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Debt Rattle January 5 2022

Jan 052022

January 5, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: CDC, Delta, guidance, Joe Rogan, Macron, Omicron, T cells, vaccine deaths 96 Responses »

Giovanni Bellini Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and Female Saint 1500-04

• Crimes against Our Country (Jim Kunstler)

• Vaccinated Over 21 Times More Likely To Get Omicron (NP)

• CDC Is Set To Update Its Guidance ‘Any Day Now’ To Include Negative Tests (DM)

• CDC Director Walensky Flip-Flops On PCR Testing Guidance (ZH)

• Chilling Pandemic Data from the Insurance Industry (Rescue)

• Unprecedented: Deaths In Indiana For Ages 18-64 Are Up 40% (Kirsch)

• Macron No Longer Views Unvaxxed as French: ‘Piss Them Off’ and ‘Reduce’ Them (NF)

• Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines Against Omicron Or Delta Infection (medRxiv)

• The ‘Find Your Balls’ Challenge (Denninger)

• French Covid Variant Is Not ‘Worth Worrying About’, Predates Omicron (DM)

• White Blood Cells Of Immune System Can Fight Omicron (GBN)

• Can Weight Loss Help Protect Against Covid-19? (CNN)

• Taking Back Our Liberty in 2022 (Ron Paul)

• Joe Rogan Podcast Reaches Millions More Than Cable News (JTN)

I has a Rainer Füllmilch video in this spot, but Twitter now tells me it was from a suspended account.

Malone
https://twitter.com/i/status/1477428321898184709

“Nurses turned so cynical about the remdesivir protocol that they nicknamed it “run-death-is-near.”

• Crimes against Our Country (Jim Kunstler)

The year of sickening global psychosis ended with virologist and vaccine-uberspecialist Dr. Robert Malone truth-bombing the Internet with three hours of straight talk about the US health authorities’ campaign to destroy the lives of at least half a million US citizens (so far) and, leading by example, to harm multiples of that number of innocent people across all of Western Civilization. Podcaster Joe Rogan assisted skillfully in an interview that is finally rocking the world out of an epic consensus trance. By health authorities I don’t just mean Dr. Anthony Fauci, the designated National SARS-CoV-2 Coordinator, or his accomplices in the Dept. of Health and Human Services agencies, CDC, NIH, NIAID, etc., but also the purblind US medical establishment of actual doctors in clinical practice, researchers, hospital administrators, and pharma executives who acted with a collective stupid malevolence not seen since the crematory-stuffers of the Nazi bureaucracy carried out their final solution.

We know what you did. You engineered and patented a gain-of-function virus at the same time you conspired with pharma companies to devise and patent pseudo-vaccines, and then you loosed both of them on the public. You didn’t just fail to adequately test the “vaccines” cooked up by Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, but you deliberately botched the trials and lied about it. You created rich $$ incentives for hospitals to mis-treat Covid patients by failing to use known, safe, effective anti-virals. You conspired with social and news media to suppress information about those common anti-viral drugs that would have informed many patients’ decisions and saved thousands of lives. You treated late-stage patients dying of Covid-induced vascular disorder with the ineffective and toxic drug remdesivir that Dr. Fauci had developed unsuccessfully for an ebola outbreak years ago. (Nurses turned so cynical about the remdesivir protocol that they nicknamed it “run-death-is-near.”) You prompted government officials to lockdown society, force useless masking, and now to coerce “vaccination” by threatening to deprive citizens of their livelihoods.

The US Supreme Court will entertain arguments this Friday, January 7, to enjoin against “Joe Biden’s” mandates to coerce “vaccination” in companies that employ more than a hundred people and a separate mandate forcing vaxxes on staff at Medicare / Medicaid certified “providers” (meaning most hospitals and doctors’ offices). There’s a pretty good chance the court will decide against the mandates. They’re expected to rule Monday, January 10, the day that the mandates are supposed to take effect.

German government report after update/correction.

• Vaccinated Over 21 Times More Likely To Get Omicron (NP)

Nearly 80 percent of reported cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant in Germany occurred in fully vaccinated individuals, according to a new report from the federal government. [Note: This article has been updated following an error by the German federal government]. Following publication, the Robert Koch Institute issued a revision to the report’s figures documenting transmission of the Omicron variant. 1,097 unvaccinated people and 4,020 vaccinated people now comprise the cohort analyzed in the paper. This new data still shows that the overwhelming majority – 78.6 percent – of cases occurred in vaccinated people. The paper – published December 30th by the German agency the ‘Robert Koch Institute’ – included information on the vaccination status of 4,206 individuals who contracted the latest variant of the virus.

Four thousand and twenty people who reported contracting Omicron in the study – which equates to 95.6 percent of total cases – had received at least two doses of COVID-19 vaccines. The revised data from the German government revealed a 78.6 percent vaccinated rate of Omicron cases. Originally, only 186 people contracting Omicron were unvaccinated in the entire sample, showing that vaccinated individuals were over 21 times as likely to contract the COVID-19 variant. The new RKI numbers reported 1,097 unvaccinated people, meaning the vaccinated were 3.7 times more likely to contract the variant.

The guidance changes now come every day and twice on Sundays.

• CDC Is Set To Update Its Guidance ‘Any Day Now’ To Include Negative Tests (DM)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to further change its recommendations for Americans diagnosed with COVID-19, potentially requiring a negative test to leave isolation before ten days. Last week, the agency shortened its recommended isolation period from 10 days to five days for people who have minimal Covid symptoms. The move drew criticism from experts who said a negative test should’ve been included. But the CDC is now considering adding a negative test to the guidance, according to CNN. Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy said that the CDC is working to further revise the isolation guidance, telling CNN on Tuesday that he expects a clarification ‘any day now.’

‘What they’re trying to do – and it’s important to say more broadly – is recognize and incorporate both the evolving science on Omicron and on prior variants in terms of how long somebody remains contagious, with the critical need to maintain essential services,’ Murthy told CNN. ‘I believe that there will be a role for antigen testing here to help reduce risk as well,’ he said. The further-updated guidance could impact millions of Americans, as the country reports record case numbers during the Omicron surge. About 95 percent of all new Covid cases in the U.S. were caused by Omicron in the week ending January 1, according to new CDC data released on Tuesday.

[..] ‘Isolation’ means a period of several days or weeks in which someone sick with Covid stays home and avoids contact with other people. This is distinct from quarantine, in which someone avoids contact with other people after a potential exposure to the coronavirus and closely monitors themselves for symptoms. Early on in the pandemic, the CDC recommended isolation and quarantine periods of 14 days. That period was shortened to 10 days in late 2020, as scientists learned more about how the virus spreads and how people recover. Then, last week, the CDC shortened isolation periods further: to just five days. The new guidance comes with some caveats, however. Someone diagnosed with Covid can only leave isolation after five days if they don’t have symptoms or if their symptoms are close to over – including no fever for at least 24 hours. After that, the Covid patient must wear a mask whenever they’re around others, the CDC says.

Stephen Colbert? Joe Rogan should be the interviewer.

• CDC Director Walensky Flip-Flops On PCR Testing Guidance (ZH)

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky appeared to majorly waffle on her agency’s controversial guidance to eliminate PCR testing at the end of Covid-19 isolation because the tests can remain positive for up to 12 weeks, long after a person is no longer contagious. “The big CDC news,” said Late Show host Stephen Colbert, is that “y’all have now gone from recommending a 10-day isolation to a five-day isolation. Why the change?” To which Walensky replied that “probably about 80 to 90 percent of your transmissibility has happened in those first five days,” right before and after symptoms appear, “and we really want people to be sure if they’re gonna be home, they’re going to be home for the right period of time, when they’re maximally transmissible.” Colbert then hinted at discord within the Biden administration after Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested the CDC guidance may shift yet again.

“In the UK they went from ten to seven days, but they are also recommending a negative test before considering yourself out of quarantine. Are we going to do that here? Because Dr. Fauci on CNN and ABC suggested that that’s under consideration. Is he talkin’ out both sides of his mouth over there, and you guys are telling him ‘put a cork in it, Tony!'” Walensky’s answer, while confusing, appeared to contradict her agency’s new guidelines. “Deepest respect for Dr. Fauci,” Walensky replied. “Obviously, yes. Really important question. The FDA has authorized these tests, and they’re terrific tests for what they’re authorized for. So the FDA has authorized them for diagnosis, and what they said about these tests is they are best for diagnosis earlier in the disease course.

“Are these the rapid antigen test?” asked Colbert. “Yes. So if you have access to a test. And you want to do a test at day five. And your symptoms are gone and you’re feeling well, then go ahead and do that test. But here’s how I would interpret that test. If it’s positive, stay home for another five days. If it’s negative, I would stay you still really need to wear a mask. You still may have some transmissibility ahead of you. You still should try not to visit grandma. You shouldn’t get on an airplane. You should still be pretty careful when you’re with other people – by wearing a mask all the time.”

“OneAmerica provided no explanation for the rise in deaths and said it was not aware of any studies being conducted by the CDC.”

• Chilling Pandemic Data from the Insurance Industry (Rescue)

An Indiana-based life insurance company is expressing concern over a substantial rise in deaths in adults eighteen to sixty-four years old in 2021 that cannot be explained simply by covid infections themselves. In a statement issued to me Tuesday evening, January 4, the OneAmerica group of financial companies, a $100 billion insurance company headquartered in Indianapolis since 1877, said: “Our data shows an increase in death rates in our business across the U.S., which aligns with what we’re seeing in national industry data.” Citing its analysis of figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the statement said: “there has been a 40% increase in death rates for 18- to 64-year-old individuals across the U.S., when comparing Q3 [third quarter] 2021 data to pre-pandemic data from the same period in 2019.”

That stunning conclusion is all the more concerning because it covers an age group that is not the hardest hit by covid-19 and which accounts for 25 percent of covid deaths. Moreover, the trend covers all causes of death, suggesting that the pandemic has led to mortality in a variety of ways. A graphic prepared by OneAmerica depicts the trend with a black line rising sharply from last July to last September, the latest available numbers. “CDC data from Q3 [third quarter] 2021 shows 250,000 actual deaths (or a 45% increase over the baseline expectation) for this age group, typically the working age population. Of that total, 50,600 were attributed by the CDC to COVID.”

The company’s statement was in response to my request for its comment on an article Saturday, January 1, in The Center Square, which first reported comments by the company’s CEO Scott Davison on the alarming trend in deaths. “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business—not just at OneAmerica,” Davison said during an online news conference, according to the article. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.” He characterized the trend in deaths in “huge, huge numbers” among people working in companies that offer life insurance plans to their employees, the article stated. He said further that the trend was continuing into the fourth quarter of 2021.

I shared the OneAmerica statement with Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA technology on which covid vaccines are based. He said in a phone conversation that the rise in deaths was “absolutely unprecedented, shocking, and raises serious major concerns.” The figures, he said, point to the consequences of a failed approach to the pandemic. “At a minimum, based on my reading” of The Center Square article, Malone wrote on his Substack publication Monday, “one has to conclude that if this report holds and is confirmed by others in the dry world of life insurance actuaries, we have both a huge human tragedy and a profound public policy failure of the US Government and US HHS system to serve and protect the citizens that pay for this “service”.”

Steve Kirsch on that same OneAmerica report. “It isn’t COVID. Could it be the “safe and effective” COVID vaccine?”

• Unprecedented: Deaths In Indiana For Ages 18-64 Are Up 40% (Kirsch)

This is huge. Something is killing healthy people at an unprecedented rate. It isn’t COVID. Could it be the “safe and effective” COVID vaccine? I think so. Here’s why. [..]

These deaths started only after the vaccines rolled out

The deaths are “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica. That’s not to say 65 and over aren’t affected as well. What’s key is that we’re seeing effects in young people.

There are more excess deaths than anytime in history, so it is likely caused by a new threat, never seen before in history, like a novel vaccine that has never been used before or something new like that that a huge number of people would be exposed to (such as by a state that pushes vaccination).

Not due to COVID (COVID deaths are way down).

They are dying from a variety of causes, not just a single cause. So this rules out food or air-based pathogens. I note that the variety of causes of death is consistent with the wide range of adverse events caused by the COVID vaccines, for example.

It has to affect massive numbers of people to get an effect size that high. So it is something new affecting at least half the population, like a new mandated vaccine for example.

There is a huge push for vaccines by the Indiana governor, he wants to have everyone vaccinated. Interesting. “Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb doubled down on the drive to get everyone in the state vaccinated.”

Useful fact: Adults 65 and older account for 16% of the US population but 80% of COVID-19 deaths in the US, somewhat higher than their share of deaths from all causes (75%) over the same period. We’ll use that 75% stat later.

