This document is part of an archive of postings by John Ray on Dissecting Leftism, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written.
This is a backup copy of the original blog
Below is the backup of this blog for August, 2023. To access the backups in earlier years, click here
31 August, 2023
Whistleblower Who Disclosed Myocarditis Spike in Military After COVID Vaccine Rollout Goes Public
A service member who earlier this year blew the whistle and disclosed data from a Pentagon medical database showing a spike in the rate of myocarditis in the military in 2021, after the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, is going public.
The whistleblower is active-duty Navy Medical Service Corps officer Lt. Ted Macie. He has also revealed new data showing a substantial rise in accidents, assaults, self-harm, and suicide attempts in the military in 2021, compared to the average from 2016 to 2021.
This includes a 147 percent increase in intentional self-harm incidents among service members and an 828 percent increase in injuries from assaults.
Lt. Macie told The Epoch Times that he began “keeping an eye on" a defense medical database when another whistleblower alerted him to a rise in health-related incidents in the winter of 2021/2022.
The Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) is a depository of all diagnoses—recorded using International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes—when an active service member is seen on or off base by a military or civilian provider. The database doesn't include any personally identifiable information of service members.
In January, Lt. Macie and his wife traveled to Washington with a report of the data that he collected from DMED.
Exposing the Vaccine 'Military Machinery' Behind the Global COVID-19 Response: Sasha Latypova
It showed that diagnoses of myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, increased in 2021 by 130.5 percent over the average number of cases in the five-year period from 2016 to 2020. Myocarditis is a serious condition that can lead to death.
All four of the COVID-19 vaccines authorized in the United States can cause myocarditis, according to U.S. officials. COVID-19 can also cause myocarditis, though some experts say that the data on that front is weaker.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mandated the vaccines in 2021, a requirement that remained in place until Congress forced its withdrawal in late 2022.
The data also showed spikes in diagnoses of pulmonary embolism (41.2 percent), blood clots in the lungs, ovarian dysfunction (38.2 percent), and "complications and ill-defined descriptions of heart disease" (37.7 percent).
DMED Data
Lt. Macie downloaded the data almost a year after the Pentagon said it fixed a data corruption issue with the DMED.
In 2022, other military whistleblowers reported shocking spikes in disease rates after the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccine. But the Pentagon responded that those figures weren't correct because some diagnoses in the years 2016 to 2020 hadn't been counted, an issue stemming from "corrupt" data.
After the Pentagon said the issue was corrected, Lt. Macie and others—including 1st Lt. Mark Bashaw, a preventive medicine officer in the Army, Navy Lt. Billy Moseley, Army Surgeon Lt. Col. Theresa Long, and Army doctor Maj. Samuel Sigoloff—noticed that there were still concerning signs of increases in diagnoses, such as myocarditis and pulmonary embolism.
Since word spread that Lt. Macie was the only active-duty member at his command who didn’t receive the COVID-19 vaccine and was actively suing the secretary of defense, people began to come to him in confidence, telling him about adverse reactions, which they were convinced were “from the shot,” he said.
“These anecdotal, but compelling, personal injuries were a motivator to get things on the right track,” Lt. Macie said.
After verifying Lt. Macie's report with the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the top Republican on that panel, sent a letter (pdf) to Mr. Austin in March asking the Pentagon to confirm Lt. Macie's data.
Lt. Macie had suspected that the Pentagon wouldn't respond, based on his experience of previous requests made within the department going unfulfilled.
“In the event our suspicions were correct, I kept additional data to reveal as soon as the data we brought [to Washington] was confirmed, or after being ignored for some time,” he said.
Much to his surprise, he said, the Pentagon, in a July reply (pdf) to Mr. Johnson's letter, confirmed that his data was accurate.
In the Pentagon's response, Gilbert Cisneros Jr., undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, pointed to data on the rate of cases per 100,000 person-years, a way to measure risk across a certain period of time. For almost all the conditions that showed an increase in cases in 2021, he stated, the new case rate was higher for service members with a prior COVID-19 infection than for those with a prior COVID-19 vaccination.
"This suggests that it was more likely to be [COVID-19] infection and not COVID-19 vaccination that was the cause," Mr. Cisneros stated.
Lt. Macie said he plans to bring the additional data he kept up his chain of command “with the aim of a resolution and validation for injured service members.”
"But I’m not holding my breath," he said.
Lt. Macie has also brought this new data to the office of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), hoping to get the attention of the House Armed Services Committee, a panel that Mr. Gaetz sits on. Lt. Macie isn't aware of what Mr. Gaetz and his staff will do, but the lawmaker's office acknowledged in June that “they will take a look,” he said.
The Epoch Times reached out to Mr. Gaetz's office for comment, but didn't receive a reply by press time.
Rise in Accidents, Self-Harm
According to his research, health-related incidents in 2021 rose substantially above the five-year average from 2016 to 2020.
“As some may expect, internal injuries like myocarditis (130 percent), tinnitus (42 percent), and cerebral infarction (stroke) (43.5 percent) are on the rise,” Lt. Macie said.
But it was Lt. Macie’s wife who became curious, asking about other types of injuries.
“What about external cause morbidities, like burns, accidents, self-inflicted harm, and injuries that are not expected to be associated with the COVID shot?” he said.
With the new data that he discovered, incidents that exhibited increases in 2021 above the five-year average included exposure to forces of nature (773 percent); water transport accidents (7,400 percent); land transport vehicle accidents (526 percent); suicide attempts (33 percent); assault (828 percent); slipping, tripping, stumbles, and falls (471 percent); and intentional self-harm (147 percent).
Some of these not only increased in 2021 but continued to rise in 2022. The Epoch Times has viewed screenshots of these data from the DMED.
Historically, if the Pentagon noticed a trend in certain areas such as abuse and suicide, he said, the department would hold a safety stand-down—a military-wide mandatory training and review in which all commands require 100 percent participation.
“What will higher-ranking general officers, the surgeon general, Defense Health Agency, and Joint Chiefs do when they receive word that ICD codes/injuries for these incidents are on the rise?” Lt. Macie said.
“Soon, we’ll see if the same people who claim that the service member is their top priority actually show that through their action.”
According to Lt. Macie, there are a few possibilities concerning the new data collected.
“If the data is correct, and is confirmed by [the Pentagon], more than just a stand-down needs to happen. Rising problems like self-harm, suicide attempts, accidents, and assault must be addressed immediately, not just the mess of [vaccine] injuries,” he said.
He noted that the Pentagon may, for a second time, reply, saying that the data are incorrect, even though the department previously said they've resolved the data corruption issues in the system to prevent future errors. But such a reply would raise even more questions concerning the integrity of the database and whether there's a cover-up at play, he projected.
Lt. Macie hopes that Congress will press the Pentagon for answers concerning the new data.
But if lawmakers fail to do this, "the people need to step up to hold our government accountable,” he said.
Lt. Macie emphasized that his views don't reflect those of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Navy.
The Pentagon didn't return inquiries by The Epoch Times seeking an explanation for the rise in external cause morbidities.
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Meta Analysis: mRNA Vax Myocarditis/Pericarditis at 2X the Rate of SARS-CoV-2 Infection
With an aim of summarizing the available evidence on the risk of myocarditis and/or pericarditis following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination as compared with the risk among unvaccinated individuals in the absence of COVID-19 infection, a group of researchers led by Abdallah Alami, a Masters graduate at Carleton University, School of Mathematics and Statistics and colleagues in Canada, United States and Argentina conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to address the following research question: what is the risk of myocarditis or pericarditis among individuals who received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine compared with those who did not receive an mRNA injection, in the absence of COVID-19 infection?
The multinational team found that while the overall absolute number of myocarditis and pericarditis was quite low, when comparing the adverse events induced by mRNA COVID-19 vaccination versus unvaccinated indivduals in the absence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, vaccination is associated with higher risk.
Acknowledging that the COVID-19 vaccines helped reduce morbidity and mortality (albeit in surges due to durability and breadth challenges), Alami and associates suggest more research focusing on the rates of myocarditis/pericarditis linked to the mRNA jabs, as well as an imperative need to better understand the biological mechanisms driving the rare cardiac events. Finally, research must better peg risk stratification.
Results
After seven studies met this present studies inclusion criteria, the study team included six of them in their quantitative synthesis. The meta-analysis points to the following observation: within a 30=day follow-up duration, “Vaccinated individuals were twice as likely to develop myo/pericarditis in absence of SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to unvaccinated indivudals, with a rate ratio of 2.05 (95% CI 1.49–2.82).”
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30 August, 2023
Ivermectin War Continues: Washington Medical Commission Fines Doctor, Puts License on Probation Five Years
A Yakima, Washington physician was not only fined but also had his medical license restricted by the Washington Medical Commission. Why? According to recent local media accounts, he failed to meet the state’s standard of care due to his decision to prescribe patients ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 in addition to spreading misinformation. In addition to a $15,000 fine, Dr. Richard Wilkinson’s license is placed on probation for five years. During this time, he cannot prescribe ivermectin for non-FDA approved purposes. Also, he must pass a clinical competency within a half-year. He is part of a countersuit. While the Food and Drug Administration representative acknowledged in a court case that doctors have always been able to prescribe ivermectin off label, this is not technically how doctors found trouble during the pandemic. See TrialSite’s “Doctor’s Always had the Right to Treat COVID-19 Patients with Ivermectin.”
The Washington Medical Commission issued a statement and order in August restricting the doctor’s license due to unprofessional conduct and misrepresentation involving COVID-19 to patients, reports Santiago Ochoa with the Yakima Herald-Republic.
The facts
According to the local media account, the doctor prescribed ivermectin to seven patients during the period August to December 2021, yet failed to both A) document a sufficient rationale and B) inform the patients that the medication was off label, not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for COVID-19 treatment or prevention.
A technicality that hurt a substantial number of doctors during the pandemic, they failed to follow a procedure including the above points plus the allegation that a physician-patient relationship must be established as well. For example, some doctors that via telehealth prescribed ivermectin without that established relationship, plus the other aforementioned documentation and informed consent led to trouble.
Wilkinson also prescribed inhaled hydrogen peroxide to one patient without “a warning that inhaled hydrogen peroxide does not have any effect on a COVID-19 infection and is dangerous.”
Lawsuit
As reported in The Chronicle, Dr. Wilkinson joined four other plaintiffs in Benton County to challenge the Washington Medical Commission’s COVID-19 misinformation position statement.
Filed by the group called the Silent Majority Foundation based in Pasco, WA on behalf of the doctors, the local media reports that Dr. Wilkinson’s attorney is the nonprofit’s director and general counsel.
Is the medical commission’s COVID-19 misinformation position statement an enforceable rule? The Silent Majority Foundation position suggests it is not. A hearing is scheduled in Benton County on August 30.
Background
TrialSite first started reporting on how ivermectin seems to zap SARS-CoV-2 in a cell culture in the laboratory. That news from Australia spread around the world as mostly low-and-moderate countries (LMICs) embraced the drug in research and care during the pandemic. A large number of studies show positive evidence that the drug inhibited SARs-CoV-2. For example, 99 studies involving 1,089 scientists and 137,255 patients across 28 countries show significant benefits against mortality, ventilation, ICU, hospitalization, aiding recovery and viral clearance.
Yet most of these studies were conducted in LMICs with what medical establishments in the United States consider questionable study design, data and the like. Also, some prominent studies in North America and South America pointed to a lack of effectiveness. Although, some critics who happen to be TrialSite contributors such as David Scheim, have openly questioned these studies' design and conduct. For a summary of the unfolding ivermectin war by the start of 2022, see “The Ivermectin Wars Intensify as States want Access Over the Counter and a Medical Freedom March Commences this Weekend.”
The national emergency has been called off, but many doctors found themselves in hot water, or worse. One key point many in the medical freedom movement didn’t fully grasp was that drugs are regulated nationally and that doctors that did embrace ivermectin off label needed to follow very careful protocol, plus they needed to be careful how they communicated about the drug online.
TrialSite suggests that much of the medical establishment didn’t care about ivermectin use off label until it came to the attention of the pharmaceutical industry that weekly prescriptions which were about 3,000 pre-pandemics skyrocketed to nearly 90,000 prescriptions per week during the pandemic.
The regulators such as the FDA wrote menacing letters to groups such as the Federation of State Medical Boards as reported by TrialSite in “Feds Coming After Doctors and Pharmacies that Market Ivermectin as Effective & Safe for COVID-19.” Then, that umbrella board association would communicate with state members charged with licensing physicians and pharmacists, spooking members to not discuss topics like Ivermectin.
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Does America Face a Growing ‘Anti-Vaxx’ Crisis? Kaiser Family Foundation Poll Points in That Direction
A recent poll from the prominent Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) finds that doubts about COVID-19 vaccines run rampant, as over 25% of the participants believe the jabs cause infertility, despite any lack of conclusive evidence. Involving 2,007 adults, the KFF poll titled “Health Misinformation Tracking Poll Pilot’ the survey was conducted from May 23 to June 12. 33% of the poll respondents believe that the COVID-19 vaccines led to thousands of sudden deaths in what were otherwise healthy people.
Almost a third of the population believes ivermectin is an effective COVID-19 treatment while 22% are definitely certain that’s not the case. 44% are “probably certain,” meaning they have some trepidation. On to some of the more radical, or fringe beliefs would be the group that believes that more people died from the COVID-19 jabs than the virus itself. 14% of the poll population believes this to be the case. 20% of the respondents believe the MMR vaccine causes autism, however, this hypothesis was discredited. We don’t know what the cause of autism in fact is, and there are many lines of research investigating today.
Importantly, vaccination rates for more of the standard vaccines on the children’s vaccination schedule are on the decline. In 2021, due to a confluence of factors including the pandemic, but also a growing anti-vaxx movement, nearly 40 million children in America failed to get a measles vaccine, reported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
TrialSite has reported on slipping measles vaccination rates in some key states. In Ohio, 80 children contracted the infection at the end of 2022, as reported by the CDC.
TrialSite’s founder Daniel O’Connor recently presented on YouTube the controversial position that its perfectly acceptable to openly discuss some of the disturbing science associated with the COVID-19 vaccines (safety signals, lack of sterilizing powers, durability issues) while remaining unapologetically pro vaccination. That video can be seen here. O’Connor shared that 130,000 children die every year due to measles worldwide. He notes that an anti-vaccine movement, often led by individuals in the upper echelons of socio-economic strata, fails to embrace that vaccines are public health tools, meant to address aggregate population level needs. This becomes mission-critical to overcome certain diseases in low- and middle-income countries while continuing to ensure herd immunity in the rich world. He reminds that not all vaccines are the same, and that risk-benefit analyses are quite important when considering their criticality.
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New study shared by NIH suggests N95 Covid masks create dangerous of level toxic compounds linked seizures, cancer
A recently published study has found that wearing an N95 mask is, far from being safe, a potential health risk.
Published in April and quietly shared by the National Institutes of Health, the study from researchers at Jeonbuk National University in South Korea found that disposable masks, including medical-grade N95 masks, released eight times the recommended safety limit for toxic volatile organic compounds (TVOCs).
According to the American Lung Association, breathing TVOCs “can irritate the eyes, nose and throat, can cause difficulty breathing and nausea, and can damage the central nervous system and other organs.” Some TVOCs can even cause cancer.
Bob Barker remembered for support of MN Wildcat Sanctuary
What other types of products release TVOCs? Paint, caulks, cleaners/disinfectants, pesticides, and even tobacco smoke.
Here’s the huge catch: The researchers discovered that TVOC levels were 14 times lower in cloth masks, suggesting therefore that despite not being medical-grade, cloth masks are safer to wear than N95 masks.
However, speaking with the Daily Mail, Dr. Stuart Fischer warned against reaching any major conclusions from the study, though he did endorse the notion that there are indeed drawbacks to mask-wearing.
“There seems to be diminishing returns on the need for masks,” he said.
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29 August, 2023
First COVID Deaths Were Fully Jabbed, Australian State Records Reveal
In light of a court case launched by a group of doctors challenging the Queensland government's COVID-19 vaccination mandates, records have revealed that the first deaths in the Australian state were individuals who were fully vaccinated.
A list of the state’s first 183 COVID-19 deaths from the pandemic's start on March 13, 2020, until Jan. 27, 2022, produced by Queensland’s chief health officer in an affidavit, indicates it was known to authorities as early as Jan. 2022 that the vaccines may not be preventing deaths.
The list shows that the first locally acquired COVID-19 death was one in their 80s and another in their 30s, with both having received two doses of the vaccine in December 2021 and January 2022, respectively.
While Queensland recorded seven deaths early in the pandemic, these cases were acquired outside of the state and before vaccine rollouts began.
Queensland's border opened in December 2021 after 80 percent of the state population vaccination was reached. By Dec. 31, 2021, nearly 90 percent of the population over 16 were fully vaccinated.
The case, which was launched against the state, calls for the September 2021 directive requiring employees in public health and aged-care facilities to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to be revoked.
A specialist from the case, psychiatrist Peter Parry, said that in the three decades of his career, he had never been subject to disciplinary action until now.
“I graduated from medical school 40 years ago and in all that time have never had a single complaint about me presented to a medical board or AHPRA,” he said.
The reason he chose to decline the COVID-19 vaccines was because these are “not normal vaccines.”
“We hope, by bringing evidentiary material and expert witness testimonies before the Supreme Court, that the Justices will look at the evidence and rule in our favour. If successful, large numbers of experienced nurses, allied health, and doctors will be able to return to assist an overstretched Queensland public health system,” he added.
In addition to enforced work mandates, Premier Annastacia Palazczuk barred the unvaccinated from accessing services and freedoms such as hospitals, disability services, aged care, libraries, and hospitality venues.
This was enforced by proof of vaccination requirements at venues, which the Queensland government said was to keep Queenslanders safe.
Messaging Shifts to Reducing Severe Illness
Initially, in 2021, the Queensland Government closed the state's borders and encouraged people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. They aimed to reopen the borders once 80 percent of the population was vaccinated, with the goal of stopping the virus's spread and safeguarding vulnerable citizens.
However, when the borders reopened after reaching the target, COVID-19 cases surged instead of decreasing. When it became clear that the vaccines didn't entirely prevent infection or transmission, the focus of the messaging shifted to highlight the vaccines' effectiveness in reducing severe illness and death.
It is still a condition today for most Queensland health staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to ensure the ongoing safety of employees, patients, visitors and the wider community.
“The overwhelming benefits of COVID-19 vaccination continue to outweigh the potential risks, and this is substantiated by enormous amounts of safety data based on billions of doses worldwide,” a spokesperson for the TGA told The Epoch Times in an email.
Pfizer Dismisses Concerns Over Vaccine Mandates
The news of the deaths follows a parliamentary inquiry into the COVID-19 mandates heard from the Australian heads of Pfizer Australia that the vaccine mandates coerced Australians into getting vaccinated for COVID-19, saying they had a choice.
Appearing before an Australian senate inquiry into the COVID-19 vaccine mandates, Pfizer Country Medical Director Dr. Krishan Thiru and Dr. Brian Hewitt, the head of Regulatory Sciences for Pfizer, dismissed concerns of senators that Australians had been coerced into getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
"I believe firmly that nobody was forced to have a vaccine," Dr. Thiru said.
"Mandates for vaccine requirements are determined by governments and health authorities. I believe everybody was offered an opportunity to get a vaccine or not get a vaccine. I don't believe that anybody was forced to take a vaccine."
Meanwhile, Dr. Hewitt, when asked if he believed Australians in states that were subject to large-scale mandates—like Western Australia or Victoria—were not forced into getting the shot even when they found they were unable to earn a living without receiving a vaccination, replied he did not believe mandates compelled individuals into vaccinating.
"The mandates for vaccine requirements are determined by governments and health authorities. I don't believe that the mandates actually forced individuals to get vaccinations," he said.
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Recent Mask Mandates Lifted Amid Pushback
Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa, California, on Aug. 24 reversed a recent policy that would require masks in its hospital after it reinstated the mandate days before. A Hollywood studio also said it would do away with its mandate.
Officials for the hospital system told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat that the mask policy applies only to staff, not patients. It said that it is “strongly encouraging masks for patients, members, and visitors in the hospital and medical offices in the Santa Rosa Service Area in response to this latest increase in COVID-19 cases.”
“Our intent was to communicate that as of Tuesday, we have expanded the masking requirement for our employees and physicians to medical offices and clinic settings; we apologize for any confusion among Press Democrat readers,” Kaiser said in its latest statement.
The statement also said that "visitors, patients, and members are strongly encouraged to also wear masks in these settings,” according to the paper. “We have not changed our masking requirements in the hospital, which have been in effect since April: employees and physicians are required to wear masks and we ask visitors to wear masks when in the hospital.”
It doesn't appear that Kaiser Permanente, which operates hospitals across the United States and California, would also attempt to reinstate mask mandates at other locations.
Days before its latest statement, the hospital system said it would be mandating masks for patients, doctors, patients, visitors, and staff members at its hospital and medical offices.
“Kaiser Permanente Northern California is committed to protecting the safety of our members, patients, employees, physicians, and visitors, which includes taking appropriate steps to prevent the spread of transmissible infectious diseases in our facilities," it told local media.
