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From the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Biden White House has repeatedly announced large and seemingly random amounts of money that it intends to send to fuel the war in Ukraine. The latest such dispatch of large amounts of U.S. funds, pursuant to an initial $3.5 billion fund authorized by Congress early on, was announced on Friday; “Biden says U.S. will send $1.3 billion in additional military and economic support to Ukraine,” read the CNBC headline. This was preceded by a series of new lavish spending packages for the war, unveiled every two to three weeks, starting on the third day of the war:

Feb. 26: “Biden approves $350 million in military aid for Ukraine”: Reuters; Mar. 16: “Biden announces $800 million in military aid for Ukraine”: The New York Times; Mar. 30: “Ukraine to receive additional $500 million in aid from U.S., Biden announces”: NBC News; Apr. 12: “U.S. to announce $750 million more in weapons for Ukraine, officials say”: Reuters; May 6: “Biden announces new $150 million weapons package for Ukraine”: Reuters. Those amounts by themselves are in excess of $3 billion; by the end of April, the total U.S. expenditure on the war in Ukraine was close to $14 billion, drawn from the additional $13.5 billion Congress authorized in mid-March. While some of that is earmarked for economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, most of it will go into the coffers of the weapons industry — including Raytheon, on whose Board of Directors the current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, sat immediately before being chosen by Biden to run the Pentagon.

As CNN put it: “about $6.5 billion, roughly half of the aid package, will go to the US Department of Defense so it can deploy troops to the region and send defense equipment to Ukraine.” As enormous as those sums already are, they were dwarfed by the Biden administration’s announcement on April 28 that it “is asking Congress for $33 billion in funding to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, more than double the $14 billion in support authorized so far.” The White House itself acknowledges that the vast majority of that new spending package will go to the purchase of weaponry and other military assets: “$20.4 billion in additional security and military assistance for Ukraine and for U.S. efforts to strengthen European security in cooperation with our NATO allies and other partners in the region.”

It is difficult to put into context how enormous these expenditures are — particularly since the war is only ten weeks old, and U.S. officials predict/hope that this war will last not months but years. That ensures that the ultimate amounts will be significantly higher still.

“The ‘Boys from Davos’ plot out the future of the world.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1523927620999475200

These people have no dictionaries.

• Lithuania Lawmakers: Russian Actions in Ukraine ‘Genocide’, ‘Terrorism’ (R.)

Lithuania’s parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to describe Russia’s actions in Ukraine as “genocide” and “terrorism” and to call for a international tribunal, modelled on the Nuremberg Trials after World War Two, to prosecute suspected war crimes. The motion, co-sponsored by Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, said Russian forces’ war crimes in Ukraine included the deliberate killing of civilians, mass rape, forcible relocation of Ukrainian citizens to Russia and the destruction of economic infrastructure and cultural sites. Moscow denies targeting civilians and calls its invasion, launched on Feb. 24, a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and rid it of what it calls anti-Russian nationalists. Ukraine and the West say this is a false pretext for waging an unprovoked war of aggression.

“The Russian Federation, whose military forces deliberately and systematically select civilian targets for bombing, is a state that supports and perpetrates terrorism,” the Lithuanian parliamentary motion said. Lithuania’s move follows a similar unanimous vote by Canadian lawmakers on April 27 to call Russia’s attacks in Ukraine a “genocide”. Leonid Slutsky, head of the International Affairs Committee of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said the resolution was not legally binding and that it merely repeated what he called the United States’ Russophobic views. He said the resolution was part of an “anti-Russia project” and biased actions against Russia that “have nothing to do with reality,” the TASS news agency cited him as saying.

1/3 of Russian gas flows.

• Ukraine Halts Some Russian Gas Flows, Claims Battlefield Gains (R.)

Flows of Russian gas to Europe through a key transit point in Ukraine dried up on Wednesday, while Kyiv claimed battlefield gains over invading Russian forces, including the recapture of four villages around the second city of Kharkiv. Ukraine has remained a major route for Russian gas to Europe even after President Vladimir Putin ordered what he called a “special military operation” on Feb. 24. Mounting Western sanctions are seeking to ban or phase out the use of Russian energy, a major source of funds for Putin’s war effort and a vulnerability for Europe, especially Germany. Blaming the interference of Russian occupying forces for the suspension, Ukraine’s gas operator said on Tuesday it would redirect gas from the Sokhranivka transit point, which is in an area occupied by Russian forces, to another in a Ukraine-controlled area.

Early Wednesday data from the network operator showed zero nominations for Russian gas through the transit point. Since Russia was forced to abandon an assault on the capital Kyiv at the end of March, its main force has been trying to encircle Ukrainian troops in the eastern Donbas region, using the city of Izyum near Kharkiv, in the northeast, as a base. Ukrainian troops have mostly held out against assaults from three directions, and top U.S. intelligence officials say the war is now at a stalemate. Putin appeared to be preparing for a long conflict, and a Russian victory in the Donbas region might not end the war, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said in Washington on Tuesday. But the counterattack near Kharkiv could signal a new phase, with Ukraine going on the offensive and supply lines into Russia now potentially vulnerable.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian successes were gradually pushing Russian forces out of Kharkiv, which has been under bombardment since the war began. “But I also want to urge all our people … not to spread excessive emotions. We should not create an atmosphere of excessive moral pressure, where victories are expected weekly and even daily,” Zelenskiy said in a video address.

8 years

So West has been paying and training and arming the Ukrainian army for eight years… pic.twitter.com/txV6dB9rNq

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) May 10, 2022

pfrightening

• Are We Pfinding Pfizer Pfraud? -Part 1 (Gato Malo)

The pfizer data dumps are massive and disordered. They drop 50k pages without regard to completeness or order. Here, have a huge box of who knows what! This is a longstanding legal trick. And it works well. It’s the time honored fashion in which big companies bury small legal teams and create a $3 million bill just to sort and read the stuff. But here’s a fun little wrinkle: this time is not going to be like that. Battalions of interested parties are all over it. The documents are posted and reading and sorting them is crowdsourced. And many hands make for light work. And a lot of very skilled sleuths are at work here. No law firm in history has ever had an expert team like this. Never. The FDA and pfizer fought tooth and claw NOT to release this. I have ZERO doubt that they are dumping all the least awful and incriminating things first.

Keep in mind these folks wanted to take 75 years to disclose this. Only a court order pried it loose. But even with this first set of boxes, it’s starting to become apparent why they did not want anyone poking around. They knew all sorts of things they failed to disclose and many are doing good work on this. But what if the trial itself was pfraud? Because that would be seismic. It would not only severely implicate the FDA and pfizer alike, it would likely invalidate the liability protection granted under EUA and suddenly bourla and his merry band of vaxx aficionados might find themselves accountable. Bigly. And wouldn’t that be interesting? So if this looks like a plausible possibility, we really ought to dig in like busy little mice and see what all we can winkle out. Fortunately, some busy little mice have already been doing so. and what they found is, well, pfrightening.

“..1223 people died within 90 days of taking the Pfizer jab..”

Say Pfizer’s own docs. But no lack of reports saying they do not.

• The Covid Vaccine Boomerang (Maajid Nawaz)

Initially, the FDA took a strange step on behalf of Pfizer by demanding a full 75 years before releasing any of their vaccine trial data. Euronews reports: “The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it now needs 75 years to fully release Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine data to the public – twenty years more than it originally agreed on November 15.” So strange was this attempt, that a judge then had to order the FDA to release the Pfizer data: Reuters reports: “Jan 7 – Score one for transparency. A federal judge in Texas on Thursday ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make public the data it relied on to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, imposing a dramatically accelerated schedule that should result in the release of all information within about eight months.”

So why did Pfizer and the FDA want to hide their data for 75 years? This week, the first batch of that judge-ordered data was released. Despite predictable media spin disguised as “fact-checking”, the basic and rather shocking revelation that 1233 people died within 90 days of taking the Pfizer jab is true. This is contained within Pfizer’s own adverse events report:

The public and smaller media outlets are finally beginning to wake up to the extent of the problem caused by the experimental mRNA jab in particular. Unherd cites: “On the other hand, Stabell-Benn and her colleagues found no statistically meaningful evidence in the trial data that the mRNA vaccines reduced all-cause mortality. The numbers of deaths from other causes including cardiovascular deaths appear to be increased in this group, compensating for the beneficial effect of the vaccines on Covid” No wonder Pfizer would rather pull out of countries entirely than to allow independent testing of their mRNA jab, locally. Reuters reports: “NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Pfizer Inc said on Friday it had withdrawn an application for emergency-use authorisation of its COVID-19 vaccine in India, after failing to meet the drug regulator’s demand for a local safety and immunogenicity study.”

Immunologist, virologist and the inventor of mRNA technology, Dr Robert Malone summarises the latest developments with Pfizer’s data here: “In my opinion withholding scientific data constitutes fraud, this is scientific fraud in my opinion. If I was to publish a study, in which I had a large body of epidemiological data, and I decided to only publish part of it, because I wanted to advance some agenda, I would be guilty of scientific fraud, the paper would be withdrawn, I would be kicked out of my academic institution. I would be guilty of scientific fraud. That’s what this is. And the CDC..I’ve watched it over the years become more and more and more a political arm, and not serving its function…They no longer release that detailed information.. they have become purely a political organisation, an arm of the Executive Branch and what they have done is in my opinion obscene.

And it is part of what’s under lied the attacks that Peter and I have sustained from the press.. if you think about it, the underlying thesis is: ‘well the CDC didn’t say that, so you’re spreading medical misinformation,’ but now we learn who’s really been spreading medical misinformation is the CDC. I think we’re all owed an apology… I think that this data that they have been withholding …it is a ton of information, they’ve been intentionally withholding it, that’s why we’ve been attacked, it is unjust… it turns out we have been completely vindicated. We have been speaking truth, and it’s a truth that has been hidden from the American public, and more importantly it’s been hidden from other physicians, and it’s been hidden from public health authorities..” Dr Robert Malone.

We know from Pfizer docs that their “vaccine” was never tested on pregnant women, only on 44 rats. So all reports this below is based on is about guinea pigs, tests taking place after it was said to be safe and effective, though nobody could have known that.

• Covid Vaccines Safe For Pregnant Women, Cut Stillbirth Risk – Review (G.)

Doctors have stressed the importance of Covid vaccinations for pregnant women after a major review found the shots were not only safe, but reduced the risk of stillbirth by 15%. Researchers at St George’s, University of London, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists analysed 23 published studies and trials that enrolled 117,552 pregnant women vaccinated against Covid, to assess the safety of the shots. The vast majority of the women received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, which provided 89.5% protection against Covid infection seven days after the second dose. There was no evidence of greater risk from miscarriage, preterm birth or other pregnancy complications.

“We wanted to see if vaccination was safe or not for pregnant women,” said Asma Khalil, professor of obstetrics and maternal fetal medicine at St George’s hospital in London. “It is safe, but what’s surprising, and it’s a positive finding, is that there was a reduction in stillbirths.” “So far, most of the data on vaccines in pregnancy have been about protecting the pregnant woman herself from Covid. Now we have evidence that the vaccines protect the baby too,” she added. The results are published in Nature Communications.

Almost all pregnant women admitted to UK hospitals for Covid treatment are unvaccinated. And while vaccine uptake among pregnant women rose from 23% in August to 54% at the end of last year, doctors believe thousands are still unvaccinated. In December, the UK government’s vaccine watchdog, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, made pregnant women a priority group for jabs after studies found women were more likely to become seriously ill if they caught Covid while pregnant.

All logic is gone now.

• FDA: Youngest Kids Vaccine Won’t Need To Hit 50% Efficacy Mark (EP)

The FDA’s top vaccine leader told a congressional committee on Friday afternoon that although the adult vaccines had to meet a 50% threshold for efficacy against Covid-19 infections, that same standard will not need to be met for the vaccines for the youngest group of children, for which a vaccine is not yet available. The agency is currently reviewing data from Moderna’s two-shot vaccine for this youngest group as it awaits further data from Pfizer on its potential three-dose shot. The agency previously scheduled and then canceled an adcomm to review data on two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine for children under the age of 5.

According to a readout of the meeting from the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, Marks explained that the FDA would not withhold authorization — despite previous guidance — for a pediatric vaccine solely because it did not reach a 50% efficacy threshold at blocking symptomatic infections. All of the other adult and children’s vaccines currently authorized in the US have lost significant amounts of efficacy due to the Omicron variant, but they still remain effective at reducing the risk of severe disease, hospitalization and death. “If these vaccines seem to be mirroring efficacy in adults and just seem to be less effective against Omicron like they are for adults, we will probably still authorize,” Marks said.

Meanwhile, Marks directly addressed concerns that the agency might slow-play the Moderna application and wait to review both applications together, saying that the VRBPAC meetings set for next month will be moved up if necessary. “Obviously if we get through reviews faster, then we will send them to committees sooner,” Marks said, according to Rep. Jim Clyburn’s account of the meeting. Marks also told Clyburn and his staff that VRBPAC members have reserved earlier dates, enabling FDA to potentially “move dates up even by a week for any of these reviews.” But he also explained that reviewing these vaccines for the youngest children involves more “complexity” than the review of adult vaccines, and the agency’s review process may require more time.

He also said that the emergence of new variants made the process of reviewing vaccines more complex, explaining it “was a little simpler for the original submissions in late 2020 when we didn’t have the variants and tons of immunogenicity data to go through.

What a surprise.

• $350 Million in Secret Payments to Fauci, Collins, Others at NIH Uncovered (ET)

An estimated $350 million in undisclosed royalties were paid to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and hundreds of its scientists, including the agency’s recently departed director, Dr. Francis Collins, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to a nonprofit government watchdog. “We estimate that up to $350 million in royalties from third parties were paid to NIH scientists during the fiscal years between 2010 and 2020,” Open the Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski told reporters in a telephone news conference on May 9. “We draw that conclusion because, in the first five years, there has been $134 million that we have been able to quantify of top-line numbers that flowed from third-party payers, meaning pharmaceutical companies or other payers, to NIH scientists.”

The first five years, from 2010 to 2014, constitute 40 percent of the total, he said. “We now know that there are 1,675 scientists that received payments during that period, at least one payment. In fiscal year 2014, for instance, $36 million was paid out and that is on average $21,100 per scientist,” Andrzejewski said. “We also find that during this period, leadership at NIH was involved in receiving third-party payments. For instance, Francis Collins, the immediate past director of NIH, received 14 payments. Dr. Anthony Fauci received 23 payments and his deputy, Clifford Lane, received eight payments.” Collins resigned as NIH director in December 2021 after 12 years of leading the world’s largest public health agency.

Fauci is the longtime head of NIH’s National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as well as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. Lane is the deputy director of NIAID, under Fauci. The top five NIH employees measured in terms of the number of royalty payments that they received while on the government payroll, according to a fact sheet published by Open the Books, include Robert Gallo, National Cancer Institute, 271 payments; Ira Pastan, National Cancer Institute, 250 payments; Mikulas Popovic, National Cancer Institute, 191 payments; Flossie Wong-Staal, National Cancer Institute, 190 payments; and Mangalasseril Sarngadharan, National Cancer Institute, 188 payments. Only Pastan continues to be employed by NIH, according to Open the Books.

“If the WHO says every person on the planet needs to have a vaccine passport and digital identity to ensure vaccination compliance, then that’s what every country will be forced to implement, even if the people have rejected such plans using local democratic processes.”

• WHO Pandemic Treaty: What It Is, Why It Matters and How to Stop It (Mercola)

As noted by anti-extremism activist Maajid Nawaz in an April 28 Twitter post, the “WHO pandemic treaty serves as a backdoor to global empire.” COVID-19, while potentially deadly to certain vulnerable groups, simply isn’t a valid justification for handing over more power to the WHO, especially in light of its many inexplicable “mistakes” in this and previous pandemics. As just one example, the WHO didn’t publicly admit SARS-CoV-2 was airborne until the end of December 2021, yet scientists knew the virus was airborne within weeks of the pandemic being declared. The WHO also ignored early advice about airborne transmission. So, it seems clear that the effort to now hand over more power to the WHO is about something other than them being the most qualified to make health decisions that benefit and protect everyone.

It seems far more likely that the WHO is being installed as a de facto governing body for the global Deep State. Through the WHO, under the guise of biosecurity, the globalist cabal who seek to own everything and control everyone will then be able to implement their wishes across the whole world in one fell swoop. With this treaty in place, all member nations will be subject to the WHO’s dictates. If the WHO says every person on the planet needs to have a vaccine passport and digital identity to ensure vaccination compliance, then that’s what every country will be forced to implement, even if the people have rejected such plans using local democratic processes.

[..] Under the guise of a global pandemic, the WHO, the World Economic Forum and all its installed leaders in government and private business were able to roll out a plan that had already been decades in the making. The pandemic was a perfect cover. In the name of keeping everyone “safe” from infection, the globalists justified unprecedented attacks on democracy, civil liberties and personal freedoms, including the right to choose your own medical treatment. Now, the WHO is gearing up to make its pandemic leadership permanent, extend it into the healthcare systems of every nation and eventually implement a universal or “socialist-like” healthcare system as part of The Great Reset.

Empty apartments.

• The Chinese Slowdown: Much More Than Covid (Lacalle)

The most recent macroeconomic figures show that the Chinese slowdown is much more severe than expected and not only attributable to the covid-19 lockdowns. The lockdowns have an enormous impact. Twenty-six of 31 China mainland provinces have rising covid cases and the fear of a Shanghai-style lockdown is enormous. The information coming from Shanghai proves that these drastic lockdowns create an enormous damage to the population. Millions of citizens without food or medicine and rising suicides have shown that the infamous “zero covid” policy often disguises mass population control and repression. It is easy to use the covid-19 lockdowns as the reason for the weakening of the Chinese economy but that would be a gross simplification. The problem is deeper.

China is going through a severe slowdown caused by the burst of the enormous real estate bubble and the crackdown on the private sector, which has led to a cut in investment growth. According to Nomura Research, China faces the worst slowdown since the covid outbreak in 2020 and the world should be worried about a further slide, as the challenges persist. Official gross domestic product (GDP) figures may be massaged to deliver the government’s target, but all other macro figures point to a much weaker growth. We must remember that there are two ways in which the Chinese government “boosts” real GDP: By publishing a low inflation and GDP deflator figure and by massively increasing credit and infrastructure spending. However, those two cannot disguise the importance of the weakening of the Chinese economy, because it is now structural.

The collapse of the real estate bubble is the biggest problem. A research paper by Kenneth Rogoff and Yuanchen Yang estimated that the real estate sector accounts for around 29 percent of China’s GDP. It is impossible for the Chinese government to offset the impact of such a massive part of the economy with other high-growth sectors. Furthermore, real estate’s impact on the job market is hard to substitute. Economist George Magnus warned that the impact of the real estate collapse would last for years.

“..while the number of weather-related disasters [..] has risen in the past 50 years, the number of deaths caused by them has fallen..”

• BBC Climate Editor Made False Claims On Global Warming (DM)

A BBC Panorama documentary about global warming made a number of false claims, an internal investigation by the broadcaster has found. The programme Wild Weather, presented by climate editor Justin Rowlatt, said deaths worldwide were rising due to extreme weather caused by climate change – whereas the opposite is true. It also claimed Madagascar was on the verge of the first famine caused by climate change – despite other factors being involved. The programme, broadcast last November to coincide with the COP26 climate conference, sparked two complaints investigated by the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU). Last year Rowlatt’s sister Cordelia was among a number of Insulate Britain activists arrested for staging a protest at junction 3 of the M25.

Miss Rowlatt, who once appeared on TV advising her brother on how to be more environmentally friendly, pleaded guilty by post at Crawley Magistrates’ Court. She was fined £300 with £85 court costs and a £34 surcharge for committing a public nuisance on a highway. The introduction of Wild Weather said ‘the death toll is rising around the world and the forecast is that worse is to come’. The ECU said this risked giving the impression the rate of deaths from extreme weather-related events was increasing. In fact, as noted by a recent report from the World Meteorological Organisation, while the number of weather-related disasters – such as floods, storms and drought – has risen in the past 50 years, the number of deaths caused by them has fallen because of improved early warnings and disaster management.

The Guardian is a two-faced monster.

• Priti Patel, Julian Assange Must Not Be Handed Over To The US (G.)

Priti Patel now has to make one of the most important decisions of her career: will she bow to heavy pressure from the United States and send a vulnerable man who has been convicted of no crime to face an indeterminate number of years in an American jail where he may experience intimidation and isolation? Her decision is imminent and all other legal avenues have been explored. This was the scenario 10 years ago in the case of Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker who, working out of his north London bedroom, trawled through the computer systems of Nasa and the US defence department in search of information about UFOs and left behind some mildly rude messages about the systems’ sloppy security. The home secretary was Theresa May, who halted extradition proceedings at the last minute.

Now Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder and also a vulnerable man – who has been in Belmarsh high-security prison for three years without being convicted of any crime – is facing extradition, with the issue due to be decided this month. Once again, the home secretary has an opportunity to demonstrate, as May did, that respect for justice and humanity are much finer and more enduring qualities than appeasement. It is worth recalling the words of party leaders in support of McKinnon after Labour home secretaries – to their great shame – declined to intervene in the years after his initial arrest in 2002. Nick Clegg, then leading the Liberal Democrats in opposition, said that McKinnon “has been hung out to dry by a British government desperate to appease its American counterparts”.