It isn’t just the one life insurance company, they are all seeing this huge rises at other insurance companies. So this is something huge and national in scope, like a vaccine mandate in the entire US, or something like that.

“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be a 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.” This suggests it has to be a novel pathogen (like a novel vaccine, for example). It has to be something first introduced in 2021, you know, like a new COVID vaccine.

The company is seeing an “uptick” in disability claims, saying at first it was short-term disability claims, and now the increase is in long-term disability claims. So whatever it is is killing people and those that aren’t killed are disabled. You know, like what the COVID vaccines are proven to do (since I believe VAERS).

Brian Tabor, the president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said that hospitals across the state are being flooded with patients “with many different conditions,” saying “unfortunately, the average Hoosiers’ health has declined during the pandemic.” In a follow-up call, he said he did not have a breakdown showing why so many people in the state are being hospitalized – for what conditions or ailments. But he said the extraordinarily high death rate quoted by Davison matched what hospitals in the state are seeing. So this could all be caused by the COVID vaccines.

The number of hospitalizations in the state is now higher than before the COVID-19 vaccine was introduced a year ago, and in fact is higher than it’s been in the past five years, Dr. Lindsay Weaver, Indiana’s chief medical officer, said at a news conference with Gov. Eric Holcomb on Wednesday. So again, whatever is killing people is worse than COVID. It can’t be COVID since we have so many vaccinated people with our safe and effective vaccine that prevents COVID deaths.

The CEO of the insurance company doesn’t think the vaccines are causing the deaths and disability. Check out this tweet: he is requiring his employees to be vaccinated! So it cannot be the vaccine, even though it fits all the facts! Darn! The CEO knows that the vaccines are safe and effective. He has no evidence to back that statement up, but we should believe him since he’s an authority figure (you know, like the CDC). We can always trust authority figures, and even more so when they have no evidence. Who needs evidence? Science has been displaced in 2021.

Little Napoleon says 10% are unvaxxed. Having gone through these numbers for a year now, I bet almost every country has one third unvaxxed. In the US, it’s 40%.

• Macron No Longer Views Unvaxxed as French: ‘Piss Them Off’ and ‘Reduce’ Them (NF)

French President Emmanuel Macron told one of the nation’s leading newspapers that he no longer considers the unvaccinated to be French citizens, and that his primary COVID-19 strategy is to continue to “piss them off” until they submit to his COVID-19 mandates. The remark from Macron, delivered during an interview with French newspaper Le Parisien, has divided French politicians, and even has the country’s Communist Party candidate questioning Macron’s motives. “I am not about pissing off the French people,” Macron told the readers of Le Parisien on Tuesday. “But as for the non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And we will continue to do this, to the end. This is the strategy.”

He declared that the “worst enemies” of “democracy” are “lies and stupidity,” then declared that his government is “putting pressure on the unvaccinated by limiting, as much as possible, their access to activities in social life.” Macron’s government claims that 90% of its citizens are vaccinated. He promised to “reduce” this minority with further restrictions. The French president repeatedly noted the minority status of the resisters. “How do we reduce that minority?” Macron asked, rhetorically. “We reduce it – sorry for the expression – by pissing them off even more.” The fallout from his remarks led the French Parliament to come to a screeching halt as it attempted to debate an expansion of the country’s vaccine passport system.

“A third dose provides SOME protection in the immediate term, but substantially less than against Delta..”

• Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines Against Omicron Or Delta Infection (medRxiv)

The incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, including among those who have received 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccines, has increased substantially since Omicron was first identified in the province of Ontario, Canada.

Methods Applying the test-negative design to linked provincial data, we estimated vaccine effectiveness against infection (irrespective of symptoms or severity) caused by Omicron or Delta between November 22 and December 19, 2021. We included individuals who had received at least 2 COVID-19 vaccine doses (with at least 1 mRNA vaccine dose for the primary series) and used multivariable logistic regression to estimate the effectiveness of two or three doses by time since the latest dose.

Results We included 3,442 Omicron-positive cases, 9,201 Delta-positive cases, and 471,545 test-negative controls. After 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccine, vaccine effectiveness against Delta infection declined steadily over time but recovered to 93% (95%CI, 92-94%) ≥7 days after receiving an mRNA vaccine for the third dose. In contrast, receipt of 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccines was not protective against Omicron. Vaccine effectiveness against Omicron was 37% (95%CI, 19-50%) ≥7 days after receiving an mRNA vaccine for the third dose.

Conclusions Two doses of COVID-19 vaccines are unlikely to protect against infection by Omicron. A third dose provides some protection in the immediate term, but substantially less than against Delta. Our results may be confounded by behaviours that we were unable to account for in our analyses. Further research is needed to examine protection against severe outcomes.

“This garbage has directly led to over half a million dead Americans and it is our fault for allowing it to go on..”

• The ‘Find Your Balls’ Challenge (Denninger)

We are all currently being forced to be lab rats to some degree when it comes to *****-19, and that force is in some areas and cases being literally enforced at gunpoint, such as in NYC with “******* mandates” where cops are literally arresting people and thus, by definition, threatening the use of deadly force to compel compliance. Pilots have been coerced by their employers to take a drug that under FAA regulations immediately and conclusively voids their medical certificate, yet they are also continuing to fly. The liability for such is wildly open-ended for everyone involved yet nobody cares. Nearly two years into this crap our local county medical center has actually doubled or more the fatality rate for *****-19 admissions, now standing at over 90% fatality for the last six months of 2021, begging the question as to why, if I had needed to go to the hospital during that time when I got ***** in August, I should not have shown up there and killed everyone I could by whatever means I could obtain since they were, with more than 90% certainty, going to kill me.

We have sat for all of this and we must conclusively stop it. This garbage has directly led to over half a million dead Americans and it is our fault for allowing it to go on for the last two years under both Trump and Biden administrations Until and unless we do put a conclusive stop to this crap there is exactly nothing you can do to change my mind in terms of my opinion related to the medical industry and everyone in it who is taking home a paycheck, in many cases a very large paycheck, as a direct result of a corporate and government-run set of decisions that are killing people wholesale by deliberately refusing to treat conditions we know how to handle and have known how to treat for decades, never mind the evidence for early treatment that has emerged over the last two years and has been ignored along with the exhortation to take what has proved up over time, and which I fully expected and explained why, to be worthless or even harmful jabs.

More contagious, less lethal. It’s the only path left. “Cases” will go up for 2-3 weeks per location, then plummet. Deaths will start to fall after that.

And remember, deaths from Omicron are non-existent. It’s all still Delta, as Omicron grows.

• French Covid Variant Is Not ‘Worth Worrying About’, Predates Omicron (DM)

A new Covid variant detected in France is not worth worrying about, experts have insisted. Virologists say the strain predates Omicron but has yet to cause chaos, bolstering hopes that it may fade into the background. At least 12 cases of B.1.640.2 have been spotted so far near Marseille, with the first linked to travel to the African country Cameroon. But it is not outcompeting the dominant Omicron variant, which now makes up 60 per cent of all infections in France. Dr Thomas Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, said the variant has had ‘a decent chance to cause trouble but never really materialised’.

The strain was first uploaded to variant-tracking database GISAID on November 4, more than two weeks before Omicron was sequenced. More than 120,000 cases of Omicron have been detected since officials first raised the alarm about the ultra-infectious variant. For comparison, only 12 cases of B.1.640.2 have been spotted. But the true toll may be closer to 20, data suggests. ‘This virus has had a decent chance to cause trouble but never really materialised as far as we can tell’, Dr Peacock said. So it is definitely ‘not one worth worrying about too much’ at the moment, he added.

Don’t let Fauci hear it.

• White Blood Cells Of Immune System Can Fight Omicron (GBN)

A new study has revealed that the white blood cells of the immune system are capable of mounting an immune response against the Omicron variant of Covid-19. Due to Omicron having a higher number of mutations than other Covid variants, it can sometimes slip past the antibodies created by vaccination or infection. However, if the virus still does enter the body, the white blood cells, known as T-cells, will attack. The new research, from the University of Melbourne and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), involved investigators analysing over 1,500 fragments of SARS-CoV-2’s viral proteins – called epitopes – that have been found to be recognised by T-cells in recovered Covid-19 patients or after vaccination.

The team’s findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Viruses, suggest Omicron is unlikely to be able to evade T-cells, adding to a growing body of evidence from research groups around the world who are also investigating T-cell responses to Covid-19. University of Melbourne professor and co-leader of the research, Matthew McKay, said: “Despite being a preliminary study, we believe this is positive news. “Even if Omicron, or some other variant for that matter, can potentially escape antibodies, a robust T-cell response can still be expected to offer protection and help to prevent significant illness.

What an excellent question, CNN. And so timely! Hardly a day over two years too late! Not a word about what makes Americans fat, bien sur.

• Can Weight Loss Help Protect Against Covid-19? (CNN)

In the holiday season, when the average American can easily pack on a few pounds, experts say there is another reason to pay attention to your weight: Covid-19. People who are overweight or obese are at a much higher risk of much more severe disease and even death from Covid-19, and one new study suggests that losing weight can reduce that risk. The obesity epidemic has been a threat to Americans’ health for years. It’s the second leading cause of preventable death, after smoking. With Covid-19, it becomes even more dangerous. One study found that 30% of Covid-19 hospitalizations were in people with obesity. The obesity clinic where Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford works in Boston has a 1,000-plus person wait list that grew a lot longer with the pandemic. Even with more than a dozen specialists on staff, it’s not enough to meet the demand.

“We are overwhelmed with the volume of patients that have really made that connection between obesity and Covid and the need for them to get appropriate care,” said Cody Stanford, who is also an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. People with obesity are 46% more at risk of getting Covid-19, according to a study from August. It found that they are also more at risk of getting really sick, facing a 113% higher chance of being hospitalized, a 74% higher risk of needing to be treated in the ICU and – perhaps most troubling of all – a 48% increased risk of death. “The risk goes up and up and up with each increase” in body mass index (BMI), said study co-author Barry Popkin, a distinguished professor in the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Both father and son Paul are medical doctors.

• Taking Back Our Liberty in 2022 (Ron Paul)

For those of us who value liberty, these past two years have been a bad dream. It seems like we fell asleep in early 2020 and woke up in 1984! They said that if we just put on a mask and stayed home for two weeks, we’d be able to return to normal. The two weeks came and went and instead of going back to normal they added more restrictions. These past two years have been a story of moving goalposts and “experts” like Anthony Fauci constantly contradicting themselves. Early on, in April 2020, I warned in an article titled “Next in Coronavirus Tyranny: Forced Vaccinations and ‘Digital Certificates,’” that the ultimate goal of the “two weeks” crowd was to force vaccines and a “vaccine passport” on Americans. My concerns were at the time written off as just another conspiracy theory. But less than a year later that “conspiracy theory” became conspiracy fact.

I am not happy about being right on this. The introduction of vaccine passports was from the beginning my worst nightmare. The idea that you must “show your papers” to participate in society is a concept that is totally opposed to a free society. It is inhuman. The history of these past two years is that the worst ideas have been adopted by force and anyone questioning those ideas has been suppressed by force. We learned recently that Dr. Fauci and the director of the National Institutes of Health conspired to deliver a “quick and devastating take-down” of the esteemed scientists behind the Great Barrington Declaration. Were the Great Barrington scientists horribly wrong? Fauci and his boss could not have cared less. They were not interested in a debate. Their only goal was to shut down any opposing views. That’s not science. It’s ideology, politics, and probably self-interest.

As my son Rand said on a recent Liberty Report, thousands of people died because Fauci refused to consider the proven effectiveness of natural immunity against Covid. He and his colleagues were determined to deny any outpatient treatments and insisted on vaccines as the only way out. Now, as we see the vaccines performing so poorly versus natural immunity, their whole strategy lies in tatters. Will anyone apologize to the relatives of all those who died? When we look back at these two years, hopefully one thing that will be remembered is how the institutions of state power have all lost their credibility. They have been exposed as frauds and worse.

The MSM is in trouble. There’s a whole new model in town.

• Joe Rogan Podcast Reaches Millions More Than Cable News (JTN)

Joe Rogan has more than three times as many people per episode as his next greatest competitor “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, according to newly released data. “The Joe Rogan Experience” reaches a reported average of 11 million people per podcast episode. Fox News reigns as the most-watched cable news network, taking ten of the top viewership 15 spots. The top cable news spot goes to Carlson with 3.21 million viewers on average, Adweek reported on Nielsen data Monday. Conservative reporter Luke Rudkowski pointed out Rogan’s larger audience using 2021 Quarter 3 ratings. The most recent rating data from Adweek is slightly off from Q3, but overall remains the same. “This is why they are afraid of Rogan,” Rudkowski tweeted with a graph comparing the most popular cable news shows.

