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
30 December, 2022
Elon Musk scraps Twitter's Covid misinformation policy that censored tweets questioning vaccines and lab leak origin theory
Twitter has dropped its COVID-19 misinformation policy as part of new owner Elon Musk's pro-free speech agenda for the platform.
Last night, some Twitter users noticed that the change had been implemented on November 23. They had seen a post on the 'transparency' page of the company's website which said: 'Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misinformation policy.'
Twitter developed the rules in 2020 to filter out 'harmful misinformation' about COVID and vaccines. They were able to censor and label tweets deemed to contain misleading information that the company considered posed considerable harm to public health.
Between January 2020 and September 2022, Twitter suspended more than 11,200 accounts for breaking their policy as well as removing nearly 100,000 pieces of content.
It comes as Musk vowed to soon reinstate previously banned Twitter accounts which could include some of the 11,000 suspended under the previous coronavirus rules.
Upon his multi-billion-dollar takeover of Twitter, Mr Musk billed the social media giant as a bastion for free speech. He wanted to reduce content moderation on the site due to this, something that critics warned would lead to a spike in abuse, harassment and other harmful behavior.
He has also voiced his plans to reinstate some of the most controversial accounts, calling for 'general amnesty.'
Prominent figures on the platform who had been banned in the past for violating Twitter's anti-misinformation policy have since been reinstated, including Georgia far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green.
Rep Green attacked the platform's decision to freeze her account last January, tweeting from her congressional account: 'I'm the only Member of Congress the unelected big tech oligarchs permanently banned... On January 2, 2022, they violated my freedom of speech and ability to campaign & fundraise crying 'covid misinformation.''
The reason for the major policy change as well as its quiet debut remain unclear. The billionaire has proven a staunch opponent of draconian social distancing measures and vaccine mandates over the past couple of years.
Mr Musk backed an anti-vaccine mandate protest , writing 'Canadian truckers' rule, in response to a January demonstration.
In September 2020, Mr Musk said that he would decline the Covid vaccine because 'I'm not at risk for Covid, nor are my kids.' He has since been vaccinated against Covid.
The billionaire also urged for an end to early 'fascist' isolation practices that he said in April 2020 constituted ''forcibly imprisoning people in their homes' against all their Constitutional rights.'
Since Mr Musk's takeover, Twitter has seen a spike in transphobic, antisemitic, racist, and otherwise offensive speech.
His decision to outlaw the coronavirus misleading information policy comes as America is still seeing 305,000 cases and 2,600 deaths a week, according to the CDC.
He has also made a huge number of other changes at Twitter to misinformation policies and procedures.
One change announced days ago was that suspended Twitter accounts will be offered an 'amnesty' from this week after a poll revealed a landslide of users support the move.
The Twitter CEO, who completed a $44 billion takeover in October, said accounts for users will be restored as long as they have not broken the law or spammed people on the social media site.
The declaration opens up the possibility that thousands of suspended accounts will be immediately reinstated. It has not been revealed if there will be a vetting process before the reactivation or if there will be a mass reactivation.
Musk has already restored Donald Trump, Kanye West, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson and Marjorie Taylor Green's accounts. It is likely that he could also reinstate other controversial Twitter accounts including figures such as Steve Bannon, Wiley and Katie Hopkins.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Mr Musk has also dramatically reduced the size of the team devoted to tackling child sexual exploitation on the platform.
The report suggests that the team of specialists that review and escalate reports of child sexual exploitation has more been halved.
Last week, Mr Musk tweeted that 'removing child exploitation is priority £1'.
And earlier this month, in another change, Musk fired Twitter contractors responsible for battling misinformation on the site. The social media giant fired its contractors that track hate and other harmful content.
Musk said on Oct. 29 he would set up a content moderation council with 'widely diverse viewpoints'.
Meanwhile, in the early days after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October and dismissed its board of directors and top executives, the billionaire Tesla CEO sought to assure civil rights groups and advertisers that the platform could continue tamping down hate.
Musk's decision to drop the Covid-19 misinformation policy has materialized after he came under fire previously for expressing controversial opinions on vaccines and coronavirus. He said in 2020 that fears of the virus were 'dumb' and falsely claimed that children were 'essentially immune' before branding lockdowns 'fascist.'
But he backtracked in 2021, saying on Twitter: 'I do support vaccines in general and covid vaccines specifically' and said that 'rare' allergic reactions can be 'easily addressed.'
He wrote: 'To be clear, I do support vaccines in general & covid vaccines specifically. The science is unequivocal.
'In very rare cases, there is an allergic reaction, but this is easily addressed with an EpiPen.'
He had previously stirred up concerns about vaccine safety when he suggested that the second dose could be harmful.
Musk was replying to a post someone had shared about their parents' refusing to get the vaccine 'based on stuff they saw on Facebook.'
He appeared to add fuel to the so-called 'Facebook brainwashing effect' cited by the social media user when he raised concerns about 'quite a few negative reactions' to the second shot.
It came after the lab leak was censored and denounced by Twitter as a possible cause for how the coronavirus pandemic started- but is now one of the leading theories.
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Bombshell as two Australians WIN their Supreme Court case over Covid fines - and it means as many as 45,000 penalties could be struck down
Thousands of Covid-19 fines worth millions of dollars could be ruled invalid after two Sydneysiders won a landmark test case in the New South Wales Supreme Court.
The man and woman claimed their infringement notices were issued in such vague terms they could not be legally enforced and would be difficult, if not impossible, to challenge in front of a magistrate.
On Tuesday morning, barrister David Kell SC for the Commissioner of Police told the Supreme Court the pair's Covid penalty notices would no longer be enforced.
'These two notices do not sufficiently state or describe the offences in general terms,' Mr Kell said.
The two claimants, Brenden Beame and Teal Els, will have their fines refunded. A fine issued to a third claimant, Rohan Pank, had already been repaid.
The ruling could set a precedent that sees many of more than 45,000 unpaid penalty notices for Covid-related public health order breaches in NSW withdrawn.
Kate Richardson SC, for the claimants, said there were 32,648 fines - totalling almost $33million - issued for the same reason as that given to Mr Beame so 'in all likelihood' they too would be declared legally invalid if challenged.
She has asked Justice Dina Yehia to publish detailed reasons for the fines being declared invalid to make it 'absolutely plain' why they were withdrawn.
'This is a case that has ramifications beyond Ms Els and Mr Beame,' Ms Richardson said.
Ms Els was fined $3,000 for unlawfully participating in an outdoor public gathering.
A class action in NSW could now go ahead and similar law suits would likely be pursued in other states. There were 19,000 fines handed out in Victoria for breaches of Covid lockdown laws, and tens of thousands across the rest of Australia.
Redfern Legal Centre ran the case against the NSW Police Commissioner and Commissioner of Fines Administration on behalf of Mr Beame and Ms Els.
Mr Pank had his $1,000 fine withdrawn in July after the administrative law court action was launched.
When the matter was before in court in July it was heard if the claims succeeded fines worth millions of dollars issued across NSW could be invalidated.
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29 November, 2022
Activating the Enemy Within: COVID Jabs Might Reactivate Virus and Diseases in Your Body
New evidence in the scientific community indicates that there is a strong correlation between COVID-19, its related vaccines, and the reactivation of other viruses which have previously infected the host. This article will dive deeper into the nuances.
How Can Viruses Be Reactivated?
In the number of years I spent in the military as a microbiologist, I’ve always been quite impressed with how shrewd viruses can get.
During viral infections, viruses have to deal with the defense of the immune systems. If the immune system has the upper hand and defeats the viruses, viruses might develop mechanisms to stay dormant and become inactivated.
One such mechanism is to insert their viral DNA into cells’ chromosomes, staying in latency without active replication. Other mechanisms might involve promoting epigenetic silencing of the viral genome, meaning they stay “muted” in activity, but present and lying in wait.
Host cells will then reproduce cells still carrying the viral genetic information. Then, viruses might come back years, or even decades later, reactivating the viral replication when the immune system degrades. This prudent strategy where viruses turn into a latent enemy within the host is quite an effective strategy against the enemy, whether in the military or the human body.
The scientific community is very familiar with five types of viruses that are able to “hibernate” and reactivate given suitable conditions:
Herpes simplex virus, which causes blisters in the mouth and genital herpes. It is extremely common;
Varicella zoster virus (VZV), more commonly known as chickenpox;
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which causes mononucleosis or “mono,” the “kissing disease,” as it can be transmitted when people kiss each other;
Cytomegalovirus (CMV), which usually causes a great deal of trouble for immunocompromised people but not really otherwise;
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS; this virus can stay in your body for more than a decade before becoming activated.
Let’s take VZV, or chickenpox, as an example. In the usual sense, everybody gets chickenpox in their life. This usually happens early on and is quite itchy for the patient but doesn’t have a lot of other severe complications.
After the patient initially overcomes VZV, it never truly goes away. It has the possibility of coming back, especially with the weakening of the immune system. It can attack again in a more severe form called shingles or Herpes Zoster. Shingles is a very painful rash that develops on one side of the body. In some cases, it may also cause chronic nerve pain or other serious complications, including blindness.
Shingles can also be caused by advanced age, stress, diseases (chronic or acute), cancer, or various other sources. In fact, the aforementioned factors usually also lead to the reactivation of other viruses. Chronic fatigue might lead to reactivating EBV, herpes might be reawoken with surgery, and HIV might be kickstarted by tumors.
A popular theory behind why viruses can be reactivated is that, after the initial wave of viruses was defeated, the body has a large fleet of naive CD-8 T-killer cells (immune cells that get rid of pathogens they don’t recognize) which serve to keep the remaining number of viruses in check.
When the immune system is placed under a lot of stress, such as during acute infection, when battling cancer, or after an organ transplant (due to the administered immunosuppressant drugs), those naive CD-8 cells go down in number one way or another. The virus then seizes the chance to proliferate when defenses are down.
Can COVID-19 Reactivate Latent Viruses?
Although it is unclear what exactly lets the viruses know that the immune system is compromised or otherwise occupied, there is now an increasing pool of data that strongly correlates the reactivation of previous viruses and a COVID-19 infection or even vaccination.
For example, in the journal Cell, scientists published a study that followed around 300 COVID-19 patients and tested their blood serum for viral fragments including from the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), the Cytomegalovirus (CMV), as well as SARS-CoV-2 itself.
The researchers recorded fragment levels two to three weeks after clinical diagnosis of COVID-19, two to three weeks after acute disease onset, and two to three months after initial symptoms. The researchers found that although viral fragment levels of other diseases were never higher than that of SARS-CoV-2, EBV fragment levels were still quite high.
Then, is this due to coinfection of COVID and EBV, or reactivation of latent EBV after COVID infection?
Actually, studies have found that the fluctuation patterns of antiviral IgG levels can indicate whether this is coinfection or reactivation of latent EBV.
So, there are two major differences: one is that IgG antibody levels against viral capsid protein (VCA IgG) will be low during the initial one to two days of infection, while VCA IgG will start from a high level if it is a reactivation case.
The second difference is that the IgG against nuclear antigen (NA protein) will have a slow curve to increase its level if it is related to acute EBV infection on top of COVID, but the NA IgG will start from medium to high level if it is a reactivation of latent EBV.
Long COVID and Virus Reactivation
COVID-19 sometimes leads to an infamous syndrome called long covid, also known as post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC). Long covid patients often experience “unremitting fatigue, post-exertional malaise, and a variety of cognitive and autonomic dysfunctions” for a prolonged period of time.
This means that the immune system is under a terrific amount of stress struggling with these symptoms, which some scientists speculated to be quite the precursor to the reactivation of various hibernating viruses.
In a cross-sectional study, 215 participants were analyzed for key features that distinguished long COVID.
The results were surprising in the sense that many antibody responses were raised against not only SARS-CoV-2, but also other viruses such as EBV and VZV.
Using a process called rapid extracellular antigen profiling (or REAP), scientists were able to identify an elevated REAP score for many viruses belonging to the family herpesviridae, indicating that these viruses were reactivated during a COVID-19 infection.
Long COVID is known to cause a lot of issues even disregarding the reactivation of previous viruses, but what about the COVID-19 vaccines? Will they cause something similar?
Can the Jabs Reactivate Viruses as Well?
COVID-19 vaccines simulate the COVID-19 infection in a special way and force the immune system to adaptively react to it.
During the time when the immune system is processing the vaccine, it effectively redirects the attention of a lot of the naïve CD-8 T-killer cells to the COVID-19 spike proteins, and might leave a fleeting moment for some viruses from past infections to resurface.
The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV or mono) is ubiquitous in the global population and usually doesn’t cause a lot of trouble. Only in patients with severe immune deficiencies, such as after an organ transplant, will EBV lead to severe or even fatal complications.
One study looked at patients with an organ transplant history and analyzed their EBV fragment levels before and after receiving a full course of COVID-19 vaccination. They found that EBV levels in this category of patients were significantly higher after vaccination.
Another case study related to EBV analyzed its reactivation in a young and healthy man after he was administered a COVID-19 vaccine. This was the first case of EBV reactivation in a healthy, immunocompetent adult post-COVID-19 vaccination. These incidences indicate a strong correlation between the vaccine and dormant virus reactivation.
According to the REAP data above, shingles or herpes zoster (HZ) was another virus that correlates to COVID-19 in terms of reactivation. An Indian case study analyzed 10 cases of shingles directly after the COVID-19 vaccine, where the onset of symptoms occurred within 21 days post-vaccination.
In the study, 80 percent of the patients in the study didn’t have any other factors which might have led to the reactivation. Two patients, who had diabetes as the only other possible factor, already had it well under control before the vaccination. This is not the only case report in relation to shingles.
An article published in The Lancet reveals that 16 and 27 cases of shingles were discovered after the administration of CoronaVac (Sinopharm) and BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech) vaccines when analyzing vaccination records from the Hong Kong Department of Health. The study concluded that shingles would likely occur in about seven or eight in 1 million doses administered. A more systematic case report which summarized 91 cases of post-vaccine HZ found that the mean symptom onset time was just under six days, with hypertension as the most common comorbidity and autoimmune conditions being fairly prevalent among the patients.
Data from the WHO global safety database shows that there are already over 7000 cases of HZ found worldwide, meaning that this is not an isolated issue.
By May 2022, the United States Vaccine Adverse Event Report System (VAERS) has already reported 4,577 cases of HZ post-vaccination, and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MRHA) of Great Britain reported 2,527 HZ cases. It is important to note that HZ is likely an underreported occurrence as a post-vaccination complication.
Other viruses mentioned in the beginning, such as the Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and the cancer-inducing Kaposi’s Sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus (KSHV) have also seen case reports or studies that document their reactivation after the administration of anti-COVID-19 drugs. Scientists are even discussing whether SARS-CoV-2 itself can embed itself in humans only to become reactivated in the unforeseeable future, but it is generally too early to tell.
The hotly contested issue at hand is how we should treat the issue of vaccination for those at risk of having their old diseases “rise from the dead” or “wake up from hibernation.” The discussion of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), which raises the risk of booster vaccines causing more severe illness than otherwise, begs the question of whether vaccines effectively lead to easier infections, whether COVID or old viruses and diseases.
It is important to note that the studies validate the correlation between the COVID-19 infection or vaccine and the reactivation of various viruses from their dormant period, but it is in no way meant to indicate causation.
However, there needs to be a well-calibrated balance between administering vaccines to individual groups with different risk factors.
The official guidelines are to get the elderly vaccinated first in order to protect them from strong ramifications as a result of a COVID-19 infection. It is true that most coronavirus deaths are from that age group and that the elderly suffer the most under this virus.
However, we have to keep in mind that, empirically, this age group is precisely the group at high risk of having other viruses reactivated when their immune system has a burden to face.
This is why a delicate balance of risks and benefits must be maintained when operating under the assumption and guise of prevention and protection.
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28 November, 2022
Finally! The Vindication of the Anti-Vaxxer
Lawrence Johnson comments:
On the evening of October 30th, 1938, 23-year-old Orson Welles began a broadcast at 8pm entitled “War Of The Worlds,” that changed America forever.
That Saturday night, millions of listeners were tuned in as Welles’ program depicted an attack by invaders from Mars landing on a farm in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. The actual fake news managed to fool millions.
In 2020, 82 years after Welles’ famous broadcast, America fell for an even greater hoax- COVID-19, a.k.a. Coronavirus.
Originally known as the China-Virus and the Wuhan flu due its geographical origin (or WuFlu as Kevin Jackson coined it), it quickly gained steam due to its flu-like symptoms, its spreadable, contagious abilities and solid, unending support from most media outlets. Although it was not the deadliest Pandemic/virus, nor even the first COVID (hence the number 19), it was perpetuated as such. Within days of the breakout reports, we began to see the COVID effect.
Long Lines and Sold-out Signs
Everywhere you looked, lines were forming around corners as limitations on basic food items such as milk, eggs and even bread were sternly being enforced. Shelves were emptying out all over the United States as hand sanitizer, toilet paper, paper towels, dry goods, canned goods, and cases of water were being purchased literally by the truckload.
Despite the questionable writing on the wall of oversaturation, America by-and-large came to a virtual
halt. Billions were spent on PPE protective gear and plastic dividers to separate us from this invisible threat. However, while schools, churches and small businesses were shut down (in many cases never to re-open), bars, cannabis establishments and abortion clinics like Planned Parenthood and its outlets remained up, open, and
operational.
Many states and municipalities paid the ultimate price, losing thousands daily by emptying their shops and streets of consumers and patrons who would otherwise share their hard-earned money.
While there were millions of deaths attributed to COVID, several factors became blatantly apparent very soon:
?Those that were dying of COVID had pre-existing conditions.
?The common-cold, Influenza, and Pneumonia cases instantly became extinct- now EVERYTHING was COVID.
?Not one adult or child’s death to date had been factually attributed directly to COVID.
?Masks were virtually ineffective.
?Vaccines were producing unmistakable side-effects.
?30 days did not slow the spread; 6 feet did not prevent it.
?Rioters and mob groups did not fall under the same restrictions as other gatherings.
More to the Story
All these factors soon revealed themselves as components of a much larger narrative. In fact, though California’s population was twenty million greater than Florida, the Sunshine state’s only temporary closure versus the Golden State’s year’s long lockdowns resulted in negligible differences in the respective death tolls.
As a result of the insanity, it wasn’t long before America revealed just how divided she truly was. Stories of fights and shoppers being harassed and accosted for not wearing masks by those by those did. Court cases that continue to this day over employees in various industries including the military, hospital nurses and staff fighting to either retain their jobs or to get them back after being fired for refusing to get a non-FDA-approved vaccine.
Then, as suddenly as the panic had begun- it was over. As the election mid-terms approached, the tide began a most abrupt turn. The mask mandates were eroding. COVID rules had now become guidelines. The reports calling COVID refuters’ stories disinformation and misinformation, now ran alongside those that simply disagreed with the lockdowns and regulations.
It was as if it was all a bad dream.
On Saturday, November 5th, 2022, however- the antivaxxer was vindicated- and slapped in the face at the same time. On that night, SNL (a.k.a. Saturday Night Live) performed a skit entitled “Thanks COVID.”
Today.com framed it this way: The sketch, tweeted by the “Saturday Night Live” account on Nov. 6, shows three people who tested positive for COVID-19 enjoying, as the voiceover calls it, a “guaranteed … five and sometimes even 10-day vacation from all of life’s problems.” One of the characters grabs a backpack and heads to a cabin; another spends the week in her bed, not working but still getting paid by her employer; and a third stays at home alone after her husband leaves with three rowdy kids. “I needed a break, just some time away from everyone, so my doctor suggested I get COVID, and it was the greatest week of my life,” one character tells the camera.
“At first, I was worried about getting COVID, but my doctor assured me it’s fine that I’m triple vaxxed, quadruple if you count HPV,” says another. Then the voiceover quips, “Side effects of COVID include having COVID, which is still kind of bad, but doesn’t it seem different now?” One character explains that her symptoms were like a bad cold, and shortly after, the sketch references a few telltale long COVID signs. “There might be long-term memory problems, but that would honestly be amazing because there’s so much, I want to forget,” one actor says. “My brain’s already really bad. If it gets 10% worse but I don’t have to talk to a single person for a week, I’ll take that deal in a horse beat,” adds another, poking fun at brain fog, which can causes challenges with language.
“COVID, go ahead, you deserve a break,” the ad concludes.”
While those in the Mainstream media feigned gasps of disbelief, shock, and awe, many of us in America collectively rolled our eyes at the fact that an exceptionally large cat was released from an enormous bag. Despite all the masks, double-masks, double, and even triple vaxxing and boosting, the locking-down of offices, schools, churches, restricted weddings, funerals and hospital visits, of family members and neighbors snitching on each other- the truth was revealed by the same group that manufactured, pushed and perpetuated the lie: the COVID scare was a hoax.
Real Virus, Fake Hype
It’s not that real lives weren’t lost, because that was certainly true. However, lives through other diseases were lost as well- many times over. Through the words of that skit, MSM reminded us all how easily we fell for something innocuous to most of us. In the words of the late Winston Churchill, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Though Churchill’s point was to find a silver lining in even the darkest clouds, there are those like ex-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others that likened that statement to milking all the money, power and control out of every crisis that came across their collective desks.
This was the latest hoax- but not the last. In fact, this hoax was birthed out of a sea of lies and deception in its adolescence. The point: this will get worse before it gets better. Because absolute power corrupts absolutely, the free pass that those “pimping” the COVID scare narrative will eventually try this again. The only way through is for us to start paying attention.
Much like when magicians lose their “magic” after the cards up their sleeves are revealed, or how Oz the Great was not so Powerful once they saw the man behind the curtain, we must be apprehensive to believe, or worse, to blindly act on what we’re being told. Unfortunately, the results of the Mid-term elections show that many of us are still not paying attention. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Be advised, no matter how it looks, the next “trick” is right around the corner with no “treat” in sight. You’ve been warned.
https://theblacksphere.net/2022/11/finally-the-vindication-of-the-anti-vaxxer/
***********************************************Public Health Leaders, Scientists Owe Americans Apology for Harms of Lockdowns: Dr. Scott Atlas
Americans have lost their trust in science, and it can’t be repaired without public health leaders and scientists admitting and apologizing for their wrongs during the pandemic, said former White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Scott Atlas.
While serving in the Trump administration’s pandemic task force in 2020, Atlas was attacked by the mainstream media and academia over his advocacy for “focused protection,” a strategy aimed to speed up herd immunity and minimize collateral damage by allowing the virus to spread freely among younger, healthier Americans while keeping the older, more vulnerable population from getting infected. The ensuing Biden administration ended up rejecting that strategy in favor of widespread lockdowns in an attempt to control the virus transmission.
Public health leaders like Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, as well as academics who supported lockdown measures, have left behind a harmful legacy that Americans are still grappling with today, Atlas said.
“Their legacy is: number one, the history’s biggest public health failure; number two, massive avoidable deaths in society’s most vulnerable; and number three, ongoing enormous health damages to low-income families and to children,” Atlas told The Epoch times in a recent interview.
“They have created a severe loss of trust in public health and science, and left us as a public in a situation where we cannot trust guidance,” he added. “Because the experts have been exposed—like in the story, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’—as being non-expert, politicized, and simply unfit to hold the public trust.”
According to the latest survey by Pew Research Center, just 29 percent of American adults say they have “a great deal of confidence” in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public, down from 43 percent who said so in April 2020, when state and local governments started to roll out lockdown measures in accordance to federal guidelines.
This eroded trust can be rebuilt, Atlas said, but public health officials and academic experts have to first admit that the lockdowns have not only failed to stop the spread of the virus or reduce the number of deaths, but also added suffering to low-income families and children.
“Trusted is granted by privilege from the citizens of this country,” he told The Epoch Times. “We need a public admission from Dr. Fauci, Dr. Burks, and the university scientists who supported their policies. We need a public admission of error and an apology. That’s the first step in restoring the trust that they squandered.
When asked about the proposal of “pandemic amnesty,” which asks Americans to forgive decisions made with a lack of understanding of the virus, Atlas said he “completely disagrees” with the idea, which apparently is based on a “false premise.”
For example, it was already known in the spring of 2020 that healthy children had an extremely low risk of becoming severely ill or dying from COVID. The fact that school closures and social isolation were leading to a dramatic rise in mental illness, suicides, and drug abuse among children and adolescents was also known at that point, he added. Yet the schools remained closed in some of the nation’s largest public school districts.
What Americans need, according to Atlas, is not amnesty, but accountability.
“We need to not turn the page, we need an investigation—an non-partisan exposure of what happened,” he said. “Only public accountability will prevent the repetition of this heinous, destructive policy by those in power.”
Atlas pointed to several of the Biden administration’s public health policies, which are still in place despite not being backed by science or reason.
“We are the only country of civilized nations in the world that still requires proof of vaccination to enter this country,” he said. “This is bizarre, particularly since well over 90 percent of Americans have already had COVID. This is simply nonsensical.
“We have a government leadership that continues to insist there’s a public health emergency when there is not a public health emergency. We have a government leadership that’s allowing emergency use authorization of an experimental vaccine on infants and children,” he added. “So we are still in a country that is denying science.”
“We need good people, rational people to have the courage to rise up and speak up, as you are expected to do in a free ethical society.”
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27 November, 2022
Fauci Defended Lockdowns During Deposition, Said China Was the Inspiration
A top U.S. health official who publicly backed lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic defended his position during a deposition on Nov. 23, according to people who were present for the questioning.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, also said the inspiration for the lockdowns was communist-run China, one of the people said.
Fauci sat for the seven-hour deposition in Bethesda, Maryland, where the headquarters for the institute’s parent agency are located.
He was forced to answer questions under oath on orders from a federal judge who is set to decide whether the government should be blocked from pressuring Big Tech firms into censoring posts and users.
While Fauci often could not recall actions he took during the pandemic, he did talk about his role in advocating for lockdowns.
Fauci said that Dr. Clifford Lane, a deputy director at the NIAID, reported back to him after Lane went to China soon in early 2020, a few months after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan.
Lane reported China appeared to be controlling the COVID-19 virus through harsh lockdowns, and Fauci soon decided the United States needed to emulate China, at least to an extent, according to Jenin Younes, one of the lawyers present for the deposition.
“This is what we had to do. There were freezer trucks in New York full of bodies,” Fauci said, Younes told The Epoch Times.
New York was hit hardest by the pandemic. Critics say that unusual policies, such as one that forced nursing homes to accept people who tested positive for COVID-19, led to the elevated number of deaths. Tens of thousands of people died in New York nursing homes with COVID-19.
Chinese officials, meanwhile, told residents in various areas to remain inside their homes, and forced many to comply by barricading their doors. China is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, which regularly commits human rights abuses against Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, and others.
“The question of human rights didn’t factor in” to Fauci’s mindset, according to Younes, a lawyer with the New Civil Liberties Alliance who is representing some of the plaintiffs in the case.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican, also said that Fauci defended the lockdowns while answering questions under oath this week.
Fauci and NIAID have not responded to requests for comment on the deposition. Lane, who wrote in a February 2020 email (pdf) that “China has demonstrated this infection can be controlled, albeit at great cost,” declined to comment.
Lane was also part of the World Health Organization team that, along with Chinese scientists, called for countries to “Prepare to immediately activate the highest level of emergency response mechanisms to trigger the all-of-government and all-of society approach that is essential for early containment of a COVID-19 outbreak” in a February 2020 report (pdf).
Backed Harsh Measures
Fauci, who helped lead the federal government response to the pandemic during President Donald Trump’s administration, repeatedly backed harsh measures that were believed to help contain COVID-19.
In early 2020, for instance, Fauci said on CNN that he supported policies that would lead to “a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in restaurants and in bars.”
“For a while, life is not going to be the way it used to be in the United States,” he said on Fox News around the same time. “We have to just accept that if we want to do what’s best for the American public.”
Fauci was successful in convincing Trump to advocate for “15 days to slow the spread,” according to accounts from Dr. Deborah Birx and others who worked closely with the doctor. Birx said in her book, “No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it.”
The federal government later added additional weeks to their recommendations, which triggered mass closures of schools and private businesses on orders from governors across the United States.
Multiple governors, including South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, soon balked at the recommendations, though the harsh measures continued in a number of states into 2021.
Studies have since identified the measures as contributing to jumps in suicides, mental health crises, learning loss, and delayed health treatments.
Fauci did not express regret during the deposition for helping trigger the lockdowns, Younes said. Fauci has claimed publicly that he never recommended lockdowns.