David Cameron, before he became prime minister, had said: “McKinnon is a vulnerable young man and I see no compassion in sending him thousands of miles away from his home and loved ones to face trial.” The current case is different in that, while McKinnon remained at liberty, Assange has been held in custody alongside murderers and terrorists after the seven years he spent in the Ecuadorian embassy, seeking political asylum. He should have been given bail long ago to be with his wife, Stella Moris, whom he married in prison in March, and their two young children; he could simply be electronically tagged and monitored. It is also different in that he faces charges under the Espionage Act which carries a potential sentence of 175 years. And yes, the US criminal justice system does actually impose such medieval sentences.

Truth Social

BREAKING: Donald Trump posts new video slamming Biden on Truth Social: pic.twitter.com/tDV43jzwD0

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 9, 2022

Expodentially

'Expodentially' isn't a word, Joe pic.twitter.com/ZjRqqR1Lgt

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 11, 2022

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Debt Rattle September 20 2021

Sep 202021

September 20, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:01 am Finance Tagged with: BlackRock, efficacy, Evergrande, FDA, Lancet, Pfizer, Steve Kirsch, vaccines 53 Responses »

Claude Monet The sheltered path 1888

• YouTube Is Always Right (Steve Kirsch)

• Covid-19 Vaccines Are Killing At Least 2 People For Every 1 Life They Save (TE)

• Counting Covid (Attkisson)

• A Plausible Hypothesis, Based On Fact (Denninger)

• Indian Bar Association Issues A Legal Notice To WHO (IF)

• The Weaponisation of Vaccination (NoF)

• Gaming Measurement of Vaccine Efficacy (Crawford)

• Now The Lancet U-turns Over Covid Lab Leak Theory (DM)

• This Week in the New Normal |(OffG)

• Evergrande: Why Most Analysis Is Dead In The Water (Erba)

• France Accuses Britain Of ‘Retreating To America’s Lap’ (Inews)

• BlackRock and Citi Get on Board the Climate Nazi Train (IMan)

Fullmilch

Reiner Fuellmich – scary if true… pic.twitter.com/pn5y0bCmXr

— Osler (@osler78) September 18, 2021

Singapore stats. Completely out of hand. Vaccines, is there still any doubt about this? 82% fully vaccinated. Yet Eric Topol, who calls himself a physician-scientist, says:
“Delta can be daunting to contain. The situation in Singapore with over 1,000 new cases today and yesterday, 80% of total population fully vaccinated, 1 of top 3 countries in the world, is an important indicator of the challenge.”

How blind can one be?

And here’s the health minister. The vaccines saved us!

See Us. Hear Us. Believe Us. Heal Us.

Vaccine Truth tweets: “Steve Kirsch’s last video on YouTube where he admits “Ivermectin doesn’t work” in order to satisfy YouTube policies. It’s hilarious. Let’s see how long it takes before YouTube removes it.”

Note: Kirsch was suspended by Twitter too.

• YouTube Is Always Right (Steve Kirsch)

STOP listening to the science! Whatever YouTube says is what you should believe. The science says that Ivermectin works. The science is wrong. What matters is what YouTube says, not science. Stop thinking for yourself and do whatever YouTube says. Otherwise, you will be banned, block, and demonitized.

Watch all my future content on Rumble.

More Kirsch.

• Covid-19 Vaccines Are Killing At Least 2 People For Every 1 Life They Save (TE)

FDA experts have unexpectedly voted against approving Covid-19 vaccination boosters for anyone over the age of 16 in the USA, citing a lack of long term data and stating that the risks do not outweigh any benefits because the Covid-19 vaccines are killing at least 2 people for every 1 life saved. In a live broadcast conducted on the 17th September the Food and Drug Administration vaccine advisory committee met to debate and vote on Pfizer and BioNTech’s application to offer booster shots to the general public. The meeting lasted over 8 hours and contained some shocking revelations. Dr Joseph Fraiman, an emergency medicine physician in New Orleans, spoke for several minutes during the meeting and revealed that no clinical evidence exists to disprove claims that the Covid-109 vaccines are harming more people than they save.

“We need your help on the front lines, to stop vaccine hesitancy. Demand the booster trials are large enough to find a reduction in hospitalisations. “Without this data we the medical establishment cannot confidently call out anti-Covid-vaccine activists who publicly claim the vaccines harm more than they save especially in the young and healthy. “The fact we do not have the clinical evidence to say these activists are wrong should terrify us all”. Dr Joseph Fraiman was then followed by Steve Kirsch, Executive Director of the Covid-19 Early Treatment Fund, who revealed that the Covid-19 vaccines more people than they are saving. “I’m going to focus my remarks today on the elephant in the room that nobody likes to talk about, that the vaccines kill more than they save.

“We were led to believe that the vaccines were perfectly safe but this is simply not true, for example there are four times as many heart attacks in the treatment group in the Pfizer 6 month file report, that wasn’t just bad luck.VAERS shows heart attacks happen 71 times more often following these vaccines compared to any other vaccine,” Steve Kirsch then continued his presentation by showing a slide titled ‘Excess Death: Life ratio is UNACCEPTABLE’. The slide shows how many excess deaths were required following vaccination to save one life due to Covid-19. “Only the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) are statistically significant, but the other numbers are troubling.” said Steve Kirsch.

“Even if the vaccines have 100% protection, it still means we kill 2 people to save 1 life. “Four experts did analysis using completely different non US data sources and all of them came up with approximately the same number of excess vaccine related deaths, about 411 deaths per million doses. That translates into 115,000 people have died (due to the Covid-19 vaccines).”

“Oh, well that was a typo. They just got put in there by accident.”

• Counting Covid (Attkisson)

As hindsight comes into clearer focus, we’re learning a lot about mistaken advice and policies amid the Covid-19 pandemic. One still murky and disputed area involves the death toll, now upwards of 640,000 in the U.S., according to CDC. Some insist the true count is much higher; others claim it’s lower. Today, we begin with the startling results of our investigation that found in some documented cases, news that Covid was the cause of death was greatly exaggerated. Grand County, Colorado, rural country a hundred miles outside of Denver. Thanksgiving 2020, Lucais Reilly shoots his wife Kristin in the head, then turns the gun on himself, committing suicide. They have alcohol and drugs in their system and a history of domestic troubles. Grand County coroner Brenda Bock explains how the small town tragedy is exposing serious questions about the way Covid deaths are counted.

Brenda Bock: I had a homicide-suicide the end of November, and the very next day it showed up on the state website as Covid deaths. And they were gunshot wounds. And I questioned that immediately because I had not even signed off the death certificates yet, and the state was already reporting them as Covid deaths. Bock says somebody, somewhere had apparently run the couple’s names through a database showing they’d tested positive for Covid within 28 days of their death. Then recorded them as Covid deaths even though they died of gunshots. Sharyl: If we look at the death certificates for the murder-suicide case, what will it say about Covid? Bock: Nothing, absolutely nothing. I paid a forensic pathologist to do the autopsies on those two cases. And nowhere is COVID mentioned on those death certificates. Nowhere.

Bock: This is a copy of the death certificate, and nowhere does it say COVID. So we have a homicide, suicide, nothing to do with COVID. Because there had been no Covid deaths within the geographic boundaries of Grand County in 2020, Bock was in a unique position to challenge the state’s accounting. In many cities and counties, the numbers are too big and the coroners would never know about discrepancies. Within a week of the murder-suicide, two more Grand County deaths popped up on the state’s Covid count. Bock investigated and found out why she had no record of them. Bock: Two of them were actually still alive, and yet they were counting them. Had I not called them on it and asked them who those were, where were they from, all the information about it and it’s like, “Oh, well that was a typo. They just got put in there by accident.”

Attkisson

“Despite the presence of antibodies sufficient to suppress a virus with an R0 of nearly 6, twice that of the original strain [..] we had a wild outbreak of disease anyway”

• A Plausible Hypothesis, Based On Fact (Denninger)

The recent JAMA article makes clear several things. First, likely as many as half of those who got a positive PCR test never had Covid-19 at all. The antibody counts they documented in that study do not square with the claimed infection rate nor the low-symptom prevalence where the person in question never sees a doctor and is never tested. Back in the fall of 2020 the folly of the so-called “tests” was laid bare on the table when Elon Musk took four in sequence on the same day and got two positive and two negative results — nothing better than a coin-toss. How many more people were labeled as “diseased” when they either had the flu, some other virus, or nothing? The data from JAMA strongly suggests the answer is “a huge percentage, likely roughly half of so-called positive tests, were in fact not from actual positive Covid-19 individuals.”

The danger of telling someone they had something when they didn’t is they have every reason to think they’re safe when they’re not and thus they are likely to put themselves at severe risk of getting hammered. That’s stupid and contrary to every principle of medicine, say much less ethical behavior. But antibody presence is dispositive. Pre-existing immunity is very, very hard to determine the presence of, since cross-reaction requires you know what you’re looking for — and we don’t. We didn’t do the work, beyond SARS. We didn’t want to do the work because discovering what it was (1) made possible a potential easy infection that would confer actual immunity (e.g. if it’s OC48 which usually causes colds, well, go get inoculated with it on purpose!) and (2) instantly deflates the fear porn, drive for vaccines and every single screaming idiot in the government, social media and on TV.

But then this summer something odd happened. Despite the presence of antibodies sufficient to suppress a virus with an R0 of nearly 6, twice that of the original strain and equal to that claimed for Delta, which I remind you is unsubstantiated and the data from the UK in fact suggests Delta is not materially more-infective than the original wild strain (it only has to be a bit more-so to out-compete, of course), we had a wild outbreak of disease anyway. Much worse is that in Britain it is impossible for there to be widespread communicable disease even for a a virus with an R0 worse than measles: “Based on antibody testing of blood donors, 97.7% of the adult population now have antibodies to COVID-19 from either infection or vaccination compared to 18.1% that have antibodies from infection alone.”

It is impossible for Britain to have any material Covid-19 infectious activity among adults given this level of prevalence unless the jabs are largely or entirely worthless, or much worse, enhance infection. It’s a hypothesis that fits the facts and you can bet not one single penny of government money will go toward proving or disproving it as if it was to be proved then what do you do with all the vaccine companies and every involved government at all levels, local, state and federal, who literally slaughtered their populations with their advocacy and even in some cases attempted mandates for these jabs. Do we have any independent medical science folks remaining, anywhere in the world, who will take this challenge on and prove it up? We’ll see.

But whether they do or not you can’t change facts and the facts are that either the jabs destroyed existing immunity, creating susceptible people out of resistant ones, or the virus has evolved to largely-evade the protection the jabs provided. Which it is doesn’t matter to the person who believed they were safe, and now learns — especially the hard way — that they are not.

You go girl.

• Indian Bar Association Issues A Legal Notice To WHO (IF)

Advocate Dipali Ojha of the Indian bar association and a team of young indian lawyers have issued a legal notice to the world health organization over their blatant campaign against any alternative treatments. Her legal action against WHO comes after the tweet from Soumya Swaminathan, WHO chief scientist, who issued tweet against Ivermectin backing it with a link, that was declaration from a private company. The team of indian lawyers seeks to make available all possible affordable options to the masses and hold the highest authorities accountable for their directives, and suspected submission to big pharma lobbying.

Timestamp :

00:00 Intro
01:14 Interview Start
02:03 Dipali Ojha background
03:58 Why did Indian Bar association sue WHO ?
11:08 WHO Scientist Twitter statement against treatments
13:04 History of Iver-mectin & Big Pharma profit motive
16:30 Can 8 billion people get vaccine ? options for poor countries
20:19 Dipali Ohja explains indian Protocol & Lawsuit
23:44 Media blackout on Iver-mectin
24:20 role of fact checkers
25:20 AI bias in social media
26:40 Where was the lawsuit filed?
27:10 Dipahli ojha explains cause of 2nd legal notice
32:38 Effects of legal notice
34:50 Many solutions to the crisis
37:14 Diplai ojha explains the Public Interest Litigation
38:52 Rajiv explains the two lawsuits in one
40:54 Challenging Compulsory Vaccine & civil rights
42:28 Role of Gates Foundation , Fauci & Wuhan lab funding
46:50 Dipali Ohja explains WHO’s compromised investigations
48:40 Vaccine and complementary treatments
50:24 Role of AI in information bias
51:19 Closing statement of Diplai Ojha

“The vaccination pass is a mobilisation of state power, an extension of discipline and policing over the free life of civil society.”

• The Weaponisation of Vaccination (NoF)

The vital public health measure of vaccination is being transformed into a project of the extension of state control, with measures such as covid passports and mandatory vaccination. The Israeli minister of health was caught confiding to the minister of the interior that ‘there is no medical or epidemiological justification for the Covid passport, it is only intended to pressure the unvaccinated to vaccinate’. France – the European country with the harshest covid pass laws – shows how this ‘pressure to vaccinate’ is driven by a political rather than a medical impulse. The vaccination pass is a mobilisation of state power, an extension of discipline and policing over the free life of civil society. This rides roughshod over individual liberty, unions, scientific committees and medical logic alike.

Currently, all over-12s in France must present a vaccine passport (‘pass sanitaire’) in order to access restaurants, museums, long-distance trains, and outdoor and indoor sports facilities. All civil society bodies take on a policing function. Covid pass checks are installed at the entrance of open-air horse riding facilities, in bars, at the entrance of swimming pools. The sports instructor checks your covid pass at the start of every class or term. The riding school asks you to ‘prepare your health certificate’ before you are allowed to walk into the open field where the horses are held. The cafe asks you to scan your QR code before sitting down at a table.

The vaccinated person is treated as safe, and the unvaccinated person as risky. This distinction is made not on public health grounds, since vaccinated and unvaccinated transmit the delta variant at similar rates, but because the unvaccinated person stands as the figure that has resisted state authority. The unvaccinated becomes the dissident, the person who refused to roll over. A young French woman who tried to enter a shopping centre without a covid pass was set upon and beaten by a group of armed police. She was beaten not because she is a public health risk, but because she represents a threat to public order. The push for 100% vaccination has become a project of incorporating the whole population, whether it is in their interests to be vaccinated or not.

It is this political impulse that lies behind the hasty extension of vaccination to younger age groups, who stand to benefit little from the vaccine and could suffer from short-term or future side effects. Macron apparently made the decision to extend vaccines to 12-15 year olds suddenly one morning, when he was told by his scientific advisory committee that he had ‘free rein’ to decide whether to vaccinate the young, partly in order to ‘avoid the slowing down of vaccination’. A more reflective scientific ethics advisory committee complained that it has not been given time to make its recommendations, and criticised the ‘hasty’ decision; it judged that the benefits of the vaccine to adolescents were ‘very limited’ and the existing safety data to be too slim to judge its suitability for this age group. Yet now, this age group is forced to take the vaccine.

Statistician Mathew Crawford on the problem with the first 14 days after vaccination.

• Gaming Measurement of Vaccine Efficacy (Crawford)

Suppose that tomorrow it is announced that in a Wuhan laboratory—located somewhere between the French-designed Wuhan Institute of Virology and the fabled wet market—that an NIH funded project results in highly valuable intellectual property in the form of the Morris Therapy. After rigorous mandatory testing of the Morris Therapy on Uyghurs, including the high risk elderly, pregnant women, and also children, the Morris Therapy demonstrates 100% efficacy in preventing COVID-19…after day 13. NIAID Princeling, Dr. Anthony Fauci quackly announces an EUA both for the Morris Therapy, and also swift approval of the as of yet unavailable COMorrisY Therapy. Nobody was reached at any governmental organization who could explain which of these has indemnity, and whether citizens pay for those liabilities by giving up their children as they drop them off at school where they are to be treated by swiftly trained gym teachers.

During the first two weeks, 80 million Americans jump at the opportunity to receive Morris Therapy. However, 79.2 million of those Americans seem to be…well…missing. With doctors and morgue owners tight lipped, the CDC reports that indeed, the Morris Therapy has resulted in 100% efficacy in preventing COVID-19 after the first 13 days. Scientists and other people who pay attention to things rush to post videos on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook pointing out that there are nearly a million reports of death in the Highly Profitable Therapy Adverse Events Reporting System (HPTAERS). Fact checkers [just doing their job] point out that causality of those deaths HPTAERS hasn’t been proved, and censor all those reports. University faculty petitioned to silence, reprimand, or simply harass their colleagues who participated in those reports, labeling them with the pejorative “anti-Morrisers”. No autopsies are performed on the 79.2 million Americans who died during the first 13 days after a dose of Morris Therapy.

What happened is that 99% of the people who received the Morris Therapy dropped dead during the first few days. Even worse, many were taken to the hospital, entered into a database as non-Morrised, and as hospital beds filled up, media outlets declared a “pandemic of the un-Morrised”. All the social pressure makes it hard to talk about the problem. Meanwhile, nobody does autopsies on the bodies that might reveal clues to the deaths, such as the presence of spike-Morris protein in organs all over the body. All the 79.2 million deaths are presumed to be COVID-19 deaths, and the media dedicates itself to a 48 hour marathon of fear porn, lamenting that poorer nations are not receiving their equitable share of limited supplies of Morris Therapy.

Meanwhile, health officials and all those devoted to the success of the Morris Therapy as the final solution to the COVID-19 pandemic…”correctly” point out none of the 800,000 survivors of the Morris Therapy have COVID-19 (though nobody really wants to talk about disease etiology as it might link Morris Therapy as a Type II COVID-19). In the end, the entire population of the SARS-CoV-2 virus decided as a “species” (if we can call a virus a species), that invading the U.S. just wasn’t worth it at all, deciding instead to go live amongst the flies, minks, bats, and pangolins.

Have they apologized yet?

• Now The Lancet U-turns Over Covid Lab Leak Theory (DM)

The Lancet medical journal has bowed to pressure over its heavily-criticised coverage of the disputed origins of the Covid pandemic by publishing an ‘alternative view’ from 16 scientists – calling for an ‘objective, open and transparent debate’ about whether the virus leaked from a Chinese laboratory. It was revealed earlier this year that Peter Daszak – a British scientist with long-standing links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology – had secretly orchestrated a landmark statement in The Lancet in February 2020 which attacked ‘conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin’. The now-infamous letter, signed by 27 leading public health experts, said they stood together to ‘strongly condemn’ the theories which they said ‘do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice’.

They also lavished praise on Chinese scientists who they said had ‘worked diligently and effectively to rapidly identify the pathogen behind this outbreak… and share their results transparently with the global health community’. Now, The Lancet has agreed to publish an alternative commentary which discusses the possibility that laboratory research might have played a role in the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It also directly confronts the efforts of science journals to stifle debate by labelling such theories as ‘misinformation’. In the article, the authors argue that ‘there is no direct support for the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, and a laboratory-related accident is plausible’. They add that the February 2020 statement ‘imparted a silencing effect on the wider scientific debate’.

[..] The new commentary, published in The Lancet on Friday, said: ‘The world will remain mired in dispute without the full engagement of China, including open access to primary data, documents, and relevant stored material to enable a thorough, transparent and objective search for all relevant evidence.’ One of the signatories, Professor Nikolai Petrovsky of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘It might seem small, but after 18 months of complete denial, the very act of [The] Lancet agreeing to publish this letter acknowledging the origins of Covid-19 remains an open verdict, is a very big deal. ‘For a leading medical journal like Lancet to agree to finally open its doors to a letter from scientists highlighting the ongoing uncertain origins of Covid-19, indicates how far we have come in 18 months in requesting an open scientific debate on the topic, but also indicates just how far we still have to go’.

“..once we’ve established “anti-vaxxers” don’t deserve healthcare, those other people she’s so careful to mention – smokers and drunk drivers – they’re next. Along with the obese, or the clumsy, or the religious, or the politically inconvenient.”

• This Week in the New Normal |(OffG)

Ruth Marcus, a deputy editor at the Washington Post, has had enough of people pussy-footing around this issue and is going “come right out and say it” – unvaccinated people deserve healthcare less than vaccinated people. She at least admits this “conflicts radically with accepted medical ethics”, which is completely true but for some reason that doesn’t seem to change her mind: “..under ordinary circumstances, I agree with those rules. The lung cancer patient who’s been smoking two packs a day for decades is entitled to the same treatment as the one who never took a puff. The drunk driver who kills a family gets a team doing its utmost to save him..”

To be clear then – Ruth considers the unvaccinated as morally inferior to a drunk driver who ran over some kids. Which says a lot more about her, than the unvaccinated. This is one of this feeler pieces. An antennae article, gently feeling the ground to see if can bear the weight of the agenda coming behind it. It’s setting up the conversation. Because once we’ve established “anti-vaxxers” don’t deserve healthcare, those other people she’s so careful to mention – smokers and drunk drivers – they’re next. Along with the obese, or the clumsy, or the religious, or the politically inconvenient.

If you don’t believe me, just check the comments under the article. The WaPo has one of the most scripted comments sections on the internet, whose usual job is to play the “bad cop” to the author’s “good cop”. And, sure enough, BTL is full of hundreds of supposedly real humans saying the author doesn’t go far enough, and we should ration all kinds of healthcare based on personal choices. This particular talking point is already being aired on CNN and by late-night talkshow hosts too. Expect it to spread quickly, especially when the flu season starts.