Some Northern California locals weren't happy with the announcement that mask mandates would return, according to local outlets.
"They told us a bunch of [expletive]," Richard Staudinger, a North Sacramento resident, told CBS. "I think most of the people don't believe it now."
Another, Craig Roberts, said, "I think it's more political than anything, just think they're trying to do what they did in 2020."
But some said they don't mind the mandates. "I don't have a problem if they reinstate the masks," Kiona Cooper, of Northern California, said.
Other Mandates
Meanwhile, the Lionsgate film studio in Santa Monica also said it would not be implementing a mask mandate, days after the media company said it would force workers to put on masks again on certain floors. It claimed that it never changed its mask policy.
“The LA County Department of Public Health notified us yesterday that we could lift the mask requirements, effective immediately, and we have," the firm told news outlets over the weekend.
The statement also said: "Lionsgate never changed its own mask policy. The LA County Department of Health ordered us to institute the temporary masking requirement after we reported a cluster of COVID cases to them and we have an obligation to comply with their orders."
Last week, a Lionsgate memo stated that employees on only certain floors have to wear surgical masks, KN95 masks, or N95 masks "except when alone in an office with the door closed, actively eating, actively drinking at their desk or workstation, or if they are the only individual present in a large open workspace.”
Earlier in the month, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that COVID-19 hospitalizations rose across the country. Hospitalizations rose by 21.6 percent, to 12,612 new admissions from 10,370, according to the data ending Aug. 12.
Despite the increase, it’s among the lowest levels of hospitalization recorded since the start of the pandemic in early 2020.
“An upswing is not a surge; it’s not even a wave,” Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine, told ABC News. “What we’re seeing is a very gradual and small upward trajectory of cases and hospitalizations, without deaths really going along, which is great news.”
At the same time, several hospitals, including some in upstate New York, and Morris Brown College in Atlanta reimplemented mask mandates, prompting concerns about a broader effort to force masks on people, three years after the start of the pandemic in the United States. Media coverage around the small increase in COVID-19 cases has also focused on whether masks should be worn, with mainstream outlets such as CNN interviewing doctors who say people should start wearing them again.
But some politicians and commentators, in response, called on supporters to resist the mandates.
“It’s alarming that the mandates are kicking in again,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in a recent interview. “It’s like, OK, we noticed masks didn’t work, particularly for children. We always knew they didn’t work for kids.”
It also comes as President Joe Biden on Aug. 25 told reporters in Lake Tahoe that he signed off on a proposal "to present to Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is necessary, that works."
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/recent-mask-mandates-lifted-amid-pushback-5481484
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Will Heavily COVID-19 Vaccinated Populations Experience High Incidence of Cancer & Autoimmune Disease?
A frequent contributor to TrialSite, Geert Vanden Bossche, the Belgium-based vaccinologist has spent the last few years of the pandemic intensely studying not only SARS-CoV-2 and mass vaccination but also the immunological considerations, and risks, associated with the vaccination drives.
In this latest paper “Immunological correlates of vaccine breakthrough infections caused by SARS-CoV-2 variants in highly C-19 vaccinated populations,” Vanden Bossche unleashes a truly dark, complex, and what he believes is thorough hypotheses suggesting heavily COVID-19 vaccinated populations will experience crisis levels of cancer and autoimmune disease.
Why will this tragedy occur? According to Vanden Bossche, “In highly Covid-19 (C-19) vaccinated populations, an increase in IgG4 antibody (Ab) titers following steric immune refocusing (SIR)- enabling PNNAb1-dependent vaccine breakthrough infections (VBTIs) with infectious SARS-CoV-2 (SC-2) immune escape variants promoted generalized hyposensitization to ‘foreign’ and hypersensitization to ‘self’.” Arguing that the process of hyposensitization (train immune system to become less reactive to allergen over time) “to ‘foreign’ leads to an “anti-inflammatory effect” and thus reducing the prospect for autoimmune-like disease symptoms, so-called ‘hypersensitization’ (heightened immune reaction) to ‘self’ will lead to surges in incidence of cancer and autoimmune disease.
Vanden Bossche’ s hypothesis suggests that in a highly COVID-19 vaccinated populations, there is a greater incidence of cancer and autoimmune disease. Looking into surges of IgG4 antibody titers first should be understood.
A subclass of immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies which are a type of antibody generated by the immune system to help protect the body against infections and other foreign substances, they play a crucial role in the immune response by recognizing and binding to specific antigens, such as bacteria, viruses and other pathogens.
TrialSite recently summarized research out of Hungary suggesting that COVID-19 vaccines trigger higher levels of spike specific IgG than persons infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19.
This was according to a team of physicians and scientists employed in Internal Medicine and the Immunology and Hematology Research Group in Semmelweis University- Eötvös Loránd Research Network (Office for Supported Research Groups), Budapest Hungary. They investigated the SARS-CoV-2 infection and the vaccination induced a similar spike-specific IgG subclass pattern. With this study involving 47 healthy volunteers for the vaccinated cohort in Budapest Hungary, an important aim was to determine if these patterns have been influenced by the chronological order of natural virus infection and vaccination or not. Also monitoring the concentration of each spike-specific IgG subclass over a three-to-four-month period the Budapest-based investigators sought to estimate the stability of the antiviral humoral immune response.
Importantly, IgG 4 antibodies are generally less understood than other subclasses of IgG. Involved in immune tolerance, and with anti-inflammatory properties, IgG4 responses are associated with chronic infections, allergies and autoimmune diseases. Interestingly, unlike other subclasses, IgG4 antibodies can undergo a process called “Fab-arm exchange” where the arms of two different IgG4 antibodies can be swapped, potentially altering their function.
Back to Vanden Bossche, with an increase in IgG4 titers due to what he describes as “steric immune refocusing” (SIR), defined in another paper of his as “re-orientation of the humoral S-directed immune response towards more conserved, immune subdominant S-associated epitopes as a result of steric masking of variable, immunodominant S protein-associated epitopes by pre-existing, low-affinity pNAbs” the latter signifying human performed natural antibodies.
So, PNNAb1-dependent vaccine breakthrough infections or “VBTIs” lead to “infectious SARS-CoV-2 (SC-2) immune escape variants promoted generalized hyposensitization to ‘foreign’ and hypersensitization to ‘self’, inducing carcinogenicity and autoreactivity.”
Not a good development if this comes true. Vanden Bossche is known for predicting select adverse outcomes as a result of the ongoing mass COVID-19 vaccination approach to the pandemic. For example, the Belgium-based vaccinologist predicted that introducing mass vaccination in the midst of the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic would place great evolutionary pressures on the pathogen, supporting the evolutionary process. Most certainly SARS-Cov-2 mutated into many different variants and strains. However, we can’t be sure if it's due to Vanden Bossche’ s hypothesis but it should be vetted by experts in the field.
But ominously, here in heavily vaccinated populations Vanden Bossche’s hypothesis suggests a tragic explosion in cancer and autoimmune disease.
That's because according to his hypothesis, “SIR-enabling VBTIs, but also mRNA vaccination, facilitates immune refocusing to more conserved, immune subdominant spike (S)-associated epitopes.” Remember, epitopes are specific regions on the surface of antigens to which antibodies or immune cells bind. They play a crucial role in the immune system’s ability to recognize and respond to foreign substances such as viruses.
So, what’ s a key part of this mechanism that leads to serious trouble—namely higher incidence of cancer and autoimmune disease?
According to Vanden Bossche’ s paper, “delayed maturation of these de novo (new) primed, subneutralizing Abs into isotype-switched IgG4 anti-S Abs enables prolonged immune pressure on viral infectiousness.” What does this do? It leads to real trouble in the form of “promoting large-scale co-circulation of more infectious SC_2 immune escape variants.”
It is a cascade of immune selection events that “eventually mitigate disease caused by SC-2 and other unrelated viral pathogens (via anti-inflammatory IgG4)” leads to viral dissemination.
Vanden Bossche hypothesizes that “acute autoimmune disease and early-onset cancer in highly C-19 vaccinated populations are due to VBTI-or mRNA vaccine-mediated immune refocusing to more conserved, poorly immunogenic ‘self-like’ epitopes.
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Sen. Johnson Sounds Alarm on Return of COVID-19 Mask Mandates
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is sounding the alarm after a small number of offices, hospitals, and schools reinstated mask mandates in recent days.
Describing the mandates as “alarming,” Mr. Johnson told the Moms for Liberty group on Aug. 23 that they are ineffective and said he would keep fighting them.
“It’s alarming that the mandates are kicking in again,” he told the group. “It’s like, OK, we noticed masks didn’t work, particularly for children. We always knew they didn’t work for kids.”
The Wisconsin Republican said, “N-95 masks can have some marginal benefits—but not to deny people freedom.”
Mr. Johnson has said he was always skeptical of federal vaccine mandates and has been an advocate for people who claimed to have been injured by COVID-19 vaccines. He also called on the Biden administration to admit that its COVID-19 policies didn’t work.
“They’ll never admit they were wrong in how they handled COVID. I don’t see how anybody can take a look at how the federal government—really, over the course of two administrations—how they handled COVID, and say it was anything but a complete and miserable failure,” he told the Washington Examiner in May.
The White House, the senator added, won’t acknowledge what he described as the “the incalculable human toll” and the “economic devastation caused by the shutdowns.”
Mr. Johnson’s recent remarks come after Hollywood studio Lionsgate said in a memo earlier this week that it would reimpose a mask mandate for several floors of its office in Santa Monica, California.
“Employees must wear a medical grade face covering (surgical mask, KN95 or N95) when indoors except when alone in an office with the door closed, actively eating, actively drinking at their desk or workstation, or if they are the only individual present in a large open workspace,” a Lionsgate manager said in a memo, reported by Deadline.
This week, Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Santa Rosa, California, and the Upstate Community Hospital in Syracuse, New York, brought back the masking rule for visitors, patients, nurses, and doctors.
“To ensure that we are helping protect the health and safety of our patients, our workforce, and our community, we have reintroduced a mask mandate for physicians, staff, patients, members, and visitors in the hospital and medical offices in the Santa Rosa Service Area,” Kaiser Permanente said.
Morris Brown College in Atlanta also said that masks will again be required on campus because of a rise in cases on a larger campus in Atlanta.
“There will be no parties or large student events on campus for the next two weeks,” the school said.
At the same time, there has been an increase in media coverage of several COVID-19 variants, including one that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated could potentially evade vaccines. No federal agencies have announced any new mask mandates or recommendations.
Media Coverage
In recent days, an increasing number of television doctors have made suggestions that some people start masking again.
“It’s riskier that you will get infected now than it was a month or two ago, without question, probably twice as risky,” Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of medicine at the University of San Francisco, told CNN in a recent interview. “If you’re trying to be careful, it’s time to whip out the mask again.”
Also appearing on CNN, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist in Washington, said on Aug. 22 that people who are at risk from a COVID-19 infection—including people aged 65 and older—should put masks on again. He also said that President Joe Biden should do so, too.
“Octogenarians comprise the highest-risk group for complications following COVID infection,” he said. “At least until the numbers start to drop again, it would be appropriate for President Biden to take some precautions and wear a mask in crowds.”
Last week, COVID-19 hospitalizations rose across the country, according to data from the CDC. Hospitalizations rose by 21.6 percent, to 12,612 new admissions from 10,370, according to the data ending Aug. 12.
Despite the increase, it’s among the lowest levels of hospitalization recorded since the start of the pandemic in early 2020.
“An upswing is not a surge; it’s not even a wave,” Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine, told ABC News this week. “What we’re seeing is a very gradual and small upward trajectory of cases and hospitalizations, without deaths really going along, which is great news.”
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27 August, 2023
Biden’s probe censored Covid ‘smoking gun’
Mr Biden ordered the Intelligence Community in May 2021 to give him an assessment into how the pandemic began after revelations, first published by The Australian, that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been hospitalised with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019 in the suspected first cluster of the pandemic.
When the report was published it concluded that most intelligence agencies assessed the virus, even if it had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was natural rather than manipulated in a laboratory
The Australian can reveal that this was not the assessments made by the four groups within the intelligence agencies that actually engaged in scientific analysis, who concurred that there was either a highly likely or reasonable chance the virus was genetically engineered.
At least 90 per cent of the work from one of those agencies — the Pentagon’s top intelligence group — was censored in the final report and Defence Department scientists were told to stop working with the FBI on their findings.
Scientists at the Defense Intelligence Agency’s National Centre for Medical Intelligence (DIA NCMI) had conducted rigorous research on the genomic sequence of the virus and firmly concluded that it was, most likely, a laboratory construct.
Well-placed sources familiar with the work that unfolded inside the intelligence agency and their interactions with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the 90-day probe spoke to The Australian for this investigation.
Covid-19 origin ‘smoking gun’
Their internal research at the Pentagon-based agency led to a finding that was described internally as a “smoking gun.”
One of the scientists discovered that the size and location of a fragment of Covid-19 resembled the same fragment in Wuhan Institute of Virology research from more than a decade earlier, in 2008. It was the same technique that the WIV had used in grant applications to make chimeric viruses.
“This paper is the smoking gun of everything. When the team reviewed this data, they thought ‘This is created in the lab. It’s a reverse genetics construct,” a source said.
But their input into the 90-day origins probe was censored.
Sources close to the inquiry estimated that about 90 per cent of the DIA NCMI edits were deleted or censored or simply weren’t included.
“They said the information was too technical to include in the ODNI assessment,” a source familiar with the process told The Australian.
“When the scientists saw the final document, they wondered were did all their edits go?”
They had been working with the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction unit, until the co-operation between the two agencies was blocked, with a director at the Defense Intelligence Agency claiming the FBI was “off the reservation” on the topic of the origins of Covid-19.
The 90-day study also ignored coronavirus gain-of-function research underway in Wuhan and there was a lack of genomic data analysis.
The scientific team inside the DIA thought the 90-day report was scientifically inaccurate, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.
“There was a lot of erroneous information. There was no genomic analysis in the ODNI report, nothing about the rare codons or the poly basic cleavage site and the minimal cassette that is similar to prior work published by WIV scientists. This virus also had no apparent mutational signatures,” a source involved in the inquiry said.
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US Congress to probe claims Covid report was censored by intelligence community
The US congress is set to probe revelations that officials at the highest levels of the intelligence community censored the input of scientists who concluded that Covid-19 was genetically engineered in a laboratory.
A homeland security committee senator has also called for the allegations to be “investigated immediately”.
The Australian and Sky News revealed on Friday that senior scientists working for the Defence Intelligence Organisation’s National Centre for Medical Intelligence – Robert Greg Cutlip, Jean-Paul Chretien and John Hardham – had 90 per cent of their input into a probe ordered by US President Joe Biden deleted.
They were stunned when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s study into the origins of Covid-19 was released and downplayed the likelihood that SARS-CoV-2 was the result of laboratory research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
US officials have expressed serious concerns at censorship of the scientists, saying the matter raised questions over the accuracy of the 90-day probe handed down by Mr Biden in August 2021.
The congressional select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic will now evaluate the allegations, with a spokesperson saying there were concerns about the accuracy of the intelligence agency’s public assessments.
“The select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic takes the reported allegations seriously,” a spokesperson said. “We are explicitly tasked with investigating the origins of Covid-19 and the purported information raises questions concerning the accuracy of the ODNI report and its conclusions.”
Separately, US senator Roger Marshall, who sits on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and is leading the Covid origins investigations, said he was exploring his options about how to take censorship of the scientists further and that the cover-up “must be fully investigated immediately”.
“We never trusted the Chinese Communist Party to come clean about the origins of Covid-19, but a potential cover-up by our own government and Defence agencies tasked with securing our nation should concern every American and must be fully investigated immediately,” he told The Weekend Australian.
“The intelligence community’s official inconclusive position about the origins of Covid-19 has never accurately reflected the classified intelligence we reviewed. Now we are learning insider censorship of US expert scientists may have influenced the report.”
Quantitative biologist Justin Kinney, associate professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, said the revelations were “very important”.
“The ODNI appeared to have intentionally suppressed critical scientific information to mislead the public about the origins of Covid-19,” he said. “The house subcommittee on the pandemic should investigate.”
It comes after The Australian and Sky News revealed a draft document was shared with agencies in the intelligence community for input when Mr Biden ordered the probe in May 2021.
Sources familiar with the work inside the intelligence agency and the scientists’ interactions with the ODNI said 90 per cent of their input was censored or deleted.
“They said the information was too technical to include in the ODNI assessment,” one said.
“When the scientists saw the final document, they wondered where did all their edits go?”
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Author of Congressional Vax Injury Compensation Bill Pens an Op-Ed
While the Biden administration recently announced another $1 billion for long Covid treatment research and up to $5 billion to develop more vaccines and therapies targeting Covid, a subject lurking just beneath the surface, individuals injured by the Covid vaccine for the most part go unacknowledged and even censored.
One advocate for the vaccine injured claims people have been suffering for too long without any government acknowledgement and it is time for action. “To live in a world where people harmed by a medication are treated with mercy instead of censorship, people must make their voices heard.” Action has been taken, including on the part of TrialSite, which covers the topic objectively as well as engages in partnership with organizations like React19, a Covid vaccine injury group, and offers vaccine injury support groups. Now, it looks as if the United States government is finally responding.
Bill to modernize vaccine compensation+
Democrat Representative Lloyd Doggett from Texas and Republican Congressman Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania introduced a bill, H.R.5142, which is designed to modernize the current COVID-19 vaccine compensation schemes. The bill would update and improve the nearly forty-year-old Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP).
Doggett had been reluctant to criticize the Covid vaccine, but recently came out and said, “Vaccines save lives, but in the rarest of cases, usually caused by an error in administration rather than the vaccine itself, they involve injury. While strongly disagreeing with the dangerous misinformation spread by anti-vaxxers, I believe that those who suffer rare injuries associated with vaccines, including those to fight COVID-19, should receive prompt, reasonable compensation for medical bills and other losses. The existing program involves unreasonable delays and inadequate redress. Our bill would update the program and correct the unjust decision to have COVID-19 claims considered by a separate, and even more inadequate governmental program. By assuring a prompt and fair response to any related injury, we build confidence in vaccines and reduce hesitancy.”
Doggett op-ed
In an article in The Hill, Congressman Doggett wrote that Congress must act to modernize the approach to “rare vaccine injuries”. The politician points out the Covid vaccine was needed as a response to the pandemic and was successful. But, he adds, vaccine hesitancy was an issue which had to be dealt with. Doggett adds one way to assure people the vaccines are safe is to make sure there is trust in the vaccines and the government is to make sure there is a program to safely and fairly compensate people who have suffered a vaccine injury.
The Congressman points out because of the uniqueness of the situation with the Covid vaccine, compensation for Covid vaccine injury was considered under the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). The CICP has been an “abject failure” in dealing with Covid vaccine injuries, and now, finally, politicians are aware of the situation. And, as Doggett points out, with all the claims made to the CICP, a pittance has been paid out by the agency scheme.
Doggett and Smucker’s bill is called The Vaccine Injury Compensation Modernization Act, which aims to update the CICP and provide “much needed” relief to people whose vaccine injury claims have been lingering. “Our legislation authorizes the resources and additional judges required to review claims expeditiously, as well as reforms to provide more reasonable time for filing a claim. It streamlines the addition of future vaccines to the program, a process now too frequently delayed by bureaucratic red tape.”
The payouts will also account for work loss compensation, medical costs and damages. The legislation would also raise the cap in line with inflation, indexing it moving forward.
Frankly why wouldn’t we compensate individuals that have legitimate, verified injuries associated with the vaccine? Again, the Biden administration continues to commit billions into new vaccine and medicinal development, yet no mention of vaccine injury compensation.
But some elected officials in Washington are starting to realize that a fair, reasonably expedited and funded compensation program makes sense.
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25 August, 2023
The Highly Mutated BA.2.86, the Detecting Lab and Immunity Questions
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Yesterday, TrialSite reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) picked up on a new SARS-CoV-2 variant, one highly mutated, termed BA.2.86. In the United States, the mutated variant was sequenced in Michigan thanks to the ongoing surveillance occurring at the University of Michigan Clinical Microbiology Laboratory.
The University of Michigan Clinical Microbiology Laboratory in the report is termed the originating lab, while the submitting lab was the Lauring Lab, University of Michigan, Department of Microbiology and Immunology. This lab is led by Adam Lauring, M.D., Ph.D., a Professor of Internal Medicine, Infectious Disease and Microbiology & Immunology.
The Clinical Microbiology Lab is led by Michael Bachman, M.D., Ph.D., and Paul R. Lephart, Ph.D., D(ABMM), both Associate Directors of the prominent Midwestern lab—one staffed by 55 medical technologists and clinical laboratory scientists. The laboratories provide service 365 days a year to meet the medical needs of Michigan Medicine and the clients of the “M-Labs” program.