Could Not Remember Specifics
Fauci’s NIAID gave grants to the high-level laboratory located in the same Chinese city where the first COVID-19 cases appeared. Some experts believed early on that the illness stemmed from a laboratory accident or purposeful release, but Fauci has repeatedly said all evidence points to a natural origin.
Scientists, though, have never been able to pinpoint such an origin.
Fauci was told early on by top U.S. health officials that a natural origin was “highly unlikely,” while several other scientists told Fauci during a call that the odds were the virus emerged from a lab, according to documents that emerged later in the pandemic.
Those same scientists later penned an influential paper that was widely cited, including by Fauci, in dismissing the lab origin theory. Fauci neglected to reveal his role in shaping the paper.
That private call on Feb. 1, 2020, which included experts from multiple countries, was brought up during the deposition but Fauci said he could not recall the specifics of the discussion, according to Younes.
“He claimed that he couldn’t [recall] the contents of the call, nothing specific,” Younes said. “That was the theme. Everything was ‘I can’t remember anything specific.’ What he does is he says he can’t remember anything specific … so if he’s confronted with something then he could say ‘well, I didn’t lie. I just couldn’t recall.'”
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who was also at the deposition, told The Epoch Times that Fauci could not recall “practically anything” when questioned on his actions during the pandemic.
Censorship
The case that led to the deposition alleges the government violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment by pressuring Big Tech firms to censor users.
Documents produced in discovery show government officials repeatedly urging companies to take action against certain users and certain posts, alleging efforts against purported misinformation and disinformation weren’t sufficient. Some officials made similar statements in public, including Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a Biden appointee. The government has said the documents do not show First Amendment violations, and has asked for the case to be dismissed.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee overseeing the case, said while ordering the depositions that emails “prove that Dr. Fauci was communicating and acting as an intermediary for others in order to censor information from being shared across multiple social-media outlets.”
Fauci “has yet to give any statements under oath in this matter,” Doughty said, adding that “the Court has no doubt that Dr. Fauci was engaging in communications with high-ranking social-media officials, which is extremely relevant in the matter at hand,” and that all three points showed any burden Fauci would face for a deposition was outweighed by the importance of the allegations.
Fauci told lawyers in the deposition that he doesn’t use social media and does not have anything to do with it, according to Younes.
She represents two of the three co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a 2020 document that challenged the prevailing view that the COVID-19 response needed to include abnormal actions such as school closures in favor of focusing on protecting the high-risk groups, including the elderly.
“I was too busy running a six billion institute to be concerned about things like the Great Barrington Declaration,” Fauci was quoted as saying in the deposition.
But publically released emails show Fauci and his boss at the time, Dr. Francis Collins, were concerned about the declaration. Collins told Fauci he wanted a “quick and devastating published takedown of its premises,” and Fauci sent over an article from Wired that he claimed “debunks this theory.” Fauci said in one email the theory reminded him of “AIDS denialism.” Fauci also spoke publicly against what he interpreted as the document’s main thrust, which he described as “let things rip and let the infection go,” and has stood by his criticism into 2022.
The National Institutes of Health, which Collins led at the time, cited Wikipedia when asked for a source for the claims against the declaration.
“I think he obviously knew what the crux of the lawsuit was and claimed sort of upfront that it’s his opinion that the best way to deal with bad ideas is more speech rather than trying to censor, so I think he was trying to get in front of any allegation,” Younes said of the deposition.
Fauci’s belief was that Collins calling for a “takedown” meant “offering an article refuting it,” Younes added.
Fauci also denied that any of his conversations with Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, dealt with censorship.
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25 November, 2022
‘Died suddenly’
Roberto Garin was only 52 when he ‘died suddenly’ on 28 July last year. The healthy father of two teenagers began feeling ill 48 hours after his first Pfizer shot and dropped dead in front of his terrified wife Kirsti six days later while she was on the phone to paramedics.
Garin’s family immediately suspected the vaccine caused his death. Kirsti was told her husband was the first person to die after a Pfizer shot. In fact, 176 deaths following Pfizer jabs had already been reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, starting in the first week of the vaccine rollout.
But when Kirsti shared her concerns with filmmaker Alan Hashem, who released the video together with the accounts of other vaccine injuries and deaths, it unleashed a storm.
‘Misinformation researchers’ published by the ABC dismissed Kirsti’s ‘claims her 52-year-old husband died from “sudden onset myocarditis” after receiving the Pfizer vaccine’ because it didn’t ‘square with official data’.
Yet that was exactly what forensic pathologist Bernard l’Ons wrote in a brilliant report on his autopsy stating that the deceased’s heart showed a clear transition to severe giant cell myocarditis that could be ‘histologically dated to the time period of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccination’ and it was ‘reasonable to state that the deceased’s previously undiagnosed cardiac sarcoidosis may have transitioned to a fulminating myocarditis as a result of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination’ noting that myocarditis had been reported in reactions to the Pfizer vaccine. L’Ons proposed a mechanism by which the vaccine could trigger fatal myocarditis and advised that a possible therapeutic implication was that sarcoid patients be given an echocardiogram to detect whether their heart was affected in which case alternative vaccination types could be considered.
All of this was ignored by [Australia's] TGA which refuses to admit to this day that any death can be attributed to a Pfizer vaccine and was parroted by the ABC. The TGA did admit that as of 22 August it had received ‘235 reports of suspected myocarditis, (inflammation of the heart muscle) and/or pericarditis (inflammation of the membrane around the heart) following vaccination’ with Pfizer but said, ‘These reports reflect the observations of the people reporting them and have not been confirmed as having been caused by the vaccine,’ and that ‘some events may be coincidental and would have happened anyway, regardless of vaccination.’
This is a particularly misleading statement. Four out of five reports to the TGA are submitted not by random ‘people’, but by highly qualified health professionals and in Garin’s case by a forensic pathologist.
Why would the TGA dismiss these reports? That’s a question Associate Professor Michael Nissen could perhaps shed light on. He was appointed to the TGA in February 2021, just as the Covid-19 vaccines were rolled out, to lead its Signal Investigation Unit which investigates safety issues that arise with vaccines in adverse reports or are raised by international regulators or the medical literature.
Prior to his appointment, Nissen was the Director of Scientific Affairs and Public Health at GSK Vaccines from October 2014 to January 2021, a period during which GSK and Pfizer entered into a joint venture. Nissen worked concurrently in hospital-based medical care and academia. He has led over 40 clinical trials and authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications including vaccine studies. In all these areas pharmaceutical companies are a major source of funding.
The TGA is sensitive about managing conflicts of interest for advisory committee members but offers no guidance on its website with regard to staff members although presumably the same principles should, at least in theory, apply. It notes that shares, involvement in clinical trials, employment, contracts, consultancies, grants, sponsorships, board memberships and so on, may give rise to a conflict of interest.
Robert Clancy, an Emeritus Professor of Pathology at the University of Newcastle Medical School and a member of the Australian Academy of Science’s Covid-19 Expert Database wrote in Quadrant online last week that ‘the power of the pharmaceutical industry and its pervasive influence at every level of political and medical decision-making’ has been underestimated in shaping the pandemic narrative which has been driven by commercial imperatives to such an extent that it has crushed scientific debate.
Clancy recounts that his approach to the College of Pathology (of which he was a Senior Fellow, a foundation Professor of Pathology, and past-Chairman of the College committee for undergraduate pathology education) calling for a national study to determine whether Covid vaccination was responsible for the increase in excess mortality in Australia and elsewhere by developing a protocol for post-mortems ‘to answer what is arguably the most important question facing medicine’ met with a rejection and a suggestion to take it instead to the TGA.
Nowadays, dying suddenly has become ominously familiar. According to a new film Died Suddenly available as of this week to stream via Twitter, in the last 18 months, the term ‘Died Suddenly’ has risen to the very top of ‘most searched’ Google terms. The film documents the surge in excess mortality in highly vaccinated countries. Dr. Peter McCullough, internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and one of the top five most-published, and most censored, medical researchers in the US, says that sudden death frequently occurs because the heart has been damaged by inflammation caused by Covid vaccines.
Papers that Pfizer and the Food and Drug Administration tried to hide for 75 years show that Pfizer knew in 2020 that myocarditis and pericarditis could be caused by its vaccine.
And in the Pfizer trial in Argentina, a report on a healthy 36-year old participant – Augusto German Roux – who developed pericarditis immediately after his second Pfizer jab, mysteriously disappeared from the published trial results.
The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) and the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ) belatedly published a warning about myocarditis and pericarditis in September this year.
It was too late for Garin. Had his doctors known, his life might have been saved. His grieving family have still not received a cent in compensation. But Pfizer has apparently grossed nearly $100 billion from its sales of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/died-suddenly/
********************************************************Cardiologist calls for an end to mNRA booster shots - as teen, 18, tells how her reaction to the jab saw her miss her Year 12 exams:
A teenage schoolgirl has revealed how she had to miss her HSC exams after a mandatory Covid jab left her with an agonising heart condition for months.
Now a Sydney cardiologist has called for an end to the use of mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna, after seeing a rise in jab-related heart conditions.
Monica Eskandar, 18, was rushed to hospital with terrifying chest pains just hours after her first Covid vaccination in September last year.
Doctors later diagnosed her with pericarditis, a condition linked with mRNA Covid jabs like Pfizer and Moderna, which causes painful inflammation of the heart lining.
'Getting Covid is ten times worse than getting vaccinated - but we don't need to use mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna,' cardiologist Dr Ross Walker told Daily Mail Australia.
'We have to put COVID in perspective where it is right now, not where it was 12 months ago, because it has changed and I think we are seeing a change.'
The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation last year mandated mRNA vaccines for all booster shots unless it's specifically dangerous for individuals.
But Dr Walker said he has no idea why. 'We have alternatives like AstraZeneca and Novavax which are just as good,' he said.
'I've seen many people getting vaccine reactions, who get symptoms for about three to six months afterwards.
'I’ve seen 60-70 patients in my own practice over the past 12 months who have had similar reactions.
'I’ve seen other people with chest pain, shortness of breath, heart palpitations.'
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FDA Says Telling People Not to Take Ivermectin for COVID-19 Was Just a Recommendation
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) guidance for people to “stop” taking ivermectin for COVID-19 was informal and just a recommendation, government lawyers argued during a recent hearing.
“The cited statements were not directives. They were not mandatory. They were recommendations. They said what parties should do. They said, for example, why you should not take ivermectin to treat COVID-19. They did not say you may not do it, you must not do it. They did not say it’s prohibited or it’s unlawful. They also did not say that doctors may not prescribe ivermectin,” Isaac Belfer, one of the lawyers, said during a Nov. 1 hearing in federal court in Texas.
“They use informal language, that is true. It’s conversational but not mandatory.”
The hearing was held in a case brought by three doctors who say the FDA illegally interfered with their ability to prescribe medicine to their patients when it issued statements on ivermectin, an anti-parasitic that has shown positive results in some trials against COVID-19.
Ivermectin is approved by the FDA but not for COVID-19. Drugs are commonly used for nonapproved purposes in the United States; the practice is known as an off-label treatment.
The FDA created a webpage in 2021 titled “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19” and later posted a link to the page on Twitter while writing: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
A second post stated: “Hold your horses, y’all. Ivermectin may be trending, but it still isn’t authorized or approved to treat COVID-19.”
On a separate page, the FDA stated: “Q: Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? A: No.”
Those actions interfered with the doctors’ practice of medicine, violating the laws including the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the lawsuit alleges.
It asked the court to rule the actions unlawful and bar the FDA from directing or opining as to whether ivermectin should be used to treat COVID-19.
Jared Kelson, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, told the court during the hearing that that informal claim “doesn’t explain the language they actually used: ‘Stop it. Stop it with the ivermectin.'”
The FDA’s actions “clearly convey that this is not an acceptable way to treat these patients,” he argued.
Plaintiffs in the case include Dr. Paul Marik, who began utilizing ivermectin in his COVID-19 treatment protocol in 2020 while he was chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School and director of the intensive care unit at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
After the FDA’s statements, Marik was told to remove the protocol from the school’s servers while Sentara issued a memorandum to hospitals telling them to stop using ivermectin against COVID-19, with a citation to the FDA.
Marik was forced to resign from his positions because he couldn’t prescribe ivermectin because of the FDA’s statements, the suit alleges.
The government has moved to dismiss the complaint, asserting plaintiffs lack standing because the injuries can’t be traced back to the FDA.
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24 November, 2022
Cardiologists Come to the Same Conclusion Regarding COVID Jab Side Effects
“The Covid mRNA vaccine has likely played a significant role or been a primary cause of unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure since 2021…”
Until the British cardiologist, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, expressed grave concern about the safety of Covid mRNA vaccines, he was one of the most celebrated doctors in Britain. In 2016 he was named in the Sunday Times Debrett’s list as one of the most influential people in science and medicine in the UK in a list that included Professor Stephen Hawking. His total Altmetric score (measure of impact and reach) of his medical journal publications since 2013 is over 10,000 making it one of the highest in the World for a clinical doctor during this period.
In the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Britain, he advocated the injections for the general public. However, in July of 2021, he experienced a terrible personal loss that caused him to reevaluate the shots—namely, the sudden and unexpected death of his 73-year-old father. His father’s death made no sense to him because he knew from his own examination that his father’s general and cardiac health were excellent. As he put it in a recent interview:
His postmortem findings really shocked me. There were two severe blockages in his coronary arteries, which didn’t really make any sense with everything I know, both as a cardiologist—someone who has expertise in this particular area—but also intimately knowing my dad’s lifestyle and his health. Not long after that, data started to emerge that suggested a possible link between the mRNA vaccine and increased risk of heart attacks from a mechanism of increasing inflammation around the coronary arteries. But on top of that, I was contacted by a whistleblower at a very prestigious university in the UK, a cardiologist himself, who explained to me that there was a similar research finding in his department, and that those researchers had decided to essentially cover that up because they were worried about losing funding from the pharmaceutical industry. But it doesn’t stop there. I then started looking at data in the UK to see if there had been any increase in cardiac arrest. My dad suffered a cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death at home. Had there been any change in the UK since the vaccine rollout? And again those findings were very clear. There’s been an extra 14,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests in 2021 vs 2020.
The more Dr. Malhotra looked into it, the more he felt the same concern about the safety of the mRNA vaccines that Dr. Peter McCullough had felt since the spring of 2021. The alarming incidence of sudden, unexpected deaths during the latter half of 2021 and the first eight months of 2022—especially among the young and fit—strengthened his grave concern and suspicion.
In September of 2022,—after a thorough investigation of the growing volume of data—he came to his conclusion:
The Covid mRNA vaccine has likely played a significant role or been a primary cause of unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure since 2021 until proven otherwise.
His conclusion, including his precise verbal formulation of it, was identical to the conclusion drawn by Dr. Peter McCullough. Though the two doctors ultimately established contact to compare notes, they reached their conclusions based on their own, independent inquiries, before they spoke with each other.
Recently the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation produced Until Proven Otherwise— a short video documentary about the corroborating findings of these two leading cardiologists. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the gripping, four-minute video is a MUST SEE for everyone. Please share it with your family and friends.
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Why Do So Many COVID Sufferers Reject Paxlovid?
Paxlovid is a paradoxlovid. The game-changing antiviral swooped in during the pandemic’s worst winter with the promise of slowing COVID deaths to a trickle. But since it became widely available this spring, death rates have hardly budged.
According to the White House, the problem is not the drug but the fact that too few people are taking it. A recent CDC report found that from April to July, less than one-third of America’s 80-plus-year-olds with COVID ended up taking Paxlovid, even though they had the most to gain from doing so. What gives? Some Americans may be having trouble accessing Paxlovid, but clearly, a significant proportion of patients and doctors are just saying no to antiviral drugs. There are no national statistics on Paxlovid refusal, so I talked with physicians around the country to learn more about their motivations. Who are the anti-Paxxers, and how dangerous is their dogma?
First things first: Paxlovid hesitancy does seem to be political, but that’s not the whole story. As a rule, fewer prescriptions of the drug are given out per capita in red states than in blue ones: Wyoming, for example, appears to be the nation’s leading anti-Paxxer state, with just one course of treatment given out for every 125 residents; in Rhode Island, the most Pax-enthusiastic state, it’s one in 28. (I’m using courses of treatment per capita rather than per COVID case because of the general unreliability of case data these days and differences in testing and reporting practices among states.)
Still, clinicians working in deep-red parts of the country told me that, on this matter at least, their patients are not significantly divided by politics. “Republicans and Democrats both love Paxlovid,” says Jason Bronner, the medical director of primary care at St. Luke’s Medical System, in Idaho. Some 20 to 30 percent of his COVID patients decline to take the drug, he told me, but they don’t appear to be driven by the same polarized attitudes he sees around vaccines. Jessica Kalender-Rich, a geriatrician at the University of Kansas Health System, told me that she still gets occasional requests for ivermectin, and that some of her patients insist that COVID is a hoax. But the ones who outright refuse Paxlovid are not obsessing over microchips or government overreach. Instead, they mostly tell her that they’re worried about treatment side effects and rebound infections of the virus.
Rebound COVID came up again and again when I asked doctors why their patients are hesitant to take Paxlovid. The link between the drug and a return of symptoms after an initial recovery has been the subject of much concern and debate since the spring; just last week, researchers reported in a study that has not yet been peer-reviewed that symptom rebound is more than twice as common among Paxlovid takers than among those who decline it. The fact that so many prominent figures in the federal government—including President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, and White House Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci—have now had rebound certainly doesn’t help inspire confidence. One of Kalender-Rich’s patients specifically cited Fauci’s experience when refusing the drug. (The next day, the patient felt worse and accepted a prescription.)
Rebound may not be dangerous, but you have to admit that it doesn’t sound like a good time. “People will say, ‘I’d rather be really sick for four or five days than just kind of sick for two weeks,’” says Adam Fiterstein, the chief of urgent care at the New York medical network ProHealth. The threat of rebound might be especially scary for geriatric patients and their family, because it means spending more time alone. “For some of these older adults, that isolation time is actually way worse than the virus at this point in the pandemic,” Kalender-Rich said. Paxlovid mouth—a bitter, metallic taste that can last throughout the course of treatment—can also be a concern for the elderly, who may already suffer from lack of appetite or other issues that restrict their eating.
Drug interactions are another source of worry for the anti-Paxxers. Official COVID-treatment guidelines warn that the antiviral may have ill effects when combined with any of more than 100 other medications. Geriatric patients in particular might need to tweak their daily regimens of pills while under treatment with Paxlovid, Kalender-Rich told me. That’s hardly ever a problem medically, she said, but some people are still reluctant to make the change, especially if a previous doctor told them to never, ever skip a dose.
These potential downsides are extra salient for people who don’t fear COVID like they used to. The patients who refuse Paxlovid are the ones who are doing well, Bronner said: “They don’t feel totally sick and are not scared like they were in previous waves.” Hundreds of Americans are still dying daily from COVID, but any given community might have seen only a handful of severe cases and deaths since the spring. Many patients “don’t feel like they need to take a medicine, because their neighbor was fine,” Kalender-Rich said.
Doctors too can be anti-Paxxers. Hans Duvefelt, a primary-care physician in rural Maine, won’t prescribe Paxlovid to his patients. He told me via email that he avoids it on account of rebound risk, side effects, kidney concerns, and drug interactions. “Paxlovid is an inferior choice,” he said, when compared with molnupiravir, another COVID antiviral. To be clear, the data hold that molnupiravir is less effective than Paxlovid at preventing hospitalization and death. Also, a June preprint found that patients treated with molnupiravir rebounded at least as often as those treated with Paxlovid. Duvefelt did not respond to follow-up questions, so I couldn’t ask him about these data.
Other doctors believe in the good Paxlovid can do but still struggle with the decision to prescribe. “This is a much more nuanced risk-benefit discussion than giving somebody amoxicillin for strep throat,” Jeremy Cauwels, the chief physician at Sanford Health in South Dakota, told me. “If you’re looking at that as an ER doctor, who by definition has no follow-up with the patient, it’s very hard to say, ‘I’m going to give you a drug that interacts with lots of medications.’” Persistent uncertainty about exactly how much Paxlovid helps people who are up to date on their COVID shots doesn’t help.
Regardless of what’s causing Paxlovid hesitancy, the exact stakes are difficult to define. Last month, Ashish Jha, the Biden administration’s COVID-19 response coordinator, told The New York Times that daily deaths from the pandemic could drop by almost 90 percent if every COVID patient over the age of 50 were treated with Paxlovid or monoclonal antibodies. The doctors I spoke with mostly didn’t dispute this; Kalender-Rich said she “would believe a number closer to 75 percent” but agreed with the general sentiment. That said, none of the doctors I spoke with could point me toward any specific cases where one of their patients refused Paxlovid only to end up severely ill or dead. And no one knows how many deaths could be reduced specifically by attacking anti-Paxxer beliefs as opposed to, say, removing barriers to access and encouraging more testing.
Because anti-Paxxerism appears to be less organized and ideological than anti-vaxxerism, some favored strategies to combat the latter—targeting influencers on social media, for example—might not work. The doctors I spoke with said that the best venue for changing minds is the exam room. “It really comes down to a face-to-face conversation” about the risks and benefits of the drug, Cauwels said: “Our patients still trust us enough to have that conversation.”
Pax-hesitant providers, on the other hand, may just need a bit more time to feel convinced that the drug is safe and effective when used correctly; some may be waiting on more data from large, randomized clinical trials. “Across different parts of the country, adoption of new things is always going to be slower,” Kalender-Rich said. That’s not exactly a comforting thought when hundreds of people are still dying every day, but it does suggest, at the very least, that we have something to look forward to.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/11/paxlovid-covid-drug-hesitancy/672210
**************************************************23 November, 2022
Fauci's fall from grace: From orchestrating Covid lockdowns to playing down the lab leak theory and claiming vaccines stopped infections — how one of America's most revered doctors lost the trust of the nation
Dr Anthony Fauci officially stood down from his government roles today after four decades spearheading America's response to infectious disease threats.
He became one of the most-cited scientists on the planet for his work on HIV and other infections - before becoming the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in 1984.
But Dr Fauci was not a name known to most Americans until 2020 when he became the face of the US' Covid pandemic response. The 81-year-old was initially a revered figure — seen as a safe pair of hands in the face of a new, unknown pathogen and dubbed 'America's doctor'.
But his credibility has come under intense scrutiny in the two years since Covid struck after he exaggerated the effectiveness of vaccines to boost uptake, flip-flopped on face masks and pushed for lockdowns.
In March 2020, when concern was rising globally over Covid, Fauci told Americans that there was 'no need' to wear a face mask. He insisted at the time that they may only help people 'feel a little better', and 'might even block a droplet' — but would not provide good protection.
Less than a month later, however, he urged all Americans to wear them and became an overnight face mask zealot, pushing for mandatory face coverings for children as young as two.
He later admitted the reason the public were recommended not to wear masks initially was to save them for healthcare workers.
Dr Fauci also exaggerated vaccine effectiveness against Covid infection — saying there was little chance those who are double-jabbed would catch Covid.
He told MSNBC in June 2021: 'It’s as simple as black and white. You’re vaccinated, you’re safe. You’re unvaccinated, you’re at risk. Simple as that.'
Meanwhile, Dr Fauci quashed discussion about Covid's origin and virus-tinkering experiments at the Wuhan facility at the center of the lab leak theory - even though privately he expressed concern the virus was unleashed in an experiment-gone-wrong.
Dr Fauci has also made several bizarre claims during his time as the medical adviser to America's Covid response. In an interview with MSNBC in June 2021 when criticisms about his judgement were put to him, he said critics were not only attacking him but 'attacking science'.
Dr Fauci is set to rake in the highest-ever federal government retirement package in US history with his annual payment exceeding $350,000, according to a Forbes estimate.
In March 2020 when concern was rising globally over Covid Fauci told Americans that there was 'no need' to wear a face mask.
He insisted at the time that they may only help people 'feel a little better', and 'might even block a droplet' — but would not provide good protection.
Less than a month later, however, he was forced into an embarrassing climbdown after it emerged the virus spread via droplets in the air.
Dr Fauci later suggested he did not advise people to wear masks to ensure there were enough available for hospitals and healthcare centers.
When asked by financial news site TheStreet why the public were not told to wear masks at the start of the pandemic, Dr Fauci said: 'Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply.
'And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected.'
What did Fauci get wrong? From telling people not to wear masks to claiming vaccines stopped infections
Dr Anthony Fauci is due to step down from his position as one of America's top infectious disease advisors at the end of this year.
Below are listed some of his key blunders when the virus struck
* Don't wear masks, do wear masks
As global concern for Covid was surfacing in March 2020, Fauci told Americans that there was 'no need' to wear a face mask.
He said they may only help people 'feel a little better', and 'might even block a droplet' — but would not provide good protection.
Less than a month later, he was forced into an embarrassing climbdown after it emerged the virus spread via droplets in the air.
Dr Fauci later insisted he advised people not to wear masks to ensure there were enough available for hospitals and healthcare centers.
* Covid did not come from a lab
Dr Fauci has also repeatedly insisted that Covid did not leak from a lab in China.
He called the theory a 'shiny object that will go away', and brushed aside claims from other top experts as an 'opinion'.
Dr Fauci has now backpedalled, saying instead that he keeps an 'open mind' although insisting that it remains 'most likely' that the virus spilled over from animals to humans.
* Two jabs will stop you catching Covid
When the Covid vaccine roll-out was in full swing, Dr Fauci said the immunity from shots made doubly-vaccinated people a 'dead end' for the virus, and even suggested they may no longer need to wear masks.
* Schools shutdown
Schools were closed from March through to August 2020, something Dr Fauci later expressed regret about.
But he said last month that he 'should have realized' there would be 'deleterious collateral consequences'.
Children are now bearing the brunt of the US's tripledemic, after lockdowns left them without proper immune defense.
* Funding Wuhan lab
In 2014, Dr Facui's agency issued a $3.7million grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which some allege was used to support gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
* Face masks were later mandated across indoor places and on public transport for more than two years as America rode out the Covid pandemic.
And his communications continued to be confused even after mandating masks for Americans.
During a congressional hearing, he was asked why he was wearing a mask indoors after being vaccinated.
Dr Fauci said: 'Let me just state for the record that masks are not theater. Masks are protective.'
Shortly after, the CDC said that people did not have to wear masks indoors, as long as they were vaccinated.
Dr Fauci then admitted that had only been wearing a mask post-vaccination as a 'signal'.
He told ABC: 'Before the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] made the recommendation change, I didn’t want to look like I was giving mixed signals. But being a fully vaccinated person, the chances of my getting infected in an indoor setting is extremely low.'
And he admitted to Senator Braun in May this year: 'I don't like mandates.'
No states currently have mask restrictions in place, but there are concerns they could return this winter.
As the head of the NIAID, Dr Fauci was also a key orchestrator of lockdowns throughout the pandemic, as the shops and other businesses followed his guidance to shut their doors in spring of 2020.
Meanwhile, Florida did not lockdown, and had one of the lowest case rates in the US, with case rates dropping 90 per cent between August and October 2021.
And when Omicron began to hit in November last year, Dr Fauci did not immediately rule out another lockdown.
He said Americans had to be willing to do 'anything and everything' to fight the new variant.
In spring this year, the top doctor also declared the pandemic was over. He told PBS NewsHour in April that the US was 'out of the pandemic phase'.
Days later he was forced to backtrack, saying that he meant 'the acute component of the pandemic phase'.
And many Americans were put off by his ongoing arrogance. He branded attacks on him by Republicans as 'painfully ridiculous', and said: 'Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.'
Schools were shut in March 2020, and did not reopen until August, which Dr Fauci later expressed regret about.
Locked down at home, children missed out on vital mixing with their peers which would have allowed them to build up natural immunity to other illnesses.
Annual respiratory viruses largely disappeared amid lockdowns and mask orders during the Covid pandemic, but left many Americans — especially children — without proper immune defense against these viruses, leaving them vulnerable to a more severe infection.
Pediatric hospitals in Arizona, Rhode Island and Washington DC are now being overwhelmed by a recent surge is respiratory illnesses as this winter's 'tripledemic' of Covid, flu and RSV slams the nation.
In October 2020, professors from Stanford, Harvard and Oxford published 'The Great Barrington Declaration', which championed herd immunity — the notion that Covid would stop spreading after everyone had contracted it.
The White House supported the paper, and used it to try and push for schools and businesses to be allowed to open back up.
But Dr Fauci dismissed the concept of herd immunity as 'total nonsense' and 'ridiculous', adding that it would 'lead to hospitalizations and deaths'.