Twitter thread by Girolamo Pandolfi da Casio ditto Carlo Dossi Erba.

• Evergrande: Why Most Analysis Is Dead In The Water (Erba)

Evergrande: why most analysis is dead in water and how best to understand and navigate what’s happening? Both denialists and alarmists are getting it wrong. Let’s start by understanding this: what is happening is the result of a CCP-initiated policy change to curb leverage. It started a while back and has seen other defaults, including SOEs. What are the specific policy changes? Most important is the introduction of the 3 red lines a year ago: – L/A < 70% – net leverage < 100% – cash to ST debt > 1. What’s the point of the 3 red lines? First and foremost to forestall a systemic crisis that could have brought down the whole financial sector if left unchecked. Real estate amounts to a significant chunk of China GDP with strong linkages upstream and downstream.

And believe it or not, the sector was levered to the gills. The 3 red lines are hardly draconian, yet all the CCC, a large chunk of the B and a good 1/3 of the BB did not pass them a year ago. Needless to say, it was really not too early. But there is more to it than leverage. One common practice of these construction companies,a game Evergrande excelled at, was to bid land at prices significantly higher than market. It didn’t matter to them, coz the risk got transferred to flat buyers and banks that financed the purchase. That model worked well for local governments, banks and households because house prices were going up. So much so over the last 15 years, that a serious affordability crisis emerged in major cities AND HH debt soared way above disposable inc – below HH debt as % GDP.

So it wasn’t hard to figure out the economic disaster in the making: exponential price rises with explosive HH and Construction leverage. But that’s not all. There is another problem that escapes most China analysts. As a result of years of seeking easy growth through construction and leverage, the misallocation of capital was : 1- capital starving more innovative and high tech sectors (see chart) and 2- creating a headwind for a re-balancing towards a more consumption driven growth. At some point, reigning in lending to the RE sector became vital in order to address the structural issue of capital misallocation. That also explains the curbs on VC investments in RE and most importantly, a curb on all the irregularities that characterized RE.

The issue of irregularities is at the core of what is happening with Evergrande. More on that later. It’s a long introduction, but it seemed important to explain these issues to understand the long term nature of this problem and why its resolution will be tedious. So there is a new paradigm dictated by a set of economic realities that CCP could no longer ignore and most importantly, they can relax the rules a bit, but can’t reverse course. They can’t allow consumers to be bust nor a rogue unproductive sector to balloon further.

“It shows our readiness to be hard-headed in defending our interests and challenging unfair practices and malign acts.”

• France Accuses Britain Of ‘Retreating To America’s Lap’ (Inews)

France has continued its war of words in the increasingly bitter diplomatic row over the UK’s new defence pact with the US and Australia. Europe Minister Clement Beaune said Britain had returned into the “American lap” after Australia announced it was scrapping its £30 billion French submarine deal in favour of more powerful nuclear-powered vessels acquired with the help of the UK and US. The announcement prompted President Emmanuel Macron to order the recall of the French ambassadors from Washington and Canberra – a move virtually unheard of among such close allies. However, there was no similar order for the French envoy to London to return to Paris for consultations.

But in a series of interviews with French television, Mr Beaune suggested it was because the UK was the “junior partner” which had accepted its “vassalisation” by the US. “Our British friends explained to us they were leaving the EU to create Global Britain. We can see that this is a return into the American lap and a form of accepted vassalisation,” he said. “The UK is clearly trying to find its feet, perhaps there was a lack of thought about the strategic future. Today they are hiding in the American fold. I hope that will not be their policy for the decades to come.” He later added: “We see through this partnership, this strategic alliance and after the Kabul crisis, that Global Britain seems to be more about a US junior partner than working with different allies.”

New Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has defended the pact, saying it showed Britain would be “hard-headed” in defending its interests. Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Ms Truss said the UK was a “fierce champion” of freedom and democracy around the world. “It shows our readiness to be hard-headed in defending our interests and challenging unfair practices and malign acts. It also shows our commitment to security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region,” she wrote.

Wait. China takes it all over, and that’s supposed to benefit Citi?

• BlackRock and Citi Get on Board the Climate Nazi Train (IMan)

There are some things that bring joy to my soul. My pleasures are simple ones. Peanut butter on toast (the food of gods), witnessing Macron getting a slap, and this…

The awesome thing here is that what is taking place is that our competition on bidding for coal assets has disappeared in a cloud of woke smoke. This will quickly become geopolitical, and the question is this: can BlackRock, Citi, Prudential, HSBC, and their other woke mates decide the fate of nations? They are already affecting the fate of nations. Witness Canada and all of Western Europe. But will they do the same to China? Will they do the same to Russia? The answer to that will only be fully revealed in the due course of time, but we don’t really need any crystal balls here as we just watch actions, not words.

“China put 38.4 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity into operation in 2020, according to new international research, more than three times the amount built elsewhere around the world and potentially undermining its short-term climate goals.” Nearly all of the 60 new coal plants planned across Eurasia, South America and Africa — 70 gigawatts of coal power in all — are financed almost exclusively by Chinese banks” We see all of this on the ground, and while it is taking place, formerly reputable media outlets such as the FT, Reuters, and Bloomberg tell us that: “China’s belt and road initiative creates a problem for China with respect to their climate goals.”

Really? There is no conflict or problem. Let me explain. Here is what is transpiring. They will keep paying lip service to the woke ideology while capturing the bulk of the energy market, and by the time we all wake up, they’ll control the world’s energy and logistics chains. And once they’ve done that, they’ll be able to control the reserve currency and once they’ve done that… well, they will be the dominant power. Game over. At this rate they’ll get there in a frighteningly rapid period of time. No more than a couple of decades.

Before machines the only form of entertainment people really had was relationships.”
~ Douglas Coupland

Chris Rock: “there’s no money in the cure. The money’s in the medicine. That’s how a drug dealer makes his money… that’s all the government is, a bunch of drug dealers.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1439792949404045314

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Debt Rattle July 22 2021

Jul 222021

July 22, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: care homes, efficacy, FBI, fully approved, mandatory, mefloquine, Whitmer 100 Responses »

Edward Hopper Western Motel 1957

• Israeli Lab: Some Existing Drugs Could Stop Covid At Almost 100% (JPost)

• Mefloquine Inhibits SARS-CoV-2 Infection In Physiologically Relevant Cells (BX)

• Israel Reports Sharp Decline In Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine Efficacy (YNet)

• 5,522 People Have Died Within 28 Days Of Having A Covid-19 Vaccine In Scotland (DE)

• English Care Homes Could Lose 70,000 Staff Over Mandatory Covid Jab (G.)

• There Goes The Rest Of The Narrative (Denninger)

• When Will Covid-19 Vaccines Be Fully Approved—And Does It Matter? (Sci.Mag)

• When Will We FORCE A Stop To The BS? (Denninger)

• Whitmer Kidnapping Defendants Claim Entrapment (ZH)

• US Women’s Soccer Team To Boycott Scoring Goals Until Racism Is Defeated (BBee)

Vaccine covid

Crazy if true… pic.twitter.com/nWb2hDpmrE

— Camus (@camus37) July 21, 2021

Crushing it pic.twitter.com/DI21CUSp7k

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 22, 2021

PRES. BIDEN: "You're not gonna get COVID if you have these vaccinations." pic.twitter.com/5x1xfQryIX

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 22, 2021

`from a a fected goldmine: CDC posting today: Attack rate for Gamma variant was 0% (0/6) among persons with a previous history of COVID-19 versus attack rate was 60% (15/25) among fully vaccinated [Pfizer] miners and 75% (3/4) among unvaccinated miners without history of infection

Ron Paul VAERS

Why Have Covid Vaccine Deaths, Reported In VAERS, More Than Doubled Over The Last Week, From Under 6,000 To 12,313? pic.twitter.com/Z4RVOGnTUb

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) July 21, 2021

9 in 10 adults in UK regions likely to have covid antibodies. In Scotland, 88.6% estimated to have antibodies, 90.0% for Northern Ireland, 91.9% for England & 92.6% in Wales. Office for National Statistics based on a sample of blood test results for week beginning June 28;

“Arkin and his team culled through a library of more than 2,800 approved-for-use compounds, identifying 18 drugs they felt could be effective..”

• Israeli Lab: Some Existing Drugs Could Stop Covid At Almost 100% (JPost)

Scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem say they have identified several drugs that could potentially help treat, if not “cure,” people who develop COVID-19. Prof. Shy Arkin, a biochemist in the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Science, told The Jerusalem Post that in lab tests in which cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 were placed together with the drugs for two days, “almost 100% of the cells lived despite being infected with the virus.” In contrast, without the preexisting drug compounds, around 50% of the cells died after coming in contact with the virus. Arkin and his team culled through a library of more than 2,800 approved-for-use compounds, identifying 18 drugs they felt could be effective. In unpublished work, the researchers were able to show that several of these compounds “exhibited remarkable potency against the whole virus in in vitro experiments.”

Two of them are Darapladib, used for the treatment of atherosclerosis, and Flumatinib, used for the treatment of certain blood cancers. Arkin said he was hesitant to share the names of any of the drugs, adding that he could not recommend them until they underwent proper clinical trials. The team focused on drug repurposing to potentially expedite any future regulatory steps. Since the drugs are already being used for other indications, their toxicity and side effects, for example, are known and approved. The way the drugs work is by inhibiting two targets in the virus: the E (envelope) protein and the 3a protein. The E protein is the most conserved of all virus proteins. For example, while the spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV-1 (the 2003 virus) are only about 75% identical, their E proteins are roughly 95% alike.

This means the drugs would likely remain effective even when the virus mutates, Arkin told the Post. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines target the spike protein. In previous studies, E and 3a proteins were shown to be essential for viral infectivity. Arkin’s team was among the first to study the E protein of the first SARS coronavirus in 2004. As part of research that Arkin’s team has been conducting for more than two decades, they identified that the E protein is an ion channel, a type of protein family expressed by virtually all living cells that because of its structure has “served as excellent and frequent targets for pharmaceutical point interventions,” including for cystic fibrosis, epilepsy, arrhythmia, neurodegenerative diseases, hypertension, angina and more, the report said.

It is important that “a large arsenal” of drugs exist to fight SARS-CoV-2, Arkin said. “We should never be in a situation where in our arsenal we only have one firearm,” he said. “If we only have one and we rely solely on it, and then there comes a time that it fails, we will be in a very precarious situation.” Arkin believes his team is set for in vitro and in vivo studies, and he is looking for a pharmaceutical partner to help carry these trials through. Citing the success of Gilead obtaining US Food and Drug Administration approval for Remdesivir in record time at the start of the pandemic, Arkin said he was optimistic that at least some of these compounds could be approved for use against COVID “very quickly with the right partner.”

Here’s another candidate,

• Mefloquine Inhibits SARS-CoV-2 Infection In Physiologically Relevant Cells (BX)

Antimalarial drugs, such as chloroquine (CQ)/hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and mefloquine have emerged as potential anti-SARS-CoV-2 antivirals. CQ/HCQ entered the Solidarity and RECOVERY clinical trials against COVID-19 and showed lack of efficacy. Importantly, mefloquine is not a 4-aminoquinoline like CQ and HCQ and has been previously repurposed for other respiratory diseases. Unlike the 4-aminoquinolines that accumulate in the high pH of intracellular lysosomes of the lung, the high respiratory tract penetration of mefloquine is driven by its high lipophilicity. While CQ and HCQ exhibit activity in Vero E6 cells, their activity is obviated in TMPRSS2-expressing cells, such as Calu-3 cells, which more accurately recapitulate in vivo entry mechanisms for SARS-CoV-2.

Accordingly, here we report the anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity of mefloquine in Calu-3 type II pneumocytes and primary human monocytes. Mefloquine inhibited SARS-CoV-2 replication, including the gamma variant, in Calu-3 cells with low cytotoxicity and EC50 and EC90 values of 1.2 and 5.3 uM, respectively. In addition, mefloquine reduced up to 68% the SARS-CoV-2 RNA levels in infected monocytes, reducing viral-induced inflammation. Mefloquine blocked early steps of the SARS-CoV-2 replicative cycle and was less prone than CQ to induce drug-associated viral mutations and synergized with RNA polymerase inhibitor. The pharmacological parameters of mefloquine are consistent with its plasma exposure in humans and its tissue-to-plasma predicted coefficient points that this drug may accumulate in the lungs. These data indicate that mefloquine could represent an orally available clinically approved drug option against COVID-19 and should not be neglected on the basis of the failure of CQ and HCQ.

The clincher: the one thing left the vaccines were still supposed to do: protection from severe illness has also recorded a sharp drop of up to 60%.

• Israel Reports Sharp Decline In Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine Efficacy (YNet)

Israel on Tuesday reported a sharp decline in the efficacy of Pfizer/BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine after receiving data from a recent analysis. Data from the analysis conducted by the Health Ministry suggest the efficacy of the vaccine declines over time in preventing infection and severe illness. Health officials presented their findings during a meeting of the ministry’s Epidemic Management Team on Monday night, which showed that protection from coronavirus infections among vaccinated people decreased by 42% since the start of the inoculation drive in Israel. In addition, protection from severe illness has also recorded a sharp drop of up to 60% among those who were inoculated in the early stages of the vaccine rollout.

However, most people who had been vaccinated at the early stage of the vaccine drive appear to be over the age of 65 and findings may not reflect the vaccine’s efficacy among those in other age groups. Ministry officials deemed the findings disturbing but claimed those were only preliminary analyses of very raw data. It was not yet clear whether the results were linked to an apparent erosion of the vaccine’s protection against the virus or greater resistance of the Delta variant to the inoculation. [..] Last week, Israel began administering a third shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech inoculation to patients with compromised immune systems, including people who have had heart, lung and kidney transplants.

920 per month over 6 months, when Covid deaths were 866 per month. Note: In Dec 2020, far fewer people were jabbed than later, so the 2021 per month number is higher.

• 5,522 People Have Died Within 28 Days Of Having A Covid-19 Vaccine In Scotland (DE)

Public Health Scotland have revealed that 5,522 people have died within twenty-eight days of having a Covid-19 vaccine within the past 6 months in Scotland alone. Due to dozens of freedom of information requests being made, asking Public Health Scotland (PHS) to provide the current total number of deaths of any individual who has died within 28 days of having a Covid-19 vaccine, PHS decided the best way forward was to publish the information routinely and periodically within their Covid-19 statistical report. The most up to date figures published by PHS and within the report released by on the 23rd June 2021, and they reveal that between the 8th December 2020 and the 11th June 2021 a total number of 5,522 people died within 28 days of having a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

According to the spreadsheet provided by Public Health Scotland; which includes the quantity of deaths by type of vaccine and the date they occurred, 1,877 deaths have been due to the Pfizer mRNA jab, 3,643 deaths have been due to the AstraZeneca viral vector jab, and 2 deaths have been due to the Moderna mRNA jab. This equates to an average of 920 deaths occurring every month due to the Covid-19 vaccines in Scotland alone. Outnumbering the average number of people who have died of Covid-19 in Scotland by 866 per month. A freedom of information request made on the 30th January asked the Scottish Government to reveal the total number of people who had died of Covid-19 since March 2020. To which the Scottish Government responded on the 11th March 2021 with – “The answer to your question is 596 deaths involving COVID-19 has been registered where there was no pre-existing medical condition between March 2020 and January 2021 (including).”

Public Health England has so far refused to publish any data on the number of deaths occurring within 28 days of having the vaccine in England, but it is not for the want of people trying. Dozens of freedom of information requests have been made to PHE asking the question but they never fail to respond with the statement that “Public Health England can confirm it does not hold the information that you have requested. However, using the data on the number of deaths due to the Covid-19 vaccines in Scotland we can estimate what the likely number of deaths are due to the jabs in England. Adjusting to the size of the population we estimate the actual number of deaths due to the jabs in England in the past 6 months could be as high as 57,470.

How many people must lose their jobs before someone says STOP?

• English Care Homes Could Lose 70,000 Staff Over Mandatory Covid Jab (G.)

Up to 70,000 care home staff in England could leave the workforce or lose their jobs because the government is insisting they must be vaccinated against Covid, with women and ethnic minorities disproportionately affected, according to an official estimate. In an impact statement from the government, officials believe between 3% and 12% of care home staff may still resist getting a Covid jab by the end of a 16-week grace period. The central estimate was that 40,000 could be left without jobs, but it could be as high as 70,000 or as low as 17,000.

In a separate statement on the public sector equality duty, the government said the policy of mandatory vaccination for care home staff was “likely to have a significant impact on ethnic minorities” as one in five members of the social care workforce are black, Asian or from another ethnic minority, a higher proportion than in the overall population of England. It added: “The evidence suggests that vaccine hesitancy is highest among black people, people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage, and non-UK/Irish white ethnic groups.” The statement also acknowledged there was a “risk that issues such as lack of trust could be exacerbated by this policy” in relation to social care workers from minority ethnic backgrounds.

A group of Conservative MPs opposed to the policy had been repeatedly pressing the government to release an impact assessment before it called a vote on the issue last week. Boris Johnson managed to get the policy through the House of Commons but there was a sizeable rebellion of more than 30 MPs who joined with Labour and other opposition parties in opposing the policy. Defending the move in the House of Lords, James Bethell, a health minister, said: “We did not take lightly the decision to introduce this legislation. However, the risks that this winter will undoubtedly pose to the most vulnerable in our society make clear the choice that we must make, to do everything in our power to protect them.”

“..there is no public health benefit to the jabs. These fully vaccinated people not only got the virus, they gave it to others. That, my friends, is what everyone claimed wouldn’t happen — if you got jabbed you protected other people. ”

• There Goes The Rest Of The Narrative (Denninger)

There are 67 Democrats in the TX Delegation. I presume not all of them flew to DC; the news says “more than 50”, which is enough to deny the quorum and was the point of the exercise. There are now six confirmed Covid infections among them, and all are fully vaccinated. That’s a failure rate of roughly 10% for symptomatic infections, and not just preventing infection either — they transmitted it to each other as the infections were serial; not all got it on the same day. Since the CDC says somewhere between 6 and 24 (best guess 11) people are entirely asymptomatic and untested for each tested, symptomatic infection this means that more than half of the delegation in fact has the virus and is presumably, under the CDC’s claim of “asymptomatic transmission” spreading it to others.

Is ten percent failure rare? How about more than fifty percent? That sounds rather more like “worthless” to me. What say you? In addition a White House official also has tested positive after coming into contact with the delegation. Said person is also fully vaccinated and is symptomatic. They, since they are symptomatic, are presumptively contagious despite being “fully vaccinated.” How many White House officials were there? One? Boy, that’s a pretty good breakthrough case percentage isn’t it? Never mind the 10%+ symptomatic failure rate, which strongly implies at least half the delegation actually got infected, among the delegation itself. May I remind you that 80%, according to a study first published last summer, of the population has pre-existing resistance and thus would likely either by asymptomatic or only mildly so even if not vaccinated.

Have we improved anything at all other than, perhaps, individual outcomes with these shots? The data says, within the confidence interval, no. In other words there is no public health benefit to the jabs. These fully vaccinated people not only got the virus, they gave it to others. That, my friends, is what everyone claimed wouldn’t happen — if you got jabbed you protected other people. That claim was never in evidence; the original studies were underpowered to determine that and this was clearly stated in the study itself. The media and politicians, on the other hand, either didn’t read the studies or didn’t give a crap about the truth and talked you into taking a jab not to protect yourself if you are at specific risk but by lying to you that doing so would protect others.

We now know that claim was a lie. It was a lie by lack of knowledge before; now it is a straight-up knowing lie to repeat it. Add this to all the other lies. Why would you take any sort of personal health advice — now that it’s admitted that’s all the jab advocacy is — from the very same people who have been caught lying serially on virtually every topic related to Covid since last spring? You have to be a special brand of stupid to listen to people who get caught lying repeatedly, and then double-down on said lies. You’re only mistaken when you admit to that which is later proved false. As soon as you double-down on it you’re intentionally misleading people.

People are so willing to ignore established scientific protocols, completely unaware that in doing so they step on the graves of the scientists who wrote them, AND those of the victims whose misery made them necessary.

• When Will Covid-19 Vaccines Be Fully Approved—And Does It Matter? (Sci.Mag)

On 16 July, FDA accepted Pfizer’s application “under priority review”—meaning it will move faster than during standard reviews, which typically take at least 10 months; the agency now has until January 2022 to review the materials. That seems like a long time, but last week an FDA official told CNN that the decision is likely to come within 2 months. “The review … has been ongoing, is among the highest priorities of the agency, and the agency intends to complete the review far in advance of the [January] Date,” an FDA press officer confirmed to Science in a statement. FDA has not formally accepted Moderna’s application, possibly because the company has not yet submitted all the required materials.

Full approval could help overcome vaccine hesitancy, Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, wrote in a recent op-ed in The New York Times. “Some people who understand that the ‘E’ in ‘EUA’ stands for ‘emergency’ are waiting for full FDA approval before they receive a shot,” he wrote. “I think it’s fair to say that any number of us who are clinical infectious disease doctors and in public health are frankly a little surprised at how long the process is taking,” says William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “I want [FDA] to be careful. I also want them to move it along,” Schaffner says. “Frankly, I’d like them to work on the weekends. The people who are vaccinating are working on the weekends. The virus is working on the weekends.”