MSNBC’s primetime viewership trails behind with an average of 1.53 million primetime viewers. “Joe Rogan has completely disrupted the legacy media,” financial commentator Anthony Pompliano tweeted with a picture of Rudkowski’s graph. “Right now, Joe Rogan is the most dangerous man alive in the intellectual arena. In terms, that he is the most genuine pursuer of truth that has a big audience – therefore people will keep listening,” he later said on “The Best Business Show.” “That’s because he doesn’t lie. Or talk down to his audience. Or manipulate for his own narrow advantage,” psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson commented on Rogan’s ratings. Journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted, “The more employees of large media corporations attack Joe Rogan, the more his audience grows. The two individuals with the largest audiences happen to be the two people most hated by corporate media because they can’t be controlled or ordered around.”

Spain TV ad

Baby doll ad from Spain – now with vax card! https://t.co/p1fJyg0t99

— Jack Posobiec ☦️ (@JackPosobiec) January 4, 2022

El Salvador pres. Nayib Bukele
https://twitter.com/i/status/1478201251737317385

Tucker end to lunacy

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Debt Rattle December 30 2021

Dec 302021

December 30, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:28 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, boosters, CDC, Comirnaty, Epstein, Fauci, Joe Rogan, Malone, Omicron, PCR, Pfizer, T cells 55 Responses »

Wassily Kandinsky Painting with Houses 1909

• Researchers Find Silver Lining In Rise Of Covid Variant Omicron (JTN)

• Early Estimates Of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Severity (medRxiv)

• SARS-CoV-2 Spike T Cell Responses Remain Robust Against Omicron (medRxiv)

• Fauci Says Fourth Covid Vaccine Shot ‘Conceivable’ For Omicron (NYP)

• Up To Three Covid Jabs A Year Could Be Needed For Protection (G.)

• CDC Admits PCR Tests are Invalid (Martin Armstrong)

• Why CDC Doesn’t Require Testing At End Of Isolation (ABC)

• Twitter Bans Robert Malone. His Response: ‘Constant Clown Show’ (JTN)

• The Pfizer Inoculations For COVID-19 – More Harm Than Good (CCCA)

• Joe Rogan’s Sold Out Show Canceled Due To Vaccine Mandates (Hill)

• Twitter Suspends John Solomon For Report On Covid Vaccines (JTN)

• There Remains No FDA Approved Covid Vaccine In The US (Schachtel)

• Ladapo: Biden Admin ‘Actively Preventing’ Monoclonal Antibody Treatments (Fox)

• Musk Thinks He Solved Bitcoin’s Greatest Mystery (RT)

• Why Assange Fears Being “Epsteined” (Mercer)

Clown World
https://twitter.com/i/status/1475657029150986241

cloth masks

.@DrLeanaWen: "Don't wear a cloth mask. Cloth masks are little more than facial decorations. There's no place for them in light of Omicron." pic.twitter.com/Kpoj18sxdi

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) December 21, 2021

“..the “neutralizing immunity” provided by Omicron infection extended to the Delta variant..”

• Researchers Find Silver Lining In Rise Of Covid Variant Omicron (JTN)

The rapid spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 worldwide “may have positive implications in terms of decreasing the Covid-19 burden of severe disease,” according to a new study funded by the Gates Foundation and South African, U.S. and U.K. government agencies. Led by researchers in South Africa, where the variant was first identified, it’s the latest study to suggest the pandemic is approaching endemic status, calling into question the benefits of strict mitigation policies beyond high-risk groups. The preprint, not yet peer-reviewed, found that the “neutralizing immunity” provided by Omicron infection extended to the Delta variant, which appears to be more “pathogenic” than Omicron and still comprises a substantial proportion of COVID infections in several countries.

It was based on 15 participants, mostly vaccinated, who were tested at a median of four days after symptom onset and again 14 days later. They showed 14.4-fold increased neutralization of subsequent Omicron infection but also 4.4-fold increased neutralization of Delta infection, as determined by antibody response. Two of the original 15 were later excluded because they did not “detectably neutralize Omicron at either timepoint.” The results suggest Omicron infection “may result in decreased ability of Delta to re-infect those individuals,” the researchers wrote. If the new variant is indeed less severe, “the infection may shift to become less disruptive to individuals and society.”

Beyond South African institutions, the 30-odd researchers in the study are affiliated with Columbia University, the University of Washington and Imperial College London. The enhanced immunity to Delta was “especially” strong for vaccinated participants, tweeted lead author Alex Sigal, who is affiliated with the Africa Health Research Institute, University of KwaZulu-Natal and Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology.

Very small study.

• Early Estimates Of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Severity (medRxiv)

While it is now evident that Omicron is rapidly replacing Delta, due to a combination of increased transmissibility and immune escape, it is less clear how the severity of Omicron compares to Delta. In Ontario, we sought to examine hospitalization and death associated with Omicron, as compared to matched cases infected with Delta. We conducted a matched cohort study, considering time to hospitalization or death as the outcome, and analyzed with a Cox proportional hazards model. Cases were matched on age, gender, and onset date, while vaccine doses received and time since vaccination were included as adjustment variables.

We identified 6,314 Omicron cases that met eligibility criteria, of which 6,312 could be matched with at least one Delta case (N=8,875) based on age, gender, and onset date. There were 21 (0.3%) hospitalizations and 0 (0%) deaths among matched Omicron cases, compared to 116 (2.2%) hospitalizations and 7 (0.3%) deaths among matched Delta cases. The adjusted risk of hospitalization or death was 54% lower (HR=0.46, 95%CI: 0.27, 0.77) among Omicron cases compared to Delta cases. While severity may be reduced, the absolute number of hospitalizations and impact on the healthcare system could still be significant due to the increased transmissibility of Omicron.

Who wants vaccine induced T cells if natural infection does the trick better?

• SARS-CoV-2 Spike T Cell Responses Remain Robust Against Omicron (medRxiv)

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant has multiple Spike (S) protein mutations that contribute to escape from the neutralizing antibody responses, and reducing vaccine protection from infection. The extent to which other components of the adaptive response such as T cells may still target Omicron and contribute to protection from severe outcomes is unknown. We assessed the ability of T cells to react with Omicron spike in participants who were vaccinated with Ad26.CoV2.S or BNT162b2, and in unvaccinated convalescent COVID-19 patients (n = 70). We found that 70-80% of the CD4 and CD8 T cell response to spike was maintained across study groups.

Moreover, the magnitude of Omicron cross-reactive T cells was similar to that of the Beta and Delta variants, despite Omicron harbouring considerably more mutations. Additionally, in Omicron-infected hospitalized patients (n = 19), there were comparable T cell responses to ancestral spike, nucleocapsid and membrane proteins to those found in patients hospitalized in previous waves dominated by the ancestral, Beta or Delta variants (n = 49). These results demonstrate that despite Omicron’s extensive mutations and reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies, the majority of T cell response, induced by vaccination or natural infection, cross-recognises the variant. Well-preserved T cell immunity to Omicron is likely to contribute to protection from severe COVID-19, supporting early clinical observations from South Africa.

Because it’s so mild…

• Fauci Says Fourth Covid Vaccine Shot ‘Conceivable’ For Omicron (NYP)

Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday it’s “conceivable” that a fourth dose of a COVID-19 vaccine will be recommended to protect against the Omicron variant — though more research is needed about how well the current boosters prevent severe disease. “Before we start talking about a fourth shot, it would be very important for us to determine the durability of protection, particularly against severe disease for the third-shot booster of an mRNA [vaccine] and the second shot of a [Johnson & Johnson],” Fauci said at a White House COVID-19 task force press briefing. But Fauci said it’s possible that more protection will be necessary against the variant.

“It is conceivable that in the future, we might need an additional shot, but right now, we are hoping that we will get a greater degree of durability of protection from that booster shot,” Fauci said. “So we’re going to take one step at a time, get the data from the third boost and then make decisions based on scientific data.” Fauci warned that Omicron has been better at evading the immunity provided by vaccines, causing breakthrough infections. But he said that “boosters bring back up that degree of protection to a level that is approximately what it was before.” “So boosters are critical in getting our approach to Omicron to be optimal,” he said.

Dutch goverment wants 3rd jab in January, 2 more in 2022, and then no. 6 in 2023. How many people will comply?

• Up To Three Covid Jabs A Year Could Be Needed For Protection (G.)

Australians may have to receive two or even three Covid jabs each year to maintain defences against the virus if early results on the efficacy of booster shots turn out to be a useful guide. Weekly data published just before Christmas by the UK’s Health Security Agency shows the effectiveness of both the Pfizer and Moderna boosters against symptomatic diseases is lower for the Omicron than the Delta variant across all periods after the injection. The analysis included 147,597 Delta and 68,489 Omicron cases in the UK. The agency stressed the “results should be interpreted with caution due to the low counts and the possible biases related to the populations with highest exposure to Omicron (including travellers and their close contacts) which cannot fully be accounted for”.

The UK data showed both Pfizer and Moderna boosters had 90% effectiveness against symptomatic diseases from the Delta variant up to at least nine weeks. By contrast, efficacy against the Omicron strain was about 30% lower, and appeared to drop away further after nine weeks. Israel has already begun administering a second booster dose to follow the original three-dose treatment, and at least one US medical centre is considering recommending staff have a second booster. Medical experts in Australia said results beyond the 12-week dataset would be needed to get a longer term picture. Jaya Dantas, a professor of international health at Curtin University, said it was still early days for the understanding of the efficacy of the vaccinations but “it appears that there might be a need for regular boosters”. “You might need boosters, say maybe two a year or three a year,” Dantas said, with elderly people more likely to be in line for a triple annual dose.

“..the politics in the USA realizes that this is not going well and they need to shift gears or all be thrown out in the next election.”

• CDC Admits PCR Tests are Invalid (Martin Armstrong)

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is finally withdrawing the PCR test for COVID for it is seriously flawed and is incapable of distinguishing between the COVID and influenza viruses. I have stated that I was tested 5 times in 2020 and all were negative only to have two doctors, including the head of pulmonary at the hospital, inform me that they believed I had COVID despite the tests because they were “invalid” and that was back then. Social Media was blocking any discussion about that calling it conspiracy theory and misinformation. This agenda to terrorize the public for political gain has been at the heart of the abuse of politics and media intruding into the medical field. Doctors who have gone along with this terror campaign are a disgrace to their field.

The CDC is withdrawing the COVID PCR Test and the media is not making this front page. The withdraw of the COVID PCR test as valid for detecting and identifying SARS-CoV-2 is critical for all the restrictions and lockdowns. It appears that the collapse in the approval ratings for BIDEN has sent a shock wave through the Democrats as they see their own demise on the horizon. They are now back-peddling in hopes of surviving the 2022 elections. The CDC has stated on its website: “After December 31, 2021, CDC will withdraw the request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel, the assay first introduced in February 2020 for detection of SARS-CoV-2 only.”

The CDC has finally admitted that the PCR test cannot even differentiate between SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses. As I was told personally that the test was invalid, the politics in the USA realizes that this is not going well and they need to shift gears or all be thrown out in the next election.

“..because PCR tests can stay positive for up to 12 weeks..”

• Why CDC Doesn’t Require Testing At End Of Isolation (ABC)

The newly updated CDC guidelines don’t require testing at the end of isolation because PCR tests can stay positive for up to 12 weeks, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told “Good Morning America” Wednesday. “So we would have people in isolation for a very long time if we were relying on PCRs,” Walensky said. Walensky also addressed Tuesday’s news from the FDA that, according to early data, rapid antigen tests may be less sensitive when it comes to the omicron variant.

“We do know that the most sensitive test you can do is a PCR test,” Walensky said. “So if you have symptoms and you have a negative antigen test, we do ask you to go and get a PCR to make sure those symptoms are not attributable to COVID.” Walensky said rapid tests do work “quite well,” especially in places where people are being tested regularly, like at schools. “They may not work as well as they have for the delta variant,” Walensky said, but “we still are encouraging their use.”

Tolerate

CDC Director Walensky on the reduction of quarantine: “It really had a lot to do with what we thought people would be able to tolerate.”

This says it all. As much tyranny as the people will tolerate. This ends when we demand they end it—unconditionally.pic.twitter.com/63aodHJMut

— Michael P Senger (@MichaelPSenger) December 29, 2021

“Over a half million followers gone in a blink of an eye..”