The Clinical Microbiology Laboratory has close ties with Adult and Pediatric Infectious Diseases, the Infection Control Program, the Department of Pharmacy, and the School of Public Health. Close collaboration is key among the various functional areas, thus providing the ongoing analysis of interactions between organisms and antimicrobial agents that allow for dynamic reporting to clinicians on the floors and foster productive research collaborations that directly result in improving the quality of care provided to patients.
The Clinical Microbiology Laboratories are accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and active in the CAP Laboratory Accreditation and Proficiency Testing programs
More on the variant
CBS News coverage of the latest variant discovered revealed some useful information. Kathleen Conley, a CDC spokesperson told the network news, “Today we are more prepared than ever to detect and respond to changes in the COVID-19 virus.” Conley empathized that “Scientists are working now to understand more about the newly identified lineage in these four cases and we will share more information as it becomes available.”
Alexander Tin covered the story for CBS News HealthWatch.
Is BA.2.86 a more threatening or dangerous variant of SARS-CoV-2? Will it lead to more severe COVID-19? While the World Health Organization went on the record that the variant includes dozens of genetic changes, for comparison it’s a similar situation in some ways to how Omicron emerged as a materially different stain than, say, delta.
But public health agencies and academic research centers need more data to determine the risk levels associated with BA.2.86. TrialSite reported that this newly detected strain has been detected in Israel and Denmark as well.
The concern, among other things, is that the mutations could aid the pathogen in its ability to evade immunity, both of the natural (previous infection) as well as vaccine-induced type. There is no real threat at this point given the pathogen has only been detected in a few places. Also, it may well be the case that the human body’s current immune responses help fight off the mutant. Or for that matter, the mutant may not be able to compete with existing highly infectious strains.
CBS News obtained a presentation from a Fred Hutch Cancer Center evolutionary biologist, Jesse Bloom, Ph.D., conveying what could be considered potentially disturbing information about the latest variant. “Deep mutational scanning indicates BA.2.86 variant will have equal or greater escape than XBB.1.5 from antibodies elicited by pre-omicron and first-generation Omicron variants.”
Some of the mutations exist in parts of the virus that could help it evade immunity provided by prior vaccination or infection.
But Bloom also suggested the collective immunity may well be ready to take on BA.2.86, “[T]here are also broader mechanisms of immunity elicited by vaccination and infection that provide some protection against severe disease even for very heavily mutated variants.”
What are the implications for the latest vaccine that will likely be approved by FDA, and recommended by CDC for the fall season?
A monovalent mRNA vaccine produced by both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are under clinical study. TrialSite reported on a trial site looking to enroll adolescents in Cincinnati Ohio for the Moderna clinical trial.
The FDA recommended that the vaccine makers tailor this COVID-19 season’s vaccine to XBB.1.5, an Omicron variant. As TrialSite has reported recently, while this strain predominated circulating Omicron variants across America just a few months ago it is now at 10.3% or lower. TrialSite estimates that by October XBB.1.5 will be under 5% of all circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants, if not less.
What does this mean for COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness? And what about the emerging predominant variants? For example, EG.5 at over 17% of SARS-CoV-2 cases according to the CDC now is the pathogen to watch. The good news for vaccination and natural immunity supporters---EG.5 is an XBB descendent so perhaps the vaccine’s effectiveness will be better than expected. Or perhaps Moderna pointed out, according to CBS News, that its shot provides "a significant boost in neutralizing antibodies" for EG.5.
Yet according to the Fred Hutch evolutionary biologist Jesse Bloom, all bets are off if BA.2.86 is able to outcompete and overcome other fast-moving, mutating Omicron variants. That scenario could represent trouble for our collective immunity. BA.2.86 heavily mutated would be a “fairly poor match” for the current vaccines under clinical development which again target XBB.
A reminder tempering the concern. With each progressive mutation under the Omicron umbrella of variants, COVID-19 becomes ever milder all things considered. And there are treatments available. Yes, it still can turn severe and even deadly but the case fatality rate now ranks with influenza, if not even less dangerous for healthy people.
Even during the Delta variant surge TrialSite always reminded that 90-95% of the COVID-19 cases were mild to moderate, but that persons in high-risk categories (e.g., elderly, persons with comorbidities, immunocompromised) faced considerably higher threat. TrialSite emphasized with national and state public health agencies that face a U.S. population with a staggering reality—about 70% of the adult population is either overweight or obese as reported by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. During the pandemic, there was little time to risk stratify, and obesity itself was/and is a risk factor. Meaning a good half, of the country’s adults likely fell in the higher risk category. This remains so, although the case fatality rate is under 1%. But generally, the Omicron variants are more infectious, meaning they spread faster, yet overall lead to milder outcomes.
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Murdoch Children’s Bombshell: Medicinal Value of COVID-19 Vaccines Now Questionable Among Healthy Children
According to researchers at Australia’s Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, COVID-19 vaccines have demonstrated efficacy against severe incidence of SARS-CoV-2 in children and adolescents, but their value proposition as a mass medical tool becomes questionable considering the unfolding dynamics of today: high pre-existing infection and low risk when infected.
Researchers led by John Hart from the academic medical center for young people Down Under acknowledge that most children now have been infected by SARS-CoV-2, meaning they have built up immunity, and the vaccine’s benefit in healthy children is minimal. They argue any energies and attention placed on COVID-19 vaccination campaigns should be used to advocate for vaccines known to offer higher medical value, such as the measles vaccine. The ramifications of this recent set of findings are substantial.
Published in the BMJ Pediatrics Open, the international review was led by medical researchers from the Australian medical institute. They explored the challenges and considerations of COVID-19 vaccination, especially in low-and middle-income countries with high levels of community transmission and infection-derived immunity.
The team’s review, led by Hart, a medical epidemiologist, suggests that any COVID-19 vaccination scheme moving forward, especially in low-and middle-income countries should be coupled with routine childhood vaccination program that the researchers acknowledge “have greater impact on illness and death, including for measles, pneumonia and diarrheal disease.”
Mild for most
The Australian team found that about two-thirds of all young people that had COVIS-19 and were hospitalized in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic did not require medical intervention. Deaths, the investigators reported, “were extremely rare in children.”
Closing in on child herd immunity?
The researchers also point out that the vast majority of children have been infected with SARS-CoV-2. As immunity has increased over time, the disease continues to evolve. Prior research led by Murdoch Children’s found that croup, triggered by the novel coronavirus, declined in 2022 despite the rise of new variants.
Also, data from the Pediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance (PAEDS) network in America found that rates of pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome (PIMS-TS), what was a major driver for childhood vaccination, were “Substantially lower during the Omicron COVID-19 variant period.” TrialSite reported on similar findings in the UK.
Net takeaway
While there are still cases where COVID-19 vaccination is recommended, the Australian researchers are clear—they value of these vaccines for children has markedly diminished. In fact, they use the COVID-19 vaccination push as a primary means of promoting more substantive medical vaccination, such as measles. Reading between the lines, and on the face of the piece, the investigators are more concerned about standard vaccination rates, especially in low-and moderate-income countries.
One takeaway called out by this independent media, children achieved herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2 by infection, not vaccination.
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24 August, 2023
What You Need to Know About New ‘Eris’ COVID Variant
The new COVID-19 virus variant spreading now, “Eris,” is currently the predominant strain in the United States, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although it’s increasingly reported worldwide, health experts say it poses a low risk to public health, as there is no evidence it causes different or more severe symptoms than previous omicron offspring.
The Essentials
A subvariant of the omicron lineage, Eris, otherwise known as EG.5, was detected as early as February 2023. As of Aug. 23, Eris has been detected in more than 50 countries and is responsible for an estimated 20.6 percent of all cases in the United States.
Meanwhile, FL.1.5.1 is now the second most prevalent strain, accounting for over 13 percent of cases.
On Aug. 9, the World Health Organization (WHO) designated Eris as a variant of interest (pdf), meaning it possesses genetic characteristics that could increase its transmissibility, virulence, and ability to evade vaccines.
The WHO had previously labeled Eris as a variant “under monitoring” after a surge in COVID-19 infections in early July.
The current variant of interest list also includes two other omicron cousins—XBB.1.5 and XBB.1.16.
If Eris is upgraded to a variant of concern, governments would need to increase preventative measures, such as mask mandates in hospitals, testing, or physical distancing.
There have already been growing concerns that Eris could trigger governments to revive some COVID-19 restrictions.
How Dangerous Is It Compared to Other Variants?
Eris is a descendent of omicron variant XBB.1.9.2.
Eris carries an additional amino acid mutation, known as F456L, in the spike protein. This mutation has been shown to escape immunity gained from previous variants and may help the new variant transmit quickly.
The CDC said there is no evidence Eris causes more severe disease than other omicron descendants, and it seems to cause similar symptoms.
Similar to those of earlier COVID-19 virus strains and that of the common cold, symptoms may include the following:
Fatigue.
Muscle pain.
Chest pain.
Headache.
Sore throat.
Runny nose.
Congestion.
Cough.
Fever and chills.
Nausea or vomiting.
Diarrhea.
Loss of taste or smell.
New Generation ‘Variant Under Monitoring’
Health authorities have also been tracking a highly mutated strain called BA.2.86, or “Pirola” by some, which has caught scientists by surprise after it was picked up by COVID-19 testing on three continents.
This variant has scientists on alert because its emergence is reminiscent of the early days of the omicron variant in late 2021 when researchers in southern Africa noticed a lineage that quickly spread globally.
“There’s a little bit of déjà vu all over again,” said Adam Lauring, a virologist and infectious-disease physician at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, whose lab identified one individual infected with BA.2.86, in an interview with Nature.
Health authorities first detected BA.2.86 in Denmark on July 24, and it has also been spotted in the UK, United States, and Israel.
None of the cases appears to be linked, including three infections in Denmark found in different parts of the country. This geographical distribution is another feature of BA.2.86 that is garnering scientists’ attention.
This suggests the variant may already be fairly widespread, Jesse Bloom, a viral evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, told Nature. “It’s got to have been transmitting a fair amount.”
The UK Health Security Agency said a recent case was reported in a person with no recent travel history, “suggesting a degree of community transmission within the UK.”
However, experts do not expect BA.2.86 to have the same impact as omicron due to response practice with earlier COVID-19 waves and vaccine rollouts. “There’s good reason to think it won’t be like the omicron wave, but it’s early days,” Mr. Lauring said in the Nature interview.
Current Vaccines
Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax have created new versions of their vaccines to target another omicron sublineage—XBB.1.5—similar to Eris, so health authorities hope the vaccines will work on new variants.
However, according to the WHO, the F456L mutation Eris carries has been shown to decrease the neutralization of most XBB.1.5 neutralizing antibodies.
Listed by the WHO as a “variant of concern,” XBB.1.5 previously dominated transmission in the United States for several months straight but was surpassed by XBB.1.16, or Arcturus, in July.
The new CDC director, Dr. Mandy Cohen, anticipates that these vaccines will be available at common locations such as pharmacies and anticipates an annual COVID-19 shot, integrating it into routine health practices.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/what-you-need-to-know-about-new-eris-covid-variant-5477514
***************************************************Another Covid Medication Gets authorization from FDA Despite a Phase 3 “Miss”
When the Covid pandemic started, there was a rush to find a vaccine to combat the disease. Initially, issues arose with the Johnson and Johnson shot and it was discontinued, but the Pfizer mRNA jab was approved. Both shots were authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under emergency use authorization (EUA) although the Johnson and Johnson’s (Janssen) authorization was later revoked. The mRNA jabs were later formally approved. But questions still arose over whether or not the Pfizer and later Moderna vaccines were fully vetted before EUA was granted. Now it appears history has repeated itself.
Known as vilobelimab, this experimental product now available on an emergency basis was developed via human-mouse chimeric IgG4 kappa antibody targeting human C5a in plasma.
Gohibic gets EUA
In April, the FDA granted emergency use authorization for the use of the Gohibic injection for the treatment of Covid-19 in hospitalized adults. The medication is to be used within 48 hours of a patient who’s been intubated or is on a heart-lung machine. The press release for the medication says, “There is limited information known about the safety or effectiveness of using GOHIBIC to treat people in the hospital with COVID-19.
Available results from clinical trials in adults indicate that treatment with GOHIBIC may decrease the risk of dying in hospitalized adults with COVID-19 when initiated within 48 hours of receiving IMV or ECMO. The safety and effectiveness of GOHIBIC have not been studied in children hospitalized with COVID-19.”
Authorized despite Phase 3 “miss”
According to the FDA, the Gohibic clinical trial showed that patients treated with the drug had a lower risk of death by day 28 and day 60 of treatment compared to placebo. However, there is a phase 3 clinical trial “twist”. In a randomized trial, Gohibic reduced the risk of death in the sickest patients by 27% compared with placebo during a 28-day period. In that trial, the drug missed “statistical significance” on the trial’s primary endpoint. But in another analysis and two other post hoc analyses the medication’s improvement was significant. The treatment targets inflammation that leads to progression of the Covid virus.
Drug maker talks to FDA
Despite the results of the trial, the maker of Gohibic, InflaRx, talked to the FDA and then applied for the EUA last September. InflaRx was founded in 2007 in Germany and has offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In a press release, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of InflaRx, Niels Riedemann said that Gohibic will bring hope to Covid patients who despite vaccines and other treatment options, are still developing viral sepsis and are progressing to critical status.
The company has a supply of Gohibic which is readily available, but Riedemann didn’t reveal the price of the medication. However, he did expect to charge a five-digit figure per patient for the drug. Once again, it appears Covid is a continual cash cow for Big Pharma CEOs.
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The World’s Longest Natural Experiment on Vaccine Efficacy
Lack of controls in evaluating vaccine efficacy makes all inferences speculative
In early 2021, the COVID-19 vaccine campaign was launched, based on clinical findings of 95% efficacy in late 2020 (Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine).
But this efficacy relied on relative risk measures that are more appropriate for epidemiological population studies that measure exposure and response to risk factors without controlling for confounding factors that could produce the same results from other sources.
Confounding factors are controlled in a vaccine clinical trial through randomization of participants to the vaccine and placebo groups, thereby equally distributing all known and unknown confounding factors. Randomized controlled clinical trials require absolute measures of risk reduction to prove causation of vaccine efficacy, not relative risk reductions that only observe associations of effectiveness. (Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy).
The absolute risk reduction of the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials was approximately 1%, which rendered the vaccine clinically insignificant (Outcome Reporting Bias in COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Clinical Trials). Generally, a significant clinical effect reduces a risk by at least 50% or increases a risk by at least two-fold.
In what amounts to the world’s longest natural experiment, it took many months for a national public health official to declare to the public what the clinical trial results had already proven back in 2020 due to their low absolute risk reductions: that the COVID-19 vaccines would not prevent SARS-CoV-2 infections (CDC Director Rochelle Walensky tells Wolf Blitzer that COVID Vaccines won't prevent transmission - YouTube 1:20).
And to suggest that the vaccines would at least keep you out of the hospital has never been clinically proven. Just because you are vaccinated and stay out of the hospital doesn't prove the vaccines had anything to do with it. It's just another one of those unproven associations.
By now the truth about the COVID-19 vaccine failure should be evident to anybody who cares to look and listen. However, are the lessons learned? Are we better equipped now to prevent more failed vaccine campaigns based on misleading statistics that benefit pharmaceutical profits? That last phrase provides a clue to the answer, and the world's longest natural experiment on vaccine efficacy is likely to continue on indefinitely.
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/the-worlds-longest-natural-experiment-on-vaccine-efficacy-d9d9b7c3
*************************************************23 August, 2023
Long COVID damage can linger for 2 years, leading to elevated risk of disability, hospitalization, and death, landmark new study finds
Long COVID—and the increased risk of death, disability, and hospitalization it brings—can persist for two years, according to a landmark study published Monday in Nature Medicine.
It’s the first study to look at a broad range of potential health effects stemming from the virus in the two years after infection. Most previous studies had only examined the initial year after infection, or a more narrow range of health effects in a period slightly longer than a year.
For those who contracted the virus in 2020 and were hospitalized with it, the risk of both death and hospitalization remained “significantly elevated” for two years, according to researchers with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Washington University.
Among those who contracted the virus the same year and weren’t hospitalized during their initial infection, the risk of death remained statistically significant for six months, researchers found. The risk of hospitalization remained elevated for about a year and a half.
“The findings highlight the substantial cumulative burden of health loss due to [long COVID] and call for attention to the care needs of people with long-term health effects" due to the virus, the study’s authors wrote.
A longer road for those who were hospitalized
Researchers examined the Department of Veterans Affairs medical records of nearly 140,000 individuals who survived COVID during 2020, as well as nearly 6 million who weren’t known to have contracted the virus that year. They followed them for two years to gauge their risk of death from all causes, as well as the incidence of 80 conditions known to be post-acute sequelae of COVID (PASC), frequently referred to as long COVID.
At the two-year mark, the risk of most of those health conditions—69%—was insignificant for those who hadn’t been hospitalized with the virus. But "substantial" risk remained "impacting several major organ systems." The chance of developing blood, lung, gastrointestinal, or musculoskeletal conditions remained elevated, in addition to fatigue and diabetes, suggesting a longer-lasting risk for these ailments, the authors stated.
In a Monday blog entry, Dr. Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research and founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, wrote that the statistic was the "only reassuring finding for non-hospitalized people in the study."
For those who had been hospitalized with the virus, the risk of most of conditions—65%, affecting all organ systems examined, and including cardiovascular, blood, endocrine, gastrointestinal, kidney, mental health, musculoskeletal, and pulmonary issues—remained significant for the entire two years. The findings are a nod to the "the difficult and protracted road to recovery among those whose disease was sufficiently severe to necessitate hospitalization during the acute phase of infection," researchers wrote.
The study's findings "show that while risks of many (but not all) post-acute sequelae decline and become non-statistically significant over time, the decline is less pronounced among those who were hospitalized in the acute phase of infection," the authors wrote.
The good news for everyone: Researchers found no increased risk of cancer among those who had experienced COVID, hospitalized or not.
While significant, the study had its limitations, as the authors point out. All participants were veterans, and most were older males. Long COVID as a whole may look different—in both duration and symptoms—in a primarily female, or younger, population. As Topol pointed out, the study's prototypic participant, a 61-year-old male, is far different from a female in her thirties—the demographic for which long COVID is thought to be most prevalent.
Further, all participants were infected during the first year of COVID, before variants like Delta and Omicron evolved. While thought to be less common, long COVID from later strains may feature important differences.
What's more, those with a record of COVID infection were compared to those with no record of a COVID infection during the same year. But some of them may have had COVID without knowing, or telling their doctor, skewing rates of death, hospitalization, and disability in the COVID crowd for better or worse.
Long COVID's long-term impacts on the immune system
Another new study, published Aug. 18 in the journal Cell, details the long-term immune system changes that severe COVID can trigger. The findings help elucidate why some with long COVID have symptoms tied to prolonged inflammation, like lung and kidney damage and neurological changes—and may have implications for anyone who has experienced the virus, regardless of severity.
Researchers with Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and other institutions examined data from the blood of tens of patients—those who had recovered from severe COVID, and those who had recovered from other types of critical illness. In particular, they were able to isolate and analyze a rare type of stem cells found in blood—CD34+ hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells—thanks to a new technique they developed that made bone marrow biopsy unnecessary.
Among their findings: Monocytes—a type of white blood cell produced every few days from stem cells—showed changes in epigenetic programming up to a year after severe COVID infection.
Epigenetic programming refers to the epigenome—comprised of factors like chemicals, stress, diet, drugs, and disease that modify DNA, telling it "what to do, where to do it, and when to do it,” according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Those changes, to what could be casually referred to as DNA's "packaging," can be passed down from cell to cell as they divide, and from generation to generation.
Researchers also found that stem cells of those who had experienced severe COVID were more likely to allow activation of inflammation-associated genes. Such cells were also more likely to create a type of blood cell that serves as a "first responder" to infection.
Stem cells "can pass their epigenetic ‘memories’ on to their progeny immune cells, changing those cells’ inflammatory programs," Dr. Steven Josefowicz, an associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, told Fortune. "So, when they see another pathogen, they respond in a different way than they would if they came from ... cells that hadn’t seen inflammation to the same extent.”
Such changes to the immune system may persist longer than a year, Josefowicz said, adding that the study only lasted a year. And they may also occur—at least to some extent—in those who had more mild cases of COVID, though further study will be needed to tell.
Who's most at risk for long COVID?
Factors like age, gender, BMI, and pre-existing conditions may put individuals at higher risk for long COVID, according to a study published in March in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine.
The U.K.-based study found that certain groups of people are at a significantly higher risk of developing the post-viral condition, thought to affect millions around the world. They include:
Women
Over 40
People with obesity
Smokers
Those who were immunosuppressed before COVID
People who were hospitalized with COVID
People who had the following conditions before COVID:
anxiety or depression
diabetes
asthma or COPD
Researchers examined the results of 41 published studies, with a combined total of more than 860,000 patients. They found that the aforementioned conditions were strongly associated with a higher risk of long COVID symptoms persisting three or more months after infection.