About 30% of unvaccinated people say they were waiting for vaccines to receive full approval, according to a survey of 1888 adults conducted in June by the Kaiser Family Foundation. But the report cautions that for many people, FDA approval is likely “a proxy for general safety concerns.” Not everyone now focused on approval may actually get a vaccine, especially if they perceive the approval process as rushed or politically motivated. “For the people who are really dead set against getting the vaccine at this point, I don’t know that the FDA giving it full approval is going to make a huge difference,” says Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease doctor at the Medical University of South Carolina who says many of her patients are wary of COVID-19 shots.

But full approval may sway some people. For example, for members of groups that have been treated poorly by the health care system, signing a consent form to get vaccinated—a requirement for vaccines with an EUA—may be a psychological barrier, Gandhi says: “Signing a consent that says ‘experimental’ and the phrase ‘experimental’ brings up issues of experimentation on Black and brown communities.”

Some lies are bigger than others.

• When Will We FORCE A Stop To The BS? (Denninger)

Ok, enough folks. “I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections. One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late,” she wrote. “A few days later when I call time of death, I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same.” This sort of lie should cost Ms. LIAR her license and everyone who ran this bull**** should be ruined. Her “hospital” — any agency or entity that allows her to infest their premises should be flat-out destroyed along with every single person who works in any such place and gives her credibility by doing so. Why? This story is from Alabama. Now I want you to look very carefully at this table.

[..] According to that table not one person has died since the end of April in Alabama from Covid-19 according to that graph which goes through 7/20 — yesterday. What is “99% (unvaccinated) of ZERO (all people who died of Covid in Alabama SINCE APRIL)”? ZERO! But yes, Ms. Smiling Crazy Bitch is imploring people to get jabbed for what, she says, will stop becoming part of a wave of death that is happening right now. If someone died today, well, that’s one. Where are all the others? Oh, and the story? It’s not, allegedly, from today. It references a viral Facebook post from the weekend. AGAIN: Where is the pile of bodies in the above graph that Ms. Crazy claims are stacking up? If you look elsewhere you will find that perhaps Statista gave up. Why? Too small to matter.

Let’s put perspective on this, assuming it’s accurate: The 7-day average according to that second site state-wide has been at or under 10 since April. Ok, Alabama has approximately 5 million people in it, or 1.52% of the total of the nation. Roughly 8,200 people die daily in the US of all causes, so in Alabama that would be 124 dead bodies. Do you really think three, four, five on a 7-day average state-wide — with lots of zeros — is material in the whole? How many of those are people who are seriously ill with other things? Most of them, as has always been the case with Covid. And has also always been the case if you’re positive at death or within 30 days of it you count and Biden just extended the hospital toe tag bounties for both admissions and ventilator use. People need to go straight to prison for this bull****.

10 years for Ms. Ex-Preggers tossing her new kid (along with any others she has) in an orphanage should wake her ass up for lying and threatening people that they will surely die in order coerce them to do something they do not otherwise want to do. If the jabs work so well why are both Malta and Israel, two of the highest-vaccinated percentage populations in the world, both taking huge case spikes? In addition explain India which has 6% of their population vaccinated (one of the lowest among the world) and their case rate has collapsed by 90%. How is that possible if the jab is the only way forward and the only way we can defeat this horrible virus? Is it not more likely that the jabs are nearly worthless in terms of infections and the virus is, in fact, following Farr’s Law — as places release lockdowns and strictures the infections which were delayed occur anyway? How many times has Australia breathed an “all clear!” sign of relief and then oops — guess not!

J. Edgar Hoover must have been a fan of the Keystone Cops. But hey, the J6 people get convicted, so why not these schmucks?

• Whitmer Kidnapping Defendants Claim Entrapment (ZH)

At least a dozen FBI informants infiltrated an anti-government group of aspiring extremists, and were involved in virtually every aspect of a plan to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, according to BuzzFeed. “Some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported,” according to the report. One ‘informant,’ an Iraq war veteran, “became so deeply enmeshed in a Michigan militant group” that he rose to second-in-command – telling members of the group to meet with other potential suspects, and even footing the bill to transport members to meetings. Another FBI ‘informant’ advised the militia group on where they should plant explosives, and offered to procure as many as were needed.

“Everybody down with what’s going on?” an Iraq War veteran in the group demanded to know when they ended their recon mission, well past midnight, at a campsite where they were all staying. “If you’re not down with the thought of kidnapping,” someone else replied, “don’t sit here.” The men planned for all kinds of obstacles, but there was one they didn’t anticipate: The FBI had been listening in all along. For six months, the Iraq War vet had been wearing a wire, gathering hundreds of hours of recordings. He wasn’t the only one. A biker who had traveled from Wisconsin to join the group was another informant. The man who’d advised them on where to put the explosives — and offered to get them as much as the task would require — was an undercover FBI agent. So was a man in one of the other cars who said little and went by the name Mark.” -BuzzFeed

Three weeks later, over a dozen men were arrested by federal and state agents in what one federal prosecutor described as a “deeply disturbing” criminal conspiracy hatched over several months via secret meetings, encrypted chats, and paramilitary-style training exercises. In total, 14 men were charged last year in the alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer. They’ve all pleaded not-guilty, and say the FBI set them up. They claim their talk never rose beyond the level of fantasy, and that they never intended to harm Whitmer or anyone else. The defendants claim there was no conspiracy to kidnap the governor – and instead say they were targeted because of their political views.

Not everyone likes the woke girls.

• US Women’s Soccer Team To Boycott Scoring Goals Until Racism Is Defeated (BBee)

People were stunned after the U.S. women’s soccer team lost to Sweden in the Olympics this week by a score of 3-0—until the team revealed they are boycotting scoring any goals until racism is defeated. “Yeah, we didn’t score any goals against Sweden last night, but that was totally on purpose,” said star player and beloved activist Megan Rapinoe. “This isn’t the time to score goals—when America is still racist. We totally could have beaten Sweden but we decided as a team that no goals will be scored until complete equality has been achieved in America. Also, we demand a hefty raise.”

Onlookers were stunned during the second half of the game when Rapinoe dribbled the ball all the way to Sweden’s unprotected goal and whispered “This is for you, people of color,” before kicking the ball straight into the air and running headfirst into the goalpost. “This may be one of the most powerful performances in the history of sports,” said Teen Vogue’s sportswriter who has never watched sports. The U.S. Women’s team is demanding to remain in the Olympic tournament and promises to continue its streak of zero goals. Inspiring!

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Hudak Hodkinson

After receiving the gene-based covid vax, the spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor, which is expressed in high concentrations in the testis

What could this mean for male fertility?

Dr. Roger Hodkinson says that this could be “catastrophic”pic.twitter.com/xm0avEWX3I

— Taylor Hudak (@_taylorhudak) July 21, 2021

Seneff2

Senior MIT research scientist Stephanie Seneff about mRNA vaccines – part 2 pic.twitter.com/iWi5Q645qY

— Camus (@camus37) July 21, 2021

Evil Tiger Eye.

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Debt Rattle July 19 2021

Jul 192021

July 19, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, dams, efficacy, Facebook, Israel, misinformation, panic pandemic, Pegasus, vax deaths 94 Responses »

Giuseppe Leone Ragusa Sicily 1953

• 2nd Week in a Row: More Covid Vax Deaths than COVID-19 Deaths in the US (GP)

• Four New Discoveries About Safety And Efficacy Of COVID Vaccines (DfCE)

• Response to Dr. Bhakdi (VanDen Bossche)

• Israel Bans Entry To Vaccinated Tourists (JPost)

• 2 More Texas Dems Who Fled State To Block GOP Voting Bill Test Positive (NYP)

• Facebook Says 85% of US Users Are Pro-Vaccine (RT)

• The Panic Pandemic (Tierney)

• “Misinformation” Means Whatever The Censors Want It To Mean (Tracey)

• Leak Uncovers Global Abuse Of Cyber-surveillance Weapon (G.)

• The Controversial Prosecutor At The Heart Of The Julian Assange Case (IC)

• Tribes Are Leading the Way to Remove Dams and Restore Ecosystems (Yes)

Heparin

Dr. Richard Fleming about Heparin pic.twitter.com/WLNr5C5caC

— Camus (@camus37) July 19, 2021

We have a trend.

• 2nd Week in a Row: More Covid Vax Deaths than COVID-19 Deaths in the US (GP)

The VAERS website released its weekly numbers on Friday. There are now 11,140 reported deaths from the COVID vaccine in the United States. This is up from 9,125 reported deaths from the COVID-19 vaccinations total from last week. The number of deaths linked to vaccines this year has absolutely skyrocketed. According to the CDC’s own data. The VAERS database contains information on unverified reports of adverse events (illnesses, health problems and/or symptoms) following immunization with US-licensed vaccines. The CDC government website links to VAERS platform. Two weeks ago VAERS reported 6,985 deaths due to the COVID vaccines. Last week that number jumped to 9,048. That number is now at 11,140.

“The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database contains information on unverified reports of adverse events (illnesses, health problems and/or symptoms) following immunization with US-licensed vaccines. Reports are accepted from anyone and can be submitted electronically at www.vaers.hhs.gov.” There have been over 400,000 adverse reactions reported to the COVID vaccine. Last Week: there were 1,918 total COVID-19 deaths in the United States. Last Week: There were 2,092 deaths from the COVID Vaccines — According to the CDC-linked VAERS website. That means there were 174 more Covid vaccine deaths in the United States last week than Covid deaths in the United States last week. Why is this not making headlines?

45,000 have died within 3 days from the COVID Vax
https://twitter.com/i/status/1416947451056033795

“Doctors for Covid Ethics has sent the following letter to tens of thousands of doctors in Europe, summarising four recent scientific findings critical to the COVID-19 vaccination program. The letter explains each finding as it relates to the biology of COVID-19 vaccines, including interactions with the immune system.

Taken together, the letter warns that these new pieces of evidence force all physicians administering COVID-19 vaccines to re-evaluate the merits of COVID-19 vaccination, in the interests of their own ethical standing, and their patients’ safety and health.”

• Four New Discoveries About Safety And Efficacy Of COVID Vaccines (DfCE)

Discovery 1: SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Circulates Shortly After Vaccination. SARS-CoV-2 proteins were measured in longitudinal plasma samples collected from 13 participants who received two doses of Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine [1]. With 11 of the 13, the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein was detected in the blood within only one day after the first vaccine injection. Significance. Spike protein molecules were produced within cells that are in contact with the bloodstream—mostly endothelial cells—and released into the circulation. This means that a) the immune system will attack those endothelial cells, and b) the circulating spike protein molecules will activate thrombocytes. Both effects will promote blood clotting. This explains the many clotting-related adverse events—stroke, heart attack, venous thrombosis—that are being reported after vaccination.

Discovery 2: Rapid, Memory-Type Antibody Response After VaccinationSeveral studies have demonstrated that circulating SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG and IgA antibodies became detectable within 1-2 weeks after application of mRNA vaccines [1–3]. Significance. bRapid production of IgG and IgA always indicates a secondary, memory-type response that is elicited through re-stimulation of pre-existing immune cells. Primary immune responses to novel antigens take longer to evolve and initially produce IgM antibodies, which is then followed by the isotype switch to IgG and IgA.bA certain amount of IgM was indeed detected alongside IgG and IgA in some studies [1,4]. Importantly, however, IgG rose faster than IgM [4], which confirms that the early IgG response was indeed of the memory type.

This memory response indicates pre-existing, cross-reactive immunity due to previous infection with ordinary respiratory human coronavirus strains. The delayed IgM response most likely represents a primary response to novel epitopes which are specific to SARS-CoV-2.bMemory-type responses have also been documented with respect to T-cell-mediated immunity [5–7]. Overall, these findings indicate that our immune system efficiently recognizes SARS-CoV-2 as “known” even on first contact. Severe cases of the disease thus cannot be ascribed to lacking immunity. Instead, severe cases might very well be caused or aggravated by pre-existing immunity through antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE, see below).

Discovery 3: SARS-CoV-2 Elicits Robust Adaptive Immune Responses Regardless Of Disease Severity Serum antibody profiles were reported for 203 individuals following SARS-CoV-2 infection [8]. 202 (>99%) of the participants exhibited SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies. With 193 individuals (95%), these antibodies prevented SARS-CoV-2 infection in cell culture and also inhibited binding of the spike protein to the ACE2 receptor. Furthermore, CD8+ T-cell responses specific for SARS-CoV-2 were clear and quantifiable in 95 of 106 (90%) HLA-A2-positive individuals. Significance. This study confirms the above assertion that the immune response to initial contact with SARS-CoV-2 is of the memory type.

In addition, it shows that this reaction occurs with almost all individuals, and particularly also with those who experience no manifest clinical symptoms. The goal of the vaccination is to stimulate production of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, but we now know that such antibodies can and will be rapidly generated by everyone upon the slightest viral challenge, even without vaccination. Severe lung infections always take many days to develop, which means that if the antibodies generated by the memory response are needed, they will arrive on time. Therefore, vaccination is unlikely to provide significant benefit with respect to the prevention of severe lung infection.

Discovery 4: Rapid Increase Of Spike Protein Antibodies After The Second Injection Of MRNA Vaccines IgG and IgA antibody titres were monitored before vaccination and after the first and the second injection of mRNA vaccines [3]. Antibody titres rose with some delay after the first injection, then plateaued, but rose again very shortly after the second injection. Significance. Even though the antibody response to the first injection is of the memory type, the small time lag after the injection may mitigate adverse reactions, because the abundance of spike protein on the cells in the blood vessel walls and in other tissues may have already passed its peak when the antibodies arrive.

The situation changes dramatically with the second injection. Then the spikes are produced and protrude into the bloodstream that is already swarming with both reactive lymphocytes and antibodies. The antibodies will cause the complement system [9,10] and also neutrophil granulocytes to attack the spike protein-bearing cells. The possible consequences of all-out self-attack by the immune system are frightening.

The article above references a Dr. Bahkdi video VanDen Bossche has issues with. Could we have an actual scientific discussion? Where do the censors stand on this one?

• Response to Dr. Bhakdi (VanDen Bossche)

I herewith wanted to react to a recent video posted by Dr. Bhakdi (https://evidencenotfear.com/proof-that-puts-an-end-to-the-sars-cov-2-narrative-professor-sucharit-bhakdi-oracle-films/). I was quite stunned about the statements he made and could not believe that this had allegedly been published. Hence, I consulted the publications Dr. Bhakdi has been referring to in his presentation (you’ll find them in the article that accompanies the video). My contribution attached explains why his viewpoint in regard of herd immunity and protection against variants is highly questionable. Given his background and credentials, I am very surprised at his conclusions. It’s certainly not that I cannot refrain from criticizing but if we’re not going to stick to the science, we’re going to lose our precious credibility.

I am sure many of you have seen Dr. Bhakdi’s presentation. As much as I’d like to confirm his position, I cannot agree with his interpretation. Dr. Bhakdi is basically claiming that because of previous exposure to common cold viruses we have immune memory cells that can be recalled upon exposure to Sars-CoV-2 and protect us! This is not true! While there is no doubt that there is some cross-reactivity between immune responses to some spike(S)-derived epitopes on beta coronaviruses (CoVs), these immune responses are not cross-PROTECTIVE. Dr. Bhakdi is confusing all along cross-reactivity (which basically means that antibodies (Abs) or T cells induced by one CoV can BIND similar [conserved] epitopes on some other CoVs) and cross-protection.

However, immune RECOGNITION does not equal immune PROTECTION. None of the publications Dr. Bhakdi is referring to has analyzed or claims cross-PROTECTION elicited by other CoVs. Again, Abs that bind to Sars-CoV-2 do not necessarily neutralize the virus and prevent it from entering the cell. Of course, many people will have a history of common cold infection and hence may rapidly recall some spike-directed Abs (i.e., towards epitopes that are shared with Sars-CoV-2) upon exposure to Sars-CoV-2 or after immunization with Sars-CoV-2-derived antigens. However, this doesn’t mean at all that these rapidly rising IgG and IgA Dr. Bhakdi is referring to will neutralize Sars-CoV-2 and protect you from Covid-19 disease!

In addition, Sars-CoV-2-induced Abs were only found to cross-react with 2 out of the 4 common cold CoVs (i.e., only for beta coronavirus HKU1 and OC43) and the cross-reactivity was ‘much lower than that observed for the remaining CoV epitopes’. Furthermore, his statement that people who have built immunity against CoV are automatically protected against all Sars-CoV-2 variants is not true either for exactly the same reasons (i.e., Abs that bind to variants do not necessarily neutralize them and could even be at risk of causing Ab-dependent enhancement of disease; ADE).

Israel is a prime example alright; of how the vaccine hunger screws up a country.

• Israel Bans Entry To Vaccinated Tourists (JPost)

Vaccinated tourists will not be allowed to enter Israel on August 1, as had been previously planned, Health Ministry Director-General Prof. Nachman Ash said Sunday, also announcing that the authorities will discuss measures to restrict all travel. “We are postponing the date for the entry of tourists; it is not going to happen on August 1,” he said, adding that a new date has not been set. “Unfortunately, the current situation does not permit us to allow tourists to enter.” The director-general also warned the public that with the Delta variant raging around the world, this is not a time to fly abroad. He said the authorities are examining how to restrict travel, either by expanding the list of countries under the travel ban or severe travel warning, or by other means.

Channel 12 reported that health official are considering several options for a recommendation to bring before the cabinet, including shutting the airport for non essential traveling and requiring all travelers to enter isolation regardless of their immunization status and the country they fly from. However, according to the report, the most likely recommendation will be to significantly expand the list of countries under travel ban or travel warning – in both cases all returnees have to quarantine, for the first group Israelis are prohibited from visiting unless they obtain a permission from the devoted special governmental committee.

Not arrested yet; they won’t return till August.

• 2 More Texas Dems Who Fled State To Block GOP Voting Bill Test Positive (NYP)

Two more Texas Democrats who traveled to Washington, DC, last week to prevent a vote on a Republican voting bill have tested positive for the coronavirus, a report said. The new cases, announced late Sunday by the Texas House Democratic Caucus, are in addition to the three other state Democratic lawmakers on the trip who have already tested positive for COVID-19, the Texas Tribune reported. The infected lawmakers are all fully vaccinated, the report said — and one is experiencing mild symptoms. Among the two newest members to test positive is state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, the lawmaker said. “Today, I received a positive COVID-19 rapid antigen test result. I am fully vaccinated, and had tested negative on Friday and Saturday.

“I am quarantining until I test negative, and I am grateful to be only experiencing extremely mild symptoms,” he told the newspaper in a statement. The Lone Star State Democrats left the state House of Representatives last Monday and flew aboard two chartered flights to the nation’s capital to scuttle a Republican-backed election reform bill by depriving the chamber a quorum. While in Washington to wait out the special legislative session called by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the Democrats met with congressional lawmakers to press them to approve the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The state lawmakers have been slammed by Republicans for running away from their duties to represent their constituents, and Abbott has threatened to have them arrested when they return to Texas in August.

Because our users are not terribly smart people…

• Facebook Says 85% of US Users Are Pro-Vaccine (RT)

Facebook has patted itself on the back for encouraging vaccine acceptance among its US users, noting an increase of 10-15% since January, while firing back at President Joe Biden’s claim of subverting the rollout. “The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19,” Facebook VP of Integrity Guy Rosen said in a blog post on Saturday, rejecting Biden’s charge that social media was to blame for the lack of enthusiasm among Americans towards the Covid-19 jabs. On Friday, Biden tore into social media platforms such as Facebook, accusing them of “killing people” by not cracking down on non-conventional opinions about vaccination fervently enough.

“They’re killing people… Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people,” the US president said. Dismissing the allegation, Rosen accused Biden of essentially making Facebook a scapegoat for his administration’s failure to reach its self-imposed goal of having 70% Americans vaccinated by July 4. “President Biden’s goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed,” Rosen said, arguing that figures “tell a very different story to the one promoted by the administration.” Facebook, Rosen claimed, has seen a dramatic increase in confidence in Covid-19 vaccines among its American users in the last six months.

“Since January, vaccine acceptance on the part of Facebook users in the US has increased by 10-15 percentage points (70%->80-85%),” Rosen wrote, citing a recent survey by Carnegie Mellon University. He added that distrust of the jabs among racial and ethnic minorities has “shrunk considerably” as well. Facebook has deployed “unprecedented resources” in its fight against the pandemic, such as “pointing people to reliable information” and facilitating vaccine appointments, he noted. In addition to persuading people of the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines through pop-up labels under coronavirus-related posts, Facebook has been waging a war on information that does not align with the official stance of the World Health Organization (WHO) or local governments.

” It was a dangerous experiment being conducted without knowing the answer to the most basic question: Just how lethal is this virus?”

• The Panic Pandemic (Tierney)

The United States suffered through two lethal waves of contagion in the past year and a half. The first was a viral pandemic that killed about one in 500 Americans—typically, a person over 75 suffering from other serious conditions. The second, and far more catastrophic, was a moral panic that swept the nation’s guiding institutions. Instead of keeping calm and carrying on, the American elite flouted the norms of governance, journalism, academic freedom—and, worst of all, science. They misled the public about the origins of the virus and the true risk that it posed. Ignoring their own carefully prepared plans for a pandemic, they claimed unprecedented powers to impose untested strategies, with terrible collateral damage. As evidence of their mistakes mounted, they stifled debate by vilifying dissenters, censoring criticism, and suppressing scientific research.

