Ivan Aivazovsky The Galata tower by moonlight 1845
“Israel, where ~90% of the adult population is fully vaccinated, reports 3,849 new #COVID19 cases, severe cases spike to 324 (of which 209 are fully vaccinated)” – Ministry of Health
There are entire “long covid in kids” campaigns out there.
• Long-Lasting Covid-19 Symptoms Rare In Children (BBC)
Children who become ill with coronavirus rarely experience long-term symptoms, with most recovering in less than a week, research suggests. King’s College London scientists say that while a small group may experience prolonged illness, they were “reassured” that number was low. Headaches and tiredness were the most common symptoms seen. A Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health expert said the data reflected what doctors saw in clinics. Many who are infected do not develop symptoms and those that do, tend to have a mild illness. This peer-reviewed study, published in the Lancet Child and Adolescent Health journal, wanted to understand how Covid affected children and how it compared to other respiratory diseases. It used data provided by parents or carers to the UK Zoe Covid Study app.
The study looked at 1,734 children, aged between five and 17, who were reported to have developed symptoms and tested positive for Covid between September 2020 and February 2021. The researchers say it’s very difficult to know how many children were infected during this time period as the four UK nations record data differently, but they estimate more than 400,000 children and young people tested positive. Fewer than one in 20 (4%) were found to have experienced symptoms for four weeks or more, with one in 50 (2%) having symptoms for more than eight weeks. The most common symptoms reported were headaches and tiredness. Others included a sore throat and loss of smell. On average, older children were typically ill for slightly longer than primary school children, with those aged between 12 and 17 taking a week to recover while for younger children the illness lasted five days.
It’s the scientists hope that these findings will reassure families, while also validating those who have experienced prolonged illness. ‘The team also looked at an equal number of children who had symptoms but tested negative for Covid. Only a few children – 15 out of 1,734 – had symptoms for at least 28 days, fewer than one in 100. Emma Duncan, professor of clinical endocrinology at King’s College London who worked on the research, said the “takeaway message” was: “Can children have prolonged illness after Covid-19? Yes they can, but it’s not common and most of these children get better with time. “Children can also have prolonged symptoms from other illnesses as well. We need to be looking after all children who have protracted illnesses, irrespective of whether that illness is Covid-19 or anything else.”
"So for children, the balance of risks is very clear:
The risk of the vaccine is greater than the risk of Covid itself" pic.twitter.com/8n1m3rVn2r— Patrick Phillips MD (@DrP_MD) August 7, 2021
The obvious questions that are forbidden.
• Let’s Talk Delta (Denninger)
I’ll try to make it simple. Before the first jab went into the first arm and could do anything Covid-19 had peaked in the United States in most areas. Remember that the rule is “two weeks from first shot to second, then two weeks to have protection.” The CDC, Trump and then Biden all took credit for something that the vaccines did not do. What did it? Covid originally had an R0 of about 3. That means you need 1 – (1/3) or about 66% of the people to be immune by either infection of vaccination before the case rate would fall. The CDC claimed we had about 33 million infections and somewhere between 4 and 11 not diagnosed for each one that was. Well, it wasn’t 11 because that’s more people than exist in the US.
But if it’s six, more or less up the middle, then we were for all intents and purposes at herd immunity. Rah-rah-rah-rah vaccines are the reason we’re saved. Nice try; the evidence is that the vaccines don’t work well at all. They might work to some degree to prevent infection and transmission but not very well. In fact on the evidence coming out of Israel it appears that they’re about 20% effective which is damn close to worthless. What proved this? Delta. Again, if you believe the CDC, then Delta has an R0 of somewhere between 5-9. Let’s take the middle; 7. 1 – 1/7 = 85% must be immune. Again, it doesn’t matter how their immune, just that they are. The CDC claims in a new MMWR that the shots are “very” effective as a booster if you previously had Covid. I disagree, looking at their alleged “study.”
check the Delta fatality rate
But frankly, I don’t care what their MMWR says because the data says its wrong. See, 70% of Americans have had at least one shot and half are fully vaccinated, that is, allegedly protected. Now let’s look at the data again. The CDC stupidly did not segregate and hive off those who were previously infected; we’ll thus, given their advocacy, assume that the previously-infected, which are about 60% of the population, are equally divided into those who got the stabs. Well, if that’s true then 60 + 25 = 85% — which is herd immunity for Delta with an R0 of 7! Clearly, however, it isn’t given the infection rate. There is only one logical conclusion: The jabs do not work to stop either infection or transmission. If you can’t stop infection and transmission you also can’t stop people from getting sick.