The results bolster the case that female gender and older age serve as risk factors for developing long COVID. A potential common thread among several risk categories: pre-existing inflammation, which may extend the acute phase of COVID “even after recovery.” In the case of females, hormones might play a role in inflammatory status, while obesity shares a proinflammatory profile with long COVID, the authors write.
That’s not-so-great news for a giant swath of the population. There is good news, however: At least two doses of COVID vaccination seemed to lower the risk of developing long COVID, researchers found. Other studies have come to similar conclusions, they noted. They include a report from the U.K. Office of National Statistics, which found that those with two doses of COVID vaccine had a 42% lower risk of developing the potentially disabling condition.
What is long COVID?
With more than 200 symptoms identified—from lingering cough and fatigue to ear numbness and a sensation of “brain on fire”—long COVID is undoubtedly not one but multiple conditions, experts say.
True long COVID, some contend, is best defined as a chronic-fatigue-syndrome-like condition that develops after a COVID infection, similar to other post-viral syndromes that can occur after an infection with herpes, Lyme disease, and Ebola, among others.
Other post-COVID complications like organ damage should not be defined as long COVID and better fit into the larger umbrella category of PASC, some experts say. Also known as post-acute sequelae of COVID-19, the term is used to encompass a wide variety of COVID consequences, from chronic-fatigue-like symptoms and subsequent heart disease to lasting lung damage and odd new symptoms like urinary incontinence, itching, and skin lesions.
As of Jan. 16, 15% of U.S. adults reported having long COVID symptoms at some point in the pandemic, and 6% reported lingering symptoms, according to a Jan. 26 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, citing data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The percent of Americans who’ve experienced COVID and still report long COVID symptoms dropped from 19% in June to 11% in January, according to the report.
https://fortune.com/well/2023/08/21/long-covid-last-2-years-death-disability-hospitalization/
*************************************************21 August, 2023
Most Intensive Ivermectin Use Had 74 Percent Reduction in Excess Deaths
According to a new peer-reviewed ecological study, a natural experiment occurred when the government of Peru authorized ivermectin for use during the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in evidence of the drug’s effectiveness and ability to reduce excess deaths.
The paper’s results, published August 8 in Cureus, found a 74 percent reduction in excess deaths in 10 states with the most intensive ivermectin use over a 30-day period following peak deaths during the pandemic. When analyzing data across 25 states in Peru, researchers found these reductions in excess deaths correlated closely to ivermectin use during four months in 2020.
When ivermectin was available without restriction, there was a fourteenfold reduction in nationwide excess deaths. Once access to ivermectin was restricted by the government, a thirteenfold increase in excess deaths was observed in the two months following the limitation of its use. The findings align with summary data from the World Health Organization for the same time period in Peru.
Ivermectin is a widely-known and inexpensive treatment against parasitic diseases. Scientists believe the drug can also bind to the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, limiting its morbidity and infectivity.
Peru Promoted Then Restricted Access to Ivermectin
Before Peru implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates, the country relied on mitigation strategies such as lockdowns and therapeutics to control the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, as did many other nations.
The Peruvian Ministry of Health, on May 8, 2020, approved ivermectin widely for use prompting 25 states in Peru to implement inpatient and outpatient treatments with ivermectin to different extents and in different time frames. Additionally, through the Mega-Operación Tayta (MOT)—a national program led by the Ministry of Defense—Peru’s government began distributing ivermectin on a wide scale.
Through a partnership with 11 other government agencies, MOT aimed to reach every targeted region with rapid response teams to detect COVID-19 cases, administer ivermectin, and provide food to encourage people to isolate for 15 days. Shortly thereafter, MOT began distributing the therapeutic to everyone identified as high-risk, regardless of whether they tested positive or were symptomatic for COVID-19.
The government of Peru independently tracked daily COVID-19 deaths and all-cause deaths through numerous Peruvian national health databases, allowing researchers to calculate excess deaths. Additionally, they extensively tracked data for deaths and other public health parameters allowing analysis of the potential efficacy of interventions such as ivermectin during the pandemic.
When President Francisco Sagasti took office on Nov. 17, 2020, the government stopped distributing ivermectin and made it available only by prescription. This made the drug significantly more difficult for people to obtain and allowed researchers to see nationwide changes in daily excess all-cause deaths before and after restrictions went into place.
Impact of Ivermectin on Excess Deaths
Excess all-cause deaths were calculated from the total deaths recorded for January through February 2020. During this period, monthly all-cause deaths fluctuated with a mean value of 5.2 percent and a standard deviation of 3.8 percent. By May 2020, total deaths fluctuated by more than double the baseline value calculated in January through February.
An analysis of excess all-cause deaths was performed state-by-state for those aged 60 years and older to establish the date of peak excess deaths during the pandemic’s first wave. Decreases in excess deaths from the peak date of death to 30 and 45 days afterward were tracked. The 25 states were then grouped by the extent of ivermectin distribution: maximal distribution—occurring through operation MOT, medium, and minimal.
Results showed that the 10 MOT states had a sharp decrease in excess deaths after reaching peak values—with a 74 percent drop at 30 days and an 86 percent drop at 45 days after the date of peak deaths. For 14 states that locally administered ivermectin, excess deaths dropped by 53 percent at 30 days and 70 percent at 45 days.
In Lima, where ivermectin treatments were delayed until August—four months after its initial pandemic surge in April—excess deaths only dropped by 25 percent at 30 days and 25 percent at 45 days after peak deaths on May 30.
According to the study, mean reductions in excess deaths 30 days after peak deaths were 74 percent, 53 percent, and 25 percent, respectively, for the maximal, medium, and minimal states that distributed ivermectin. Forty-five days after peak deaths, mean reductions were 86 percent, 70 percent, and 25 percent.
The researchers noted that ivermectin distribution may have yielded such positive numbers due to the drug’s ability to both prevent and treat COVID-19 when distributed to an at-risk population on a greater scale.
Similar Results Observed in Uttar Pradesh, India
Researchers noted similar results with ivermectin distribution in Uttar Pradesh, India, where government teams moved across 97,941 villages as part of a COVID-19 management program to distribute home medication kits that contained ivermectin, doxycycline, zinc, vitamins C and D3, and acetaminophen tablets.
After the mass distribution of ivermectin, the seven-day moving average of COVID-19 deaths in Uttar Pradesh decreased by 97 percent. The cumulative total of COVID-19 deaths per million in population from July 7, 2021, through April 1, 2023, was 4.3 in Uttar Pradesh, compared with 70.4 in all of India and 1,596.3 in the United States, according to the study.
Although Peru had more comprehensive data, the Uttar Pradesh data suggests using ivermectin may prevent and potentially treat COVID-19.
“These encouraging results from IVM [ivermectin] treatments in Peru and similar positive indications from Uttar Pradesh, India, which have populations of 33 million and 229 million, respectively, offer promising models for further mass deployments of IVM, as needs may arise, for both the treatment and prevention of COVID-19,” researchers concluded.
The authors considered factors that could influence their findings, such as the effects of a social isolation mandate imposed in May 2020, the varying genetic makeup of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, differences in seropositivity rates, and population densities across the 25 states. Still, researchers stated the extent and reliability of data showed other factors did not significantly influence study outcomes.
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Post-Vaccination Parsonage-Turner Syndrome: A Case Series
Cripes! I have something very like Parsonage-Turner Syndrome right at this moment: All sorts of painful symptoms in my right shoulder. And I have been Covid vaxxed. But the vax was years back and there is no associated muscle weakness so I suspect the resemblance is coincidental. I seem to be healing up anyway
Case reports on COVID-19 vaccination-related neurological events are appearing more frequently in the literature. TrialSite follows these case studies on adverse effects on the central and peripheral nervous system attributed to COVID-19 vaccines. The study summarized here describes six cases related to a rare neurological condition called “Parsonage-Turner syndrome (PTS)” that presented after COVID-19 vaccine shots.
Also called “brachial neuritis”, PTS is a neurological condition characterized by severe pain in the shoulder and upper arm followed by muscle weakness. It mainly affects motor nerves which are responsible for movement. These symptoms may last for months and are usually unilateral.
The condition is commonly seen in men as compared to women and although people of any age can develop the condition, the average age of onset is 41 years.
The study
The current case series published in Case Reports in Neurology in 2022 is entitled “Parsonage-Turner Syndrome Following COVID-19 Vaccination: Clinical and Electromyographic Findings in 6 Patients.”
Background
The reasons behind PTS are unclear, but reported causes include viral infections, surgery, vaccination, and trauma. One theory suggests that viral antigens in vaccines may trigger this syndrome. The condition is associated with various vaccines such as hepatitis B, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus vaccine, smallpox, and swine flu.
The authors of the case report mentioned that during the first six months of 2021, a rise in PTS diagnoses was observed. A possible reason could be COVID-19 vaccination, so they investigated it further. They suggested that a mechanism behind PTS may be an immunization-induced inflammatory reaction against brachial plexus nerve fibers. Although rare, other case studies investigating the relationship between COVID-19 vaccines and PTS have been reported.
Methodology
A retrospective analysis was performed with six patients who had acute onset of pain and weakness in their upper extremities post vaccination. These patients were referred for electrodiagnostic (EDX) investigation for their reported symptoms. EDX investigations include electromyography (EMG) and nerve conduction studies and aim to identify the cause of pain. It evaluates muscle and muscle nerve health.
Along with EDX evaluation, patients’ clinical symptoms, physical exams, MRI findings, COVID-19 vaccination history, and treatments were discussed. Other potential underlying reasons for PTS were excluded.
Findings
Four patients had received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine while two patients had received Moderna. Symptoms had arisen around 17 days after the injection in either the same arm with the injection site (five patients) or the other arm (one patient). Two patients had received the first dose and four had received the second dose before the symptom onset. EDX evaluation revealed abnormalities and further confirmed the diagnosis of PTS with localization of the disorder to the brachial plexus.
To treat the condition, patients received prednisone/prednisolone, gabapentin, and physical therapy. All of the patients showed improvement in their arm pain in follow-up evaluations. While three did not show improvement in weakness, the other three’s symptoms of muscle weakness improved.
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/post-vaccination-parsonage-turner-syndrome-a-case-series-236a3340
*************************************************20 August, 2023
When corrupted science becomes a threat to population health
‘The medical-political complex tends towards suppression of science to aggrandise and enrich those in power. And, as the powerful become more successful, richer, and further intoxicated with power, the inconvenient truths of science are suppressed. When good science is suppressed, people die.’ BMJ executive editor Kamran Abbasi
Below is a section from the Australian Medical Professionals Society’s (AMPS) submission to the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023. The full submission can be viewed here. We encourage you to make a submission here by August 20.
AMPS believes granting ACMA, a government-appointed entity, the authority to label information contradicting official messaging as misinformation or disinformation establishes an alarming and precarious precedent. This becomes especially concerning considering the growing awareness of the effect of corporate conflicts of interest, leading to biased reporting within academia, biased media content, skewed therapeutic guidelines, and profit-driven public policies. History is replete with instances showcasing the consequences of authorities making decisions without being held accountable or having to be transparent about their actions. We must be cautious when policies, based on concealed health advice for instance, are determined by those in power without the requirement for empirical validation, effectively bestowing them the power to define what qualifies as true information.
The extensive sway exerted by pharmaceutical companies’ financial interests across medical academia and public policy presents a notable jeopardy to the credibility of healthcare and societal welfare. The involvement of pharmaceutical companies in financing research, regulation, education, and policy endeavours introduces an intrinsic susceptibility to bias, potentially undermining the impartiality of scientific investigation and policy development. This dynamic could result in an undue prioritisation of profit-centred incentives, overshadowing the imperative of prioritising patient well-being and the broader public health.
Professor Ioannidis describes what he calls a ‘misinformation mess’ where he claims much-published research is not reliable. Having to negotiate such a mess in deciding exactly what is misinformation offers no benefit to patients or decision-makers. It is a risk to public health.
The government must consider that many prominent journal editors have drawn attention to the pervasive influence of financial conflicts of interest on the reliability of research findings.
‘Financial conflicts can compromise the integrity of research,’ warns Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of The BMJ, stressing the potential bias that can result from industry funding.
Dr. Jerome Kassirer, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, notes in his book, How medicine’s complicity with big business can endanger your health, the ‘shocking extent of these financial enticements and explains how they encourage bias, promote dangerously misleading medical information, raise the cost of medical care, and breed distrust’, highlighting the distortion such conflicts can introduce into the scientific record.
Dr. Virginia Barbour, founding editor of PLOS Medicine, adds, disclosure alone is insufficient to address conflicts, emphasising the need for greater transparency and safeguards against undue influence.
Dr Maria Angell, long-time editor in chief of the NEJM resigned more than 20 years ago after 20 years as editor because of what she described as the rising influence of the Pharmaceutical industry. She said in her book, The truth about drug companies: How they deceive us and what to do about it, ‘Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, big pharma uses it wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the US congress, the FDA, academic medical centres and the medical profession itself.’
These editorial voices collectively emphasise the imperative of robust disclosure mechanisms and stringent evaluation of financial conflicts to maintain the integrity and credibility of research in the face of commercial interests.
AMPS would argue that the demonisation of Ivermectin during the pandemic is a prime example of how financial conflicts of interests that claimed extensive evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of Ivermectin in the treatment and prevention of Covid resulted in harm.
Our submission to the TGA’s rescheduling of Ivermectin showed how statistically significant the evidence base is to support the clinical improvements in time to clinical recovery, time to viral clearance, and reduction in hospitalisation and death from this cheap, safe, fully approved, WHO essential medicine. This medication was banned by the TGA claiming safety and efficacy concerns when their own 2013 Australian Public Assessment Reports (AusPAR) demonstrated safety and instead recommended for example the use of provisionally approved very expensive Remdesivir. Remdesivir in the WHO Solidarity Trial reported in the NEJM was found to have ‘little or no effect on hospitalised patients with Covid, as indicated by overall mortality, initiation of ventilation, and duration of hospital stay’. In fact, in 2020 the WHO recommended against the use of Remdesivir in Covid patients. A study in the Lancet from September 2021 found, ‘No clinical benefit was observed from the use of Remdesivir in patients who were admitted to hospital for Covid, were symptomatic for more than 7 days, and required oxygen support.’ The banning of Ivermectin in favour of antivirals such as Remdesivir appears to make little evidentiary or clinical sense.
Dr Mike Magee, former physician spokesman for Pfizer, published in 2019 his book Code Blue: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex. He powerfully describes the corruption of the US healthcare system.
‘Cosy relationships and generous gratuities have demonstrated a remarkable ability to corrupt even those we would instinctively put on the side of the angels, including members of the biomedical research community, deans of medical schools, directors of continuing medical education programs, officers at the NIH and FDA, and even seemingly altruistic patient advocacy organisations like the American Cancer Society.’
AMPS has also written quite extensively about our concerns regarding the conflict between the government safety and efficacy claims for the Covid vaccinations and the lack of comprehensive safety and efficacy data surrounding these novel immunisations. While the accelerated development and emergency approvals were perhaps motivated by the global health crisis, some experts caution that the available data are not yet as extensive as in standard vaccine development processes.
AMPS has written about our concerns with these vaccines especially for children. According to our Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) AusPAR long-term safety data remains a critical gap in our understanding, emphasising the importance of continued post-vaccination pharmacovigilance. Dr. Peter Doshi, an associate editor at The BMJ, underscores the need for transparent and thorough reporting of clinical trial results to ensure the public’s confidence in these vaccines.
Financial conflicts of interest can erode trust in medical research, undermine the credibility of academic institutions, restrict access to transparent data, and ultimately result in the promotion of treatments or policies that prioritise corporate gain over the impartial pursuit of knowledge and the advancement of public welfare. Stricter safeguards and transparency measures are essential to mitigate these dangers and ensure that medical academia and public policy remain steadfastly committed to unbiased and evidence-based decision-making when seeking to define what constitutes mis-or-disinformation.
We should heed Abbasi’s warning before science itself becomes a threat to overall population health, or maybe we are too late.
‘Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health. Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency — a time when it is even more important to safeguard science…’
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/when-science-becomes-a-threat-to-population-health
******************************************************For the COVID-19 Vaccine Injured: Time for Action
A recent letter to the editor of the Peninsula Daily News, a local press serving the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State shares some possible good news for persons struggling with injuries associated with the COVID-19 vaccines. Could real change be around the corner with the proposed bipartisan Vaccine Injury Compensation Act?
A local resident, Kathy Zelenka seeks to influence the area’s politicians to ensure they support the legislation. Why? Because “politicians need to hear that their constituents care.”
The Port Angeles, Washington State resident summarizes the challenge well: “To live in a world where people harmed by a medication are treated with mercy instead of censorship, people must make their voices heard.”
Reaching into the dark past of Germany during WW2, Zelenka cites a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who is known to have said, “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Ms. Zelenka educates her local politicians Derek Kilmer and Patty Murray on the new Office of Long COVID Research and Practice launched by the Biden administration and recently reported on by TrialSite. Importantly, she urges local residents to press the politicians to add vaccine injury studies to that new office, or conversely, set up an equivalent office.
She suggests the politicians read “Insult to the Injured: The Case for Modernizing Vaccine Injury Compensation” a recent piece published in Health Affairs co-authored by an advisor to vaccine makers and the director of Vaccine Injury Litigation at George Washington University Law School.
The opinion writer rightly points out that “we need each other.”
React19 is supporting this vaccine injury compensation reform. The largest COVID-19 vaccine injured group in the United States, if not the world, shared some thoughts on the proposed bipartisan legislation.
The organization, which collaborates with TrialSite, is identified as a science-based non-profit offering financial, physical and emotional support for those suffering from long-term COVID-19 vaccine adverse events globally.
Serving React19 as Legal Affairs Director, Christopher A. Dreisbach told TrialSite via email that “in an ideal world the COVID-19 vaccine-injured would be able to hold the pharmaceutical industry directly accountable through personal injury actions. Nonetheless, this bill represents the next best thing.”
As TrialSite has reported, the current COVID-19 vaccine injured population must navigate the completely broken Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). The proposed legislation among other things would move the COVID-19 vaccine injured to the at least somewhat functional Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
According to React19’s counsel:
“By transitioning the COVID-19 vaccines to the VICP, this bill represents the comprehensive reform the vaccine-injured desperately deserve. We commend Representative Doggett and Representative Smucker for their bipartisan effort - an unfortunately rare occurrence in today’s highly polarized political environment.”
React19 has a message for politicians that might try to water down, dilute the proposed legislation:
“Incremental CICP reforms, proposed by other lawmakers, will not make a meaningful difference to the COVID-19 vaccine-injured. That program is simply too broken to fix. This bill is a welcome departure from such a short-cited approach.”
Given that over 230 million people are now considered fully vaccinated, TrialSite estimates that anywhere from half-a-million to just over 2 million people are in dire need of care, suffering with life changing injuries caused by the COVID-19 vaccines.
Many of these people are barely getting by, and the medical establishment hasn’t embraced vaccine injures as key opinion leaders in the National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have yet to step forward and open up the dialogue publicly.
It’s time they do so.
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/for-the-covid-19-vaccine-injured-time-for-action-26b77ba5
*************************************************August 19, 2023
Another Sabbath thought
Did you know that, according to Genesis chapter 1 God did NOT create the heavens and the earth? What's that? You say. What the heck am I talking about
What I am talking about is what the original Hebrew Bible says, not what the King James version or some other translation says.
You see, the original Hebrew Bible is very exact when it refers to God. It uses a specific name for him: "Yahveh" (or Jehovah in English). I have a copy of the Hebrew Bible so does it anywhere in Genesis 1 mention the Tetragramaton (Divine name in Hebrew)?
It does not. The Tetragrammation is quite a short word, whereas Elohim is quite a long word. You can't miss the difference. What Genesis 1.1 to 1:3 says is that the Heavens and Earth were created by "Elohim", which in Hebrew means "gods", any gods. Could be pagan gods. Don't blame me. That's what it says.
So what is going on? Why is Genesis 1.1 to 1:3 so different from the rest of the Torah? It's because that passage is what scholars politely call an interpolation, in plain words a pious fraud. It was not there when the original Torah was written. It is a late addition, presumably put there by some priests.
The original creation story starts from Genesis 2:4. And guess who gets a mention there straight away? Yahveh. The divine name now appears.
So Genesis 1.1 to 1:3 is a document from somewhere much later than the rest of the Torah. It dates from a time when Israelite priests had ceased using the divine name out of a fear of taking it in vain. They used "Elohim" instead, as a respectful plural. It is quite a late document.
So Why? Why did the priests do that? It's propaganda. The Israelites have always had to exist among pagans and pagans all regard the Sun as a great god. So they dedicate the first day of the week to him. So it has always been a battle for Israelites to defend their unique god.
And one way they did that from early on was to defy custom and have their Holy day on the 7th day, not the 1st. But that needed defending to the Israelite public. They had to have a reason for celebrating the "wrong" day. So in desperation the priests invented a story about God resting on the 7th day of creation. Keeping Saturday holy was simply following God's example. Neat, eh?
