or with a history of prior covid-19 infection.

Rhode Island’s 2021 estimated population is 1.1 million. According to the public RIDOH database, by September, 15, 2021, ~684,000 Rhode Islanders were fully vaccinated. Per the website “Covidestim.org,” a project supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and directed by epidemiologists from Yale, Harvard, and Stanford universities, 58% had been covid-19 infected at some point during the pandemic. Applying these estimates yields the following rates, for covid-19 hospitalizations, and deaths:

Hospitalizations
—136 breakthrough hospitalizations/684,000 fully vaccinated=19.9/100,000
—27 not fully vaccinated hospitalizations/416,000 not fully vaccinated= 6.5/100,000
—12 hospitalizations in those with prior infection history/638,000 with prior infection=1.9/100,000

Deaths
—22 breakthrough deaths/684,000 fully vaccinated=3.2/100,000
—5 not fully vaccinated deaths/416,000 not fully vaccinated= 1.2/100,000
—0 deaths in those with prior infection history/638,000 with prior infection=0/100,000
Another way to look at an estimate of relative risk for hospitalization, the crude odds ratio, comparing being fully vaccinated to having a prior infection yields an ~90% reduction [odds ratio 0.095; 95% confidence interval= 0.052 to 0.171] with a history of prior infection.

Read more …

“In Brazil, health officials even suggested avoiding pregnancy to reduce risk during the pandemic.”

Covid-19 Treatments And Vaccines Must Be Evaluated In Pregnancy (BMJ)

The numbers of pregnant and postpartum women in the UK admitted to hospital or intensive care because of covid-19 peaked over the summer. Maternal mortality has reached concerning levels in 2021, with case fatality rates rising in the US, doubling in Brazil, and almost tripling in India since the beginning of the pandemic. In Brazil, health officials even suggested avoiding pregnancy to reduce risk during the pandemic. Inconsistent messaging from authorities, driven by lack of trial data, has increased covid-19 vaccine hesitancy among pregnant women. This, coupled with the increased transmissibility of new variants and relaxing of social distancing restrictions, contributed to the surge in hospital admissions seen in successive waves.

Concerns around the longer term effect of covid-19 post partum, including long covid, cardiovascular complications of covid-19, and widening socioeconomic disparities are also mounting. Despite a desperate need for treatments, pregnant women continue to be left behind. In the long shadow of the thalidomide and diethylstilboestrol tragedies, only one drug designed for use in pregnancy, atosiban, has been licensed in four decades and only five prescription medicines (amoxicillin, labetalol, diazoxidine injection, doxylamine with pyridoxine, sodium feredetate) are licensed for non-obstetric use in pregnancy in the UK. A sobering 98% of all marketed drugs have insufficient or no safety data to guide dosing during pregnancy and lactation. This includes all covid-19 vaccines.

Vaccination in pregnancy is not a new concept; nor are the struggles with uptake. Concerns about covid-19 vaccination, like previous vaccines, have centred around fears of side effects for the fetus, doubts regarding efficacy, and even doubts around the need for immunisation. These concerns have been further compounded by misinformation regarding fertility, suspicion of the swift rollout of vaccines, and the exclusion of pregnant women from preapproval trials, with levels of vaccine hesitancy highest in deprived communities and among those from ethnic minority groups.

Read more …

“By the end of the week, tens of millions more Americans could be eligible for extra shots.”

FDA To Allow “Mixing and Matching” Of COVID Boosters (ZH)

mRNA or a disabled adenovirus? According to the latest iteration of the “science” it’s really all the same and just jam it in there, because as the NYT reports, the Food and Drug Administration will allow Americans to “mix and match”, i.e., receive a different Covid-19 vaccine as a booster than the one they initially received, a move that could “reduce the appeal of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and provide flexibility to doctors and other vaccinators.” In other words, the mRNA lobby has just booked the entire second floor at Scores and is hoovering up industrial amounts of Colombian marching powder while surrounded by the best silicone money can rent.

In the latest example that money talks and what was scientific consensus until this morning walks, the government would not recommend one shot over another, and may instead note that using the same vaccine as a booster when possible is preferable, but vaccine providers could use their discretion to offer a different brand, a freedom that state health officials have been requesting for weeks. Maybe one should check if the bank accounts of said state health officials have suddenly seen a mysterious inflow of outside funds that prompted their agitation. In any case, the approach was foreshadowed on Friday, when so-called “researchers” presented the findings of a federally funded “mix and match” study to an expert committee that advises the Food and Drug Administration.

