NBA Archives - The Automatic Earth

The NBA has reportedly urged players to get Covid-19 booster shots. Some vaccinated players may face game-day testing by December if they refuse. The NBA told the players the new rules on Sunday, according to AP, and stressed that those who initially received the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine are most in need of a booster shot. Citing its waning efficacy over time, the league called on players, coaches, and referees who received the vaccine more than two months ago to roll up their sleeves for a booster of a different vaccine, namely Pfizer’s or Moderna’s. Those who were vaccinated with either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine were told that they will need a booster shot six months after initial vaccination.

Depending on which vaccine a player was originally given and when that vaccination took place, some players may already face repercussions for refusing a booster dose by next month. “In some cases, those who are vaccinated but elect to not receive a booster would be subjected to game-day testing again starting Dec. 1,” AP reported. The announcement angered opponents of Covid-19 restrictions, including figures in the sports industry. “Wake up, sheep. The NBA is already mandating the vaccine booster now. This won’t ever end,” tweeted sports commentator Clay Travis, who founded the sports journalism website OutKick. Travis also questioned whether the industry was “going to make 100% healthy people get covid shots every six months for the rest of their lives.”

Sports journalist Jason Whitlock protested that the news was “just the tip,” while Inner Sports founder Garret Kramer wrote, “On what planet do we continue to mandate drugs for people who are not sick? Say NO.” “This world and league is getting more asinine by the day,” golf champion Steve Flesch said. The NBA recommendation found support among proponents of vaccine mandates, however. “The NBA is doing the right thing here,” Jerome Michael Adams, the former surgeon general who served in the Donald Trump administration, tweeted, arguing that “in hindsight this should’ve been billed as a 3 dose (2 for J&J) series anyway.” The NBA already has strict Covid-19 policies for its players, which include unvaccinated players not being able to eat with vaccinated players. Unvaccinated NBA players are also required to socially distance themselves from vaccinated players and must wear face masks.

A Greek expert says 4 months. He should talk to the NBA.

• Expert Committee Member Calls For Booster Covid Shot After 4 Months (K.)

People who have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus should get their booster shot four instead of six months after their last dose to stem transmission and the possibility of serious illness, a member of the committee of experts advising the government on the pandemic, said on Tuesday. “When the vaccines first came out, they had this incredible effectiveness that we believed would last for some time. I had also said that we should be covered for six months. But new studies have shown that their effectiveness starts to wane after four months, mainly for mild infections, which do not lead to death but are still a transmission risk,” Theodoros Vassilakopoulos, an Athens University professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine, told Skai television.

The booster “needs come sooner,” he said, warning that “the worst obviously still lies ahead,” after Greece on Monday broke a new record with 7,335 new infections in 24 hours. He added that while being vaccinated protects most people from serious illness, this is not the case for people over the age of 60, who are particularly vulnerable. “The vaccinated need to be protected by having the option of getting their booster shot earlier, at four months at least,” he said. “Science is a process of seeking the truth through experimentation and study. We have to rethink or adjust what we know as new evidence emerges,” said Vassilakopoulos.

Yeah, 3-5 times annual, that is.

• COVID Boosters Likely to Be Annual ‘For the Foreseeable Future’ (ET)

From Nov. 8, COVID booster shots will be available for all adult Australians six months after they got their second dose. Around 1.7 million people will be eligible for a booster dose by 2022, a move making Australia the second country in the world after Israel to offer boosters to all ages. Australia has reached the 80 percent full vaccination rate last week, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison praising it as “another magnificent milestone.” At the state level, however, only New South Wales, Victoria, and the Australian Capital Territory have reached this number. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the country’s medicine and therapeutics regulator have approved Pfizer as a booster dose. Pfizer booster shots will be given to people even if they had other vaccines for their first two doses.

For those who have an allergic or adverse reaction to Pfizer, the AstraZeneca vaccine will be given instead. While boosters are not required for international travel, states and territories will decide whether to make it mandatory for residents to be fully vaccinated. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews suggested last month that booster shots may be needed for those who are fully vaccinated to retain their freedoms. “A month before your six months is up, then you will get a message and your vaccination certificate, the thing that gets you the green tick. You’ll be prompted to go and book a time to go and have your booster shot,” Andrews said. “There may be state clinics in that or it might be all done through GPs and pharmacies, that hasn’t been worked through yet. We’re happy to play our part, though. So it’ll be about the maintenance of your vaccination status.”

Ideally, it wants you to be sick your entire life.

• Medicine Wants to Kill You (Kunstler)

It bears repeating that whatever Covid-19 actually is or where it came from, it’s a disease not a whole lot more deadly in the general population than the flu in a bad season; that in the natural course of things, it would have probably only killed mostly the very old and already sick, and that the rest of the population would have soldiered through it and acquired a sturdy natural immunity superior to anything the vaxxes might confer (even in theory). My own doctor tried to persuade me to get vaxed-up during a routine physical in October. I asked him if he was aware of the thousands of deaths and disabling adverse events reported on the CDC’s VAERS system. He said the numbers were not true and went on to say that he had “one hundred percent confidence in the vaccines.”

He’s always appeared to be a smart and capable person. A year or so ago he was enlisted to act as an executive administrator in the health care org he practices in, and now only sees patients two days a week. Perhaps that leaves him no time to follow the news. Or maybe he has no inclination to follow any news except what comes from sources like cable TV channels, which are almost entirely sponsored by the Pharma industry. The bottom line for me is that he has compromised my faith in his judgment. I wonder how many other people feel that way about their doctors. The medical profession was already in trouble before Covid came on the scene. It had entered into a demonic symbiotic relationship with the insurance industry that amounted to pervasive racketeering. (Just imagine the hospital bills of all those people with adverse vax reactions that the doctors affected to be mystified by, and ran countless, fruitless tests on.)

The good news for now is that a federal court has stayed the “Joe Biden” vax mandates. The government is expected to dispute that decision today (Monday Nov 8). Meanwhile, the rumor of a general strike against vaccine tyranny, set for today through Thursday, is in the air and we’ll have to stand by to see if anything happens. We should also be standing by in the weeks ahead to see how many more people begin to show symptoms of developing serious bodily disorders from the multiple shots they have been suffered to take.

“..the bottom line is this: You take a jab because you believe it will protect you. That’s the beginning and end of it. There is never any other argument available because the risk of adverse events is always yours.”

• Will You Ever Care To SOLVE The Problem? (Denninger)

I came of age in the early 1980s. Anyone who says that there have been all these “mandates” to get shots on a durable basis, and that everyone has had to prove it, is 100% full of crap. It’s a flat-out lie. I went to college on my own — both enrolling in a community college while still in High School to take a couple of classes and in college generally until I quit, making more money than it was costing to go to school. I was never asked for any evidence that I had received a single vaccination of any sort. Never. I’ve never been asked to prove my vaccination status for any disease ever in my life. Not once since I became sentient have I, or anyone in my family, ever been asked to prove I’d been immunized against anything. Want to know why? Because there was a hell of a hangover from the mid to late 1970s mess at the time where once again pharma lied, people died and nobody was going anywhere near that bull****.

Yes, by the year 2000 things had changed. People forgot what had happened and who had gotten away with it. The schools wanted evidence my daughter had the “routine” childhood shots. I objected to exactly none of them so there was no foul. All, in my opinion, were in fact safer than the disease and effective in preventing it. Thus administration was voluntary. So let’s solve the problem. No mandates. Period. Zero. Not for measles, DTaP, HIB, nothing. Recommendations, yes. Strong ones. But folks, the bottom line is this: You take a jab because you believe it will protect you. That’s the beginning and end of it. There is never any other argument available because the risk of adverse events is always yours. If the shot harms or kills you that’s on you, so the case to make is that it is less dangerous for you to take the shot than risk the disease. If you can’t make that case on a conclusive basis then sit down and shut up.

Manufacturers are required to publish true and accurate statistics on so-called “breakthroughs” and all adverse events. Health providers are required by law to report all adverse events as they are now, but failure to do so gets you 10 years in prison and permanent revocation of your medical license throughout the US — no ifs, ands or buts. Manufacturers are held to strict liability at the letter of their claims. If you can’t make the case that it is safer to take the shot while telling the truth then you don’t sell any shots. If you lie you are fully legally accountable, period. All medication has risks so as long as the risk is truthfully disclosed in terms of outcomes and odds, and the person chooses to take it, that’s their decision and it’s fine. The NCVIA and PREP Act are both repealed. This is not a request, by the way. It’s demand we are willing to enforce by destroying every firm along with all of the directors and officers shielded by these acts, physically if necessary, if refused.

And, since we’re dealing with this mess, I want to add another provision: Any competent adult may purchase any drug, allegedly “prescription”, over the counter against medical advice and a pharmacist may not refuse to fill it, for any other than a DEA-scheduled controlled substance being purchased beyond reasonable personal use limits, save in one instance: They are able to document, by scientific evidence, a direct contraindication as a result of conflict with some other drug the person is consuming. Such an “AMA” purchase shall absolve the pharmacist along with any physician or other medical facility involved in all liability for the outcome of such consumption If I want to take HCQ and/or Ivermectin if I get the Coof, and add Budesonide to that, I can irrespective of whether a pharmacist or physician likes it or not. If I kill myself doing it that’s on me.

My physician (and pharmacist) is thus returned to their rightful role: That of a paid expert who issues recommendations but under no circumstance can they prohibit or mandate any particular course of action, including the use or withholding of a treatment or drug, for a given condition. It is my ass and thus must be my choice.

Big stories about molnupiravir as a 3CLPro Inhibitor. We don’t need it.

• 3CLPro Inhibitors As Potential Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Agents (Nature)

Emerging outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is a major threat to public health. The morbidity is increasing due to lack of SARS-CoV-2 specific drugs. Herein, we have identified potential drugs that target the 3-chymotrypsin like protease (3CLpro), the main protease that is pivotal for the replication of SARS-CoV-2. Computational molecular modeling was used to screen 3987 FDA approved drugs, and 47 drugs were selected to study their inhibitory effects on SARS-CoV-2 specific 3CLpro enzyme in vitro.

Our results indicate that boceprevir, ombitasvir, paritaprevir, tipranavir, ivermectin, and micafungin exhibited inhibitory effect towards 3CLpro enzymatic activity. The 100 ns molecular dynamics simulation studies showed that ivermectin may require homodimeric form of 3CLpro enzyme for its inhibitory activity. In summary, these molecules could be useful to develop highly specific therapeutically viable drugs to inhibit the SARS-CoV-2 replication either alone or in combination with drugs specific for other SARS-CoV-2 viral targets.

“The potential consequences of vaccines crossing the natural blood-brain barrier in children’s developing brains are of the utmost concern to all future humanity.”

• Applying Brakes On ‘Warp Speed’ Covid-19 Vaccinations For Children (WT)

One of the worst medical disasters was diethylstilbestrol (DES) which was commonly prescribed as an anti-miscarriage medication in the 1940s. It was recalled 30 years later after it was connected to a rare tumor that appeared in the next generation of daughters of women who had taken it. We rarely know everything about a new drug when it’s approved, and we must brace ourselves for side effects we may only learn of years later. The history of medicine documents time and time again tragic examples of new drugs causing unsuspected problems discovered after release. The challenge for researchers to identify new COVID-19 viral target proteins and then to adapt existing manufacturing platforms already shown to be safe for vaccines against other pathogens is already a daunting endeavor.

However, using a new, rapid, but previously untested manufacturing technology (mRNA or DNA) introduced a second variable. Herein lies the problem that every science student is taught to avoid: changing two variables simultaneously in a single experiment. This violates the classic scientific method. In this case, the vaccines generated were comprised of active (COVID-19 viral sequences) and inactive components (manufacturing ingredients, including any impurities), neither of which had a prior favorable safety track record in healthy adults or children. But how likely is the risk of an epidemic of long-term medical complications worse than the pandemic itself, say five years from now?

RNA-based vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) could trigger any number of autoimmune diseases, which can take years to manifest. This is because the resulting combination of viral and normal self-proteins expressed by any cell, which takes up mRNA, creates a brand-new target on normal cells, which the immune system potentially recognizes as foreign and attacks. mRNA also activates danger sensors in the primal immune system, which in turn indirectly promotes the release of pro-inflammation factors, specifically interferons, which have been associated with autoimmunity. This issue is underscored by a clinical trial of an mRNA lung cancer vaccine in 2019, in which blood tests revealed elevated indicators for autoimmunity concerns in 20% of patients.

Immune responses directly against RNA molecules themselves cause autoimmune diseases, such as systemic lupus. In 2014 in the early days of the technology, an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine inventor published on this potential long-term concern of mRNA vaccines. Finally, none of the mRNA vaccines has a built-in “off” switch to control where they travel in the body and how long they persist there. Published animal safety studies showed traces of COVID-19 spike protein in the brain, heart, and other vital organs, and the European Medicines Agency’s assessment report acknowledged that low levels of mRNA itself were detected in most tissues. The potential consequences of vaccines crossing the natural blood-brain barrier in children’s developing brains are of the utmost concern to all future humanity.

“What should we anticipate? Children of different ages being barred from mingling. Children being bullied, ridiculed and mocked, with taunts using terms like “covidiot.”

• Vaccine Passports: Institutionalized Segregation (BI)

Increasingly, vaccination is no longer a matter of choice. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of workplaces and schools are instituting COVID-19 vaccine mandates, with more expected following formal FDA licensure of the vaccines. But mandating people and their children who have consciously chosen not to get vaccinated — a group that tends to be younger, less educated, Republican, non-white and uninsured — is a recipe for creating new and deeper fractures within our society, the kind of fractures we may profoundly regret in hindsight. Let’s not sugarcoat it: This is a new form of institutionalized segregation. Yes, some unvaccinated adults may swallow this bitter pill and comply as a way of doing their part in making America safer.

But many will see it — along with requirements that the unvaccinated wear masks or undergo regular COVID testing — as a thinly veiled attempt at public shaming. After all, if the goal is to maximize the interruption of spread, then surely all people should be masked irrespective of vaccination status. Forced compliance will come with future consequences. The ensuing anger, resentment and loss of trust forms a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. Are we ready to add this mandate to the list of issues helping erode the fabric of our society? These practices diverge substantially from the historical norm of equal opportunity. For all other required vaccines, religious and philosophical exemptions allow unvaccinated children to enjoy the same educational experience as the vaccinated.

This is because exemptions reflect a social value that in the United States, there are valid reasons for refusing treatments or vaccines, and these reasons will be respected. Once exempt, there are no sanctions experienced in everyday life. But with COVID vaccine mandates, even those with exemptions are being sanctioned, sending another clear message: We really don’t care about your reasons. And in schools, where a child’s experience will be shaped by their parents’ decisions and those of policymakers, the situation could become tragic. If schools invite vaccinated children to lose their masks, what was once an act of social responsibility could morph into a mark of disease. What should we anticipate? Children of different ages being barred from mingling. Children being bullied, ridiculed and mocked, with taunts using terms like “covidiot.”

Differential treatment toward unvaccinated children by some teachers (who are, just like everyone else, individuals with their own views about COVID vaccines). And families deciding to withdraw from formal education, choosing instead to home-school. Vaccinate-or-mask policies will drive a wedge between children and parents, cause daily psychological harm, carrying long lasting consequences for future generations. Some might see mandate resistance as a symptom of vaccine misinformation. But considering most of these individuals have complied with mandates for routine vaccines such as mumps and measles, diseases of far less societal consequence than COVID, is it not worth listening to their objections against COVID vaccine mandates?

“When you are imposing a measure which restricts liberty and undermines human rights, the measure should be necessary and proportionate. Vaccine passports are not.”