I give a fuller account of the above matters here:
https://ntwords.blogspot.com/2017/03/#804425755551654534
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18 August, 2023
Australian Scientists Find Disturbing Patterns: COVID-19 Vaccines Correspond with Excess Deaths
Recently, Andre Madry, Ph.D., a Sydney, Australia-based signal processing and data analysis scientist, investigated excess mortality in Australia, seeking to better understand when any obvious warning signs were in fact apparent. A physicist by training, Madry was in touch with TrialSite to disseminate his recent research findings uploaded to ResearchGate. The findings are highly disturbing and while they are yet to be published in a scientific journal nor peer-reviewed, the data need to be taken seriously. The head-in-the-sand approach to excess mortality taken by some public health agencies doesn’t help establish greater trust, which is likely at an all time low since the pandemic.
Also reviewing the recent paper uploaded to ResearchGate is an Australian journalist, Rebekah Barnett. She reports on what she describes as an “in-depth analysis of Queensland mortality data” finding the surge in deaths after the mass COVID-19 primary series rollout.
TrialSite reported on surges in COVID-19 mortality after the mass vaccination event which seemed to have contradicted expected outcomes.
By April of last year in “Heavily Vaxxed Australia: First 3.5 months of 2022 has Double the COVID-19 Deaths from 2020-2021 Combined,” TrialSite reported on the disturbing surge of COVID-19 deaths after the mass COVID-19 vaccination roll out Down Under.
This is a growing topic as reported in this media. Just in March of this year in “Australian Excess Deaths Surge While COVID-19 Deaths Down—Could there be a Link to COVID-19 Vaccination?”, TrialSite points to Australian Bureau of Statistics released “Provisional Mortality Statistics,” a report revieing provisional deaths data as part of an ongoing effort to measure changes in patterns of mortality. This latest period is for the entire year of 2022. The agency Down Under reports there were 190,394 deaths that occurred by December 31, 2022, representing 25,235 (15.3%) excess over a historical average.
Now, Madry applies his quantitative acumen to the problem of excess deaths in Australia. Although the paper is not scientifically peer-reviewed (meaning it should not be cited as evidence till its published and reviewed by a scientific body) his report for the Australian Medical Professionals Society (AMPS) needs to be taken seriously.
The Australian Scientist purchased custom data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) segmented and stratified by age and years. Emphasizing the elderly cohort (aged 60 and above) the pragmatic, real-world emphasizing scientists understood this cohort represented the highest risk for death Down Under.
The study’s output reveals a surge in all-cause mortality across all age cohorts, with the highest rates, perhaps not surprisingly, in the age 80 years and above group. The Australian journalist Rebekah Barnett points out that Madry analysis not only reveals “the elderly dying a year or two early after exposure to a nasty virus” but emphasizes actual declining life expectancy in real time starting around March 2021. What’s that date known for? Of course, the mass COVID-19 vaccination program rollout.
Drilling into the State of Queensland mortality data, the analysis probes mortality trends across three data sets including 1) No Covid, no vaccinations in 2020; 2) No Covid, almost full population vaccination coverage (2021) and 3) Covid and almost full population vaccination coverage (2022).
The expert data analyst and signal processing specialist finds a clear surge in all-cause mortality among the elderly (age 60 and up) temporally corresponding with the mass primarily mRNA COVID-19 vaccine program execution starting by March 2021.
As summarized by Ms. Barnett in her Substack Dystopian Down Under, another surge occurs in Queensland with the onset of the Omicron wave leading to COVID-19 deaths. Madry points to the confounding due to the concurrent saturation of primary series and booster mass vaccination effort.
But is there a temporal association of death and COVID-19 vaccine rollout?
Yes, there is, according to Madry. Down Under journalist Barnett calls the temporal link between COVID-19 vaccination and all-cause mortality “striking.”
Officially, the reporter reminds all that the Australian government agency charged with protecting the public against medicines and vaccines, the Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA) acknowledges formally only 14 deaths linked to the jabs. Yet the surge’s timing raises real alarm.
Madry shared with the journalist that a willingness of other research groups, such as The Actuaries Institute and their COVID Mortality Working Group to “swallow the TGA’s official figure whole without any further analysis” represents not only a major shortcoming but even a potential red flag for some kind of mass head in the sand moment.
No matter how one slices and dices the Australian data, deaths associated with COVID-19 after mass vaccination raise disturbing questions that TrialSite posed over a year ago. Now an Australian scientist reveals in graphic detail a surge in all-cause mortality right about the time that mass COVID-19 vaccination commenced. Yes, this data must be published and scrutinized in depth, but TrialSite also suggests, yes this is a problem that cannot be ignored.
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The collateral damage of lockdowns on children is still emerging
There has been plenty of evidence published over the past three years of the severe effects on children’s education and wellbeing of closing schools during Covid lockdowns, but a new study by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) and University College London (UCL) has a slightly different emphasis – linking children’s social and emotional development with the employment situation of their parents.
Overall, it found that 47 per cent of parents reported that their children’s social and emotional skills had declined during the pandemic – with just a sixth of parents reporting that there had been an improvement. The effect was more severe along younger children – 52 per cent of children of 4-7 year olds reported a decline in social and emotional skills, compared with 42 per cent among 12-15 year olds.
Children were more likely to be affected if their parents’ employment situation changed
However, in contrast to other studies, this one did not find that children from disadvantaged backgrounds suffered more – in fact, the effect seemed to be least among children whose parents are in the lowest income quintile, and greatest among those in the 4thincome quintile. The survey relied on parents’ replies, however, rather than independent assessments, so there may be an element of different levels of expectation in children’s development.
What the study did find, on the other hand, was that children were more likely to be affected if their parents’ employment situation changed. This was particularly the case even if their parents had been furloughed, and so were being kept afloat financially. The difference was not all that great, however – social and emotional skills were reported to have fallen in 51 per cent of children whose parents had been furloughed, compared with 45 per cent of children whose parents had not been furloughed.
A lot of research and comment on children’s wellbeing during Covid has focused on the closure of schools. But as this study hints there is another side to the subject: what was happening in the home while children were confined there. It ought not to be a surprise if children fared worse in homes where parents were suffering a significant amount of stress for their employment and financial situation.
There are still ministers and advisers involved in the Covid response who think Covid lockdowns were a success – or who, like Matt Hancock, think we should have faster and more severe lockdowns in future. As the IFS/UCL study shows, the evidence on the collateral damage of lockdowns is still being produced.
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Hybrid Immunity Surpasses Vaccination for COVID-19 Protection Against Omicron
Researchers from the Center for Infectious Disease Control, National institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands led by Mirjam J. Knol, a senior Epidemiologist at the Dutch Center of Infectious Disease Control, investigated natural (pre-existing infection-based) immunity to SARS-Cov-2, the virus behind COVID-19.
The Dutch researchers report in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications an increasing proportion of the population became immune to COVID-19 via vaccination and previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, i.e., hybrid immunity, possibly affecting the risk of new infection.
The goal of this investigation was to generate an estimation of the protective effect of previous infections and vaccinations on SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection. Tapping into data between January 10, 2022 and September 1, 2022 involving 43,257 adult participants in a prospective community-based cohort study in the Netherlands, the team’s output reveals that for participants with 2, 3 or 4 prior immunizing events (vaccination or previous infection), hybrid immunity is more protective against infection with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron than vaccine-induced immunity, up to at least 30 weeks after the last immunizing event.
The authors led by corresponding member Knol report variance in risk of infection are partly explained by differences in anti-Spike RBD (S) antibody concentration, which is associated with risk of infection in a dose-response manner.
Among participants with hybrid immunity, with one previous pre-Omicron infection, the authors fail to observe a relevant difference in risk of Omicron infection by sequence of vaccination(s) and infection. Furthermore, more immunizing events increase the protection against infection, however, there’s a limit: not above the level of the first weeks after the previous event.
Importantly, the authors note that based on mass vaccination concerns and so called “narrow immunity” or ‘original antigenic sin’ or immunological imprinting, the Dutch team reports, “We did not find evidence of a higher risk of Omicron infection in participants with hybrid immunity with a vaccination as first immunizing event compared to infection as first immunizing event.”
The authors wrap up that their “study shows that hybrid immunity confers better protection against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection than vaccine-induced immunity. This effect does not seem dependent on the sequence or number of immunizing events. It should be kept in mind that experiencing a SARS-CoV-2 infection carries significant risks, including severe COVID-19, post-covid syndrome and transmission to vulnerable people.”
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17 August, 2023
Stuck in a (Covid) time warp: End of the pandemic? Or just Intermission?
Supposedly, the pandemic is over. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says it ended on 5 May. Yet the persecution of the unvaccinated continues.
Dazelle Peters, only 16 years old, has been denied a lung transplant. She suffers from an auto-immune condition and such people were excluded from the Covid vaccine trials so there is no data to support her immunisation. Indeed, at least two vaccine deaths in Australia occurred in healthy people with auto-immune conditions that were fatally exacerbated – Natalie Boyce who had antiphospholipid syndrome died after a Moderna vaccine and Roberto Garin who had cardiac sarcoidosis died after a Pfizer vaccine.
The hospital’s policy is not to perform transplants on unvaccinated people and Dazelle says she was told that if she didn’t get the jabs and caught the virus she would be a ‘major threat to everyone (in the hospital) who has done the right thing’.
Yet a report from the University of Freiburg by Reeg et al. shows ‘an impaired T cell response in solid organ transfers (SOT) following Sars-CoV-2 vaccination, with a potentially less robust development, compared to natural infection.’
Vicky Derderian, a slim 46-year-old mother of two, is trying to raise the money to get a heart transplant in India because she is being refused one in Australia. Vicky has been exempted by Australia’s Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation because she already has heart scarring from myocarditis but that’s not good enough for the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne which is denying her a transplant.
Never mind that a peer-reviewed Swiss study published on 20 July shows that 1-in-35 people who received the Moderna Covid booster had detectable heart injuries and women were almost five times as likely to be injured. The group tested was a healthy cohort with few preexisting heart problems and an average age of 37. How much worse would it be for Vicky?
Another study released this month by Marchand et al. showed that ‘Covid-19 vaccination may be associated with a small increase in cardiac-related mortality’. A study that came out in June from the prestigious US Cleveland Clinic shows that, ‘The risk of Covid-19 was lower in the “not up-to-date” group as compared to the “up-to-date” group.’ Put the two together and they show that a Covid jab makes you more likely to get Covid and more likely to die of heart trouble.
Unvaccinated people are encouraged to donate organs to others even though they are denied transplants. The wife of Garnet Harper, a 35-year-old Canadian man who died last month after he was denied a kidney transplant because he was unvaccinated was asked to donate his organs to a vaccinated person. She says the woman who made the request had no idea her husband was dying because he had been refused a transplant. Canadians opposed to persecuting the unvaccinated are calling on all Canadians to refuse to donate organs until the government ends its fatal discrimination.
But that’s not the end of the punishment in Australia. In South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, healthcare workers are still not allowed to work unless they get vaccinated. (They are not the only ones.) In NSW, a case against vaccine mandates was lost in 2021, in Queensland, a case was heard in 2022 but no ruling has been delivered in more than 12 months. In South Australia, healthcare workers took their case to the employment tribunal in late June.
That was after the secretary of the federal Department of Health, Professor Brendan Murphy said in a parliamentary committee on 1 June, that in his view, as a clinician rather than as a public servant, Covid vaccine mandates were no longer justified.
But South Australia’s Chief Health Officer Nicola Spurrier – famous for claiming you could catch Covid from a football or a pizza box – is not for turning. Her indifference to evidence is breathtaking. The South Australian health department was forced to reveal in response to a freedom of information request from Liberal Senator Alex Antic that cardiac presentations in 18 to 44-year-old people in South Australia which remained steady at 1,100 per month from January 2018 to June 2021, drastically spiked from July 2021 to November 2021 when vaccines were rolled out to that age group, peaking at 2,172 presentations, with another spike in February when boosters were mandated. She doesn’t care. The laid-off workers, the heroes who faced Covid in 2020, are zero today.
Instead, the states that still ban unvaccinated staff are in a bidding war to attract vaccinated staff from interstate and abroad. They face dramatic shortfalls due to the thousands who have been laid off, while vaccinated workers and the general public have increased illnesses. In 2023, excess mortality is still running at 12 per cent above the baseline average.
Meanwhile, almost a thousand people have joined a class action suing the head of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and Professor Murphy for negligence or misfeasance in approving the vaccines which resulted in personal injury or the death of a loved one. The case which is being funded through donations is still open to be joined and will be heard next year.
The TGA’s own database shows that there have been 996 deaths reported which it is suspected were caused by the vaccine and 139,052 reports of injury. That’s one-third of all deaths reported to the TGA since the vaccines were rolled out and three-quarters of all injuries.
Meanwhile, despite promising a royal commission into the pandemic before coming to office, Labor refused to support a motion in the Senate this week by Senator Ralph Babet of the United Australia Party, to get one underway. The Liberals helped Labor out by offering pairs so that the motion was narrowly defeated. The guilty protecting each other?
Why do state and federal governments refuse to acknowledge what even Bill Gates admitted in January, that Covid jabs are ‘not infection-blocking, they’re not broad, so when new variants come up you lose protection, and they have very short duration, particularly in the people who matter who are old people’. Is it because they have entered into a partnership with Moderna giving them a massive conflict of interest? Is it because the WHO is already predicting with its spooky clairvoyance that the next pandemic bonanza is on the way? Perhaps the pandemic isn’t over, perhaps this is just intermission.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/stuck-in-a-covid-time-warp
************************************Heart Scarring Observed in Children Months After COVID-19 Vaccination: Study
Some children who experienced heart inflammation after COVID-19 vaccination had scarring on their hearts months later, a new long-term study found.
Researchers followed a group of 40 patients aged 12 to 18 for up to one year after the children were diagnosed with myocarditis, or heart inflammation, following vaccination with one of the messenger RNA shots from Pfizer or Moderna. They performed a series of tests, including echocardiograms.
Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, or cardiac MRIs, was performed on 39 of the 40 patients. Abnormal results came in for 26 of those who were imaged, including 19 who had late gadolinium enhancement, or signs of scarring.
The patients with abnormal results returned for follow-up cardiac MRIs at least five months after the initial tests and 15, or 58 percent, had residual late gadolinium enhancement (LGE). The one patient without an initial scan also had mild late gadolinium enhancement when scanned during a follow-up visit.
“Persistence of LGE in a significant subset of patients with up to 1 year of follow-up was observed,” Dr. Yiu-fai Cheung, with Hong Kong Children’s Hospital, and the other researchers wrote.
They said that the implications of the persistence remain unclear, but that given it is an indicator of subclinical heart dysfunction and scarring, “there exists a potential long-term effect on exercise capacity and cardiac functional reserve during stress.”
The study was published by Circulation. Authors reported no funding or disclosures.
Dr. Peter McCullough, an American cardiologist and president of the McCullough Foundation, said that the new data is consistent with what cardiologists are seeing in clinical practice.
“Serious cases of COVID-19 vaccine induced myocarditis are not resolved by cardiac MRI at one year of followup in the majority of cases. At some point, we must assume that late gadolinium enhancement represents a scar or permanent damage,” Dr. McCullough, who was not involved in the research, told The Epoch Times via email.
“COVID-19 vaccines should be pulled from the market immediately until further notice. Large scale research programs should be commissioned immediately on subclinical and clinical COVID-19 vaccine induced myocarditis with initial aims at risk stratification and mitigation for cardiac arrest,” he added.
Dr. Anish Koka, another American cardiologist who was not involved in the study, said that the persistent LGE signifies a scar that replaced the initially inflamed heart muscle.
“The good news is that the amount of scar is small. The bad news is that there is scar,” Dr. Koka wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Dr. Koka said that the level of scarring indicates there would likely not be a long-term impact, but that even small levels of scarring could be a foundation for future arrhythmias, with exercise serving as a trigger.
“All these kids (even those without scar) would need exercise stress tests at 6 months to attempt to prognosticate this,” Dr. Koka said.
Pfizer and Moderna did not respond to requests for comment on the study on myocarditis, a known side effect of both of the companies’ COVID-19 vaccines.
Myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination was first detected in early 2021, and an increasing number of studies have undercut claims from officials in the United States that the heart inflammation is mild and resolves without treatment.
A study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published in 2022, reported that among patients with follow-up cardiac MRIs, 54 percent had at least one abnormal finding, such as scarring.
The study relied on surveys from health care providers who examined the patients.
The providers later told the CDC that five to 13 months after the initial diagnosis, 14 percent of patients were still not cleared for all physical activity, and that multiple patients still had abnormal cardiac MRI findings. And in a separate set of surveys, many patients reported experiencing one or more symptoms beyond one year.
Also in 2022, Rhode Island doctors reported that eight of nine patients who were scanned a median of 94 days after initial diagnosis had persistent LGE, while U.S. researchers reported in 2023 that three of seven patients who were imaged a median of 107 days after diagnosis had persistent LGE.
Myocarditis can cause deaths, including sudden deaths, and deaths from myocarditis after vaccination have been confirmed in a number of countries, including South Korea, the United States, and Germany.
South Korean researchers reported in June that vaccine-induced myocarditis caused eight sudden deaths, all in people aged 45 or younger, and a new meta-analysis found COVID-19 vaccination was linked with an increased risk of cardiac-related death.
Vaccine-induced myocarditis primarily affects young people, particularly young males.
Some critics say that all people, or certain people, don’t need a vaccine, noting the risks as well as the high percentages of people who have been vaccinated, infected, or both.
The CDC still recommends people of all ages receive a COVID-19 vaccine, despite the risk of heart inflammation and other side effects and even as the effectiveness of the vaccines has become worse. In its most recent benefit-risk assessment, the CDC estimated that a million doses in children aged 12 to 17 would prevent up to 136 hospitalizations and one death. According to previous estimates from the CDC, a million second doses would lead to 48 cases of myocarditis in children aged 12 to 15 and 84 cases in children aged 16 or 17.
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16 August, 2023
Doctors Can Prescribe Ivermectin for COVID-19: FDA Lawyer
Doctors are free to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID-19, a lawyer representing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said this week.
“FDA explicitly recognizes that doctors do have the authority to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID,” Ashley Cheung Honold, a Department of Justice lawyer representing the FDA, said during oral arguments on Aug. 8 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
The government is defending the FDA’s repeated exhortations to people to not take ivermectin for COVID-19, including a post that said “Stop it.”
The case was brought by three doctors who allege the FDA unlawfully interfered with their practice of medicine with the statements. A federal judge dismissed the case in 2022, prompting an appeal.
“The fundamental issue in this case is straightforward. After the FDA approves the human drug for sale, does it then have the authority to interfere with how that drug is used within the doctor-patient relationship? The answer is no,” Jared Kelson, representing the doctors, told the appeals court.
The FDA on Aug. 21, 2021, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” The post, which linked to an FDA page that says people shouldn’t use ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19, went viral.
In other statements, the FDA said that ivermectin “isn’t authorized or approved to treat COVID-19” and “Q: Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? A: No.”
Command or Not
“FDA made these statements in response to multiple reports of consumers being hospitalized, after self medicating with ivermectin intended for horses, which is available for purchase over the counter without the need for prescription,” Ms. Honold said.
A version of the drug for animals is available, but ivermectin is approved by the FDA for human use against diseases caused by parasites.
Ms. Honold said that the FDA didn’t purport to require anyone to do anything or to prohibit anyone from doing anything.
“What about when it said, ‘No, stop it’?” Circuit Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, on the panel that is hearing the appeal, asked. “Why isn’t that a command? If you were in English class, they would say that was a command.”
Ms. Honold described the statements as “merely quips.”
“Can you answer the question, please? Is that a command, ‘Stop it’?” Judge Elrod asked.
“In some contexts, those words could be construed as a command,” Ms. Honold said. “But in this context, where FDA was simply using these words in the context of a quippy tweet meant to share its informational article, those statements do not rise to the level of a command.”
The statements “don’t prohibit doctors from prescribing ivermectin to treat COVID or for any other purpose” Ms. Honold said. She noted that the FDA, along with the statements, said that people should consult their health care providers about COVID-19 treatments and that they could take medicine if it was prescribed by the provider.
“FDA is clearly acknowledging that doctors have the authority to prescribe human ivermectin to treat COVID. So they are not interfering with the authority of doctors to prescribe drugs or to practice medicine,” she said.
Judge Elrod is on the panel with Circuit Judges Edith Brown Clement and Don Willett. All three were appointed under President Donald Trump.
Federal Law
The plaintiffs are Drs. Paul Marik, Mary Bowden, and Robert Apter. They say they were professionally harmed by the FDA’s statements, including being terminated over efforts to prescribe ivermectin to patients.
Dr. Marik has noted that a number of studies support using ivermectin against COVID-19, as the FDA itself has acknowledged. Some other studies show little to no effect.
Federal law enables the FDA to provide information, such as reports of adverse reactions to drugs, but not medical advice, Mr. Kelson said.
“This is something the FDA has never been able to do. And it’s a bright line,” he told the court, adding later: “The clearest examples of where they have gone over the line are when they say things like, ‘You are not a horse, you are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.'”