I think maybe Malone got banned because he’s about to go on Joe Rogan. Whose interview with Peter McCullough was the most popular one he did at 40 million listeners.

• Twitter Bans Robert Malone. His Response: ‘Constant Clown Show’ (JTN)

A social media purge may be accelerating against reporting and commentary perceived at odds with conventional storylines on COVID-19. Twitter permanently suspended mRNA vaccine pioneer-turned-critic Robert Malone’s account Wednesday for “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information” about the novel coronavirus, according to a notice Malone shared with Just the News. [..] Malone’s only previous sanction was a 12-hour suspension for “posting something with a commercial intent (near as I could tell),” Malone said. He has also received complaints about his tweets required by “German law” over the past year. But he suspects his “big sin” was sharing the Canadian Covid Care Alliance’s analysis of Pfizer’s “adverse event reports” from the first six months of its COVID vaccine’s emergency use authorization.

In a Substack essay Wednesday, posted before his account went down, Malone characterized that analysis as showing the “inoculations cause more illness than they prevent” – a claim at odds with mainstream scientific opinion. France-owned newswire service AFP countered the Canadian Covid Care Alliance’s claims several months ago and similar claims earlier this month, arguing the Pfizer data had been misconstrued. It quoted a Pfizer spokesperson who said the causes of the 1,223 fatalities among 158,893 adverse effects had not been verified, and reflect “spontaneous” reports from sources in several countries. An FDA spokesperson said “the vast majority of the deaths reported are not directly attributable to the vaccines.”[..]

The last archive of Malone’s Twitter page Wednesday afternoon doesn’t show him promoting the analysis. But his final tweets linked to a British Medical Journal investigation into “data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial” and a related interview. He also claimed the World Economic Forum had published a “roadmap” for “managing us,” citing WEF’s “Transformation Map” on peace and resilience. “This is the face of global information control and warfare,” he told Just the News, referring to the map. “It’s not just Twitter.” Malone announced his suspension on Substack and encouraged readers to sign up for his newsletter. “Over a half million followers gone in a blink of an eye,” he wrote, referring to his Twitter audience. “That means I must have been on the mark, so to speak.”

Created less than a month ago to share “deeper” essays and research, the newsletter had 35,000 subscribers Wednesday morning, he told Just the News. It “just exploded” after Twitter deplatformed him later in the day. A much larger audience will get to hear from Malone soon. He’s scheduled to go on Joe Rogan’s podcast, by some measures the most popular in America.

The report Malone mentioned.

• The Pfizer Inoculations For COVID-19 – More Harm Than Good (CCCA)

Watch this video of the Pfizer 6 month data which shows that Pfizer’s COVID-19 inoculations cause more illness than they prevent. Plus, an overview of the Pfizer trial flaws in both design and execution.

Rescheduled for October?! By then, what will he talk about?

• Joe Rogan’s Sold Out Show Canceled Due To Vaccine Mandates (Hill)

Joe Rogan’s sold out Vancouver show, scheduled for April 20, has been canceled after the podcast host said he likely would be unable to enter Canada from the U.S., where he lives, because he is not vaccinated against COVID-19. In a Dec. 24 episode of his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Rogan told his guest, comedian Tim Dillon, that Rogan’s springtime show in Vancouver was likely to be canceled because of COVID-19 restrictions in British Columbia. The Canadian territory requires proof of vaccination to gain entry into some indoor businesses and event spaces, including Rogers Arena, where Rogan’s show was set to take place.

“I should probably say this because I haven’t yet. My 4/20 show that’s sold out in Vancouver — I don’t think that’s happening,” Rogan said. “I don’t think I can even get into the country. I’m not vaccinated. I’m not gonna get vaccinated. I have antibodies, it doesn’t make any sense.” Rogan announced in an Instagram post in early September that he had been diagnosed with COVID-19 after running a high fever and said he had been taking a mix of medications, including monoclonal antibody treatments, Z-Pak, the anti-inflammatory drug prednisone and the antiparasitic ivermectin, which the FDA has said is not recommended for treating COVID-19.

“It is outrageous and unfair that a story that is completely accurate and points out an important legal distinction between the two versions of vaccines gets blocked and my account suspended..”

• Twitter Suspends John Solomon For Report On Covid Vaccines (JTN)

Twitter suspended the account of Just the News founder John Solomon for sharing an article about the legal distinctions between Pfizer’s fully approved and emergency use authorization (EUA) COVID-19 vaccines, which could affect the legality of vaccine mandates. The social media company is also warning users who click the link to the article from individual tweets that it “may be unsafe” and “could lead to real-world harm.” An immunologist who reviewed the article told Just the News he saw nothing wrong with it factually. Solomon’s Dec. 27 tweet shared the link and headline: “Pfizer to continue distributing version of COVID-19 vaccine not fully approved by FDA.”

The report noted that Pfizer and several experts have claimed that the fully approved Comirnaty vaccine has the same ingredients and manufacturing process as the EUA vaccine, known as Pfizer-BioNTech. But it also cited the FDA’s acknowledgment that the two are “legally distinct” owing to more stringent requirements for the Comirnaty vaccine, whose biologics license application (BLA) was approved. In a legal challenge to the U.S. military’s vaccine mandate, a federal judge ruled in November that “FDA licensure does not retroactively apply to [EUA vaccine] vials shipped before BLA approval.” U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor cited DOD guidance that limits mandates to fully approved vaccines, which must be “produced at approved facilities.”

“It is outrageous and unfair that a story that is completely accurate and points out an important legal distinction between the two versions of vaccines gets blocked and my account suspended,” Solomon told Just the News. “The distinction was important enough for a federal judge to note. The story and my post weren’t unsafe,” he said. “The only threat is to the safety of the 1st Amendment afflicted by Twitter’s wrongheaded decision.” [..] According to the notice Solomon received, Twitter “temporarily limited” his account features for 12 hours because the tweet violates its policy on “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information” related to COVID.

What got Solomon banned.

• There Remains No FDA Approved Covid Vaccine In The US (Schachtel)

Is Pfizer refusing to make the fully authorized version available, while continuing to sell an EUA product because doing so could open up Pfizer and BioNTech to legal liability issues? Pfizer and an HHS spokesperson talked to The Washington Post in a previous “fact check,” and claimed that there’s no additional legal immunity benefits between the EUA product and Comirnaty. However, these entities have never explained why Pfizer and the federal government would go through the trouble of recognizing two legally distinct products. An EUA fully protects the drugmaker and grants zero legal recourse to the patient. This surefire protection measure was bolstered by the PREP act and other measures implemented to shield COVID companies from liability. Now, here’s where it all gets very nefarious.

Due to a law passed during the Reagan Administration, in order for drug makers to be granted more robust legal liability protection for their vaccines, they must first secure full approval for the children’s version of their shot. Steve Kirsch has explained this at length last month on his Substack. Additionally, Robert Kennedy Jr mentioned it on a recent podcast with Mikhaila Peterson. I looked into these claims extensively, and they appear accurate. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA), which was passed into law in 1986, provides a legal liability shield to drug manufacturers if they receive full authorization for all ages. Is Pfizer seeking approval for children so that it can protect itself from lawsuits? The company is working with regulators, even clandestinely altering vaccine ingredients (a process that should require them to get full approval for an entirely separate product), in a seeming bid to clear the path to legal indemnity.

Surely, there’s also a monetary incentive in play, but maybe there’s another reason why Pfizer, Moderna, and others are working relentlessly to authorize their products for children, who face near-zero risk from COVID-19, but continue to showcase alarming side effects from the vaccine. A vaccine on the children’s schedule provides a definitive, government-incentivized liability boost. If Comirnaty becomes available for all ages, that means Pfizer receives an extensive, additional layer of protection. Is Big Pharma using children as legal human shields for their products?

RFK: If a vaccine is introduced under EUA, the maker can’t be sued. When it IS approved, they can be sued. Unless they can get it recommended for children. That’s why 5 year olds are being jabbed.

RFK Jr On Vaccines Liability: "They Know This Is Going To Kill And Injure A Huge Number Of Children, But They Need To Do It For The Liability Protection" pic.twitter.com/CL62aAIv14

— Tim Truth (@TimTruth1) December 29, 2021

There is no federal solution. Ask Joe….

• Ladapo: Biden Admin ‘Actively Preventing’ Monoclonal Antibody Treatments (Fox)

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo accused the Biden administration of “actively preventing the effective distribution of monoclonal antibody treatments” in the United States, according to a Tuesday letter addressed to Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra.The Biden administration recently paused shipments of COVID-19 antibody treatments manufactured by major drug companies Regeneron and Eli Lilly amid claims that such treatments are not effective against the omicron variant of the coronavirus. The federal government continues to supply Sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody from the company Glaxosmithkline, which reportedly does work against omicron. Ladapo concluded his letter by referencing comments Biden made Monday that there wasn’t a solution by the federal government to end the nearly two-year-old pandemic.

“There is no federal solution. This gets solved at the state level,” Biden said at the time in response to Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson warning the president against letting “federal solutions stand in the way of state solutions.” A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) pushed back against Ladapo’s assertion, telling Fox News Digital in a statement: “The federal government has and will continue to supply Florida with treatments that can help improve patient outcomes, reduce stress on healthcare facilities, and save lives. We have never stopped allocating or shipping COVID-19 therapeutics to Florida. “With regard to monoclonal antibody treatments, the federal government has allocated about 22,000 doses in just the past two weeks (11,050 doses last week and 10,576 doses this week). That’s in addition to the approximately 28,000 doses of product that they have on hand from their previous orders,” the statement continued.

“He claims not to be Nakamoto, but I’m not sure that’s neither here nor there.”

• Musk Thinks He Solved Bitcoin’s Greatest Mystery (RT)

The true identity of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, who has been one of the financial world’s enduring mysteries, is still unknown. However, Elon Musk says he might have the answer. Musk says hyper-secretive cryptocurrency expert Nick Szabo might be the creator of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency. “You can look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of Bitcoin and see who wrote about those ideas,” Musk told artificial-intelligence researcher Lex Fridman in a podcast on Tuesday. The Tesla CEO also denied the allegations that he could be Satoshi, stating he would not hide it if he were. Musk said while he “obviously” doesn’t know exactly who created Bitcoin, Szabo’s theories seem fundamental to the creation of the world’s leading cryptocurrency.

“It seems as though Nick Szabo is probably, more than anyone else, responsible for the evolution of those ideas,” he said. “He claims not to be Nakamoto, but I’m not sure that’s neither here nor there. But he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind Bitcoin than anyone else. In 2014, a team of researchers studied Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper alongside the writing of Szabo and 10 other potential creators. “The number of linguistic similarities between Szabo’s writing and the Bitcoin whitepaper is uncanny,” they said, adding that “none of the other possible authors were anywhere near as good of a match.” Before Bitcoin debuted in 2008, Szabo was seen commenting on his blog about his “intent to create a living version of the hypothetical currency.” He had developed a digital money mechanism known as Szabo Bit Gold between 1998 and 2005.

The FBI sealed 20,000 photos seized from Epstein’s residences, as Ghislaine was found guilty. Who’s in those photos? Clinton, Gates, who else?

Summit of irony: The BBC had Alan Dershowitz on to opine on the verdict.

• Why Assange Fears Being “Epsteined” (Mercer)

If America’s so free and fair, why is Julian Assange, innocent in natural law, so terrified of being extradited to the USA? And why must journalist Glenn Greenwald live abroad, after heroically helping whistleblower Edward Snowden, now safely ensconced in Russia? American heroes living abroad for fear of the American Security State? Time perhaps to shut up about China? In 2010, Snowden had shared internal NSA documents with Mr. Greenwald, the guardian of American freedoms at the British Guardian newspaper. Facilitated by Greenwald, Snowden divulged that the National Security Agency boasted of having “direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, PalTalk, YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL, and other servers.”

It transpired that, contrary to what you’d been told by officials under oath, “the world’s largest surveillance organization” can and does “obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders.” This is contrary to the Bill of Rights, and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, in particular, which specifies that “warrants shall issue” only “upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation. Tellingly, the tools of Big Media and Big Government had not apprised you of these facts.

It took Snowden to come forth, in his words, “to reveal the criminality.” In Snowden’s poignant words, “You can’t wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act. … I’m neither traitor nor hero. I’m an American,” he summed-up so simply. “Thank you for your service,” Mr. Snowden. For his part, a decade before he was broken, an insouciant Assange told the New Yorker that “a social movement to expose secrets could bring down many administrations that rely on concealing reality — including the US administration.” A naïve Assange had vowed to skewer “lying, corrupt and murderous leadership from Bahrain to Brazil.”