• UK Health Expert: Vaccine Passports Make No Sense (DR)

One of the UK’s most respected public health experts has called on the Scottish Government to scrap its “ridiculous and discriminatory” vaccine passport scheme. Professor Allyson Pollock spoke out after a study by The Lancet medical bible found double-jabbed people can be just as likely to pass on Covid-19. The research appears to blow a hole in the argument for controversial new laws in Scotland requiring proof of vaccination to enter football grounds and nightclubs. The Scottish Government forged ahead with the scheme, along with a mobile phone app, despite Westminster ditching its plans. Pollock, a clinical professor of public health at Newcastle University, said: “Vaccine passports don’t make public health sense. Your vaccination status tells us nothing about whether you’re infectious or transmitting at that moment in time.

“Even if you’re vaccinated, you may well become infected or re-infected and you may also transmit the virus. “So passports make no sense. They are a ridiculous, discriminatory and disproportionate measure because they tell you nothing about the individual’s risk or what the background prevalence of infection is. “It is very surprising that Scotland has chosen to introduce them given the First Minister claims to be a strong believer in human rights. When you are imposing a measure which restricts liberty and undermines human rights, the measure should be necessary and proportionate. Vaccine passports are not.” Pollock – an ex-member of Covid advisory panel Independent SAGE – spoke out in the wake of the Lancet study last week. Researchers discovered that while vaccines do an excellent job of preventing serious Covid illness and deaths, they are less good at stopping infections.

This is understood to be particularly true since the emergence of the more infectious Delta variant, which is dominant in the UK. Pollock added: “The question that has to be asked is why has the Scottish Government implemented vaccine passports. “Is it to stop transmission and infection or is it a coercive measure to make people have a vaccine. “You really need to be very clear about why are you doing this and that is what parliaments in Edinburgh and Westminster should be debating. “My advice to Nicola Sturgeon would be simple – stop using passports. “If you think that having lots of mass gatherings – nightclubs and things like that – are going to be to too dangerous, then you need to take a decision not to have them. “Clearly there has been pressure to open up the economy and perhaps it is thought vaccine passports offer a reassurance but it is a false reassurance, not a public health measure.

There are no data on myocarditis from Covid.

• The Cause of Myocarditis: COVID19 or COVID19 Vaccination? (BI)

Which causes more myocarditis: COVID19 or COVID19 vaccination? This question should be answered easily, yet here you are, reading this. First, let us agree to the terms: We want to know the rate of myocarditis after COVID19 or vaccination for individuals. Since we know age and gender, it would be useful to know these rates by age and gender. For instance, what is the rate of myocarditis in a boy between the ages of 12-15 if they get COVID19 vs. if they get the vaccination, or alternatively, what are those rates in a 40-45 year old woman? Lumping everyone together— from 12 year old boys to 80 year old women—would be silly. Let us be honest. This is not asking for the moon. It is a simple question. The answer should be very clear. In fact, one could present it as a table.

Second, let’s be very clear about the fraction we are after. When it comes to myocarditis after COVID19 we want the following: Number of cases of myocarditis within 14 or 21 days after vaccination (excess) / Number of vaccinations given For rates of myocarditis after COVID19 we want the following: Number of cases of myocarditis within 14 or 21 days after COVID19 (excess) / Number of infections of COVID19. When it comes to the former, the FDA has given us a clear number for boys aged 12 to 15 and 16 to 18 (orange bars). This is FDA’s slide; the data come from OPTUM health This translates into a risk of myocarditis of 179 per million in boys aged 12 to 15, and 196 per million in boys aged 16 to 18. That is a rate of 1 in 5,600 and 1 in 5,100 respectively. (Note: I am not citing a preprint here, I am citing the FDA’s own slides)

Now what about the rate of myocarditis after COVID19? To perform this calculation you need the numerator of excess myocarditis cases after infection and divide that by the number of people who have been infected. While many publications have reported the numerator, the denominator requires serologic testing. You need to know people who were infected who may not have even showed symptoms. You cannot use cases presenting to health care systems as the denominator, as that is is not the totality of infections. A reader can correct me if I am wrong but, I have not seen ANY analysis that uses the denominator of infections. Many papers model this denominator, but the correct method would be to perform seroprevalence of a large cohort. Can anyone provide a link to such a paper— one that uses a denominator of seroprevalence?

“We have to be ready to go every day, all the time,” Berger explained. “We are the ready force. We have to be ready to go.”

That’s exactly the problem, isn’t it?

• Marines Chief Blames ‘Disinformation’ For Remaining Unvaccinated Troops (WE)

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger cited “disinformation” as the reason there are thousands under his leadership who have not yet been vaccinated for the coronavirus. Berger said Thursday during the Aspen Security Forum that the force is being “challenged by disinformation … that still swirls around about where the genesis, how did this vaccine get approved, is it safe, is it ethical — all that swirls around on the internet, and they see all that, they read all that.” As of last Monday, 93% of Marines were partially or fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. Each Marine must be vaccinated by Nov. 28, but troops are not considered fully vaccinated until two weeks after the final dose of a two-shot vaccine or that same time period after a one-shot dose.

This means the final shot will actually have to be given by this Sunday. “We have to be ready to go every day, all the time,” Berger explained. “We are the ready force. We have to be ready to go.” He also noted that there are more than a dozen non-COVID-19 vaccinations that troops are required to receive, though some are specific to troops in certain locations. “Just to get through boot camp, you got to get 12 vaccinations,” he said. If the vaccination rate of the Marines remains the same until the deadline, it would leave more than 12,500 Marines unvaccinated, according to Military.com. The Nov. 28 deadline for the Marines is the same for the Navy, which has reported that active-duty sailors have a 99% vaccination rate. The Air Force is the only military branch whose vaccination deadline has passed, being last Tuesday. Slightly less than 96% was vaccinated in time, while roughly 8,500 remain unvaccinated.

Galloway
https://twitter.com/i/status/1457243550366773252

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Debt Rattle October 3 2021

Oct 032021

October 3, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:06 am Finance Tagged with: antibody levels, dishonorable discharge, India, ivermectin, NBA, obituary, power play, restaurants, unvaccinated spouses 61 Responses »

René Magritte Memory of a voyage 1955

• Covid Vaccine Antibody Levels Drop ‘Nearly 10-Fold’ After About Six Months (JTN)

• Public Health Or Power Play? (AC)

• India’s Ivermectin Blackout: The Secret Revealed (Hope)

• The Flu Shot Stupidity (Denninger)

• NYC Restaurateurs: Business Down 40 to 60% Due to Vaccine Mandate (ET)

• Restaurants’ Fragile Recovery Is Fizzling in the US (BBG)

• Dozens of NBA Players Refuse the Shot (PJM)

• The NBA’s Vaccine Problem Is Bigger Than A Few High-Profile Holdouts (G.)

• Senate Bill To Require Vaccines Or Testing For All US Domestic Flights (JTN)

• Afghan War Vet Faces Dishonorable Discharge For Refusing Vaccine (JTN)

• Largest Louisiana Health System Fines Employees With Unvaccinated Spouses (Fox)

• Biden Reportedly Floats Smaller Spending Bill To Avert Perceived Defeat (JTN)

A mother of 2 young children dies from the vaccine. And Twitter has the gall to call her obituary misleading. Not an ounce of decency.

Zuby

When given even an ounce of control, government officials WILL take advantage of it.@ZubyMusic

— YAF (@yaf) October 2, 2021

Prediction

Not the whole story. 2x more breakthrough cases after 5-6 months compared to 3-4 months.

• Covid Vaccine Antibody Levels Drop ‘Nearly 10-Fold’ After About Six Months (JTN)

A preliminary study this week claimed to have found a steep reduction in the number of coronavirus-fighting antibodies in patients roughly half a year after they received the COVID-19 vaccine. Researchers “analyzed blood samples from 46 healthy, mostly young or middle-aged adults after receipt of the two doses and again six months after the second dose,” Reuters reported this week. The study indicated that “vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine induces high levels of neutralizing antibodies against the original vaccine strain, but these levels drop by nearly 10-fold by seven months,” two of the researchers told the news wire.

The study, which has not yet been certified by peer review, comes amid growing talk of the possible need for a booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine to ensure a robust immune response. The study determined that “administering a booster dose at around 6 to 7 months following the initial immunization will likely enhance protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants.”

https://www.humetrix.com/powerpoint-vaccine.html

“All that would remain are vaccinated people humbly bowing to a perpetual mandate in the name of a promised security that is not even demonstrable.”

• Public Health Or Power Play? (AC)

If the pro-vaccination syndicate has its way, every American, and eventually every human, will have the Covid-19 vaccination. Furthermore, if recent chatter and momentum are any indication, regular boosters will be soon be standard. For instance, last week an FDA panel rejected a Pfizer request to recommend boosters for the general population, recommending, instead, boosters for people over 65 and those deemed at high risk. CDC director Rochelle Walensky, however, unilaterally chose to expand the recommendation to include high risk occupations, teachers, grocery store employees, and other “essential” workers.

Of course, there’s no clear reason why one booster will suffice. A policy of perpetual, mandated boosters is a remarkable achievement. If nothing else, there is a lot of money at stake in this vaccination ballet. But there is something here that should interest anyone concerned with “the science.” If everyone is vaccinated, there is no control group and therefore no group against which we can accurately judge the effectiveness of the vaccine. This is a monopoly of the most excellent sort and also an exquisite insulation against lawsuits: The government mandates regular doses of a drug the long-term effects of which are unknown—and unknowable—because we will have nothing with which to compare. All that would remain are vaccinated people humbly bowing to a perpetual mandate in the name of a promised security that is not even demonstrable.

“Politicized science” is being used as a club to bludgeon dissenters into submission. But this is not science, for science requires open and free inquiry. It is not politics, either, for legitimate politics requires free and vigorous debate. It is, instead, naked power masquerading as science. Combine this with a chorus of eager and self-righteous minions and you have a toxic situation where power is dramatically expanded and abused in the name of public health. Science is an obvious casualty, but when you dress up power in the garb of pseudo-science, another casualty is freedom.

“They had less infection when they had no protection. So, that’s a problem.”

Thanks to a Whistleblower that came forth to Attorney Thomas Renz, the public is now seeing, for the first time ever, hard data from the largest database available in the U.S. to study the COVID-19 impact including deaths & injuries; The CMS Medicare Tracking System. The Total number of American Citizens that died within 14 days of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine is 48,465 according to hard data revealed in the Medicare Tracking System. Attorney Renz is also in possession of Remdesivir death data from the Medicare Tracking System that has been withheld by the government from our citizens. The Remdesivir data reveals of the 7,960 beneficiaries prescribed Remdesivir for Covid-19, 2,058 died. That is 25.9%.

46% of people died within 14 days of the Remdesivir Treatment. The Remdesivir Treatment was established in U.S. Hospitals at the direction of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Serious adverse events were reported in 131 of the 532 patients who received Remdesivir. That is 24.6%. Attorney Renz says, ”This begs the question… why is this the protocol in American Hospitals? Does this appear “Safe and Effective” to you?” LifeSiteNews has more details on the presentation specifically as it pertains to the risks within the Pfizer vaccine. “So, when they weren’t injected, their infection rate was 1.3%, and when they got injected, it was 4.34%. It went up by over 300%,” Kingston stated. “They had less infection when they had no protection. So, that’s a problem.”

Funny that the CDC and WHO supported it. But the Ziverdo kit has been known for a long time to include doxycyclin, ivermectin, zinc. So there is no secret.

Wonder why Justin Hope would present it that way.

• India’s Ivermectin Blackout: The Secret Revealed (Hope)

The Rapid Response Teams derive support from the United States CDC under the umbrella of the WHO. This fact further validates the Uttar Pradesh test and treat program and solidifies this as a joint effort by the WHO and CDC. Perhaps the most telling portion of the WHO article was the last sentence, “WHO will also support the Uttar Pradesh government on the compilation of the final reports. None have yet been published. Just five short weeks later, on June 14, 2021, new cases had dropped a staggering 97.1 percent, and the Uttar Pradesh program was hailed as a resounding success. [..] By July 2, 2021, three weeks later, cases were down a full 99 percent. On August 6, 2021, India’s Ivermectin media blackout ended with MSM reporting.

Western media, including MSN, finally acknowledged what was contained in those Uttar Pradesh medicine kits. Among the medicines were Doxycycline and Ivermectin. On August 25, 2021, the Indian media noticed the discrepancy between Uttar Pradesh’s massive success and other states, like Kerala’s, comparative failure. Although Uttar Pradesh was only 5% vaccinated to Kerala’s 20%, Uttar Pradesh had (only) 22 new COVID cases, while Kerala was overwhelmed with 31,445 in one day. So it became apparent that whatever was contained in those treatment kits must have been pretty effective. News18 reported, “Let’s look at the contrasting picture. Kerala, with its 3.5 crore population – or 35 million, on August 25 reported 31,445 new cases, a bulk of the total cases reported in the country.

Uttar Pradesh, the biggest state with a population of nearly 24 crore – or 240 million – meanwhile reported just 22 cases in the same period. Two days ago, just seven fresh positive cases were reported from Uttar Pradesh. Kerala reported 215 deaths on August 25, while Uttar Pradesh only reported two deaths. In fact, no deaths have been reported from Uttar Pradesh in recent days. There are only 345 active cases in Uttar Pradesh now while Kerala’s figure is at 1.7 lakh – or 170,000.” “Kerala has done a much better job in vaccination coverage with 56% of its population being vaccinated with one dose and 20% of the population being fully vaccinated with a total of 2.66 crore – or 26.6 million – doses being administered.

Uttar Pradesh had given over 6.5 crore – or 65 million – doses, the maximum in the country, but only 25% of people have got their first dose while less than 5% of people are fully vaccinated. Given the present COVID numbers, Uttar Pradesh seems to be trumping Kerala for the tag of the most successful model against COVID.” [..] ” By September 12, 2021, Livemint reported that 34 districts were declared COVID-free or had no active cases. Only 14 new cases were recorded in the entire state of Uttar Pradesh. On September 22, 2021, YouTube hosted a video by popular science blogger Dr. John Campbell detailing the Uttar Pradesh success story. He gave a breakdown of the ingredients and dosages of the magical medicine home treatment kit responsible for eradicating COVID in Uttar Pradesh. The same kit was also used in the state of Goa.

Dr. John Campbell broke India’s Ivermectin Blackout wide open on YouTube by revealing the formula of the secret sauce, much to the dismay of Big Pharma, the WHO, and the CDC. Readers will want to watch this before it is taken down. See mark 2:22. Each home kit contained the following: Paracetamol tablets [tylenol], Vitamin C, Multivitamin, Zinc, Vitamin D3, Ivermectin 12 mg [quantity #10 tablets], Doxycycline 100 mg [quantity #10 tablets]. Other non-medication components included face masks, sanitizer, gloves and alcohol wipes, a digital thermometer, and a pulse oximeter.

“Why would you study a drug if you didn’t get to keep the proceeds from success? Does that prove they don’t work? Nope. That which you don’t study you don’t prove.”

• The Flu Shot Stupidity (Denninger)

Now comes Merck who, big shock, invents an oral protease inhibitor that will be on patent and appears to work. I’m not surprised at those results; they may or may not bear out over time but it wouldn’t shock me if they do. You see, Merck has every reason to invest money in something they’ll profit handsomely from if it does work. Who has a similar incentive if HCQ, Ivermectin, Budesonide, Claritin+Zpak and several other readily-available, inexpensive and off-patent medications also work? Nobody. There’s no way to prevent some other generic manufacturer from making the sales, is there? Why would you study a drug if you didn’t get to keep the proceeds from success? Does that prove they don’t work? Nope. That which you don’t study you don’t prove.