However, when reflecting on the decision to close schools, Dr Fauci told ABC News last month: 'We should realize, and have realized, that there will be deleterious collateral consequences when you do something like that.
'That's the reason why I continually would say on any media appearances I've had: "We've got to do everything we can to keep the schools open." The most important thing is to protect the children.'
He has also repeatedly insisted that Covid did not leak from a lab in China.
In April 2020 he dismissed the theory as a 'shiny object that will go away', and later brushed aside claims from other top experts as an 'opinion'.
But evidence since built up that Covid may have leaked from a lab, rather than jumping from animals to humans as thought.
A US intelligence and WHO investigation have both failed to rule out the theory.
And Beijing has repeatedly frustrated attempts to access the Wuhan lab to investigate whether the virus did leak from the location.
Dr Fauci himself has also now backpedaled, saying instead that he keeps an 'open mind' although insisting that it remains 'most likely' that the virus spilled over from animals to humans.
He also told CBS the immunity from vaccines made them a 'dead end' for the virus, and even suggested they may no longer need to wear masks.
But when Omicron struck the US at the end of November it quickly became clear that two jabs did not block infection, although they did slash the risk of hospitalization and death.
America has now run several programs to 'top up' people's immunity from jabs, including another this fall and winter.
And under Dr Fauci's watch, the NIAID funded Coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) using taxpayer money.
Politicians including Senator Rand Paul suggested this research might have played a part in the origins of the global pandemic.
He alleged that Dr Fauci, whose agency in 2014 issued a $3.7million grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which was thought to have supported gain-of-function research at the WIV.
EcoHealth issued WIV nearly $600,000 in sub-awards before the National Institutes of Health (NIH) suspended the grant in July 2020 due its controversial work, Vanity Fair reported.
The Wall Street Journal reported in May that three researchers at the WIV fell ill with Covid-19 symptoms in November 2019 and sought hospital care, furthering the theory that the virus had originated in the lab.
Funding for gain-of-function research, the controversial practice of increasing a virus' transmissibility or lethality to study the development of new diseases, was banned under President Obama in 2014. That decision three years later was overturned by the NIH.
And in a leaked email from 2020, disgraced scientist Dr Peter Daszak appeared to express gratitude to Dr Fauci for downplaying the theory that the Covid-19 was created in a lab but publicly stating the science did not support it.
**************************************************
22 November, 2022
Seriously harmful vaccines and negligent medical advice
Julie Sladden
I was recently accused of lying. This was a little hard to swallow as it was over a directly referenced quote. At the same time, I found the accusation understandable. So much has happened over the past two and a half years, it’s difficult to know who to trust anymore.
Take this example: Pfizer recently admitted they didn’t test for transmission because they were too busy moving at the ‘speed of science’ (to be honest, they really didn’t need to admit it – just ask any double, triple, quadruple jabbed person whether they’ve had the virus yet). Yet we were repeatedly told by authorities the vaccine would stop the virus in its tracks. Trustworthy?
Or this example: The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) revealed it did not know the myocarditis risks of the Pfizer and Moderna products until five months after provisionally approving them for use. Five months! Trustworthy?
Meanwhile, adverse event reporting systems around the world indicate more adverse events in Covid vaccines than all previous vaccines developed over the past 50 years, combined. Yet we were subject to months of multimedia messaging that claimed the vaccines were both ‘safe and effective’. Trustworthy?
It turns out that for a small (but significant) number of people, the vaccines are neither safe nor effective.
People like Tyson Illingworth (known to his millions of fans as ‘tyDi’). He is an acclaimed composer, songwriter, and DJ with a swag of awards. Like so many others trying to ‘do the right thing’ he stepped up for his first dose with ‘complete faith and trust in (Australia’s) leadership and medical system’.
What happened next was alarming. He writes, ‘Within days I started to feel severe and unbearable shooting pain and paralysis in my hands and feet.’
Soon afterward, Tyson was rushed to hospital. ‘I couldn’t believe the vaccine could do this to me, especially when we were all told it was safe and effective and if there was a reaction it would be minor.’
But there was worse to come. Before release from hospital, Tyson was strongly advised to get the second vaccine by the neurologist. ‘I acted on the neurologist’s advice and ended up taking the second vaccine… in hindsight I cannot believe I listened to her as I have always thought of myself as a critical thinker, and instead I took advice from a doctor who had no regard for my personal situation.’
Tyson’s symptoms were further exacerbated by the second dose, and he was rushed to hospital once again. ‘I was unable to move, my hands felt like they were on fire, and I struggled to get through the day… I thought my life was over…’
A couple of months later he contracted the virus, sending him to hospital yet again.
Tyson’s life has changed immeasurably. Where there should be touring, performing and interviews, instead is terrible pain, medications and doctor’s appointments, and a new understanding of the state of medicine in Australia.
Vaccine claims and censorship
The COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme was established to help people receive financial support if they’ve experienced harm because of a Covid vaccine. The application process could be described as complicated, at best. Many patients find they are ineligible to claim due to the limited list of recognised adverse effects. In addition, submitting a claim requires a doctor to complete a 10-page report documenting their medical opinion and link to vaccination – something many doctors are unwilling to put their name to.
Tyson experienced this also, ‘I had 5 different doctors confirm that my condition was caused by the vaccine, and they all said they cannot go on record.’
Thank you AHPRA position statement…
(The position statement makes clear that any health advice which undermines the national immunisation campaign may result in investigation and regulatory action. Result? Many doctors are too scared to report an adverse event for fear they might be investigated.)
Despite these limitations, the claims scheme budget is set to blow out to almost $77 million by July 2023. That’s a lot of claims.
Un-informed consent
Tyson rightly questions the advice he was given recommending he take the second dose of the vaccine. ‘One would think that when a patient presents with severe neurological issues in hospital a specialist would think first, “I will do no harm and disclose the risk”… The information about neurological side effects was available to every clinician at the time, a simple Google search would have revealed this.’
A formal complaint from Tyson to the QLD health ombudsman returned a letter acknowledging that although the doctor advised him to get a second vaccine, despite being injured by the first, the practitioner was (conveniently) indemnified.
However, an April 2021 letter from Greg Hunt to both the AMA and the RACGP released under freedom of information outlines the parameters of this ‘indemnity’ and confirms ‘as with all vaccines, informed consent is required before the administration of each vaccine dose’.
The Australian government’s six-page consent form lists only a handful of potential and ‘rare or very rare’ side effects including blood clotting and heart inflammation. No mention of neuropathy or potential for other serious side effects emerging or not yet known due to incomplete safety data of these provisionally approved injectables.
So, what exactly is informed consent?
Every health practitioner should know ‘consent is a process, not a form’, says medical professional insurer Avant. ‘Gaining consent from your patient means more than just going through a checklist of risks… you need to understand the risks that are material to your patient.’
Medical professional insurer MIPS agrees that it is important that professionals ‘identify the risks that the patient is most concerned about.’
Given the nature and severity of Tyson’s reaction to the first dose it would be reasonable to be concerned about the risk of a reaction to the second.
This ‘un-informed consent’ story is all too common and one I have heard repeated time and again. Being simply handed a form to read and sign does not equate to informed consent. It never has. Especially when administering a provisionally approved medical product.
If the government’s indemnity scheme is dependent on informed consent, and informed consent didn’t happen, what happens when the patient suffers a vaccine injury? Where does the buck stop?
It stops with the patient, the person at the receiving end of this bureaucratic mess. In this case that person was Tyson who now suffers debilitating symptoms.
How bureaucracy undermines trust
The recently amended National Law, which regulates medical practitioners, is set to give AHPRA even more power to silence doctors if they are deemed to be undermining ‘public confidence’. This means if doctors disagree with public health messaging, like a ‘safe and effective’ mantra, they risk disciplinary action.
How then will patients be able to trust they are receiving the best health advice for their individual circumstances alongside up to date evidence, and not the government-endorsed public health message of the day?
They won’t.
For someone who used to trust our medical system, like Tyson, I’m not sure that trust can be earned back. And with the way things are heading, I wouldn’t trust it either.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/dont-trust-me-im-a-doctor/
*************************************************What is in C19 Injection Vials? Experts Highlight Disturbing Images
Shabnam Palesa Mohamed engages an Israeli scientist Shimon Yanowitz about yet another report of strange visuals in the blood of a sampling of persons inoculated with COVID-19 vaccines. The scientist presents data from his exercise and from various experts studying self-assembling particles, synthetic organisms, ribbons and tubes, AI circuits, sharp crystalline, and graphene oxide. TrialSite emphasizes such reports are by no means proof for any anomalous elements within the COVID-19 vaccines as larger, validated and peer-reviewed studies must be undertaken.
An independent scientist and researcher specializing in Electrical Engineering (computer vision, microscopy, electromagnetic radiation, and 5G, microelectronics), Shimon Yanowitz has spent the past three years looking into claims that there is more to the COVID-19 vaccines than is disclosed by industry and regulators.
But some may be critical of the scientist who apparently, at least according to one interview, claims there was no Spanish flu of 1918, but rather a conspiracy by the Rockefellers, according to entries in other media involving interviews with Yanowitz. Sounds like conspiratorial fare.
Pfizer has gone on the record in Europe that their vaccines don’t contain graphene oxide-based materials. See the link to Reuters.
Regardless, Yanowitz and a group of like-minded, skeptical scientists around the world have continued to attempt access to vials for independent investigation via optical and electron microscopy both in the blood of vaccinated and unvaccinated for comparison. Given laws and contractual rules against access, setting up and accessing vaccine content—legitimate proof of chain of custody—is often extremely difficult. And without that, the study result is highly questionable.
Yanowitz participates in groups delving into these issues, some of which have been covered by this media. Do they represent a paranoid fringe obsessed with conspiracy theories? Or perhaps, a controlled opposition seeking to deflect attention from more serious COVID-19 inquiry? Or well-intentioned, independent souls who have stumbled on deeply troubling anomalous findings? Perhaps another scenario?
One forum for this group is the IJVTPR Journal, - which is known to allow for considerable anti-vaccine sentiment. This journal has an entry that points out that “Between July 2021 and August 2022, evidence of undisclosed ingredients in the COVID-19 vaccines was published by at least 26 researchers/research teams in 16 different countries across five continents using spectroscopic and microscopic analysis.”
**************************************************
21 November, 2022
They knew the truth all along
Below is one of many accounts about the bad effects of Covid vaccinations. Before I comment on it, I think I should declare my own status
I had two vaccinations with the British Astra-Zeneca vaccine. I had them under duress. I needed them to be permitted to go to certain places. On both occasions I had zero noticeable effects from the vaccination and I have also not apparently had Covid. So I would appear to be a "success" of the program
I personally don't think I am. I have a very good immune system and I think that was what defeated the harms from both the vaccine and the virus. Everybody I know who had the vaccine reported side effects from their shot: Side effects akin to the flu. And they got Covid anyway. I occasionally get flu symptoms but they vanish within 24 hours.
But in any case, I have no personal reason to be critical of the Covid vaccination programs. I look on with horror at what others have suffered but I have no personal beef
So the major point that I want to make is that the official response to vaccination side-effects was WILDLY out of keeping with the normal official response to medication side-effects. When a drug appears to have only a few reports of serious side effects, it usually gets banned in short order.
A case in point is Vioxx -- a very good nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug that had been used by millions with no problems. There were however a handful of very serious cases attributed to the drug and publicity about that put the manufacturer under great pressure, causing them to "voluntarily" withdraw the drug from the market. By vuoluntarily withdrawing it, they left the way open to re-marketing it if vindication of the drug emerged.
I was at the time critical of the furore surrounding Vioxx. If millions have used the drug with no ill-effects and only a handful of adverse cases have surfaced, how do we know that the adverse effects were due to the drug? Which body of evidence is persuasive about what the drug does: the millions who have used the drug beneficially or the handful who SAY that their illness was caused by the drug? Is it not by far most likely that the adverse cases were mere coincidence? Yet the drug was effectively banned on the basis of those possibly coincidental cases.
And that has long been typical: Only a few cases of adverse effects from a medication are usually sufficient to ban it. If aspirin had been subject to modern approval scrutiny, we would never have had it.
But with Covid vacines the pendulum swung WILDLY in the opposite direction. Far from bad side-effects getting maximum scrutiny, they were actually COVERED UP. Why?
I think it was the Chinese example that ruled the day. When stories emerged about the Chinese authorities actually welding people's doors shut to enforce quarantine, our Left-leaning elites salivated. They saw a golden opportunity to go Fascist. They saw a way of getting the sort of control over other people that they had previously only dreamed of. They NEEEDED the vaccines to be effective and problem-free in order to justify their dreamy descent into authoritarianism. In fact, as it is now clear, the vaccines were NEITHER effective nor safe. So they had to cover that up as long as they could.
As I said from the beginning, the only public health measures that might have been justified emerge from the fact that only a tiny number of deaths were among people aged under 65. So it would have been justifiable to give maximum support to the over 65s to enable them to isolate themselves voluntarily
These days, news of a whistleblower isn’t all that uncommon. It seems to be the only way to get the truth out there in this world full of Fake News. Add the word COVID, and you can practically guarantee a cover-up is in there somewhere.
From day one, Kevin Jackson coined the vaccination a “death poke”, and together we urged people to think twice before allowing that concoction to be forced through their veins. We’ve chronicled dozens of stories about the negative effects of various covid vaccines and boosters.
Most recently, I wrote about the negative reactions patients experienced, as hundreds of thousands of people reported adverse side-effects and sought medical treatment.
Most people who got the covid-vaccine are just good-hearted people who wanted to do their part to keep others safe from this virus that targets the medically vulnerable population. Sadly, those efforts were mostly in vain, as even the big wig CEO’s like Albert Bourla [of Pfizer] tested positive after rounds of vaccination.
However, through the worst of the pandemic, Big Pharma, the CDC, and the Biden Administration continually denied the existence of negative side effects. Yet, we know, without a doubt, this vaccine has ruined countless lives. We have teenagers dropping dead at basketball games because of the death poke, babies that were stillborn, and a ridiculous amount of heart failure in people with relatively good health. It makes no sense. The only common denominator is the covid-19 vaccine.
Even the media played a huge part in covering up the truth. They still blindly push others to put themselves at risk to join the “vaxxers”. Well, call me crazy, but I’m anti-vaxxer all the way. And I’m keeping my kids far away from any kind of covid shot.
According to the Epoch Times’ recent article:
Some 782,900 people reported seeking medical attention, emergency room care, and/or hospitalization following COVID-19 vaccination. Another 2.5 million people reported needing to miss school, work, or other normal activities as a result of a health event after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.
The reports were made to the CDC’s V-safe program, a new vaccine safety monitoring system to which users can report issues through smartphones.
The CDC released the data to the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) after being sued over not producing the data when asked by the nonprofit. ICAN posted a dashboard summarizing the data.
“It took numerous legal demands, appeals, and two lawsuits, and over a year, but the CDC finally capitulated and agreed to a court order requiring them to do what they should have done from day one, release the V-safe data to the public,” Aaron Siri, a lawyer representing ICAN in the case, told The Epoch Times in an email.
About 10 million people utilized V-safe during the period of time the data covers: Dec. 14, 2020, to July 31, 2022. About 231 million Americans received at least one vaccine doses during that time.
The V-safe users reported about 71 million symptoms.
The most commonly reported symptoms were chills (3.5 million), swelling (3.6 million), joint pain (4 million), muscle or body aches (7.8 million), headache (9.7 million), fatigue (12.7 million), and general pain (19.5 million).
About 4.2 million of the symptoms were of severe severity.
Users of V-safe filled in data for about 13,000 infants younger than two, reporting over 33,000 symptoms, including pain, loss of appetite, and irritability.
The data produced so far by the CDC does not include free-text responses, according to ICAN. The data covered fields where users checked boxes.
ICAN, founded by film producer Del Bigtree, said that the newly revealed data “reveals shocking information that should have caused the CDC to immediately shut down its COVID-19 vaccine program,” citing the percentage of people who reported needing to get care or missing school, work, or other normal activities, as well as the reported adverse events.
Another shocking fact has come to light. A whistleblower has provided government data documenting 47,465 deaths within 14 days of COVID-19 vaccination among Medicare patients alone.
Now, we get another piece of the puzzle, and it’s actually shocking.
Our Government Knew This All Along!
That’s where Attorney Tom Renz comes in. He actually exposed the DOD after discovering these documents.
According to Renz Law:
Recently discovered DOD stamped documents show the following:
As Delta Variant Surged to over 50% in June, Covid-19 Hospitalizations more than doubled, reversing the prior trend of decreasing hospitalizations since April.
Unlike what Fauci, Biden, and Big Pharma are telling the American public about the safety and effectiveness of the 3 Covid Vaccines, the following DOD stamped document shows 60% of the hospitalized are fully vaccinated.
This DOD stamped document also reveals that the government knows that “prior Covid-19 infection has a major protective effect against breakthrough hospitalization,” which means that natural herd immunity is superior to the vaccines.
Attorney Thomas Renz says “Even with this high of a number, 60%, the real number is absolutely higher due to the skewed methods of how the government determines who is vaccinated. They are not including those that received 1 dose, only those that received 2 doses and a 14 day window has passed, and now Biden is saying boosters plus 2 shots will put you on the “fully vaccinated” list.. If you get covid within the 14 day window of being vaccinated and die like nearly 50K Medicaid patients did, your death is not counted in these statistics.”
Attorney Thomas Renz adamantly adds “This definitively proves that Biden and his cronies at DHHS are outright lying when they claim this is a crisis of the ‘unvaccinated.’ It’s just the opposite. It is a crisis of the poor Americans that believed Big Gov, Big Media, Big Pharma, and Big Tech when they promoted lies that the vaccines were ‘safe and effective.’ It is unquestioningly a manipulative marketing for profit and power scheme, at the expense of Americans lives.”
Tell Us What We Didn’t Know
Of course, we knew these vaccines were bad news all along. This just proves our “leaders” were in on the scam. These fools didn’t even give us the courtesy of making informed decisions. So many people had to be privy to this information, it’s hard to imagine that no one else felt the need to send up the flares. If you ask me, there’s only one thing left to do— Bring on the Class Actions. Big Pharma, Big Tech, and Uncle Sam all need to pay their fair share. It’s hard to put a price on human suffering, and impossible to put a price on human life. But we can force them to pay enough so they feel some kind of pain. In fact, let’s start at the top with Biden and Dr. Fauci. I’d say taking their entire fortunes sounds fair, wouldn’t you agree? Eventually, we all have to pay for our sins.
https://theblacksphere.net/2022/11/attny-tom-renz-exposes-dod-data/
**************************************************20 November, 2022
SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Found in the Human Nucleus
Peter A. McCullough
In a recent paper by Sattar et al in collaboration with scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the authors report that both mRNA and Spike protein colocalized within the nucleus of human cells.[i]
Colocalization of mRNA and Spike protein within the human nucleus. Sattar S, Kabat J, Jerome K, Feldmann F, Bailey K, Mehedi M. Nuclear translocation of spike mRNA and protein is a novel pathogenic feature of SARS-CoV-2. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2022 Sep 27:2022.09.27.509633. doi: 10.1101/2022.09.27.509633. PMID: 36203551; PMCID: PMC9536038.
The authors note this is unusual and appears to not rely upon the furin cleavage site which is necessary for Spike protein entry into the cell. It is important to note the context and the methods of this paper utilized SARS-CoV-2 and not mRNA or adenoviral DNA vaccines. However, the ramifications of this finding cannot be understated. Having both one of the most pathogenic and lethal proteins ever discovered found within the nucleus of human cells with its genetic code is a hair-raising discovery. The paper was uploaded to the preprint server bioRxiv and still needs to be subjected to the peer review process.
A prior paper by Singh and Singh demonstrated Spike protein models anticipate an interaction with tumor suppressor genes P53 and BRCA1.[ii] Sattar now says this could indeed happen! Thus, Spike protein is at the scene of a potential crime—oncogenesis or the failure of immune surveillance against nascent cancer cells. Seneff et al have predicted that the Spike protein may be related to cell senescence and autophagy.[iii]
This means more rapid aging of cells and then programmed cell death. I have had many patients ask me why they lose muscle mass and have hair loss after COVID-19 illness, these observations provide perhaps some explanatory basis for discussion at the cellular level.
Finally and most disturbing, Nunez-Castilla et al of demonstrated homology of the Spike protein with about three dozen other human proteins.[iv] This explains why in the first place would the human nucleus allow entry of mRNA and Spike into the control center of the cell. Could the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 have been intentionally “humanized” as by design?
While Senator Rand Paul is doing a wonderful job staying focused on the possibility of U.S. government involvement in engineering of SARS-CoV-2 via the funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology for example; more in-depth lines of inquiry are needed with preclinical-scientists and officials from Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the NIH to reveal how much they knew about mRNA, the Spike protein, and any risks to human cells during SARS-CoV-2 infection and over the longer term.
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/sars-cov-2-spike-protein-found-in-the-human-nucleus-75dba3dd
************************************************Every Bit of Heart Muscle Matters
Peter A. McCullough
As a cardiologist, I can tell you the entire discipline of cardiovascular disease is oriented to preserving heart tissue. Heart muscle is largely terminally differentiated with low rates of turnover; hence, we cannot afford to lose any cardiomyocytes to damage caused by vaccines. Aldana-Bitar et al. described the excursion of cardiac troponin as about four days with COVID-19 vaccine induced myocarditis, which is oddly about the same duration as an ischemic myocardial infarction due to blocked coronary arteries.[i]
Hence, the confusion with the terms “myocarditis,” “myopericarditis,” and “heart attack” in the CDC VAERS system and the media. The first two prospective cohort studies, where blood cardiac troponin level was measured before and after receiving mRNA injections, both demonstrated unacceptably high rates of troponin elevations, indicating predictable heart damage. Mansanguan et al. found the rate of heart injury was 2.3% on the second injection of Pfizer in children 13-18 years old.[ii] Two children were hospitalized with myocarditis in this 301-person study. Le Pessec et al., in a presentation at the European Society of Cardiology, revealed 2.8% of healthcare workers (n=777) had elevated troponin by day 3 after the third mRNA injection.[iii]
Given the known relationship of coronavirus spike protein and cardiac toxicity from the 1990’s, the vaccine companies should have been measuring troponin during their randomized trials in 2020. In 1999, Baric et al. reported: “We have shown that infection with RbCV [rabbit coronavirus] results in the development of myocarditis and congestive heart failure, and that some survivors of RbCV infection go on to develop dilated cardiomyopathy in the chronic phase.”[iv]
Sadly, and ineptly, BARDA, DARPA, vaccine consultants, and the manufacturers had no measures in place to identify expected cardiac damage in humans. Now, two years after public release and mounting cases of fatal myocarditis published in the peer-reviewed literature, both Pfizer and Moderna have announced they will begin studies of cardiac safety that were required by the FDA in their 2021 Biological Licensing Agreement letters from the FDA.[v] Why did the US government and the vaccine companies wait so long? Do they anticipate their own bad news will kill the failing product line? Only internal document review from government agencies and vaccine developers will tell the public what was going on during this biological product safety disaster.
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/every-bit-of-heart-muscle-matters-2cb74bdc
**********************************************************New medical study on COVID reinfection
There has been much mainstream media attention to a new medical study titled “Acute and postacute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection.” Note that postacute sequelae refer to long COVID symptoms. The coverage likely frightened readers about the high probability of COVID reinfection and serious resulting near and long term health impacts, notably long COVID problems.
But here are several important aspects of the study that the media did not cover. Afterwards some summaries of the findings are given.
First, the study only included a “Veterans Affairs population which consists of those who are mostly older and male may not be representative of the general population, our cohorts included 10.3% women, which amounted to 589,573 participants, and 12% were under 38.8 years of age (the median age of the US population in 2021), which amounted to 680,358 participants.” The study participants definitely did NOT in any way mirror the general population; there was a very small fraction of women. And it was an older group because instead of 50% under the median age there was only 12%. It was also noted that subjects were mostly white.
Second, a careful reading of the article shows that COVID vaccination did not offer health benefits when there was marked COVID reinfection. A more honest story about this study could featured the lack of vaccine effectiveness, but none of the media coverage did this.
Third, for some time most medical thinking has been that natural immunity resulting from COVID infection is far more effective than vaccine immunity. But this article sends a message that prior COVID infection does not protect against future reinfection. On this point note that Monica Gandhi, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of California at San Francisco, pointed to other studies, including one that took a look at 26 studies of reinfections that show they become less severe over time. And another study from Qatar examined patients with different vaccination histories in more comprehensive ways and found that reinfections tend not to progress to severe, critical or fatal outcomes. Gandhi also said there’s research showing that infection, reinfection, vaccination and boosting broaden and diversify components of the immune system that may make people “better able to respond to the newest subvariants as we continue to live with covid-19.”
Keep all three point in mind when you read media stories and the new study itself; here are some exercpts from it.
“infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is associated with increased risk of acute and postacute death and sequelae in various organ systems.”
“The risks were most pronounced in the acute phase but persisted in the postacute phase at 6 months. Compared to noninfected controls, cumulative risks and burdens of repeat infection increased according to the number of infections.”
“The evidence shows that reinfection further increases risks of death, hospitalization and sequelae in multiple organ systems in the acute and postacute phase. Reducing overall burden of death and disease due to SARS-CoV-2 will require strategies for reinfection prevention.”
This too was found: The median time between the first and second infection was 191 days. Compared with people who experienced only one infection, those who were reinfected had a twofold increased risk of death, threefold increased risk of hospitalization, twofold increased risk of long covid, threefold increase in risk of heart problems and blood clotting disorders, and twofold increased risk of fatigue.
“The risks were evident in those who were unvaccinated and had one vaccination or two or more vaccinations before reinfection.”
Besides pushing vaccination the study concluded “Other pharmaceutical and nonpharmaceutical interventions to lessen both the risk of reinfection and its adverse health consequences are also urgently needed.” But no consideration was given to, for example, ivermectin and vitamin D. Indeed, it appears that the study did not determine whether participants used such medicines as part of a strategy to stay health and avoid COVID infection and reinfection.
“Getting it a second time is almost like you’re trying your chance again with Russian roulette,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, one of the study authors. “You may have dodged a bullet the first time, but each time you get the infection you are trying your luck again.”
Final thought: Not all published medical studies merit your attention; and mainstream media stories that work hard to instill fear in the public as one way to push vaccination should not be trusted.
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/new-medical-study-on-covid-reinfection-90dce547
**************************************************18 November, 2022
Drug offers hope in fight against Covid
At last: Immunotherapy for Covid. Immunotherapy saved me from stomach cancer: Completely wiped it out
Australian scientists have taken a critical step towards developing a one-stop Covid-19 therapy to combat existing and future strains of the virus.
In what it described as a “very significant” development, a team at Brisbane’s Translational Research Institute repurposed an existing oral drug that acts on cholesterol receptors, activating the body’s immune response rather than attacking the virus. The drug reduces inflammation in the lungs and associated coughing and breathing difficulties.
A study involving mice, published in the European Respiratory Journal, found the virus that causes Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, triggered the production of oxidised cholesterols.
In response, the body creates immune cells to fight the infection, which have a cholesterol-sensing receptor named GPR183. While white blood cells are important to fight the infection, having an excess of a particular type called macrophages is a hallmark of severe Covid-19.
Recent tests on infected mice found the drug was effective in blocking the cholesterol receptors and reduced the number of macrophages cells within the lungs. It also reduced the mice’s viral load. Associate professor Katharina Ronacher realised the significance of oxidised cholesterols in respiratory illnesses while researching tuberculosis six years ago while in South Africa. When she realised the two viruses worked in similar ways, she tested her findings on Covid-19.
“It was actually initially very intuitive,” Professor Ronacher said. “Once we understood the mechanism and studied this in mice infected with tuberculosis first, I knew it would actually work well in Covid-19.”
She said the reason the discovery was so exciting was because the cholesterol receptor had never before been targeted with a drug. “It’s a completely new therapy and this really opens up the research in other areas,” she said.
The study took two groups of mice infected with Covid-19 and gave one group the drug and the other a placebo. Mice given the treatment lost less weight, appeared happier and had less inflammation in the lungs. Researchers were also surprised to find the medication also caused them to carry less of the virus.
The treatments would not need to target a specific Covid-19 variant as it worked to trigger the immune response of the body rather than target the virus itself like typical antivirals.
With the fourth wave of Covid-19 expected to hit over the Christmas period, Professor Ronacher said it is important to have alternative treatments.
“At any time, a new variant can emerge that can be so different that our current immunity does not really help us much, and vaccines don’t really help much, then we definitely need other drugs,” she said.