The study found that recipients of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot who received a Moderna booster saw their antibody levels rise 76-fold in 15 days, compared with only a fourfold increase after an extra dose of Johnson & Johnson. We can only assume that this “study” is different than the one that took place just a few months ago that prompted the same NYT to report that “Britain Opens Door to Mix-and-Match Vaccinations, Worrying Experts”…… and in which we read that: Some scientists say Britain is gambling with its new guidance. “There are no data on this idea whatsoever,” said John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University. Officials in Britain “seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess.” It now turns out that Britain was simply early in guessing which way a whole lot of bribes money can sway the “science” du jour.

Amusingly, even as the FDA agonizes over greenlighting covid booster shots for Americans younger than 65 – having initially rejected the biotech/pharma lobbied outcome which has been eagerly sought by the Biden admin – Federal regulators this week are aiming to greatly expand the number of Americans eligible for booster shots. As such, the FDA is now expected to authorize boosters of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines by Wednesday evening; it could allow the mix-and-match approach by then. The agency last month authorized booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for at least six months after the second dose. Then, on Thursday, a CDC advisory committee will also take up the booster issue and will then issue its own recommendations (to go ahead and do it because science says “mix and match” is cool). By the end of the week, tens of millions more Americans could be eligible for extra shots.

Read more …

“And right on cue, it’s time for aspirin-bashing to commence.”

Is Aspirin the New Horse Dewormer? (Brian C.Joondeph, MD)

Aspirin is one of those drugs that has been around forever. It is commonly used as a pain reliever, anti-inflammatory, and blood thinner. Surprisingly it may also have benefits in treating COVID. A paper in Anesthesia and Analgesia published last spring titled, “Aspirin use is associated with decreased mechanical ventilation, intensive care unit admission, and in-hospital mortality in hospitalized patients with coronavirus disease 2019.” This was a retrospective, observational study of adult patients admitted to multiple hospitals in the U.S. between March and July 2020, in the early days of COVID. The primary outcome addressed by the researchers from George Washington University was the need for mechanical ventilation, which then, and still now, carries an extremely high chance of never leaving the ICU alive.

This was not a gold standard randomized prospective clinical trial. That would not be feasible in this situation since study patients were already hospitalized and critically ill. Remember in the early days, one needed to be extremely ill before even being admitted to the hospital rather than being sent home until sick enough to return and go straight to the ICU. But the results were impressive. As reported last week by the Jerusalem Post, “The team investigated more than 400 COVID patients from hospitals across the United States who take aspirin unrelated to their COVID disease, and found that the treatment reduced the risk of several parameters by almost half: reaching mechanical ventilation by 44%, ICU admissions by 43%, and overall in-hospital mortality by 47%.”

Why would aspirin be helpful for COVID, a respiratory disease? What if COVID is more than simply a lung disease or pneumonia? COVID is actually thought to be a microvascular disease causing blood clots, as described in the medical journal Circulation, “Although most patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) present with a mild upper respiratory tract infection and then recover, some infected patients develop pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, multi-organ failure, and death. Clues to the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19 may lie in the systemic inflammation and thrombosis observed in infected patients. We propose that severe COVID-19 is a microvascular disease in which coronavirus infection activates endothelial cells, triggering exocytosis, a rapid vascular response that drives microvascular inflammation and thrombosis.”

How did aspirin get its start? Over 3,500 years ago, willow bark, known as “nature’s aspirin,” was used as a painkiller and antipyretic by ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and in a chemical synthesis by a Bayer chemist in 1897. Aside from pain relief, it was found to have anti-platelet and anti-cancer effects. It’s also on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines, along with another familiar drug, ivermectin. The Harvard-based physicians’ health study in the 1980s found that low-dose aspirin reduced the risk of heart attack by 44 percent. A recently published Israeli study found, “Aspirin use is associated with better outcomes among COVID-19 positive patients.” This included a lower likelihood of infection, disease duration, and hospital survival. In other words, aspirin works as both a preventative and as a treatment.

Aspirin is another potential therapeutic, along with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which is inexpensive, readily available, and relatively safe, and could save countless lives when used appropriately for COVID. An editorial in Anesthesia and Analgesia described aspirin for COVID as, “An old, low-cost therapy with a strong rationale.” And right on cue, it’s time for aspirin-bashing to commence.