With its many epic “data dumps,” Assange’s WikiLeaks enlightened and educated, providing definitive proof that the mass media are lapdogs, not watchdogs. Democratic lapdogs. The colluding quislings of the major American networks and newspapers had actively worked to elect Mrs. Clinton. Thanks to WikiLeaks, Americans also learned of the contempt with which these Democrats hold them. [..] Well, America has jurisdiction over Assange because it has simply asserted it based on trumped-up charges equating his journalism with espionage. Which is why Assange now fears being “Epsteined.”

Elon and Bernie

This is the best thing you’ll see on the Internet before 2021 ends. pic.twitter.com/n6WUj8JHt5

— Bhavik Lathia (@bhaviklathia) December 28, 2021

OSCAR WILDE / JULIAN ASSANGE
History repeats itself

OSCAR WILDE / JULIAN ASSANGE
History repeats itselfhttps://t.co/YhkhT70OYN
by Murray Lachlan Young@MurrayLYoung

Follow @artAssange, join https://t.co/R7HVcvLEP2 #FreeAssange #DropTheCharges pic.twitter.com/A14T4SZHhZ

— Artists for Assange (@artAssange) February 17, 2021

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Debt Rattle November 18 2021

Nov 182021

November 18, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: Fauci, Marik, OSHA, Pfizer, Rittenhouse, Schiff, Steele dossier, T cells, truckers 142 Responses »

Francisco Goya Witches’ Sabbath 1797-98

• OSHA Suspends Enforcement of Biden’s Vaccine Mandate (NR)

• FDA Asks Judge to Grant it Until 2076 to Release Pfizer Vaccine Data (Siri)

• Fauci Says Covid-19 Booster Might Become New Standard For Being Vaccinated (NYP)

• Hospital Files Motion to Dismiss Dr. Paul Marik’s Landmark Case (FLCCC)

• 37% of US Truckers Will Not Comply With Vaccine Mandate (CTH)

• “T-Cell Priming” Vaccine Could Provide Better Immunity Than mRNA Vaccines (Salon)

• The US Is A Powder Keg (Tucker)

• Kyle Rittenhouse Defense Moves For A Mistrial With Prejudice (AT)

• The Steele Dossier and the End of Shame In American Politics (Turley)

John Campbell references the same German vit. D study I did several times, last in The End of Mass Vaxx.

Germany now has more deaths per day than 1 year ago, despite 85% of the adult population vaccinated

Lost.

• OSHA Suspends Enforcement of Biden’s Vaccine Mandate (NR)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has suspended implementation and enforcement of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private employers after a federal court blocked the measure. The OSHA website page dedicated to the COVID Vaccine Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) reads: “While OSHA remains confident in its authority to protect workers in emergencies, OSHA has suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement of the ETS pending future developments in the litigation.” Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit fully blocked Biden’s executive order requiring companies with over 100 workers to mandate vaccination for their employees after temporarily staying it on November 12.

The court ordered that OSHA “take no steps to implement or enforce” the vaccine mandate “until further court order.” By its mandate, the Biden administration is claiming that the federal government, through congressional legislation, has regulatory power to issue a medical mandate for the sake of public health and therefore general welfare. However, since the directive was announced, many legal scholars have challenged its constitutionality, given that the legislation it relies on for authority explicitly states that an ETS can only be issued when employees are exposed to a “grave danger” that necessitates immediate action. That case is becoming increasingly difficult to argue, given the fact that some vaccinated individuals can transmit the disease and that treatment options for COVID infections are expanding.

As of Tuesday, the Biden administration is planning to purchase 10 million doses of Pfizer’s antiviral medication to treat patents with COVID. Some lawmakers and pundits have speculated that Biden’s strategy with the vaccine mandate recognized that the order would likely be indefensible in court but hoped that its chilling effect would pressure employers to comply in advance of any litigation. After the federal appeals court first issued a motion to stay the order, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki still urged employers to implement coercive measures to increase vaccination numbers among their labor forces, although without the teeth of government enforcement.

It took 108 days to approve the vaccine. It will take over 20,000 days to tell us why.

• FDA Asks Judge to Grant it Until 2076 to Release Pfizer Vaccine Data (Siri)

The FDA has asked a federal judge to make the public wait until the year 2076 to disclose all of the data and information it relied upon to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. That is not a typo. It wants 55 years to produce this information to the public. As explained in a prior article, the FDA repeatedly promised “full transparency” with regard to Covid-19 vaccines, including reaffirming “the FDA’s commitment to transparency” when licensing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. With that promise in mind, in August and immediately following approval of the vaccine, more than 30 academics, professors, and scientists from this country’s most prestigious universities requested the data and information submitted to the FDA by Pfizer to license its COVID-19 vaccine.

The FDA’s response? It produced nothing. So, in September, my firm filed a lawsuit against the FDA on behalf of this group to demand this information. To date, almost three months after it licensed Pfizer’s vaccine, the FDA still has not released a single page. Not one. Instead, two days ago, the FDA asked a federal judge to give it until 2076 to fully produce this information. The FDA asked the judge to let it produce the 329,000+ pages of documents Pfizer provided to the FDA to license its vaccine at the rate of 500 pages per month, which means its production would not be completed earlier than 2076. The FDA’s promise of transparency is, to put it mildly, a pile of illusions.

It took the FDA precisely 108 days from when Pfizer started producing the records for licensure (on May 7, 2021) to when the FDA licensed the Pfizer vaccine (on August 23, 2021). Taking the FDA at its word, it conducted an intense, robust, thorough, and complete review and analysis of those documents in order to assure that the Pfizer vaccine was safe and effective for licensure. While it can conduct that intense review of Pfizer’s documents in 108 days, it now asks for over 20,000 days to make these documents available to the public. So, let’s get this straight. The federal government shields Pfizer from liability. Gives it billions of dollars. Makes Americans take its product. But won’t let you see the data supporting its product’s safety and efficacy. Who does the government work for?

What happened to the story of puppies eaten alive?

• Fauci Says Covid-19 Booster Might Become New Standard For Being Vaccinated (NYP)

COVID-19 booster shots may become the new standard to be considered fully vaccinated, according to the nation’s top doctor. Dr. Anthony Fauci discussed the impending need for hundreds of millions of Americans to roll up their sleeves and get the jab during a pre-taped interview that aired at the 2021 STAT Summit in Boston this week, according to ABC News. “I happen to believe as an immunologist and infectious disease person that a third shot boost for an mRNA [vaccine] … should be part of the actual standard regimen, where a booster isn’t a luxury,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reportedly said.

“A booster isn’t an add-on and a booster is part of what the original regimen should be. So that when we look back on this, we’re going to see that boosters are essential for an optimal vaccine regimen,” Fauci told the audience, according to the network. The remarks came as New York City and several states expanded booster shot eligibility to all adults who were vaccinated against COVID-19 at least six months ago this week. Until then, the jabs were only available to people 65 years of age and over and those in high-risk situations. The guidance from the president’s chief medical advisor came as Moderna filed an application with the FDA seeking emergency use authorization of vaccine booster shots for all US residents 18 and older. Pfizer last week asked federal regulators to expand its booster shot eligibility to all Americans.

Some 31.5 million Americans had already received a booster shot on Wednesday, according to CDC data. More than a third of the recipients were over 65. The number of vaccinated US residents stood at 196 million people, according to the agency — which noted that more than 40 percent of the country was not fully inoculated. The push for booster shots came as the seven-day rolling average of cases increased by 27 percent since Oct. 25, US data showed. Fauci had said over the summer he was “certain” Americans would need additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

They, too, have a deal with Pfizer.

• Hospital Files Motion to Dismiss Dr. Paul Marik’s Landmark Case (FLCCC)

On Friday, November 12, 2021, Sentara Hospital System in Virginia submitted a motion to dismiss the complaint filed against it earlier in the week by Dr. Paul Marik—co-chief medical officer of the FLCCC, tenured professor, and the Director of the Intensive Care Unit at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. Dr. Marik filed suit seeking a temporary injunction to lift the ban Sentara Healthcare System had placed on a range of highly effective COVID-19 treatments used by Dr. Marik to save critically ill COVID-19 patients. These components, including IV vitamin C, dutasteride, fluvoxamine, finasteride, and ivermectin, had previously been successfully used—with the exception of ivermectin, the use of which Sentara never permitted —to reduce COVID deaths in the ICU by as much as 50 percent. The result of the prohibition has been a sharp increase in mortality at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.

The hospital’s motion to dismiss Marik’s lawsuit rests on their claim that Dr. Marik has “lack of standing” to bring the lawsuit against the hospital. According to the hospital, “The alleged causes of action against Sentara, if any, reside with the patients in the hospital, not those patients’ attending physician.” The hospital also asserted in its motion that Virginia’s Advance Directive Statute and/or the Health Care Decisions Act do not “afford the patient the ability to specifically direct or demand his or her course of treatment by a physician or hospital.” But Dr. Marik’s complaint argues that “Sentara’s prohibition of these medicines is causing needless deaths, because it violates patients’ rights to informed consent, and because it contravenes Virginia’s Health Care Decisions Act.”

Under Virginia law, Dr. Marik, as the “attending physician” of his patients in the ICU, is personally and legally responsible for the exercise of professional skill and judgement in determining what a patient under his care receives. Because Dr. Marik is prohibited from giving his patients medications that are potentially lifesaving—and have been demonstrated as such in peer-reviewed studies—he is forced to abandon his professional duty. His actions are regulated by the hospital in such a way that it causes him to violate the rights of his patients.

The hospital’s motion to dismiss or continue the hearing — scheduled for Thursday, November 18 at 1PM ET in Norfolk — also argues that Dr. Marik has lack of standing to bring the lawsuit because he has not been “injuriously affected” by the prohibition of the medications since he himself was not a patient who was denied “the alleged” lifesaving treatment. Yet, if Dr. Marik were to violate the hospital’s prohibition, he would be subject to revocation of his hospital privileges. Furthermore, due to Sentara’s prohibition, he is the one who faces potential legal liability for failing to provide his patients with the medications which, in his professional judgment, had the capacity to save their lives. Therefore, Dr. Marik has solid standing to seek vindication of the rights of his patients and of himself as treating physician.

Think there’s a supply chain issue now? Just wait.

• 37% of US Truckers Will Not Comply With Vaccine Mandate (CTH)

A very interesting interview with Chris Spear, president and CEO of the American Trucking Association. During a House Transportation Committee hearing on supply chain issues, CEO Chris Spear shares an internal survey showing that 37% of truck drivers “not only said no, but said hell no” to the Biden vaccine mandates. To give some perspective of the downstream consequence, the ATA President noted that “if just 3.7 percent, not 37 percent, just 3.7 percent” of the drivers left the industry, there would be over a quarter million vacancies resulting in a “catastrophic” collapse of the U.S. supply chain. Mr. Spear also shared his opinion the OSHA rule is completely unworkable and unlawful.

The consequences are grave if just 3.7% did not work. However, if ten times that many, 37 percent of truck drivers, stopped hauling products because of the Biden vaccine requirement, American civic society would collapse within days as panicked citizens took to the streets. Desperate Americans would be clamoring for scarce products, and the impact on society could not be measured. As we have continued to point out, a federal vaccine mandate might sound like a good idea on a think tank, academic or white paper policy level of consideration; but on a practical level, wiping out a large percentage of your most productive workforce over a vaccine mandate is unworkable, and might even end the operation of the entire business.

It is important to note the recent NBC poll on this issue amid the outlook of the vaccine mandates. A majority of the country do not support the vaccine mandates, and worse still, the number of unvaccinated workers is essentially unwavering in the past six weeks. Remember, the number of Americans who willingly quit their jobs increased to 4.3 million in August, and then increased again to 4.4 million in September. People are not f**king around now.

Challenging the spike protein monopoly?

• “T-Cell Priming” Vaccine Could Provide Better Immunity Than mRNA Vaccines (Salon)

The development of mRNA vaccines, a long-promised and much-touted biotechnology, is regarded as a great victory of medical research spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nowadays, millions of people have been inoculated with these novel vaccines, which comprise both the Pfizer/BioNTech shot as well as Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. Yet mRNA vaccine technology is not the only immunological innovation that may emerge from the pandemic. Now, a company based in the United Kingdom called Emergex is preparing to test a next-generation COVID-19 vaccine based on a radical new technology. Unlike the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines — which inject a bespoke strand of messenger RNA that generates Spike proteins within the human body — this new vaccine technology is delivered via a skin patch, and relies on T cells, which are white blood cells that are part of the immune system, to kill infected cells.