So when does this end? When enough people get naturally infected that we have actual herd immunity. Which is what I said back in March of 2020. What does this mean for you? Well, it makes for a problem right now, because we know that during the four weeks between the first jab and immunity building you’re more likely to get infected. We’ve seen this repeatedly all over the world. Into the maw of a spike getting vaccinated is dangerous because it temporarily suppresses immune response. It probably doesn’t increase the risk of bad outcomes but it definitely increases the risk of infection itself. The very difficult question for people now is whether that risk is worth the nebulous claims of “preventing severe disease and death.” UK’s data, along with Israel’s, strongly suggests that might be a bad bet. The majority of their admissions into the hospitals are now vaccinated. So much for “prevents severe disease” eh?
[..] BTW the data out of the UK continues to show Delta is less dangerous. A lot less-dangerous. It’s about one fifth as likely to kill you overall, and about half as likely if you’re over 50. It is also less-likely to send you to the hospital. This is the expected progression of a respiratory pandemic virus. While it appears on that data the vaccines confer some personal protection it is by no means perfect and nowhere near the 95%+ claimed, especially in people over 50. Further there is no evidence Delta is more-transmissible; its secondary attack rate in household and non-household settings is nearly identical to Alpha. This STRONGLY implies the CDC is lying about Delta’s R0 and the real problem driving the spike is that the jabs not only do not work against Delta they destroy the victim’s immune response in some percentage of those previously infected.
We badly need such perspectives.
• Covid is a Global Propaganda Operation (APT)
Dr Piers Robinson is an expert on communication, media and world politics, focusing on conflict and war and especially the role of propaganda He is presently Co-Director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies, Convenor of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media and Associated Researcher with the Working Group on Propaganda and the 9/11 ‘War on Terror’ From 2016 – 2019, he was Professor and Chair in Politics, Society and Political Journalism at the University of Sheffield. Dr Robinson has served on the boards of several academic journals. He has lectured at the NATO Defense College in Rome and briefed senior UK military commanders and diplomats.
His Research interests focus on Organised Persuasive Communication and Contemporary Propaganda and his current projects include Propaganda and the Syrian conflict; Propaganda and the 9/11 Global War on Terror and Covid19. Dr Robinson’s books include the Routledge Handbook of Media, Conflict and Security (2016), Pockets of Resistance: British news media, war and theory in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, (2010) and The CNN Effect: the myth of news, foreign policy and intervention.(2002).
No-one with a positive antibody test should be vaccinated. Where are those tests?
• Durable And Broad Immune Memory After SARS-CoV-2 Infection (Cell)
Ending the COVID-19 pandemic will require long-lived immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Here, we evaluate 254 COVID-19 patients longitudinally up to 8 months and find durable broad-based immune responses. SARS-CoV-2 spike binding and neutralizing antibodies exhibit a bi-phasic decay with an extended half-life of >200 days suggesting the generation of longer-lived plasma cells. SARS-CoV-2 infection also boosts antibody titers to SARS-CoV-1 and common betacoronaviruses. In addition, spike-specific IgG+ memory B cells persist, which bodes well for a rapid antibody response upon virus re-exposure or vaccination.
Virus-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells are polyfunctional and maintained with an estimated half-life of 200 days. Interestingly, CD4+ T cell responses equally target several SARS-CoV-2 proteins, whereas the CD8+ T cell responses preferentially target the nucleoprotein, highlighting the potential importance of including the nucleoprotein in future vaccines. Taken together, these results suggest that broad and effective immunity may persist long-term in recovered COVID-19 patients.
New definition of booster.
• SF Hospital To Give Supplement mRNA Vaccine To People Who Got J&J (ABC)
Even though the CDC is not recommending a booster shot at this time, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and San Francisco’s Department of Public Health have decided to allow an extra coronavirus vaccine for people who got the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The new dosing allowance seems to be unique to San Francisco. The hospital’s chief of staff does not know of any similar guidance elsewhere at this time. ZSFG says people who got J&J will be able to get a second shot of either Pfizer and Moderna by the end of the week at their vaccine clinic. But “booster” is not the word health officials are using to describe it – instead San Francisco’s Department of Public Health is calling it a “supplemental dose.”