“We also need drugs that are not necessarily antiviral, because viruses produce resistance to those back very quickly. We really need host-directed therapies … like a type of immune therapy.”
Patients with other severe respiratory illnesses and transplant recipients could also find relief with the drug, although this has not been tested.
“It has really far-reaching implications,” Professor Ronacher said.
The study was a collaboration between Mater Research, the University of Queensland and the University of Copenhagen, and was funded by the Mater Foundation, the Australian Infectious Disease Research Centre and Diabetes Australia.
Human clinical trials have yet to be locked it, with more funding needed.
********************************************************
Novak’s mandate: How dangerous are the vaccines?
This week, Labor immigration minister Andrew Giles quietly confirmed on Tuesday 15 November that the ban on Novak (No Vax) Djokovic would be dropped but refused to comment ‘on privacy grounds’. Whose privacy? Presumably that of the minister, frightened of a backlash from zero-Covidian zealots. So far, it hasn’t materialised.
The tide is slowly turning in Australia. The latest True North Strategy Compass polling of Australians, released on 16 November, showed that despite the fact that 95 per cent of Australians over the age 18 had been vaccinated, almost half of all Australians surveyed, 46 per cent, said governments should not have the power to mandate vaccines and 8 per cent of those who were vaccinated regret it. On a national scale, that would equate to around 1.5 million Australians over the age of 18. Of those who got vaccinated most (48 per cent) said they were glad they did it because it allowed them to escape lockdown sooner. Only 44 per cent were glad because they didn’t get Covid.
The polling comes as the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) quietly confirmed for the first time on 12 November that it was unlikely to approve another booster for people under 30 due to the increased risk of myocarditis and the fact that there would only be a ‘minimal’ reduction in transmission from a fifth jab. ATAGI member Professor Allan Cheng said ‘the more doses you get, the less benefit you derive from them and then we start to worry about causing side effects’. That’s a rare confession.
Woolworths, Australia’s largest retailer, which employs 180,000 people, announced on 15 November that it would end its vaccine mandates for staff effective 22 November.
But Australian Football League star and nurse Deni Varnhagen and fellow nurse Courtney Millington have lost their second legal challenge to the South Australian vaccine mandate for healthcare workers and their application to appeal the decision was dismissed.
Refusing to hire unvaccinated nurses is testimony to idiocy of the Australian health establishment which has belatedly admitted that vaccination doesn’t stop transmission and infection provides protection. So why persist with a mandate when the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation says there is a nationwide shortage of at least 8,000 nurses?
Varnhagen who was working in intensive care and has just given birth to a baby girl was particularly concerned about the impact of the vaccine on her fertility. She is not alone.
In the US, on 10 November Dr James Thorp, an obstetrician gynaecologist with over 40 years of experience including on the board of the Society of Maternal Foetal Medicine and the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, author of over 200 publications and a reviewer for major medical journals, wrote that Covid vaccinations are ‘the greatest disaster in the history of obstetrics and all of medicine’, should never have been used in pregnancy and were promoted unlawfully, with ‘falsified data’. He notes that it was known as early as 2012 that lipid nanoparticles concentrate in the ovaries of rats, that in the Pfizer trial on rats, vaccine concentrated in the ovaries 118-fold in 48 hours and may permanently damage the human genome for multiple generations. Thorp writes that he has witnessed a dramatic rise in foetal morbidity, malformations and mortality since vaccination commenced, a 75-fold increase in miscarriages and a 12,000-fold increase in menstrual abnormalities.
In France, Mélodie Feron has formed a group of 10,000 women called ‘Where’s my cycle’. She organised a rally in Paris attended by Dr. Laurence Kayser, a Belgian gynaecologist who told investigative journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer that, ‘The injections didn’t create a new disease, they revealed… dormant pathologies, and allowed them to explode…’. In October, a committee of the European Medicines Agency recommended that heavy menstrual bleeding in menstruation be acknowledged as a possible side effect of mRNA vaccines.
Dr Kimberly Biss, an obstetrician gynaecologist in Florida, said in October that since the vaccine rollout she has seen a 50 per cent rise in infertility and miscarriages and a 25 per cent increase in abnormal Pap smears and irregular cervical malignancies.
Michelle Gershman, a whistleblower nurse in Fresno California reported an increase at her hospital in stillbirths after 20 weeks (foetal demise) from one to two every two or three months to 22 in July and 22 in August. Gershman released an email she received from the hospital which said stillbirths were projected to increase stipulating babies must be put in a white bucket and adding callously, ‘I know that it feels disrespectful to many of you to pour a bottle of saline over the baby, so you can wrap the baby in a saline soaked Chux if it feels better to you.’
Is it happening in Australia? The Australian Bureau of Statistics won’t release data on births for 2022 until December. So far, the Therapeutic Goods Administration has received more than 5,390 reports of menstrual disorders, 891 incomplete abortions, 844 spontaneous abortions, 235 reports of premature babies of whom 11 died, 176 foetal deaths, 88 cases of foetal distress, four of whom died, 90 stillbirths, 88 cases of multiple congenital abnormalities of whom 11 died, 62 cases of congenital heart disease of whom 10 died. The TGA says none are related to the Covid vaccines although it does admit that at least 14 Australians are likely to have been killed by the vaccines and at least 700 hundred injured by myocarditis.
Vaccine injuries are still a taboo topic in Australia. The federal government has only offered a maximum of $20,000 compensation for vaccine injuries but it will cover funeral costs. The October budget revealed the scheme has paid out less than $1 million but that is projected to increase to $76.9 million next year, the equivalent of 3,845 claims at the maximum rate. That is not going to be the end of it. So far there have been 136,529 reports of adverse events including 946 deaths, more than any other vaccine in history. In the absence of any longterm safety data, or evidence of efficacy, that should be reason enough to end the vaccine mandates.
Don’t hold your breath.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/novaks-mandate/
**************************************************17 November, 2022
Another unhelpful study of Ivermectin
Once again we have a study that fails to heed the stricture that Ivermectim has to be administered immediately symptoms emerge. Giving it up to 7 days later is pointless and proves nothing. Journal article below
Efficacy of Ivermectin Treatment on Disease Progression Among Adults With Mild to Moderate COVID-19 and Comorbidities (The I-TECH Study)
Question: Does adding ivermectin, an inexpensive and widely available antiparasitic drug, to the standard of care reduce the risk of severe disease in patients with COVID-19 and comorbidities?
Findings: In this open-label randomized clinical trial of high-risk patients with COVID-19 in Malaysia, a 5-day course of oral ivermectin administered during the first week of illness did not reduce the risk of developing severe disease compared with standard of care alone.
Meaning: The study findings do not support the use of ivermectin for patients with COVID-19.
Abstract
Importance: Ivermectin, an inexpensive and widely available antiparasitic drug, is prescribed to treat COVID-19. Evidence-based data to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin are needed.
Objective: To determine the efficacy of ivermectin in preventing progression to severe disease among high-risk patients with COVID-19.
Design, Setting, and Participants: The Ivermectin Treatment Efficacy in COVID-19 High-Risk Patients (I-TECH) study was an open-label randomized clinical trial conducted at 20 public hospitals and a COVID-19 quarantine center in Malaysia between May 31 and October 25, 2021. Within the first week of patients’ symptom onset, the study enrolled patients 50 years and older with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, comorbidities, and mild to moderate disease.
Interventions: Patients were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to receive either oral ivermectin, 0.4 mg/kg body weight daily for 5 days, plus standard of care (n = 241) or standard of care alone (n = 249). The standard of care consisted of symptomatic therapy and monitoring for signs of early deterioration based on clinical findings, laboratory test results, and chest imaging.
Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was the proportion of patients who progressed to severe disease, defined as the hypoxic stage requiring supplemental oxygen to maintain pulse oximetry oxygen saturation of 95% or higher. Secondary outcomes of the trial included the rates of mechanical ventilation, intensive care unit admission, 28-day in-hospital mortality, and adverse events.
Results: Among 490 patients included in the primary analysis (mean [SD] age, 62.5 [8.7] years; 267 women [54.5%]), 52 of 241 patients (21.6%) in the ivermectin group and 43 of 249 patients (17.3%) in the control group progressed to severe disease (relative risk [RR], 1.25; 95% CI, 0.87-1.80; P = .25). For all prespecified secondary outcomes, there were no significant differences between groups. Mechanical ventilation occurred in 4 (1.7%) vs 10 (4.0%) (RR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.13-1.30; P = .17), intensive care unit admission in 6 (2.4%) vs 8 (3.2%) (RR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.27-2.20; P = .79), and 28-day in-hospital death in 3 (1.2%) vs 10 (4.0%) (RR, 0.31; 95% CI, 0.09-1.11; P = .09). The most common adverse event reported was diarrhea (14 [5.8%] in the ivermectin group and 4 [1.6%] in the control group).
Conclusions and Relevance: In this randomized clinical trial of high-risk patients with mild to moderate COVID-19, ivermectin treatment during early illness did not prevent progression to severe disease. The study findings do not support the use of ivermectin for patients with COVID-19.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2789362
************************************************Unjustifiable vaccine mandates did a lot of harm in Australia
In the 1980s movie Rain Man, the autistic Dustin Hoffman reliably informed Tom Cruise that Qantas was the safest airline in the world. Indeed, our national carrier has safely transported generations of Aussies around the world. The ‘flying kangaroo’ is our de facto international mascot and one of our most respected enterprises. Yet the ‘spirit of Australia’ now resides in a man who likes to tell members of the Australian public to ‘eff off’.
This occurred the other day when a disgruntled former employee attempted to ask Qantas CEO Alan Joyce about the vaccine mandates still in place for the airline’s employees.
During the same-sex marriage debate, Mr Joyce developed a taste for political campaigning and even encouraged people travelling on Qantas to wear a black ring on their finger to show their support for same-sex marriage – presumably so cabin crew could easily distinguish between those who were morally superior on supporting LGBT issues and those who were not. One Anglican archbishop complained that this sort of campaign was nothing short of corporate bullying of everyday Australians.
At the time Peter Dutton also maintained that it was completely unacceptable for Mr Joyce to use the Qantas brand in this way, saying, ‘Don’t use an iconic brand and the might of a multi-billion-dollar business on issues best left to the judgements of individuals….’
And that is the point. Whether it is political or cultural issues or medical interventions, the same principle should be true in a democracy: corporations and businesses should wherever possible leave judgment on non-corporate matters to the individual. But instead, Covid provided many corporations the opportunity to behave like the worst schoolyard bullies – imposing mandates and restrictions on loyal staff and customers despite then prime minister Scott Morrison insisting that there were no vaccine mandates in this country and that companies could only apply mandates that were ‘reasonable’.
Coerced vaccination is offensive and wrong under any circumstances. And the sort of draconian mass mandates imposed by Qantas, Woolworths and many other corporations were certainly not ‘reasonable’.
As we now know, and many writers in this magazine anticipated, the vaccines do not and never did protect other people from catching the coronavirus. By definition, all compulsory vaccine mandates and restrictions – which potentially damaged people’s mental health or income yet did not stop transmission – were futile and therefore unreasonable.
Many loyal long-serving employees of these companies had their lives, careers and livelihoods completely turned upside down. Ex-Qantas pilot Graham Hood who was forced to lose his career thanks to Mr Joyce’s unreasonable mandate was one, Alan Dana at Jetstar another. There were many, many others.
Woolworths appointed its own chief medical officer in August 2020 to ‘provide expert medical advice to help shape policies’ around Covid. In October last year, Woolies implemented a mandatory vaccination policy similar to that of Qantas and other large firms. At the time their chief medical officer stated that, ‘A vaccinated team member is far less likely to get Covid, much less likely to pass it on [our italics] and also significantly less likely to become seriously ill.’
But that was simply untrue. As was revealed in a recent article by the left-leaning Washington Post, the Biden administration knew in the early northern summer of 2021 – several months prior to that statement – that ‘the vaccines did a far worse job of blocking infection than originally expected.’ Similarly, Pfizer have also admitted that they never tested the vaccines for immunistation.
So Woolworths need to explain who specifically informed or advised them that the vaccines did stop transmission? As with so many other companies, where did this advice come from and what was it based on?
Furthermore, what steps were taken by each individual CEO, health officer or HR officer to verify that that information was factually correct before forcing people to lose their jobs because of an unnecessary mandate? Wasn’t there a duty of care to the mental health and wellbeing of all those individuals who lost their jobs because of reluctance to take the jab? A reluctance that with each passing day looks more and more understandable.
Indeed, read Rebecca Weisser in this week’s magazine on some of the disturbing questions that are now surfacing around issues of women’s reproductive health and potential vaccine injuries.
All of which is why we need a royal commission into the abuse of political and corporate power during Covid
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/unreasonable
**************************************************************Bivalent Vaccines probably useless
The US government vaccine program led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) selected most recently mRNA booster vaccines that contained genetic code for the original (long extinct) Wuhan wild-type strain (50%) and Omicron BA4/BA5 subvariant (50%) produced by both Pfizer and Moderna.
These products were not only purchased but also authorized on an emergency basis and distributed on the market, with only preclinical animal study data as well as immune-bridging data. The FDA who is conflicted as a sponsor of the vaccine program authorized the products based upon a surrogate antibody elevation against BA4/BA5. Within a few short months, as depicted by the CDC Nowcast system, BA4/BA5 are on their way out giving way to BQ.1 and BQ1.1.[i]
This has been an accurate and helpful part of the CDC’s effort to inform the public and scientists on the outbreak: “To identify and track SARS-CoV-2 variants, CDC uses genomic surveillance. CDC's national genomic surveillance system collects SARS-CoV-2 specimens for sequencing through the National SARS-CoV-2 Strain Surveillance (NS3) program, as well as SARS-CoV-2 sequences generated by commercial or academic laboratories contracted by CDC and state or local public health laboratories.
Virus genetic sequences are analyzed and classified as a particular variant. The proportion of variants in a population are calculated nationally, by HHS region, and by jurisdiction. The thousands of sequences analyzed every week through CDC’s national genomic sequencing and bioinformatics efforts fuel the comprehensive and population-based U.S. surveillance system established to identify and monitor the spread of variants.”
So Nowcast is telling us the emerging dominant strains are BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 subvariants, known to have enhanced ability to fuse with the human ACE-2 receptor, dictated by the N460K mutation which is the principle site for antibody neutralization.[ii]
Qu et al. have recently demonstrated that sera from patients with BA4/BA5 had very poor antibody defenses against BQ.1 and BQ.1.1. The authors concluded: “The perpetual emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants with enhanced immune escape continues to threaten public health. Monitoring the immune escape of emerging variants will be critical to improving mRNA vaccine reformulation, assessing new broader coronavirus vaccine candidates, as well as directing ongoing public health measures.”
Moderna conveniently just came out with a press release reported in this media that the novel booster in “exploratory analysis of approximately 40 participants using research assay, both bivalent vaccines demonstrates robust neutralizing activity against BQ.1.1…” However, Moderna's press release is in conflict with the findings of Qu et al., indicating that urgent research is needed with clinical outcomes to see of mRNA vaccines have any impact at all in patients with acute COVID-19.
But the release of these potent, gene therapy-based vaccines cannot be done through press release as a form of public health communique for vaccines that are already in circulation and promoted by regulators, public health agencies and health systems. This just isn’t the way drug and vaccine development are ethically done, at least not up until COVID-19. Declaring that the novel boosters elicit responses against the new variant in a 40-participant research assay tells us next to nothing.
All of this is a politically correct way of saying the new vaccines are essentially obsolete just a few months after their debut
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/bivalent-vaccines-up-to-bat-a-swing-and-a-miss-0514dcf4
**************************************************16 November, 2022
Endocrinologist Forecasts More Hormone-Related Diseases as Spike Proteins Found to Deplete Endocrine ‘Reserves’
Dr. Flavio Cadegiani, a Brazilian endocrinologist, suspects that the worst has yet to come for spike protein-induced diseases in the endocrine system.
The endocrine system, colloquially known as the hormone system, is critical for our health. It regulates growth and development, mood, metabolism, reproduction, immunity, and functions of other organs through the secretion of hormones.
Hormones are one of the three biggest messengers in the body. Compared to the two other messengers—neurotransmitters and cytokines—hormones are slower in responding, and have systemic functions across the body rather than localized actions.
While cells can usually respond to neurotransmitters in milliseconds and cytokines in minutes to hours, cells that respond to hormones can take hours or even weeks.
Since hormones can have slow and systemic actions, a dysfunctional or damaged endocrine system will generally be slow in its symptom onset and recovery.
Studies have shown that spike proteins from COVID-19 infection and the vaccines can damage endocrine glands, including pituitary, thyroid, and adrenal glands, as well as reproductive organs, and many more.
Cadegiani raised a concern that the slower onset of endocrine pathologies may pose difficulties in diagnosis and treatment.
Depletion of Hormonal Reserves
Endocrine pathologies can take longer to become apparent because endocrine glands have “reserves,” according to Cadegiani.
“What we’re going to see in the future [for endocrine diseases] is a little bit different from the other fields, because glands have reserves and the decrease of the reserve will not be clinically seen right now, but it may be in the future,” said Cadegiani at a Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) conference in Kissimmee, Florida.
Therefore, affected individuals may show no symptoms until their reserves have been depleted.
Cadegiani said that most of his concerns for the future are speculative and based his own clinical observations. But since the pandemic and the administration of COVID-19 vaccines began, there have been increasing reports that implicate endocrine pathologies.
Hormones regulate the entire body, so once the reserved are depleted and underlying endocrine pathologies are unmasked, there may be cases of systemic dysregulations.
Endocrine glands control the function of many organs across the body, and each endocrine organ is also connected through a feedback loop, also known as a hormonal axis.
At the top of this chain is the hypothalamus, which is a diamond structure in the brain and acts as a master switchboard. It sends messages to the pituitary glands, a small, oval structure tucked behind the nose.
The pituitary gland is colloquially known as the master gland; it regulates other endocrine organs, together with the hypothalamus forming hormonal axes.
The pituitary gland is part of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis which regulates the reproductive organs including the ovaries and the testes. In females, it is responsible for regulating the release of ovarian hormones as part of the menstrual cycle, and in males the axis regulates spermatogenesis.
The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is a neuroendocrine axis that mediates the adrenal glands, an organ that produce hormones that trigger the fight or flight response. The fight or flight process is a stress response that occurs in response to harmful threats, and can reduce metabolism, suppress immune, as well as activate the sympathetic nervous system.
Another major axis is the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis. This regulates the thyroids and the hormones it secretes. Thyroid hormones are essential for biological functions of growth, regulation of the cardiovascular system, bone replacement, liver function, and metabolism.
How Spike Proteins Target the Endocrine System
The spike protein is the most toxic part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Studies on people with long COVID and post-vaccine symptoms often detected spike protein presence months or even a year after the exposure.
Spike protein particularly favors tissues and organs that express ACE2 and CD147 receptors. Many endocrine glands display ACE2 receptors, including the pancreas, thyroid, testes, ovaries, adrenal glands, and the pituitary gland, making the endocrine system particularly vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2.
The key driver behind spike protein-induced disease is inflammation.
Upon entering cells, spike protein can activate pro-inflammatory pathways by inducing DNA damage, inhibiting DNA repair, causing stress to the cell’s mitochondria, which is critical for cell energy production, and many more. All of this lead to cellular stress, injury, and possible cell death.
When many cells are affected, it can cause problems in tissues and organs, affecting individual endocrine glands and the system.
Spike proteins also inhibit autophagy, the cellular “recycling system,” thereby preventing the cells from clearing the toxic protein out, leading to prolonged damage.
Spike proteins may also contribute to autoimmunity. Since it shares many similarities with common human tissues and proteins—known as “molecular mimicry”—it has the potential to cause immune cells to mount an attack against the body’s own cells and organs, leading to endocrine damage.
Several studies have reported on endocrine pathologies following COVID-19, though data on the exact damage is still emerging.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/endocrine-system-spike-protein_4827779.html
****************************************************Are Behavioral Changes Due to Mass Vaccination Behind Fertility Drop in Germany & Sweden? Study Suggests So
Reports of wide-scale fertility declines over the past couple of years have raised concerns about possible causes, including mass COVID-19 vaccination. This media reported on a specific example in Zurich, Switzerland, and broader trends in both Germany and Sweden, while journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer just investigated the topic.
The research institute of the German federal government, managed under the Federal Ministry of the Interior and tasked with providing scientific advice to the federal government on issues relating to demography and demographic trends in fertility, nuptiality, morality, aging, migration, and other global issues, recently released its disturbing report suggesting dramatic declines which this media reviews in more detail.
The Federal Institute of Population Research led by Dr. Martin Bujard, Deputy Director at the Federal Institute for Population Research and supported by Gunnar Andersson, a Swedish fertility research expert from Stockholm University, found a fertility decline markedly different than an initial fertility trend in Southern Europe during the first stages of the pandemic. Seasonally adjusted monthly Total Fertility Rates (TFR) dropped 14% in Germany and 10% in Sweden in 2022.
After analyzing the trend against various categories from unemployment, infection rates or COVID-19 deaths, the authors report that for the two nations there appears a “strong association between the onset of vaccination programs and the fertility decline nine months after this onset.” Calling out the fertility declines in the first months of 2022 in both Germany and Sweden as “remarkable,” they argue that “common explanations of fertility during the pandemic do not apply in its aftermath.”
Assuming that vaccination is correlated, what's the cause—behavioral change or worse, a real-world impact of the vaccines themselves? The authors of this recent study titled “Fertility declines near the end of the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence of the 2022 birth declines in Germany and Sweden” suggest the former—behavioral changes.
Referred to some by the ‘baby bust,” the report out of Germany most definitely offers novel information as described by the authors. A behavioral change in the populations of Germany and Sweden could have very well led to the disturbing decline in TRF in both nations. The mass vaccination program became a center topic and discussion, and it’s likely that although continuously promoted by health authorities as safe and effective for all (including pregnant persons), people in both Germany and Sweden may have changed behavior during 2021 and into 2022.
That could be the explanation---and it would be one that would have far less ominous implications than another explanation—that the vaccines were directly causing the decline in TRF (instead of behavior associated with the vaccines).
With no birth declines in the first months of 2021, Germany experienced a small increase of about 2.9% in the total number of births in 2021 when compared to 2020. But new births plummeted by February and March 2022, representing a 14.3% and 13.7% drop respectively when comparing them to the previous months last year. When looking at a five-year average in Germany (2016-2020), they still found a notable 8.2% and 11.1 % decline in those first months of 2022.
The trends are comparable in Sweden and in the report, the data can be found in tables 1 and 2.
Limitations
The authors note that the data is “preliminary” and subject to change. But they do emphasize that any change wouldn’t be substantial when considering the overall trend observed. Certain assumptions underlying seasonal adjustments could be challenged. The authors disclose that their summaries are in part, based on “descriptive associations” not accounting for individual-level characteristics as well as additional contextual elements that could have an impact on the data. Research factoring in individual-level data would offer better insight into the outcomes observed—the fertility declines. For example, a look at parent and non-parent households; socio-demographic elements, etc.
**************************************************
15 November, 2022
Deep In The Wombs of Women: The Hidden Harm of Covid Vaccines
Mary Beth Pfeiffer
On a bright October day in Paris, I attended an unusual event in a long reporting career: A rally, just a stone’s throw from Napoleon’s Tomb, at which women spoke about their periods.
Organized by a group called “Where’s my cycle,” the rally focused on intimate revelations: heavy bleeding, unprecedented pain, humiliation, and elemental physical changes. These symptoms began, not coincidentally, at the start of 2021, when women put out their arms and took, or were coerced by employers to take, covid-19 vaccinations.
The 300 women, and men, at this rally—and the 10,000 that Oú est mon cycle represents—are fighting for basic expectations of life: a pain-free existence, a medical system they can trust, and the ability to bear children.
This was not just about inconvenience or embarrassment. It was about fertility.
Among the testimonials:
“I had a miscarriage in July 2021 [a month after the first vaccination]…I didn’t even know I was pregnant when I took my first dose.”
“My second dose was done at the same time that I became pregnant…this pregnancy [after bearing two healthy babies] was dramatic with a chromosomal abnormality of the fetus, heart also. It ended with an IMG [Interruption Médicale de Grossesse, or medical termination of pregnancy].” A year later, “I took a smear and it turned out to be abnormal with the presence of pre-cancerous lesions.”
“My menstrual cycle is completely out of order. I have them randomly, once bleeding and the next time almost nothing, not to mention that I can no longer get pregnant.”
So far, the collective has received about 1,000 reports of concerning and bizarre abnormalities, like 20-year-olds in pre-menopause and 70-year-olds suddenly menstruating. The list of complaints is a veritable gynecological glossary of woe: amenorrhoea, menorrhagia, adenomyosis, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, miscarriage, and hysterectomy.
European Union overseers concluded in June that the complaints of these women had “no link” to the vaccines. It’s difficult to know how such conclusions are drawn, since data is scant on fertility issues and vaccines. The only completed pregnancy study, in a September vaccine risk plan posted by the EU, was performed on rats, while research on human beings is incomplete. That lack of evidence—for or against vaccination—was one of many reasons Oú est mon cycle demanded, in a fifteen-page letter in September, that the EU reconsider the risk of covid vaccines to women.
Nonetheless, the EU is recommending fourth boosters to women of all ages. To that, the three hundred people at the rally had one word: “No.”
Dormant pathologies explode
Dr. Laurence Kayser, a gynecologist from Belgium, attended the rally as one of few doctors speaking out about the denial faced by women who report gynecological problems. Indeed, women said doctors routinely told them, when they questioned the inoculations, that they needed mental health care or were anxious. Rejected was any suggestion that vaccination was to blame.
Since the vaccine was rolled out, Kayser says she’s seen more miscarriages, babies too small for birth age, and rapidly growing fibroids that she said were unusual in shape and composition, “partially watery, necrotic.” She treated a 17-year-old whose period stopped for eleven months after vaccinations and may be infertile.
“The injections didn’t create a new disease, no,” she told me. “They revealed the frailties of people, the dormant pathologies, and allowed them to explode in broad daylight. You see more diseases, more often and more quickly than before.”
People like Kayser, whose Twitter profile describes her as a “rebellious…independent thinker,” have paid dearly for bucking covid directives. At a demonstration last January 30, she criticized doctors who failed to treat covid early, said masks do not work, and said that vaccines have side effects. For that, she faces professional charges and may lose her medical license. Nonetheless, she told me, “I’m in a good way. I’m not afraid about losing my job.”
Typhaine Pinsolle, a PhD microbiologist, lost her job in a hospital laboratory for refusing to be vaccinated. First, she saw injuries around her: four senior doctors hospitalized in ICU a week after their first shots; a 23-year-old colleague “blue from feet to head” after injection, and many women with “hemorrhagic periods.” Then, in May, her mother, 78 and otherwise healthy, died weeks after receiving the vaccine from a blood clot in the brain.
“It killed my mother,” she told me. But she had long before decided to refuse vaccines that were, to her, “scientific nonsense.” Her rationales? Her laboratory work showed robust antibodies after infection, but natural immunity was discounted. The spike protein as the foundation of vaccines was toxic. She worked closely with patients and took hydroxychloroquine; she had not gotten covid. And a hematologist advised against vaccination for health reasons, which her employer would not honor.
At the Oú mon cycle rally, Pinsolle read the emotional testimony of a friend whose covid vaccination caused a river of bleeding, a sudden fibroid that her doctor insisted was normal, thickening of the uterus and, finally, a recommended hysterectomy. “I blame the people who injected me with the anti-covid products,” the friend, Annelise Bocquet, wrote after I contacted her via email. “I believe that every caregiver, doctor or nurse (and even pharmacist), is responsible for the medical acts they perform.”
Bocquet holds a PhD in biology and, should surgery take place, said she will analyze “my damaged tissue” to look for key markers of inflammation in order to establish, or rule out, a link to vaccination. “I can’t understand why no team of scientists, nor high-ranking doctor, tries to determine the pathophysiological mechanisms induced by the injections,” she wrote.
Alexandra Henrion-Caude, a PhD geneticist for seventeen years who spoke at the rally, said she warned of infertility from the start, knowing from SARS-CoV-1 that “the spike went to the testes, placenta, and some to the ovary.”
“I believe in the therapeutic potential of RNA, relevant to people who are at risk,” she told me. “It was mad to give it to people when we knew so little about them.” Despite an Eisenhower fellowship and twelve years of research in mRNA, she has been censored by Facebook and LinkedIn, along with others who disagree.