Anecdotes, such as my personal experience, are not data. But bans and public maligning of the off-label use of drugs which have decades-long safety profiles and are safe are the work of ghouls, monsters, and profit-driven *******s who, in the middle of a pandemic, deserve destruction — personally and professionally. May I remind you that it is exactly through that process that we discovered HCQ, which you wouldn’t expect to work for Lupus and RA, in fact does? This of course isn’t the first time either. For decades you so-called “experts” told Americans to eat the “food pyramid”, loaded at the bottom with fast carbohydrates. You also told us to substitute for butter and other saturated fats with unsaturated, machine-processed and stabilized vegetable oil replacements and claimed they were good.

We now know that was bull**** and in fact transfats, which do not exist in nature, have a safe human dose approximating zero. I listened to you folks on “what to eat” for a couple of decades. My body mass and waistline kept getting bigger. After Obamacare was passed it became abundantly clear that within a decade or so the health system would go straight down the crapper and thus if I needed it I was going to die, and it would probably hurt. So I did the exact opposite of what all you ghouls recommend — and promptly lost 60lbs, entirely stabilized my glucose metabolism and now am faster, as a runner, than I was at 17 in High School. Argue with the clock if you’d like.

Oh, there was not one pharmaceutical preparation involved in that and I consume zero on a routine basis as there’s no need. As for the medical system going down the crapper I made that call in 2011. Is it not ten years later? Threatening to, say much less actually firing doctors, nurses and support staff who won’t take a medication they believe, on good evidence, is dangerous — especially when they’ve already had the disease as a result of providing care to sick people for the last 18 months and thus are presumptively immune — into the maw of an alleged health emergency with flu season just around the corner is flat-out insane.

Well, if you exclude 72% of blacks…

• NYC Restaurateurs: Business Down 40 to 60% Due to Vaccine Mandate (ET)

New York City restaurateurs are complaining that their business has been slashed severely by the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which requires people 12 and older to show vaccination proof for indoor dining, indoor fitness, and indoor entertainment. Pre-pandemic, O’Donoghue’s Pub and Restaurant was a successful business that has been open for 10 years in Times Square, Manhattan. Fergal Burke, the owner of O’Donoghue’s noticed that his business has seen “a massive drop,” since the vaccine mandate came into effect. “We don’t have the money here to survive without the help of our landlord, [who] has been very supportive and has been giving us breaks on the rent, but without our landlord, we would not be in business,” Burke told The Epoch Times.

He said that he needed to hire another person to be at the door checking for vaccination proof, which increased his expenses. Comparing the clientele from pre-mandate to when it kicked in about two weeks ago, “Our business is definitely down 50, I’m going to say 60 percent,” Burke said with a somewhat downhearted tone. “There’s just not people coming into the restaurant, they have the fear of being asked for vaccines.” Burke and his staff have had to refuse a lot of customers for not having the passes. “They’re being refused and they get a resentment against us, they don’t get a resentment against Bill de Blasio or Biden, or whoever is mandating us to check for this.” “It comes as a personal rejection,” he said, further stressing that it’s not O’Donoghue’s that wants this. “We don’t want this mandate, we want nothing to do with this.”

He also noted how the subway is full of people but there’s no requirement to show vaccination proof. “I mean how is that fair in New York City, that the trains are jammed with people with a silly mask on and they’re not being mandated to show nothing, and yet they’re coming against the heart of the city. We’re the ones that’s trying to keep 20 people employed here,” Burke said. “We will go out of business if this continues, it’s gonna force us to shut our doors.”

No clients, no workers, no business.

• Restaurants’ Fragile Recovery Is Fizzling in the US (BBG)

After a brief glimpse of normalcy this summer, the fragile recovery in the U.S. restaurant industry is sputtering. Data and interviews with restaurateurs point to a deterioration in finances due to surging costs for everything from salmon to uniforms and labor shortages. A survey found that 51% of small restaurants in the country couldn’t pay their rent in September, up from 40% in July. Unlike during most of 2020, today’s struggles aren’t visible with the naked eye: Customers are still flocking to eateries, for the most part, in spite of rising prices and lingering fears of the delta coronavirus variant. But the anxiety over mounting expenses is palpable among restaurant owners from New York City to Nashville, Tennessee.

“You might see a restaurant that’s doing well on a Friday night, but that doesn’t at all tell the story of how they’re doing. Probably not good,” said Daisuke Utagawa, a Washington, D.C., chef whose restaurants include Haikan and Daikaya. “For us, personally, we haven’t seen any sort of recovery. We are still underwater.” The industry is raising the alarm. Its main lobbying group this week called on Congress for more aid to help meet payroll and pay down debt, citing a survey showing that a majority of restaurant operators have seen business conditions deteriorate in the past three months. Like many companies around the world, food-service firms are also hit by supply-chain bottlenecks. Underscoring the surge in expenses, a closely watched price gauge hit its highest since 1991 in August, driven by energy and food, the Commerce Department said Friday. “Our kitchen labor costs are up 20%, maybe more,” said Jeff Katz, partner at Crown Shy and Saga in New York City.

“The question is, how much more can the customer handle. We haven’t raised our prices yet, but these costs are real.” The rebound has been shaky and uneven across the country, even for national chains. Darden Restaurants Inc., which has about 870 Olive Garden locations, said last week that sales bounced back slightly in September after falling off in August. Georgia and Florida have seen pressure from the delta variant in recent weeks, Chief Executive Officer Gene Lee said on a conference call. But California locations are getting better. Large public-traded companies including Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. are scheduled to report quarterly earnings in October. While the recovery in fast food has been stronger, with brisk sales via drive-thru and takeout options, costs and the lack of workers are eating into profitability.

Calgary
https://twitter.com/i/status/1444268828871958536

“I don’t believe that being unvaccinated means infected or being vaccinated means uninfected.”

• Dozens of NBA Players Refuse the Shot (PJM)

The NBA season is close upon us and there are some interesting developments that are blowing up the conventional wisdom on those refusing to get vaccinated. The League says that 5-10 percent of players have yet to be vaccinated. This presents a big problem because most major cities where NBA teams play have vaccine mandates that prevent players from participating unless they’ve been jabbed. The League has taken the position that if players won’t play, their pay will be docked. NBA players are paid by the game in most cases so this could get serious. After spending most of the last few months portraying those refusing to get vaccinated as anti-science, Kool-aid-drinking MAGA supporters, the media is now stuck. How do they stereotype mostly black NBA players who refuse to get vaccinated? Especially a player like the Orlando Magic’s Jonathan Isaac. Mr. Isaac, who has already contracted COVID-19, wonders why he has to get jabbed if the antibodies in his system are already protecting him? Nobody had an answer for him because there is none.

“I understand that the vaccine would help if you have COVID, you’ll be able to have less symptoms from contracting it. But with me having COVID in the past and having antibodies, with my current age group and physical fitness level, it’s not necessarily a fear of mine. Taking the vaccine, like I said, it would decrease my chances of having a severe reaction, but it does open me up to the albeit rare chance but the possibility of me having an adverse reaction to the vaccine itself. I don’t believe that being unvaccinated means infected or being vaccinated means uninfected. You can still catch COVID with or with not having the vaccine. I would say honestly the craziness of it all in terms of not being able to say that it should be everybody’s fair choice without being demeaned or talked crazy to doesn’t make one comfortable to do what said person is telling them to do.” Stephen Miller points out the left’s conundrum.

“I don’t personally agree with his vaccine stance. I myself contracted COVID last year and still chose to get vaccinated. However there is a deeper meaning to what he’s saying that goes beyond ‘Bill Gates is trying to microchip everyone.’ It stands against what the media and the Biden administration are attempting to do by shaming and other-ing anyone who opts not to get vaccinated or can’t because of medical reasons. And that’s before we even get into the dark history African Americans and vaccinations, which has no doubt played a role in lower vaccination rates among that demographic. Isaac is rejecting the atmosphere of division, the idea that anyone who’s unvaccinated is deserving of scorn from the desks at CNN, as well as ostracization from polite society by employers, friends and family. Division is the lingua franca of the national media — and Isaac isn’t speaking it. Legitimate medical diagnoses are being lumped in with QAnon Facebook conspiracists. That leads nowhere good.”

These players are more eloquent and educated than all politicians put together.

Guardian: “..the NBA waited just long enough for some of its star players to irresponsibly contribute to the very reason that the NBA and American society are in this predicament in the first place: the misinformation crisis..”

• The NBA’s Vaccine Problem Is Bigger Than A Few High-Profile Holdouts (G.)

[..] the NBA’s vaccine problem extends beyond a couple of high-profile holdouts: the league and the players’ union were not prepared for just how important and divisive a political issue vaccines have become over the past year, and they failed in their responsibility to get out ahead of it. Instead of being leaders on the vaccine issue like the WNBA was – and like the NBA was when it came to the Black Lives Matter protests last year – the NBA waited too long to figure out just how polarized the league was on the topic. Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal said he “didn’t get sick at all” after contracting coronavirus in July, making him miss the chance to represent Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics. “I lost my smell. That’s it.” “People with vaccines, why are they still getting Covid?…

Like, it’s funny that, ‘Oh, it reduces your chances of going to the hospital.’ It doesn’t eliminate anybody from getting COVID, right? Some people have bad reactions to the vaccine. Nobody likes to talk about that. What happens if one of our players gets the vaccine and can’t play after that? Or they have complications after that? Because there are cases like that.” Jonathan Isaac, a religious man who plays for the Orlando Magic, said: “At the end of the day, it’s people [developing vaccines], and you can’t always put your trust completely in people.” And Denver Nuggets wing Michael Porter J said: “For me, I had Covid twice, I saw how my body reacted, and although the chances are slim, with the vaccine, there’s a chance you could have a bad reaction to it. For me, I don’t feel comfortable.

“If you want to get it because you feel more protected and you feel safer, and it’s protecting people around you, get it. That’s good for you. But if you feel like, ‘Oh, for me, I don’t feel safe getting it, then don’t get it.’” Forget that there are no publicly known cases of professional basketball players missing time because of side effects related to the vaccine, and severe side effects are rare for anyone. And remember that some athletes have spoken about lingering respiratory and muscle issues after contracting Covid-19, with Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum suffering lingering impairment for months after contracting the virus last season, requiring the use of an inhaler before games to help his breathing long after he recovered. Also, forget that these vaccine holdouts are ignoring a crucial reason to get the vaccine, which is to protect others.

What’s more important is that the NBA waited just long enough for some of its star players to irresponsibly contribute to the very reason that the NBA and American society are in this predicament in the first place: the misinformation crisis. And that is the bigger issue here: not the fact that Wiggins and Irving might be willing to sit out 41 home games instead of getting the vaccine, but the fact that the NBA let it get to a point where influential NBA players are broadcasting vaccine skepticism and misinformation to a highly vulnerable American public.

Including Air Force 1?

• Senate Bill To Require Vaccines Or Testing For All US Domestic Flights (JTN)

A bill introduced in the Senate this week would require all domestic U.S. air travelers to show either proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative COVID test prior to boarding a flight. The U.S. Air Travel Public Safety Act, introduced by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, would mandate “national vaccination verification standards” that would order airlines to require “documentation demonstrating that the passenger is fully vaccinated” against the SARS-Cov-2 virus. The bill does not specifically define “vaccination,” leaving it instead up to the Secretary of Health and Human Services and indicating that the qualifications for vaccination could change over time. Passengers would also be permitted to fly with “proof of a negative pre-departure qualifying test” for SARS-Cov-2.

With two heart conditions.

The politicians are looking for people they can force to jump through hoops. Teachers, nurses, soldiers.

• Afghan War Vet Faces Dishonorable Discharge For Refusing Vaccine (JTN)

A United States Marine corporal who served in Afghanistan during Operation Freedom Sentinel and Operation Southern Vigilance is facing dishonorable discharge for refusing to take the COVID-19 shots as required by the secretary of defense. Having been diagnosed with two heart conditions, arrhythmia and right bundle branch blockage, taking an experimental drug with unknown long-term side effects isn’t a medical option for him, he says, especially since the shots have already been proven to cause blood clots and heart inflammation. However, he was informed that the only medical waiver he could receive was if he was diagnosed with congenital heart failure.

The nonprofit religious freedom law firm Liberty Counsel says it’s “been inundated with heartrending pleas for help from military members who are being ordered to get the COVID shots or face discipline, including solitary confinement and dishonorable discharge.” This Marine’s story is just one of many. “If I don’t stand for what I believe in, I could never look at myself in the mirror again,” the corporal said in a statement issued by Liberty Counsel. “This is everything I’ve fought for and taught my Marines and everything our Founding Fathers stood against. This is completely unconstitutional and goes against more than one Amendment.” All military members who refuse the COVID shots are facing dishonorable and bad conduct discharge for failing to obey a lawful order, a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Non-compliance could mean a general court martial at the Divisional Commander Level, six months solitary confinement/imprisonment, and a felony charge. The DOD even created a new disciplinary department, the COVID Consolidated Disposition Authority, or CCDA, according to messages released by the U.S. Navy to servicemembers. Last month, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said the new CCDA would decide what happens to sailors who refuse to get the shots, Military.com reported. The CCDA would use “the full range of administrative and disciplinary actions,” Del Toro said, adding that “until further notice” he wouldn’t allow the CCDA to begin “non-judicial punishment, courts-martial, or administrative separation in cases of Navy Service Members refusing the vaccine.”

But the U.S. Air Force warned, “Any refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, absent an approved exemption or accommodation, may be punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Military commanders retain the full range of disciplinary options available to them under the UCMJ.” Liberty Counsel warns that for members dishonorably discharged, the potential consequences are dire, including loss of eligibility for a range of important benefits, opportunities, honors and rights, including: VA home loans and medical benefits, educational benefits under the GI Bill, military funeral honors, reenlistment in another military branch, and the right to own a firearm — all for simply refusing to take an experimental drug.

How about the kids? Neighbors?

• Largest Louisiana Health System Fines Employees With Unvaccinated Spouses (Fox)

The largest health system in Louisiana will start fining employees hundreds of dollars a month if they are married to an unvaccinated person. “The reality is the cost of treating COVID-19, particularly for patients requiring intensive inpatient care, is expensive, and we spent more than $9 million on COVID care for those who are covered on our health plans over the last year,” CEO of Ochsner Health, Warner Thomas, told NOLA. Ochsner Health will start charging employees $200 per month, or $100 per pay period, if their spouse or partner is unvaccinated. The “spousal COVID vaccine fee” will begin in 2022, and Thomas said it is not a mandate, saying non-employed spouses and domestic partners can select a health plan outside the Ochsner’s offerings.

“This is not a mandate as non-employed spouses and domestic partners can choose to select a health plan outside of Ochsner Health offerings,” he told NOLA. The fee only applies to domestic partners or spouses, not other dependents such as children, who are covered by the employee’s health insurance. [..] The rollout of vaccine mandates in hospitals is spurring nurses and other healthcare workers across the country to quit their jobs or face termination over their refusal to comply with the rules. Protests have also formed in recent weeks with healthcare workers holding signs reading phrases such as, “We are still essential,” “Say no to vaccines and yes to freedom of choice,” “Healthcare heroes demand medical freedom,” and “Don’t fire last year’s heroes.”

“We were celebrated last year,” Indiana nurse Adara Allen told Fox News this week. “But a few nurses did end up leaving due to [the hospital] not accepting their medical issues or having a reaction or adverse effect to the first dose of the covid vaccine.” Allen was told to no longer come into her hospital in Indianapolis over refusing the vaccine during her high-risk pregnancy.