Judges indicated they agree that the FDA lacks the power to give medical advice; Judge Clement said, “You’re not authorized to give medical advice.”
But Ms. Honold said the government “isn’t conceding that in this case.”
She also argued that Congress has empowered the FDA to protect public health and make sure regulated products are safe and effective, giving it the “inherent authority to further its mission by communicating information to the public about safe uses of drugs.”
A ruling in favor of the doctors would prevent the FDA from reporting on consumers suffering after cooking chicken with NyQuil or that opioid addiction is a problem, she claimed.
Mr. Kelson said that wasn’t accurate. “It’s when they step beyond that [and] start telling people how they should or should not be using approved drugs,” he said.
Ms. Honold also said that the courts can’t hold agencies accountable when they provide false or misleading information: “The FDA is politically accountable, just like all other executive agencies.”
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COVID-19 Vagus Nerve Inflammation May Lead to Dysautonomia
New data may provide answers for those experiencing persistent symptoms long after their bout with COVID-19 has ended. These may include fatigue, lightheadedness, brain fog, cognitive issues, gastrointestinal problems, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, or an inability to tolerate upright postures.
A July 15 study published in Acta Neuropathologica suggests that SARS-CoV-2 infection may damage the nerves of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), causing an inflammatory response that can later lead to dysautonomia observed in long COVID patients.
Study Findings
Using several methods, researchers at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany performed a microscopic analysis of the vagus nerves in 27 deceased patients with COVID-19 and five controls who died of other causes, without COVID-19.
The vagus nerve is a vital component of the ANS that regulates critical functions such as digestion, respiratory and heart rate, and immune response. Vagus nerve signaling to the brainstem also controls the “sickness behavior response,” where the brain mounts flu-like symptoms including nausea, fatigue, pain, and other chronic symptoms in response to inflammation.
The researchers detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA in vagus nerve samples obtained from deceased patients with severe COVID-19 showing direct infection of the nerve was accompanied by inflammatory cell infiltration composed mostly of monocytes—a type of white blood cell that finds and destroys germs and eliminates infected cells. Their analysis revealed a “strong enrichment of genes regulating antiviral responses and interferon signaling,” supporting the idea that vagus nerve inflammation is a common phenomenon with COVID-19.
The researchers also analyzed 23 vagus nerve samples of deceased COVID-19 patients grouped into low, intermediate, and high SARS-CoV-2 RNA viral load to determine if the virus was directly detectable in the vagus nerve and if the viral load correlated with vagus nerve dysfunction. Results showed the virus was present in the vagus nerve and also determined there was a direct correlation between SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA load and dysfunction of the central nervous system.
Researchers then screened a cohort of 323 patients admitted to the emergency room between Feb. 13, 2020, and Aug. 15, 2022, categorized by whether they had mild, moderate, severe, critical, or lethal COVID-19. They found that the respiratory rate increased in survivors but decreased in non-survivors of critical COVID-19. These results suggest SARS-CoV-2 induces vagus nerve inflammation followed by autonomic dysfunction (respiratory rate decrease), which “contributes to critical disease courses and might contribute to dysautonomia observed in long COVID.”
Responding to the study, microbiologist Amy Proal of PolyBio Research Foundation wrote on X, “Because the vagus nerve is an essential component of the #autonomic nervous system and regulates body functions such as heart rate, digestion, and respiratory rate, direct infection of the nerve by SARS-CoV-2 may contribute to related symptoms.” She added, “The findings beg the question: Could persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection of the vagus nerve contribute to dysautonomia in #LongCovid?”
What is Dysautonomia?
Nearly 1 in 5 people in the United States continue to experience unexplained symptoms of long COVID after their infection ends, with as many as 66 percent of patients suffering from moderate to severe dysfunction of the ANS known as dysautonomia.
Dysautonomia is a disorder of the ANS, a part of the central nervous system that controls vital involuntary functions such as breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, skin and body temperature regulation, salivating, hormonal and bladder function, and sexual function. The ANS also plays a role in the acute “fight or flight” stress response and sends messages to and from internal organs.
Dysautonomia causes the ANS—which consists of the sympathetic, parasympathetic, and enteric nervous systems—to malfunction, either through an inability to perform its tasks or by causing too much activity, resulting in high blood pressure or a rapid heart rate. The condition can be confined to the arms and legs or spread throughout the entire body. It can be severe or mild, and may be reversible or worsen over time.
Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) is a common form of dysautonomia that has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic began and has been reported by those with long COVID and in those following COVID-19 vaccination.
Symptoms of POTS include but are not limited to lightheadedness, difficulty thinking or concentrating, severe and long-lasting fatigue, intolerance to exercise, blurred vision, low blood pressure, heart palpitations, tremors, and nausea.
Since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, 801 cases of POTS were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System as of July 28. This includes 597 cases attributed to Pfizer and 171 cases to Moderna.
Dysautonomia Associated With Long COVID or Post-Vaccine Syndromes
The Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) has played a major role in treating long COVID and post-vaccine injuries, including people with dysautonomia.
Many long COVID patients are vaccinated, making it difficult to determine whether their prolonged symptoms are due to COVID-19 or vaccine injury. Regardless, both are manifestations of “spike protein-related disease” and share a significant overlap in symptoms, pathogenesis, and treatment, according to the FLCCC.
The FLCCC has developed protocols for people with long COVID and those experiencing post-vaccine injuries, including POTS.
They recommend patients undergo a series of initial tests to determine whether they have long COVID, and a chest scan for those who have respiratory symptoms to differentiate between long COVID and post-vaccine syndrome.
Protocols are geared towards either long COVID (pdf) or post-vaccine injuries (pdf)—including dysautonomia disorders such as POTS—exercised under the care of a practitioner.
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15 August, 2023
Some optimism
My illness seems to have receded a little of its own accord so I have been able today to blog pretty much as per usual. It's too early to be sure of anything, though, so whether I will do much tomorrow remains to be seen
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Biden Admin Concedes No Evidence Behind Recommendation for 6 COVID Booster Shots a Year
President Joe Biden’s administration concedes that there is no scientific evidence to support an apparent recommendation to receive as many as six COVID-19 booster shots in a year.
After Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Biden appointee, wrote in a social media post on Nov. 29, 2022, that people should get vaccinated “if it’s been over 2 months since your last dose,” the Functional Government Initiative (FGI) filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents supporting the statements.
The watchdog organization then sued after the administration didn’t comply with timelines laid out in the law.
FGI asked for, among other documents: “Any scientific support relied on by Secretary Becerra when approving or issuing the tweet recommending that all Americans receive a booster shot every two months” and “any study, synopsis, or similar statement or document of scientific, academic, or government research on whether a bi-monthly booster shot will effectively prevent the transmission or susceptibility to COVID-19 and known active variants as of November 2022.”
It also asked for internal communications regarding Mr. Becerra’s statements.
In a new response, the government said it had no evidence to support Mr. Becerra’s recommendation.
“The department reviewed 1,263 pages of potentially responsive records captured in the agency’s search for this FOIA request. After a careful review of these records, I determined the 1,263 pages were not relevant to your request,” Alesia Williams, an official in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told FGI.
“The lack of a single of a single record supporting Secretary Becerra’s bold public health recommendation for six COVID boosters a year is a startling development,” Pete McGinnis, a spokesman for FGI, said in a statement.
“It is tremendously irresponsible for the government’s chief health official to fire off tweets recommending frequent injections of a new vaccine booster apparently based on no academic or scientific support,” Mr. McGinnis added.
“How can the public be assured that the agency is ‘following the science’ on other important public health matters when it demonstrates such clear disregard for basic scientific integrity standards on an issue as important as COVID vaccine shots?”
The group noted that Mr. Becerra, a lawyer by training, lacks a background in health. Doctors typically lead that department.
Booster Recommendations
As newer COVID-19 variants have emerged, the vaccines have performed increasingly worse. Federal officials inside HHS first cleared booster shots in 2021 due to the flagging effectiveness, and have since authorized and recommended additional shots.
In the spring of 2023, regulators had authorized, without clinical trial data, newly formulated versions of the vaccines aimed at Omicron subvariants. Federal officials had said that people should get a booster if more than two months had elapsed since their most recent shot. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said most people should only receive one additional shot, but that certain groups could receive more.
In another statement promoting vaccination, Vice President Kamala Harris claimed that a single shot would protect people from COVID-19 for an entire year. There’s no evidence supporting that claim.
Mr. Becerra said the day after the initial post: “An updated COVID vaccine can help protect you from the worst outcomes of COVID. If it’s been over 2 months since your last dose, make a plan to get one now.”
He later wrote: “Time to get your updated COVID vaccine if 1) You haven’t gotten the updated vaccine yet & had the primary series or original booster 2+ months ago 2) It’s been 3+ months since you’ve had COVID If you have a big event in 2+ weeks, it’s a good time to go.”
FGI said the differing messages were causing confusion and made it appear as if Mr. Becerra was, at least at one point, recommending up to six shots in a year.
HHS has declined to comment on the suit.
“The clear message from across the Administration is: Don’t wait,” an HHS spokesperson previously told The Epoch Times, after being asked about Mr. Becerra’s statements. “Get your free COVID-19 vaccine. It’s safe and effective. People can go to vaccines.gov to find free and easily available vaccines in their community.”
New Vaccines Coming
The updated slate of vaccines isn’t working well, prompting plans to implement new formulations that, for the first time, won’t include components of the Wuhan virus strain.
The updated shots are expected to be rolled out in the fall.
The CDC’s new director, Dr. Mandy Cohen, said recently that the agency is poised to recommend annual shots.
“We anticipate that COVID will become similar to flu shots, where it is going to be you get your annual flu shot and you get your annual COVID shot,” Dr. Cohen said.
The CDC didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the U.S. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and other members asked the CDC (pdf) for information on the planned recommendation, noting that it would “mark a significant change in federal policy and guidance regarding COVID-19 vaccines and the way in which they are utilized.”
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12 August, 2023
A Sabbath thought
Most Christians celebrate the pagan day of the Sun as their holy day. They justify that by saying that Christ rose from the dead on Sunday. But he did not. The women found the empty tomb on Sunday morning, which implies that he rose on the Saturday. As it says in Matthew 28:
"After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he[a] lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead"
So Saturday is again the proper holy day
7 August, 2023
Using vaccines as a political weapon, U.S. military leaders have wrecked the force’s combat readiness and morale
Under pressure from Republicans in Congress, the Defense Department announced at the start of this year that it would no longer require American service members to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The policy change faced fierce resistance from the military’s top brass, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. In a memo sent in January repealing the requirement for soldiers to be vaccinated, Secretary Austin continued to credit the vaccine with “the many lives we saved … and the high level of readiness we have maintained.”
But critics of the military’s COVID-19 policy, including active and former service members who spoke with Tablet for this article, tell a different story. They say that the requirement for troops to receive the new vaccines, which included those with natural immunity after recovering from previous COVID-19 infections, was damaging to morale and hurt the military’s combat readiness. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has repeatedly pointed to medical data which suggests that enforcing mass vaccinations on a generally young and healthy population may have actually caused an increase in non-COVID-19 related health problems in the force, though the Defense Department has not provided him or Tablet with a clear interpretation of that data.
By the time the Pentagon announced it was ending the mandate, 96% of service members across the armed forces had been vaccinated. However, a significant number of troops declined the shots, objecting on religious, scientific, or medical grounds. Of those objectors, 8,339 were kicked out of the military, a loss that was particularly acute coming in the midst of the worst recruitment crisis in 50 years, which saw the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force all struggling to attract or retain members. The number of ejected objectors might continue to rise, as more service members who declined to get the jab are penalized for “refusing to obey a lawful order.” Many of those who were forced out, meanwhile, were given a “general” discharge rather than an “honorable” one, putting them at a disadvantage for future employment.
While a 96% compliance rate suggests general cohesion and a functioning military, the lurking reality is that a large percentage of troops who got the vaccine appear to have done so under duress. Tablet spoke with eight active and former service people for this article who come from some of the Army’s most prestigious units, as well as the Coast Guard. They paint a picture of a force that is divided and embittered and say that many of their compatriots resented being forced to take the shots against their will or even conscience in order to keep food on the table for their families. One soldier estimated that as many as 90% of his unit didn’t want to get the shots, and that many who caved now feel they should have held out for the mandate to be repealed. Another said he only knew three people in his entire platoon that got the shots “of their own volition” prior to the implementation of the mandate.
John Frankman, who declined the shot and left the Army in July 2023 after eight years of active service, including three as a Green Beret, told Tablet, “I’m getting out specifically because of the shot, even though it’s not mandatory anymore. I’ve lost out on enough opportunities, it doesn’t seem worthwhile for me to stay in.”
An Army infantryman from an elite unit who wished to remain anonymous told Tablet that he saw a senior noncommissioned officer from his unit tell a group of vaccine holdouts that they “were the reason America was in decline.” A paratrooper who spoke with Tablet anonymously said that leadership in his unit began an intense campaign to pressure soldiers to get the COVID-19 vaccines months before the Army officially implemented its mandate on Aug. 24, 2021. The paratrooper says that he heard a company commander in his unit say that he would “make my soldiers’ lives as miserable as fucking possible until they get the shot.”
They paint a picture of a force that is divided and embittered and say that many of their compatriots resented being forced to take the shots against their will or even conscience in order to keep food on the table for their families.
For the commanders, meanwhile, who were tasked with enforcing public health positions that turned out to be false, there are now concerns about reputational damage. “Soldiers know your position. You can say some untruths [and] no one’s going to give you a hard time about that,” said one former company commander. “But when you’re changing the story every week and obviously just saying nonsense because your higher command is telling you that … I saw personally that we were alienating our rank and file in a big way. We were losing their trust, and I didn’t want to be a part of that.”
In many cases, commanders embraced these policies with a commitment that went beyond the zeal for enforcing Army policies that is common among junior officers, according to the paratrooper. Rather, he calls the push to make soldiers get the COVID-19 vaccine the single most “divisive and destructive” event he witnessed in the military in more than a decade of service. As he would later write in a formal complaint submitted to the Army that was reviewed by Tablet, the COVID-19 vaccination “became by far the most important issue in our brigade and in the division.” That memo continued:
In order to get reluctant soldiers to take these experimental vaccines, commanders […] were encouraged to use all manners of persuasion and bullying, and even to do things that were plainly illegal (such as denying soldiers the right to attend career-enhancing military schools based on their vaccination status).
From the military’s standpoint, the mandate was not just a matter of life and death but also of national security. If infections swept through the ranks due to troops refusing to take available vaccines, not only would that destroy morale and discipline, but it could also leave the country unable to respond to an attack or emergency.
The problem with this argument is twofold: First, COVID-19 never posed a significant acute risk to healthy young people—the very demographic that overwhelmingly makes up the military—which means the vaccination drive was, at best, unnecessary. And secondly, according to several sources, the military’s approach to the vaccines, rather than emphasizing combat readiness, was used as a disciplinary tool to enforce political conformity and punish independent thought and ideological dissent.
“I’ve seen everything from [Don’t Ask Don’t Tell] repealed to gay marriage legalized to people are allowed to put gay pride flags in their offices now,” said a member of an elite infantry unit with over a decade of service. The jarring thing, he explained, was that the same military that boasts about its tolerance became rigidly intolerant on the question of bodily autonomy and vaccines. “You can get exemptions for religious beards if you’re Muslim, you can get an exemption to wear headgear, instead of your issued hat. That’s fine. I’m all for it … If you can do the job you should be allowed to do it … But then for a vaccine that’s violating the Nuremberg Code, and all of the sudden we’re the problem, that’s what’s bizarre to me.”
Many of those who refused the vaccines did so on the grounds that the mandate violated the Nuremberg Code of ethics for “permissible medical experiments.” The first line of the code reads, “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.” Those citing the code point out that these COVID vaccines had not even finished their clinical trials at the time troops were being pressured and/or mandated to take them, and were therefore being asked to sacrifice their Nuremberg derived rights. Health authorities in the U.S. dismiss that claim on the grounds that the vaccines had received emergency authorizations and were therefore not strictly “experimental.”
With two exceptions, all the soldiers who spoke with Tablet insisted that they remain anonymous—even those who are already out of the service. One former officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, the Army’s legal branch, said: “The fact that I am not subject to the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice], that there is no way that they can touch me, and yet I still don’t want to identify myself, should tell you something.”
That attorney, along with several other soldiers interviewed for this article (all of whom come from different backgrounds and do not share a clear set of political views) painted a disturbing picture that went beyond concerns about vaccine mandates. Given how intensely polarized national debates around COVID became, the Pentagon’s vaccination push—even in a best case scenario—was likely to cause some dissension in the ranks. But according to these current and former service members, the policy was not the result of medical or warfighting needs. Rather, they say that the emphasis on vaccinations was part of a larger push to overtly politicize the military—one of the only institutions left in the U.S. that still retains a degree of broad bipartisan support.
It may be tempting to dismiss this account as merely the grumbling of an isolated group, but their concerns echo a larger public debate. A series of recent reports, insider leaks, and congressional hearings have highlighted the tension between the military’s newfound adoption of ideological causes and its traditional warfighting mission. Indeed, there is no real question that the military has become more ideological in recent years since the top brass, moving in step with the White House, now openly touts the embrace of progressive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. The debate is over whether such policies strengthen the military, as leaders from Secretary Austin down insist they do, or cripple it as whistleblowers, watchdog groups, and conservative politicians have claimed.
Last October, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar acknowledged that the military uses racial preferences as a criteria for acceptance to military service academies like West Point and ROTC contracts. The crucial point in Prelogar’s argument, and one that has been echoed by dozens of senior military leaders, including in an amicus brief filed to the Supreme Court last fall ahead of its ruling on affirmative actions policies in university admissions, is that engineering racial diversity is not simply a moral or social good but an imperative of warfighting. “It is a critical national security imperative to attain diversity within the officer corps. And, at present, it’s not possible to achieve that diversity without race-conscious admissions,” Prelogar testified to the Supreme Court last October.
This is how the difficult and divisive questions about vaccinations—were they really necessary for healthy young people? Did the government and medical authorities misrepresent their risks and benefits?—became truly explosive. The Pentagon now treats its medical policies, diversity goals, and national security missions as inseparable if not interchangeable. That makes it nearly impossible for the military to do an honest internal assessment of how specific decisions affected the force and the nation’s overall warfighting capacity.
While the Pentagon at present may be ill-equipped to act as its own auditor, there is still a vital need for a clear-eyed assessment of how and why the military imposed vaccine mandates, and what the consequences of those mandates have been so far.
12 August, 2023
A Sabbath thought Most Christians celebrate the pagan day of the Sun as their holy day. They justify that by saying that Christ rose from the dead on Sunday. But he did not. The women found the empty tomb on Sunday morning, which implies that he rose on the Saturday. As it says in Matthew 28:
7 August, 2023
Using vaccines as a political weapon, U.S. military leaders have wrecked the force’s combat readiness and morale
Under pressure from Republicans in Congress, the Defense Department announced at the start of this year that it would no longer require American service members to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The policy change faced fierce resistance from the military’s top brass, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. In a memo sent in January repealing the requirement for soldiers to be vaccinated, Secretary Austin continued to credit the vaccine with “the many lives we saved … and the high level of readiness we have maintained.”
But critics of the military’s COVID-19 policy, including active and former service members who spoke with Tablet for this article, tell a different story. They say that the requirement for troops to receive the new vaccines, which included those with natural immunity after recovering from previous COVID-19 infections, was damaging to morale and hurt the military’s combat readiness. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has repeatedly pointed to medical data which suggests that enforcing mass vaccinations on a generally young and healthy population may have actually caused an increase in non-COVID-19 related health problems in the force, though the Defense Department has not provided him or Tablet with a clear interpretation of that data.
By the time the Pentagon announced it was ending the mandate, 96% of service members across the armed forces had been vaccinated. However, a significant number of troops declined the shots, objecting on religious, scientific, or medical grounds. Of those objectors, 8,339 were kicked out of the military, a loss that was particularly acute coming in the midst of the worst recruitment crisis in 50 years, which saw the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force all struggling to attract or retain members. The number of ejected objectors might continue to rise, as more service members who declined to get the jab are penalized for “refusing to obey a lawful order.” Many of those who were forced out, meanwhile, were given a “general” discharge rather than an “honorable” one, putting them at a disadvantage for future employment.
While a 96% compliance rate suggests general cohesion and a functioning military, the lurking reality is that a large percentage of troops who got the vaccine appear to have done so under duress. Tablet spoke with eight active and former service people for this article who come from some of the Army’s most prestigious units, as well as the Coast Guard. They paint a picture of a force that is divided and embittered and say that many of their compatriots resented being forced to take the shots against their will or even conscience in order to keep food on the table for their families. One soldier estimated that as many as 90% of his unit didn’t want to get the shots, and that many who caved now feel they should have held out for the mandate to be repealed. Another said he only knew three people in his entire platoon that got the shots “of their own volition” prior to the implementation of the mandate.
John Frankman, who declined the shot and left the Army in July 2023 after eight years of active service, including three as a Green Beret, told Tablet, “I’m getting out specifically because of the shot, even though it’s not mandatory anymore. I’ve lost out on enough opportunities, it doesn’t seem worthwhile for me to stay in.”