The abnormal normalized
Changes in the cycle that governs human reproduction have been documented in recent months in several post-covid-vaccination studies. A July study in Science Advances reported “breakthrough bleeding” in 42 percent of women with regular periods, 71 percent on birth control, and 66 percent who were post-menopausal. Nonetheless, it concluded the changes were “not uncommon or dangerous.”
Another study, in Obstetrics & Gynecology found what the National Institutes of Health called a “small, temporary” increase—less than one day in the overall cycle length—in 6.2 percent of vaccinated women. A third study, in British Medical Journal, also found a one-day extension in women’s cycles, which it called “small and likely temporary.” A carefully worded NIH post assures women that the “normal” changes they may experience should not feed “vaccine hesitancy.”
Mélodie Feron, the rally organizer, argues that such conclusions are flawed because they excluded many women—on hormonal therapy, in menopause, or suffering other common problems. “What about endometriosis?” she asked.
Like Dr. Henrion-Caude, she sees pervasive censorship. “As long as you are talking about the vaccination, you are shadow banned,” she said, referring to suppression of information that does not support established covid doctrine. “It’s a very bad moment for women.”
A French Parliament report from June concluded that dismissing such reported menstrual irregularities as “frequent, self-limiting and…due to stress is not acceptable.”
“Given their volume and therefore the unlikely nature of a temporal coincidence,” the report stated, “…it is very surprising that they are not already considered as a proven adverse effect of the vaccine.”
That may be changing. In late October, a committee of the European Medicines Agency recommended that heavy bleeding in menstruation be added as a potential side effect of Moderna and Pfizer covid vaccines.
Quiet nurseries, empty wombs
The experiences of these French women may explain, at least in part, a concerning trend in countries around the world: Fewer babies are being born or born alive.
In Scotland, a “significant” increase in stillbirths in September of 2021 and March of 2022 led to a government investigation. Inexplicably, the probe ruled out any the role of covid vaccines, without even checking whether mothers were vaccinated.
In Zurich, Switzerland, births declined 21 percent in the first five months of 2022 compared to a year earlier, according to the newspaper Inside Paradeplatz. When the newspaper studied five years of pre-pandemic data, a second article found a decline of 31 percent in June 2022. Nearly 600 fewer babies were born in the first half of 2022 compared to the average for 2015 to 2019.
“This is a magnitude 10 earthquake,” the article stated. The headline: “Baby crash in the city of Zurich is accelerating massively.”
Unlike the Swiss newspaper report, a new research report from Europe points to Covid vaccinations as a factor in declining birthrates in Germany and Sweden. In early 2022, the fertility rate dropped 14 percent and 10 percent, respectively, in those countries.
Performed by the (German) Federal Institute for Population Research and Stockholm University, the analysis, using birth data since 2000, found a “strong association between the onset of vaccination programmes and the fertility decline nine months after of this onset.” It ruled out at three other possible factors: covid infections, covid deaths and unemployment.
“The fertility decline in the first months of 2022 in Germany and Sweden is remarkable,” the study said.
The media: silence
Similar to reports worldwide of excess deaths, which I wrote about in September, little media attention is being paid to fertility developments. Instead, they are informed often by anecdotal reports.
In Florida, Dr. Kimberly Biss, an obstetrician, states in a widely shared video: “I can definitely say since the vaccine rollout started, we have seen in our practice a decrease in new OB numbers, which would be infertility by about 50 percent. We’ve also seen an increase in miscarriage rates by about 50 percent. And I would say there’s probably about a 25 percent increase in abnormal pap smears as well as cervical malignancies in our area.” (I reached out to Dr. Biss but did not hear back.)
In California, a post-partum nurse from a major hospital center, Michelle Gershman, shared a September 8 email to maternity staff describing record numbers of fetal deaths.
“Well, it seems like the increase of demise patients that we are seeing is going to continue,” the email began. “There were 22 demises in August, which ties the record number of demises in July 2021 and so far in September there have been 7 and it’s only the 8th day of the month.”
“I’m blown away because this is not natural, this should not be happening,” Gershman said in an interview with Del Bigtree on The Highwire. Gershman said many women had been vaccinated shortly before giving birth, often early.
The timing of these deaths indisputably coincides with vaccine rollout, which began in December 2020. But there may be other factors driving these trends, such as covid itself, socioeconomics, or lockdown effects. Not all studies agree on declines in birthrates. An Australian study showed fewer stillbirths among vaccinated women, who tended to be more well-to-do, less apt to smoke, and were more often English-speaking and older first-time mothers.
The issue, amid denial and censorship, is whether the right questions are even being asked. Will women who question vaccines be heard?
“They are in the refusal mode to debate,” said Henrion-Caude, the geneticist at the Paris rally. “It’s never good, especially in science. It’s the path to any extreme.”
“The most awful thing is people have been suffering and dying unnecessarily,” she continued. “I have a strong sadness about this.”
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14 November, 2022
Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Led to Multiple Cranial Nerve Palsies: Case Report in Romania
Late last year, physician-scientists associated with the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy and the National Institute of Neurology and Neurovascular Diseases in Bucharest Romania reported on a post-COVID-19 vaccine injury via a case report involving a 29-year-old white male who had no known history presenting Bell’s palsy and diplopia.
Represented by corresponding author Maria Mirabela Manea, the Romanian medical research group reported that his symptoms commenced just 6 days after receiving the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine. With no disclosed allergic history, the doctors secured a signed patient consent to publish the case report using CARE reporting guidelines.
The Case Report
The doctors conducted a gadolinium-enhanced MRI which presented enhancement in the left facial, trigeminal and oculomotor nerves—this observation only persisted upon repeated examination. While cerebrospinal fluid analysis was done initially and one month after the start of the patient’s symptoms, the study authors found no signs of inflammation.
Reviewing a list of possible causes, the team eliminated one after the other while treating the patient with high doses of corticosteroids with an improvement in symptoms.
Conclusion
The BNT162b2 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine the researchers determined was the cause of the enhancement observed in the left facial, trigeminal, and oculomotor nerves.
Relevance
Part of the nervous system responsible for sending pain, touch and temperature sensations from one’s face to the brain, this large three-part nerve in the head powers significant neurological function. The mandibular nerve, a section, helps motor function to help chew and swallow.
The third cranial nerve (CN III), the oculomotor nerve supports the movement of the eye muscles, constriction of the pupil, eye focus as well as positioning of the upper eyelid. This nerve works with others to control eye movements while supporting sensory functioning.
Importantly when this case report was published in the journal Activa Neurological Scandinavica, the Romania authors cited four cases of Bell’s palsy occurring 3, 9, 37 and 48 days post the vaccine as reported by the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, December 10, 2020 Meeting Briefing Document—FDA 2020.
Additionally, the authors pointed out:
“Several cases are reported of peripheral facial palsy after immunization with PBV [Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine]: a patient with two episodes of contralateral Bell's palsies arising shortly after inoculation with the first and second dose of the PBV and other cases of unilateral facial palsy occurring 36 h after the second dose. Another published case involved abducens nerve palsy 2 day after PBV.”
The study authors reported on “the strength of this study” based on the “thorough work-up performed which enabled the exclusion of other potential causes.” They do acknowledge how this was a first of its kind involving multiple cranial neuropathies after SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Caution
The doctors overseeing this case report acknowledge the “efficacy and safety of these novel vaccines…” but emphasize the importance of “the monitoring period for the appearance of post-vaccine complications” currently limited to just “a few months.” Their point: “neurological side effects require close observation.”
About Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy
Based in Bucharest, Romania: Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy is known as UMFCD and serves as a vital public health sciences university in this major city of Romania. UMFCD represents one of the largest and oldest institutions in Romania.
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Vaccine Expert Skeptical About Bivalent Booster
Paul Offit is a well-known pediatrician and researcher often seen on network television for his expertise on vaccines. TrialSite News has cited Offit for his known expertise specifically on vaccines, as he started to question the push for the bivalent Omicron BA.4/BA.5 COVID-19 vaccine booster.
Increasingly outspoken, it’s not too surprising that mainstream media such as The Philadelphia Inquirer features his growing restless point of view on the COVID-19 vaccination program, not to mention his skepticism of the new bivalent Covid vaccine and the government’s questionable response. Offit understands that the government’s obsession with vaccine hesitancy, and avoiding it, may lead to even more resistance.
Oversold
According to Offit, who is on the independent Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) advisory board regarding which vaccines the public should receive, the bivalent shot is unnecessary. “This product was grossly oversold,” says Offit, who was in the minority when the FDA Vaccine and Related Biologics Committee (VBRAC) recommended the booster in June with a 19-2 vote.
Recently, on the record, Offit declared :
“We have to be careful when we get in front of the American public and try to sell this vaccine as something that’s significantly better when all the evidence we have so far doesn’t support that.”
The Philadelphia-based physician-scientist grows more and more frustrated with the government's handling of the pandemic. Offit believes a person who has been fully vaccinated and boosted gets little benefit from additional Covid jabs. And Offit isn’t only a vaccine advocate, he’s also developed them. He was part of a team that developed a vaccine for rotavirus which is now given to every infant in the United States and has been accepted worldwide.
He’s also a founder and co-director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Keeping this in mind, Offit isn’t completely against the bivalent jab, he thinks it should be given to vaccinated people 75 and older and those who are immunocompromised, but not to children ages 5 and above.
Really, he seems to be moving away from the pandemic one-size-fits-all approach that the government, academia, health systems, and industry are all aligned to promote. For example, Offit emphasizes now a risk-based approach focusing on higher-risk individuals:
“The take-home lesson is the people who were in high-risk groups and benefit from booster doses as we enter this late fall and early winter – those who are immunocompromised, who have high-risk medical conditions, who are elderly — they should get this booster dose,” says Offit.
Concerned Decision Not Backed by Science
As reported by TrialSite, there were no clinical trials of the bivalent booster [at the time of release to the public], a fact not missed by Offit. He’s also concerned about the federal government making a decision about the vaccine when it’s not backed by what Offit calls “robust science”.
Why would the government authorize the booster without input from the FDA advisory committee—asks Offit. Comparing the approval of the bivalent vaccine with the Trump administration’s pressure on health agencies to approve the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid—essentially stating the Biden administration is politicizing the pandemic as much as the previous Trump administration, Offit declares, “It isn’t different.”
Importantly, Offit is concerned about losing the trust of the majority of the American public. After all, he is aware that even up until now, less than 9% of all persons across America eligible for the bivalent booster have stepped forward to get it.
Offit says…
“If you’re advocating for a position where the science doesn’t really support that position, then what happens is you lose trust.”
In an April 2022 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Offit points to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as the main government body which must educate the public about the Covid vaccines and boosters. In the article, Offit says people are now confused about what it means to be “fully vaccinated” and also asserts boosters are not “risk-free.”
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/vaccine-expert-skeptical-about-bivalent-booster-dd4f2af1
***************************************************Australian actress reveals why she refused to get a Covid jab and how she knew she 'wouldn't get another TV job' because she dared to lash out at lockdown lunacy
Australian actress Isabel Lucas sparked widespread backlash in 2020 after coming out against vaccine mandates and lockdowns amid the Covid pandemic.
And now the former Home and Away star has opened up about her decision to jib the jab, admitting that she knew it was 'highly likely I won’t work for years if I share this'.
Speaking to Stellar magazine, the 37-year-old said that she had 'several' vaccines when she was growing up, but chose not to get vaccinated against Covid.
'For me, I appreciate, what might be right for you may not be right for me, but it’s not right that either of us are being stripped of the freedom to choose,' she explained.
'Our relationship with our body is very personal and it’s deeply complex and so are our choices, and we’re claiming to engage in conversations about inclusion and diversity – you know, gender, religion, sexuality, race – without allowing our beliefs or observations to be acknowledged,' she continued.
'The diversity of choice is yet to be included, in my experience.'
Last November, Isabel said that she was 'pro-choice' when it came to the Covid vaccine. She later clarified her remarks on Instagram, saying she has 'concerns around "mandatory" vaccination, not vaccination itself'.
At the time, the star joined hundreds of people at a rally to protest Australia's Covid-19 vaccine mandates at the New South Wales-Queensland border.
In 2020, Isabel hit headlines when she shared anti-vaccination views on Instagram while commenting on a post by controversial chef Pete Evans.
Throwing her support behind the former MKR judge, she wrote: 'Freedom of choice is every human's right. I don't trust the path of vaccination.'
She received widespread backlash for her stance, and as a result was dropped as an ambassador for the charity Plan International Australia, which ironically champions equal rights for young girls.
Isabel has a long history of activism dating back to 2007, when she and fellow actress Hayden Panettiere joined activists on surfboards to try and stop a pod of dolphins being slaughtered in Japan.
In 2020, Isabel also attended a 'peaceful' anti-5G protest in Byron Bay, marching from the Jing Organics health food store to the proposed location of a 5G tower.
The Sydney-born beauty got her big break in acting playing Tasha Andrews on Home and Away from 2003 to 2006.
From there, she found stardom in Hollywood in films like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Daybreakers, and Red Dawn.
More recently, she played Samantha Cage in season two of the MacGyver TV reboot.
Isabel has since left Los Angeles and moved back to Australia to start a new life in Byron Bay
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13 November, 2022
‘Masks reduce racism’ study is latest sign US medical establishment is insanely, perilously woke
A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine purports to show that mask policies in schools work to contain COVID. But that’s not all: The authors conclude, “We believe that universal masking may be especially useful for mitigating effects of structural racism in schools, including potential deepening of educational inequities.”
Sure, masks help fix structural racism. Why not? And the next study will show masking fights climate change.
No, what this study shows is that much of the medical establishment continues to be intensely woke — and deeply dishonest because of it. Just as the “experts” told us gathering in crowds wasn’t OK in spring of 2020, but just weeks later protesting for Black Lives Matter somehow was.
This dishonesty is going to hurt us all for a long time.
As for this study specifically: It does not prove what the authors intended to. It’s just the latest in a push by agenda-driven scientists, and the media who love them, to get people back in masks.
The study centers on two Massachusetts school districts that didn’t remove their mask mandates as soon as the state allowed, in March 2022, but kept them until June. A few months later, they saw slightly lower COVID rates than the other districts.
It’s amazing that COVID could lay in wait like that, ready to punish those who behaved badly months earlier. What’s even more startling: COVID rates in all the schools were higher before anyone took off their mask — but that uncomfortable fact goes unmentioned in the write-up.
Plus, the study doesn’t look at actual mask use, just the mandates. Nor does it account for any differences in behavior, income level, lifestyles and so on. (Which also means it can’t show a thing about masks and “structural racism,” whatever that is anyway.)
Oh, and: It’s an “observational” study — the kind the left dismissed as irrelevant when we’d point out that New Mexico and next-door Utah had very similar COVID trajectories despite very different masking policies. Or that Europe largely didn’t mask kids in school at all but had similar or lower rates than we did. None of that counted.
Which didn’t stop The New York Times’ Roni Caryn Rabin from promoting the new study as “a so-called natural experiment” and breathlessly concluding, “The bottom line: Masking mandates were linked with significantly reduced numbers of Covid cases in schools.”
This is full-on nonsense. The mask mandates did no such thing. New Mexico-Utah and Europe are just part of the avalanche of “natural experiments” that prove it.
It’s pathetic that in November 2022, we have to keep pointing out the obvious — and that garbage science like this destroys everyone’s confidence in the medical field.
Pre-COVID, trusting the medical establishment was the default for all of us, most conservatives included. I’m firmly on the right, but when the health agencies told me in the early days of the pandemic that masking worked, I believed them.
Yet things quickly stopped making sense. Masking outside seemed ludicrous right off the bat, yet it would be a long time before these same health agencies admitted it.
Not until April 25, 2021, did Dr. Anthony Fauci say, “It’s common sense to know that the risk when you are outdoors, which we have been saying all along, is extremely low, and if you are vaccinated it’s even lower.”
He had not, actually, been saying that all along — and those of us who had that “common sense” got targeted and ridiculed for being “anti-science.”
It wasn’t that we stopped “believing” in masking. It’s that we were lied to and then realized it.
And “common sense” did not prevail at all in blue areas. My family moved to Florida in January 2022 because our kids were still forced to mask at their New York City public schools, outdoors.
These bonkers policies destroyed the trust of so many people, and it will be far more difficult than it seems to restore it.
Again, the problem isn’t just with masking. It’s that the medical establishment has gone fully woke. Wokeness goes hand-in-hand with forced conformity.
No one is allowed to step out of the woke lines — though those lines are free to shift at any time. It’s very Soviet.
Under those rules, you can’t be critical of even this cockamamie study; you’re supposed to see that someone squiggled some lines on a graph and pretends it “proves” something it clearly doesn’t because you need to support your “side.”
Inside the woke echo chamber, you even have to embrace insane ideas like “masking fights racism.”
https://nypost.com/2022/11/11/us-medical-establishment-has-gone-woke-with-masking-racism-study/
**********************************************************CDC boss tests positive for Covid AGAIN: Rochelle Walensky is diagnosed with virus just days after being given the all-clear
The head of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has tested positive for Covid again - after a course of Paxlovid saw her recover from the virus.
Dr Rochelle Walensky initially tested positive on October 21 and tested negative sometime in recent days after taking Pfizer's antiviral pill.
But the CDC said today her symptoms had returned and she was positive for the virus again on Sunday, October 30.
Paxlovid has proven effective at preventing serious disease and death among those at highest risk, including older people and those who are immune compromised.
Some who take the drug have experienced a return of symptoms after completing Paxlovid’s five-day regimen of pills.
These include President Joe Biden and Dr Anthony Fauci, who both also had their symptoms rebound after recovering using the drug.
Dr Walensky, 53, has received four doses of the COVID-19 vaccines, including a bivalent booster received on September 22.
The agency reports that she is suffering mild symptoms and will take part in her planned meeting virtually.
Walensky has received four shots of a COVID-19 vaccine up to this point.
Her agency has warned repeatedly for Americans to get the bivalent booster in an effort to stave off a winter surge of the virus.
Uptick has been low so far, though, with only 22.8million having received the shot in the two months it has been available.
Up to 5.3 per cent of people that use Paxlovid will experience a rebound of symptoms. These include President Biden, who first tested positive for the virus on July 21 of this year.
He would then leave isolation after two consecutive negative tests, but then test positive for the virus once again on July 30.
Dr Fauci experienced a similar phenomenon when he caught Covid in June. He said that he beat the virus after a five day course of the drug. After testing negative for three days, his symptoms then returned.
Both President Biden and Dr Fauci fully recovered from the virus in the following weeks.
Scientists have not been able to determine why this rebound occurs, but believe it could be tied to the way the drug functions.
Paxlovid fights Covid by preventing its replication. After a course of a drug is finished, their could still be some infected cells lingering in a person's body.
Once the Paxlovid is no longer around to stop replication, the virus is able to begin infected the body once more.
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FDA Regulators: Peter Doshi has a Message for You
Peter Doshi, Ph.D., is most certainly an accomplished, influential figure in American biomedical research. A senior editor of the respected medical journal, The BMJ, as well as an associate professor of pharmaceutical health services research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, Dr. Doshi could be classified as a clinical investigator heavyweight in any biomedical scientist match. An expert in not only the drug approval process but also how risks and benefits associated with medicinal products are evaluated, communicated, and ultimately approved, the Baltimore-based academic researcher and scientist has dedicated his career to improving the process of generating medical evidence.
TrialSite has showcased his and colleagues’ recent investigations raising concerning questions about COVID-19 vaccine safety, particularly in low-risk cohorts.
Although the indisputable pedigree, intellectual firepower, and an extensive network of connections are all in place, Doshi’s critique of the COVID-19 vaccines is completely evaded by mainstream academia, regulators, and industry.
Why? Because there has been so much pressure built up from the highest circles of power in Washington to drive a mass vaccination program during the pandemic that a certain top-down, politically-inspired rigidity has compromised objectivity, veracity, and frankly, morals and ethics.
Those regulatory and compliance professionals charged with doing their job are, unfortunately, missing in action. Doshi, a moral operator who isn’t worried about McMansion payments or keeping up with the academic ‘Joneses,’ takes an ever more proactive stand, calling out the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to start handling their business, properly.
Disturbing Safety Signals Need Investigation
For example, the Baltimore-based academic and clinical research expert shared his findings, conveying his growing concern as to what happened to the Gold Standard regulatory agency. Why is the FDA MIA?
Doshi, who has communicated with TrialSite from time to time, shares that the safety signal he and colleagues have uncovered is troubling, to say the least.
Both Pfizer and Moderna’s Phase 3 clinical trials data suggest an investigation is needed, and now! Serious adverse events—those events that the companies themselves have classified as being the most concerning, are too high not to notice. This is no trivial matter, to be minimized and marginalized by the FDA, CDC, NIH, and others, not to mention political representatives. Clearly, the companies can’t get themselves to do the right thing as they and their shareholders are blinded by avarice and an insatiable urge for ever more capital accumulation. True, the shareholders demand such behavior but there’s ultimately a bigger, more sustained corporate brand health imperative that the CEOs must understand and ultimately embrace.
Doshi is one but a few lonely voices in academia calling for regulators to get off their tails and back into an independent regulatory groove. While political agendas and pharmaceutical sirens have lured the FDA’s independent regulatory ship into precarious, dangerous straits, the vaccine safety data calls for getting back on course—immediately.
What’s the trial data show?
Doshi shares that the trial data are indicating that serious adverse events occur at around 1 in 800 people vaccinated—“so 1 additional serious adverse event for every 800 people vaccinated.” This is a disturbingly high safety signal. For comparison, previous vaccines typically produce about 1 or 2 serious adverse events per million vaccinated persons.
Doshi reminds today’s regulators that at any other point in time there would be a serious investigation. For example, he recalls back in 1976: a small boost in the risk of a serious neurological disorder known as Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) associated with the swine flu vaccine necessitated stopping the immunization to investigate. At that time, the rate of incidence was approximately 1 additional case of GBS for every 100,000 people who got the swine flu.
This is all very troubling—especially with the impact of the safety signal on low-risk groups—centering on young people. Doshi’s calls for a review should have long ago been heard.
Regulators—Are you Listening?
Dr. Doshi understands his obligation, regardless of political or career fallout, to intensify the call to the leadership at the FDA to wake up and start an investigation.
First reminding the FDA of their responsibilities and duties as the agency entrusted to protect public health, Doshi prompts the regulators that they need to be able to conduct an independent replication of the trial data using the individual participant data from the trials.
Second, he instructs the FDA leadership to ensure immediate receipt of all the necessary trial data—not summaries of the data. Finally, the Maryland-based professor directs the FDA to review this data with as much scrutiny as possible. He reminds all: “That’s the responsibility that I think a regulator has.”
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/fda-regulators-peter-doshi-has-a-message-for-you-d90cfdd7
**************************************************11 November, 2022
Is demonising the unvaccinated a health hazard?
Vaccine zealots attacking the unvaccinated have been a feature of the pandemic. ‘Mocking anti-vaxxers’ deaths is ghoulish, yes – but necessary’, wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Michael Hiltzik in the LA Times in January after the death of Republican Kelly Ernby – an unvaccinated critic of vaccine mandates. Those who ‘deliberately flouted sober medical advice by refusing a vaccine known to reduce the risk of serious disease from the virus, including the risk to others, and end up in the hospital or the grave can be viewed as receiving their just deserts’, Hiltzik moralised. In fact, Ernby died at home of a blood clot while gardening not on a ventilator in hospital but for Hiltzik it didn’t matter, it was a ‘teachable’ moment.
Covid karma is not as ugly. There is no gloating over the untimely deaths of those who attacked or ridiculed the unvaccinated, just a grim sense of foreboding about the true toll of the pandemic’s tarnished silver bullet. Social media captures the outbursts in screen shots that haunt their authors beyond the grave. There are dozens of examples online pinned like butterflies to a board.
They include Willie Garson, star of Sex and the City, who scapegoated the unvaccinated for the failure of the vaccine to end the pandemic. ‘We’ll be wearing masks the rest of our lives because of these f..cking idiots not wearing masks and refusing vaccines’, he ranted, repeatedly calling them ‘stupid ’, ‘morons’, ‘idiots’ and ’selfish and irresponsible’. Eventually, the US Centers for Disease Control published a study in July, showing that Covid vaccines did not stop transmission or infection and vaccinated people were just as infectious as unvaccinated people but it was too late to make much difference to Garson who died of pancreatic cancer on 20 September, just over five months after he was vaccinated.
Early in the pandemic, doctors merrily mocked the vaccine hesitant but sometimes didn’t get the last laugh. Dr. Witold Rogiewicz was vaccinated on Polish television in January 2021. He joked to viewers, ‘I have info for anti-vaxxers and anti-Coviders. If you want to contact Bill Gates you can do this through me. I can also provide from my organism the 5G network.’ A video of the broadcast was taken down when he died suddenly during the night less than three weeks later.
Dr Thomas Flanagan, a plastic surgeon from Ohio was equally jocular after his first jab, tweeting, ‘I didn’t feel the microchip going in but I can hear local radio stations now’. After the second jab he added, ‘The microchip is working just fine.’ But he wasn’t fine. He died three months later, aged 48. His obituary made world headlines because people thought he had written it before his death as a joke. It started, ‘My wild and crazy life has again taken a new, unexpected turn with my shocking and unexpected, yet fabulous, exit.’ It was actually written by his fraternity buddies after his death. He left behind a grieving wife and children.
Dr Sohrab Lutchmedial, a fit Canadian cardiologist, was not so cheery. He wrote that he wanted to punch anyone in the face who persuaded others not to get vaccinated and tweeted, ‘I won’t cry at your funeral’. But it was Lutchmedial who passed away unexpectedly two weeks after his booster in November 2021.
New Zealand rapper Louie Knuxx memorised the faces of those protesting lockdowns in Melbourne so he could ‘punch one of these c..nts in the jaw’. But before he had a chance, he died of a heart attack on 13 August, 2021 while running on his treadmill, age 42.
Darrell Beveridge, the Aussie ‘internet food police’, had an Instagram account called ‘CookSuck’. He enthusiastically supported the exclusion of unvaccinated people from restaurants tweeting, ‘Anti-vaxxers are like people who’ve done a big sh..t in their pants. You’re allowed to do it, it’s very natural, and the bathroom is possibly a scam created by BigToiletTM, but the general public don’t want you in the room with them while they’re eating’. He died suddenly and unexpectedly in June this year aged 41.
Are these deaths related to the Covid vaccines? Without autopsies it is impossible to say. The FDA refuses to release depersonalised reports on people who died post-vaccination but Dr Ute Kruger, a former chief pathologist and a senior physician at Lund University in Sweden said in a recent interview that clinicians often say a patient is unvaccinated when they are vaccinated, and typically don’t do rigorous histopathological testing to detect markers of vaccine injury.
What is apparent in Australia is that along with a dramatic increase in excess deaths due to heart attacks and stroke there has also been an increase above the baseline in cancer deaths that bears watching. All started rising with the rollout of the vaccines. While regulators admit that vaccination can cause blood clots and heart inflammation, they have yet to acknowledge studies that show Covid vaccinations can suppress type I interferon signalling, down regulating cancer surveillance and prevention. It’s only anecdotal evidence at this stage but Kruger says she has noted an increase in cancer since the rollout of the vaccines, a decrease in the average age of those she diagnoses, more people in remission getting aggressive recurrences, and larger tumours occurring in multiple locations.
As the hubristic certainty of the vaccinated wanes, Covid karma is likely to fade away.
All that will be left are the questions about vaccine deaths and injuries hanging in the air, waiting for answers.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/covid-karmas-gonna-get-ya/
*******************************************************Has the world won the war on Covid? Global virus deaths have plummeted 90% since February
Covid deaths have plunged nearly 90 per cent globally since February — in a sign the world is finally winning the pandemic fight.
There were 9,400 fatalities from the virus last week compared to more than 75,000 every seven days in early February. This is also the lowest level since Covid started to take off in March 2020.
World Health Organization chiefs — who compiled the data — said in a press conference the figures were a 'cause for optimism' and showed the world had 'come a long way'.
But they insisted that the current death tally was '10,000 too many', and maintained that Covid was 'still a pandemic'.
America is recording the most weekly Covid deaths out of any nation at 2,000 every seven days on average, and the third highest number of cases per week.
But cases and death counts are massively skewed by the number of tests carried out.
Despite America's relatively high death count, virtually all Covid restrictions have been abandoned in the US, with President Joe Biden declaring in September the pandemic was 'over'.
Many left-leaning scientists — including Dr Anthony Fauci — were quick to undermine the president, claiming that there was still work to be done.