It is believed that a T-cell vaccine would incite a more rapid and durable response to fighting the infection. “Although current COVID-19 vaccines have made significant progress in reducing mortality and morbidity, challenges still remain, especially with the development of new variants,” said Professor Blaise Genton, Principal Investigator for the trial from the Center for Primary Care and Public Health (Unisante) at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. “This exciting new scientific approach to developing a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 addresses the need to generate a T-cell response to elicit long term immunity.”

One of the constituent types of immune system cells, T cells play a vital role in fighting threatening foreign substances in the human body. Unlike some immune system cells, T cells do not attack any foreign body; rather, they are laser-focused only on specific pathogens. This trait, researchers believe, could be exploited such that their vaccine could instill a T-cell response in the human body — without actually giving their immune system the dangerous SARS-CoV-2 virus first. Emergex’s proposed vaccine would prepare T cells to remove infected cells from the body right after being infected. This would prevent the virus from replicating and progressing to COVID-19. By targeting and priming the T cells, this would also reduce the transmissibility between infected and non-infected people because it would stop the virus from replicating and prevent the onset of symptoms.

Closer to exploding than almost anyone appears to think.

• The US Is A Powder Keg (Tucker)

A USA Today poll shows that Biden’s approval has sunk to 38%. The trend line here is truly devastating. We can speculate why. Inflation plays a role. But also the vaccine mandate seems to have hit the Biden approval rating very hard. In the coming month, millions of jobs could be affected by this. The protests are growing in every city, and the people protesting are union members, city employees and even tech workers. They are furious that government would presume the right to tell people what medicines they must inject into their bodies. Some of the protesters are themselves vaccinated against their will. They are bitter and angry about it. The news of adverse outcomes from vaccination is leaking out through family networks and alternative news venues, though it continues to be suppressed by the media. So this mandate is now being seen as a direct threat to individual health.

That’s something that will inspire people to take to the streets. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a stay against OSHA’s mandate on businesses. The Biden administration attempted a response, but the result was lame. It just said that it stands by the mandate on health grounds, period. Perhaps this won’t surprise you, but the president himself instructed businesses to go ahead and proceed, essentially advocating that they ignore the court ruling. In other words, the Biden administration has gone completely lawless, not just ignoring the U.S. Constitution but also advocating that businesses ignore the courts. That’s dangerously close to announcing that we now live with dictatorship. It’s no wonder that even Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is talking about secession from the union. If he is saying this, I truly cannot imagine the kind of anger there is among the citizens.

If you wanted to live in exciting times, you chose a great time to be alive. The conditions are ripe not only for continuing electoral bloodbaths but more street protests, explosive town halls, hate-filled school board meetings and much worse. A more divisive and destructive policy is hard to imagine. Sadly, these policies are dividing friends and family. Some people with vaccinations don’t see the big deal here. Just get the jab, they say, and then you can be free. Others find this idea to be outrageous, an immoral acquiescence to power that can only lead to even worse outcomes. I just watched several hours of testimony from big shots at the NIH and the CDC. It might as well have been a paid advertisement from Moderna and Pfizer. Nearly every word out of the bureaucrats’ mouths was structured to push the vaccines that most everyone knows by now have failed to live up to their promise.

Indeed, if they were as good and safe as they say, government would not need to mandate them. The mandates, ironically, undermine public confidence. It’s hard to imagine that public confidence in everything could fall further, but it will. To top it off, making all the above much worse, the vaccination is now coming for the kids. Mandates will surely follow. You want revolution in this country? This is a good way to foment one. The current regime has another year of unchecked power. It seems unfathomable. So far, they have not been deterred by anything, not the courts, not public opinion, not even sinking election prospects. The U.S. has become a powder keg.

The prejudice will be needed, or the whole circus can start again.

• Kyle Rittenhouse Defense Moves For A Mistrial With Prejudice (AT)

During the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, the prosecution argued that Kyle provoked the men who attacked him by waving his gun. To prove this, during the trial, the prosecution gave the defense fuzzy drone footage. There was a great deal of argument about what could be extrapolated from that fuzzy view. It turns out that the prosecution had within its possession a high-quality video that it played for the judge after the trial ended. On this, and other evidentiary grounds, the defense moved for a mistrial with prejudice. The defense motion states the facts with sufficient clarity that I’m going to reprint them here verbatim:

“On November 5. 2021, the fifth day of trial on this case, the prosecution turned over to the defense footage of a drone video which captured some of the incident from August 25, 2020. The problem is, the prosecution gave the defense a compressed version of the video. What that means is the video provided to the defense was not as clear as the video kept by the state. The file size of the defense video is 3.6 MB and the state’s is 11.2 MB. Further, the dimensions on our video are 480 x 212, the state’s, 1920 x 844. The video which was in the state’s possession, wasn’t provided to the defense until after the trial concluded. During the jury instructions conference, the defense played their version of the video for the court to review. The state indicated their version was much clearer and had their tech person come into court to have the court review their clearer video. The video is the same; the resolution of that video, however, was not. The state did not provide their quality video to the defense until Saturday, November 13, 2021, and only did so upon specific request by Attorney Wisco — two days before closing arguments and after the evidence had been closed.”

Under Wisconsin law, when the defense makes a demand, the prosecution must provide to the defense “[a]ny physical evidence that the district attorney intends to offer in evidence at the trial” and “[a]ny exculpatory evidence.” That’s Wisconsin Stat. § 971.23(1)(g) & (h). I don’t have the time to research the law, but my bet is that if Wisconsin’s appellate court ever had before it the question of whether the prosecutor may get away with producing bastardized, degraded versions of the requested evidence, it would say emphatically not. The motion for a mistrial with prejudice also raises the fact that, when Kyle Rittenhouse took the witness stand, the prosecutors improperly accused him of keeping silent after his arrest. That right, of course, is enshrined in the famous Miranda rights warning that all arrestees in America receive: “You have the right to remain silent …” The corollary to that right is that this silence cannot be used against the defendant in a court of law, but that’s exactly what the prosecution tried to do.

Rittenhouse videos
https://twitter.com/i/status/1461035214977777674

“Schiff’s spin is enough to cause permanent vertigo.”

• The Steele Dossier and the End of Shame In American Politics (Turley)

The famous philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once declared that “the only shame is to have none.” The problem with shame is that it requires a sense of guilt over one’s actions. In the age of rage, there appear fewer and fewer actions that are beyond the pale for politics. Take Adam Schiff and the Steele dossier. While even the Washington Post has admitted that it got the Russian collusion story wrong in light of the findings of Special Counsel John Durham, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is still insisting that he was absolutely right to promote the discredited Steele dossier. Schiff’s interview on NBC’s Meet the Press may be the final proof of the death of shame in American politics.

Schiff was one of the greatest promoters of the Steele dossier despite access to briefings casting doubt about Steele and the underlying claims. However, Schiff recently has attempted to defend himself by claiming that Steele was a respected former spy and that he was lied to by a Russian source. Schiff told host Chuck Todd: “I don’t regret saying that we should investigate claims of someone who, frankly, was a well-respected British intelligence officer. And we couldn’t have known, of course, years ago that we would learn years later that someone who is a primary source lied to him. [Igor] Danchenko lied to Christopher Steele and then lied to the FBI. He should be prosecuted. He is being prosecuted. And I’ll tell you this, if he’s convicted, he should not be pardoned the way Donald Trump pardoned people who lied to FBI agents, like Roger Stone and Mike Flynn. There ought to be the same standard in terms of prosecuting the liars. But I don’t think there ought to be any pardon, no matter which way the lies cut.”

Schiff’s spin is enough to cause permanent vertigo. Some of us have spent years being pummeled for questioning the obvious problems with the Steele dossier, including the long-denied connection to the Clinton campaign. Schiff was the main voice swatting down such criticism and his endorsements were treated as dispositive for media from MSNBC to the Washington Post. After all, he was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and assured the public that our criticisms were meritless and the dossier was corroborated. Schiff’s spin, however, continues to deny the obvious about the Russian collusion scandal.

First, many would guffaw at the claim that Steele was and remains a “well-respected British intelligence officer.” Soon after the dossier was shopped to the FBI, British intelligence flagged credibility problems with Steele. The FBI severed Steele as an asset. Even his own sources told the FBI that Steele wildly exaggerated information and distorted intelligence. Most recently, Steele went public with a laughable claim that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former counsel, was lying to protect Trump despite spending years trying to get Trump charged criminally.

Second, Schiff ignored repeated contradictions in Steele’s dossier as well as evidence that the dossier was paid for and promoted by the Clinton campaign. In 2017, even fired FBI agent Peter Strzok admitted that “we are unaware of ANY Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials” and “Steele may not be in a position to judge the reliability of his subsource network.” Schiff would have had access to some of this intelligence. Indeed, while the Clinton campaign was denying that it funded the dossier, American intelligence knew that that was a lie. Indeed, until the Durham indictments, Schiff continued to defend the Russian collusion investigation and the Steele dossier.

Third, Schiff attempts to portray the sole problem with the Steele dossier as Russian analyst Igor Danchenko. That is simply not true. Schiff was long aware that there were allegations of misleading or false information given by the FBI to the secret court. Indeed, the first Durham conviction was of Kevin Clinesmith, the former FBI agent who pleaded guilty. Schiff was aware that President Barack Obama was briefed in 2017 that Hillary Clinton was allegedly planning to manufacture a Russian collusion scandal — just days before the start of the Russian investigation. The dossier was riddled with disproven allegations. Fourth, Schiff states that he merely sought to investigate allegations. However, Schiff was one of the most active members fueling the Russian collusion allegations. Indeed, when the Mueller investigation found no proof of Russian collusion, Schiff immediately went public to claim that he had evidence of collusion in his committee files. It was meant to keep the scandal alive. Schiff has never produced his promised evidence of collusion.

Kill the Bill

It's 2 years of labeling us as lunatics, us, standing up for the core values of our ancestors. Wake up! pic.twitter.com/rW2LiAtP64

— Wake Up From COVID (@wakeupfromcovid) November 17, 2021

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Debt Rattle September 14 2021

Sep 142021

September 14, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: Biden, Evergrande, immunity, ivermectin, McCullough, Mercola, spike proteins, T cells, Vitamin D 61 Responses »

Claude Monet The Manneporte at Étretat 1886

• Clearing Up Misinformation About The Spike Protein And Covid Vaccines (Joomi)

• Risks of Vaccines for Those Recovered from COVID-19 (McCullough)

• Do Many People Have Pre-Existing Immunity? (BMJ)

• Yes, They Are Insane (Denninger)

• Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? (Mercola)

• Variant Heads-up To The Virologist Community (Roemer)

• Biden’s Tax & Vax Plan May be The Final Straw (GRB)

• New York City Teacher’s Union Wins Battle Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate (ET)

• LA Cops Sue Over Vaccine Mandate, Police Across CA Threaten To Resign (G.)

• FDA Senior Officials Say No Evidence Fully Vaccinated Need Booster Shots (DM)

• Sweden Proposes Law to Compensate Those Injured by Covid Vaccines

• Ivermectin Frenzy: The Advocates, Anti-vaxxers And Telehealth Companies (G.)

• US Bankruptcy Judge Approves Purdue Pharma’s $7 Mln Executive Bonus Plan (R.)

• Evergrande Hires Bankruptcy Advisors As Investors Protest Imminent Default (ZH)

Gestetner

Low-vaccinated India has now 60% less Coronavirus deaths than the same week last year.

Mid-vaxxed US is up 39% from last year.

Highly-vaccinated Israel and Canada are up 100% and 200% respectively.

I don’t know why it’s so.

Here is Fauci March 2020:pic.twitter.com/iZO6JArhmp

— Yossi Gestetner (@YossiGestetner) September 5, 2021

India

Kory/Ivory

Lies and rumors about the “i” word: Dr. @PierreKory, top ivermectin researcher, dispels the myths and answers the questions my viewers submitted. Full 27 minute interview here: https://t.co/5A1uzu6h5U pic.twitter.com/FxFEJ6WJhn

— Ivory Hecker (@IvoryHecker) September 13, 2021

Great source that references tons of studies.

• Clearing Up Misinformation About The Spike Protein And Covid Vaccines (Joomi)

The spike protein is a type of protein on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that helps the virus infect cells. The COVID vaccines available in the U.S. work by getting the body to produce this protein (with some modifications) so that the body will generate neutralizing antibodies to it. It turns out that the spike protein by itself, even without the rest of the virus present, has been shown to cause harm to the body. In Part I of this article I’ll summarize some of the studies that show this. This is not really controversial at this point. However, what is controversial is that some people have asked: if spike is dangerous, might we be endangering people by giving them vaccines that make the body produce spike?