“It’s not a booster because it’s not specific for some of the variants, which the booster ultimately will be,” said Dr. Chris Colwell, chief of emergency medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General. On Monday, Dr. Colwell voted to allow the hospital’s vaccine clinic to give a supplemental mRNA vaccine to somebody who had the J&J shot. “Potential benefit, no downside. To me, as we look at the future of this virus and now we’re facing a fourth surge, it does make sense,” he explained.
Another study that will be suppressed.
• Cholesterol Drug Cuts Coronavirus Infection By 70% (Fox)
A drug meant to treat cholesterol was found to reduce coronavirus infection by 70% in lab studies, with researchers calling for additional clinical trials among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. A team of researchers from the U.K. and Italy published findings in the Frontiers in Pharmacology journal Friday, finding that fenofibrate and fenofibric acid resulted in a significant reduction in coronavirus infection in human cells when the drug was used in safe and approved concentrations, according to a news release posted Friday. “Our data indicates that fenofibrate may have the potential to reduce the severity of COVID-19 symptoms and also virus spread,” Dr. Elisa Vicenzi of the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan and co-author, said in the release.
“Given that fenofibrate is an oral drug which is very cheap and available worldwide, together with its extensive history of clinical use and its good safety profile, our data has global implications.” The team called for added clinical trials to explore use of the drug as a potential COVID-19 therapy, while noting studies are ongoing at the University of Pennsylvania and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dr. Farhat Khanim of the University of Birmingham and corresponding study author, cited viral variants spurring rising infection rates and deaths in countries around the world. “Whilst vaccine programmes will hopefully reduce infection rates and virus spread in the longer term, there is still an urgent need to expand our arsenal of drugs to treat SARS-CoV-2-positive patients,” Khanim wrote.
[..] The drug was suggested to work by inhibiting the harmful overproduction of cytokines tied to coronavirus infection, and also treat airway inflammation. Additional properties could prevent blood clotting seen in late-stage disease in many COVID-19 patients, study authors noted.
Pay attention to the René Girard quote.
• The Unvaccinated: The New COVID Scapegoats (TF)
The press revels in condemning conservatives for not getting the vaccine. Self-loathing conservatives like David French say Evangelical vaccine hesitancy is a “spiritual problem.” Conservative governors – those with low COVID death rates in their states – are attacked for not doing enough to encourage vaccination. Paul Krugman takes these arguments to the next level, arguing that conservatives seeking personal autonomy are really trying to preserve their while male Christian “privilege” while making minorities pay the price. The government – including officials like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins – must be happy with the blame-shifting. Just imagine their delight, after having potentially contributed to the creation of COVID-19, that the unvaccinated are now the accused.
Never one to miss a media appearance, Dr. Fauci is out there saying the unvaccinated are “propagating” the latest outbreak, that we need to “do something to get them to be vaccinated.” This duty that Dr. Fauci advances is the purported obligation to do something to protect others. (One has to ask whether millions of lives would have been saved had they followed this same duty with taxpayer dollars at Wuhan.) We believe this is just the start. If persuasion has reached its limit (and there is evidence it has), then please, trust them at their word when they advocate restricting your rights and inflicting punishment if you remain unvaccinated. And in considering the institutions of power setting their sights on the unvaccinated – those whose purported crime is of inaction – I leave you with the words of René Girard:
“The crowd tends toward persecution since the natural causes of what troubles it and transforms it into a turba cannot interest it. The crowd by definition seeks action but cannot affect natural causes. It therefore looks for an accessible cause that will appease its appetite for violence. Those who make up the crowd are always potential persecutors, for they dream of purging the community of the impure elements that corrupt it, the traitors who undermine it.”
The vaccines are leaky and they make the blood vessels leaky. Wonderful.
• Vaccines Are Leaky And Have Poor Durability (Bannon)
COVID is a disease of hyperinflammation and hypercoagulation. Now finally Dr. Malone is trying to drive that home after 18 months. We can treat this early. Many doctors were saying this in March 2020.
Criminal.