Dr Anthony Fauci has warned America is at a Covid 'crossroad' and claims the current level of virus deaths is 'unacceptable'.
The government's top infectious disease doctor said Americans should not be lured into a false sense of security because Covid stats have been deflating since spring.
There are currently 270,000 weekly cases, while deaths hover around 2,500, compared to about 500,000 and 8,500, respectively, this time last year.
While he accepted the declining numbers as progress, Dr Fauci said he expects a harsh winter with high infection levels and new variants of the virus.
'We're really at a point that may be a crossroads here,' Dr Fauci said in a radio interview.
'As we're entering into the cooler months, we are starting to see the emergence of sublineage variants of omicron.'
He added: 'We're still in the middle of this — it is not over — 400 deaths per day is not an acceptable level. We want to get it much lower than that.'
Dr Fauci expects the new Omicron subvariants to render antibody therapies such as Evusheld completely useless — in a worrying sign for immunocompromised patients.
He also warned US hospitals face a 'negative trifecta' this winter as flu and RSV cases soar to unseasonably high levels.
The WHO's director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference: 'We have come a long way, and this is definitely a cause for optimism.'
But he also urged everyone to 'remain vigilant' for new Covid variants, and spikes in cases or deaths.
'Almost 10,000 deaths a week is 10,000 too many for a disease that can be prevented and treated,' he added.
Maria van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on Covid, also insisted during a press conference that Covid is 'still a pandemic, it is circulating quite rampantly around the world.'
The health agency also reported 2.1million Covid cases globally last week, down 88 per cent on the nearly 18million in early February.
The WHO has no hard and fast definition for when a pandemic should be declared over.
The judgement is made by a panel, based on cases, deaths and vaccination rates, as well as social and political factors.
China is still using brutal lockdowns to curb the spread of the virus, showing that while most of the West is learning to live with the virus, some countries are still struggling to adapt.
Weekly US fatalities have remained at around 2,000 and 3,000 since late April, and there is no sign at present they are about to take off.
The lowest weekly Covid fatality recorded to date was over the seven days to July 7 when the US registered about 1,500 deaths in a single week.
When the virus first emerged people had no natural protection against the disease.
But with the advent of Covid vaccines and an ever-growing number of infections a wall of immunity has built up against the virus.
This has severed the link between surging cases and a subsequent rise in fatalities.
Last week, outgoing lockdown architect and top disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci said the level of Covid deaths in the US was still 'unacceptable'.
He added that Americans should not be lured into a false sense of security because Covid stats had been deflating since the spring.
'We're really at a point that may be a crossroads here,' Dr Fauci said in a radio interview.
'As we're entering into the cooler months, we are starting to see the emergence of sublineage variants of omicron.'
He added: 'We're still in the middle of this — it is not over — 400 deaths per day is not an acceptable level. We want to get it much lower than that.'
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European Union watchdog backs Sanofi Covid booster jab
The EU on Thursday approved a Covid booster vaccine by French drug maker Sanofi and Britain‘s GSK after it gave positive results against the Omicron variant in trials.
The approval of the “next generation” jab by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is a shot in the arm for Sanofi and GSK, which have lagged behind rivals in offering a vaccine.
“A booster dose of VidPrevtyn Beta is expected to be at least as effective as Comirnaty (Pfizer‘s vaccine) at restoring protection against Covid-19,” the Amsterdam-based EMA said.
A second study restored immunity in 627 adults who received other vaccines for their first course of jabs.
“Today‘s approval validates our research in developing a novel solution for the Covid-19 pandemic,” Thomas Triomphe, Sanofi executive vice president for vaccines, said.
The approval marks the end of a long journey for Sanofi to bring a Covid vaccine to market.
The French pharma giant, considered to be a world leader on vaccines, has come under huge scrutiny at home for failing to roll out a Covid jab earlier.
While it struggled, Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna brought their vaccines to market at a pace never before seen in history. Both vaccines were approved nearly two full years before Sanofi‘s breakthrough on Thursday.
While Sanofi has finally managed to get a Covid vaccine approved, the question remains about how much demand remains in an already crowded market.
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10 November, 2022
Mainstream media thrilled over study showing Paxlovid prevents some long COVID symptoms
The unusual intense coverage of a new study showing benefits of the Pfizer antiviral drug Paxlovid can best be explained by the collusion between the media and the big drug industry.
In its 2022 financial guidance, the company reported Paxlovid revenue of $22 billion.
True, the new data are impressive in some ways. But some relevant questions can be raised and will be done here.
Here are some excerpts from the new study.
“In this work, we aimed to examine whether treatment with nirmatrelvir in the acute phase of COVID-19 is associated with reduced risk of post-acute sequelae. We used the healthcare databases of the US Department of Veterans Affairs to identify users of the health system who had a SARS-CoV-2 positive test between March 01, 2022 and June 30, 2022, were not hospitalized on the day of the positive test, had at least 1 risk factor for progression to severe COVID-19 illness and survived the first 30 days after SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis. We identify those who were treated with oral nirmatrelvir [this drug is just part of Paxlovid] within 5 days after the positive test (n=9217) and those who received no COVID-19 antiviral or antibody treatment during the acute phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection (control group, n= 47,123).”
“Compared to the control group, treatment with nirmatrelvir was associated with reduced risk of PASC (HR 0.74 95% CI (0.69, 0.81), ARR 2.32 (1.73, 2.91)) including reduced risk of 10 of 12 post-acute sequelae in the cardiovascular system (dysrhythmia and ischemic heart disease), coagulation and hematologic disorders (deep vein thrombosis, and pulmonary embolism), fatigue, liver disease, acute kidney disease, muscle pain, neurocognitive impairment, and shortness of breath. Nirmatrelvir was also associated with reduced risk of post-acute death (HR 0.52 (0.35, 0.77), ARR 0.28 (0.14, 0.41)), and post-acute hospitalization (HR 0.70 (0.61, 0.80), ARR 1.09 (0.72, 1.46)).”
“Nirmatrelvir was associated with reduced risk of PASC in people who were unvaccinated, vaccinated, and boosted, and in people with primary SARS-CoV-2 infection and reinfection. In sum, our results show that in people with SARS-CoV-2 infection who had at least 1 risk factor for progression to severe COVID-19 illness, treatment with nirmatrelvir within 5 days of a positive SARS-CoV-2 test was associated with reduced risk of PASC regardless of vaccination status and history of prior infection. The totality of findings suggests that treatment with nirmatrelvir during the acute phase of COVID-19 reduces the risk of post-acute adverse health outcomes.”
“Nirmatrelvir was associated with reduced risk of PASC across strata of baseline risk, and in people who were unvaccinated, vaccinated, and boosted; and in people with primary SARS-CoV-2 infection and reinfection.”
Though the study reports “reduced risk of 10 of 12 post-acute sequelae” note that various reports on long COVID usually refer to 20 to 30 typical symptoms. And it is not entirely clear which of the 10 were most helped by the expensive, prescription drug.
Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research and development at the VA St. Louis Health Care System and lead author of the new report, said it showed the importance o f introducing an antiviral to reduce the severity of acute disease. It also lends credence to the idea that long covid symptoms may be driven, at least in part, by viral persistence, in which the virus is not fully cleared by infected individuals.. He said “Suppressing the viral load may reduce the problem of viral persistence.”
What has not received any attention, however, is whether the antiviral ivermectin might also offer similar benefits.
Nor has there been any research on whether high doses of vitamin D might also be beneficial for long COVID.
The people who enrolled qualified to receive the drug according to the emergency use authorization issued last year by the Food and Drug Administration, which is for anyone 12 and older at risk of severe disease including those 65 and older. As a result, the study did not include previously healthy young people, who represent the majority of patients seen at many long covid clinics, according to Benjamin Abramoff, director of the Post-COVID Assessment and Recovery Clinic at Penn Medicine.
There is no data to show whether those previously healthy young people would reap the same benefits as people at risk of severe disease.
Al-Aly, the lead author, said the study also highlighted for him the remarkable underutilization of an effective therapy, with 85 percent of people who were qualified to be prescribed the antiviral not taking it. “Is it because they were not offered it, or they had concerns?” he asked. “We are not saying any and all people should take Paxlovid,” Al-Aly said. “At this point, we do not know that. People need to understand that.”
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COVID Vaccine Shedding – Canaries in the Mine
Spike protein shedding. The media ignored it, people found out the hard way, and most no longer discuss it. But some symptoms remain.
Back in February 2022, I reported secondary vaccine shedding among patients in my naturopathic medical practice, as experienced by them throughout 2021. Pfizer had acknowledged to the FDA here that spike protein shedding from COVID-vaccinated people could occur by exhalation and skin contact. I wrote about that here.
Of the people who were already my patients for other reasons (none came to me initially regarding shedding), 26 individuals noted symptoms during, and often after, contact with COVID vaccinated people (then later a few more). None of the 26 were themselves COVID-vaccinated. This distribution of first reported 2ary symptoms showed a distinct temporal pattern.
This USAfacts interactive graph alleges that 30% of the US population had received one COVID vaccine by April 1, 2021, and that 54% of the US population had received one COVID vaccine by June 30, 2021. I say “alleges,” because there were pharmacists and healthcare workers in vehement opposition to this experimental injection, as well as threatened employees and college students who knew better than to take this injection, but did not want to be fired or expelled either, and I have no idea what kind of arrangements may have happened among individuals in these groups. Suffice it to say that I suspect that the percentage of COVID-vaccinated people in the United States is overestimated.
(As for me, my long-time subscribers likely know that I provided the first comprehensive warnings about multiple aspects of COVID vaccine hazards here, and my book Neither Safe Nor Effective cites over 300 studies from the peer-reviewed medical literature on the problems with the COVID vaccines. It’s been on the Forensic Medicine bestseller list on Amazon since it came out in May.)
After the summer of 2021, I heard fewer and fewer secondary vaccine reactions from the patients in my practice.
Two interesting exceptions remain:
Case 1: A Tertiary Vaccine Reaction
Several times in 2021, patients had asked me if their own exposure to COVID-vaccinated people could be further transmitted to family members at home. I told them that I had not heard of this, and I thought they would be fine, without cause for worry.
However, this week a patient came in regarding the secondary vaccine reactions she still gets from proximity to COVID-vaccinated people. She had been included among the 26 I had earlier counted. After such exposures, she suffered menorrhagia, malaise, rashes, itching, fatigue and headaches for some time after returning home, with symptoms resolving within about a day.
Her husband suffered the malaise, fatigue, headache and itchy rash symptoms too, at the same time, although he had not been directly exposed to COVID-vaccinated people at the same time. With each incident of the wife’s exposure, the husband began to have symptoms on her return home, and for both of them, symptoms resolved within about a day. This happened to him multiple times. This was the first I had heard of any likely tertiary exposure to COVID-vaccinated people causing symptoms.
So I think tertiary exposure is worth keeping an open mind about, while at the same time, I think it is now disproven as a major health concern, because of its scarcity.
Case 2: A Role for Zinc Oxide?
Another patient, in a loving marriage of over 30 years, tried desperately to talk her husband out of getting his three COVID vaccines, but to no avail; he was determined to have them.
After he got his first COVID vaccine, she began to feel vaguely sick while around him, but he would not believe it, and insisted on getting his second, and then a booster. With each successive vaccine, she is sicker than before in his presence. She cannot be in the same room with him for more than 20 minutes, or she remains sick for hours. (He insists that his vaccines cannot be the cause of her symptoms.) Now you might think that her prior opposition to the COVID vaccines predisposed her to feel sick, but that would not explain the following:
Two of their grandchildren have also had this reaction to their granddad since his 2nd and 3rd COVID vaccines, one of them being an infant, and they physically avoid him. The dog used to cuddle up and sleep at his feet at night. The dog can no longer stand to be around him, and will approach him quickly and then leave within seconds. By all accounts, this man has a wonderful and delightful personality, and the beauty of a strong and otherwise happy marriage, in which the couple genuinely enjoy each other’s company for over 30 years, and he is generally adored by all family and friends, according to his wife.
When the wife, my patient, recently had to be near her husband in a long car ride, and other times of necessary extended proximity, her distal cephalic vein in one wrist visibly throbs, and does so for sometimes days on end. I have seen this throbbing vein. She also gets an itchy rash at these times. Recently, she began to apply a zinc oxide sunscreen to exposed skin, when having to be near her husband for any length of time, and the vein did not throb then or afterward. Also, her skin did not develop an itchy rash after zinc oxide application. So she now applies a generous coat of zinc oxide to exposed skin for times when the couple shares a room or vehicle, and it has seemed to help her a number of times.
I would caution against this strategy for children and reproductive age people. Elizabeth Plourde PhD has presented information that zinc oxide and titanium oxide skin products can have reproductive impacts that may be concerning. Her book on sunscreens offers important warnings to those who fear the sun more than commercial products applied directly to the body’s largest organ: the skin.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/covid-vaccine-shedding-canaries-in-the-mine_4853276.html
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Does Preexisting Immunity Mean that SARS-CoV-2 Has Already Been with Us?
I am inclined to go with the theory that prior infection with other coronaviruses gave the immunity observed. I had a lot of cold/flu viruses early in life and have had no sign of infection with Covid despite being elderly and despite being in contact with infected people
A preexisting immune response can be seen in adults who have not been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Dr. Paul Alexander, COVID-19 Consultant Researcher in Evidence-Based Medicine, quoted a research study in his Substack blog titled “Making the case that COVID-19 virus was NEVER ever ‘novel’ or new, it was circulating for many years and we had some level of cross-reactive immunity.” According to research, it is more likely that preexisting immunity represents a form of cross-reactive immunity instead of meaning that SARS-CoV-2 was already with us before the pandemic.
Playing a very important role in adaptive immunity, T cells and B cells are formed as a result of encountering a pathogen. With these soldiers, our immune systems produce antibodies that attack foreign substances to protect our bodies from infections and learn how to fight better and faster for the next encounter.
This system works in the same way following exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, it has been revealed in the intensive research on this subject that there is no need for exposure to SARS-CoV-2 for these cells to form. In some individuals, preexisting T and B cells can emerge without exposure to the virus.
Current Study and Main Findings
In 2021, a study published in JCI Insight was conducted by Abdelilah Majdoubi, PhD. from BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute and colleagues to investigate the extent of the preformed immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in the Canadian adult population. They also investigated whether this immune response could be explained by existing coronaviruses or direct exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The research was funded by the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation, the Intramural Research Program of the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and also in part by the Canadian government via its COVID-19 Immunity Task Force.
This study revealed that most adults in the Canadian population show antibody reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 antigens. However, the authors concluded that it is highly unlikely that this immune response was formed from direct exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. There were relatively low cases of COVID-19 after the first wave in the British Columbia region. This greatly reduces the likelihood of a pre-existing and asymptomatic circulation of COVID-19. Also, pre-pandemic sera from adults and sera from infants younger than one-year-old revealed a similar antibody reactivity, which bolsters arguments for cross-reactivity.
Possible Sources of Cross-Reactive Immunity
If COVID-19 was not circulating before the pandemic, then what is causing this immune response? It is widely known that a strong immune reaction, in the form of antibodies or T-cell responses, occurs when the virus itself is encountered or by vaccination. Interestingly, upon exposure to cross-reactive antigens from different viruses, bacteria, vaccines, and even certain food proteins, antibodies can also be formed to create an immune response.
It is hypothesized that exposure to coronaviruses predating COVID-19, particularly common cold coronaviruses, may have created reactive T-cell responses against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Implications and Conclusion
The fact that immunity has pre-formed in individuals who have not been infected with COVID-19 does not necessarily mean that SARS-CoV-2 is not a newly emerged virus. However, these findings still have important implications.
The presence of cross-reactive antibodies in some people and their absence in others may cause differences in the severity of the disease in different people. The heterogeneity of COVID-19 disease, which is more severe in some people and milder in others, may be a result of cross-reactive immunity.
It is also important to note that pre-existing immunity does not always provide a protection advantage. More research is needed to investigate the extent to which this cross-reactive immunity provides protection against disease.
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Reports of ‘Bubbles’ in Vials Leads to Swiss Regulator’s Inspection of Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA Vaccine Batch
The governmental authority responsible for the surveillance of medicines and medical devices in Switzerland based in Bern in an inspection of Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine vials report other than identifying “bubbles,” the examination revealed no specific problems with Comirnaty (BNT162b2). A unit from the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products or “Swissmedic” discovered the bubbles in an examination of vials containing Comirnaty Bivalent Original/Omicron BA.1 in its OMCL laboratory. The explanation for the bubbles? According to the Swiss drug regulators' news release, they (the bubbles) likely had to do with differences in pressure or temperature when preparing the doses. TrialSite praises this action—with other reports of anomalous findings in the vials based on independent examinations, more of these very public inspections should be undertaken.
The Inspection
The findings were based on an audit, part of a risk assessment targeting the bivalent vaccine targeting the spike protein associated with the original Wuhan variant as well as Omicron BA.1. This particular audit focused on batch GE8297, which is and will continue to be used for vaccinations, the agency reports. They further calmed any frayed nerves, declaring that no risks exist to persons who have already been vaccinated. Other than bubbles nothing else was found. The report is silent about any strange objects that other independent doctors and scientists have been reporting from Germany and Australia, for example.
Details
In a supplementary report, the Swiss regulator mentions its laboratory examination was in response to reports of bubbles in the vials.
According to the agency report:
“…the phenomenon seems to be accentuated when the syringes are prepared several hours in advance. Some vials already contain bubbles when they are removed from the fridge. As a precautionary measure, Swissmedic has informed the cantons and vaccination centers. Swissmedic will issue updates on the situation and measures to be taken through this communication channel as soon as further findings are available.”
Its Mandate
TrialSite praises Swissmedic for performing this audit. Given reports of strange anomalies in vaccines in other parts of the world, it can help build trust to perform such functions. The agency shared in its press entry that they are “interested in any reports of anomalies affecting medicinal products.”
The regulator emphasized the importance of following the manufacturer’s instructions when preparing the mRNA vaccine doses. Additionally, the agency notes, “It is recommended that syringes for the vaccine should not be drawn up more than 15 minutes before use (injection).” The agency declared they stand ready to launch investigations into any other “phenomena reported.”
Due Diligence
Recently, TrialSite reported that an independent physician in Australia performed his own analysis of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, identifying what are most certainly anomalies. Strange nano-sized metallic-looking objects raise concerns and also become fuel for conspiratorial chatter online. Even Anglosphere mainstream weeklies now report on the topic—albeit the conservative-leaning media. See “British/Australian Weekly Features TrialSite Contributor: Is Graphene Oxide in the COVID-19 Vaccines?”
Reports of these microscopic-sized anomalies in the vials of mRNA vaccines emanated from several countries and should be investigated by federal and /state/provincial health authorities upon such reports. That’s the way that public health authorities can build back more trust that in many cases during the pandemic has been lessened in the public’s eye.
The Agency
Commencing operations by January 1, 2002, Swissmedic is the successor regulatory agency of Interkantonale Kontrollstelle für Heilmittel (IKS), which was itself the successor of Schweizerische Arzneimittelnebenwirkungszentrale (SANZ). Swissmedic is affiliated with the Federal Department of Home Affairs.
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Google Is Impacting Elections by Influencing Votes on ‘Massive Scale’: Researcher
A psychologist is accusing Google of manipulating American citizens to influence the outcome of the November midterm elections.
Robert Epstein and his research team from the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology have been monitoring online political content being sent to voters in swing states. As part of the research, the team is looking into search engine results on Google and Bing, messages displayed on Google’s homepage, tweets sent by Twitter, email suppression on Gmail, auto-play videos suggested on Google-owned YouTube, and so on.
The study found over 1.9 million “ephemeral experiences” that Google and other firms were using to “shift opinions and voting preferences,” Epstein wrote in a Nov. 6 article for the Daily Caller. “Ephemeral experiences” are short-lived content that immediately disappears without leaving a trace after user consumption.
The team expects such “ephemeral experiences” to number over 2.5 million by Election Day. Epstein has identified roughly a dozen new forms of online manipulation using ephemeral experiences which are almost exclusively controlled by Google and a few other tech firms.
The impact created by the experiences is “stunning,” Epstein says. Search engine results that favor one political candidate were found to influence undecided voters so much that up to 80 percent of such people in some demographic groups shifted their voting preferences after only a single search.
“Carefully crafted search suggestions that flash at you while you are typing a search term can turn a 50/50 split among undecided voters into a 90/10 split with no one knowing they have been manipulated,” Epstein writes.
“A single question-and-answer interaction on a digital personal assistant can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by more than 40 percent.”
Ahead of the 2022 election, “a high level of liberal bias” is being seen in Google search results in swing states like Arizona, Florida, and Wisconsin, Epstein wrote. Search results from Bing did not indicate such bias.
In multiple swing states, liberal news sources make up 92 percent of auto-play videos being sent to YouTube users, which can potentially shift “hundreds of thousands of votes” on Election Day, he warned.
Manufacturing Bias
Back in 2020, Epstein and his team collected 1.5 million ephemeral experiences from 1,735 field agents which were “sufficient, in theory,” to shift over 6 million votes to Joe Biden’s favor. Epstein had supported Biden at the time, he said.
He found that Google sent more voting reminders to moderates and liberals than conservatives, which Epstein calls a “brazen and powerful manipulation.”
Google also “turned off all manipulations” in the 2020 Georgia Senate races after three Republican senators sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai which discussed Epstein’s findings on manipulation (pdf). Political bias in Google search results “dropped to zero” after the letter, he pointed out.
In an April interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders,” Epstein also talked about online platforms using surveys to “help” users decide whom to vote for. In such surveys, users are given a quiz and the platforms tell them how good a match they are for specific candidates.
In an experiment, Epstein’s team found that they were able to shift a significant number of people’s voting preferences to the candidate that was presented as being their best match.
“Opinion matching is a fantastic way to manipulate people because you can shift people very, very, very dramatically, and they have no clue. They do not suspect any kind of bias or manipulation.”
About 96 percent of donations from Silicon Valley firms, including Google, go toward the Democratic Party, he adde
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8 November, 2022
Bombshell #2 from California Clinicians group: Vaccines Not Helping Against COVID-19 During Omicron Surge
A group of California Central Valley primary care physicians and specialists continue to turn up disturbing findings associated with UK population-wide data, finding disturbing data based on a large, real-world evidence-based population-wide cohort retrospective study covering over 22 million persons in the UK. Like the previous study covered by TrialSite, these practicing clinician-real-world data investigators report bombshell outcomes that demand attention.
At this point, there is trivial difference in outcome between vaccinated and unvaccinated across cases, hospitalizations, and death. The findings run counter to the one-size-fit-all mass vaccination theme that continues to emanate out of English-speaking nations from the UK, USA, Australia, to New Zealand.
Rather, the California-based clinicians report a negative vaccine effectiveness impacted by key variables such as comorbidities, ethnicity, vaccination rates, and other factors. Fundamental to human health at this stage of the pandemic and “irrespective of vaccination” is the need for “uniform screening protocols and protective measures.”
The group attempted to get published with their last study and unfortunately, found few takers, probably due to the fact that the findings diverge from the mainstream health establishment’s narrative. But the group of practicing primary care and specialist physicians continue to generate study outcomes that must be read carefully and understood.
Previous Work
TrialSite showcases previous work by the group in “California Physician-driven Study of UK Population: COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations & Deaths Show Fully Vaccinated Elderly at Significant Risk.” This study was also represented by Dr. Emani.
Inquiring and analyzing nationwide data covering confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the UK starting from the beginning of the pandemic to investigate infection patterns, hospitalization, and deaths across various age cohorts during the COVID-19 pandemic, the California-based group probed 22,072,550 cases, 848,911 hospitalizations, and 175,070 deaths due to COVID-19 across the UK. The analysis revealed that 11,315,793 (51.3%) of the cases, 244,708 (28.8%) of hospitalizations, and 28,659 (16.4%) of deaths occurred during the most recent Omicron surge. When comparing the period of February 28-May 1, 2022, with the prior 12-weeks, they observed a significant increase in the case fatality rate (0.19% vs 0.41%; RR 2.11 [2.06-2.16], p<0.001) and odds of hospitalization (1.58% vs 3.72%; RR 2.36[2.34-2.38]; p<0.001). At the same time, a significant increase in cases (23.7% vs 40.3%; RR1.70 [1.70-1.71]; p<0.001) among ?50 years of age and hospitalizations (39.3% vs 50.3%; RR1.28 [1.27-1.30]; p<0.001) and deaths (67.89% vs 80.07%; RR1.18 [1.16-1.20]; p<0.001) among ?75 years of age was observed.
Disturbingly, the vaccine effectiveness (VE) for the third dose was in negative since December 20, 2021, with a significantly increased proportion of SARS-CoV2 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among the vaccinated; and lower proportion of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among the unvaccinated.
Demonstrating the risks of co-morbidities, pre-existing conditions were present in 95.6% of all COVID-19 deaths. The physician-real-world investigators caution that various ethnicities, comorbidities, deprivation score, and vaccination rate disparities were noted that can adversely affect hospitalization and deaths among compared groups.
Background
Based in Stockton, California. Dr. Ventaka R. Emani recently sent the group’s most recent work to TrialSite that was uploaded to the preprint server medRxiv. Titled “Increasing SARS-CoV2 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among the vaccinated populations during the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant surge in UK,” the California group of cardiovascular specialists and primary care doctors were at it again, investigating what is not a popular topic to delve into in mainstream medicine.
In a previous telephone conversation with TrialSite’s founder Daniel O’Connor, Dr. Emani shared that they weren’t sure if their last study would get accepted by any major journals.
The Study
Again, conducting a retrospective observational study, the California team analyzed COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and death during the pandemic in the UK. The group also analyzed various variables possibly impacting outcomes from ethnicity to vaccination disparities and co-morbidities in the form of preexisting conditions. Looking at a UK population ranging in age from 18 and up, they studied the period August 16, 2021, through March 27, 2022.
What were the results?
Dr. Emani and team report that toward the end of the Omicron variant-driven surge in the UK running from February 28, to May 1, 2022, they observed a slight rise in the proportion of cases (cases (23.7% vs 40.3%; RR1.70 [1.70-1.71]; p<0.001) and hospitalizations (39.3% vs 50.3%; RR1.28 [1.27-1.30]; p><0.001) among ?50 years of age, and deaths (67.89% vs 80.07%; RR1.18 [1.16-1.20]; p><0.001) among ?75 years of age compared to the earlier period (December 6, 2021-February 27, 2022) during the Omicron variant surge. “Using the available data from vaccine surveillance reports, we compared the Omicron variant surge (December 27, 2021-March 20, 2022) with the Delta variant surge (August 16-December 5, 2021). Our comparative analysis shows a significant decline in case fatality rate (all ages [0.21% vs 0.39%; RR 0.54 (0.52-0.55); p><0.001], over 18 years of age [0.25% vs 0.58%; RR 0.44 (0.43-0.45); p><0.001], and over 50 years of age [0.72% vs 1.57%; RR 0.46 (0.45-0.47); P><0.001]) and the risk of ><0.001) and hospitalizations (39.3% vs 50.3%; RR1.28 [1.27-1.30]; p<0.001) among ?50 years of age, and deaths (67.89% vs 80.07%; RR1.18 [1.16-1.20]; p<0.001) among ?75 years of age compared to the earlier period (December 6, 2021-February 27, 2022) during the Omicron variant surge.”
The California group embraced vaccine surveillance reports to evaluate the delta between the Omicron variant surge (December 27, 2021-March 20, 2022) with the Delta variant surge (August 16-December 5, 2021).
What does this comparative analysis reveal?
First there was a significant decline in case fatality rate (all ages [0.21% vs 0.39%; RR 0.54 (0.52-0.55); p<0.001] for those persons 18 years of age and up [0.25% vs 0.58%; RR 0.44 (0.43-0.45); p<0.001] and over 50 years of age [0.72% vs 1.57%; RR 0.46 (0.45-0.47); P<0.001]) and the risk of hospitalizations (all ages [0.62% vs 0.99%; RR 0.63 (0.62-0.64); p<0.001], over 18 years and up [0.67% vs 1.38%; RR 0.484 (0.476-0.492); p<0.001], and over 50 years of age [1.45% vs 2.81%; RR 0.52 (0.51-0.53); p<0.001]).
Both the unvaccinated (0.41% vs 0.77%; RR 0.54 (0.51-0.57); p<0.001) and vaccinated (0.25% vs 0.59%; RR 0.43 (0.42-0.44); p<0.001) populations of over 18 years of age showed a significant decline in the case fatality rate during the Omicron variant surge when compared to the Delta variant surge.