An Army infantryman from an elite unit who wished to remain anonymous told Tablet that he saw a senior noncommissioned officer from his unit tell a group of vaccine holdouts that they “were the reason America was in decline.” A paratrooper who spoke with Tablet anonymously said that leadership in his unit began an intense campaign to pressure soldiers to get the COVID-19 vaccines months before the Army officially implemented its mandate on Aug. 24, 2021. The paratrooper says that he heard a company commander in his unit say that he would “make my soldiers’ lives as miserable as fucking possible until they get the shot.”
They paint a picture of a force that is divided and embittered and say that many of their compatriots resented being forced to take the shots against their will or even conscience in order to keep food on the table for their families.
For the commanders, meanwhile, who were tasked with enforcing public health positions that turned out to be false, there are now concerns about reputational damage. “Soldiers know your position. You can say some untruths [and] no one’s going to give you a hard time about that,” said one former company commander. “But when you’re changing the story every week and obviously just saying nonsense because your higher command is telling you that … I saw personally that we were alienating our rank and file in a big way. We were losing their trust, and I didn’t want to be a part of that.”
In many cases, commanders embraced these policies with a commitment that went beyond the zeal for enforcing Army policies that is common among junior officers, according to the paratrooper. Rather, he calls the push to make soldiers get the COVID-19 vaccine the single most “divisive and destructive” event he witnessed in the military in more than a decade of service. As he would later write in a formal complaint submitted to the Army that was reviewed by Tablet, the COVID-19 vaccination “became by far the most important issue in our brigade and in the division.” That memo continued:
In order to get reluctant soldiers to take these experimental vaccines, commanders […] were encouraged to use all manners of persuasion and bullying, and even to do things that were plainly illegal (such as denying soldiers the right to attend career-enhancing military schools based on their vaccination status).
From the military’s standpoint, the mandate was not just a matter of life and death but also of national security. If infections swept through the ranks due to troops refusing to take available vaccines, not only would that destroy morale and discipline, but it could also leave the country unable to respond to an attack or emergency.
The problem with this argument is twofold: First, COVID-19 never posed a significant acute risk to healthy young people—the very demographic that overwhelmingly makes up the military—which means the vaccination drive was, at best, unnecessary. And secondly, according to several sources, the military’s approach to the vaccines, rather than emphasizing combat readiness, was used as a disciplinary tool to enforce political conformity and punish independent thought and ideological dissent.
“I’ve seen everything from [Don’t Ask Don’t Tell] repealed to gay marriage legalized to people are allowed to put gay pride flags in their offices now,” said a member of an elite infantry unit with over a decade of service. The jarring thing, he explained, was that the same military that boasts about its tolerance became rigidly intolerant on the question of bodily autonomy and vaccines. “You can get exemptions for religious beards if you’re Muslim, you can get an exemption to wear headgear, instead of your issued hat. That’s fine. I’m all for it … If you can do the job you should be allowed to do it … But then for a vaccine that’s violating the Nuremberg Code, and all of the sudden we’re the problem, that’s what’s bizarre to me.”
Many of those who refused the vaccines did so on the grounds that the mandate violated the Nuremberg Code of ethics for “permissible medical experiments.” The first line of the code reads, “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.” Those citing the code point out that these COVID vaccines had not even finished their clinical trials at the time troops were being pressured and/or mandated to take them, and were therefore being asked to sacrifice their Nuremberg derived rights. Health authorities in the U.S. dismiss that claim on the grounds that the vaccines had received emergency authorizations and were therefore not strictly “experimental.”
With two exceptions, all the soldiers who spoke with Tablet insisted that they remain anonymous—even those who are already out of the service. One former officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, the Army’s legal branch, said: “The fact that I am not subject to the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice], that there is no way that they can touch me, and yet I still don’t want to identify myself, should tell you something.”
That attorney, along with several other soldiers interviewed for this article (all of whom come from different backgrounds and do not share a clear set of political views) painted a disturbing picture that went beyond concerns about vaccine mandates. Given how intensely polarized national debates around COVID became, the Pentagon’s vaccination push—even in a best case scenario—was likely to cause some dissension in the ranks. But according to these current and former service members, the policy was not the result of medical or warfighting needs. Rather, they say that the emphasis on vaccinations was part of a larger push to overtly politicize the military—one of the only institutions left in the U.S. that still retains a degree of broad bipartisan support.
It may be tempting to dismiss this account as merely the grumbling of an isolated group, but their concerns echo a larger public debate. A series of recent reports, insider leaks, and congressional hearings have highlighted the tension between the military’s newfound adoption of ideological causes and its traditional warfighting mission. Indeed, there is no real question that the military has become more ideological in recent years since the top brass, moving in step with the White House, now openly touts the embrace of progressive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. The debate is over whether such policies strengthen the military, as leaders from Secretary Austin down insist they do, or cripple it as whistleblowers, watchdog groups, and conservative politicians have claimed.
Last October, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar acknowledged that the military uses racial preferences as a criteria for acceptance to military service academies like West Point and ROTC contracts. The crucial point in Prelogar’s argument, and one that has been echoed by dozens of senior military leaders, including in an amicus brief filed to the Supreme Court last fall ahead of its ruling on affirmative actions policies in university admissions, is that engineering racial diversity is not simply a moral or social good but an imperative of warfighting. “It is a critical national security imperative to attain diversity within the officer corps. And, at present, it’s not possible to achieve that diversity without race-conscious admissions,” Prelogar testified to the Supreme Court last October.
This is how the difficult and divisive questions about vaccinations—were they really necessary for healthy young people? Did the government and medical authorities misrepresent their risks and benefits?—became truly explosive. The Pentagon now treats its medical policies, diversity goals, and national security missions as inseparable if not interchangeable. That makes it nearly impossible for the military to do an honest internal assessment of how specific decisions affected the force and the nation’s overall warfighting capacity.
While the Pentagon at present may be ill-equipped to act as its own auditor, there is still a vital need for a clear-eyed assessment of how and why the military imposed vaccine mandates, and what the consequences of those mandates have been so far.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/thinning-the-ranks
*************************************************12 August, 2023
A Sabbath thought Most Christians celebrate the pagan day of the Sun as their holy day. They justify that by saying that Christ rose from the dead on Sunday. But he did not. The women found the empty tomb on Sunday morning, which implies that he rose on the Saturday. As it says in Matthew 28:
"After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he[a] lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead"
So Saturday is again the proper holy day
6 August, 2023
TrialSite in the Crosshairs: NewsGuard Attacks Any Media Countering “Official Truth”
Billing itself as “TRANSPARENT TOOLS TO COUNTER MISINFORMATION FOR READERS, BRANDS, AND DEMOCRACIES,” the nominally privately-owned NewsGuard is a fact-checker and browser tool which purports to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to truthful information. This firm has come under fire from both conservative and progressive media sources for its single-minded focus on allowing only one official version of reality to be presented to the public. Recently, NewsGuard contacted TrialSite (TSN) for the second time, essentially threatening to defame the site if it fails to take down or correct specific stories. All of this occurs in the context of 1) TrialSite currently suing the Trusted News Initiative for antitrust violations, and 2) a federal judge ordering the Biden administration to quit communicating with social media in efforts to stifle the First Amendment.
This article takes a look at the ”fact checker” and finds an obviously state-sponsored entity. Notably, while NewsGuard has critiqued TrialSite for publishing stories about problems with the COVID-19 vaccines, TSN has in fact, been one of the very few willing the publish the good, the bad, and the ugly about these medical products. In other words, TrialSite is one of the few objective media specializing in biomedical and health research producing unbiased news and analysis covering a range of points of view and data sources. TrialSite’s founder brings over two decades of direct experience developing FDA-compliant systems for clinical trials for the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies; this compares to the NewsGuard health editor that has exactly zero pragmatic real-world experience not only in life sciences but in healthcare generally. Why would this group try to harass TrialSite? How about what appears as blatant attempts of censorship?
Former CIA Director on advisory board
The Federalist, a conservative media source, offered us some insights into NewsGuard in 2022. They reported on NewsGuard advisory board member Michael Hayden, the “former” Central Intelligence Agency director (many folks believe there is no such thing as an ex-spy). Hayden is quoted as saying he is “perfectly fine” with misinformation as long as it serves purposes he approves of. The ex-spook served in the George W. Bush administration and also presided over the National Security Agency during the intelligence failure that was 911; a failure of cataclysmic proportions.
He commented on the fact that he was one of 50 intelligence veterans who signed a group letter prior to the 2020 election asserting that the indisputably true Hunter Biden laptop story was actually Russian propaganda. And the laptop contents tend to show that “then-candidate Joe Biden was lying when he denied ever discussing Hunter’s business with him, ‘or with anyone else.’”
The Federalist reports that actually, Joe Biden had met with Hunter’s partners and also “stood to personally profit from his son’s potentially criminal overseas ventures.” Also, NewsGuard is, “being deployed in schools to indoctrinate students regarding acceptable news sources.” As per this outlet, the “claims of Russian disinformation surrounding the laptop were disputed by the FBI, the Department of Justice, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, and the Department of State all before Election Day.”
Report from the left
From the other side of the political spectrum, all the way back in 2019, The Black Agenda Report offered more scathing critiques of NewsGuard. Billing itself as “News, commentary and analysis from the black left,” this outlet argued that “it will soon become almost impossible to avoid this neocon-approved news site’s ranking systems on any technological device sold in the US.” In one example, MintPress Editor-in-Chief Mnar Muhawesh was “informed that it was under review by an organization called NewsGuard Technologies, which described itself to MintPress as simply a ‘news rating agency’ and asked Muhawesh to comment on a series of allegations, several of which were blatantly untrue.”
Yet an examination of the fact-checker shows that it is both funded by and connected to “the U.S. government, neo-conservatives, and powerful monied interests, all of whom have been working overtime since the 2016 election to silence dissent to American forever-wars and corporate-led oligarchy.”
The Report notes that NewsGuard was then lobbying hard to get its news site rankings “installed by default on computers in U.S. public libraries, schools, and universities as well as on all smartphones and computers sold in the United States.” And “Tom Ridge, the former secretary of Homeland Security…is on News Guard’s advisory board.”
Mainstream media misinformation given a pass
Per this left-wing media, NewsGuard’s bias can be seen in its high marks for CNN and the Washington Post, both of which have a history of their own misinformation. For example, in 2016, CNN reported that it was illegal for folks to read WikiLeaks releases and also “illegally colluded with the DNC to craft presidential debate questions.”
This CNN-Hillary Clinton collusion was quite clear at the time to savvy media consumers. Then in 2017, CNN published “a fake story that a Russian bank linked to a close ally of President Donald Trump was under Senate investigation. That same year, CNN was forced to retract a report that the Trump campaign had been tipped off early about WikiLeaks documents damaging to Hillary Clinton when it later learned the alert was about material already publicly available.”
And the Washington Post, “whose $600 million conflict of interest with the CIA goes unnoted by NewsGuard, has also published false stories since the 2016 election, including one article that falsely claimed that ‘Russian hackers’ had tapped into Vermont’s electrical grid.” Other NewsGuard advisors included Richard Stengel, a former Undersecretary of State who called his old government job “chief propagandist.”
And he has said that he is “not against propaganda. Every country does it and they have to do it to their own population, and I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.” Hypocritically, while NewsGuard judges media firms for transparency, its own “Securities and Exchange Commission Form D — which was filed March 5, 2018 — states that the company ‘declined to disclose’ the size of its total revenue.”
$749,387 from the Department of Defense
Further lack of transparency can be seen in the fact-checker’s “our investors” webpage. That page’s statement is, “Revenue Sources: NewsGuard’s revenue comes from Internet Service Providers, browsers, search engines, social platforms, education providers, hospital systems, advertising agencies, brand safety providers, researchers, and others paying to use NewsGuard’s ratings and Nutrition Labels and associated data.”
Yet publicly available data shows a $749,387 award from the US Department of Defense in 2021. Was this to vet COVID-19 information covering for Big Pharma?
And yet another conservative source, PragerU, has pointed out that “NewsGuard is partnered with Big Tech companies (like Microsoft), Big Pharma (like the PR firm for Pfizer—the maker of the COVID vaccine), government agencies (like the Department of Defense), and even national teachers unions (like the American Federation of Teachers) ‘to combat disinformation, especially around COVID-19 and elections’ according to the World Economic Forum.
They want to control the narrative on any and every topic—from climate change, COVID-19 treatments and vaccines to elections, Planned Parenthood, and the WEF (to name just a few!).”
Military contractor
Despite its limited description of its “investors” NewsGuard does acknowledge being a military contractor. Its own site says that its purview includes, “Equipping defense and military personnel with tools to track state-sponsored narratives---NewsGuard’s analysts are experienced journalists trained to identify and track state-sponsored disinformation sources and narratives targeting Western democracies. Using OSINT [Open-Source Intelligence] methods and a thorough, journalistic approach, NewsGuard’s team captures data and insights about disinformation sources and narratives that can be used by defense personnel as an early warning system about emerging threats and layered on to existing open-source collection and analysis tools to provide an additional layer of human-intelligence insights.” They go on to state that, “In 2020, NewsGuard was selected as a winner of a contest run by the National Security Innovation Network, a joint State Department and Department of Defense group seeking solutions that would help the agencies ‘evaluate disinformation narrative themes in near real-time.’ In the ensuing project, NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints were combined with AI/ML social listening tools to monitor content containing state-sponsored mis- and disinformation and to identify state-sponsored sources publishing those false narratives.”
NewsGuard censored lab-leak theory of COVID-19
It has been noted by a US House Judiciary Committee witness that “NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index, both taxpayer-funded, are urging advertisers to boycott disfavored publications and direct their funding to favored ones. The organizations have been caught spreading disinformation, including that the COVID lab leak theory is a debunked conspiracy theory, and seeking to discredit publications which accurately reported on Hunter Biden’s laptop, such as the New York Post[.]” A military contractor with the CIA director on its advisory board deciding what we are allowed to hear---What could go wrong?
Finally, the chap who harasses TrialSite this time is the group’s health editor. This questionable organization’s health editor is a graduate from Columbia College in Chicago and has exactly zero healthcare experience. Couple that with TrialSite’s founder who has spent over two decades developing FDA-compliant clinical and regulatory systems for some of the largest pharmaceutical companies on the planet including a sizable Pfizer contract in 2006. TrialSite's network of experts know far more about FDA-regulated research than anything NewsGuard can muster. Plus, how can the organization hire a health editor with no pragmatic healthcare experience? Well, that tells you something else about NewsGuard. This serves as a front to protect the markets of the largest media companies, and likely, as a front for more nefarious state-sponsored censorship, although this is not conclusively proven just because a key advisory director is ex-CIA director and they get sizable DoD contracts. It most certainly smells and doesn’t bode well for democracy.
*************************************************
3 August, 2023
Stanford Medicine POV: SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Far More Toxic that mRNA Vax-Elicited Spike—But is this Accurate?
A key component of the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein plays a crucial role in the virus’s ability to enter and infect human cells. Understanding spike protein is essential for the development of vaccines and therapeutics to combat the virus. Importantly the mRNA vaccines rapidly developed to help train the human body to fend off SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, also offers the host’s molecular machinery instructions to produce the spike protein.
While the spike protein associated with the mRNA vaccines are not supposed to remain in the individual vaccinated for more than a few days to a week or so, study after study now suggests that in some cases the mRNA-induced spike protein may persist in circulation in the human body for months, even over a year. In fact, nascent research points to the toxicity of this circulating “free” spike protein but mainstream medicine remains hesitant about the role of the mRNA vaccine induced spike protein and its role in COVID-19 vaccine injury. Recently published in Stanford Medicine’s Scope, science writer Bruce Goldman compares and contrasts the spike protein associated with the virus versus that of the vaccine. The Stanford science writer acknowledges that all is not perfect with the mRNA vaccines, in particular the elicited spike protein, but he doesn’t allow himself the intellectual curiosity to investigate and report on the growing body of research evidencing the potential risks associated with these vaccine-created spike proteins, especially when they continue to circulate, freely, not neutralized by antibodies. This latte scenario, although somewhat rare, can potentially lead to serious, even deadly consequences.
Before delving into Goldman’s overview a brief prime of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein,. What follows are key elements associated with the virus’s spike protein:
The spike protein is a common target for mutations in SARS-CoV-2. Some of these mutations can lead to the emergence of new variants of the virus, which may have altered transmissibility, virulence, or immune escape properties.
Vaccine Development
Many COVID-19 vaccines target the spike protein to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies and mount an immune response against the virus. Some vaccines use a small part of the spike protein (mRNA vaccines), while others use a weakened version of the virus containing the spike protein (viral vector vaccines).
Therapeutics
Some experimental treatments for COVID-19 focus on targeting the spike protein to prevent viral entry into cells or inhibit its function
Importantly a better understanding of the structure and function of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein has been crucial in the development of effective vaccines and treatments to combat the virus. Vaccines that elicit an immune response against the spike protein have been successful in reducing the severity of COVID-19 and preventing hospitalization and death. Ongoing research continues to deepen our understanding of this protein and its role in the virus's infectivity and pathogenicity.
Some Challenges not Widely Discussed
The Stanford Medicine science scribe points to the billions of doses of the mRNA vaccine administered during the pandemic, leading to an unquestionable saving of lives.
It’s been sort of taboo to offer any critical assessment of the mRNA vaccines in mainstream media, or even in the pharmaceutical trade press. Even with medical journals, case series or studies centering on serious side effects of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines must always come with an accompanying passage that essentially declares the risk benefit analysis favors vaccination over not getting vaccinated.
Problems arise with the mRNA vaccines when considering “the molecular delivery vehicles now used to transport mRNA to the right places into the body.” Why? Because as the Stanford Medicine writer points out sometimes these get delivered to the wrong places “or hold on to that cargo rather than letting it go once they get inside our cells.” In fact, Goldman points to research ongoing in Standard looking to overcome these challenges.
The Cargo
Transport mechanism aside and the mRNA vaccines, Stanford’s Goldman asks about the cargo itself—that is those “mRNA strands in the vaccine.” Or even “more specifically” he suggests the key question becomes “what about the protein that this cargo instructs our cells to make in profusion?”
Goldman shares in clear, easy to follow format:
“In the case of COVID-19, that would be the infamous spike protein, which dots SARS-CoV-2's coat, picks locks on cells' outer surfaces and catapults the virus into them.” Referring to the mRNA vaccine induced spike protein’s “multiple talents” which make it “essential to the virus’s ability to infect our cells.”
It’s designed perfectly to make itself an object of the human immune system writes, Goldman, with its many prominent spikes protruding outward according to Mark Davis, PhD, Stanford Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection who also according to Goldman happens to be an authority on immune response.
But is the mRNA induced spike protein toxic?
A growing number of front-line physicians, and independent scientists have claimed that the spike protein associated with the vaccine can in fact become toxic when it freely flows throughout the body.
In fact they claim that this toxic protein can, if in circulation, show up in various organs and cells. And in fact, TrialSite has reported on several if not a dozen studies that indicate this can and does occur.
While enormous pressure mounts to keep up a certain narrative about the mRNA vaccine induced spike protein (e.g., that it remains local near the injection, that it clears from the body via the lymphatic system within days and that its not linked to vaccine injury) the science unfortunately pulls in a different direction.
The mRNA vaccine induced spike protein now has been shown to be able to remain in the body for over a year, while it can show up in just about any organ or cell in the body. Mounting evidence points to the spike protein as a troublesome to even deadly trigger.
Stanford Medicine’s Bruce Goldman reports that “A number has flagged that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein may be toxic even on its own—say if released as debris from a shattered viral particle. And the science writer goes a step further acknowledging the nascent science pointing out that “contact with the spike protein appears to damage endothelial cells.” Of course, these ubiquitous cells cover all blood vessels throughout the human body “including the hundreds of billions in our lungs.”
The Big Question
Now the above points frames the big question, which frankly is about time that major academic medical centers start addressing.
“if spike proteins are toxic, wouldn't a vaccine that causes our cells to make them be toxic, too? Could the mRNA vaccines directed at SARS-CoV-2 trigger a deluge of that protein into the bloodstream, where it could wreak havoc with heavily vascularized organs such as the heart, intestine and, of course, lungs?”
Downplaying the Concern?
According to several Stanford Medicine experts, the logic that the mRNA spike protein is dangerous becomes less of a concern. For starters these experts would say “For virtually every spike-protein molecule induced by vaccination, the cell that made it becomes its jail cell.” Meaning overwhelmingly the molecular mechanism of action mitigates the potential for damage most of the time.
Stanford’s Mark Davis, again an expert in immune response says “The spike proteins made by SARS-CoV-2-infected cells and the spike proteins cells produced in response to the vaccine are nearly, although not exactly, identical.” And importantly form this point of view these differences are in essence, profound in terms of outcomes.