• COVID-19 Vaccine To Be Offered To 16 And 17 Year-olds (HART)
On Tuesday, there was a quiet mention from the BBC and several newspapers that the government was likely to announce routine vaccination of 16 and 17 year-olds following updated advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). This announcement duly came on Wednesday. An urgent letter is being prepared to the JCVI to ask what new information they have to inform this decision. On 19 of July, they highlighted the very low risk to children from COVID-19 and the emergence of rare but serious side-effects. They stated: “Any decision on deployment of vaccines must be made on the basis that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks to those people who are vaccinated.” They concluded: “JCVI is of the view that the health benefits of universal vaccination in children and young people below the age of 18 years do not outweigh the potential risks”.
Only two things appear to have changed in the two weeks since that announcement. First, there has been a dramatic fall in cases demonstrating how wrong the government advisors have been. Secondly, the membership of the JCVI has changed and Professor Robert Dingwall — who has raised concerns around the ethics of vaccinating children — is no longer a member. It has been revealed that other members of the JCVI Covid-19 sub-committee have also been ‘let go’. In attempting to defend the shift away from this position, JCVI Chair Professor Wei Shen Lim was entirely unconvincing in his reasoning for this change of heart. We note that he has a substantial conflict of interest: he has direct responsibility for material levels of funding received by his department from Pfizer.
The JCVI’s current position is that the second dose is too dangerous for children but the first dose is safe enough. The evidence upon which they base the latter hypothesis is based only on data of short-term effects collected by the voluntary reporting systems such as VAERS, which is acknowledged to underestimate by a wide margin. It begs the question, why would it be necessary to vaccinate children with a single dose when the government has already argued via the national campaign that the first dose is not sufficient to be effective and that everyone must get their second dose? Public Health England estimates that a single dose of vaccine is only 35% effective against the Delta variant.
We were told in the press conference that the rollout would come in the next week or two but now there are targeted sessions at nightclub venues, so no chance for adolescents to take time to consider their ‘choice’ and a very clear message that you will need ‘the jab’ to get your life back. The plea to ‘do the right thing’ and protect your friends and family seems rather hollow with new data from PHE suggesting the Delta variant is as easily transmitted by vaccinated as unvaccinated, with vaccine effectiveness down to 17% and no reduction in infectiousness. Meanwhile news of the planned rollout to 12-15s has appeared even though approval is yet to be given.
Neil Oliver
'The government want 16 and 17-year-olds to have the vaccine. I won’t let that happen to mine… not while we have breath with which to say no'
Neil Oliver says whether or not to vaccinate children comes down to morality, and that he won't let his children get the jab. pic.twitter.com/aQfFywjgmh
— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 7, 2021
“the very sort of environment that we’re creating by having so many people vaccinated with a vaccine that doesn’t kill off the virus, it actually can lead to a more potent virus. Try finding that story anywhere.”
• Joe Rogan Blames Jabs For Virus Mutations & Blasts Mandatory Vaccination (RT)
Angry Twitter users called for Joe Rogan to be canceled and Spotify held accountable for giving him a platform after he claimed vaccines may cause virus mutations and labeled mandatory jabs a step towards ‘dictatorship.’ Rogan’s controversial statements have caused online frenzy on multiple occasions since he moved his super-popular podcast from YouTube to Spotify in a $100 million-plus exclusive deal last year to avoid censorship. The show instantly became one of the most viewed on the platform, with Spotify saying it was performing “above expectations.” Back in April, the stand-up comedian and UFC commentator was trending on social media after suggesting young and healthy people didn’t need to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, and warning that giving into cancel culture could eventually lead to a situation in which “straight white men aren’t allowed to talk.”
He addressed the issue of vaccination once again in the latest episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, saying that, by trying to inoculate as many people as possible, the US government might actually be making the virus stronger and more dangerous. He based his claim on the findings of a peer-reviewed scientific paper published in the PLOS Biology magazine in 2015. Its authors said “anti-disease vaccines that do not prevent transmission can create conditions that promote the emergence of pathogen strains that cause more severe disease in unvaccinated hosts.” Speaking about the so-called ‘breakthrough cases’ of inoculated people becoming infected with Covid-19, Rogan suggested that “the very sort of environment that we’re creating by having so many people vaccinated with a vaccine that doesn’t kill off the virus, it actually can lead to a more potent virus. Try finding that story anywhere.”