If, as seems increasingly plausible, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 leaked out of a laboratory in Wuhan, it is the costliest blunder ever committed by scientists. Whatever the pandemic’s origin, the response to it is the worst mistake in the history of the public-health profession. We still have no convincing evidence that the lockdowns saved lives, but lots of evidence that they have already cost lives and will prove deadlier in the long run than the virus itself. One in three people worldwide lost a job or a business during the lockdowns, and half saw their earnings drop, according to a Gallup poll. Children, never at risk from the virus, in many places essentially lost a year of school. The economic and health consequences were felt most acutely among the less affluent in America and in the rest of the world, where the World Bank estimates that more than 100 million have been pushed into extreme poverty.

The leaders responsible for these disasters continue to pretend that their policies worked and assume that they can keep fooling the public. They’ve promised to deploy these strategies again in the future, and they might even succeed in doing so—unless we begin to understand what went wrong. The panic was started, as usual, by journalists. As the virus spread early last year, they highlighted the most alarming statistics and the scariest images: the estimates of a fatality rate ten to 50 times higher than the flu, the chaotic scenes at hospitals in Italy and New York City, the predictions that national health-care systems were about to collapse. The full-scale panic was set off by the release in March 2020 of a computer model at the Imperial College in London, which projected that—unless drastic measures were taken—intensive-care units would have 30 Covid patients for every available bed and that America would see 2.2 million deaths by the end of the summer.

The British researchers announced that the “only viable strategy” was to impose draconian restrictions on businesses, schools, and social gatherings until a vaccine arrived. This extraordinary project was swiftly declared the “consensus” among public-health officials, politicians, journalists, and academics. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, endorsed it and became the unassailable authority for those purporting to “follow the science.” What had originally been a limited lockdown—“15 days to slow the spread”—became long-term policy across much of the United States and the world. A few scientists and public-health experts objected, noting that an extended lockdown was a novel strategy of unknown effectiveness that had been rejected in previous plans for a pandemic. It was a dangerous experiment being conducted without knowing the answer to the most basic question: Just how lethal is this virus?

Freedom of speech is dead, but not from the virus.

• “Misinformation” Means Whatever The Censors Want It To Mean (Tracey)

Government officials and their lackeys in the media often speak of the term “misinformation” as though it has some sort of universally-accepted, politically neutral definition. That’s always been total BS, but generating the mirage of neutrality has been a necessary ingredient in popularizing the “misinformation” concept over the past five years. Those who reject the impositions of mainstream cultural and political elites must not be simply wrong, but maliciously brainwashed by “misinformation” that complicit entities such as the social media platforms allow to proliferate.

In 2018, when these entities engineered a simultaneous cross-platform purge of Alex Jones, there was an avalanche of media apologia for this hitherto unprecedented act of censorship. Jones had caused unique harm, the journalists cried, and the platforms were merely “Enforcing The Rules.” But of course what they were oblivious to was that “the rules,” such as they exist, are just a function of power. “Misinformation” and other alleged infractions of social media “rules” are determined at the whim of whoever happens to wield censorship and speech-regulation power at that moment. Journalists themselves, chronically oblivious to their own power, were exactly the ones who agitated for the expulsion of Jones, and their agitation succeeded.

Here is an article I wrote the day after this cross-platform purge: “Alex Jones’ lunacy is self-evident and needs no further comment. The only relevant question is whether we want a media landscape in which a tiny cadre of unelected private officials are empowered to decide, in secret and with no mechanisms for accountability, that the time has come to purge this lunatic from the public square. “Now, just around three years later, we receive a declaration from a spokesperson for the President that the Federal Government is seeking to coerce, mandate, or otherwise bring about routinized cross-platform purges. “You shouldn’t be banned from one platform, and not others, for providing misinformation out there,” press secretary Jen Psaki demanded, creepily calling on the social media giants to create “robust enforcement strategies that bridge their properties.”

So if you were under any illusion back in 2018 that this would ever stop with Jones — a figure believed to be sufficiently repulsive that any punishment doled out to him would not have broader implications for the average internet user — well, it didn’t take long for proof of just how wrong you were. Journalists and others with influential platforms, particularly those who spend all day everyday on the internet and rely on it for their livelihood, at least in theory have a duty to demonstrate some semblance of foresight. Meaning, to consider issues of public interest that go beyond their short-term desire for political vengeance.

Big story yada yada, even Snowden says it, but it’s from the Guardian.

• Leak Uncovers Global Abuse Of Cyber-surveillance Weapon (G.)

Human rights activists, journalists and lawyers across the world have been targeted by authoritarian governments using hacking software sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, according to an investigation into a massive data leak. The investigation by the Guardian and 16 other media organisations suggests widespread and continuing abuse of NSO’s hacking spyware, Pegasus, which the company insists is only intended for use against criminals and terrorists. Pegasus is a malware that infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators of the tool to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones. The leak contains a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that, it is believed, have been identified as those of people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016.

Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based nonprofit media organisation, and Amnesty International initially had access to the leaked list and shared access with media partners as part of the Pegasus project, a reporting consortium. The presence of a phone number in the data does not reveal whether a device was infected with Pegasus or subject to an attempted hack. However, the consortium believes the data is indicative of the potential targets NSO’s government clients identified in advance of possible surveillance attempts. Forensics analysis of a small number of phones whose numbers appeared on the leaked list also showed more than half had traces of the Pegasus spyware. The Guardian and its media partners will be revealing the identities of people whose number appeared on the list in the coming days.

They include hundreds of business executives, religious figures, academics, NGO employees, union officials and government officials, including cabinet ministers, presidents and prime ministers. The list also contains the numbers of close family members of one country’s ruler, suggesting the ruler may have instructed their intelligence agencies to explore the possibility of monitoring their own relatives. The disclosures begin on Sunday, with the revelation that the numbers of more than 180 journalists are listed in the data, including reporters, editors and executives at the Financial Times, CNN, the New York Times, France 24, the Economist, Associated Press and Reuters.

It’s personal.

• The Controversial Prosecutor At The Heart Of The Julian Assange Case (IC)

The battle to extradite WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange from the United Kingdom to the United States is shaping up to be a legal case of paramount importance to the future of national security reporting. The U.S. continues to press the case even after a change of administration, with President Joe Biden keeping up efforts to bring Assange to a U.S. court on Espionage Act charges for his role in publishing classified government documents. One little-noted name in filings from extradition hearings in the U.K. keeps popping up as a key figure in the U.S. government’s case: a federal prosecutor named Gordon Kromberg. On the central questions of what assistance Assange provided to whistleblower Chelsea Manning and the ostensible harm his actions caused to U.S. national security, a U.K. court filing earlier this year cites Kromberg’s assertions verbatim.

“Mr. Kromberg’s evidence on this is clear,” the filing says. “He stated that stealing hundreds of thousands of documents from classified databases was a multistep process.” The same document cites Kromberg again, claiming that “well over one hundred people were placed at risk from the disclosures and approximately fifty people sought and received assistance from the US” — references to purported U.S. intelligence assets outed by the documents WikiLeaks published. Kromberg, an assistant United States attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, may be unknown to foreign and even many American observers. In U.S. legal circles, though, he has been a highly controversial figure for over two decades, dogged by accusations of bias and politicization in his prosecutions.

For years, civil rights activists and lawyers tried to draw attention to allegations of Kromberg’s abusive practices. Rather than being pushed into obscurity by these efforts, today he is serving as a key figure in one of the most important civil liberties cases in the world. In all, the January court documents from Assange’s extradition case mention Kromberg over 40 times to help make the legal argument for extraditing Assange. Many of his statements go to the heart of the Espionage Act case against the WikiLeaks publisher.

[..] In the years after the 2001 September 11 terrorist attacks, Gordon Kromberg became the government’s point man on notorious terrorism cases involving allegations of torture and malicious prosecution. In the past, opposing counsels and civil rights groups accused him of engaging in racist behavior and using unethical tactics in pursuit of convictions. Legal experts said that the inclusion of a notoriously politicized and aggressive prosecutor on a high-profile extradition case like Assange’s is a sign of how strongly the government is motivated to extradite the WikiLeaks publisher and bring Espionage Act charges at all costs.

“A common factor in Kromberg’s career has been a willingness to take very provocative positions on behalf of the government and stay the course with them,” said Wadie Said, a professor of law at the University of South Carolina and author of “Crimes of Terror: The Legal and Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions.” “He has also shown great willingness to take on highly political cases and to be a lightning rod himself for attention; he often makes himself part of the story with his own actions and statements.” Said added, “From my perspective, some of the things that Kromberg has said in the past and the positions that he has taken are quite tendentious and even vindictive in terms of his mindset toward the person that he is targeting.”

Good.

• Tribes Are Leading the Way to Remove Dams and Restore Ecosystems (Yes)

Cameron Macias bent down to examine a small pile of sawdust-filled scat on the floor of the former Lake Mills on the Elwha River in the northwest corner of Washington state in 2016. It was a sign that beavers were moving into the area after a 100+ year absence. “There’s very small dam-building activity in some of the side tributaries,” says Macias, who was working at the time as a wildlife technician for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, of which she is a member. “It’s kind of funny and ironic because of the dam removal,” Macias says with a laugh. The dams she’s referring to—the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams—were removed in 2011 and 2014 respectively, and together they are considered the world’s largest dam removal project to date.

Many other tribes have looked to the success of the Elwha River dam removals in bringing down fish-blocking dams in their lands as well, including along the Snake River and the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. Together, the country’s 2 million dams block access to more than 600,000 miles of river for fish. And by 2030, the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that 80% of those dams will be beyond their 50-year lifespans. Given how obsolete and potentially dangerous this infrastructure will be, not to mention its negative effects on declining fish stocks, the best solution for many aging dams is to simply remove them. But bringing down a dam is a big job.

When the Elwha River dams fell, it was the culmination of many decades of successful partnerships among the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and dozens of other local and national organizations. Today, those partnerships continue to support the tribe in righting historic wrongs. The Elwha Dam was built in 1910 to provide electricity to attract new settlers, in flagrant violation of a Washington state law that said dams must allow for fish passage. At the time, no one consulted the Lower Elwha Klallam people, whose culture rests on the salmon that would be blocked by the dams. “We had a few of the elders that even stood in the areas of the lower dam where they were starting to build to protest,” says Frances Charles, the tribal chairwoman for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.

But the dam construction proceeded, and afterward, hatcheries were put in as a sort of life support to keep salmon populations afloat. Every year, the fish born in the hatcheries would try to return to the spawning grounds of their ancestors, banging their heads on the dam in a desperate attempt to get upstream. “We ourselves felt like we were banging our heads against the concrete wall, no different than the salmon,” Charles says. Things changed in January 1986 when the tribe filed a motion to stop the relicensing of the dams, citing that the dam prevented them from exercising their treaty rights because it blocked fish passage. “The tribe and [Olympic National] Park and the environmental interests said, ‘You know, if you’re going to license these things, you’re going to provide fish passage,’” says Mike McHenry, the Tribe’s fisheries habitat manager. Studies showed that building fish passages wouldn’t effectively restore the salmon runs, so the decision was made to take down the dams. Still, it took an Act of Congress and $325 million to complete the job.

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Debt Rattle July 10 2021

Jul 102021

July 10, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:31 am Finance Tagged with: adverse reactions, asymptomatic, children, Delta, efficacy, Haiti, ivermectin, mandates, myocarditis 61 Responses »

Paul Gauguin The Day of the God 1894

• Asymptomatic Transmission More Myth Than Reality (LSN) /span>

• Covid Cases In Jabbed Brits Soar 85% In A Week (Sun)

• Children’s Extremely Low Covid Risk Confirmed By Study (BBC)

• Just 25 Under 18’s Died From COVID in UK, 100s Died From Suicide, Trauma (SN)

• If Ivermectin Proven Effective Against Covid, It Moots Vaccine Push (Fox)

• The Persistent Efficacy Of Ivermectin (Pierre Kory)

• Enough With The Damned Mandates (Denninger)

• UK Regulator: Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines May Result in Heart Damage (Sp.)

• Over 13,000 UK Women Report Changes To Periods After Having Vaccine (Sky)

• Haiti Requests US troops & UN Peacekeepers To Secure ‘Key Infrastructure’ (RT)

• Is Reality “Baseless,” Too? (Kunstler)

“Proof that puts an end to the Sars-CoV-2 Narrative” | Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, M.D.

2,063 vaccine deaths in one week

India: Uttar Pradesh has ivermectin. Maharashtra does not.

0.04%

In a nutshell…….. pic.twitter.com/u0zaepfn2N

— John Bowe (@JohnBoweActor) July 9, 2021

Loooong piece.

• Asymptomatic Transmission More Myth Than Reality (LSN) /span>

We will address the lie of ‘asymptomatic spread’ by using the exact words of Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIAID. Fauci previously stated the following as he advocated shutting down society: “historically people need to realize that even if there is some asymptomatic transmission, in all history of respiratory viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person. Even if there is a rare asymptomatic person that might transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers”. Soon, and without scientific evidence, he and his fellow Task Force people reversed the narrative

We believe that he knew, yet sought to lie to the nation. In asymptomatic individuals, the viral load is typically very low, and the infectious period is also short in duration. Asymptomatic virus-positive persons (assuming they really are positive and have not been diagnosed based on an incorrect test) may still exhale virus particles which another person may encounter. However, the overall likelihood of transmitting the disease to others is negligible. Vanishingly small. Exceedingly small. Thus, asymptomatic cases are not the major drivers of epidemics.

Dr. Fauci and his staff, assisted by the media, repeatedly misled the nation, for they repeatedly told us that we would have to wear masks, socially distance, close schools, and shut everything down because of asymptomatic spread. Dr. Fauci’s recent emails, which exposed the issue of asymptomatic spread as being a non-issue, highlight the misinformation he broadcasted to the public. Recently uncovered emails show that Fauci stated that “most transmissions” of virus “occur from someone who is symptomatic” and “not asymptomatic.” His comments, repeated scores of times by national and international media, caused a loss of life, property, liberty and wealth to an entire generation.

Equally misleading was the premise that all infections equated to severe illness and potential death. This was not only an untruth but has led to scores of teenagers and people in their 20s fearful for their lives. They cower below their beds thinking they have the same risk as their 85-year-old grandmother with three grave medical conditions. This has not only devastated their outlook on the future, but driven them into a state of depression which has led to an increase in suicides in that cohort. We as a nation (and world) were fed mistruths, lies, and half-truths by what we can only describe as ‘fallen’ nonsensical, illogical, irrational, and specious medical experts on television, on the stage with their government bureaucratic leaders and academics.

Blame the young.

• Covid Cases In Jabbed Brits Soar 85% In A Week (Sun)

Daily Covid cases have soared by 85 per cent in vaccinated Brits in one week, data reveals. Around 11,000 people are falling sick with the virus each day compared with 6,000 a week ago, according to the ZOE Covid Symptom Study. Even though the jabs are highly effective at preventing serious illness and death, you can still catch the virus. The infection tends to be more mild and cause symptoms that are not the same as the official NHS list. Covid in fully vaccinated people tends to cause a headache, runny nose, sore throat, sneezing and loss of smell. Therefore the typical fever and persistent cough are uncommonly experienced by those with jabs.

Tim Spector OBE, lead scientist on the ZOE COVID Study app and Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London, said: “It’s more important than ever to realise this ranking because the pandemic is absolutely not over and lots of people are still getting infected. “We need to move away from the 18-month-old idea that this is just a fever, cough and loss of smell.” He added: “It seems unlikely that the government is going to change the official list anytime soon, so we are calling on people to spread the word. “If you or anyone in your household feels ill, do a lateral flow test and if you test positive, confirm it with a PCR test. It’s simple, if you feel ill, take a test.”

Delta doesn’t exist

Crazy if true… pic.twitter.com/Wx20ZyqCH5

— Husserl (@husserl80) July 9, 2021

6 kids without any obvious comorbidities died in the entire 18 months. Lock them all up!

• Children’s Extremely Low Covid Risk Confirmed By Study (BBC)

The overall risk of children becoming severely ill or dying from Covid is extremely low, a new analysis of Covid infection data confirms. Data from the first 12 months of the pandemic in England shows 25 under-18s died from Covid. Those living with multiple chronic illnesses and neuro-disabilities were most at risk, though the overall risk remained low. The conclusions are being considered by the UK’s vaccine advisory group. Currently, under-18s are not routinely offered Covid vaccines, even if they have other underlying health conditions that put them at risk. Scientists from University College London, and the Universities of York, Bristol and Liverpool say their studies of children are the most comprehensive yet anywhere in the world.

They checked England’s public health data and found most of the young people who had died of Covid-19 had underlying health conditions: – Around 15 had life-limiting or underlying conditions, including 13 living with complex neuro-disabilities – Six had no underlying conditions recorded in the last five years – though researchers caution some illnesses may have been missed – A further 36 children had a positive Covid test at the time of their death but died from other causes, the analysis suggests – Though the overall risks were still low, children and young people who died were more likely to be over the age of 10 and of Black and Asian ethnicity.

Researchers estimate that 25 deaths in a population of some 12 million children in England gives a broad, overall mortality rate of 2 per million children. Current data shows some 128,301 people in the UK have died within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test since the pandemic started.

Same study, but the BBC forgot the trauma’s.

• Just 25 Under 18’s Died From COVID in UK, 100s Died From Suicide, Trauma (SN)

New figures released by researchers in the UK show that just 25 under-18’s died from COVID from March 2020 to February 2021, two-thirds of whom had “chronic” health conditions, and that lockdown measures aimed at children “may prove a greater risk than that of SARS-CoV-2 itself.” The numbers show that there is around a 1 in 500,000 chance of children dying from coronavirus in England, and that includes victims of pre-existing medical conditions, like heart disease and cancer. “More than 75 per cent of the children who died had chronic conditions, while two thirds had more than one underlying condition and 60 per cent had life-limiting conditions,” reports the Daily Mail.

During the same time period, 124 children died from suicide and 268 died from trauma. Studies conducted by researchers at University College London, the University of York and the University of Liverpool found that lockdown measures which remove children from social environments “may prove a greater risk than that of SARS-CoV-2 itself.” The numbers should inform the government when it comes to considerations of the pros and cons of vaccinating children, although don’t expect the story to receive much wider media attention. Earlier this year, experts in the UK warned that isolation and depression caused by lockdowns had created a “mental health pandemic.”

As we know.

• If Ivermectin Proven Effective Against Covid, It Moots Vaccine Push (Fox)

An evolutionary biologist claimed Friday that, should the anti-malarial drug Ivermectin be proven effective against the coronavirus, it would moot the usage of and potentially the ability to administer the U.S. coronavirus vaccines currently active under the Food & Drug Administration’s Emergency Use Authorization. Bret Weinstein – who previously made headlines after being pressured out of his biology professorship at Evergreen State College in Washington State for criticizing an anti-White “day-of-absence” – told Fox Nation’s “Tucker Carlson Today” that he has been analyzing the vaccines, and has summarily been censored for raising concerns about the shots and the medical establishment’s opposition to alternative treatments.

“[I]f Ivermectin is what those of us who have looked at the evidence think it is … then the debate about the vaccines would be over by definition, because the vaccines that we have so far were granted emergency use authorization,” Weinstein said, noting that the coronavirus vaccines are not formally “approved” treatments by the FDA and instead administered under the rarely-delineated category of EUA. According to the FDA’s own definition, an EUA is “is a mechanism to facilitate the availability and use of medical countermeasures, including vaccines, during public health emergencies, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.” “Under an EUA, FDA may allow the use of unapproved medical products, or unapproved uses of approved medical products in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions when certain statutory criteria have been met, including that there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives,” the agency said.

That last clause, Weinstein told host Tucker Carlson, is key to why it is important that Ivermectin and other established pharmaceuticals are thoroughly investigated as alternative treatments. “That emergency use authorization has as a condition that there be no safe and effective treatments available,” he said, noting that Ivermectin is old enough and established enough that it is “out of [its] patent” – meaning it can be produced generically – and has been proven safe and effective for other medical conditions. [..] “So if Ivermectin is safe and effective … then there shouldn’t be vaccines that we’re administering. They should be in testing and we should be finding out whether they are or are not safe,” said Weinstein, alluding to several serious cases of vaccine side effects.

Weinstein suggested that if the anti-malarial was proven effective, it would moot the Emergency Use Authorization for the vaccine. In January, the New York Post reported on a study of 573 patients that revealed only 8 who received Ivermectin died versus 44 out of 510 who passed away after being administered a placebo. However, the FDA in March warned against Ivermectin’s use as a treatment for COVID, explaining that “taking large doses of this drug is dangerous and can cause serious harm.” The agency also warned that humans can be harmed if they ingest the derivative formulation of Ivermectin meant otherwise for dogs and horses.

Longish Kory.

• The Persistent Efficacy Of Ivermectin (Pierre Kory)

Dr. Pierre Kory provides information on what you need to know about the COVID-19 Variants. He also discusses the publishing of a major new study further proving the efficacy of Ivermectin.