What’s the California group’s findings summary?
First, they report, not surprisingly, a marked decline in the risk of hospitalization for both the unvaccinated (1.27% vs 2.92%; RR 0.44 (0.42-0.45); p<0.001) and vaccinated (0.65% vs 1.19%; RR 0.54 (0.53-0.55); p<0.001) populations of over 18 years of age during the same period.
In what could be considered bombshell evidence, the group of doctor’s report that they observed a negative vaccine effectiveness (VE) associated with the third booster dose of the vaccine since December 20, 2021, with a significantly increased proportion of SARS-CoV2 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among the vaccinated.
Conversely, Dr. Emani and colleagues report a decreased proportion of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among the unvaccinated.
Much like the last study, the California-based clinicians report that 95.6% of all COVID-19 deaths in the UK are associated with pre-existing conditions. Like before they note the data points to other elements to consider from ethnicity and deprivation score to vaccination rate disparities which can adversely impact key indicators from hospitalization and deaths among the compared groups.
Bombshell Takeaway
Emani et al. again, are attempting to wake up their colleagues with data and science. The team wrote in their conclusion:
“There is no discernable optimal vaccine effectiveness among ?18 years of age and vaccinated third dose population since the beginning (December 20, 2021) of the Omicron variant surge.” They noted that more specific, granular validation models targeting VE against hospitalization and deaths necessitates the incorporation of other variables mentioned above (e.g., pre-existing conditions, ethnicity, etc.).
In a finding counter to the medical establishment, the authors report that there is little difference in outcome now between vaccinated and unvaccinated in the Omicron period. They declared:
“Both the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations showed favorable outcomes with a significant decline in case fatality rate and risk of hospitalizations during the Omicron variant surge.”
Fundamental to the clinician’s outlook based on the slicing, dicing and analysis of real-world data: the COVID-19 vaccines offer little benefit moving forward in the Omicron period. This directly counters what could be considered a one-size-fit-all message from most health authorities across Anglo-centric societies—whether the UK, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
Showcasing the necessity of infection prevention targeting higher risk populations (e.g., the elderly) “irrespective of vaccination,” the doctors stress the use of “uniform screening protocols and protective measures.” These clinicians have something profound to say based on the data analysis out of the UK—are health systems., government, and industry listening?
Principal Investigator Point of View
Dr. Emani emailed some of his thoughts on the study to TrialSite:
“As researchers, we have to stay within the scope of our data. All the available evidence suggests that the vaccine effectiveness is suboptimal, and protection is brief during the Omicron variant surge.”
Emani continued:
“Our data also shows that there are no adequate controls to compare the vaccine effectiveness for hospitalization, severe disease, and/or deaths as the unvaccinated population have more comorbidities and risk prone behavior than the vaccinated population.”
In keeping with the data and undoubtedly tapping into the physicians’ real world clinic experience during the pandemic the Manteca, based clinical-scientists shared:
“We recommend that all the risk factors including comorbidities and risk prone behavior should be adjusted at individual level than the population level while calculating VE for the hospitalizations, severe diseases and or deaths through models that should be validated in the same lines as the Randomized Controlled Trials.”
Finally, the group recommends a two-pronged approach to improving pandemic response at this point during the tail end of the pandemic—as Dr. Emani concludes:
“The recommended population (especially elderly with high risk) should get vaccinated per the current health department guidelines, but at the same time, should also take precautions to avoid contracting disease based on the data from our study. We also suggest that nation’s top Health policy bodies should look at all the emerging data carefully and come up with guidelines to protect public.”
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7 November, 2022
UK: Why are excess deaths higher now than during Covid?
More people are dying every week than during Covid’s peak years. Last month there were 1,564 more deaths than average each week – known as excess deaths – compared with just 315 two years ago and 1,322 last year. In the week to 21 October (the most recent week of data) ONS figures reveal there were some 1,646 excess deaths alone. As has been reported before, excess deaths are most stark at home: with deaths in private homes nearly a third above average. Meanwhile in hospitals and care homes they’re just 15 and 10 per cent above average. The shift to dying at home, and the health service ceasing to function, continues.
What’s causing these deaths? It isn’t Covid: just 27 per cent of excess deaths in England for the most recent week have Covid as the underlying cause. Instead, problems that built up over lockdowns are being keenly felt now. A report from the British Heart Foundation, published this week, found that over 30,000 people in England have died ‘needlessly’ of heart disease since the start of the pandemic. That’s 230 deaths every week that wouldn’t have happened had we not locked down.
This is in part due to treatment delays during lockdowns. By the end of August some 346,000 people were on a cardiac waiting list in England – the highest number on record. This is expected to get even higher too: modelling suggests it could be as high as 395,000 by next April, some 224,000 more than before the pandemic. One in five of those heart patients say their health has gotten worse since the pandemic. And, as the below graph shows, over 7,000 patients have now been waiting over a year for a heart procedure. Heart and circulatory conditions account for nearly a quarter of the life expectancy gap between the rich and poorest. So any rise in excess heart deaths is likely to make things much worse.
The BHF report pointed to failures in the ambulance service too. NHS figures tracked by The Spectator data hub reveal that in September Category 2 calls – emergencies such as heart attacks and strokes – were taking 48 minutes. The target is 18 minutes. The BHF are furious: ‘there isn’t a moment to lose’, they say.
Could ambulance delays be the cause of Britain’s excess deaths then? A look at Scotland might support the theory. Recent figures suggest Scotland has lower and less consistent non-Covid excess deaths. But it locked down for longer and with harsher restrictions than the rules imposed south of the border. But look at ambulance waits and there’s much less of a problem. Comparable ambulance response times in Scotland are closer to 15 minutes. More than half those seen in England. Is that why they’re seeing less excess mortality, once Covid is removed?
Correlation is of course not causation but this nonetheless seems an important piece of the puzzle. Devolution lets us down here though. A truly direct comparison is incredibly difficult because all of the four nations categorise their statistics differently. England reports an average response time for four categories; Scotland uses colour codings and report medians rather than averages; the Welsh round to the nearest hour, and Northern Ireland haven’t bothered to update their statistics recently. We need proper UK wide data to answer a real UK wide problem.
Those on the heart disease treatment and test waiting lists are only a fraction of the potential excess deaths. They’re just the ones who at least have a diagnosis. More data reveals a huge drop in the percentage of 40-74 year olds (those most at risk) receiving health checks during the pandemic. NHS England modelling cited by the BHF suggested the drop in people having their blood pressure checked because of lockdowns could lead to an extra 11,190 heart attacks and 17,702 strokes in the next three years.
Despite increased pressure from academics, clinicians and now charities the government still displays little interest in what could be considered one of our greatest ever health crises. An investigation was promised by the then Health Secretary earlier this year but we’re onto our third government since then. An official in the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities wasn’t even aware it was something they monitored (they do) when asked earlier this week.
The communications void on the issue is becoming a problem. Senior clinicians are starting to worry that the lack of attention from the government and the health service is fuelling conspiracy theories. Dr Charles Levinson, CEO of Doctorcall, told me:
‘The silence around non-Covid excess deaths is fuelling conspiracy theories – the longer it goes on, the worse it’s getting. If the authorities don’t properly address and discuss the issue, this will only further undermine trust in public health.’
Those concerned about possible long-term effects of the vaccine are not the only ones intrigued by excess deaths. Some followers of the data have contacted me to suggest that perhaps there aren’t any excess deaths at all. There’s a worry among some that the crude averages used by the ONS do not account for an ageing population, and other demographic changes that occur over time. But the most senior figures in statistical academia refute this. Yes the ONS data is crude they say, but it’s not the only finding pointing to increased excess deaths.
The OHID use a complicated methodology for their average deaths baseline which does take population change into account. They find excess deaths in 23 out of 39 weeks this year. The institute and faculty of actuaries (who just compare deaths to their 2019 level) finds an excess of deaths too: 1,388 in the week to 21 October, slightly less than the ONS. So three separate sources, with three different methodologies, find the same thing. Excess deaths are not some ‘data glitch’.
Government has allowed this confusion to fester. Dr Levinson think’s a press conference on the topic would be useful: ‘Current levels of excess deaths are running higher than in the pandemic years. We had almost daily press conferences then – why can’t we have just one now?’
Week after week, excess deaths continue to mount. The issue is getting more attention than earlier in the year. But it’s taking independent charities and twitter sleuths to push the cause. The NHS is facing a mounting winter crisis (a waiting list already over seven million that may well reach nine) and deaths are only expected to get worse. Even small actions now might make big differences later on. Health Secretaries don’t seem to last very long at the moment. But whoever’s in post, this should surely be at the top of their red box every single day.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/why-are-excess-deaths-higher-now-than-during-covid/
**********************************************************If GOP Retakes Congress, It Should Defund Pentagon’s Vaccine Mandate in Defense Spending Bill: Rep. Massie
A Republican lawmaker and nearly 100 colleagues are seeking to prohibit any requirement for service members to receive a vaccination against COVID-19. This measure would put an end to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s August 2021 military vaccine mandate. Nearly two dozen Republican members of Congress have joined the effort in the past three months alone.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced H.R.3860 in June 2021, over two months prior to Austin’s announcement of a mandate. He said it wasn’t a premonition, but insider information from whistleblowers that could foresee what was to come.
“Although Biden and his press secretary at the time were giving the impression that there would never be mandates, people in the military were telling me that paper was being pushed around to put the mandate in place,” Massie told The Epoch Times.
Acting on this information, he introduced the bill to specifically protect members of the military. “I never imagined that Biden would assert that he had the constitutional authority over anybody but the military,” he added.
Massie said many have asked him why his legislation is needed if there are already laws in place, like the permanent injunction granted in 2004 that brought the mandatory anthrax vaccine program to an end. With regard to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for service members, he said, “If I were a lawyer, I’d be suing the Secretary of Defense—but I’m a legislator.”
He is gravely concerned about the “false equivalency” between Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) products and those approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA). Service members opposing the mandate point to its wording, and argue that it only applies to vaccines that have full approval from the FDA. Therefore, the Pentagon cannot force vaccines labeled as issued under EUA, they say.
Massie agrees with many service members, opposing the Department of Defense policy (pdf) that says the Cominarty and EUA Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are interchangeable. The Pentagon is “fudging” and it’s illegal, he said.
An Act of Congress
Massie said it’s not the executive or judicial branches of government, but Congress that has the sole authority to fund the government. And according to the text of his bill, “No Federal funds may be used to require a member of the Armed Forces to receive a vaccination against COVID-19.”
If the bill were to become law, Massie said, anybody who is in violation of the law when it passes would be violating the Antideficiency Act. “It basically says it’s against the law against the law to spend money that Congress has not appropriated,” he explained.
The bill would not only end the military vaccine mandate, but would prohibit retaliation, punishment, disparate treatment, mask requirements, and forced substandard housing conditions.
The lawmaker now hopes the bill to be included, in the form of an amendment, to the final version of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual defense spending bill. The House version of the NDAA was approved in June, and the Senate is set to vote of its version in November after the midterms. Any differences between the two versions will then be reconciled in conference.
In addition, members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus are taking it a step further, calling on Republicans to delay passage of the annual defense bill until after the new year, anticipating a Republican majority in either the House or the Senate after the midterms. A new Congress would allow the majority to “rework” the legislation, the caucus said.
And Massie doesn’t disagree. “If Republicans can be united on this,” he said, “we could surely defund the vaccine mandate in the NDAA.” According to the congressman, it would also “end all the wasted time and effort of the lawsuits and the pain and suffering that’s been brought on the military.”
With a GOP majority comes “subpoena power,” Massie added. “We can force the people who are harming our nation’s military to come and testify.” And according to Massie, “It’s really malpractice on the part of the Democrats not to be doing oversight on this issue [of the military vaccine mandate].”
Austin would be on his shortlist for questioning. “He and others would be called to task to produce the scientific data to back the mandate—but we all know, that doesn’t exist.”
“It’s past time for the entire chain of command to follow the data, to follow the science, and use some common sense,” Massie said. “Service members have lost confidence in their leadership, and this must be rectified.”
Massie said he is thankful for the “secret force” of service members behind his bill.
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6 November, 2022
The puzzle of Long Covid
For nearly three years, research into COVID-19 has been driven by questions we’ve had since the beginning of the pandemic: How does this virus spread, and what does it do to the human body? Scientists were still caught up in these early mysteries when a new one rose to their attention. A growing number of people who had cleared the initial viral infection were left with ongoing, life-altering symptoms. Once the medical establishment recognized long COVID as legitimate (a contentious story itself), it began in earnest to search for cures and treatments that would enable patients to make full recoveries.
A critical issue in the discourse has become apparent over time: We’re missing the mark in the way we talk about recovering from long COVID. The science tells us a full recovery is in no way guaranteed, and that progress can vary wildly among individuals. And yet, most current long COVID research is predicated on the notion that full-on recuperation is possible, said Alison Sbrana, a board member of the queer feminist wellness collective Body Politic.
Just take the name of the RECOVER Initiative, the $1.15 billion research project on long COVID launched by the National Institutes of Health. “It’s an acronym that spells ‘recover,’” Sbrana told The Daily Beast. “That just encompasses the way that our health care system and our research systems think about medicine and disability.”
Many people with long COVID—perhaps even a majority of those afflicted, though it’s still too early to say for sure—aren’t going to “get better.” So how should doctors, employers, and families think about long-term, organized care?
Looking for Answers
What we do know is that a good chunk of people who get sick with COVID-19 are at risk for long COVID—being vaccinated may lower their risk, but not eliminate it entirely. There are millions of Americans experiencing symptoms of long COVID today, and recent research suggests that for many of them, these symptoms won’t go away. One, published in October in Nature Communications, found that half of people who had been infected with COVID were not fully recovered (and almost 10 percent had not recovered at all) when surveyed six, 12, and 18 months later. Another, led by McMaster University respirologist Manali Mukherjee and published in September in European Respiratory Journal, found that a quarter of over 100 COVID patients surveyed still experienced coughing, fatigue, or shortness of breath one year after their initial infection.
Mukherjee herself is part of that statistic. She told The Daily Beast that since contracting COVID for the first time in January 2021, she has struggled with bouts of long COVID symptoms that have affected her productivity and lifestyle. In March of this year, she got sick with the virus again, and the symptoms that seemed to be fading came back with a vengeance.
“I’m living on and off with the symptoms that I am researching,” she said.
Recovery from nearly any illness is typically measured as returning to some initial baseline. Mukherjee pointed out that this doesn’t work for long COVID symptoms, which seem to ebb and flow depending on factors like environmental triggers and subsequent viral infection.
“It’s been over two years since the start of COVID. If you’ve aged and gone through an infection as a 30-year-old, would you function the same as when you were 25? Would you ever get back to baseline?” Mukherjee said.
A World of Chronic Illness
Long COVID isn’t alone in that regard. Many other conditions play out over the course of years, including chronic and age-related illnesses. According to experts, the ways our medical system cares for some of these conditions and measures progress or improvement may offer insight into improving long COVID treatment.
Some features of stroke recovery may be relevant to an illness like long COVID, said Vincent Mor, a health services researcher at Brown University. Strokes often leave the people they affect with lingering neurological impairments, long after blood flow to the brain has been restored.
“Even though the outside observer won't notice it, the person themselves will also always notice that they’re not quite as sharp, they’re more frail or fragile, or less resilient,” Mor told The Daily Beast. “In that sense, there’s a commonality to long COVID.”
Recovering from a stroke is a multi-step process, taking place in many different settings before a patient is discharged. An initial inpatient hospital stay to stabilize one’s condition is followed by a post-acute care phase consisting of rehabilitation treatment. Medicare covers a patient’s stay in a skilled nursing facility for up to 100 days, though most patients do not stay the entire length, said David Grabowski, a health care policy researcher at Harvard Medical School. Facilities’ guidelines for discharging patients may vary, but they often weigh an individual’s progress toward rehabilitation goals with their desire to return to their community—two priorities that are often in conflict.
“I do think there's a lot of communication around what the goals you have to have for discharge are, and the goals are certainly not that you’re 100 percent back to your prior level of health,” Grabowski told The Daily Beast.
From then on, recovery takes place at home. After six months or so, most stroke patients reach a phase where they are only improving gradually, while a subset do not improve and instead develop a condition called chronic stroke disease. What determines these trajectories—who gets better and who doesn’t—isn’t fully clear, but a person’s transportation, occupation, housing, and family structure all influence their ability to access high-quality, ongoing care.
These social determinants alternately constrain or bolster healing in the months following a stroke, and they have resulted in stark disparities that are rooted into society, Grabowski said.
“You end up with very much a two-tiered system, and I could see something very similar happening with long COVID,” he said. “There’s a group of individuals that have insurance and are able to really withstand a longer term of treatment, whereas others are going to be under real pressure with their families.”
It’s an interesting comparison, but Mor cautioned that despite some apparent similarities, stroke rehabilitation is different from long COVID treatment in significant ways.
“The vast majority [of long COVID patients] are the walking wounded,” he said. “They’re in pain or they’re grieving because they’re no longer what they were, but they’re not bed-bound, and they don’t require hospital care.”
Instead, Mor emphasized that chronic pain and autoimmune conditions like fibromyalgia may share more similarities with long COVID—including in how little organized structure exists for treating these conditions.
Disability care provides another framework for what organized health care for long COVID patients could look like. Centers for Independent Living, founded and operated primarily by people with disabilities, arose out of the civil rights movement and subsequent disability rights activism. The organizations, which receive government funding and comprise about 400 centers nationwide, are designed to offer alternatives to long-term nursing homes and residential care facilities for people with disabilities. What this looks like can vary from place to place, but the overall work rejects traditional approaches of “curing” or “fixing” disabilities to maximize physical and mental functioning, in favor of developing strategies to meet one’s needs and enable independent living. Housing assistance, short-term counseling, and help in acquiring benefits and accommodations can all be part of an individual’s participation in a center, as their value lies in personalized aid.
But Centers for Independent Living are neither a one-size-fits-all remedy for every disability, nor a scalable, individualized solution for the growing number of Americans with long COVID. “Is there something specialized about long COVID care that would dictate institutions totally focused on that care? That's really hard to predict right now,” Grabowski said.
And while the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has made it clear that long COVID can be a disability, many people don’t realize that they have a disability in the first place, much less that they are legally accorded certain rights and benefits on account of their condition, Sbrana said.
This reality, combined with a lack of incentives for policymakers to change the current health care system to provide reimbursement pathways for long COVID care, means that talk of any organized care communities for the condition will remain just that.
Turning Vision to Reality
In the absence of a defined care structure for long-term treatment or improvement, people with long COVID are left to figure out what recovery means to them, on their own terms and in their own lives. Mukherjee, for instance, has adjusted her baseline to avoid comparing herself to a place she can’t return.
“I’m not functioning at my 100 percent, the way I was in 2020, but I am functioning at 75 percent right now, and I consider that to mean I have recovered,” Mukherjee said. “The truth is, I don't think I will ever be able to do exactly whatever I was doing in 2020.”
Rather than focusing on regaining every function lost due to long COVID, emphasis should be placed instead on adapting to a “new normal,” Sbrana said. Long COVID can change a person’s capacity to work a full-time job; the Job Accommodation Network has recommendations on the kinds of accommodations that employees can ask for and are entitled to under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Building in rest breaks, providing ergonomic furniture, and allowing an employee to use noise-canceling headphones are all accommodations that a workplace could make for someone with long COVID.
Instead of aiming for a “full recovery,” Davids thinks about improvement in the symptoms of his chronic conditions in terms of remission, keeping in mind that flare-ups can and will occur. Outside of their jobs, people with chronic illnesses like long COVID may benefit from reassessing their environment—their communities, housing, or eating—with an eye toward how they can improve their quality of life today.
“For many of us, I think it can come down to changing who we’re around,” he said.
Having come of age during the early years of the AIDS epidemic and organized with ACT UP, Davids is no stranger to the health disparities and misconceptions that proliferate about chronic infectious conditions. At this moment, he said, we have a chance to reframe our thinking and focus on helping people with long COVID get better.
“We could be ahead of the curve here,” Davids said. “We don't have to wait 30 years with long COVID to start looking at what the quality of life is for people with long COVID, and what we can do to preserve or improve it.”
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4 November, 2022
Strange things in mRNA vaccines
What is in the Pfizer vaccines? Recently, Dr David Nixon, a Brisbane GP, decided to find out, putting droplets of vaccine and the blood of vaccinated patients under a dark-field microscope.
That’s a more radical decision than it might sound. According to Sasha Latypova, a scientist with 25 years of experience in clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies, the contract between Pfizer and the US government prohibits independent researchers from studying the vaccines. They claim it would ‘divert’ these precious resources away from their intended use fulfilling an ‘urgent’ need.
Is that true in Australia? Who knows? All the Commonwealth Department of Health has said about its contract with Pfizer is that it is commercial-in-confidence.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration performs tests on all Covid vaccines for composition and strength, purity and integrity, identity and endotoxins, but it provides scant details other than the batch numbers tested and whether they passed. (Spoiler alert: they did.)
In the US, the Centers for Disease Control specifically states that all Covid-19 vaccines are free from ‘metals, such as iron, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth alloys’ and ‘manufactured products such as micro-electronics, electrodes, carbon nanotubes, and nanowire semiconductors’.
Notably, this list does not include graphene oxide which has been widely investigated for biomedical applications. Some researchers sing its praises, its ‘ultra-high drug-loading efficiency due to the wide surface area’, its exceptional ‘chemical and mechanical constancy, sublime conductivity and excellent biocompatibility’. But there’s a catch. ‘The toxic effect of graphene oxide on living cells and organs’ is ‘a limiting factor’ on its use in the medicine.
So is there graphene oxide in the Pfizer shots? What Nixon found, and filmed, is bizarre to say the least. Inside a droplet of vaccine are strange mechanical structures. They seem motionless at first but when Nixon used time-lapse photography to condense 48 hours of footage into two minutes, it showed what appear to be mechanical arms assembling and disassembling glowing rectangular structures that look like circuitry and micro chips. These are not ‘manufactured products’ in the CDC’s words because they construct and deconstruct themselves but the formation of the crystals seems to be stimulated by electromagnetic radiation and stops when the slide with the vaccine is shielded by a Faraday bag. Nixon’s findings are similar to those of teams in New Zealand, Germany, Spain and South Korea.
An Italian group led by Riccardo Benzi Cipelli analysed the blood of over 1,000 people, one month after they were vaccinated, who had been referred for tests because they had experienced side effects. They ranged in age from 15 to 85 and had had between one and three doses. More than 94 per cent had abnormal readings, deformed red blood cells, reduced in counts and clumped around luminescent foreign objects which also attracted clusters of fibrin. Some of the foreign objects dotted the blood like a starry night, some self-assembled into crystalline structures and others into spindly branches and tubes.
The Italians think the objects are metallic particles and say they resemble ‘graphene oxide and possibly other metallic compounds’. They believe the damaged blood is contributing to post-vaccine coagulation disorders, which in turn contribute to increased malignancies, while graphene-family materials are associated with oxidative stress, DNA damage, inflammation and damage to those parts of the immune system that suppress tumours.
The artificial mRNA concoction which is ‘cloaked’ from the recipient’s immune system is also likely to reduce the recipients immune function, increasing the likelihood of new or recurring tumours.
Nixon has shared his findings with Wendy Hoy, professor of medicine at the University of Queensland who has called on the Australian government and its health authorities to explain the apparent spontaneous formation of chips and circuitry in mRNA vaccines when left at room temperature, and the abnormal objects that can be seen in the blood of vaccinated people. Hoy thinks that these are ‘undoubtedly contributing to poor oxygen delivery to tissues and clotting events, including heart attacks and strokes’ and asks why there is no systematic autopsy investigation of deaths to investigate the role of the vaccine in Australia’s dramatic rise in mortality.
According to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, excess mortality was over 17 per cent in July. It is similarly elevated in other highly vaccinated populations.
In Germany, excess mortality in people over 60 increased by 174 per cent between 20 September 2021, when 85 per cent of people over 60 were fully vaccinated, and October 2022.
In the UK, there have been more excess deaths in the last three months than at any time during the pandemic or indeed since 2010. In the most recent week, excess mortality in England was 16 per cent.
In the US, excess mortality in people aged 25 to 44, and in those aged 75 to 84, is 18 per cent, and it is 15 per cent in those aged 65 to 74.
The situation is all the more alarming because there should be fewer deaths now, since so many people died earlier in the pandemic. There has also been a dramatic rise in people with disabilities.
As for Covid, in Australia, vaccine efficacy appears to be negative, judging by the statistics in NSW which are far from perfect but the best in Australia. They show that 88 per cent of people who died were vaccinated even though they made up only 85.5 per cent of the population. They also showed that the unvaccinated made up only 0.15 per cent of people in hospital with Covid and only 1.1 per cent of people in ICU.
Why is this? Almost certainly, because the unvaccinated who die of Covid in NSW are frail and elderly with multiple comorbidities, living in aged care or palliative care or at home, and don’t go to hospital. Why weren’t they vaccinated? Probably because they or their doctors feared it would kill them.
The question is, how many others is it killing too? Until health authorities tell us what’s in the shots, we won’t know.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/wots-in-the-shots/
***************************************************Vaccinating After Recovering from COVID-19
With each COVID-19 infection, there is exposure to the Spike protein on the surface of the virus. This protein causes a world of trouble, including damaging blood vessels and causing blood clots. When the virus infects the nose with nasal washes and gargles and other treatments in the McCullough Protocol©, the degree of viral invasion in the body should be negligible.
When a COVID-19 vaccine is given, however, the genetic code for the Spike protein is installed throughout the body, and then it is produced for at least a month or longer, giving a heavy and prolonged exposure to what can become a deadly protein.
Although this counters the mainstream assessment, the highest risk patients for complications after vaccination are those who already had untreated COVID-19 illness and then went on to take unnecessary COVID-19 vaccines. It’s promulgated by health authorities that so-called hybrid scenarios offer the most protection against COVID-19—that is persons that were first infected then went on to get their full series vaccination.
However, based on this author’s ongoing practice, literature, and unfolding real world observations of colleagues, many nationally directed COVID-19 edicts need to be questioned. This is fundamental for any real science.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the vaccine producers excluded COVID-19 recovered patients from clinical trials because in this author’s (and colleagues) opinion, they knew there could be no theoretical benefit and that they would cause harm.
It has been accepted now that natural immunity affords as much if not more protection than vaccine-induced immunity—it’s a complex matter and important to note earlier in the pandemic while various other national governments embraced the established science of viral natural immunity, the topic was completely suppressed in the United States.
When the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised Americans that naturally immune patients should undergo vaccination violating the exclusions of the clinical trials—we knew the program was off the rails.
Multiple studies have shown complication rates are markedly increased for the naturally immune who vaccinate.[i] Take my favorite college football commentator Herb Kirkstreit who contracted COVID-19 in December of 2020 and later commented: "Been 5 months since I tested positive for COVID-19. Still can’t taste or smell."[ii] Then in the Spring of 2021 he takes a COVID-19 vaccine, stating, “I just wanted to get vaccinated and feel the freedom.”
Presumably, he takes a booster six months later in the fall of 2021. Then early in 2022 Kirkstreit announces he cannot attend the NFL draft because he has a blood clots that have shot to the lungs.[iii] More cancellations occur because of this persistent problem. He wasn’t exactly “feeling the freedom” at that point.
Kirkstreit has been loaded with the Spike protein at least three times and may still be taking on more thrombogenic protein every six months if boosting. I would not be surprised if in addition, he has an inherited genetic trait that predisposes to blood clots.
I am concerned that in my practice large blood clots like the one he has are not going away quickly with conventional blood thinners. Additionally, undertakers are reporting tubular rubbery blood clots in the form of a casts of the major blood vessels obstructing the flow of injected embalming fluid. Thus, the quality and the size of the clot are worrisome, although of course, this all requires more systematic investigation for scientific certainty.
Reports indicate the Spike protein is within the clots and is amyloidogenic, meaning the Spike protein folds and encourages complexes of clotting material to organize into a solid form that is resistant to the natural thrombolytic system of the body.[iv] We hope for Kirkstreit that his clot is not permanent. His doctors should recognize the connection and fully exempt him from more ill-advised vaccinations.
The science of post-COVID-19 vaccine injury must imminently evolve, meaning among other things, government, academia, and yes, even industry should redirect at least some of the precious taxpayer-driven research funding meant for ongoing vaccination toward targeted real-world and interventional studies all the while ensuring that the vaccine injured, along with long-COVID patients have access to high quality care. Unfortunately, for a majority, that isn’t the case today.