Too late. The perception is there.

• Biden Reportedly Floats Smaller Spending Bill To Avert Perceived Defeat (JTN)

President Biden addressed House Democrats at the Capitol in a closed-door meeting on Friday, urging them to reach an agreement that yields passage of the Senate infrastructure bill and a budget reconciliation bill. Biden reportedly signaled that the caucus would likely have to accept a spending package smaller than $3.5 trillion to gain the support of all Democratic members. Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia have called for spending $1.5 trillion as part of a budget reconciliation bill. “He basically said it’s not going to be $3.5 [trillion],” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) about the meeting with Biden. “It could be $1.9 trillion-$2 trillion. The president threw out some numbers, so I assume there was a reason why.”

The Associated Press reported that Biden privately told Democrats that not passing the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and a separate reconciliation bill would be seen as a defeat and “embolden the same forces” that led to the Jan. 6 riot. Biden also said those forces are opposed to raising the nation’s debt limit. Republican leaders in Congress have said they do not want to vote for raising the debt limit due to Democrats proceeding with spending trillions on new benefit programs with a party-line vote. Pelosi had said a House vote on the Senate infrastructure bill would take place on Thursday, but it was delayed due to progressive opposition to passing the infrastructure bill before a reconciliation bill. “Even a smaller bill can make historic investments,” Biden reportedly said in the meeting with Democrats.

2 days old.

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Debt Rattle September 29 2021

Sep 292021

September 29, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:20 am Finance Tagged with: fully vaxxed, Guam, NBA, propaganda, prophylaxis, purges, variant, Victoria 80 Responses »

Salvador Dali Galatea of the Spheres 1952

• The Purges Have Begun (Tucker)

• Clinical Outcomes of Over-the-Counter COVID-19 Prophylaxis and Treatment (Sage)

• A New Covid Variant (B.1.1.523) Capable Of Escaping Immune Protections (Bose)

• Guam’s Vaccination Success Story Turns Grim With Covid Surge (G.)

• Victoria Australia: 95% of Those Hospitalized are Vaccinated (CTH)

• How Close Is A Coronavirus Vaccine? (FT)

• Network Of Right-wing Health Care Providers Makes Millions Off HCQ, IVM (IC)

• United Airlines To Lay Off 600 Workers Who Refused To Get Vaccinated (Hill)

• Liberal COVID Discourse is Devoid of Science (Greenwald)

• Pandemic A Unique Opportunity To Test Propaganda On Canadians (NP)

• British Gov’t Trying to Bypass Parliament to Implement Vaccine Passports (SN)

• You Can’t Be Fat And Fit (DM)

• Florida AG Files Lawsuit Against Biden Admin for Not Protecting Border (TC)

Leadership
https://twitter.com/i/status/1442998732220362758

“My wife is a triple board certified doctor in the Bronx. She worked at the hospital that had the highest Covid death rate in all of NYC. She went down hard w/Covid in April 2020 and missed two months of work. She recovered and went back. For 15 years she served the poor – underprivileged patients on welfare in the Bronx – none of them had private insurance. She resigned on Friday and I could not be more proud of her.”

• The Purges Have Begun (Tucker)

The biggest impact will most immediately be felt in the state of New York. The governor – a new person named Kathleen Courtney Hochul to replace the previous bad guy – is all behind the Biden order. In particular, she is imposing this on health-care workers. As many as 70,000 people will lose their jobs as health-care workers even as hospitals are complaining about staffing shortages. She has issued an executive order that contemplates forcing people who are enlisted in the National Guard to be deployed as scabs to replace the people who will be fired from their jobs. It’s hard to imagine how all of this will work. It comes very close to being a form of conscription in the health sector, replacing a voluntary system with a compulsory system. It’s not going to work out well for the patient.

The most shocking aspect of this is that it targets the very workers who put themselves on the line in the early days of the panic. The world cheered in the spring of 2020. New Yorkers stood outside their windows and sang songs as the staffing shifts took place. They banged pans in appreciation. Here were all kinds of nurses, technicians, and doctors who put themselves in harm’s way at a time when people were unsure of the risk profile of the disease itself. And they gained natural immunity through exposure. They know what that means because they are all trained in virology. They know that nothing beats acquired immunity via exposure. Especially with a coronavirus with a changing profile, a vaccine cannot compare. That is precisely what 100% of the studies have shown since that time. And yet here we have governments imposing the shot on people who took the risk, gained the immunities, and now refuse to take another and potentially more deadly risk from the vaccine that operates not like vaccines of old.

A correspondent writes as follows: “My wife is a triple board certified doctor in the Bronx. She worked at the hospital that had the highest Covid death rate in all of NYC. She went down hard w/Covid in April 2020 and missed two months of work. She recovered and went back. For 15 years she served the poor – underprivileged patients on welfare in the Bronx – none of them had private insurance. She resigned on Friday and I could not be more proud of her. She is not bowing to this tyranny. She tested her antibodies several times and they remain high. Please keep up this fight. Many many nurses took the vax against their will because they could not afford to miss a paycheck. These mandates must fail.”

[..] This is no longer about scientific confusion. This is starting to look like an old-fashioned political purge, whether justified by fake science or theology. It is happening at many levels of society. In Massachusetts, dozens of state troopers are resigning. Health care workers in North Carolina are resigning. It’s happening in Nebraska, California, and many other areas of the country, and hospitals and many other industries are worried. Even Navy Seals are being told that they won’t be deployed if they don’t get the jab. It is not lost on the Biden administration – this tactic seems to have been hatched in the summer – that this is harming their political enemies, not exclusively but predominantly. Apparently, no one really cares.

In academia, the problems are heating up. Todd Zywicki of George Mason University School of Law sued over the mandate – he proved that he had natural immunity – and won an individual concession from the school but the policy remained unchanged. He is just one person but there are thousands of others, most of whom are quiet about their plight. They don’t have lawyers. They are considering just giving in. They wonder what the point of resistance really is.

Good. Simple. Read.

• Clinical Outcomes of Over-the-Counter COVID-19 Prophylaxis and Treatment (Sage)

There is a pressing need for formulations and methods for COVID-19 alleviation that can be easily accessed and utilized by the public. That the alleviation should encompass prophylaxis and early-stage treatment is underscored by studies confirming spread of COVID-19 by asymptomatic/pre-symptomatic carriers; by widespread upsurges of new confirmed COVID-19 cases amid second-wave concerns; and by identification of ongoing mutations of the COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus with diverse infectivity rates. We present a 20-week study of our clinical experience with a multi-component over-the-counter (OTC) “core formulation” regimen used in a multiply exposed, high risk population.

The OTC core supplementation formulations used include zinc and zinc ionophores; vitamins C, D3 and E; and l-lysine. Analysis of clinical outcome data from our sample of 113 subjects – comprised of roughly equal sized regimen-compliant (test) and non-compliant (control) groups meeting equivalent inclusion criteria of age and overall health, including prevalence of COVID-19 comorbidities – demonstrates a strong statistical significance in favor of use of the core formulations. The statistical analysis exhibits significance even with an assumption of a sub-15%, even as low as a sub-5%, post-exposure symptom-presentation rate.

“..many variants have been detected that are more infectious and virulent than the original strain first reported in Wuhan..”

Really?

• A New Covid Variant (B.1.1.523) Capable Of Escaping Immune Protections (Bose)

A new study published on bioRxiv* preprint server describes a new variant that possesses a novel combination of various concerning mutations at the spike region. These mutations have been reported to be shared among VoCs. The researchers of this study also revealed that the prevalence of this new variant has already been reported in many countries across the world. Scientists defined the pangolin lineage of this variant to be B.1.1.523 and it was originally recognized as a variant under monitoring on July 14, 2021. According to GISAID, a total of 533 cases of B.1.1.523 have been reported as of August 19, 2021. A number of cases of this variant have been reported in Russia and Germany. The prevalence of this variant has also been reported in the U.S. and Australia.

According to sequence-based surveillance data, the first cases concerning this variant were reported in February 2021. The frequency of this variant increased in May 2021 and its prevalence decreased by June 2021. Scientists have observed that this variant does not infect any specific age group. In the current study. The researchers explain that it has not been easy to identify the origin of this variant by knowing the pangolin lineage and some spike mutations. Using the genomic sequences, they constructed a phylogenetic tree which revealed that all the cases were similar, as they were in the same branch. This result indicated that the origin of this virus was likely in Russia and the first strain was reported in Moscow.

Two of the main reasons why scientists are concerned about this variant are the three amino acid deletions in the NTD antigenic supersite and the presence of the E484K mutation of the spike protein. The E484K mutation is also present in B.1.351 and P.1 variants, both of which are strongly associated with the reduced efficacy of vaccines. Researchers conducted multiple sequence alignment (MSA) with the amino acid sequence of VoC and the original SARS-CoV-2 strain. They found that three VoCs (Alpha, Beta, and Delta) have deletions in one of the regions of the NTD antigenic supersite. The deletion of B.1.1.523 was found to be similar to B.1.617.2 and also comprises the E484K mutation that is present in many VOC. The results of this study are in line with previous studies that reported the effect of spike mutations on the efficacy of monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma treatment.

The authors of this study have reported that the B.1.1.523 variant harbors a new combination of concerning spike mutations that are present in many currently circulating VoCs. Many of these mutations are concerning and are associated with the evasion of immune protection. This is critical, as these developments could challenge the effectiveness of available vaccines. More research is required to determine the transmissibility of this variant, which would assist in the development of preventive strategies to stop the further spread of this strain.

Not one single word to suggest maybe the vaccines are the culprit. Not one. Blinders all around.

• Guam’s Vaccination Success Story Turns Grim With Covid Surge (G.)

Outside Guam Memorial hospital, blue medical tents have sprung up to accomodate an overflow of Covid patients. The sight is bewildering for Guam residents. The island ran an incredibly successful vaccination campaign, with almost 90% of eligible people having received two doses, and even began offering jabs to tourists in an “Air VnV” – vacation and vaccination – scheme. But the tents have been installed to accommodate an overflow of Covid patients at the hospital as the territory grapples with a third wave of the virus, with daily deaths reaching the highest rates since March 2020. “We just have no space – we have Covid patients waiting outside,” Pauline Perez, a nurse at the hospital, said in a government-released video that appeals to the remaining vaccine stragglers to get their shots.

“We use the blue med tents for Covid-19 patients who are stable. They need to be checked up by doctors but they don’t need treatment.” Even before the onset of the pandemic, Guam’s healthcare system was fragile, but the surge in Covid cases triggered by the Delta variant has pushed it to the verge of collapsing. Last week, the government hospital paused its services for all elective surgeries in order to realign its limited resources. Guam has been seeing close to 300 cases some days in the last few weeks, reversing months of steady decline. It has recorded 14,705 cases – nine percent of Guam’s population of 160,000 – and 195 deaths. Covid test results in the past two months have shown an alarming rate of breakthrough cases of people who had been vaccinated, including 554 of the 1,765 positive cases in August.

Overall, breakthrough cases represent 31% of infections – the highest rate in the US, where most states have less than 1%. Breakthrough patients in Guam account for about 40% of hospital admissions. The Covid surge is perplexing for a territory with a vaccination rate close to 90%, ranking sixth in the US. To date, a total of 118,756 people – or 87.13% – of Guam’s eligible population (residents 12 years and older) are fully vaccinated. That includes 10,318 residents aged 12 to 17. The high rate of breakthrough cases has led to fear in the community. “One of my officemates received her results of swab test and she turned out positive,” said Dori Leomo, a resident of Tamuning. “I cried after I heard the news. It’s my first time to feel anxiety. The following day, all of us at work went to get our swab tests. Thank God I tested negative.”

“The vaccine could be making people suffer more severe outcomes.”

• Victoria Australia: 95% of Those Hospitalized are Vaccinated (CTH)

Pay close attention to what Victoria, Australia, Health Minister Martin Foley says at the 2:45 minute mark of his comments. Health Minister Foley announced 867 new COVID cases recorded yesterday. During the statistical outline Foley identifies 375 people as hospitalized, 81 people in intensive care and 61 people on a ventilator. Then comes the statistic everyone in government and media ignore. Amid the recorded cases “78% of the hospital cases are fully vaccinated, and 17% are partially vaccinated (1 dose)”…. That means 95% of the COVID patients in Victoria hospitals are vaccinated. 356 people out of 375 patients are vaccinated, yet 81 people are still in intensive care with 61 on a ventilator.

What good are the vaccinations if 78% of those occupying the hospital are fully vaccinated? Keep in mind, this tracks with what we have been saying about sample populations around the world in general. The percentage of people sick and hospitalized is directly equivalent to the percentage of people vaccinated in the population. If 50% of the population is vaccinated, 50% of the hospitalized patients will be vaccinated. The vaccine makes no difference. Victoria is reflecting this same issue, perhaps worse. 78% of the hospital patients are fully vaccinated, that’s actually a higher percentage than the population vaccinated as a whole. Meaning vaccinated people are arriving at the hospital in greater percentage than they represent in the population. The vaccine could be making people suffer more severe outcomes.

Don’t think the FT realized how hilarious their headline is. You mean we have no vaccine? Don’t tell the FDA!

At least the article is free. Someone was wondering if there’s a link between vaccine test sites and outbreaks on that map.

• How Close Is A Coronavirus Vaccine? (FT)

All the possible inoculations broadly follow the same logic. They deliver a protein into the body that imitates or contains a part of the coronavirus called the spike, and triggers the immune system to produce antibodies and virus-fighting cells to fend off the infection. There are dozens of possible ways to transmit immunising proteins into the body, and researchers around the world are trying different approaches. Three of the Chinese phase 3 candidates use an inactivated virus as their vector. In other words, Sars-Cov-2, which has been killed by heat or chemicals. In theory, it will elicit the correct immune response but without any of the severe health impacts of the live virus.

AstraZeneca, J&J, China’s CanSino and Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute all use an adenovirus — a common virus that causes coughs and fever — that acts like a cloaked horseman, carrying the immunising protein into battle. Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech are both developing RNA-based vaccines, which use specific parts of the Sars-Cov-2 virus’ genetic code to trigger the immune response. All of the phase 3 vaccine trials are what is called “event-based”, meaning the trial only ends when a certain number of people across the vaccinated group and the control group — which receives a placebo — have contracted the virus and shown symptoms. Moderna, for example, has set the number of these “positive events” at 151. It also means that the more prevalent the disease is in the population at the time of trial, the quicker it is to gather results.

[..] Given the growing chorus of experts warning it is likely the vaccine will confer only temporary immunity, the capacity to “boost” the immune response at a later date with another shot is important. “The assumption at the moment is that we’ll be shooting to get to a year’s immunity,” said Kate Bingham, chair of the UK government’s Vaccine Taskforce. Seven of the vaccine candidates in phase 3 are designed to be taken in two doses, to increase the chance they will trigger an effective immune response. Only J&J and CanSino are trialing single dose shots. “Even if you have a vaccine with a second dose, you may need to boost every year,” Ms Bingham said.

The Intercept does Horse Paste 2.0. They should be sued out of existence. This is vile.

• Network Of Right-wing Health Care Providers Makes Millions Off HCQ, IVM (IC)

A network of health care providers pocketed millions of dollars selling hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and online consultations, according to hacked data provided to The Intercept. The data show that vast sums of money are being extracted from people concerned about or suffering from Covid-19 but resistant to vaccinations or other recommendations of public health authorities. America’s Frontline Doctors, a right-wing group founded last year to promote pro-Trump doctors during the coronavirus pandemic, is working in tandem with a small network of health care companies to sow distrust in the Covid-19 vaccine, dupe tens of thousands of people into seeking ineffective treatments for the disease, and then sell consultations and millions of dollars’ worth of those medications. The data indicate patients spent at least $15 million — and potentially much more — on consultations and medications combined.