“If you’ve had Covid then there’s no reason you take the shot because it is extremely unlikely you will get any benefit from it at all..”

• Enough With The Damned Mandates (Denninger)

Oh look what we have here! “But others experts say the concern about the Delta variant is overblown and returning to strict health measures could be harmful. Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor Dr. Marty Makary told Fox News that guidance like Los Angeles’ “sends the wrong message” for increasing vaccination levels. “While 40-60% more contagious,” Makary said of the Delta variant, “the COVID in all its variant forms is circulating at very low levels in the population. The only people who should be concerned are those who do not have immunity either through vaccination or natural immunity.” “At this point, everyone at-risk has had the opportunity to get vaccinated,” Makary continued. “Those who are not immune are choosing to do so at their own personal risk.”

So why has Johns Hopkins imposed a vaccine mandate on its students and employees? If there was no risk for accepting a shot that would be a different matter than is fact. There is risk. If you’ve had Covid then there’s no reason you take the shot because it is extremely unlikely you will get any benefit from it at all and thus any amount of risk is unacceptable. You already took the risk with the original infection and survived. To take more risk without hard proof of benefit to offset said risk is stupid. For most young people it’s stupid to take the risk anyway because the odds of a bad outcome from Covid-19 are very, very low. This is especially true for Delta, which I remind you is the very same mutational pattern that every single pandemic virus in history has followed: More easily transmitted but less-dangerous — in this case, according to the data, somewhere around 10x less dangerous.

That is, statistically-speaking, about as dangerous as the flu yet the Covid-19 shots are, by the data, at least 100x more-dangerous than the flu vaccines given every year. Even with the original virus the shots were wildly more-dangerous on a ratable-to-risk basis than flu shots. That doesn’t mean they were a bad deal for everyone; even a very dangerous shot for someone with cancer that will clearly die if not treated is a good bargain, for example, because the outcome if you do nothing is final so any crack at a better outcome is worth the risk. But this is not true when (1) infection is not certain and (2) if you do get infected your odds at a base level are somewhere around 1/30,000 or less. For comparison your odds of being killed in a traffic crash are about 1/8,000 a year.

Covid-19 is an odd virus indeed in that unlike flu that has a 10x or so greater risk to older, more-morbid people, or Chicken Pox which has about a 25x greater risk in adults .vs. children this virus is, by the numbers, about 1,000 times more-dangerous if you’re fat, diabetic and hypertensive. With few exceptions, however, these are voluntarily-acquired conditions. For such people the shots are probably a good bargain — they may still kill or seriously injure you, but voluntary assumption of said risk either way is a choice, and one that adults should be free to make.

Only took half a year or so…

• UK Regulator: Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines May Result in Heart Damage (Sp.)

The NHS announced at the end of June that over 45 million Britons had received at least one jab against the coronavirus, while 33 million were fully vaccinated. British health chiefs have discretely released a warning that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may cause heart issues, MailOnline reported. The outlet noted that the British medicines watchdog had updated its safety information to accept that the condition is a possible side effect of both vaccines, without making a formal announcement. According to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), complications are possible but rare and “typically mild”, as the “vast majority recovered with simple treatment and rest”. However, several cases of cardiac issues have been confirmed among those vaccinated, with inflammation of the heart muscle finally listed as a potential side effect by the MHRA last week.

According to data collected by the watchdog, by 23 June 60 cases of myocarditis and 42 cases of pericarditis had been detected among Pfizer vaccine recipients, as Britain had administered 30 million doses. At the same time, the Moderna vaccine distributed among adults was followed by five instances of myocarditis and two of pericarditis (900,000 doses had been administered in the UK). “Over 79 million doses of Covid vaccines have been administered in the UK, saving thousands of lives, and our advice remains that the benefits of getting vaccinated outweigh the risks in the majority of people”, Dr June Raine, the MHRA’s chief executive, stressed. “We have carefully reviewed reports of suspected adverse reactions involving types of heart inflammation known as myocarditis and pericarditis and we have concluded that the Covid vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna may be linked with a small increase in the risk of these very rare conditions”.

Spike proteins will do that to you.

• Over 13,000 UK Women Report Changes To Periods After Having Vaccine (Sky)

The number of women reporting changes to their menstrual cycle linked to having a COVID vaccine has risen to 13,000.The figure has increased from around 4,000 women last month. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has so far received more than 13,000 reports from women across the country who have experienced changes to their period after having the vaccine. Experts say there is no evidence to believe the coronavirus vaccine affects fertility, but there are reports that some women are refusing to get the jab. Dr Viki Male, a reproductive immunologist at Imperial College London, said women should feel confident getting the jab and that reports of changes are not unexpected, as similar reactions have been observed with the flu vaccine.

She told Sky News that 25% of women who contract COVID-19 also see changes to their period. “We know that sex hormones affect the immune system and the immune system affects sex hormones and we have some evidence that the flu vaccine, given a certain time in your cycle, can slightly dampen the amount of progesterone you have, and it’s the balance between oestrogen and progesterone that builds up and breaks down the lining of your uterus. “So if these get slightly out of whack then we might expect to get a heavier period or a later period,” she said. These reports have led to fears among some women that the vaccine could affect fertility, fuelled in part by conspiracy theories promoted by anti-vaccination groups online.

As a result, experts are concerned that increasing numbers of young women are hesitant about the vaccine or refusing to have it altogether, putting pressure on the government’s plan to unlock the country as it relies heavily on high numbers getting vaccinated. Dr Male said there is no scientific link between the vaccination and fertility issues and warned that women can be more susceptible to problems during pregnancy if they contract COVID-19. She said: “We have quite a lot of evidence that these vaccines don’t reduce your chances of getting pregnant.

The president was muredered on the very day his newly appointed PM was to take office, and now there’s another PM instead. Do I get that right so far?

• Haiti Requests US troops & UN Peacekeepers To Secure ‘Key Infrastructure’ (RT)

Haiti approached both the US and the United Nations for security aid soon after the murder of President Jovenel Moise, asking them to deploy soldiers to guard infrastructure in the event of unrest, according to multiple reports. The country’s elections minister Mathias Pierre said the request for US troops was made after Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Joe Biden himself had “promised to help Haiti” in the wake of the president’s assassination earlier this week, the New York Times reported on Friday. He warned that “urban terrorists” could exploit current tensions and carry out further attacks. “The group that financed the mercenaries want to create chaos in the country,” Pierre said. “Attacking the gas reserves and airport might be part of the plan.”

While a Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on the matter after being contacted by a journalist with Sputnik, an unnamed senior administration official later said Washington has no plans to send soldiers “at this time,” according to Reuters. During an earlier press briefing on Friday, State Department spokeswoman Jalina Porter said she could not confirm that such a request was made, though White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki did note that federal agents from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security would be dispatched to the Haitian capital to assist “as soon as possible.”

Robenson Geffrard, a journalist at Le Nouvelliste, a major Haitian newspaper, echoed Pierre’s concerns about unrest, saying there is now a “sense of uncertainty” and a “shadow of violence” hanging over the country, which had already been in the grips of a political crisis even before the hit on the president. Haiti also called on the UN to send peacekeepers soon after the president’s death, according to a letter obtained by Reuters on Friday. Sent by Acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph on July 7 – the day Moise was killed – the message requested a troop deployment to “support the efforts of the national police” and help “reestablish security and public order in the whole territory.” The UN has so far offered no public comment on the purported request. The body’s 15-member Security Council would have to vote to authorize such a deployment.

Haiti

Journalist @kimives13 explains how the revolutionary movement led by Jimmy "Barbecue" Cherizier threatens the #Haiti bourgeoisie and why they may have hired the mercenary team that murdered President Jovenel Moïse. pic.twitter.com/rzqMGpRlia
Full interview: https://t.co/1aBBq1S3sl

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) July 8, 2021

“So much evil mischief has not been seen in one polity since Berlin, 1938.”

• Is Reality “Baseless,” Too? (Kunstler)

Advice to the mindfuck-hesitant: When “Joe Biden” and Kamala Harris come to your door selling vaccines, treat them as you would, say, a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses proffering Watchtower magazines: “Thank you, but I’m not interested in your organization… and please take me off your mailing list. Have a nice day!” Cue: sound of door clicking shut. Something tells me there are still too many sane people with a sense of humor left in this tormented land for the flunkies of “progressive” Wokery to achieve the total control they seek over the hundred-million, give or take, who are starting to think: Y’know, I’d kind of like my country back. And what country was that? It was the country we were before the Intel “Community” took over, in the service of an utterly corrupt political elite running the system like it was their personal cash register.

About that country I would like back… for starters, the country that valued the rule-of-law. Yes, I know, that’s awfully high-toned — the rule of law — as if one is invoking some clichéd bronze blindfolded babe in a negligee, hoisting a scale in one hand and a sword in the other. I’m thinking, rather, of a flesh-and-blood judge, perhaps a corpulent fellow with bad knees, of, say, the DC federal court, who would dare to throw out the malicious political prosecution of figures like General Flynn or the journalist Julian Assange… or an FBI that would make a criminal referral for sedition against Senator Mark Warner… or a newspaper editor who might be interested in the connection between Marc Elias’s Lawfare outfit at Perkins Coie and the Central Intelligence Agency. One could go on endlessly with the pungent hypotheticals. So much evil mischief has not been seen in one polity since Berlin, 1938.

Anyway, the country we live in now no longer observes the rule of law because it has become a security state like the former Soviet bloc states, with a rogue Intel “Community” that has hijacked the truck that the wheels of justice run on. Here’s a thought: do we know for sure whether the CIA might have been involved in the late, lamentable 2020 election? Wow, that’s outside the box! But, hey, why not? Think of all the fakery they are so capable of engineering, and consider how avid they were to get rid of that pain-in-the-ass Donald Trump (who wanted to get rid of them!), and also consider that there is really no check on their activities whatsoever because the supervising authorities are 1) Adam Schiff’s House Intel Committee (bwaha!), and 2) the aforementioned seditious scoundrel Mark Warner’s Senate Intel Committee. These two are so owned by the CIA that they must have a standing weekly TGIF session to peel grapes for the C-suite at Langley.

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Tucker about how forced vaccinations can be very problematic

Tucker about how forced vaccinations can be very problematic pic.twitter.com/0ghWzHXzcF

— Husserl (@husserl80) July 9, 2021

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Debt Rattle June 10 2021

Jun 102021

June 10, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:41 am Finance Tagged with: Biden, efficacy, Fauci, Good Friday, hospitalization, J&J, Lafayette Park, Mongolia, NATO, talcum powder, WHO 53 Responses »

Henri Matisse Odalisque couchée aux magnolias 1923

• CDC Claims Hospitalization Rising Among Unvaccinated Teens (Blaze)

• The Real Efficacy of Covid-19 Vaccines (OR)

• Fauci Compares Criticism Of Him To ‘Attacks On Science’ (RT)

• G7 Leaders Will Call For Fresh WHO Inquiry Into Covid Origins (G.)

• Covid Distancing May Have Weakened Children’s Immune System (G.)

• Mongolia Reports Fresh COVID Outbreak Despite High Vaccination Rates (ZH)

• J&J Must Pay $2 Billion In Landmark Talcum Baby Powder Trial (ZME)

• Yet Another Media Tale Collapses (Greenwald)

• EU-UK Talks On Northern Ireland Appear Close To Collapse On Eve Of G7 (G.)

• Joe Biden Accuses Boris Johnson Of ‘Inflaming’ Tensions In Ireland (Sun)

• Zelensky Tells Biden Ukraine Needs Clear Plan For Accession To NATO (ZH)

Actual deaths after waxxine

Surely this isn't true, It MUST be fabricated data, but it's from Official Govt Sources… The Solid RED line is alleged deaths from Covid pre wax, The broken RED line is the trajectory of the future deaths as per curve and the solid BLUE is actual deaths after the Waxxine. pic.twitter.com/4Zzr6lwti0

— ✖️RISE✖️ OR ✖️DIE✖️ (@altern8ending) June 10, 2021

Neat little trick.

• CDC Claims Hospitalization Rising Among Unvaccinated Teens (Blaze)

In order to justify the forced vaccination of children, the powers that be would somehow have to overturn 15 months of observations that COVID is less a threat to children than the flu and that unvaccinated children are less at risk than vaccinated adults (100 times less at risk than seniors), even if we are to believe Pfizer’s efficacy data. “CDC director reports spike in teen hospitalizations, urges parents to vaccinate kids over 12,” was the headline at the Hill on Friday, reporting on the CDC’s new study of hospitalizations. Naturally, it caught my attention because we all know that hospitalizations among all age groups have been plummeting to record lows across the country in recent weeks.

It turns out that along with its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the CDC published a “study” purporting to show an increase in hospitalizations among 12- to 17-year-olds, with one-third of them being in the ICU and 5% of them being placed on ventilators. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky was ready to pounce. “I am deeply concerned by the numbers of hospitalized adolescents and saddened to see the number of adolescents who required treatment in intensive care units or mechanical ventilation,” said Walensky in a statement. Of course, the solution is the great experimental gene therapy. “Until they are fully vaccinated, adolescents should continue to wear masks and take precautions when around other [sic] who are not vaccinated to protect themselves, and their family, friends, and community,” Walensky stated.

But there’s one problem. The CDC’s own data show that hospitalizations among all groups have plummeted over the past six weeks. It turns out they picked arbitrary start and end points – an old trick they’ve used with mask studies – which coincides with a period of increased hospitalizations among all age groups, including those with high vaccination rates. The study period of the CDC’s report was from March 1, 2020, to April 24, 2021. It just so happens that April 24 was roughly the peak period for ALL age groups! Most of that mini increase (after the major winter spread) was due to the final spring spread in the northeast and upper Midwest. Based on the CDC’s headlines, one would think that childhood hospitalizations are spreading now and that they are rising relative to other age groups. In reality, they have plummeted and only rose slightly from a near-zero baseline earlier this year along with other groups.

To make it clear once and for all.

• The Real Efficacy of Covid-19 Vaccines (OR)

Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) and Relative Risk Reduction (RRR)

Why are ARR and RRR very important? Very simply, let’s assume you have 100 people in a Treatment group and another 100 people in a Control or placebo group. Then, let’s say that 2 people get Disease X in the Control group while one person gets Disease X in the Treatment group. The Relative Risk Reduction or RRR in this example is 50% because one diseased person is 50% or half of 2 diseased people. However, the Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) is only 1% because in the treatment group, only one fewer people out of 100 participants got Disease X. You can also work it out using these formulas:

1) In the Treatment group, 1/100 got Disease X = 1% which is the EER (Experimental Event Rate)
2) In the Control or placebo group, 2/100 got Disease X = 2% which is the CER (Control Event Rate)
3) ARR (Absolute Risk Reduction) = CER – EER = 2% – 1% = 1%

In a subtraction the % signs carry through the equation and are kept.

4) RRR (Relative Risk Reduction) = ARR divided by CER = 1% divided by 2% = 1/2

In a division, the % signs cancel each other out and are not kept, but 1/2 is the same as 50%.

Let’s say the Treatment in this example had side effects, as most treatments do. If a patient were offered this Treatment and was told that the “efficacy” (how well the treatment works) was only 1% (the ARR) which is the true efficacy, this patient would be much less likely to accept the Treatment and its side effects than if he or she were told the efficacy was 50%. Fifty percent sounds a lot more promising than 1% but it reflects only the comparison between the diseased people of each group. The ARR or 1% efficacy is much more accurate as it reflects how many more people out of 100 will be protected from Disease X as a result of the Treatment. To just say that the Treatment is 50% effective in this scenario by ignoring the ARR is to introduce outcome reporting bias.

[..] Analysis of Pfizer’s Data

1) In the vaccine group, 8/18,198 got Covid-19 infection (not death) = 0.044% This is the EER (Experimental Event Rate)
2) In the Control (placebo) group, 162/18,325 got covid-19 infection (not death ) = 0.884% This is the CER (Control Event Rate)
3) ARR (Absolute Risk Reduction) = CER – EER = 0.884% – 0.044% = 0.84% = 0.84/100 = 0.0084
4) RRR (Relative Risk Reduction) = ARR divided by CER or 0.84% divided by 0.884% = 0.95

As this formula involves division, the percentage signs cancel out. 0.95 is the same as 95% which is what the Pfizer study reports for “efficacy.” An “efficacy” of 95% gives the impression that one is 95% less likely to catch Covid-19 if one is vaccinated with Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. However,

5) the ARR or Absolute Risk Reduction, which is 0.0084 or 0.84%, is actually less than 1%

As shown under the ARR and RRR heading above, the ARR (of any study) is far more accurate than the RRR, but clearly, 95% sounds much more compelling than <1%. Referring to the “efficacy” of the Pfizer vaccine as 95% is not technically incorrect, but it is very misleading as this value does not properly inform the vaccine recipient. Such misrepresentation is at the very least unethical and at most illegal in many countries which require informed consent. Unfortunately, it is easy for outcome reporting bias to escape detection since the average individual, including the average doctor, does not understand ARR and RRR and will automatically assume that “95% efficacy” means 95% less likely to get Covid-19 in the real world.

How much longer?

• Fauci Compares Criticism Of Him To ‘Attacks On Science’ (RT)

White House health advisor Anthony Fauci pushed back against growing controversy surrounding him, equating attacks on him to “attacks on science.” While Fauci remains a leading force in the US government’s battle against Covid-19, he has become an increasingly divisive figure, especially in light of a recent dramatic flip on his position on vaccinated Americans masking, as well as leaked emails seemingly showing him wavering on public positions. Asked about continuing attacks from mainly conservative critics, Fauci equated the criticism to attacking science itself. “It’s very dangerous, Chuck, because a lot of what you’re seeing as attacks on me quite frankly are attacks on science, because all of the things that I have spoken about consistently from the very beginning, have been fundamentally based on science,” he told MSNBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ hosted by Chuck Todd.

While critics have argued Fauci’s emails show he was perhaps more open to a lab leak theory behind Covid-19 privately than publicly and flip-flopped his position on masking, the infectious disease expert has denied any wrongdoing in the messages. “If you go through each and every one of them you can explain and debunk it immediately,” he said. As he has done in the past, Fauci argued that when he has seemingly changed his position on issues like masking, it’s because new data has been presented. “As a scientist, as a health official, when those data change, when you get more information, it’s essential that you change your position because you’ve got to be guided by the science and the current data,” he said. It was Fauci’s “science” defense that really stirred his critics – and Fauci believes they want him “fired” or “put in jail.”

Beyond the dangerous arrogance and pomposity of proclaiming ‘anyone who criticizes me is attacking Science’ – thus placing himself off-limits from questioning – he *admitted* he purposely issued false, anti-science, politicized claims, such as telling people not to wear masks,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted.

Fauci

Dr Fauci voices plans to give the Covid vaccine to any age child / baby, via "age de-escalation."
Source: https://t.co/X0tbfCuXaF pic.twitter.com/3dRfFSUwc7

— Heidegger (@heidegger79) June 9, 2021

Yeah, sure Fauci would like that! Then again, as long as it’s the WHO doing the inquiry, he has nothing to fear.

• G7 Leaders Will Call For Fresh WHO Inquiry Into Covid Origins (G.)

Leaders at the G7 summit will call for a new, transparent investigation by the World Health Organization into the origins of the coronavirus, according to a leaked draft communique for the meeting. The call was initiated by Joe Biden’s administration and follows the US president’s decision to expand the American investigation into the origins of the pandemic, with one intelligence agency leaning towards the theory that it escaped from a Wuhan laboratory. The broad consensus among scientific experts remains that the most likely explanation is that Covid-19 jumped to humans from an animal host in a natural event. An on-the-ground investigation by WHO experts earlier this year concluded t it was “extremely unlikely” the pandemic began in a laboratory.

According to Bloomberg News, which said it had sight of the draft communique, the G7 will also commit to deliver 1bn extra doses of the Covid-19 vaccine over the next year to accelerate global protection against the disease. The move may disappoint aid agencies that want most of the world’s 8 billion people to be vaccinated, but the communique will argue that the fresh commitment will dramatically increase the number of people in the developing world offered a vaccine. Ahead of his arrival at the summit, Biden said the US would commit to buying 500m doses of the vaccine for distribution to developing countries. The communique, which is often leaked ahead of the G7 summit, is due to be finalised on Sunday following a three-day meeting in Cornwall. At the 2020 summit in France, leaders abandoned publishing a list of commitments after Donald Trump refused to sign the letter.

Biden to announce a “vaccine plan for the world”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1402688704767041539

May have?

• Covid Distancing May Have Weakened Children’s Immune System (G.)

Scientists are concerned that measures to combat Covid-19 have weakened the immune systems of young children who have not been able to build up resistance to common bugs, leaving them vulnerable when mask-wearing and social distancing eventually end. Contact with viral pathogens happens on a fairly regular basis and although it does not always lead to sickness, the exposure helps shore the immune system against the threat should the bugs be encountered again. Over the past 14 months or so, protracted restrictions on mixing and travel, alongside mask-wearing and social distancing, have not only reduced the risk of Covid but other respiratory bugs such as the flu – cases of which were basically nonexistent last winter, according to surveillance data largely encompassing England compiled by the Royal College of GPs (RCGP).