Read more …

“..the question is whether the stress on our society could accumulate to a level in which we would start doing the things that were done in Germany during the Nazi period..”

The Age of Exterminations (V): Suicide (Ugo Bardi)

In Germany, regular medical doctors used barbiturates to kill children and gas chambers to get rid of adults. Neither the victims nor their families were told of what was being done. Officially, the victims were hospitalized in order to receive some kind of medical treatment, and, later on, families received notice that, unfortunately, their relatives had not survived it. These deaths were not suicides, but there was a certain element of voluntary acceptance of the procedure and it is hard to think that people would not at least suspect what was going on. The human mind is pliant, and probably everyone, including the victims, was doing their best to believe that it was all done for the sake of their health.

In our times, we have methods to get rid of people with their consent that were not available in Nazi Germany. In terms of “substance abuse,” we have a large choice of substances that shorten one’s life expectancy. In some cases, we know that they are bad. In some cases, they are forbidden, although obtainable illegally (heroin, cocaine, and others). In some cases, they are recognized to be harmful, but they are still marketed, although not advertised (tobacco) or advertised with some limitations (alcohol). In other cases, they are heavily advertised and widely available (junk food). We need also to mention that some medical treatments are widely recommended as good for your health, but nobody really knows if they really are (4) and in some cases, it is discovered only later that they are very bad. Maybe you remember the case of Thalidomide, but there are many more in the history of medicine. Surely, there will be more in the future.

Although effective, these substances are slow and messy ways to get rid of people and they may generate negative side effects in terms of diffuse criminality and handicapped people that are expensive to care for. For instance, cocaine taken every day will shorten a person’s life by about 10 years. Morphine will do better, with a 30 years reduction, but, in any case, these methods are too slow to be interesting but for would-be exterminators. It is at least unlikely that the diffusion of heavy drugs in our society is the result of an evil plan of extermination, although some agencies of the deep state may well have a role in the supply and distribution system. At this point, the question is whether the stress on our society could accumulate to a level in which we would start doing the things that were done in Germany during the Nazi period, that is to exterminate people singled out for some physical factor, religious belief, or ideology.

And there is no doubt that our society is heavily stressed although, probably not so heavily as Germany was in 1945 (not yet, at least). Of course, the reaction to this hypothesis normally comes with the sentence “It can’t happen here” and clearly, we are not seeing our government distributing cyanide capsules to the population. Nor are we seeing explicit orders given to doctors to kill their patients. But a basic rule in history is that if something happened once, it may happen again. So, never underestimate what psyops can accomplish, nor how evil the people in power can be! And if they were to start reasoning like the German government did in 1945, they have a number of options that we can only hope will never be put into practice.

Read more …

“..“Joe Biden’s” vaccination mandate — with no basis in law, by the way — that is destroying most of the critical services industries in the nation: the hospitals, school systems, police forces, firefighters, ambulance squads, airlines, railroads, restaurants, you-name-it. No vaxx, no job for you..”

Let Us Count the Ways (Kunstler)

Let us count the ways that America is committing suicide by Democratic Party policy. There is, front and center, “Joe Biden’s” vaccination mandate — with no basis in law, by the way — that is destroying most of the critical services industries in the nation: the hospitals, school systems, police forces, firefighters, ambulance squads, airlines, railroads, restaurants, you-name-it. No vaxx, no job for you — and no resuscitation for the unfortunate persons writhing on their kitchen floors in myocardial infarction. I’d say that depriving folks of their livelihoods while ensuring harm and death upon the citizenry is a bad combo for public order. One can easily imagine the righteous wrath building to the point where lamp-posts in capital cities are decorated with the dangling government officials who caused this to happen.

Then there are the vaxxes themselves and the Covid cat that dragged them in. Do you feel all warm and fuzzy over a shot that will turn your body into a spike protein generator, considering how spike proteins behave in a human vascular system? Got any questions or doubts about the number of adverse events seen so far? Looks like more than ten thousand deaths in the USA directly attributable to the vaxxes under the VAERS registry, and millions of injuries around the world. Not to mention the murky origins of the disease, the participation of US public health officials in its design and development, and the colossal profits reaped by the pharma companies that sell the vaxxes. Have you noted the draconian desperation to vaxx up absolutely everybody, despite some excellent reasons for people to say “no thanks?” Does the Big Picture look a little nefarious to you? Like some parties are out to bump off a pretty large number of people — including parties who have stated out loud that steeply reducing the global population would be a swell idea?