The Intercept has obtained hundreds of thousands of records from two companies, CadenceHealth.us and Ravkoo, revealing just how the lucrative operation works. America’s Frontline Doctors, or AFLDS, has been spreading highly politicized misinformation about Covid-19 since the summer of 2020 and refers its many followers to its telemedicine partner SpeakWithAnMD.com, which uses Cadence Health as a platform. People who sign up then pay $90 for a phone consultation with “AFLDS-trained physicians” who prescribe treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to prevent and treat Covid-19. The drugs are delivered by Ravkoo, a service that works with local pharmacies to ship drugs to patients’ doors. Of course, that’s if patients ever get the consultation; many customers told Time they never received the call after paying.

The data from the Cadence Health and Ravkoo sites was provided to The Intercept by an anonymous hacker who said the sites were “hilariously easy” to hack, despite promises of patient privacy. It was corroborated by comparing it to publicly available information. The Intercept is not publishing any individual patient data and has taken steps to secure the data. After The Intercept reached out, Cadence Health’s Roque Espinal-Valdez said he shut the platform down, not wanting any part in profiting off of Covid-19 “quackery.” America’s Frontline Doctors, which debuted in the summer of 2020, has close ties to a network of right-wing efforts to undermine public health during the pandemic, including the Tea Party Patriots. AFLDS’s founder, physician Simone Gold, was arrested and charged after the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

She and other doctors have appeared in widely shared videos arguing that the drugs hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin — which are primarily used to treat malaria in humans and parasitic worms in livestock, respectively — are effective treatments for Covid-19, despite warnings from the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention against using them. The extremely partisan group also misleads people about Covid-19 vaccines, which they refer to as “experimental biological agents,” and against public health measures like vaccine mandates, masking, social distancing, and restrictions on businesses. In a video titled “The Truth About Covid-19 Vaccines,” which has received over 1.3 million views, Gold falsely argues that Covid-19 is not very deadly and that the vaccines are more dangerous than the virus itself. Over 690,000 Americans so far have died from the virus, and unvaccinated people now make up 99 percent of recent Covid-19 deaths.

“United is the only one of the top four U.S. airlines to fire employees who do not comply with a vaccine requirement.”

• United Airlines To Lay Off 600 Workers Who Refused To Get Vaccinated (Hill)

United Airlines will begin the process of laying off roughly 600 employees — less than 1 percent of its workforce — who refused to comply with the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, it announced Tuesday. The Chicago-based airline said that 99 percent of its workforce provided proof of vaccination prior to a Monday deadline. United will move to fire those who did not seek an exemption or provide proof of vaccination, but the carrier will give them one more chance to comply with the mandate during the separation process. “This was an incredibly difficult decision but keeping our team safe has always been our first priority,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby and President Brett Hart wrote in a memo to employees Tuesday.

The percentage of vaccinated United employees excludes the less than 3 percent of the company’s 67,000 employees who sought a religious or medical exemption. Six United employees filed a lawsuit against the airline last week over its policy to put exempt employees on unpaid leave. United told reporters Tuesday that the company has seen an uptick in applicants after announcing the vaccine requirement from individuals who want to work in a safe environment. “Our rationale for requiring the vaccine for all United’s U.S.-based employees was simple — to keep our people safe — and the truth is this: everyone is safer when everyone is vaccinated, and vaccine requirements work,” the United executives wrote to employees Tuesday.

United is the only one of the top four U.S. airlines to fire employees who do not comply with a vaccine requirement. Delta Air Lines will enact a $200 monthly surcharge on unvaccinated employees, while American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are only encouraging employees to get the shot.

Second eloquent NBA player in a week. The other one below.

• Liberal COVID Discourse is Devoid of Science (Greenwald)

The attempt to equate being unvaccinated with stupidity and ignorance suffered a massive blow on Wednesday night when NBA star Jonathan Isaac was asked why he was hesitant to take the vaccine. Like many unions, the NBA’s player union has refused a vaccine mandate, and Isaac, the 23-year-old player with the Orlando Magic who previously had and recovered from COVID, gave a stunningly compelling, informed, well-reasoned and thoughtful exposition on his rationale for not wanting the vaccine. Isaac also defended the right of individuals to make their own choice. One need not agree with his ultimate conclusion on the vaccine to see how groundless (and obnoxious) it is to claim that anyone who chooses not to take the vaccine — like him — is stupid, ignorant and primitive. I really encourage everyone to watch his two-minute master class in demonstrating why such a choice can, depending on one’s circumstances, be perfectly rational:

Is there anyone who can argue with a straight face that Isaac sounds stupid, ignorant or evil? One can cogently dispute the wisdom of his conclusion: while it is true that most people who recover from COVID (as he did) enjoy “natural immunity” in the form of antibodies — indeed, one major study found that “the natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine” — some studies conclude that immunity is stronger still with the vaccine.

Nonetheless, Issac is indisputably right that the risk of dying or becoming seriously ill from COVID is extremely low for someone like him: early 20s, healthy and with natural immunity. In fact, during the entire course of the pandemic, the total number of people aged 15-24 (Isaac’s age group) who have died of COVID — in a country of 330 million people — is 1,372: fewer than the number in that age group who have died of non-COVID pneumonia. Add onto that Isaac’s physical fitness and the fact that he already had COVID once, and it is clear that his risk from contracting the virus is vanishingly small.

Bradley Beal
https://twitter.com/i/status/1442930151352725504

Forget about winning a war with these guys.

• Pandemic A Unique Opportunity To Test Propaganda On Canadians (NP)

Canadian military leaders saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity to test out propaganda techniques on an unsuspecting public, a newly released Canadian Forces report concludes. The federal government never asked for the so-called information operations campaign, nor did cabinet authorize the initiative developed during the COVID-19 pandemic by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, then headed by Lt.-Gen. Mike Rouleau. But military commanders believed they didn’t need to get approval from higher authorities to develop and proceed with their plan, retired Maj.-Gen. Daniel Gosselin, who was brought in to investigate the scheme, concluded in his report.

The propaganda plan was developed and put in place in April 2020 even though the Canadian Forces had already acknowledged that “information operations and targeting policies and doctrines are aimed at adversaries and have a limited application in a domestic concept.” A copy of the Dec. 2, 2020, Gosselin investigation, as well as other related documents, was obtained by this newspaper using the Access to Information law. The plan devised by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, also known as CJOC, relied on propaganda techniques similar to those employed during the Afghanistan war. The campaign called for “shaping” and “exploiting” information. CJOC claimed the information operations scheme was needed to head off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic and to bolster government messages about the pandemic.

A separate initiative, not linked to the CJOC plan, but overseen by Canadian Forces intelligence officers, culled information from public social media accounts in Ontario. Data was also compiled on peaceful Black Lives Matter gatherings and BLM leaders. Senior military officers claimed that information was needed to ensure the success of Operation Laser, the Canadian Forces mission to help out in long-term care homes hit by COVID-19 and to aid in the distribution of vaccines in some northern communities. BLM organizers have questioned why military officials gathered information on their initiative, pointing out they followed pandemic rules and did not hold any gatherings outside LTC homes.

Then chief of the defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance shut down the CJOC propaganda initiative after a number of his advisers questioned the legality and ethics behind the plan. Vance then brought in Gosselin to examine how CJOC was able to develop and launch the propaganda operation without approval. Gosselin’s investigation discovered the plan wasn’t simply the idea of “passionate” military propaganda specialists, but support for the use of such information operations was “clearly a mindset that permeated the thinking at many levels of CJOC.” Those in the command saw the pandemic as a “unique opportunity” to test out such techniques on Canadians.

Replace Parliament with “public consultation” if that gets you better odds.

• British Gov’t Trying to Bypass Parliament to Implement Vaccine Passports (SN)

The British government has been accused of trying to bypass Parliament in an effort to implement vaccine passports via the backdoor, with the scheme under review AGAIN despite assurances it wasn’t being considered. As we highlighted earlier this month, just a day after health secretary Sajid Javid asserted that the system had been scrapped, the government announced that vaccine passports would form an ‘integral’ part of its winter response to COVID if cases and hospitalizations rose. Under the government’s ‘Plan B’, vaccine passports will form a “first-line defence” against a winter wave of COVID, despite their widespread use in Israel having proven to have zero impact on minimizing COVID cases.

Aware that it may struggle to get a vaccine passport system through a Parliamentary vote, the government is now launching a ‘public consultation’ in an attempt to enlist support for the scheme. “The plans seemed to have been put on the backburner but on Monday night the Government launched a consultation, asking the public for views on the use of vaccine passports this autumn and winter if Covid-19 cases threaten to overwhelm the NHS,” reports the Telegraph. “The Plan B proposals also open the door to the number of venues being widened beyond nightclubs, music venues, outdoor festivals, concerts and sports events.”

With the government refusing to commit to a vote, many respondents saw the move as the start of an effort to sidestep Parliament. The utter stupidity of the scheme is proven by the fact that it will eliminate the option to provide a negative test to enter any of the venues. In other words, proving that you don’t have the virus won’t be good enough to gain entry, but proving you’ve complied and taken a vaccine with dodgy efficacy that means you could still be carrying the virus anyway will be good enough to gain entry.

Confusing piece.

• You Can’t Be Fat And Fit (DM)

It is not possible to be fat and fit at the same time, French experts have concluded. A study of 3million people found even volunteers who were obese but ‘metabolically healthy’ still had a much higher chance of suffering heart problems. Obese people with normal blood pressure and who were not diabetic were still at a 34 per cent increased risk of heart failure and a similar risk of an irregular heart beat. Lead author Dr Laurent Fauchier, a cardiologist at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Trousseau, said the idea that people can be ‘fat but fit’ was ‘simply untrue’. Last week, an American study found that people simply need to focus on exercise rather than dieting to live longer. The latest French research was presented to the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. It looked at the medical records of around 2.9 million adults, of whom about one in 10 were obese.

All participants had been admitted to French hospitals in 2013 and had not had any major cardiovascular issues in the past, including a heart attack or stroke. They were monitored for five years. Dr Fauchier said: ‘This new and best available evidence tells us that on a population level, the idea that large numbers of people can be obese but metabolically healthy is simply untrue.’ The cardiologist refutes the controversial claim made by Arizona and Virginia researchers last week that people can be fat and fit. American researchers who reviewed existing studies said that when it came to trying to get healthy and cutting the risk of dying early, increasing exercise and improving fitness was more effective than shedding flab. Numerous studies have shown how people around the world have been trying to lose weight over the past 40 years, and yet obesity has continued to rise.

The researchers said that adopting what they called a ‘weight-neutral approach’ did not mean weight loss should be ‘categorically discouraged’. They added: ‘But shifting the focus away from weight loss as the primary goal and instead focusing on increasing physical activity to improve cardio-respiratory fitness may be prudent for treating obesity-related health conditions.’ Their claims appear to contradict a study published this summer by Glasgow University researchers who tracked 381,263 adults over 11 years. They concluded it was not possible to be fat but fit – a misleading phrase that doctors should stop using. Those who were ‘metabolically healthy’ but obese were 22 per cent more likely to die than those of a normal weight. They were also 18 per cent more likely to have a heart attack or stroke, 76 per cent more likely to develop heart failure and four times more likely to suffer from type 2 diabetes.

“I’m signing an executive order to prohibit state agencies that report to me, from aiding or abetting in any way what the federal government is doing right now. We’re not gonna be a party to this lawlessness.”

• Florida AG Files Lawsuit Against Biden Admin for Not Protecting Border (TC)

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration on Tuesday for not adequately protecting the southern border. The suit alleges that the administration’s catch-and-release policy is a violation of federal immigration law. Moody argues in the suit that the immigration policy hurts Florida because the illegal migrants travel to the state and cost taxpayers millions of dollars. “I don’t care if it is extreme incompetence, if it is radical liberal policy agenda, no one, let me repeat that, no one is above the law,” Moody argued. “We are seeing dramatic effects at our border. It is an unmitigated crisis based on this president’s refusal to follow federal law.”

In addition to filing the lawsuit, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the “Biden Border Crisis Executive Order” prohibiting state agencies from working with the Biden administration at the border until his policies change. “I’m signing an executive order to prohibit state agencies that report to me, from aiding or abetting in any way what the federal government is doing right now. We’re not gonna be a party to this lawlessness. We haven’t, to my knowledge, but we’re letting the marker down, know this is an absolute red line. We’re not gonna do it,” said DeSantis during a press conference about the lawsuit and the order. Moody also spoke at the press conference, saying that “criminal cartels are having a field day. I can assure you, their profits are skyrocketing.” “Had the government, the federal government, just done its job this would not have happened. They would not have been in that situation,” DeSantis added.

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Debt Rattle September 27 2021

Sep 272021

September 27, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:53 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, cattle, CIA, Daszak, Lancet, natural immunity, NBA, Pompeo, Wikileaks 87 Responses »

M. C. Escher Symmetry Drawing 1948

• Natural Immunity Emerges As Potential Legal Challenge To Vaccine Mandates (Y!)

• Lancet Covid Origins Panel Disbanded Over Ties To Peter Daszak (DM)

• Dear Idiot: I Will Laugh (Denninger)

• We Are All Cattle Now (Eugyppius)

• The NBA’s Anti-Vaxxers Are Trying to Push Around the League (RS)

• How The US Vaccine Effort Derailed And Why We Shouldn’t Be Surprised (G.)

• Treating Antisocial Elements For What They Are (K.)

• Inside The CIA’s Secret War Plans Against Wikileaks (Y!)

• CIA Was Ready To Wage Gun Battle In London Streets Over Assange (RT)

• Mike Pompeo And The CIA’s War On WikiLeaks and Julian Assange (Gosztola)

• CIA’s Assange Abduction/Murder Plan Raises Questions For Australia (Crikey)

“Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left”
– Aldous Huxley

No infections, lots of excess deaths. Why?

O’Looney

Launch 1,000 cases.

• Natural Immunity Emerges As Potential Legal Challenge To Vaccine Mandates (Y!)

The argument that natural immunity against COVID-19 is an alternative to vaccination is emerging as a potential legal challenge to federally mandated vaccination policies. Vaccination is already required for certain workers and some college students. The federal government, despite steeper legal hurdles to imposing vaccination, has also invoked the U.S. Department of Labor to mandate inoculation for health care workers and is expected to roll out a larger policy effectively mandating vaccination for a majority of U.S. workers. The stated goal behind mandatory vaccination policies is to protect against the spread of disease, meaning that the crux of any policy is immunity.

The notion that a previous COVID-19 infection provides natural immunity that can be at least as good as vaccination in some people is something a judge would likely need to consider in a challenge to a mandatory policy, especially against a government actor. “I think that a judge might reject a rule that’s been issued by a body, like the U.S. Department of Labor or by a state, that has not been sufficiently thought through as it relates to the science,” Erik Eisenmann, a labor and employment attorney with Husch Blackwell, told Yahoo Finance. Some recent research, which looks at hundreds of thousands of cases in Israel and has yet to undergo peer review, indicates that natural immunity might be at least as effective as vaccination in certain people.

Other peer-reviewed research cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which looks at dozens of cases in the U.S., indicated that certain people who suffered from a COVID-19 infection did not create antibodies (ie, natural immunity) at all. In August, the CDC published a study of 246 Kentucky residents, concluding that vaccination offers higher protection than a previous COVID infection. The CDC said the study went through a “rigorous multi-level clearance process” before submission, though analysis was conducted before the Delta variant became prevalent in the U.S. The CDC says the Kentucky data indicates that vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone, and medical professionals widely recommend vaccination for everyone who is eligible — including those who have experienced a prior COVID-19 infection.