However, virologists are concerned about RSV, a virus that can cause serious lung infections requiring hospital admission, and sometimes even death, in children under the age of one – and for which there are no approved vaccines. “Flu worries me, but there is a vaccine – and so the most vulnerable will still have access to the vaccines,” said Dr Catherine Moore, consultant clinical scientist for Public Health Wales. She warned that RSV currently has no vaccine. “Whereas what Covid has done has caused a big issue in our adult ICUs, we may see conversely problems in our paediatric hospitalisations and intensive care,” she said. Pre-Covid, most children encountered most seasonal viruses before they turned 18 months old.

But the biggest influx in paediatric hospital wards each winter are babies under the age of one who have for the first time been infected with RSV – because their lungs are not well developed, their bodies struggle to fight off the infection, explained Moore. Scientists are worried that if life begins to go back to pre-Covid normality, respiratory viruses that typically circulate every winter will return alongside the coronavirus. Moore said she was particularly worried about the risk of RSV in young children. “We’ve got two cohorts now of children who’ve never met the virus, so they are susceptible, but there’s two years’ worth of them!” Before the pandemic, data suggested more than 30,000 babies and children under five were admitted to hospital every year in the UK because of RSV. Assuming “normality” resumes later this year, “we are preparing for a significant impact in paediatrics”, said Moore.

Is it Sinopharm?

• Mongolia Reports Fresh COVID Outbreak Despite High Vaccination Rates (ZH)

For weeks now, Mongolia has been touted as an unexpected success story in the international vaccination project: the poor, mostly rural country lies between northeastern China and Russia’s resource-rich east. The country, which struck deals with its neighbors to stock its vaccine coffers months ago, drew attention due to its climbing international vaccination rate. But in recent days, Mongolia’s COVID-19 rate has surged, raising questions about the efficacy of China’s vaccines. More than half of Mongolia’s population has been fully vaccinated. But despite this, the country reported 1,312 new cases of the coronavirus on Wednesday as the country’s total infections neared 70K, with almost all of those recorded since January. New daily infections have risen more than 70% in the past two weeks, according to a New York Times database.

The landlocked nation has easily secured enough doses of the vaccine from Russia and China. And as its case numbers rise, Sinopharm’s vaccine has come under scrutiny because of a lack of transparency in its late-stage trial data. The vaccine faced more questions after the island nation of the Seychelles, which relied heavily on Sinopharm to inoculate its population, also saw a spike in cases, although most people did not become seriously ill. “Inactivated vaccines like Sinovac and Sinopharm are not as effective against infection but very effective against severe disease,” said Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist and biostatistician at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health. “Although Mongolia seems to be having a spike in infections and cases, my expectation is that there won’t be large number of hospitalizations,” he added.

Doubts about the efficacy of China’s Sinopharm jab have been spreading for months, as the vaccine was repeatedly shown to be less effective than the new mRNA jabs from Pfizer and Moderna-BioNTech. In some areas, mutant strains may be spreading fast enough to cause concern even in countries where much of the population has vaccinations effective against them: Britain is dealing with a rise in cases linked to the Delta variant, despite having more than half of its adult population fully vaccinated, largely with shots from AstraZeneca and Pfizer. Still, the wave of infections has raised questions in Mongolia over why the government relied on the Sinopharm shots instead of a vaccine proven to be more effective.

“If even a fraction of these cases succeed, it could cost J&J in the trillions.”

• J&J Must Pay $2 Billion In Landmark Talcum Baby Powder Trial (ZME)

In 2018, a court verdict ordered Johnson and Johnson to pay $2.1 billion to 22 plaintiffs who claimed the company’s talcum baby powder contained asbestos and caused ovarian cancer. It’s a hefty fine, but the stakes are even higher — as the company faces around 21,000 other trials. The story (or at least one part of it) starts in 1999, when J&J was sued by a woman who had used their baby powder. She claimed that the powder gave her cancer. The woman (and her lawyer) had a hunch that the company’s baby powder was contaminated with asbestos, but couldn’t prove it. It seemed to make sense: in nature, talc and asbestos (both naturally-occurring minerals) are often found together, so there’s a significant risk of contamination. But without hard evidence, the case was dropped. As it turns out, Johnson and Johnson had the hard evidence all along.

The company, which denied any wrongdoing, had numerous lab tests showing that their product sometimes contained small amounts of asbestos, a known carcinogen. Two decades later, they were ordered to release these lab tests during a much larger trial that involved 11,700 plaintiffs, who all claimed the same thing: Johnson and Johnson’s baby powder sometimes contains asbestos. According to a Reuters investigation, J&J knew they were in the wrong, and hid it from both the public and regulators. In light of these findings, a Missouri jury initially awarded the women $4.7 billion — but an appeal dropped two women from the suit and reduced the award to $2 billion. The judge in that case ruled that the company had “misrepresented the safety of these products for decades” and demonstrated “particularly reprehensible conduct.”

J&J tried to push things even further. The case initially combined the claims of almost two dozen plaintiffs from 12 states. The company argued to the Supreme Court that the sprawling nature of the case violated the Constitution’s due process clause. But without comment, the top US court refused to consider J&J’s objections. “Today justice is served,” said Mark Lanier, the women’s lawyer. “Twenty families now get compensated for a horrible, unnecessary disease. And J&J, the trigger for that disease, is held accountable.” Jurors in the initial case awarded each woman $25 million in compensatory damages, in addition to the company fine. For J&J, this could be only the beginning. The company faces more than 26,000 lawsuits blaming baby powder for causing cancers — which could be the biggest litigation lawsuit in history. If even a fraction of these cases succeed, it could cost J&J in the trillions.

Lafayette Park. Who will be held accountable?

• Yet Another Media Tale Collapses (Greenwald)

The independent Inspector General of the Interior Department, Mark Lee Greenblatt, issued his office’s findings after a long investigation into “the actions of the U.S. Park Police (USPP) to disperse protesters in and around Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020.” Greenblatt has been around Washington for a long time, occupying numerous key positions in the Obama administration, including investigative counsel at the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General and Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at Obama’s Commerce Department. The letter released by Greenblatt’s office accompanying the report makes clear how far-reaching the investigation was:

“Over the course of this review, our career investigative staff conducted extensive witness interviews, reviewed video footage from numerous vantage points, listened to radio transmissions from multiple law enforcement entities, and examined evidence including emails, text messages, telephone records, procurement documents, and other related materials. This report presents a thorough, independent examination of that evidence to assess the USPP’s decision making and operations, including a detailed timeline of relevant actions and an analysis of whether the USPP’s actions complied with governing policies.”

The IG’s conclusion could not be clearer: the media narrative was false from start to finish. Namely, he said, “the evidence did not support a finding that the [U.S. Park Police] cleared the park on June 1, 2020, so that then President Trump could enter the park.” Instead — exactly as Hemingway’s widely-mocked-by-liberal-outlets article reported — “the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow a contractor to safely install anti-scale fencing in response to destruction of Federal property and injury to officers that occurred on May 30 and May 31.” Crucially, “the evidence established that relevant USPP officials had made those decisions and had begun implementing the operational plan several hours before they knew of a potential Presidential visit to the park, which occurred later that day.”

Good Friday.

• EU-UK Talks On Northern Ireland Appear Close To Collapse On Eve Of G7 (G.)

Talks between the EU and the UK over Northern Ireland appear on the brink of collapse as London indicated it was still considering unilateral action to keep unhindered supplies flowing from Great Britain into the region. The European commission vice-president, Maros Sefcovic, said patience was “wearing very, very thin” and described the relationship with the UK as “at a crossroads”. Amid fears that the escalating crisis over Northern Ireland would develop into a trade war, David Frost, the Brexit minister, said there had been “no breakthroughs” over the Brexit checks but no “breakdowns” after a two-hour meeting with Sefcovic in London.

They agreed to continue to try to find a solution before 30 June when a ban on chilled meats including sausages and mincemeat is due to come into force. Late on Wednesday, Boris Johnson insisted that there was no crisis. “I’m very very optimistic about this. I think that’s easily doable,” he said, referring to an issue that was at the heard of the fraught Irish border negotiations two years ago: preventing a border on the island of Ireland while protecting trade within the UK post-Brexit. Johnson’s optimism could face a challenge at the G7 meeting on Thursday, however, when Joe Biden will warn him and the EU not to “imperil” the Northern Ireland peace process.

Playing with fire.

• Joe Biden Accuses Boris Johnson Of ‘Inflaming’ Tensions In Ireland (Sun)

Joe Biden has accused Boris Johnson of “inflaming” tensions in Ireland ahead of their first meeting in Britain today. The President is expected to address post-Brexit peace with the Prime Minister to ensure that the Good Friday Agreement is protected – as Britain and the EU try to resolve the issue of checks in the Irish Sea. But tensions over Britain’s handling of Irish issues have already been voiced by Biden, reports The Times. Yael Lempert, America’s most senior diplomat in Britain, told Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, that the government was “inflaming” tensions in Ireland and Europe with its opposition to checks at ports. Lempert said she had been told to take the step of issuing London with a demarche – which is a formal diplomatic reprimand rarely exchanged between allies.

The memo said that the US “strongly urged” Britain to come to a “negotiated settlement”, even if that meant “unpopular compromises,” according to reports. In a meeting on June 3, the US diplomat warned Frost that the increasingly bitter dispute between Britain and the EU over the protocol was “commanding the attention” of Biden before his first meeting with Johnson today. Ahead of the talks, Mr Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned that the president harbours “very deep” concerns on the issue provoked by Brexit. Mr Sullivan said the president believes the post-Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol is “critical” to ensure that the Good Friday Agreement is protected – as Britain and the EU try to resolve the issue of checks in the Irish Sea.

Ha ha ha!

• Zelensky Tells Biden Ukraine Needs Clear Plan For Accession To NATO (ZH)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed in his phone conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday that Ukraine needs “a real step-by-step plan” tied to calendar dates for its accession to NATO, the chief of the Ukrainian presidential office Andriy Yermak said according to a report on Ukraine’s official website. The time of statements and declarations of intent should be a thing of the past, Zelensky told Biden. “There can be no doubt that Ukraine is an integral part of Europe in terms of its value foundation. Now, in the new situation in Europe, we need a logistical plan for Ukraine’s accession to the Alliance in the near future. NATO is a way of maximum protection for our country,” Zelensky said.

According to a second official report, Zelensky also informed Biden about the situation in Donbas, a Ukrainian territory temporarily occupied by Russian-backed separatists, and explained the reasons and nature of the periodic escalation of the conflict. “The so-called withdrawal of Russian troops is only an imitation,” Zelensky said. There was still a high concentration of Russian troops and heavy weapons in the temporarily occupied Ukraine’s territories and near the Ukrainian border, he explained. “Ukraine’s move to NATO is also an opportunity to achieve the preconditions for establishing a stable and lasting peace in Donbas,” the second report states.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on June 4 during an event at The Brookings Institution that the best way for Ukraine to move toward membership in NATO is to implement reforms to fight corruption and to modernize its defense and security institutions. “We are helping [Ukraine] with that as they move toward further Euro-Atlantic integration,” he added. NATO provides support to Ukraine in the form of training and capacity building, Stoltenberg said, and encouraged NATO Allies “to do more of that.”

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Debt Rattle January 23 2021

Jan 232021

January 23, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:19 am Finance Tagged with: Biden, Big Tech, COVID, efficacy, free speech, Israel, Pfizer, superheroes, thought police, Trump, vaccine 25 Responses »

Zao Wu-Ki Le soleil rouge 1950

• Here Are the Superheroes To Come and Save Us (MPN)

• Dems Demand Social Media Stop ‘Polluting Minds Of American People’ (RT)

• New McCarthyism Will Prove An Orwellian Mistake – Hanson (K.)

• Big Tech, Big Brother, & The End Of Free Speech (RCP)

• The Echo Chamber Era (Matt Taibbi)

• 500,000 More British Kids Face Mental Health Issues (Wilson)

• Israel Analysis Of COVID Vaccine Raises Questions About UK Strategy (Sky)

• Are COVID Vaccination Programmes Working? (Nature)

• One Dose Of Pfizer Vaccine Could Be Less Effective Than Expected (BMJ)

• Hungary First EU Country To Get Russia’s Sputnik V Covid19 Vaccine (RT)

• Overall Mortality Is Around Normal For This Time Of Year (RT)

• How US CDC Missed Chances To Spot COVID’s Silent Spread (R.)

• McConnell Lays Out Trump Impeachment Trial Timeline (ZH)

• Rough Ridin’ with Biden (Kunstler)

• Home Run King Hank Aaron Dead At 86 (F.)

Cavafy – Monotony

“The few who ventured near the Capitol were mostly somber, as if they were attending a vigil.” “It feels a little postapocalyptic..”

• Here Are the Superheroes To Come and Save Us (MPN)

We rely on the media to hold the powerful to account. But in its first hours in office, the corporate press has celebrated, rather than challenged, the new Biden administration. It began immediately during the 78-year-old Delawarean’s inauguration, with senior figures in the media barely able to contain their emotions watching what they saw. “As Lady Gaga sang the national anthem, the sky opened up and sunlight reflected off of the Capitol, illuminating the flag,” wrote Olivia Nuzzi, the New Yorker’s Washington correspondent. The New York Times was in a similarly poetic mood. “Whether or not related to the former president’s absence, a bipartisan lightness seemed to prevail across the stage at President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Snow flurries gave way to sun,” ran its subheadline.

If it were not clear enough that corporate media intends to spend the next four years propping up, rather than scrutinizing President Biden, then senior CNN figures spelled it out. “Trump—>Biden. Lies—>truth. Ignorance—>knowledge. Amorality—>decency. Cruelty—> empathy. Corruption—>public service” wrote CNN’s White House correspondent John J. Harwood on Twitter, attributing several extremely positive (and questionable) qualities to the incoming president. Meanwhile, the company’s head of strategic communications, Matt Dornic, was in an even more bombastic mood. Sharing a picture of fireworks exploding over the Washington Monument, he remarked that, “This team truly understands optics. These images will inspire our friends and shake our foes.”

Leaving aside why some colorful pyrotechnics would terrify Russia, China or any nation, Dornic’s rhetoric worried many who felt the nation’s top journalists should see themselves as the government’s adversaries, rather than their allies. “Note how this CNN imperial stenographer fearmongers about foreign bogeymen with his “foe” rhetoric. The real foe of average working-class Americans isn’t any foreign nation; it’s the parasitic capitalist oligarchs who control everything and their lackeys in politics and the media,” replied Ben Norton of The Grayzone. Perhaps the most adulatory coverage of the inauguration came from MSNBC, however, with analyst John Heilemann depicting the senior politicians present as almost mythical ubermensch. “What was to me so striking about today was that comforting sense,” he said.

“The sight of the Clintons and the Bushes and the Obamas — The Avengers, the Marvel superheroes back up there together all in one place with their friend Joe Biden.” He later went on to compare Biden’s speech to Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address of 1865 after the union victory in the American Civil War and claimed there was a deep sense of relief washing over the nation’s capital.. This sentiment was apparently not shared by ordinary people on the street. Even as it was praising Biden, the New York Times reported that “The few who ventured near the Capitol were mostly somber, as if they were attending a vigil.” “It feels a little postapocalyptic, to be honest,” one told them.

How is this not the thought police?

”..algorithms and recommendations that breed extremism and undermine the sense of “objective reality.”

• Dems Demand Social Media Stop ‘Polluting Minds Of American People’ (RT)

Democrats in the US Congress have urged major social media platforms to eliminate algorithms and recommendations that breed extremism and undermine the sense of “objective reality.” Representatives Anna Eshoo and Tom Malinowski wrote letters demanding change to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. A similar letter was sent to the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, and Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, which is owned by Google. “For years, social media companies have allowed harmful disinformation to spread through their platforms, polluting the minds of the American people,” Eshoo tweeted. The lawmakers argued that social media platforms allow content which reinforces “existing political biases, especially those rooted in anger, anxiety, and fear.”

They said the algorithms used by Big Tech “undermine our shared sense of objective reality” and “facilitate connections between extremist users,” which lead to violence in real life, like the storming of the US Capitol in Washington, DC on January 6. Twitter was urged to “immediately make permanent changes to limit the spread of misinformation and other forms of harmful content.” Facebook and YouTube were similarly asked to tweak their recommendation systems in order not to promote “dangerous conspiracy theories” among users. The Democrats and many in the media accused former President Donald Trump of inciting the crowd of his supporters to seize the Capitol in hopes of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.

“We are in a sort of left-wing version of the Corleone “Godfather” cinema family “taking care of business” all at once.”

• New McCarthyism Will Prove An Orwellian Mistake – Hanson (K.)

The efforts of “Big Tech” to ban Trump and many of his supporters, while Apple, Google etc in concert made it almost impossible for a conservative site like Parler to exist, are reflections of a Salem Witch trial madness sparked by the trifecta of Trump’s loss, the Capitol violence, and the Republican loss of the Senate. Hysteria reigns as books by conservatives are now canceled, thousands kicked off social media, radio hosts fired etc. We are in a sort of left-wing version of the Corleone “Godfather” cinema family “taking care of business” all at once. Yet this new McCarthyism will prove an Orwellian mistake, and constitute one of the greatest political blunders in modern US history.

Think of the Ayatollah Khamenei calling for the destruction of Israel on Twitter with impunity or Antifa announcing planning sessions for their next riot, on Facebook with impunity – juxtaposed to social media banning those who merely showed up in Washington at a peaceful rally and did not join the violent splinter group who stormed the halls of Congress. In contrast, again, the current Vice President Harris earlier had called for the more protests this summer. Many were violent and occasionally lethal, resulting in mass looting, death and arson by Antifa and BLM. She worked to bail out those arrested for street violence. The public is tiring of such asymmetries. US publishers all the time publish books like “In Defense of Looting” – a manifesto supporting the mass theft from stores this summer. So there is no consistency in the current violations of free speech.

And the effort to remove Trump before his tenure not only failed, but showed his opponents as small-minded and vindictive and further divided a 50/50 divided country. The attempt to coordinate Big Tech to destroy the conservative opposition’s means of communicating with the public came by design on the eve of the most revolutionary moments in modern history to come: Very soon the Left plans to end the 180-year Senate filibuster, the 234-year Electoral College, the 60-year 50-state union (by adding Puerto Rico and Washington DC), and the 150-year-old nine-person Supreme Court – and now will have its critics de-platformed from social media or afraid to express objections in fear of being banned.

“..When 13-year-olds are entrusted with cellphones and Snapchat accounts, they can use them to bring shame on innocent children and even destroy their lives. Often, this involves spreading false rumors about the person or discrediting them for something they espouse, like their religion, their political beliefs or their sexual identity. Tell me how this is different from what Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have done to Donald Trump..”

• Big Tech, Big Brother, & The End Of Free Speech (RCP)

In George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” members of the Outer Party of Oceania engage in the Two Minutes Hate ritual against Emmanuel Goldstein, who is supposed to be the enemy of the people but may actually just be a fabricated symbol to distract the people from their real enemy — Big Brother. In Nancy Pelosi’s “Twenty Twenty-One,” members of the Democratic Party engage in the Two Hours Hate against Donald Trump, who is supposed to be the enemy of the people, but may actually just be a fabricated symbol to distract the people from their real enemy — Big Tech. Two hours of hate — er, debate — was held in the House of Representatives last Wednesday for the avowed purpose of removing a president of the United States. That’s all it took. Two hours. That should tell you everything you need to know about the state of democracy in our country.

[..] In a sense, Big Tech has taken cyberbullying to its logical conclusion. When 13-year-olds are entrusted with cellphones and Snapchat accounts, they can use them to bring shame on innocent children and even destroy their lives. Often, this involves spreading false rumors about the person or discrediting them for something they espouse, like their religion, their political beliefs or their sexual identity. Tell me how this is different from what Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have done to Donald Trump and, by extension, the more than 74 million people who voted for him. This group of post-pubescent cyberbullies in Silicon Valley doesn’t like Donald Trump. They feel justified in calling him names like white supremacist and Nazi and racist. They don’t care whether it hurts him or not. They don’t care whether it is true or not. They are strangely enlivened by what they perceive as their ability to hurt him, to weaken him.

Like the mob that they have attempted to link the president to, these bullies act in mindless concert, emboldened by each other to see who can strike the deeper blow, who can make the victim hurt more. And over what? Differences of opinion, for the most part. Strong border or no border? Mask or no mask? Globalism or Americanism? Carbon credits or fracking? Abortion or no abortion? And then the last straw — fair election or fraudulent election? These should be legitimate subjects for debate in a free society. But not anymore. Big Tech has banned debate about government policy on the coronavirus, and any discussion of election fraud is treated as if it were a crime. But wait? It’s only a crime to question the government in a totalitarian system, like that in communist China or Orwell’s fictional Oceania, right?

In America, we have the right and obligation to question our government, don’t we? Because, if we don’t have that right any longer, then what are they afraid of? What are they hiding? Bottom line: At some point in some election, the allegations of election fraud have to be real. It can’t always just be the figment of some right-wing president’s imagination. And if we aren’t allowed to have free speech, then how do we fight back? If Big Tech and Big Government have their way, we don’t. Just keep your head down and your nose clean — and never ever question what you are told.