In the course of an average day, do you ever think about all the people from around the world who are jumping the US/Mexican border? It’s thousands of them each day, and millions piling in over the year 2021 — under the averted eyes of “Joe Biden” & Co. Some of them are criminal opportunists who — how shall we say — aim to blow shit up in this country. That’s apart from the economic burdens that the nonviolent ones will impose on the nation. Can you blame genuine US citizens from regarding this as an affront to common sense and common decency, not to mention an insult to the law and the constitution behind the law? Well, it is, you know. Since it’s the federal government’s duty to control entry across the border, and since “Joe Biden” directed the border patrol to not perform its duties, will you be surprised if the citizens develop the notion that they will have to defend the border themselves?

Read more …

Lynn Parramore talks to Jim Chanos. Who knows China.

Jim Chanos: China’s “Leveraged Prosperity” Model is Doomed (Parramore)

LP: Let’s talk about Evergrande, the Shenzhen developer whose crisis has got everybody worried. How did things get so bad? JC: Last year, as the tech crackdown was gaining momentum, Xi’s administration put down a set of rules called the “three red lines.” They were sort of balance sheet financial tests. It was an attempt to deleverage the real estate developers. LP: Which means he knew something was wrong. JC: Well, here’s the problem. I always joke that when you have an investment-driven economic model, you know your annual GDP on January 1st of that year, because you can stick shovels in the ground to make your growth numbers. That’s how the model works. It’s not a consumption-based model. As we now know — and the Wall Street Journal just had some phenomenal numbers in a recent piece – that real estate construction is now larger than it was when he took office. I would always hear, well, don’t worry: these are smart guys, technocrats who see the problem and will wean themselves off this apartment construction-on-steroids. But they haven’t.

LP: Why haven’t they been able to slow it down? JC: Since we started following China at the end of ’09, this is the fourth time that they’ve attempted to slow the real estate market down, because they do know that this is going to be basically too big to deal with if it keeps growing at the rate it’s growing. But every time they’ve done it, the economy has hit stall speed very quickly, and they panicked. They went from hitting the breaks to hitting the accelerator. That’s why we’ve seen higher levels of real estate. The idea that “I can’t lose buying apartments” became ingrained with bankers, real estate speculators, and the public. LP: So with Evergrande, everyone came to expect a bailout?

JC: I think we’re at that crossroads. The problem is that these companies are so much bigger than they were in 2015 or 2011. Can you bail everybody out? In the case of the developers, you have an additional problem. The biggest amount of liabilities is not necessarily to banks and bondholders. It’s to apartment buyers. Here’s why: the Chinese real estate finance system is exactly the opposite of ours. In our system, when there’s a new development, you’re typically required to put 10% down to sign a contract, with the balance due on closing. You go get your financing and your mortgage proceeds pay for the rest of the house or the apartment.

In China, you pay upfront. You are extending the developer a loan. So, of the $300 billion in liabilities Evergrande owes, I think the biggest chunk, last time I checked, is basically what we would call a deferred revenue item. It’s money that you took in from people, and you owe them an apartment. And the apartments aren’t done, but the money’s been spent. So the problem is not just bailing people out, but the question of who is going to put up more capital to pay off the retail people that have bought apartments that haven’t gotten anything. These numbers are big, and Evergrande is not the only one. There are a handful of developers that are missing interest payments and have their bond prices reflecting distress.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

CRT

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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


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

 

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

 

 

Veritas

 

 

IVM

 

 

 

 

NZ adverse events

 

 

What more can we say?

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

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


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

Read more …

McCullough.

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

And Then Everything Happens at Once (Kunstler)

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

Got a business to run.

Alabama Hospital Ends COVID Vaccine Requirement for Staff (WJ)

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

Perfectly legal.

Louisiana State University Begins Disenrolling Unvaxxed Students (CR)

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

This ain’t over.

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

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

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


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

Read more …

Want to go home? Try next year.

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

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


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

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

Read more …

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

“..up to 10 tubs of coleslaw..”

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

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


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

Read more …

Pon Zi.

How Evergrande Became Too Big To Fail (ZH)

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

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

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

Read more …

 

 

 

Josh Steimle
@joshsteimle

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

 

 

 

 

 

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