Legally challenging COVID-19 vaccine mandates involves both science and law. The scientific arguments are based on certain studies over the past year, including the Israel study, and studies out of Cleveland Clinic and Washington University. A June study that tracked 52,238 Cleveland Clinic employees found that within 1,359 previously infected and unvaccinated people, none contracted a subsequent COVID-19 infection over the five-month study. The findings led authors to conclude that prior infection makes a person “unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination.” Nevertheless, Cleveland Clinic stated afterwards that it continued to recommend vaccination for people previously infected, stressing that the research was conducted in late 2020 and early 2021 before the emergence of the Delta variant.

I don’t trust Jeffrey Sachs.

• Lancet Covid Origins Panel Disbanded Over Ties To Peter Daszak (DM)

The chairman of a COVID-19 origins task force affiliated with the Lancet scientific journals has disbanded the commission over its ties to controversial researcher Peter Daszak and his EcoHealth Alliance. Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs told the Wall Street Journal on Saturday that he was concerned with the links to Daszak, who led the task force until recusing himself from that role in June. Daszak, who lives in New York, devoted his career to championing so-called ‘gain of function’ research to engineer coronavirus to be more deadly to humans, arguing that it was the best chance to detect and prevent a global pandemic. Shocking documents released this week revealed his 2018 proposal to help the Wuhan Institute of Virology engineer bat coronaviruses to be more deadly, by inserting genetic features that are similar to those found in SARS-CoV-2.

There is still no conclusive proof as to whether COVID-19, a coronavirus linked to bats, first jumped to humans from a wild animal or in a lab setting. But from the early days of the pandemic, Daszak has made every effort to paint the lab origin hypothesis as a ‘conspiracy theory,’ including masterminding a letter in the Lancet that established a veneer of scientific consensus that natural origin was the only possibility. If the virus did emerge from a lab performing the experiments he championed, it would be a crushing blow to Daszak’s research. Natural origin, on the other hand, would vindicate his life’s work seeking to prevent the next pandemic. Several members of the disbanded Lancet task force have collaborated with Daszak or EcoHealth Alliance on projects in the past.

‘I just didn’t want a task force that was so clearly involved with one of the main issues of this whole search for the origins, which was EcoHealth Alliance,’ Dr. Sachs told the Journal. Sachs said a new Lancet Covid-19 Commission would continue studying the origins for a report to be published in mid-2022, but broaden its scope to include input from other experts on biosafety concerns, including risky laboratory research. It comes just days after the release of bombshell documents showing Daszak’s 2018 funding request to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) seeking $14.2 million to fund gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab.

“Their data, official public health data, says that (1) the jabs wear off, (2) those who were jabbed are spreading the disease and (3) you who got jabbed are at high risk of getting ****ed.”

• Dear Idiot: I Will Laugh (Denninger)

So The Miami Herald — and Yahoo — think they can print this without consequence? “That’s why we were glad President Biden stopped asking nicely, started requiring vaccinations everywhere he had power to do so. We were also glad when employers followed suit. And if that’s a problem for you, then, yes, goodbye, sayonara, auf wiedersehen, adios and adieu. We’ll miss you, to be sure. But you’re asking us to choose between your petulance and our lives. And that’s really no choice at all.” Is that so? Well here’s a bit of science for you, *******: The jabs don’t work. In fact you admit they don’t work. If you believed they did work you wouldn’t care about us. You might call us stupid, but that’s the end of it right? You’re safe, we’re not. So what? You live your life and if we kill ourselves, so be it. You don’t ban beer because I can drink myself to death, right?

So why are you all up in arms? There’s only one answer: You know you did something stupid and put yourself in a worse position rather than a better one when you got vaccinated! So now, having done something that you know is dumb you insist others join you in your ritualized suicide cult, headed by Biden, Fauci and Rochelle. Have a look at Scotland if you think I’m wrong on this. Their data, official public health data, says that (1) the jabs wear off, (2) those who were jabbed are spreading the disease and (3) you who got jabbed are at high risk of getting ****ed. Not a little ****ed either. Indeed you traded what was 18 months to get rid of the extra 100lbs for a non-sterilizing, lightly-tested jab that on the history was very unlikely to work out well. It never had before for any coronavirus, so why would you believe, without years or even decades of evidence, that “this time its different”?

So when — not if, when — you get a so-called “breakthrough” infection the evidence is you will get screwed faster, harder, and more-certainly than someone never vaccinated. You’re at least as likely to die. Indeed, if you talk to clinicians they will tell you point-blank that once you get into the hospital being vaccinated has no statistical benefit on outcome. Oh sure, it appears being jabbed comes with a lower risk of death close in to your vaccination date, but remember, when you got vaccinated you also took a wildly-elevated risk of myocarditis which, on the data, progresses to heart failure a frightening part of the time within five years and which is asymptomatic until there is nothing you can do about it because the root, PAH, is not detectable from outside the body by non-invasive means.

If that turns out badly five years down the road you either get a heart transplant (at six-figure cost, permanent disability and permanent dependence on anti-rejection drugs) or you’re dead. Never mind those people who took the first jab, got hammered by it, couldn’t go back for the second due to the risk of immediate death and now are stuck with permanent compromise from infection and wildly elevated risk of mortality. By the way that’s in the data too and your demands and screaming are why those people are screwed. Just in case you missed that let me say it again: You screwed them. Many among us, myself included, calculated that the risk from infection was less than the risk from being jabbed. I was right. I got infected, placed no burden on the health care system, survived, recovered, I have no apparent bad lasting effects, my exercise tolerance is back to where it was and I gained durable, broad and deep immunity which the jabs do not confer.

“Coronavirus vaccines have been used in animals for years, with extremely unimpressive results.”

• We Are All Cattle Now (Eugyppius)

There is nothing surprising about the failure of our vaccines. In fact it was totally predictable. Coronavirus vaccines have been used in animals for years, with extremely unimpressive results. The problem is that coronaviruses infect the mucosal surfaces of the lungs, at what is basically the very edge of the reach of our immune systems. You could say that this their grand strategy. They work their way in from our least protected borders. Typically, nasal spray vaccines are preferred in animals to stimulate immunity in the mucosa. Unfortunately, even the sprays achieve immunity that „is often short-lived, requires frequent boosting, and may not prevent re-infection.“ This is after decades of vaccine development and the considerably reduced safety standards observed in veterinary medicine.

Our own SARS-2 vaccines, despite their fancy mRNA and virus vector technology, are entirely of a piece with veterinary standards. They have a poor side effect profile, they provide only temporary and partial protection against infection, and they are deployed on a vast scale with no regard for the evolutionary pressure they place on the virus or their broader consequences for infection dynamics. These are normal standards in the context of industrial livestock, where most animals are not raised to live very long in any event, and the risk of occasional accidents — inadvertently favouring or even causing lethal superstrains, or inflicting widespread vaccine injuries — can be weighed against the economic loss associated with mortality from infections.

Of all animal coronavirus vaccines, the most successful is that which prevents IBV, or infectious bronchitis virus, in chickens. IBV is mainly deadly to chicks, who are vaccinated almost immediately after hatching with a live, attenuated virus vaccine. These kinds of vaccines are preferred over deactivated virus vaccines in animals, because they elicit a better immune response. The reason is simple: The weakened vaccine virus actually infects you and your immune system remembers the event accordingly. Some SARS-2 attenuated virus vaccines are even in development for humans, but it is unlikely they will ever be used, because they are very dangerous. The attenuated virus, because it replicates in the cells of the vaccinated, can reacquire its prior virulence via mutations. This happened with early attenuated vaccines against poliovirus in humans.

And there is an added danger, that the recently vaccinated might come into contact with the wild virus, and recombination events might then combine splice together the genomes of both, yielding unpredictable, potentially very lethal, mutant strains. IBV vaccines protect the chickens from infection for only about nine weeks. That‘s long enough for the chickens destined to be eaten, but those raised for their eggs require constant boosters. They receive two or three attenuated virus vaccines at first, and then periodic deactivated virus boosters thereafter, to maintain their protection. Adenovirus vector vaccines have been tried in chickens, with efficacy similar to that induced by the attenuated virus vaccines. This is very likely an unstated reason that vaccine vector and mRNA messenger technology were used for our own SARS-2 jabs. It was known from experience with animals that deactivated virus vaccines would not work nearly as well, and that attenuated viruses were too dangerous.

You sure it’s not the league trying to push the players around?

• The NBA’s Anti-Vaxxers Are Trying to Push Around the League (RS)

One by one, the basketball players — non-vaccinated star here, fully-inoculated veteran on mute down there, a full-on anti-vaxxer front-and-center — logged into the video conference. The annual summer meeting of the powerful NBA union had gone virtual again on August 7, and high on the agenda for the season ahead was a proposed mandate from the league office that 100 percent of players get vaccinated against Covid-19. One response echoed from squares across the screen, according to players and an executive on the call: “Non-starter. Non-starter.” The NBA had relied on science above all to lead the sports world through the Covid nightmare, from the league’s outbreak-driven shutdown to a pandemic-proof playoff bubble in Disney World to game after game with fans back in the stands.

But after two plagued seasons of non-stop nasal swabbing, quarantining and distrust, unvaccinated players were pushing back. They made their case to the union summit: There should be testing this year, of course, just not during off-days. They’d mask up on the court and on the road, if they must. But no way would they agree to a mandatory jab. The vaccine deniers had set the agenda; the players agreed to take their demands for personal freedom to the NBA’s negotiating table. This month, league officials caught a break: Two of America’s most progressive cities, New York and San Francisco, would require pro athletes to show proof of one Covid-19 vaccination dose to play indoors, except with an approved medical or religious exemption. Which meant that one of the NBA’s biggest stars — one known for being receptive to conspiratorial beliefs — would be under heavy pressure to get a shot. And if Brooklyn Nets superstar Kyrie Irving could be convinced to take the vaccine, then maybe, just maybe, the whole league could create a new kind of bubble together.

When asked directly about Irving’s vaccination status — or his plans to change it — multiple people familiar with his thinking declined to answer directly. But one confidant and family member floated to Rolling Stone the idea of anti-vaxx players skipping home games to dodge the New York City ordinance… or at least threatening to protest them, until the NBA changes its ways. “There are so many other players outside of him who are opting out, I would like to think they would make a way,” says Kyrie’s aunt, Tyki Irving, who runs the seven-time All-Star’s family foundation and is one of the few people in his regular circle of advisors. “It could be like every third game. So it still gives you a full season of being interactive and being on the court, but with the limitations that they’re, of course, oppressing upon you. There can be some sort of formula where the NBA and the players can come to some sort of agreement.”

“..vaccine misinformation campaigns overwhelmingly popular in conservative circles..”

• How The US Vaccine Effort Derailed And Why We Shouldn’t Be Surprised (G.)

The cause of flagging vaccine uptake in the United States has flummoxed national health authorities, who in May loosened mask guidance in hopes it would encourage more people to get vaccinated, in July again recommended masks because of the Delta variant, and hoped August’s full FDA approval of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine would increase vaccine mandates. In a September speech, just days before the US slipped behind Japan, Joe Biden channeled national exasperation: “Many of us are frustrated with the nearly 80 million Americans who are still not vaccinated even though the vaccine is safe, effective and free.” He called for vaccine mandates impacting 100 million Americans, two-thirds of US workers.

However, all these strategies have failed to encourage more than 900,000 Americans per day to get vaccinated in recent weeks, far lower than nearly 3m doses administered per day in April, the height of the vaccination push. Finally, in mid-September, the country’s slow progress allowed Japan to surpass the US both in terms of vaccination rate per 100,000 people and percentage of the total population with one or both shots. There are very specific, well-documented reasons that Americans are hesitant to take vaccines. They vary from the troubling way the medical system treats people of color, to vaccine misinformation campaigns overwhelmingly popular in conservative circles, to logistical challenges.

But population health researchers, whose work considers how society as a whole is fairing, said low vaccine uptake may be looked at another way: as the predictable outcome of a campaign subject to entrenched social forces that have diminished American health and life expectancy since the 1980s. “When I look at this I do see a very familiar pattern,” said Dr Steven Woolf, a prominent population health researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University. “When Operation Warp Speed came out I thought I was just seeing a modern example of this old problem where the scientific community developed the vaccine at ‘warp speed,’ but the implementation system for getting it out into the community was inadequate”. Woolf calls this “breakthrough without follow-through”. In that light, the plodding vaccination campaign could be seen as one more aspect of the American “health disadvantage”.

“These and others in the anti-vax movement are basically enemies of society and need to be treated accordingly, without hesitation…”

• Treating Antisocial Elements For What They Are (K.)

Day-to-day life in Greece is excessively determined by people defying laws, rules and reason; it’s disappointing and extremely frustrating. But this, as former prime minister Kostas Simitis once said, is Greece and it doesn’t look like it’s changing much. It’s exhausting for citizens yearning for basic normalcy to be assailed by the prevalent delinquency and to feel that their quality of life is being constantly undermined, often with the tolerance of the state apparatus. Right now, events are being defined by our fellow citizens who refuse to get the Covid vaccine and by the obstinacy of deniers of all stripes. Whether they’re jerks, kooks, nitwits, thugs, vote-mongers or religious fanatics is neither here nor there. They are a swarm that is endangering the lives of the rest of us, having a negative impact on the quality of everyday life and obstructing the vital functions of society.

The state, therefore, has an obligation to all the “normal” people in this country to decisively deal with such antisocial elements. Admittedly, there are more antisocial Greeks out there. There are the unconscionable priests and monks who preach against the vaccines, the lawyers exploiting the anti-vax movement, the judges approving the exhumation of Covid victims, the relatives suing doctors for a payout, the parents calling the police on teachers implementing the law, the nurses and other state workers who refuse to be vaccinated but expect to keep getting paid… These and others in the anti-vax movement are basically enemies of society and need to be treated accordingly, without hesitation. Especially given that the overwhelming majority of the political world claims to support vaccinations.

The truth is that the antisocial behavior we are seeing right now is not the result of the pandemic. It may appear so, but is, in fact endemic and manifests in all sorts of ways: violence in the soccer arena and on the streets; interminable protest rallies and marches; sit-ins at schools and universities; increasingly aggressive and unruly driving; sound pollution; nasty graffiti; posters pasted willy-nilly on public walls; grimy bowls of water and food scattered here and there for strays; and, of course, in the inability or indifference of the state to these and so many other such phenomena. And even in the favorable decisions and amendments passed by every government to accommodate those breaking the rules and shirking their obligations. At the end of the day, it’s the suckers who dream of a different kind of Greece who end up paying the price.

Edward Snowden @Snowden: “Stop what you’re doing and read this. The CIA developed plans to kill or kidnap an award-winning journalist whose work they did not like — before they charged him with a crime. The case against Julian Assange must be dropped—and condemned.”

• Inside The CIA’s Secret War Plans Against Wikileaks (Y!)

In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials over the legality and practicality of such an operation. Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.” The conversations were part of an unprecedented CIA campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its founder. The agency’s multipronged plans also included extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, sowing discord among the group’s members, and stealing their electronic devices.

While Assange had been on the radar of U.S. intelligence agencies for years, these plans for an all-out war against him were sparked by WikiLeaks’ ongoing publication of extraordinarily sensitive CIA hacking tools, known collectively as “Vault 7,” which the agency ultimately concluded represented “the largest data loss in CIA history.” President Trump’s newly installed CIA director, Mike Pompeo, was seeking revenge on WikiLeaks and Assange, who had sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape allegations he denied. Pompeo and other top agency leaders “were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7,” said a former Trump national security official. “They were seeing blood.”