“..not a bad or even a terrible plan, but literally a “nonexistent” plan, despite the fact that 36 million vaccines had already been delivered..”

• The Echo Chamber Era (Matt Taibbi)

Blue-state audiences didn’t ask for accounting for those official warnings for the same reason Trump voters never asked what happened to those three million undocumented votes Hillary Clinton supposedly won in 2016: audiences don’t demand explanations for puffed-up claims about other groups. People like Sullivan would have you believe that “balance” is a mandate to give voice to clearly illegitimate points of view, but it’s really about not falling so completely in love with your “values” that you stop caring to avoid mistakes about those who don’t share them, or even just mistakes generally. By any standard, the press had a terrible four years, from the mangling of dozens of Russiagate tales to scandals like the New York Times “Caliphate” disaster and the underappreciated Covington High School story fiasco.

Still, many in the business can’t see how bad it’s been, because they’ve walled themselves off so completely from potential critics. Coupled with the enhanced aggressiveness of Silicon Valley in removing dissenting accounts across the spectrum — Facebook is taking down six Socialist Workers Party accounts in Britain as I write this, a day after zapping a series of Antifa accounts — reporters at places like the Post, the Times, and CNN every day have less and less to worry about in terms of audience blowback, and they know it. Just in the first few days of the Biden administration, we’ve seen editorial decisions that would never have been attempted once upon a time. The Post just tried to remove seven paragraphs of their own archived article about Vice President Kamala Harris, which contained a cringeworthy scene of Harris and her sister joking about prisoners begging for water, only to restore it after an outcry.

CNN meanwhile ran a story that incoming Biden officials had to “build everything from scratch” with regard to Covid-19 policy because the Trump administration had no plan for vaccine distribution at all — not a bad or even a terrible plan, but literally a “nonexistent” plan, despite the fact that 36 million vaccines had already been delivered. In this rare case, rival media organizations cried foul, with reporters from both Politico and the Washington Post blasting the report as untrue and a “gambit to lower expectations” by the incoming administration. In an atmosphere where editors really feared discontent from outside demographics or rival party politicians, a story like that, with an over-the-top-to-impossible premise, would never even be tried.

COVID is not a one-dimensional issue, but it keeps being treated as such. “500,000 children under 18 in England, with no previous problems, will need mental health care..”

• 500,000 More British Kids Face Mental Health Issues (Wilson)

The gloom is infectious, as a study out today from the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford confirmed. Formerly freewheeling, high-spirited online chats have morphed into muted complaints and low moods as the novelty of school in the kitchen wore off long ago. The wide, everchanging schoolyard social networks of our children have disappeared, replaced by social contact with whoever happens to be online at the same time they are. Boredom encourages bickering and the subtleties of personal relationships are forced to rely on broadband speed, What’s App chat emojis and access to a shared computer. It is not healthy in any way. We now risk destroying our children’s love of learning while creating a mental health crisis that has struck half a million previously healthy kids across the nation already, according to the Centre for Mental Health.

It says 500,000 children under 18 in England, with no previous problems, will need mental health care due to the devastating economic, health and family pressures caused by the ongoing coronavirus crisis. This has manifested itself in children as young as five reporting self-harm and suicidal thoughts to counsellors and a tripling in the number of eating disorders reported by adolescents. An Ofsted report in November discovered that more than two months of lost schooling last spring had resulted in children regressing in basic skills such as reading and writing. And –as always– it is the poor who suffer worst. It’s estimated 1.1m kids have no computer at home, making attending online lessons impossible. The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that, in the last lockdown, better-off children spent 30 per cent more time on remote learning than disadvantaged ones. The attainment gap between rich and poor pupils will grow markedly.

A survey by England’s Mental Health of Children and Young People survey found that more than a quarter of children aged five to 16 reported disrupted sleep, one in five did not have somewhere quiet to work, and girls had the highest prevalence (27.2 per cent) of probable mental health issues. This is all shocking news. Our children are facing serious problems with their mental health in numbers never seen before and yet with no end date in sight they are expected to sit in front of a screen five hours a day, five days a week. It’s not helping, and it is clear that keeping schools shut is doing immense and lasting damage to our children.

We had a discussion in yesterday’s Debt Rattle thread about the first real-world analysis of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Which answers some questions, and leaves new ones. The 33% efficacy after two weeks raises alarms. Even if it rises afterwards.

I still have many questions about what exactly constitutes the efficacy. If all it does is keep people from getting more severely ill, that is fine, but at least be open about it.

• Israel Analysis Of COVID Vaccine Raises Questions About UK Strategy (Sky)

The first real-world analysis of the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine suggests it is matching its performance in clinical trials, but raises serious questions about the UK’s decision to delay the second dose. Scientists in Israel – which is leading the COVID-19 vaccination race – have told Sky News that they are “very hopeful” having studied preliminary data from 200,000 vaccinated people. But crucially they say their results do not show efficacy at a level close to that used by the UK to justify delaying the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNtech jab. Professor Ran Balicer is a physician, epidemiologist and chief innovation officer for Clalit, the largest health care provider in Israel. He is also an adviser to the WHO. “We compared 200,000 people above the age of 60 that were vaccinated. We took a comparison group of 200,000 people, same age, not vaccinated, that were matched to this group on various variables…” Prof Balicer said.

“Then we looked to see what is the daily positivity rate… And we saw that there was no difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated until day 14 post-vaccination. “But on day 14 post-vaccination, a drop of 33% in positivity was witnessed in the vaccinated group and not in the unvaccinated… this is really good news.” However, UK scientists said in December that trial data had suggested it would be 89% effective after one dose. A document issued by the UK government’s vaccine advisers, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, to justify delaying the second dose for up to 12 weeks said: “Using data for those cases observed between day 15 and 21, efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 was estimated at 89%, suggesting that short term protection from dose 1 is very high from day 14 after vaccination.”

This is much more optimistic than the new real-world Israeli data suggests. Responding to the UK government strategy, Prof Balicer said: “The data and estimates I gave are what we have. “We could not see 89% reduction in the data we reported. Further data and analyses will be released in peer reviewer scientific format.” He added: “The practice in Israel is to provide the second vaccine at three weeks. “And so it is impossible for us to tell what would be the impact of not providing the second dose…” Israel is following Pfizer/BioNtech protocol in giving the second dose of the coronavirus vaccine three weeks after the first. It has a smaller population and a regular supply from Pfizer/BioNtech. In return it’s providing detailed data to Pfizer.

And this is just incredibly weak: “If vaccines are effective at preventing infections, then their indirect benefit — protecting unvaccinated people — will be visible only once enough people have been immunized..”

• Are COVID Vaccination Programmes Working? (Nature)

The results from Israel are among the first to report the impact of vaccines administered to people outside clinical trials. They provide an early indication that the two-dose RNA-based vaccine developed by Pfizer–BioNTech can prevent infection or limit its duration in some vaccinated people. In a preliminary analysis of 200,000 people older than 60 who received the vaccine, compared with a matched group of 200,000 who did not, researchers found that the chances of testing positive for the virus were 33% lower two weeks after the first injection. “We were happy to see this preliminary result that suggests a real-world impact in the approximate timing and direction we would have expected,” says Ran Balicer, an epidemiologist at Israel’s largest health-care provider, Clalit Health Services, in Tel Aviv.

He expects to get more conclusive results several weeks after people receive their second shot. Another analysis, by Maccabi Healthcare Services, found a similar trend, although neither study has been peer-reviewed. Clinical trials of the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine show it to be around 90% effective at preventing COVID-19, and the preliminary data suggest it can also provide some protection from infection. But it will take longer to establish whether vaccinated people no longer spread the virus to unvaccinated people, says Balicer. As more than 75% of older people in Israel have been vaccinated, Balicer says he expects to see a drop in hospitalizations among vaccinated older people over the coming weeks.

Most countries are prioritizing COVID-19 vaccinations for people who have a high risk of getting severe disease and dying. So, the first evidence that shots are working in those countries will probably be reductions in hospitalizations, and then in deaths, says Alexandra Hogan, an infectious-disease modeller at Imperial College London. If vaccines are effective at preventing infections, then their indirect benefit — protecting unvaccinated people — will be visible only once enough people have been immunized, says Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Israel will probably be the first country to see this kind of population-wide impact, say researchers. This is because it is using a high-efficacy vaccine and aiming for wide coverage with the explicit goal of achieving herd immunity, when enough people are immune to a virus for its spread to be controlled.

Yeah, but effective at what? Not at protecting others, that much is clear now.

• One Dose Of Pfizer Vaccine Could Be Less Effective Than Expected (BMJ)

Concerns have been raised over how much protection a single dose of the Pfizer BioNTech covid-19 vaccine provides, following reports from Israel that it is much lower than expected. Israel, which, like the UK, is currently in its third national lockdown, has so far vaccinated more than 75% of its older people with at least one dose. Early reports from the vaccine rollout have suggested that the first dose led to a 33% reduction in cases of coronavirus compared with efficacy of at least 52% reported in clinical trials. A preliminary report from the Clalit Research Institute compared the infection data of 200.000 people aged 60 and over who were not vaccinated with the infection data of 200.000 people of the same age group who received one vaccine dose and were monitored for at least 11 days from the date of vaccination.

On day 14 there was a significant decrease of about 33% in the rate of positive tests for the coronavirus among those who had been vaccinated. This decrease remained the same between days 15 and 17. The report has raised concerns, as published results have suggested that the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine was 52.4% between the first and second dose (spaced 21 days apart), and data assessed by Public Health England indicated it could be as much as 89% protective from day 15 to 21. The Clalit Research Institute stressed, however, that its results included only people aged 60 and over whereas Pfizer trials also included younger people and that the findings have not yet been peer reviewed. Additionally, the Clalit study identified those infected according to laboratory tests of those who chose to be tested, while Pfizer’s studies only referred to the appearance of symptomatic disease.

In the UK, the vaccine policy prioritises getting as many at risk people vaccinated with one dose over ensuring people get two doses within the time specified in clinical trials. While there are data to suggest the chosen 12 week interval between the two doses is effective for the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, there are no data to support this interval for the Pfizer vaccine. As such, a leading statistician has written to UK health secretary Matt Hancock urging him to investigate the effects of the decision to extend the gap between the first and second dose of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.

“Unfortunately, the EU purchases vaccines very slowly, so Hungary continues negotiations with Israel, Russia, and China,” Orban said.”

• Hungary First EU Country To Get Russia’s Sputnik V Covid19 Vaccine (RT)

Shortly after becoming the first EU country to approve Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, Hungary has agreed on a three-stage supply deal with Moscow. Budapest will receive its first delivery of doses in February. The contract between the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and the government in Budapest was made on Friday, in a meeting between Russian Minister of Health Mikhail Murashko and Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó. According to Murashko, Hungarian experts visited the Gamaleya Institute, where the formula was invented, and conducted a thorough examination of vaccine production sites. The scientists also had the opportunity to review clinical trial results. “Many countries today approve the use of the Russian Sputnik V, and we are actively cooperating with the World Health Organization,” Murashko told the press.

In response, Szijjártó called the announcement of the agreement “a great honor,” assuring Hungary’s citizens that experts from the country’s own National Institute of Pharmacology and Food Safety reviewed the entire process themselves. On Thursday, it was revealed that Budapest had approved Sputnik V for emergency use, despite it not yet being deemed safe by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). On January 8, Hungarian President Victor Orban complained that the European Union was being too slow to make any decisions, putting citizens’ lives at risk. “Unfortunately, the EU purchases vaccines very slowly, so Hungary continues negotiations with Israel, Russia, and China,” Orban said. Two weeks later, his country approved Sputnik V for use.

Branch Covidians.

• Overall Mortality Is Around Normal For This Time Of Year (RT)

Although the numbers of deaths attributed to the virus in the UK are higher than they’ve ever been, in total, not many more people are dying than in any other cold season. Is the mainstream media finally waking up to this?
A recent article in the Telegraph is one of the first in a mainstream outlet to even suggest a challenge to the official coronavirus narrative. These days, that narrative claims that the ‘second wave’ is actually deadlier than the first. (Recently, some Branch Covidians have been claiming a ‘third wave’, but there is not yet a united front on that.) The basic reasoning of the article is sound, even if it is long overdue. It laments how every day, the media solemnly reports the latest figures on Covid deaths. Presenting this figure in isolation results in graphs such as this one, which does indeed seem to show that we are at the height of a second, worse phase of a pandemic.

But, like any statistics, daily death numbers are meaningless without context, which the media rarely provides. They do not provide context because, if they did, the public might see a graph such as this one, from the Telegraph article.

It quite clearly shows the spring spike in overall mortality, which was caused by Covid (plus lockdowns). After that ends in summer, we see… nothing. Overall mortality ever since, even through this winter, hovers at around the five-year average. And overall mortality, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, is the only true way to know whether you are in a pandemic or not – all other figures can easily be fiddled. So, why are the excess death data and the Covid deaths data so out of whack? And why isn’t Covid killing lots and lots of people this winter, as it did in spring? Even if you ascribe all excess deaths to Covid and none to lockdown, there really does not seem to be anything out of the normal variation in total deaths from year to year. And surely, by now, the toll of unnecessary deaths caused by untreated cancer, heart disease, depression and so on, has at least begun to register.

You mean it was’t all Trump’s fault?

• How US CDC Missed Chances To Spot COVID’s Silent Spread (R.)

Critics have widely asserted that the CDC fumbled key decisions during the coronavirus scourge because then-President Donald Trump and his administration meddled in the agency’s operations and muzzled internal experts. The matter is now the subject of a congressional inquiry. Yet Reuters has found new evidence that the CDC’s response to the pandemic also was marred by actions – or inaction – by the agency’s career scientists and frontline staff. At a crucial moment in the pandemic when Americans were quarantined after possible exposure to the virus abroad, the agency declined or resisted potentially valuable opportunities to study whether the disease could be spread by those without symptoms, according to previously undisclosed internal emails, other documents and interviews with key players.

Soon after balking at testing the returnees from Wuhan, the agency delayed testing asymptomatic passengers among 318 evacuees from the Diamond Princess, a contaminated cruise ship in Japan. In addition, the agency failed at that time to make effective use of outside experts and appeared at times unprepared for the crisis on the ground, lacking adequate personal protective gear and ignoring established protocols, Reuters found. “Yes, they were interfered with politically,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, referring to alleged meddling by the Trump administration. “But that’s not the only reason CDC didn’t perform optimally during COVID-19. There are a lot of things that went wrong.”

Four top public health experts or ethicists told Reuters that the question of whether to test or engage in research on detained people has always been a sensitive topic. But all said the CDC should have proceeded given the fast-moving public health emergency. Moreover, the CDC finalized rules in 2017 providing that medical testing was expressly allowed in quarantine, as long as participants were given the opportunity to give “informed consent” or opt out. Informed consent means giving people adequate information to understand the risks and benefits of a test or procedure. Gostin said the CDC’s argument against testing was “unreasonable” under the circumstances. “You are asking for consent and not imposing any harm,” he said. “There is a good reason to do it.”

It’s difficult to know whether more aggressive early testing among asymptomatic people would have significantly altered the trajectory of the pandemic in the United States, which has infected 24 million people and killed more than 400,000. The CDC was not the only agency that struggled with this issue. Notably, an official with the World Health Organization called asymptomatic spread “very rare” in June, only to say a day later “we don’t actually have that answer yet.” In recent months, the WHO has said infected people without symptoms can be contagious, but “it is still not clear how frequently this occurs.”

The circus is in town.

• McConnell Lays Out Trump Impeachment Trial Timeline (ZH)

While the left is split between wanting to hammer the final nail in Trump’s coffin (through the Senate impeachment trial) and tending to its aggressive agenda of new laws, spending, and government control, U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) issued a statement today regarding his proposed timeline for the first phases of an impeachment trial of former president Trump. “I have sent a proposed timeline for the first phases of the upcoming impeachment trial to Leader Schumer and look forward to continuing to discuss it with him. “Senate Republicans are strongly united behind the principle that the institution of the Senate, the office of the presidency, and former President Trump himself all deserve a full and fair process that respects his rights and the serious factual, legal, and constitutional questions at stake.

“Given the unprecedented speed of the House’s process, our proposed timeline for the initial phases includes a modest and reasonable amount of additional time for both sides to assemble their arguments before the Senate would begin to hear them. “At this time of strong political passions, Senate Republicans believe it is absolutely imperative that we do not allow a half-baked process to short-circuit the due process that former President Trump deserves or damage the Senate or the presidency.” Specifically, Leader McConnell shared the following proposed pre-trial timeline with the Republican Conference today: “When the articles arrive, the House Managers would exhibit (read) the articles to the Senate, Senators would be sworn in the Members as the Court of Impeachment, and would issue a summons to former President Trump.

“While we do not know what day the Managers will choose, Leader McConnell has asked for this to occur on Thursday, January 28. Former President Trump would have one week from that day to answer the articles of impeachment (February 4). The House’s pre-trial brief would also be due then. The President would then have one week from the day he submits his answer to submit his pre-trial brief (February 11). That means former president Trump has fourteen total days from when we issue the summons to write his pre-trial brief. The House would also submit its replication on this date. The House would then have two days to submit their rebuttal pre-trial brief (February 13). This approach tracks the structure of the Clinton and Trump pre-trial processes. The periods between due dates are longer than in 1999 or 2020, but this is necessary because of the House’s unprecedented timeline.

“Who will step forward in his absence? Probably someone we haven’t heard from yet. That’s how these things work.”

• Rough Ridin’ with Biden (Kunstler)

As for Mr. Trump, he departed as he had arrived in 2016: stridently contemptuous toward the parasitical oligarchy that finally expelled him like a bladder-stone. The threatened impeachment trial will be a marvel of casuistry — a procedure for removing someone from office who is no longer in office — and also for the transparently flimsy charge of “inciting the insurrection” at the capitol. As if to underscore the absurdity of that, Antifa squads rioted in Portland and Seattle on inauguration night. Their banners expressed less-than-jubilant sentiment for the new regime. The Portland outfit broke windows and spray-painted the city’s Democratic headquarters, faking-out pols who had warned against an uprising of “white supremacists.”

Of course, all those arrested would be promptly released without charges — demonstrating just how serious the Wokester officials running those cities really are about criminal anarchy. The grannies swept into the capitol rotunda by Antifa incursionists January 6th won’t be so lucky. Neither did a much chattered-about military takeover happen during the tension-filled transition hours, though kibitzers on the web insist days later that it remains secretly underway. On his way out, Mr. Trump failed to pardon either Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, a disturbing failure, while he commuted the sentences of a couple of two-bit rap-stars, based on their contributions to advancing human dignity. And whatever Mr. Trump finally rooted out in the way of declassified FBI documents has already disappeared into the DC quicksand.

Much adored as he is for valiantly opposing everything swampish, it might be best now for Mr. Trump to just retire from the political scene and leave the battle to others. He made his point, colorfully and often bravely, considering the astounding bad faith of his adversaries, though he certainly could have articulated the stakes better and with more decorum. He leaves not merely a vacuum but a sucking chest wound of leadership opposing hysterical and tyrannical Wokery. Who will step forward in his absence? Probably someone we haven’t heard from yet. That’s how these things work.

Muhammad Ali once called Aaron “The only man I idolize more than myself.”

Aaron received the first dose of the Moderna vaccine on Jan 5.

I don’t normally do eulogies for athletes, but this is about so much more. I was thinking about the hardship people like Aaron and Jackie Robinson went through in America’s great national pastime.

Only when Muhammad Ali arrived did that really change. And he paid a big price for that.

• Home Run King Hank Aaron Dead At 86 (F.)

Aaron was born in Mobile, Ala., to Herbert Aaron, Sr. and Estella (Pritchett) Aaron in February of 1934. He and his seven siblings grew up poor, in a home without electricity or indoor bathrooms. Aaron didn’t have an opportunity to play organized baseball in high school because only white students had teams. He signed his first baseball contract, which paid him $10 a game, at the age of 17 with a local semi-pro team called the Mobile Black Bears. After a couple of seasons dominating the Negro Leagues, Aaron joined the Atlanta Braves in 1954. Over his incredible 22-year career, Hammerin’ Hank would tally 3,771 hits in 3,298 games played. Remarkably, Aaron still holds the all-time major league records for most RBIs (2,297), total bases (6,856) and extra-base hits (1,477). Yet, Aaron was best known for the long ball.

Despite measuring only six feet and weighing in at around 180 pounds in his prime, Aaron would finish his epic career with 755 career home runs, a mark that survived until Barry Bonds (reportedly with the help of steroids) broke it in 2007. Aaron was a first-ballot inductee into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982. As he inched closer to passing Babe Ruth’s record of 714 home runs in the early 1970s, Aaron endured an avalanche of death threats from racists that did not want to see a Black man break Ruth’s revered record. In his 1991 autobiography, Aaron described how “when people finally realized I was climbing up Ruth’s back, the “Dear N——r” letters started showing up with alarming regularity. They told me no n——-r had any right to go where I was going.” In a 1992 interview with the Atlanta Journal, Aaron revealed he held onto all the hate letters he’d received. “I’m always going to keep them,” he said. “I don’t care what anybody says. It’s just like telling a Jewish family to forget about the Holocaust. If you’re not part of something, it’s easy to tell somebody to forget about it.”

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