Fact-checking articles that try to shoo away this concern usually refer to the fact that the spike encoded by the vaccines are different from “wild-type” spike (spike from the virus), and for this reason, they are safe. They also state that there is no evidence that the vaccine spike is harmful. In Part II, I’ll look into the evidence that shows that vaccine-encoded spike is not harmless. In Part III, I’ll discuss how most responses to concerns about vaccine-encoded spike usually misconstrue the concern, or don’t actually back up their statements with any real data. In Part IV, I’ll argue that we should consider the possibility that vaccine-encoded spike protein can cause lasting harm even in people that don’t have obvious or serious “adverse events” from the vaccine. In Part V, I’ll link to statements from other scientists or doctors who have concerns about the vaccines.

Before we go any further: I am not anti-vax. I am double-vaxed with Moderna. I used to be a biologist. I believe vaccines have saved many lives. However, not all vaccines are the same. And not all vaccines are equally safe, and we need to be able to have an open and honest discussion about this.

“It is my opinion that SARS-CoV-2 causes an infection in humans that results in robust, complete, and durable immunity,..”

• Risks of Vaccines for Those Recovered from COVID-19 (McCullough)

There is recent research on the fact that the COVID-19 vaccine is dangerous for those who have already had COVID-19 and have recovered with inferred robust, complete, and durable immunity. These patients were excluded from the FDA-approved clinical trials performed by Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J. From these trials, the safety profile was unknown when the products for approved for Emergency Use Authorization in 2020. There has been no study demonstrating clinical benefit with COVID-19 vaccination in those who have well documented or even suspected prior COVID-19 illness.

A medical study of United Kingdom healthcare workers who had already had COVID-19 and then received the vaccine found that they suffered higher rates of side effects than the average population. Rachel K. Raw, et al., Previous COVID-19 infection but not Long-COVID-19 is associated with increased adverse events following BNT162b2/Pfizer vaccination, medRxiv (preprint), (last visited June 21, 2021).

The test group experienced more moderate to severe symptoms than the study group that did not previously have COVID-19. The symptoms included fever, fatigue, myalgia-arthralgia, and lymphadenopathy. Id. Raw found that in 974 individuals who received the BNT162b2/Pfizer vaccine, those with a prior history of SARS-CoV-2 or those who had positive antibodies at baseline had a higher rate of vaccine reactions than those who were COVID-19 naive. Mathioudakis et al. reported that in 2020 patients who underwent vaccination with either mRNA-based or vector-based COVID-19 vaccines, COVID-19-recovered patients who were needlessly vaccinated had higher rates of vaccine reactions. Krammer et al. reported on 231 volunteers for COVID-19 vaccination, 83 of whom had positive SARS-CoV-2 antibodies at the time of immunization.

The authors found: “Vaccine recipients with preexisting immunity experience systemic side effects with a significantly higher frequency than antibody naïve vaccines (e.g., fatigue, headache, chills, fever, muscle or joint pains, in order of decreasing frequency, P < 0.001 for all listed symptoms, Fisher’s exact test, two-sided).” To my knowledge, there are no studies that demonstrate the clinical benefit of COVID-19 vaccination in COVID-19 survivors or those with suspected COVID-19 illness or subclinical disease who have laboratory evidence of prior infection. It is my opinion that SARS-CoV-2 causes an infection in humans that results in robust, complete, and durable immunity, and is superior to vaccine immunity which by comparison has demonstrated massive failure including over 10,000 well-documented vaccine failure cases as reported by the CDC before tracking was stopped on May 31, 2021.

There are no studies demonstrating the clinical benefit of COVID-19 vaccination in COVID-19 survivors, and there are three studies demonstrating harm in such individuals. Thus, it is my opinion that the COVID-19 vaccination is contraindicated in COVID-19 survivors, many of whom may be in the student population. Multiple laboratory studies conducted by highly respected U.S. and European academic research groups have reported that convalescent mildly or severely infected COVID-19 patients who are unvaccinated can have greater virus-neutralizing immunity—especially more versatile, long-enduring T- cell immunity—relative to vaccinated individuals who were never infected.

BMJ, September 2020. T cells and vitamin D. A year later, the UK still recommends 400 IU per day, which guarantees people will get very sick. Fauci takes 6,000 IU.

“When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signalling device or ‘antenna’ known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D..”

• Do Many People Have Pre-Existing Immunity? (BMJ)

All this should have shifted the focus of efforts towards T-cells at an early stage – the real question is why mainstream media and others continued to focus efforts and narrative on antibodies. Is it because vaccines are good at provoking antibody responses but not so great at generating T-cells? Some of the vaccines presently under trial do elicit some T-cells but it seems that neither the quantity nor variety are hugely impressive. Does this matter? Apparently so: Research establishments including Yale found that in mild or asymptomatic cases, many T-cells are produced. These were highly varied, responding not just to parts of the Spike, S protein or Receptor Binding Domain but to many other parts of the virus [1, 4-6]. Notably, in these mild cases there were few or no detectable antibodies.

Conversely, the severely ill produced few T-cells with less variety but had plenty of antibodies. What is also of interest is that men produced fewer T-cells than women, and unlike women, their T-cell response reduced with age [7]. So why are some people unable to mount a good protective T-cell response? The key to this question might be a 10-year-old Danish study led by Carsten Geisler, head of the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen [8]. Geisler noted that “When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signalling device or ‘antenna’ known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D,”, and if there is an inadequate vitamin D level, “they won’t even begin to mobilize.”

In other words, adequate vitamin D is critically important for the activation of T-cells from their inactive naïve state. The question of whether T-cells might also need a continuing supply of vitamin D to prevent the T-cell exhaustion and apoptosis observed in some serious COVID-19 cases [9] deserves further research. High levels of vitamin D are also critical for first line immune defences including physical mucosal defences, human antiviral production, modulating cytokines, reducing blood clotting and a whole host of other important immune system functions [10]. The obese, diabetics and people of BAME origin are far more deficient in vitamin D and men have lower levels than women.

Another intriguing clue is that Japan has the highest proportion of elderly on the planet but despite lack of lockdowns, little mask wearing and high population densities in cities, it escaped with few COVID deaths. Could this, at least in part, be because of extraordinarily high vitamin D levels of over 30 ng/ml in 95% of the active elderly [11]? By comparison, UK average levels are below 20ng/ml [10]. Vitamin D is made in the skin from the action of UV sunlight, food usually being a poor source, but the Japanese diet includes unusually high levels. Sunny countries near the equator (e.g. Nigeria, Singapore, Sri Lanka) also have very low COVID related deaths.

The results of the first vitamin D intervention double blind RCT for COVID was published on 29 August by researchers in Córdoba, Spain. This very well conducted study produced spectacular outcomes for the vitamin D group (n=50), virtually eliminating the need for ICU (reducing it by 96%) and eliminating deaths (8% in the n=26 control group). Although this was a small trial, the ICU results are so dramatic that they are statistically highly significant [12]. Substantially more vitamin D is required for optimal immune function than for bone health. It seems Dr Fauci is not ignorant of this, having apparently confirmed on TV and by email that he takes 6,000 IU daily! (see Dr John Campbell on YouTube Vitamin D and pandemic science, 16 September 2020). Meanwhile the US’s health body continues to recommend only 600-800 IU and the UK’s, only 400 IU.

“By vaccinating the unvaccinated, increasing our testing and masking, and protecting the vaccinated, we can end the pandemic. That’s exactly what we are committed to doing.” – Kamala Harris

Never before in history has there been a need to “protect the vaccinated.” There isn’t one now unless the jabs not only don’t work, in some percentage of people who took them they make infection worse — and they know it.”

• Yes, They Are Insane (Denninger)

While you can excuse Biden for being a demented old coot and unable to think before his mouth opens you can’t make that argument for Kamala. Her statement above is proof that what Biden said the other day was not an accident. Indeed, he was likely reading off a teleprompter and it is an official position of the US Federal Government at all levels. This in turn implies they know the vaccines not only have failed they are potentiating infections instead of protecting against them. Why else would you “protect the vaccinated”? But wait: Who caused all these people to be put in the position where they are more likely to get ****ed? That would be the CDC, NIH, Fauci personally and both the Trump and Biden Administrations. What might be scaring the crap out of them? Perhaps data like this:

Add to that anecdotal reports so far about people who were fully vaccinated not only winding up in the hospital and dying but crashing very rapidly — somethin that hasn’t happened throughout the time we’ve had Covid-19 here in the United States and which isn’t happening in unvaccinated persons. Gee, isn’t that something — especially when on the data we also know, and even Fauci has admitted it, that being previously infected and recovered is extraordinarily good protection — far better than that afforded by these vaccines. He refused to answer said question in a presser the other day. In other words for the previously-infected the jabs only offer risk, no benefit, exactly as does a HPV shot for a nun, who is in fact celibate and virginal, in a convent. Now that “potential risk” from not collecting the data before jabbing a huge number of Americans appears to be on the verge of turning into very real and lethal risk!

There is no way to know whether those currently-anecdotal reports will turn into an unavoidable cascade of cases that absolutely nobody will be able to ignore. Don’t you think we should have figured all of this out before we went on a stabby spree with lightly tested technology that you cannot turn around and undo if it goes badly? We would have found out and halted what may well be an incipient disaster if we didn’t proceed with “Warp Speed” and instead went through the regular process of gathering that long-term data while allowing the use of these jabs only by those at the highest degree of individual “bad outcome” infection risk (such as residents of nursing homes who have, on average, six months of remaining life and thus long-term risks are, for most of them, irrelevant.) They tried to kill you and got jabs into 200 million American arms — although whether it was intentional or simply stupidity and greed that drove what happened is up for debate — and now they’re trying to cover it up.

Mercola has already taken this down again, as he does standard now, I’m sorry. We should save his pieces in their entirety.

Fleming: “The ultimate argument is that you can’t kill somebody more than dead … they can’t do worse than kill the patient. And we’ve already seen what doing nothing does. It kills the patient.”

• Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? (Mercola)

In his book, “Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? A Scientific and Forensic Investigation,” Dr. Richard Fleming documents evidence showing SARS-CoV-2 is a bioweapon created over the past two decades. Once you conclude that SARS-CoV-2 is a bioweapon, you must also recognize that the COVID shots are nothing more than the genetic reproduction of that bioweapon. In other words, they are bioweapons too. The same people involved in the funding of this bioweapon are the same people who have interfered with doctors providing treatment to patients, and the same people who have been involved in the development of these COVID shots. Health care workers are injecting people with something they cannot possibly give informed consent for, which means health care workers are violating their Hippocratic Oath.

Health care workers who give these COVID shots are also violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Treaty, the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki and other legal statutes. Helping you take control of your health in these crazy times is Dr. Richard Fleming, a prolific author in addition to being a physicist, a nuclear cardiologist, researcher and attorney. Here, we discuss his latest book “Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon? A Scientific and Forensic Investigation,” slated for release September 7, 2021. It’s currently available for preorder on Amazon. It’s an incredibly well-documented book and contains history that many of us aren’t aware of. As it turns out, the creation of this virus goes back not a year or two but two decades.

[..] “You see real efforts to produce viruses, coronaviruses, in particular. Spike proteins of coronaviruses to be even more specific, as I show in the book, paid for by the federal government by people who say they were not involved in gain-of-function research. Well, their fingerprints are on the documents, or on the published papers or on the grants or on the patents. You can’t say that you’re not involved in things when the documents show differently. They show the work and the money that came out of the federal government that went to Peter Daszak at EcoHealth, that went to Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina, Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other places. For me, as a researcher, obviously, once I start to investigate something, the only way you can stop me from doing that is to put a bullet in my head.

Otherwise, I’m going to stay after it. There are things that are not in the book that are going to come out in international criminal court, things I’m saving for that, because this virus is, by definition, a biological weapon. It violates the biological weapons convention treaty. You just have to look at the definitions. It provides nothing useful to humanity. It’s dangerous. When Fort Detrick is involved and the Department of Defense is involved … and you see these monies and you see the people that are involved, you realize that … the United States was playing China, China was playing the United States, and you saw who got caught in between. And they’re still playing the game. For lack of a better term, this book is an indictment.

That’s now my attorney hat going on saying that I have provided in this book evidence that I would take to a grand jury … I’m not somebody who is going to give up on having these people dealt with, because all the freedoms that we have lost, and the rights that we have lost as individuals, not to mention just the numbers of people who have died. My argument is … the reason why they died is because they didn’t get treatment for the inflammation and the blood clotting that I and other doctors have shown works. The ultimate argument is that you can’t kill somebody more than dead … they can’t do worse than kill the patient. And we’ve already seen what doing nothing does. It kills the patient.