The CIA’s fury at WikiLeaks led Pompeo to publicly describe the group in 2017 as a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” More than just a provocative talking point, the designation opened the door for agency operatives to take far more aggressive actions, treating the organization as it does adversary spy services, former intelligence officials told Yahoo News. Within months, U.S. spies were monitoring the communications and movements of numerous WikiLeaks personnel, including audio and visual surveillance of Assange himself, according to former officials. This Yahoo News investigation, based on conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials — eight of whom described details of the CIA’s proposals to abduct Assange — reveals for the first time one of the most contentious intelligence debates of the Trump presidency and exposes new details about the U.S. government’s war on WikiLeaks. It was a campaign spearheaded by Pompeo that bent important legal strictures, potentially jeopardized the Justice Department’s work toward prosecuting Assange, and risked a damaging episode in the United Kingdom, the United States’ closest ally.

Isikoff

Watch: MSNBC speaks to Yahoo News' Chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff about todays bombshell Yahoo report on how the CIA planned to kidnap or kill Julian #Assange https://t.co/rA7hRgU7Tr pic.twitter.com/SQIzcFb7nC

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 27, 2021

With the Russians….

• CIA Was Ready To Wage Gun Battle In London Streets Over Assange (RT)

At the peak of preparations for hostilities in 2017, the CIA was allegedly expecting Russian agents to help Assange flee the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. In such a contingency, the Americans, together with the British, were planning to engage in street battles against the Russians, potentially starting a firefight, ramming a Russian diplomatic vehicle, or shooting at the tires of a Russian plane to prevent it from lifting off, the story said. The attempt to spring Assange was reportedly expected on Christmas Eve. “It was beyond comical,” a former senior official told the outlet regarding the situation in the vicinity of the embassy at the time. “It got to the point where every human being in a three-block radius was working for one of the intelligence services – whether they were street sweepers or police officers or security guards.”

The CIA was also deliberating plans to kill Assange and other members of WikiLeaks, the report said. Alternatively, the agency was considering snatching him from the embassy and bringing him to the US, or handing him over to the British authorities. At the time, the UK wanted Assange for skipping bail in an extradition trial on a request from Sweden – a case that has since been dropped. The possibility of carrying out a successful rendition or assassination were described as “ridiculous” by one intelligence official, because of the location. “This isn’t Pakistan or Egypt – we’re talking about London,” the source was quoted as saying. There was also resistance in the Trump administration because such an operation might be deemed illegal under US law. A source said using CIA powers meant only for spy-versus-spy activities would be “the same kind of crap we pulled in the War on Terror.”

As far as the CIA was concerned, WikiLeaks prompted these extreme measures after the so-called ‘Vault 7’ publications, which exposed a cyber-offensive toolkit used by US agents. The leak of those tools was a major humiliation for US intelligence, so “Pompeo and [then-Deputy CIA Director Gina] Haspel wanted vengeance on Assange,” Yahoo was told. Pompeo had to do some legal maneuvering so the agency could go more aggressively after Assange and WikiLeaks without having then-president Donald Trump sign off such operations. When, shortly after taking office, he infamously called WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service” during a public speech, it was more than just rhetoric, according to the report. Designating in that way allowed the CIA to file its snooping under “offensive counterintelligence” activities, which it’s allowed to conduct on its own volition. “I don’t think people realize how much [the] CIA can do under offensive [counterintelligence] and how there is minimal oversight of it,” a former official said.

Credico Isikoff

Twitter thread.

• Mike Pompeo And The CIA’s War On WikiLeaks and Julian Assange (Gosztola)

Journalists for Yahoo! News finally confirmed a narrative around Mike Pompeo and the CIA’s war on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, which I outlined back in October 2019. It’s an important report. WikiLeaks’ publication of “Vault 7” materials from the CIA was hugely embarrassing. Even though the CIA had increased spying operations against WikiLeaks, they still were surprised the media organization obtained a trove of the agency’s extremely sensitive files.

CIA director Mike Pompeo was afraid President Donald Trump would learn about the “Vault 7” materials and think less of him. “Don’t tell him, he doesn’t need to know.” But it was too important. Trump had to be informed.

[..] Recall, CIA director Mike Pompeo’s speech at CSIS, a Washington think tank, where he labeled WikiLeaks “a non-state hostile intelligence service.” That was all to fuel a climate for aggressive action targeted against Assange, WikiLeaks staff, and associates. The CIA could not prove WikiLeaks was working at the behest of the Russian government. So rather than claim authority to target WikiLeaks that way officials sought to reframe the organization as a “hostile entity.” Then it wouldn’t matter that they weren’t working for Russia.

Australian media are useless too.

• CIA’s Assange Abduction/Murder Plan Raises Questions For Australia (Crikey)

Revelations by a large number of former US officials, reported by Yahoo! News, that the CIA planned to abduct and render Julian Assange to the United States — and contemplated murdering him — raise more uncomfortable questions for the Australian government and its policy of trying to pretend Assange doesn’t exist. Yahoo’s investigation relies on accounts from eight former officials about the plan to kidnap Assange from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, among dozens of other sources about the Trump administration’s determination to go after Assange and WikiLeaks. The Trump administration went where even the whistleblower-hating Obama administration refused to go and launched a prosecution for espionage and conspiracy, but until now it was widely thought its plans were limited to legal extradition.

It is now clear the CIA — under Republican Mike Pompeo, who would go on to be Trump’s secretary of state — developed plans to abduct Assange and illegally render him to the US via a third country. There was discussion “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration of murdering him. There was also scenario planning about what violent measures US and UK agents might take to thwart a hypothetical Russian attempt to help Assange escape to Russia. The most obvious question for the Australian government is whether the CIA discussed with Australian intelligence officials its plans to abduct or murder an Australian citizen, or whether Trump administration figures — some of whom were alarmed by the CIA’s planning — alerted the Turnbull government at a political level.

It would say much about how unimportant Australia was, and how little we have spoken up for Assange, if the entire process was conducted without anyone bothering to raise it with the Australian government. The extent of Australian knowledge of the plans for Assange is likely never to be clarified because Australia’s intelligence agencies are able to operate behind a bipartisan wall of secrecy far stronger than that which applies to US agencies, where independent congressional oversight, a better-protected media, a stronger whistleblower culture and better disclosure laws mean much more scrutiny for intelligence agencies. In Australia there’s virtually none, with limited parliamentary oversight, brutal gag laws for intelligence officials, vexatious prosecutions and police raids on journalists willing to try to pierce the secrecy.

But there’s another angle that is also important. What sparked the CIA’s fury at WikiLeaks and set it to planning to kidnap or murder Assange was that WikiLeaks in 2017 revealed a trove of CIA software exploits, known as “Vault 7”, which had been stolen from the intelligence agency. That release was followed, within months, by news that the National Security Agency had had some of its own trove of software exploits stolen, which led to Microsoft publicly criticising intelligence agencies for failing to alert companies to exploitable software faults. The two cases illustrated how Western intelligence agencies were a key threat to our cybersecurity by intentionally leaving security weaknesses in commonly used systems so they could exploit them — leading to other states, or organised crime, to exploit them as well, in some cases using the very software tools bought or developed by intelligence agencies.

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Debt Rattle February 18 2021

Feb 182021

February 18, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: Australia, COVID, Cuomo, Facebook, FBI, Hong Kong, NBA, Neanderthal, subzero, Texas, vaccine 41 Responses »

Ansel Adams Church, Taos, Pueblo 1942

• Masked Drivers Banned From Wearing Sunglasses & Hats in Saxony (RT)

• Facebook Blocks News From Australia – Yes, The Entire Country (CTH)

• The Deplatforming Of Australia (Mark Pesce)

• Hong Kong Aiming For Legislation To Ban Insulting Public Officials (ZH)

• Vaccine Rollout Will Trigger New Covid Variants, Oxford Scientist Warns (RT)

• Many Top NBA Players Hesitant To Promote Coronavirus Vaccines (ESPN)

• Waitress Fired From NYC Eatery For Not Getting Covid Vaccine (DM)

• How Well You Fared With Covid19 Might Be Down To Neanderthal Genes (RT)

• Cuomo-gate: A Nixonian Scandal Is Engulfing New York (DP)

• Texas Governor Blames Power Outages on Wind, Solar (CD)

• Subzero Rates Are Coming to the US and the UK (Lacalle)

• Twenty Days Of Infamy: The January 2017 Red Flags The FBI Blew Past (JTN)

• VP Harris Gets Two Pinocchios For ‘Starting From Scratch’ Comment (JTN)

• ‘A Love As Real As Climate Change’: Tucker Carlson About Joe & Jill Biden (RT)

Perfectly in line with today’s news. Insanity rules. Just find someone to hate.

Ha ha ha. Brilliant. What people think of. “… general facial features” of the driver must still be visible to the road safety cameras…

• Masked Drivers Banned From Wearing Sunglasses & Hats in Saxony (RT)

Drivers must still be identifiable by traffic cameras, even when they follow existing health protocols and wear masks, a new rule in Germany’s eastern region says. According to the Bild newspaper, Saxony became the first region in Germany to ban hats and sunglasses on masked drivers. “Wearing a hat and sunglasses in addition to a mask that covers the face and mouth makes [the driver] unrecognizable. So that’s not allowed,” Saxony’s Interior Minister Roland Woller said. Woller explained that “general facial features” of the driver must still be visible to the road safety cameras.

He added that officials responsible for handing out fines to drivers were advised to handle the new rule on a case-by-case basis. Starting from Monday, people are required to wear masks in vehicles in Saxony if members of more than two households are traveling together. Last month, Germans were mandated to wear medical-grade respirator-type masks on public transport and when going to supermarkets. Simple cloth or homemade masks are not allowed in such cases.

Will this wake up more politicians?

• Facebook Blocks News From Australia – Yes, The Entire Country (CTH)

Australian officials are pushing back against the totalitarian grip of Big Tech. {Go Deep} As a result of investigations into Google and Facebook the Australian government is set to establish fines against tech companies for anti-trust violations. However, some officials are now discussing taking actions that are beyond civil lawsuits, and are now advocating for arrest of company officers for unlawful conduct. The battle lines are being drawn, and in response to the Australian government position on anti-trust Facebook (feeling they are elite and above the law) has now decided to block all news articles from the entire country from their social media platform.

FACEBOOK ANNOUNCEMENT – […] this means people and news organisations in Australia are now restricted from posting news links and sharing or viewing Australian and international news content on Facebook. Globally, posting and sharing news links from Australian publishers is also restricted. To do this, we are using a combination of technologies to restrict news content and we will have processes to review any content that was inadvertently removed.

“Does Facebook truly believe that their actions will change the political outcome? Or are they sending a signal to other sovereign powers—such as the EU, India and the USA—that Facebook is itself a sovereign power..”

• The Deplatforming Of Australia (Mark Pesce)

Can a whole country be deplatformed? That question confronts all of Australia today, as Facebook (for Facebook, read Mark Zuckerberg, who autocratically controls the social media giant) suddenly went nuclear, blocking all postings from news sites by its Australian users, and blocking those same users from seeing news postings from any source, anywhere in the world. All of this seemingly in response to a law that hasn’t even passed through Parliament. It feels like a dummy spit for the ages, the kind of moment that historians will simply chuckle over—and it is. But there’s much more here: never before in history has any technology firm gone head-to-head with the legitimate democratic apparatus of a highly advanced state. Australia is neither an economic backwater nor new to the Internet. That’s what makes this all a bit terrifying.

The cheek of it: a trillion-dollar social media firm twists a few dials, drops in some barely-functioning algorithms—that blocked NASA and The Betoota Advocate along with the ABC, News, Seven and Nine—and voila! the entire media landscape alters, bringing the nation’s focus to a foreign technology firm that appears to be acting to interrupt the legislative workings of a democratic sovereign power. If Facebook had acted after the bill had passed through Parliament, after the Governor General had given the law royal assent, then, perhaps, it would have seemed somewhat proportionate—just a protection of business interests. Happening now—in the middle of the political process, and seemingly designed to derail that process—it feels a bit more like the Capitol Insurrection: a bit of violent theatre designed to derail another political process.

Does Facebook truly believe that their actions will change the political outcome? Or are they sending a signal to other sovereign powers—such as the EU, India and the USA—that Facebook is itself a sovereign power, and will use that power to assert its own interests? Both of these alternatives feel like a scenario from dystopian science fiction. Yet this is the problem we now find ourselves in with Big Tech. We’ve nurtured these firms with our attention and our dollars, both of which they’ve converted to raw power. And now, when that power has been turned against us, we recognise the true cost of our addictions to our newsfeeds, our community groups—even those status updates from our families. All of it fed a monster, now unleashed, wreaking havoc with Australia’s democratic interests.

Facebook, Hong Kong, the vaccine industry, what’s the difference?

• Hong Kong Aiming For Legislation To Ban Insulting Public Officials (ZH)

Hong Kong’s government is currently in the process of introducing legislation that would prohibit insulting public officials. We can only imagine the insults that were muttered when local citizens read the news from local media. Hong Kong’s Security Bureau is in the midst of leading a study on how the legislation could work and how it would be overseen, according to Bloomberg. Local outlets said, citing Civil Service Secretary Patrick Nip, that the issue was under examination. The legislation would be part of a broader agenda by China to “erode basic freedoms” in Hong Kong. The move would be the biggest to censor free speech in Hong Kong since China’s institution of a law that has been used to combat mass protests in Hong Kong.

Beijing has also implemented a “patriotism test” to weed out pro-Democracy lawmakers. The test prompted mass resignations from opposition members in the Legislative Council last November, Bloomberg notes. Bloomberg also noted that Hong Kong judges and law enforcement are unlikely to challenge any new legislation from Beijing: Earlier this month, Hong Kong’s top court ordered that media tycoon and democracy activist Jimmy Lai remain in jail ahead of his trial on foreign collusion charges, a victory for Beijing that suggested Hong Kong judges were unlikely to challenge the security law. Hong Kong police also separately arrested Lai for assisting in an activist’s attempt to flee to Taiwan, the Oriental Daily reported on Wednesday, without citing anyone. Recall, back in June 2020, Hong Kong passed a law banning insults to China’s National Anthem.

There are thousands already. If you boost your immune system, that is much less scary.

• Vaccine Rollout Will Trigger New Covid Variants, Oxford Scientist Warns (RT)

A senior scientist at Oxford University has warned the global rollout of Covid-19 vaccines will prompt the virus to mutate, driven by “immunological selection” rather than the adaptations we have seen so far. Speaking to the UK Commons Science and Technology Committee on Wednesday, Professor Sir John Bell, Oxford’s regius professor of medicine, said that the Covid-19 mutations observed so far are a result of the virus adapting to be more effective in its new hosts, humans. “Most of the variants we have seen so far represent that kind of adaptation to a new species; it’s a bit like moving into a new apartment, you are shuffling the sofa around and making sure the TV is in the right place,” Bell told colleagues and lawmakers.

“What we will see between now and the end of the year is a number of variants which are driven by immunological selection, largely by the vaccines, and that will add another layer of complexity.” Bell added that a number of variants that currently exist have already demonstrated some “quite profound resistance” to existing immunity, either from previous Covid-19 infection or vaccines, citing people who have been reinfected by the Brazilian and South African strains. Despite this, Bell said there was good news in the fight against Covid-19, in that current vaccines do appear to have an impact on existing variants and are capable of stopping severe disease. “We need to be conscious of the new variants, we need to be ready to make new vaccines if we need them, but I am pretty clear our existing vaccines are going to work to some extent [against known variants],” the Oxford scientist stated.