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/vaccinating-after-recovering-from-covid-19-9a6d79e1
****************************************************3 November, 2022
The naked authoritarianism of the pandemic response is unforgiveable
Forgiveness is now officially on the Covid menu. The left-leaning Atlantic magazine in the US has called for a ‘pandemic amnesty’ in which people ‘forgive one another for what we did and said’ during Covid. At issue is the question of school closures and other restrictions and mandates now deemed excessive. The Atlantic is something of a mouthpiece for Joe Biden’s hopeless Democrats, but in this instance the article is actually worth paying attention to. Not because of any particular insights but because of the distinct whiff of fear that oozes out of every other sentence.
‘But the thing is: We didn’t know,’ the author whines (in italics!), claiming ignorance as a defence against implementing erroneous Covid polices because she was operating under conditions of ‘tremendous uncertainty.’ ‘We lacked definitive data.’ ‘It wasn’t nefarious. It was the result of uncertainty.’ ‘Obviously some people intended to mislead…’. As well as this bizarre post-rationalisation: ‘In some instances, the right people were right for the wrong reasons. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck.’
Well, no. In some instances the right people were right for the right reasons. At The Spectator Australia in particular, where a veritable army of writers including Rebecca Weisser, Ramesh Thakur, James Allan, David Flint, David Adler, Rocco Loiacono, Augusto Zimmerman, Alexandra Marshall and many others risked opprobrium and worse for writing for the correct reasons – out of principle, out of conviction and out of sound research.
Indeed, a recent (much-appreciated) letter to the editor of this magazine spelled out the rewards of such an approach;
‘You and your team were like a light shining through the darkness of Covid hysteria. It meant a lot to my wife and I that we were not the only ones saying “what the hell…?” I am a former journalist (what has happened to our profession?) and I look forward to The Spectator Australia every week. The quality of writing is first rate but it is the fearless pursuit of truth which is truly outstanding. Your work is critical for public discourse in Australia as our political class, big business, media, bureaucracy and educational system all seem to have been captured by nonsense and wokeism.’
It is because of ‘uncertainty’ that in a democracy we supposedly seek a plurality of views on difficult issues, and we insist on accountability. By ensuring that as many people as possible get exposed to as many ideas as possible we hopefully avoid compounding bad thinking, and we trust the public – rather than the authorities – to make those final decisions that affect our lives and livelihoods.
It is utterly disingenuous for those who made such catastrophic and reckless mistakes during Covid to now say that ‘they didn’t know’ about such-and-such an outcome because of the ‘fog of uncertainty’ and that the alternative to their authoritarian overreach and draconian measures was ‘millions of dead bodies’. These same individuals deliberately and ruthlessly suppressed anyone who did try to shed some light on potential risks, problems or alternatives to the orthodoxy.
Many people were horrified by the police brutality, by the obfuscation and lies surrounding vaccine mandates, and were repelled by the QR codes and having their kids being forced to stay home or wear worthless masks all day long. But the censoring of them and the humiliation meted out to them was merciless. Dr Jay Battacharya was just one of many brave experts who spoke out early and loudly warning that lockdowns would not only fail but would cause more deaths than they could ever possibly save, not to mention doing untold economic damage.
Yet for speaking out he was demonised and hounded out of the public square. For merely asking questions, the Greens in the Australian Senate smeared and vilified the editor of this magazine in his role at Sky News along with Rita Panahi and Alan Jones. Gideon Rozner at the IPA cut a solitary figure in Melbourne when he did a video pleading for lockdowns to end in Melbourne and was vilified and demonised remorselessly.
So let’s skip the ‘fog of uncertainty’ nonsense. There were plenty of voices warning against nearly all of the policies that were being enacted, often brutally so, but rather than such plurality of opinion being encouraged, those voices were viciously silenced, humiliated, denigrated and demonised. It’s called wilful ignorance and it is no defence under the law.
But get used to hearing this argument that nobody knew any better. That it was all so confusing and we all did our very best. Plenty of people did know better and did try and speak up.
The Atlantic author claims that ‘dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop…. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty…’.
No. Let’s have a royal commission into the abuse of power during Covid, and a Senate inquiry, too, for good measure. To ensure this never happens again.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/covid-amnesty-anyone/
*****************************************************Unvaccinated, COVID-19 Infected Identified with 90%+ Humoral Protection Against SARS-CoV-2 for 20 Months
Natural immunity is powerful and long-lasting
Carlota Dobaño, Anna Ramirez-Morros, as well as physician-scientists at both ISG Global Hospital Clinic, University of Barcelona, and other Spanish academic research institutions, conducted a longitudinal cohort study involving 247 Barcelona-based primary health care workers who were infected with SARS-COV-2, the virus behind COVID-19.
Assessing natural SARS-CoV-2 induced levels of immunoglobulins M (IgM), G (IgG), and A (IgA) in response to the spike as well as nucleocapsid proteins associated with the novel coronavirus, the Spanish researchers tracked the patients for 616 days covering the range when they were first tested positive to SARS-CoV-2. Both the vaccinated and those who were previously infected and benefited from natural immunity both face risk with waning humoral immunity combined with mutating variants of SARS-CoV-2—the latter leading to the emergence of immune-evading pathogens.
Both of these dynamics can lead to vulnerabilities associated with risk for COVID-19 reinfection. While studies and real-world observations find association with comorbidities and COVID-19 severity, the impact of comorbidity on residual antibody levels (from previous infection) hasn’t been studied. The authors detected a robust natural immunity as measured in humoral protection against SARS-CoV-2 among unvaccinated health care workers subjects.
Humoral Responses
While the richest economies developed vaccines for a mass vaccination program in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a sizable number of the human population around the world has yet to be vaccinated. While many of this global cohort survive based on natural induced antibodies (assuming they have been infected with SARS-CoV-2) how robust is this natural immunity? While studies have demonstrated that it may be active for one year or more, apex research institutes such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) centered their research investment on vaccine-induced immunity, largely avoiding the topic of natural immunity until they absolutely had no choice but to include it in discussions. But now long does natural immunity persist?
With the vaccines, a primary measure of effectiveness is the inducement of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. But the humoral immune response to the novel coronavirus represents another vital immunity response. This class of immunity consists of immunoglobulins in reaction to SARS-CoV-2 viral antigens (spike and nucleocapsid proteins). When a person is first infected, IgM and IgA represent key humoral responses, while later, the immune response centers on IgM and IgG neutralizing actions.
The Study
The study is a real-world evidence study involving 247 health care workers from Barcelona, Spain who were diagnosed as positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. The study team collected samples covering different time points between March 2020 and November 2021. The goal of this study: to identify and quantify the impact of comorbidities on antibody response to COVID-19. Comorbidities included autoimmune disease, cancer, obstructive pulmonary disease, and more.
How were antibody responses quantified?
The investigators evaluated levels of IgG, IgA, and IgM against the spike protein, subunit S2, nucleocapsid protein, receptor binding domain (RBD), and the C-terminal region of the pathogen while seeking to better understand how antibody levels modified over time.
Results
In what could be considered stunning results, naturally induced antibody levels, as measured by seropositivity against the novel coronavirus, remained cumulatively over 90% even a year after the initial infection. Yes, the level of natural immunity as measured by humoral response proxies gradually declined leading to materially less protection, however, the 90% level of protection persisted during the study period.
For example, Dobaño, Ramirez-Morros, and team report a 95.65% seropositivity rate in the unvaccinated cohort with 95.65% (IgA and IgG) in response mostly to the spike protein as well as RBD-responses that were lower (IgA and IgM), at 47.83%.
Interestingly, while RBDs associated with both Alpha and Delta were associated with comparable IgG seropositivity, as to the wildtype (original) strain, Beta and Gamma variants of concern were associated with lower seropositivity levels.
Low Reported Reinfection Rate
The robustness of humoral powered natural immunity was considerable given that the subjects of this study—again health care workers from Spain who were not vaccinated but were infected by SARS-CoV-2 in the past—experienced a COVID-19 reinfection rate of only 3.23%.
Multivariate regression models suggested comorbidities from fever and hospitalization to smoking, obesity, and other factors associated with lower antibody levels. A year later, antibody levels associated with age, occupation, hospitalization, duration of symptoms, and a host of other factors.
Stable persistence of IgG and IgA responses and cross-recognition of the predominant variants circulating in the 2020–2021 period indicate long-lasting and largely variant-transcending humoral immunity in the initial 20.5 months of the pandemic, in the absence of vaccination.
Conclusion
The authors point out that those health care workers that didn’t get vaccinated experienced robust antibody levels even up to approximately 1.7 year with seropositivity over 90% up to 20.5 months after COVID-19 symptom onset.
The authors point out:
“The maintenance of anti-S IgG, whose levels highly correlate with neutralizing antibodies, appears to be clinically relevant in protecting individuals particularly against the wild type and Alpha variants, despite lack of vaccination, consistent with having symptomatic infections in low responders, and those reinfected with the more transmissible Delta variant.”
Furthermore, the Spanish team reports that the “antibody kinetics after natural infection appear to be stably sustained, more so than after vaccination, which has led to the implementation of booster immunizations, particularly in the face of more contagious VoCs like Omicron.”
The authors remind that individuals who benefit from natural immunity also gain further protective benefit from vaccination, as unfolding study data suggests so-called hybrid immunity offers the greatest protection against COVID-19.
****************************************************
2 November, 2022
Anti-vax protesters chant ‘F–k Joe Biden’ at NYC Halloween parade
A group of anti-vax protesters chanted “F–k Joe Biden” as they marched through the streets of Manhattan Monday night in the city’s annual Halloween parade.
The political statement was but a small sideshow to a frightful evening that transformed parts of the city into a scene from “The Walking Dead” — with a wide variety of zombies lumbering up Sixth Avenue.
One other zombie, in full Michael Jackson “Thriller” regalia, danced his way along the parade route.
The brash language aimed at the president was repeated by a reveler dressed as a priest who was holding a sign that read “COVID 19 is a tool of control.”
A man dressed as the “Pfizer CEO” with a zombie mask and “killing you slowly” written on his suit danced to the beat of drums and a crowd of costumed characters followed below with a “RIP COVID-19” banner.
Asked about the mandates, a “Mayuh Eric Adams” impersonator went on a rant pretending to be the real mayor of New York City.
“I am never going to drop the mandates especially for city workers,” the fake Adams said. “I’m dropping it for private workers but not for city workers because they are second-class citizens.”
His response earned boos and a “F–k Eric Adams” chant as well.
“I don’t care about anybody’s rights,” the impersonator said. “I’m the may-uh and I get stuff done.”
Politics aside, both long-time attendees and first-timers said they were glad to partake in the parade’s 49th year.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/01/nyc-halloween-parade-met-with-f-k-joe-biden-chant-by-anti-vaxers/
*********************************************************Alarming Excess Death Among Europe’s Youth in 2022 – January-August
We are posting an alarming analysis of European excess death data from our colleague, Hervé Seligmann, an infectious disease expert in Europe from Euromomo.eu. You will note in the chart above that excess death in the age group 0-14 has skyrocketed since the introduction of the COVID injections.
As evidence of harm from the COVID injections mounts, global populations are left wondering why authorities continue the mantra of safe and effective and persist with their policies.
From Hervé Seligmann, 10VIII2022 (edited for clarity):
The two panels above represent the weekly cumulative excess deaths in two age groups for the population of 24 European countries, representing approximately 500 million people. Excess deaths for a given year are calculated as the observed deaths for that year minus the average deaths for previous years. 2019 and 2021 had particularly high cumulative excess deaths for the 0-14 year age group. 2021 had outstanding high cumulative excess deaths for the young adult population, 15-44 years old. Trends for 2022 at this moment in time, early August, exceed all previous years for both age categories. For the youngest, excess death already surpasses numbers at the end of other years.
The COVID-19 injections are plausibly involved in the excess death numbers for the second half of 2021 and 2022 until August. COVID-19 itself cannot be a cause of excess mortality in these age classes as the death rates in these classes are statistically zero. Neither could confinement and other measures be involved in excess mortality in 2022. These numbers in the young are worrisome.
https://healthfreedomdefense.org/alarming-excess-death-among-europes-youth-in-2022-january-august/
*************************************************Unreasonable war on anti-vaxxers in nAustralia
For the past two and a half years, Jack the Insider (Peter Hoysted), through his columns in the Australian, has waged a war on ‘anti-vaxxers’. Of course, he conveniently lumps into that category anyone who dared to point out the fact that the Covid vaccines, far from being the panacea he believes them to be, actually do very little, even when it comes to personal protection.
On October 27, he wrote a piece which so stood out for its lack of rigour that it has to be called out.
He started off with this statement:
When Covid-19 vaccines first became available in the summer of 2021, I argued that this was the end game for anti-vaxxers. The science and the data that followed would be irrefutable. I was right about the data. But I was wrong to think this shameless movement would put its cue in the rack.
Let’s leave aside the emotion about this ‘shameless movement’, who he says ‘are joined by a larger group of disaffected people who don’t read enough and listen too often’. Jack the Insider is the one who is not right about the data because he doesn’t read enough or listen properly.
He cites in his piece a string of US government data that supports the lie that Covid became ‘a pandemic of the unvaccinated’. Jack is a stickler. He even cites a study of prisoners (people who, unlike the vast majority of us, are confined and cannot move out and about in society as they please) to demonstrate ‘what we have now overwhelmingly shows that unvaccinated individuals are more infectious and for longer’.
Unlike Jack, let’s be honest and do the job properly.
If Jack wanted to do his job properly, he could have done far worse than read regular contributor to these pages and The Australian, Ramesh Thakur’s column in the latter on August 20 this year, and he would realise to his argument there is a very strong counter-argument, published by none other than NSW Health:
The Covid report from NSW Health for the week of July 10-16 says: “The minority of the overall population who have not been vaccinated are significantly over-represented among patients in hospitals and ICUs with Covid-19.” Just two pages later the same report gives the number of unvaccinated people admitted to hospital and intensive care units as zero. The sentence is repeated verbatim in the latest weekly report for July 31-August 6, with the number of unvaccinated people admitted to hospital at zero and to ICU just one.
Even by the standards of public health authorities across the world gaslighting the people to nudge them into docile – and often performative – compliance with official edicts, this level of internal contradiction of narrative with data is breathtaking.
Not a single Covid death under 40 was reported in the week to August 6. The total number of boosted people who died with Covid was 71.3 per cent of the 1,281 Covid deaths whose vaccination status was known, slightly above the “more than 68 per cent” of eligible people who have been boosted.
Thus the effectiveness of boosters in preventing death lasts only a short time.
People who have received two to four doses made up over 95 per cent of the over-16s and 98.1, 95.8, and 82.6 per cent of Covid hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths, respectively.
In the 11 weeks from May 22 to August 6, the unvaccinated comprised 0.2, 1.8 and 13.1 per cent of all NSW Covid-related hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths, respectively.
The double vaccinated and boosted made up 98.1, 95.4 and 85 per cent of the same respective totals. Just the boosted added up to 73.3, 73.4 and 69.9 per cent.
We are no longer in the realm of a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
Despite major protective benefits, Covid vaccines are undeniably leaky. Their real-world effectiveness lasts a disappointingly short time.
Strike one.
Then our Jack goes on a tirade against Rob Roos, whitewashing the anger over Pfizer executive Janine Small’s admission that there was never any testing done to demonstrate that the jab prevented transmission because ‘we had to move at the speed of science’. Jack dismisses the outrage at this as ‘shrieking’, and refers to, among other things, ‘peer-reviewed modelling’ (which he doesn’t reference) that suggested we couldn’t wait the usual five to ten years to produce a safe vaccine because ‘we would have to wear 14 million excess deaths a year if we waited’.
As we knew reasonably early in the piece, the modelling could never be trusted. Here are the undisputed facts about Covid from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare from November 2021, published in these pages. The average lifespan of an Australian is 82.6 years. The average age of Covid fatalities in Australia is 85. Since the pandemic began, the Covid fatality rate for Australians under 50 is four in 12,000. Sixty-six per cent of Covid deaths have been in nursing homes. Seventy-three per cent of Covid deaths involved pre-existing chronic health conditions and a higher number involved non-chronic but somewhat serious health complications. It would be difficult, therefore, to justify discrimination on the basis of vaccine status, especially if one has no pre-existing conditions, or is not in a vulnerable category.
Strike two.
Mr Hoysted, continuing his crusade against the ‘shrieking’ states that we always knew the vaccines would never prevent transmission – noting an FDA study – and that this was taken over by ‘political hyperbole’ about ‘protecting grandma’. He even cites an Israeli peer-reviewed study which showed ‘the ability of the vaccine to prevent transmission waned with time and with the advent of the Delta variant’. Well, I, among many other in this publication and elsewhere, were saying that as far back as April 2021. To then, as our Jack does, gloss over the way politicians and health bureaucrats promised to make lives miserable for people on the basis that they saw no point in getting a jab because not only did it not prevent transmission, but that, based on their own age and health circumstances, they believed it wasn’t necessary, is, in the view of this correspondent, inexcusable.
However, our Jack doesn’t give up. He uses the same study to insist that those who were unvaccinated for Covid would be more infectious and infectious for longer. As we know, that has been shown to be wrong. Remember when two doses were enough, then three, now four? Maybe that is why Denmark halted its Covid vaccine program back in April. Even before then, Lancet published this article noting the futility of vaccine mandates in the face of transmissibility (I’ll refer to it again below).
But our Jack still insists that he is right and has ‘indisputable evidence’ to prove it. He writes:
In the Oxford Academic Open Forum on Infectious Diseases, three infectious diseases doctors, two from the US and one from Scotland, examined three randomised trials and found that “receipt of the vaccine was associated with a 70 per cent reduction in all SARS-CoV-2 infections 21 days after the first dose and 85 per cent reduction seven days after the second dose. A similar cohort study of 3,975 health care workers, first responders, and other frontline workers in the United States who were tested weekly found a 91 per cend reduction in infection risk after full vaccination by an mRNA vaccine and an 81 per cent reduction after partial vaccination.”
Jack goes on:
While vaccine mandates may have been excessively applied across a range of industries (I never quite understood why they were imposed on footballers or construction workers), that analysis provides hard evidence as to why vaccine mandates continue to be necessary for frontline health workers, emergency response workers and even more obviously, for those working in aged care.
Well, that Lancet study I cited above directly contradicts this assertion, when it found that triple vaccinated Israeli doctors and nurses were getting Covid and passing it on to their patients: ‘[T]he demonstration of Covid-19 breakthrough infections among fully vaccinated health-care workers (HCW) in Israel, who in turn may transmit this infection to their patients, requires a reassessment of compulsory vaccination policies leading to the job dismissal of unvaccinated HCW in the USA,’ it argued.
So much for ‘hard evidence’. Strike three.
A suggestion for our Jack. Since he has all the ‘hard evidence’ that the Covid vaccine is safe and effective, he might want to ask his ALP friends in the federal government why it is that the Budget, handed down last week, is warning that Covid vaccine injury payouts could reach $77 million. He might want to investigate why the CDC, which he places so much faith in, fought tooth and nail to prevent this data from being released.
Maybe then our Jack might put his cue in the rack.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/jack-the-insider-is-out-of-bounds/
****************************************************1 November, 2022
‘Politically Motivated’ CDC Decisions During COVID
Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) are leading a GOP call for investigations into “politically motivated” decisions made by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a letter exclusively obtained by The Epoch Times, Roy and Biggs, joined by Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) called on Republican leaders to add the issue to a growing list of potential investigations if Republicans take the House.
The letter is addressed to Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and
Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member James Comer (R-Ky.).
The letter comes in the wake of a unanimous vote by the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to add COVID-19 vaccines to the standard immunization schedule for children.
All members of the ACIP voted to add the Moderna, Pfizer, and Novavax vaccines to the 2023 schedules, asserting that the vaccines, despite waning effectiveness, can still prevent severe disease. While technically the vote was only a recommendation, that recommendation is highly likely to be approved by the CDC.
This vote came after a Pfizer executive admitted that their COVID-19 vaccines were not tested for preventing transmission.
“We view this as COVID is here to stay,” said Dr. Matthew Daley, one of the advisers on the ACIP. “When I think about the routine immunization schedule as a pediatrician, I think of it as an opportunity to prevent serious disease and death. And if something is added to the schedule, it’s because I feel like the benefits continue to strongly outweigh the risks.”
This decision, Biggs and Roy warned, will continue to undermine Americans’ freedom and protect vaccine manufacturers from legal liability.
“This decision is concerning for multiple reasons and will only put the well-being of American families with school-aged children at further risk of their healthcare freedom while protecting pharmaceutical companies from any liability related to vaccine injuries,” the lawmakers wrote.
In response to the decision, Roy and Biggs called for the CDC to be added to a growing list of federal agencies to be investigated for misconduct by Republicans.
“If Republicans are once again entrusted with the majority of the House of Representatives, congressional committees with oversight of the CDC should immediately begin investigations, host hearings, and hold accountable those involved in politically motivated decisions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” the duo wrote. “This latest decision is but just one example.”
‘Unwarranted’
Citing several statistics showing that children are at minimal risk from the disease, and in some cases are more at risk from the vaccine, Roy and Biggs called the recommendation by the ACIP “unwarranted.”
“The decision to include such a revision in the childhood immunization schedule is unwarranted,” the lawmakers wrote.
For instance, the lawmakers noted CDC statistics showing that those aged 0–17 years old infected with COVID are at minimal risk for hospitalizations, with rates of hospitalization never exceeding 4.8 percent throughout the pandemic. During several months, hospitalization rates for 0–17-year-olds were as low as 0.3 percent according to the same data.
Further, the lawmakers cited evidence from medical studies showing that children aged 0–19 years had a 0.0003 percent mortality rate from COVID-19, or three deaths per million infections. Other research showed that in 100 percent of cases, children who died from COVID-19 had co-morbidities.
Additionally, the lawmakers warned, “studies show that children have an increased risk to COVID-19 vaccine side effects.”
After a second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, one study found, boys aged 12–17 years were more likely to have an adverse cardiac event than to be hospitalized.
In men under the age of 40, another study showed, incidents of myocarditis—inflammation of the heart muscle—were more likely after a second dose of the vaccine than after getting COVID-19 itself.
Further adding to the dubitability of claims about vaccine safety, Biggs and Roy noted, is information from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
VAERS data shows that as of Oct. 14, 2022, there have been 57,166 reports of adverse events in children after they were given the vaccine. Of those, there are 161 reported deaths, 528 reported permanent disabilities, and 1,962 cases of myocarditis.
Despite research showing that natural immunity is more effective for preventing transmission of COVID-19 among children than vaccines, Biggs and Roy noted, “the CDC does not have guidance including natural immunity for this age.”
‘CDC Guidance Has Been Wrong Before’
Biggs and Roy also warned against too readily accepting CDC guidance, noting that past CDC recommendations have had devastating consequences on children’s mental health.
“CDC guidance has been wrong before—leading to terrible outcomes for children,” the duo wrote.
The Manhattan Institute estimates that guidance from the CDC calling for school closures led to around 100,000 public schools shuttering in-person classes for at least eight weeks.
Because of the consequences these decisions had on children’s development, Biggs and Roy said, “We now face a devastating mental health and substance abuse crisis among America’s youth.”
In 2020, CDC data shows, 1,006 teenagers died from drug- or alcohol-related causes—nearly twice as many as died in 2019. By contrast, 199 people under the age of 17 died from COVID-19 that year.
‘Actively Misled the American People’
Further, Biggs and Roy accused the CDC of misleading the American people.
“The CDC has also actively misled the American people throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” they wrote.
The lawmakers cited the CDC’s controversial decision to change the definition of “vaccine” from “producing immunity” to “producing protection.”
In March 2022, the agency also chose to withhold hospitalization data by vaccine status, saying that the data might be misinterpreted. In June, the CDC reportedly decided to withhold information about the spread of COVID-19 in hospitals out of “fears of embarrassing the hospitals.”
In view of these factors, Biggs and Roy called for CDC leaders to be “questioned and fully scrutinized by Congress.”
“This recent decision by the CDC to include COVID-19 vaccines in the childhood vaccine schedule—and thereby pressuring states to implement this recommendation—should be questioned and fully scrutinized by Congress,” they wrote.
“No child should ever be faced with losing his or her education over a clearly and undeniably politicized vaccine,” they continued. “Every parent should have the full freedom to choose whether it makes sense for his or her child to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Decisions such as these are personal and do not require the ‘recommendation’ of the federal government.”
In closing, the lawmakers wrote: “As you consider the numerous failures of the public health apparatus, we strongly urge you to immediately investigate and hold to account the people responsible for brazen political decisions with the potential to impact our children with irreversible harm.
“The U.S. government should respect the decisions of American families, and not pressure States to issue an ultimatum that jeopardizes children’s access to primary and secondary education. Congress should ensure this is the case.”
The proposal by Roy and Biggs is the most recent in a line of potential investigations that Republicans could pursue if they retake the House.
Other proposed investigations could look into Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) role in leaving the Capitol unprepared on Jan. 6, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s handling of southern border security, and Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
********************************************************
CDC Latest VISION Network Real World Evidence: Not Great News for COVID-19 Vaccines & Immunocompromised During Omicron BA.5 Surge
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) organized another study based on its VISION Network, tapping into what is claimed as the first real-world data look at mRNA vaccine effectiveness during the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 surge involving immunocompromised adults. A sizable study covering multiple regions of the United States, the CDC reports positive findings associated with the COVID-19 vaccination program involving immunocompromised adults.
The unfortunate news is that at best, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, including boosters, are providing moderate protection, and vaccine-neutralizing antibodies wane substantially over time. Immunocompromised patients must work with providers to find additional ways to bolster protection against COVID-19.
Background
Covering the duration of the spring and summer 2022, BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants surged to dominate the SARS-CoV-2 variants in circulation, so much so that a special booster developed to target these pathogens was released into the market before clinical trial data could be collected.
At this time, there were four total doses available, the two primary series and two booster doses all involving mRNA shots from either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna.
What about the VISION Network? As TrialSite has reported, the CDC set this network up involving several U.S. healthcare systems as well as the Regenstrief Institute affiliated with Indian University to assess COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness.
What’s the core study findings?
Based on real-world data, the VISION Network covers large health systems across the United States. The study team was able to tap into and review the medical records of 30,000 immunocompromised adults. They found defense against COVID-19 associated hospitalizations was 34 percent after two vaccine doses, increasing to 71 percent during days 7 to 89 after a third dose, then declining to 41 percent 90 days or more after that dose. This means that after 3 months, the decline markedly goes down. TrialSite has reviewed comparable data for the immunocompromised where protection dives into teens and even negative territory in the ensuing months.
Although immunocompromised adults received increased protection after a third dose of the vaccine, this study found that vaccine effectiveness in this population remains lower than in the larger population of all adults.
The VISION investigators report vaccine effectiveness in the immunocompromised group was lowest among persons with sold organ or stem cell transplants or hematologic malignancies such as leukemia, lymphoma, or multiple myeloma.
What are the implications for low vaccine effectiveness among the identified groups?
The study authors report a combination of elements that need to be considered, including the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions, from use of masks to prophylactic antibody treatment as well as anti-viral treatments. Once a person gets infected with SARS-CoV-2 all are important tools that can confer additional protection against the novel coronavirus in the targeted population.
What’s a PI point of view?
Brian Dixon, PhD, MPA of the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health, is part of the VISION Network, and a co-author of the study. Dixon reports, “This study confirms that even with boosters, immunocompromised adults, because of their weakened immune systems, are still at high risk of moderate to severe COVID. While vaccines in the general adult population have been found to be 70 to 90 percent effective, for the immunocompromised we’re looking at a much lower range -- 34 to 71 percent effective.”
Dixon continued:
“Those with healthy immune systems should keep in mind that we are a community with a responsibility to keep fellow community members, who are immunocompromised or have other conditions that place them at higher risk for COVID, even with vaccination, protected by taking precautions like hand hygiene and mask wearing, especially when transmission rates are high. We need to look out for one another.”
Shaun Grannis, MD, MS, a physician-scientist with Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine also went on the record:
“This higher risk group has been taking precautions and should continue to work with their providers to access needed tools to protect themselves. Immunocompromised individuals should consult their physician with any questions regarding remaining up to date with COVID vaccinations to optimize their protection. Adults with immunocompromising conditions and other populations have specific questions about the pandemic and vaccine effectiveness. Our findings in this study are a step forward in helping to answer these questions.”
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http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
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http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
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https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
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http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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