Dr. Davis points to the sticky transmembrane domains associated with the spike protein cells elicited by the mRNA vaccine. They play two roles including 1) riveting the protein to the intact pathogen’s fatty outer coat and 2) as a catalyzer, facilitating penetration of cells the SARS-CoV-2 virus attempts to penetrate.
Key Differences
According to Davis and the other Stanford experts, and that prominent Silicon Valley institution of higher learning clearly will have some of the best, the mechanisms of action of the spike protein inside the SARS-CoV-2 infected cell differ markedly from those that are generated form the mRNA vaccine process, goes the logic.
In this case the viral pathogen takes over the cell’s “protein-making machinery” thus forcing on a rapid fire replication of copies of the invading pathogen’s own proteins in addition to genetic material. As this process ensues, most new spike proteins are thereafter incorporated into new viral particles, capitalizing on their ability to evolve, finding and continuously exploiting novel ways of escaping from the cell that produced them. Thus these “particles are free to invade the cell next door o spill into the circulatory system” and elsewhere
Here Goldman reminds the reader “that the COVID-19 vaccine's cargo is a bunch of mRNA strands that, once safely inside a cell, direct the production of a whole lot of a single substance: the spike protein.” But he argues that “Once produced inside a vaccine-recipient cell, it has no escape accomplices (the other components of the viral structure) to latch onto, because the cell isn't making them.” Then goes the logic, the protein lacks any “dependable passage out of the cell.”
In fact, Stanford’s Dr. Davis told the science writer “the vast majority of vaccine-induced spike proteins float or are carried, either intact or sawed into snippets by enzymes inside the cell, to the cell's outer membrane.” Stuck there, they accumulate at this important location, one where “the immune system can most easily spot them and mount a coordinated response.” Peter Kim,a Stanford vaccinologist and biochemistry professor supports this argument stating “An intact vaccine-generated spike protein molecule, by virtue of its transmembrane domain, almost invariably sticks to the cell that makes it.”
Final Thoughts—Something Seems Off
Stanford’s Goldman pointed out in the medical school’s magazine:
“The sudden appearance of a new kind of vaccine has generated concerns ranging from the spurious to the undeniable.”
The writer attempts to mitigate the more severe damage from the COVID-19 vaccine’s rare, but real adverse outcomes by noting that “their lack of toxicity may not be absolute” they “are a good bet to be a lot less toxic than the spike protein produced during the vial infections the vaccines prevent.”
Actually, to clarify the vaccines have struggled preventing infection, due to variant mutation and durability challenges with the vaccines themselves, but they have helped reduce the probability of more severe infection. And as a consequence the COVID-19 vaccines have saved lives.
But importantly Goldman doesn’t go deep enough into the unfolding science of COVID-19 vaccine injury, or so-called “long Vax.” Basically establishing by his logic that the risk-benefit analyses by far benefit the COVID-19 vaccines because among other things (saving lives, and the like) the toxicity associated with the infection is far, far worse than those associated with the supposed cure.
Yet Goldman ignores significant emerging bodies of research emphasizing the concept of fee spike protein for example. As the spike protein does escape and thereafter circulates throughout the body, potentially acting as a toxic agent, it is supposedly neutralized by the antibodies elicited by the vaccine itself. However, for whatever reason this does not always occur.
Why are so many scholars and scientific journalists ignoring or downplaying the mounting literature raising the specter of concern? One recent example would be a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Circulation titled “Circulating Spike Protein Detected in Post-COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Myocarditis” authored by Lael Yonker, MD Massachusetts General Hospital and colleagues.
Does Goldman’s recent piece in Stanford Medicine’s Scope represent a more objective, unbiased comprehensive unfolding scientific view, or rather, is the analysis framed, directed by powerful underlying ideological forces permeating academic medical center labs, halls and offices?
A recent independent (non-industry ties) study out of Switzerland (University of Basel) found that nearly 3% of all healthcare professionals vaccinated had a form of myocarditis, albeit mild, most certainly jolting those independent thinkers into a heightened vigilance mode.
Why aren’t more scientists looking critically into the topic of free spike protein and the potential for toxicity and injury for example? According to Goldman, well, after talking to some experts at his institution the answer is clear—for the reasons mentioned above the spike proteins associated with the mRNA vaccines are just so much less toxic than the real thing. But is this really the kind of science that truly advances human knowledge? Or are powerful economic, political and social agendas inherently influencing science now?
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2 August, 2023
Dr. Anthony Fauci is caught in his biggest COVID lie yet
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has announced a criminal referral of Dr. Anthony Fauci to the Department of Justice over his apparent lying during congressional testimony in 2021.
Fauci insisted repeatedly that the National Institutes of Health had never funded any gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Paul contended at the time, in arguing with Fauci, that the research done on viruses at WIV — which got US funding — matched the NIH’s own description of gain-of-function research and accused Fauci of playing word games.
Now Fauci is damned by his own words.
A newly surfaced February 2020 email about a COVID task-force call between him, his associates and UK science big Dr. Jeremy Farrar shows Fauci not only using the term “gain-of-function” to describe the work at Wuhan, but highlighting serious misgivings about the virus being of natural origin.
So not only does it look like Fauci was at the very least obfuscating during the 2021 testimony; it shows that he and other senior scientists (including then-NIH head Francis Collins, who was on the call) also took the lab-leak origin theory of COVID seriously.
Rand Paul announces ‘official criminal referral,’ says email shows Fauci COVID testimony ‘absolutely a lie’
At least before they panicked and launched a massive behind-the-scenes effort to suppress it — likely to hide their own possible complicity in funding work that might’ve unleashed COVID on the world.
To do that they bullied scientists dependent on the millions in grant money they controlled and whipped compliant media into a frenzy over “disinformation.”
In fact, that very same month a Post op-ed by Steven Mosher got smothered by Facebook and Twitter for suggesting the exact same thing Fauci & Co. admitted they were worried about to Farrar.
That view — that COVID came from a lab — is now increasingly the belief of the US federal government.
And of every thinking person, especially after evidence appeared indicating the first three Patients Zero of COVID were WIV employees.
But we may never know for sure, in part thanks to Fauci & Co’s fight to prevent any real inquiry within China at the pandemic’s start. That leaves the whole world more vulnerable.
How many more of these damning revelations is it going to take before Fauci & Co. face a single consequence for their actions?
https://nypost.com/2023/07/31/dr-anthony-faucis-caught-in-his-biggest-covid-lie-yet/
*****************************************************Australia's ABC is sticking to its wrong call
No admission that they could have got it wrong. They are Leftists and Leftists have a soft spot for Communist regimes so they are still trying to protect China
New claims that America’s leading infectious diseases adviser Anthony Fauci downplayed concerns that Covid-19 originated from a laboratory will not be acknowledged by the ABC’s Media Watch program and its host Paul Barry until a lab leak “proves to be the source of the Covid-19 outbreak”.
Since the pandemic began, the TV presenter has on numerous occasions been highly critical of Sky News host Sharri Markson’s reporting, including concerns in the science and intelligence community that a lab leak was plausible.
A world exclusive by Markson published in The Weekend Australian on Saturday included her interview with Robert Kadlec, former assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the US Department of Health.
Dr Kadlec said that he, Dr Fauci and National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins had discussed how they could “turn down the temperature” on accusations against China during the early days of the pandemic.
Dr Kadlec, in his first ever interview, told Markson that they tried to encourage a group of leading international scientists to reduce speculation about the origins of the virus. In a phone call on February 1, 2020, the scientists discussed concerns that SARS-CoV-2 looked like it might have been genetically engineered.
“When we talked about this in advance of that call, he (Fauci) would just try and see if he could get the scientists to take the temperature down, turn the rhetoric down, to at least find, we’re going to look into this, but we don’t know,” Dr Kadlec told Markson.
The Australian contacted Barry about the latest revelations on the weekend, but he did not respond. However, Media Watch executive producer Timothy Latham responded on his behalf in an email: “As Paul has previously said, if the Wuhan lab proves to be the source of the Covid-19 outbreak, we will update viewers and apologise to Ms Markson for our criticism.”
He included a link to an article The Australian published in 2021 asking Barry if he would acknowledge fresh allegations that were revealed in a Sky News documentary, What Really Happened in Wuhan, presented by Markson.
In a Media Watch segment on May 5, 2020, Barry dismissed Markson’s initial reporting on the origins of Covid-19 and repeatedly used the phrases “conspiracy theories” and “conspiracy theorists”, finishing his segment by saying: “Conspiracy theories like this are so hard to kill.”
He told viewers in the same report: “So how likely is it that the virus escaped from that Chinese lab? Well in short, it’s not.”
Among those to initially refute claims the virus could have originated from a lab leak was the ABC’s health expert Dr Norman Swan who in 2020 said he had “looked into this and other journalists have looked into this as well as scientists and there really is very little evidence”. “It’s on the outer bounds of possibility, but really so unlikely that you could say … it’s not the case,” he said.
However in May 2021 he said “in recent weeks alternate views of the sequencing have emerged which are quite compelling and a growing number of respected scientists are making a good argument”.
An ABC spokesman would not comment on the criticisms of Markson’s reporting and there was no response from chair Ita Buttrose.
It has also been revealed on the weekend, by The Wall Street Journal, that Facebook removed content relating to Covid-19 in response to pressure it received from the Biden administration.
The newspaper’s report included revelations about internal company communications, including emails divulging details of executives of Facebook (whose parent company is Meta) discussing how they handled users’ posts about the origin of a pandemic and the administration was seeking to control the narrative. “We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more,” responded a Facebook vice-president in charge of content policy, speaking of the Biden administration. “We shouldn’t have done it.”
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Smell and Taste Disorders After COVID-19 Vaccination: Case Series
Post-vaccination conditions related to olfactory (sense of smell) and gustatory (sense of taste) dysfunctions have been reported in the literature with case studies. On the other hand, these dysfunctions are unknown by many clinicians and their underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. In this article, we summarize a report that included six cases with taste and smell problems to shed light on this issue. TrialSite continuously reports case studies about neurological conditions attributed to COVID-19 vaccines.
A 2021 article published in Ear, Nose & Throat Journal entitled “COVID-19: Post-vaccine Smell and Taste Disorders: Report of 6 Cases” is summarized in this article. Although organizations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) refer to available vaccines as safe and effective, there are case studies demonstrating temporal associations between vaccines and adverse effects.
Sample and methodology
Patients were recruited from five European hospitals including Sassari University Hospital (Italy), Ferrara University (Italy), Foch Hospital of Paris (France), CHU Brugmann (Belgium) and CHU Saint-Pierre (Belgium). Patients must have self-reported smell and taste issues days after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination to be included. Taste problems were operationally defined as an impaired perception of salty, sweet, bitter or sour. Patients who had a history of COVID-19 throughout the six months before the vaccination and who had a positive COVID-19 reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) were excluded.
Findings
Six patients were included in the study. Five of them were female and their age range was 25 to 50 years.
Case 1: A 25-year-old female with an unremarkable medical history received the first shot of AstraZeneca vaccine and developed a partial loss of smell. Her olfactory and gustatory evaluations demonstrated hyposmia (partial or complete loss of smell). She did not experience any taste problems. Her smell problem lasted for 10 days and her examination 40 days after the onset demonstrated normal results without any treatment. She received a second vaccine dose and did not experience any side effects.
Case 2: A 27-year-old female presented with a partial loss of smell. It lasted for two months after the first shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine when she presented. No other symptoms were reported including taste problems and the patient had no prior medical history. Without any formal treatment, she reported experiencing an improvement in her sense of smell nine days after the first vaccine shot. 40 days later, her examination showed a normal sense of smell. No adverse effects were reported after the second dose of vaccine.
Case 3: A 51-year-old female presented with a total loss of smell two days after her first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine. She also reported other symptoms such as fever, chills and arthralgia (joint pain). The smell dysfunction lasted seven days and improved gradually after that. She also reported fever and arthralgia after the second dose was administered.
Case 4: A 30-year-old female with no prior medical history reported a total loss of smell after the second shot of Pfizer vaccine. She did not report any side effects after the first administration. Within days after the second vaccination, she also reported rhinorrhea, a runny nose. Four days after the onset of her smell dysfunction, she reported a gradual improvement.
Case 5: A 44-year-old male presented with arthralgia, myalgia (muscle pain), and abdominal pain 10 days after the first shot of AstraZeneca vaccine. The patient had a history of renal lithiasis, a disease caused by the presence of kidney stones. His taste for sweets increased significantly, while his perception of salty taste disappeared. His exams showed no signs of cleft inflammation. Taste examination confirmed the loss of saltiness while other tastes were normal. Symptoms disappeared after 10 days except for the taste disorder (dysgeusia) that lasted for seven weeks. No adverse effects were reported after the second dose of vaccine.
Case 6: A 33-year-old female reported severe parosmia (a distorted sense of smell) and phantosmia (a sense of odors even in the absence of odorant triggers) after the second dose of Pfizer vaccine. She also reported myalgia, arthralgia and fatigue. After seven days, these symptoms resolved. She also had a history of COVID-19 eight months prior with a loss of smell lasting one week. After vaccination, hyposmia was found on examination which confirmed the self-report. She received oral corticosteroid treatment for a week along with vitamins. Her symptoms had resolved completely six weeks after vaccination.
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1 August, 2023
Subclinical Heart Damage More Prevalent Than Thought After Moderna Vaccination: Study
Damage to the heart is more common than thought after receipt of Moderna’s COVID-19 booster, a new study indicates.
One in 35 health care workers at a Swiss hospital had signs of heart injury associated with the vaccine, mRNA-1273, researchers found.
“mRNA-1273 booster vaccination-associated elevation of markers of myocardial injury occurred in about one out of 35 persons (2.8%), a greater incidence than estimated in meta-analyses of hospitalized cases with myocarditis (estimated incidence 0.0035%) after the second vaccination,” the researchers wrote in the paper, published by the European Journal of Heart Failure.
In a generally healthy population, the level would be about 1 percent, the researchers said.
The group experiencing the adverse effects was followed for only 30 days, and half still had unusually high levels of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T, an indicator of subclinical heart damage, at follow-up.
The long-term implications of the study remain unclear as little research has tracked people over time with heart injury after messenger RNA vaccination, which is known to cause myocarditis and other forms of heart damage.
“According to current knowledge, the cardiac muscle can’t regenerate, or only to a very limited degree at best. So it’s possible that repeated booster vaccinations every year could cause moderate damage to the heart muscle cells,” University Hospital Basel professor Christian Muller, a cardiologist and the lead researcher, said in a statement.
Moderna did not respond to a request for comment.
None of the patients experienced a major adverse cardiac event, such as heart failure, within 30 days of booster vaccination, and none had electrocardiogram changes.
The people with elevated levels were advised to avoid strenuous exercise, which may have mitigated more serious problems, the researchers said.
No imaging was done to examine the participants’ hearts, despite imaging being recommended by many cardiologists in cases of suspected vaccine-induced myocarditis.
It’s possible that imaging would have revealed inflammation, which could cause scarring or irregular heartbeat, Dr. Andrew Bostom, a heart expert in the United States who was not involved in the research, told The Epoch Times.
Dr. Anish Koka, an American cardiologist, said that the findings were “super useful to see how ‘cardioactive’ the booster is” but that it was hard to say how significant the elevated troponin levels were, particularly without a comparison to baseline levels. “There is really nothing clinically concerning at 30 days to report,” he said on Twitter.
Study Methods
Researchers posited that the incidence of vaccine-associated heart injury was more prevalent than previously thought following messenger RNA booster vaccination because of a lack of symptoms or mild symptoms.
They defined injury as a sharp increase in high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T on the third day after vaccination without evidence of an alternative cause. The levels of cardiac troponin had to hit the upper limit of normal, 8.9 nanograms per liter in women and 15.5 nanograms per liter in men.
All workers at the University Hospital Basel scheduled to receive a Moderna booster for the first time were offered a chance to participate in the study, unless they experienced a cardiac event or underwent heart surgery within 30 days of vaccination. The workers received a booster, which is half the dosage level of the primary series shots, from Dec. 10, 2021, to Feb. 10, 2022. The cohort ended up being 777 workers, including 540 females. The median age was 37 years.
Among the participants, 40 had elevated levels of cardiac troponin. Alternative causes were identified in 18. For the other 22, the researchers determined they had “vaccine-associated myocardial injury.” The median age of the 22 was 46. All but two were women, making the percentage of women with elevated levels higher than the percentage of men (3.7 percent versus 0.8 percent), which contrasts with most of the previous literature on vaccine-induced myocarditis. That could stem from women receiving a higher vaccine dose per body weight, the researchers said.
Baseline levels were not recorded because the hospital’s COVID-19 task force and the researchers decided that the study “should interfere as little as possible with the motivation of the hospital staff to obtain the mRNA-1273 first booster vaccination and the logistics of booster vaccination itself.”
None of the people with elevated markers had a history of heart disease. While half experienced symptoms, most symptoms were nonspecific like fever. Two participants suffered from chest pain. And two, according to the Brighton Collaboration case definition, likely suffered myocarditis.
Testing was done for high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T because of its sensitivity.
“This marker is extremely sensitive—with other methods such as MRI we wouldn’t have been able to detect any damage to the cardiac muscle, as it only becomes visible once the damage there is about three to five times greater,” Dr. Muller said.
The researchers were not able to figure out the mechanism for the vaccine hurting the heart muscle.
The authors reported some conflicts of interest, including Dr. Muller reporting grants from drugmakers such as Novartis and Roche. The study was funded by the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel.
Limitations include the lack of baseline levels and lack of imaging.
Previous Findings, and Pending Study
Several other prospective studies examine myocarditis following Pfizer vaccination.
In Thailand, researchers found that 29 percent of 301 adolescents developed cardiovascular effects, including chest pain, after a second Pfizer dose. Seven were diagnosed with heart inflammation.
Researchers in Taiwan established baseline electrocardiogram levels before a second Pfizer dose and recorded abnormal results following the administration in one percent of 4,928 primary school students. That included five students diagnosed with myocarditis or an abnormal heartbeat.
And an Israeli study of 324 health care workers with a median age of 51 who received a second Pfizer booster identified two cases of vaccine-induced heart injury on day three.
Other recent studies have confirmed that vaccine-induced myocarditis can kill, including a South Korean study that ruled out all other possible causes for eight sudden deaths following messenger RNA vaccination. Myocarditis was not suspected as a clinical diagnosis or cause of death before autopsies were performed, researchers said.
The Swiss researchers said more prospective studies are needed to examine post-vaccination heart injury. Long-term problems from the injuries, they stressed, remain unclear.
Moderna was required by U.S. authorities to conduct a prospective study to assess the incidence of subclinical myocarditis following a booster among adults, with a projected completion date of June 30, 2023. Neither the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) nor Moderna have disclosed the results of the study as of yet.
Pfizer was required to conduct a similar study, with results due on Dec. 31, 2022, but the FDA changed the end date at the request of Pfizer.
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The damage of Covid lockdowns is only now becoming apparent
Ross Clark
There are still those, like Matt Hancock, who think that lockdowns were an unalloyed good – who, indeed, believe that in a future pandemic we must lock down harder and faster. But for the rest of us, the appalling toll of Covid lockdowns continues to become apparent.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) reveals today that the number of people who are economically inactive due to long-term sickness has grown by 400,000 to 2.5 million since 2019. More than half of these people – 135,000 – report depression and anxiety as either the primary or secondary cause of their absence from the workplace.
Where is the outrage over these figures?
The pandemic has left us with virtually zero economic growth, much of which is blamed on high inflation and rising interest rates. But an important underlying cause too often goes without comment: a sharp rise in economic inactivity.
We cannot grow richer as a country if ever more people are unproductive. Yet the figures for economic inactivity tend to get smothered by the more frequently-reported unemployment statistics. Since the 1990s, these have been based on answers to the Labour Force Survey (an ONS questionnaire) and do not include people on long-term sickness benefits.
Meanwhile, the Centre for Social Justice has published its latest termly tracker of school absence for the autumn term of 2022, showing that school attendance has not even nearly recovered from repeated lockdowns. It reveals that 1.7 million pupils – 24 per cent of the total – missed more than 10 per cent of their lessons. Meanwhile 125,000 pupils missed more than half their lessons. This latter figure has more than doubled since before the pandemic; by contrast it was 60,000 in the same term of 2019.
The implications of all this for society are still fully to be felt. There is a long-established link between school absence and the descent into crime. The rise in school absences suggests that there could be an extra 9,000 young offenders, 2,000 of them violent criminals, by 2027.
Yet where is the outrage over these figures? The scandal of school absences hardly shows up in the news agenda. Disgracefully, the whole issue of missed education was pushed aside by artificially inflated exam grades in 2020 and 2021, when GCSE and A level results were based on teachers’ predictions for their pupils, not on actual exam results. On paper we have a generation which looks extremely well-educated – yet which in reality has huge gaps in its education.
The government’s considered pandemic plan prior to Covid 19 was not to close schools. But, come March 2020, advisers and ministers panicked, dumped the plan and imposed lockdown, closing schools for months on end. We will be living with the consequences for a very long time.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/the-damage-of-covid-lockdowns-is-only-now-becoming-apparent/
*************************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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