“Player apprehensions about receiving the vaccine are consistent with those that also exist in Black communities..”

• Many Top NBA Players Hesitant To Promote Coronavirus Vaccines (ESPN)

Many of the NBA’s top players are expressing apprehension about accepting invitations to participate in league-sponsored public service announcements to bolster broader acceptance of the coronavirus vaccine, sources told ESPN. The NBA’s outreach to the agents of many of the league’s elite players — with hopes of getting stars to participate in PSAs to promote the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine — has been met with a tepid response, sources said. Player apprehensions about receiving the vaccine are consistent with those that also exist in Black communities throughout the country, agents and players told ESPN.

Sources describe a number of factors contributing to many players’ reluctance to participate, including uncertainty about taking the vaccine themselves, reluctance to advocate its use for others and resistance to extending favors to a league amid the largely unpopular plans for an All-Star Game. On a call with league general managers on Tuesday, commissioner Adam Silver continued to tell top team executives that the league wouldn’t “jump the line” of the general public to get vaccines, but he suggested an optimistic timeline that included the possibility of late March and early April for the start of player vaccinations, sources said. Nevertheless, that’s considered a fluid timeline, largely meant to reaffirm to teams the need to be prepared for whenever the opportunity to vaccinate players comes from public health officials, sources said.

The NBA shared with teams an expectation of 70 million to 100 million vaccine doses likely distributed by mid-March. In the hours after the call with the league’s GMs, Dr. Anthony Fauci — the nation’s leading infectious disease expert — told CNN that his original hope of April as a target for widespread vaccine availability for those outside of priority groups could be pushed back. “That timeline will probably be prolonged into mid- to late May and early June,” Fauci told CNN.

“The way I see it, getting the vaccine is for me. It protects me. If I am not getting it, it’s my choice, and I’d only be hurting myself,” she said. The coronavirus vaccines available haven’t been tested on pregnant women, but also haven’t been shown to affect pregnancy and are viewed as generally safe. [..] The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that getting vaccinated is “a personal choice for people who are pregnant..”

• Waitress Fired From NYC Eatery For Not Getting Covid Vaccine (DM)

A New York waitress was fired from her job on Monday after she told her bosses at a tavern that she wanted to wait to get the COVID-19 vaccine until she could learn more about its side effects on women who are pregnant. Bonnie Jacobson, 34, said she is not an ‘anti-vaxxer’ but wanted to wait for more research as she recently starting trying to get pregnant with her husband, she told DailyMail.com. Jacobson, who started working at the Red Hook Tavern in August, said the restaurant first sent out an email on February 8 which said: ‘If you choose to get vaccinated, here’s what you need to know.’ That email, reviewed by DailyMail.com, did not tell employees that vaccinations were required.

Jacobson said she told her manager during a staff meeting that she wanted more time to research the vaccine and said her manager initially understood her concerns, telling her she would not be required to get the shot. But the Brooklyn tavern changed its mind days later on February 12 and sent workers and email noting the vaccines were mandatory. Please be advised that we will require that all employees receive the vaccination,’ notes the email. This will be mandatory for all existing employees and any new hires. The exception to this policy will be if your own personal health or disability prohibits you from obtaining this vaccination. We encourage you to consult your healthcare professional to determine if getting a vaccine is right for you.’

Jacobson then emailed her employers on Saturday and said that she did not yet want to get the vaccine, which she said she ‘fully supports.’ ‘I am choosing not to get the vaccine because there just isn’t enough data or research at this point on its effects on fertility,’ she wrote to her boss.

How do I find out?

• How Well You Fared With Covid19 Might Be Down To Neanderthal Genes (RT)

Has Covid-19 floored you? Or did you only suffer mild symptoms? The answer to how your body responds to coronavirus could very well be influenced by the Neanderthal genes you carry, according to researchers in Germany. Svante Paabo and Hugo Zeberg of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have been looking to the genes inherited from our Neanderthal ancestors – and the pair’s studies suggest that our modern-day responses to Covid-19 are part of a genetic lottery played out over 40,000 years. Their latest study suggests that a genetic mutation in genes linked to our ancestral Neanderthal relatives might reduce the risk of severe infection by about 22 percent.

The mutation, which helps fight off RNA viruses, has been found in all Neanderthal DNA samples tested and is present in about 30 percent of samples from people with European and Asian backgrounds today. In September, the pair co-authored another study that looked at a different set of Neanderthal genes found in some 50 percent of Asians and 16 percent of Europeans. People that carried that particular gene sequence were found to be more susceptible to developing serious respiratory problems after contracting Covid-19. Neanderthals are known to have lived alongside – and interbred with – modern humans in Europe and Asia before becoming extinct some 40,000 years ago.

Paabo and Zeberg compared DNA samples from 2,200 people with samples taken from four ancient humans – a 70,000-year-old Neanderthal from Siberia, a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal from Croatia, and two separates samples from Denisova Cave in Siberia, to reach their findings for the most recent study. Previously, they had looked at samples from some 3,000 people for the study published in Nature.

How is he still in office?

• Cuomo-gate: A Nixonian Scandal Is Engulfing New York (DP)

The biggest political scandal in America right now is playing out in New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo is in a lot of trouble — and rightly so. The Democratic governor did not merely wildly mismanage his state’s response to the COVID emergency, while netting himself a lucrative book deal and an Emmy. He did something worse. In the middle of a public health emergency, he used his office to help one of his largest political donors shield itself from legal consequences as 15,000 nursing home residents died from COVID — and then he and his administration underreported that death toll, helping the same donor. The Daily Poster had been covering the story for months before it exploded this week. The scandal is a cautionary tale of hubris, megalomania, and corruption that left a literal mountain of preventable COVID deaths in its wake.

Now we are about to see whether a blue state’s democratic institutions can hold wrongdoers accountable, or whether America’s culture of impunity can once again protect the powerful from facing any consequences at all. Amid a cacophony of demands for Cuomo to resign, the governor and his aides are frantically trying to cover up the basic facts of what happened, and that includes launching a Nixonian campaign of intimidation and retribution against Democratic lawmakers who have for months been sounding the alarm. Two national news outlets today detailed Cuomo’s new campaign of retribution against one lawmaker in his own party who dared to ask questions about constituents and family members who died under Cuomo’s nursing home policies.

Cuomo held a press conference to publicly berate the same Democrat, while another New York news outlet reported that other lawmakers are now facing threats. For months, these legislators’ questions were ignored by a national media that has seemed far more interested in valorizing Cuomo than in reporting inconvenient facts. But those facts are worth reviewing, because they illustrate the direct link between the underreporting of nursing home deaths and the push for corporate immunity. They also spotlight the very real human carnage that can result when an imperious, out-of-control politician is unwilling to engage in any contrition, self-reflection, or reform.

Whether it’s Cuomo or Abbott, it’s clear that crises expose incompetence.

• Texas Governor Blames Power Outages on Wind, Solar (CD)

As millions of Texans struggled desperately to keep warm amid power outages stemming from the devastating winter storm sweeping the nation, the state’s Republican governor late Tuesday blamed solar and wind for the blackouts—despite the fact that Texas relies overwhelmingly on fossil fuels—and claimed the crisis shows that the Green New Deal would be a “deadly deal” for the United States. “Texas is blessed with multiple sources of energy, such natural gas and oil and nuclear, as well as solar and wind,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in an appearance on “Hannity” Tuesday night. “Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10% of our power grid. And that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power in a statewide basis.”

Abbott was far from the first Republican to deploy such blatantly false talking points in response to the ongoing crisis in Texas, which has left at least 10 people dead. But the governor’s decision to appear on Fox News and attack a policy that has not even been implemented as Texans resorted to burning their belongings to keep their children warm was viewed as yet another example of his failed leadership. “Five million Texans are without power tonight and temperatures are below freezing. People will most certainly die tonight because of it,” said Sawyer Hackett, senior adviser to Julián Castro. “But Gov. Abbott had time to go on Sean Hannity to blame the Green New Deal.” Citing an official with the state’s Electric Reliability Council (ERCOT), The Texas Tribune reported that as of Tuesday afternoon “16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, was offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy.”

“Texas is a gas state,” Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told the Tribune. “Gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now.” But that hasn’t stopped Texas Republicans like Abbott and Rep. Dan Crenshaw from attempting to blame frozen wind turbines for outages that could continue for days, endangering lives and coronavirus vaccines. In response to Abbott’s “Hannity” interview, Texas voting rights advocate Charlie Bonner tweeted, “He is lying. People are dying, and he is on Fox News lying to you. We are living in fear and Greg Abbott is playing politics with our lives.” “Greg Abbott doesn’t care if you live or die tonight so take care of each other, my friends,” Bonner added. “We’re living in a failed state.”

“The financial repression of central banks begins with a misdiagnosis assuming that low growth and below-target inflation is a problem of demand, not of the previous excess..”

• Subzero Rates Are Coming to the US and the UK (Lacalle)

Negative rates are the destruction of money, an economic aberration based on the mistakes of many central banks and some of their economists, who all start from a wrong diagnosis: the idea that economic agents do not take more credit or invest more because they choose to save too much and therefore saving must be penalized to stimulate the economy. Excuse the bluntness, but it is a ludicrous idea. Inflation and growth are not low due to excess savings, but because of excess debt, which perpetuates overcapacity with low rates and high liquidity and zombifies the economy by subsidizing the low-productivity and highly indebted sectors and penalizing high productivity with rising and confiscatory taxation.

Historical evidence of negative rates shows that they do not help reduce debt, they incentivize it. They do not strengthen the credit capacity of families: the prices of nonreplicable assets (real estate, etc.) skyrocket because of monetary excess and because the lower cost of debt does not compensate for the greater risk. Investment and credit growth are not subdued because economic agents are ignorant or saving too much, but because they don’t have amnesia. Families and businesses are more cautious in their investment and spending decisions, because they perceive, correctly, that the reality of the economy they see each day does not correspond to the cost and the quantity of money.

It is completely incorrect to think that families and businesses are not investing or spending. They are only spending less than what central planners would want. However, that is not a mistake from the private sector side, but a typical case of central planners’ misguided estimates, which come from using 2001–07 as “base case” of investment and credit demand instead of what those years really were: a bubble. The argument of the central planners is based on an inconsistency: that rates are negative because markets demand them, not because they are imposed by the central bank. If that is the case and the result would be the same, why don’t they let rates float freely? Because it is false.

Think for a moment what type of investment, company, or financial decision is profitable with rates at –0.5 percent but unviable with rates at 1 percent. A time bomb. It is no surprise that investment in bubble-prone sectors is rising with negative rates and that nonreplicable and financial assets are skyrocketing. Instead of strengthening economies, negative rates make governments more dependent on cheap debt. Public debt trades at artificially low yields, and politicians abandon any reformist impulse, preferring to accumulate more debt. The financial repression of central banks begins with a misdiagnosis assuming that low growth and below-target inflation is a problem of demand, not of the previous excess, and ends up perpetuating the bubbles that it sought to solve.

“Between Jan. 4, 2017 and Jan. 24, 2017, nearly every major assumption of the FBI’s Russia collusion theory was gutted..”

• Twenty Days Of Infamy: The January 2017 Red Flags The FBI Blew Past (JTN)

From its earliest moments, the FBI’s Russia collusion probe was always fraught with warning signs. Agents were told Christopher Steele provided faulty information, had likely been compromised by Russian intel disinformation, wanted to defeat Donald Trump, had leaked to the media and was being paid by Hillary Clinton, who herself might be carrying out an epic dirty political trick to vilify Trump with false information to distract from her own scandals. Those intelligence reports alone should have given agents pause. The fact that Steele had been terminated by the FBI as an informant for leaking also should have weighed heavily.

But if ever there were red lights screaming for the FBI to end the counterintelligence probe, they were flashing during a harrowing 20-day window in January 2017 as Barack Obama was leaving office and Trump was coming in. Between Jan. 4, 2017 and Jan. 24, 2017, nearly every major assumption of the FBI’s Russia collusion theory was gutted, according to recently declassified evidence reviewed by Just the News. Months of investigating Trump adviser Mike Flynn had turned up “no derogatory information,” and agents recommended shutting down that part of the inquiry after concluding Flynn wasn’t aiding Moscow. Two separate informant recordings of Trump adviser Carter Page — the target of an ongoing FISA warrant — produced stunning evidence of innocence.

U.S. intelligence had concluded a key allegation in the Steele dossier was Russian disinformation. And Steele’s primary sub-source — whom the FBI assessed was likely tied to Russian intelligence — discounted much of the information attributed to him in the dossier. Even Director James Comey was telling colleagues there wasn’t much corroborated in the dossier. And yet somehow, some way, the FBI accelerated the investigation even though overwhelming evidence showed — as lead investigative agent Peter Strzok would later text his colleague — there was “no big there, there.”

It doesn’t matter. She will be believed by her fans, and that’s all that counts.

• VP Harris Gets Two Pinocchios For ‘Starting From Scratch’ Comment (JTN)

A Washington Post fact check has given a statement made recently by Vice President Kamala Harris a rating of two Pinocchios. “There was no national strategy or plan for vaccinations. We were leaving it to the states and local leaders to try and figure it out. And so in many ways, we’re starting from scratch on something that’s been raging for almost an entire year,” Harris said during an interview with Axios. In the Post fact checking piece Glenn Kessler writes that Harris “gets into trouble when she says ‘we’re starting from scratch.’ The Biden administration appears to have had to fill in the blanks of the Trump plan and certainly did speed up the tempo of what the Trump administration envisioned. It has added a federal component and pushed for funding for states,” Kessler wrote.

“Biden administration officials may be proud of what they have accomplished, but they shouldn’t suggest that nothing was in place when they walked in the door. They have built on an existing structure left behind by the Trump team. Harris modified her comment by saying ‘in many ways,’ but that’s not quite enough to avoid Pinocchios,” he wrote. Two Pinocchios is like a rating of “half-true,” according to the Post’s explanation of the Pinocchio Test ratings. “Significant omissions and/or exaggerations. Some factual error may be involved but not necessarily. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people,” the Post says about the two Pinocchio rating.

Ha ha ha. “His latest comments quickly sparked a liberal uproar on social media, with critics calling the Fox News host “bitter,”“offensive,” and “deranged.”

• ‘A Love As Real As Climate Change’: Tucker Carlson About Joe & Jill Biden (RT)

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has outraged Democrats once again after he appeared to suggest President Joe Biden’s relationship with his wife is a carefully-devised PR campaign, mockingly saying it is “as real as climate change.” Reacting to the glowing coverage celebrating Biden’s public displays of affection with his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, and glee over a supposed return to ‘normalcy’ following chilly public interactions between former President Donald Trump and his wife Melania, Carlson put his own spin on the situation. “Not since Antony dined with Cleopatra at downtown Antioch, before they killed themselves obviously, has a country witnessed a love story as moving and poignant as Jill and Joe’s,” said Carlson sarcastically on his Tuesday show.

“No, ladies and gentlemen, Jill Biden is not Joe’s caretaker. She isn’t his nurse. She’s his fully-equal romantic partner. Together they are like besotted teens, yet at the same time they are the wise and knowing parents of a nation,” he continued. He then implied the public displays of affection were “part of a slick PR campaign devised by cynical consultants,” designed to “hide the president’s senility,” adding that in his view, their love is “as real as climate change.” Carlson has previously shot down concerns about climate change, calling it “systemic racism in the sky” – “You can’t see it, but rest assured it’s everywhere and it’s deadly.” His latest comments quickly sparked a liberal uproar on social media, with critics calling the Fox News host “bitter,”“offensive,” and “deranged.”

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