However, the US authorities insist that vaccination is the best way to stop the coronavirus pandemic, with President Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, reiterating last week that those, who avoid getting the jab “are the ones that are propagating this outbreak.” According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, more than 70% of adult Americans have so far received at least one shot of the vaccine. Rogan previously acknowledged he was “not a doctor” and his audience shouldn’t look to him as a reliable source of scientific information. He also claimed he was “not an anti-vaxx person.” During the latest episode, the 53-year-old also said those pushing for mandatory vaccination to be introduced in the US, “are dumb. They don’t understand human history.”
US politics? Boring.
• The Very Fine People of a Civilized Society (Kunstler)
Now, the very fine president “Joe Biden” has appointed a very fine fellow named Merrick Garland to be Attorney General of the civilized society called the USA. Mr. Garland is chief enforcement officer of federal law. He attended the very fine Harvard Law School, but he apparently missed the seminar course in constitutional law titled Advanced Issues in Administrative Law and Theory. Mr. Garland has been sending letters to officers of the Arizona state government threatening to punish and even imprison anyone in that state who moves further to investigate the balloting results and the conduct of the 2020 election in that jurisdiction. Mr. Garland, having missed that crucial course (above), is apparently unaware that the US constitution assigns authority over elections to each state — with the reserve clause that the US Congress can legislate changes to that order of things, which they haven’t done.
Therefore, Mr. Garland is out-of-order. Will he actually move to interfere with an effort currently underway in the state of Arizona to conduct a full forensic investigation of the 2020 vote? Elected officials of that state have counter-threatened to throw Mr. Garland’s very fine ass in an Arizona jail if he attempts to interfere. Meanwhile the forensic investigators of said election hired by the Arizona State Senate have completed phase one of their task, close examination of the paper ballots, and are moving on to phases two and three: canvassing street addresses from which mail-in ballots originated, and full examination of the Dominion vote-tallying machines.
There is reason to suppose that the investigation will reach conclusions that might distress the very fine people of the Progressive Left who maintain that the 2020 election was the “most secure in history” — that is, without any significant errors. If that were so, why would they hesitate to examine the evidence? Might it raise questions that would be difficult to answer, for instance: what to do if very large errors happen to be discovered? Is it an affront to their very fine-ness? Is the US government not fit to manage such a result? Or are the people of this land not resourceful or fair-minded enough to work through such a development? It will be interesting to find out.
Not enough firemen, not enough equipment. All been budgetted away by the EU. But still an overdose of policemen and policecars.
The Monastiraki kitchen has been feeding 1000s every day this week, including firemen whom the government doesn’t take care of.
• ‘Apocalyptic’ Scenes Hit Greece As Athens Besieged By Fire (G.)
Little had prepared any of us on the Athens-bound flight for the sight of the great fire-induced clouds that swept either side of the plane as it made its descent on Friday. News of the extreme heat engulfing Greece had spread beyond its borders all week, packaged in increasingly desperate language. Temperatures were breaking records few had ever imagined. If Monday was bad, then Tuesday was worse. In some parts of the country, the mercury had hit 47C (117F), with thermal cameras on drones recording the ground temperature in downtown Athens at 55C. By Wednesday, we were hearing that entire tracts of suburban forest on the Greek capital’s northern fringes had gone up in flames. Infernos seemingly redolent of Dante’s hell had incinerated everything in their path; friends had lost homes; thousands had been evacuated with residents and tourists fleeing blighted zones by any means possible.
Terraces, an Athenian’s respite against the blazing heat, had been transformed into ash-laden no-go zones. “It’s been crazy over here. Between the extreme heat and the wildfires, it feels apocalyptic,” Eleni Myrivili, a friend recently appointed to the role of Athens’ first chief heat officer, wrote in an email on Thursday as the army was deployed to assist firefighters. “Ash is raining down on us here in Athens.” From the sky, it was frighteningly clear that the city was under siege, caught in a cycle of insufferable heat fuelling conflagrations on terrain so parched it was ready to ignite at any moment.
Fires, some big, some small, some extinguished and then rekindled, were raging nationwide, the country’s civil protection chief, Nikos Hardalias, told reporters. Conditions were not only “extremely dangerous” but unprecedented, he said, estimating that firefighters trying to protect populated areas, electricity installations and historic sites had battled 154 wildfires over the space of the week. More than 60 conflagrations were still raging on Saturday.
Beach on Evia island
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