At no other time in American history have doctors looked at patients and said, ‘We can’t do anything for you. Go home and come back when you get sicker.’ We have always treated people with breathing problems with medications for breathing problems. We’ve always treated people with clotting problems with medicines to stop the clotting. And so, the reason why this is so critical to understand is because the same people who were involved in the funding of this bioweapon are the same people who have interfered with doctors providing treatment to patients, and the same people who have been involved in the development of these vaccines.”

Twitter thread. “Could this be a vax escape lineage?”

• Variant Heads-up To The Virologist Community (Roemer)

A new delta sublineage AY.33 has been designated that (to me) appears to be the most critical delta sublineage designated so far. (journos please don’t yet write about it, this has not been scrutinised by the science community) The defining Spike mutation is S:Q613H, a mutation that has already been studied in the context of other variants due to it’s closeness to the mutation S:D614G which got fixed last summer. The other spike substitutions on top of standard Delta are S:T29A, S:T250I, S:T299I. This lineage grabbed my attention not because of its high growth rate but because of its high number of extra spike mutations that is a clear outlier on the current delta tree (see screenshot).

The lineage is most common in Belgium but also growing in Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland and has already been observed in more than 25 countries. The first observation was in Japan mid-June in a traveller from Morocco. The second observation was in Morocco. Using timetree, the lineage seems to have arisen in April/ May. Belgium has strong ties to Morocco so it’s plausible that the lineage is widespread in North Africa where unfortunately there is very little sequencing activity (last sequences is 3mo old and this precise lineage). At this point in time, it’s difficult to estimate growth advantage because in no country has this lineage reached more than 10% and we only have a few weeks of data. But using naive methods, it’s plausible that the transmission advantage could be between 10-70%.

Comparing transmission advantages it’s interesting to see that the growth rate seems to be higher in countries with higher vaccination rate Spain: advantage ~70% (left)
Denmark: ~30%
Belgium: ~30%
Germany: ~20%
Switzerland: ~10% (right)
Could this be a vax escape lineage?
If I was a lab scientist, I’d take a close look at this lineage and study neutralising antibody titers. Any comments are very welcome! If you think there’s something fishy going on that could explain this, please comment! 8/

“..that will mean a lot more people have to be fired, adding to the soup lines at a time when soup shelves are growing bare..”

• Biden’s Tax & Vax Plan May be The Final Straw (GRB)

Joe Biden is looking a little Grinchy, having decided to fire the unvaccinated across America as we head toward the holidays. Even though the end of enhanced unemployment benefits has not brought back millions of former employees who’ve held out since the COVID lockdown, Biden decided it would be wise to fire a lot more people, mandating last week that all businesses with more than 100 employees terminate any employees who continue to refuse the government’s experimental, warp-speed vaccine. While President Biden may think he’s going to strong-arm people who don’t want to get vaccinated into a strong shot in the arm by punishing them with poverty and the threat of losing their homes as we enter the holiday season, he may find he find he has just enraged them and increased their willingness to take a stand against forced medication.

If so, that will mean a lot more people have to be fired, adding to the soup lines at a time when soup shelves are growing bare. I don’t know about where you live, but where I live, I see a number of small businesses already running fewer hours due to lack of employees and running with reduced menus or partially empty shelves due to unattainable supply. Has Jumpin’ Joe not stopped to think that an additional major drain of employees to run shops and move products around the nation does not add up to the kind of holiday retail season that can put companies in the black and may be all it takes to shove an already fading economy into a black winter hole? Will major trucking companies like Swift being forced by the nation’s ruler-by-decree to lay off hundreds of Trump-loving truckers help the nation with its widespread shortages?

Step 1.

• New York City Teacher’s Union Wins Battle Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate (ET)

New York City’s largest teacher’s union has won a battle to keep teachers and other educators employed if they suffer from certain medical conditions and don’t want to comply as a result with the Big Apple’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. An arbitrator ruled late Friday that teachers with certain documented medical afflictions must be offered assignments outside of classrooms and be kept on the city’s payroll. Other educators who don’t want a COVID-19 vaccine must be offered unpaid leave that keeps in place their health coverage or a severance package. City officials announced last month that all 148,000 Department of Education employees would have to get a COVID-19 vaccine, with limited exemptions.

The city planned to remove people who were granted an exemption from the payroll, infuriating the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the city’s largest teacher’s union. “That was it for us,” Michael Mulgrew, the union’s president, said on NY 1 this week. That prompted pushback, which ultimately resulted in the arbitration decision, even after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio seemed to publicly reverse the stance in a press conference on Wednesday. De Blasio said that few cases of medical or religious exemptions being granted are expected, “but they will be honored” if approved. “Those folks will continue to work for us in some capacity, in some location. We got to work that through,” he added, referring to the arbitration.

Mulgrew said the pushback from the union resulted in the reversal. “After our demand for independent arbitration, the city backed off its initial position that all unvaccinated personnel be removed from payroll, and will offer out-of-classroom work for those with certified medical or other conditions,” he said in a statement after the arbitrator’s decision was released.

Step 2.

• LA Cops Sue Over Vaccine Mandate, Police Across CA Threaten To Resign (G.)

Los Angeles police department (LAPD) employees have sued over requirements they get vaccinated for Covid-19, alleging that the department has created a “hostile work environment” for the unvaccinated and that the mandate violates employees’ privacy and civil rights. The suit is one of several aggressive challenges to vaccine mandates by police unions and officers across California, some of whom have threatened mass resignations in response to new rules. It comes as staff at law enforcement agencies remain unvaccinated at disproportionately high rates. LA’s vaccine mandate requires city employees to be vaccinated by 20 October unless they are approved for a specific religious or medical exemption.

Six LAPD employees over the weekend asserted in a federal complaint that that policy and its implementation infringed on their rights to “bodily integrity” and constituted “coerced medical treatment”. The complaint says that officials have threatened to lay off thousands of officers who refuse to get the jab. The lawsuit comes amid increasingly fraught debates over employer vaccination mandates in America, which escalated last week after Joe Biden announced the government would temporarily mandate that employers with more than 100 employees require workers to get vaccinated or be tested weekly.

The federal government and California have had public sector mandates in place for months, but some cities have adopted stricter requirements – that employees must be vaccinated and cannot submit to regular testing as an alternative. The LA suit, which was brought against the city, the police chief and several other government officials, claims that weekly testing is “highly intrusive”. It alleges that officers have not been given enough time to apply for exemptions, after a Monday deadline.

“Dr Marion Gruber is the director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER).”

As such, her voice was essential in approving the Pfizer vaccine. That happened on August 23. On August 30, she resigned. What’s going on?

• FDA Senior Officials Say No Evidence Fully Vaccinated Need Booster Shots (DM)

A group of senior U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials – including two who announced they will soon resign – have authored a report disagreeing with the White House’s plan to roll out COVID-19 vaccine boosters next week. In a report published in in The Lancet on Monday, the 18 officials write that there is no evidence supporting the need for boosters because fully vaccinated people still have high levels of protection against hospitalization or death. Instead, they say, vaccine doses should be donated to areas with lower vaccination rates to prevent the emergence of more COVID-19 variants. Although the administration is ready to roll out boosters starting September 20, President Joe Biden said last week that any decisions – including when to authorize boosters and who should receive them – will be left up to the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The group of FDA authors of the new report include Dr Marion Gruber and Dr Philip Krause, who plan to step down in the coming months due to disagreements over the rollout of vaccines. ‘Although the idea of further reducing the number of COVID-19 cases by enhancing immunity in vaccinated people is appealing, any decision to do so should be evidence-based and consider the benefits and risks for individuals and society,’ the officials wrote in the report. ‘COVID-19 vaccines continue to be effective against severe disease, including that caused by the Delta variant. ‘Most of the observational studies on which this conclusion is based are, however, preliminary and difficult to interpret precisely due to potential confounding and selective reporting.’

[..] Last month, health officials announced the those who received the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine would be eligible for a third shot eight months after receiving their second, starting September 20. The move was pending approval from the regulators like the FDA, though, and it appears they will not be approved by the planned roll out date next Monday. Gruber and Krause were frustrated by the decision from the White House to make the public announcement for the shots before approval, leading to the pair – who are crucial to the FDA’s process of approval of vaccines – announcing they will soon resign. Gruber is the director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). Krause is the deputy director of CBER.

The office is responsible for regulating ‘biological products for human use under applicable federal laws,’ according to the FDA. In essence, the office is largely responsible for making final decisions regarding things like vaccines, and making sure they are safe for human consumption. Gruber is one of the most important figures in the approval of vaccines. Now with senior officials choosing to publicly oppose the measure, the White House’s plans could be in turmoil.

100s of people and a $1 million fund.

• Sweden Proposes Law to Compensate Those Injured by Covid Vaccines

The Swedish government has announced a new proposal that would see those who have taken coronavirus vaccines and have been injured as a result will be entitled to compensation. The Swedish government announced the new proposal on Thursday, with Social Minister Lena Hallengren commenting: “Serious side effects of vaccines against COVID-19 are uncommon, but as an individual, you should be sure that financial compensation is paid in the event of injury.” “With this bill, the state takes it upon itself to pay the compensation for damage due to approved vaccines against COVID-19, in cases where a vaccine is not covered by Pharmaceutical Insurance or if the Pharmaceutical Insurance money is not enough,” Hallengren added.

The new law comes after the Swedish Board of Pharmaceutical Insurance made moves in December of last year to limit insurance liability in the case of injuries caused by vaccines during the Wuhan virus pandemic. “Due to the limitation of Pharmaceutical Insurance, there is weaker protection for possible serial damage caused by vaccines against COVID-19 than for other medicines. The government, therefore, considers that there is a need for the State to supplement Pharmaceutical Insurance in this regard,” the government stated in a press release. The new law would come into force in December but retroactively grant compensation to anyone injured as a result of the vaccines prior to that date. The government has also proposed to set aside 10 million Swedish kronor (£837,761/$1,159,443) to fund the initiative.

Compensation for injuries related to the vaccine is harder to access in other countries — like the United States, where lawyers have told prospective clients they may be unable to claim any compensation. Lawyer Altom Maglio told news service Reuters in July that his firm had been contacted by around a hundred people but said that despite his firm representing many people with vaccine-related injuries in the past, those looking to get compensation regarding the coronavirus vaccines were out of luck. Earlier this year, the Canadian federal government opened a vaccine injury compensation programme but stated only those with “a serious and permanent injury” would be eligible for any compensation.

“senator Ron Johnson, who has falsely claimed that natural immunity is better than vaccine immunity..”

The Guradian changes tack, from dewormer to a more ‘reasonable’ approach.

• Ivermectin Frenzy: The Advocates, Anti-vaxxers And Telehealth Companies (G.)

Despite outstanding questions over Ivermectin’s efficacy, several advocacy organizations have been on a nearly year-long campaign to mainstream the drug. Two of the most prominent groups backing Ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment are the UK-based British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (Bird) and the US-based Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). The FLCCC started as a non-profit network of doctors attempting to establish protocols for Covid-19 patient care in the initial days of the pandemic. The group became an early advocate for the use of steroids in treatment, and in late 2020 shifted its focus to Ivermectin, arguing the drug was a low cost option that could both treat and prevent the virus while vaccines were not widely available.

Bird, a non-profit group of doctors in the UK, took on a similar advocacy role. Its members published analyses promoting the drug, and the group started a now-defunct GoFundMe to “help us get life-saving drug approved for Covid-19”. The fund had raised around $44,000 as of last month. The FLCCC also solicits donations on its website, and in July it received a $100,000 award from a Malaysian charitable trust. Doctors in both groups have been on a media blitz during the last year, publishing protocols and promotional material on Ivermectin, giving interviews to news outlets, holding panels and appearing on major podcasts. But other doctors have cautioned the groups have relied on weak data, ignored studies that show Ivermectin is not effective and made numerous misleading claims in their push for the drug – such as FLCCC tweeting last month that “this could all be over by the end of August” and one founding member comparing restrictions on Ivermectin to genocide.

[..] Co-founder and president of FLCCC, pulmonary care specialist Dr Pierre Kory, has also found allies among influential politicians and media figures who have spoken critically of Covid-19 vaccines. At a December 2020 hearing chaired by senator Ron Johnson, who has falsely claimed that natural immunity is better than vaccine immunity and made misleading statements about vaccinations causing death, Kory called Ivermectin “the solution to Covid-19”. The appearance boosted Kory’s online following and led to appearances on several popular podcasts that have questioned vaccinations. In June, Kory was a guest on Joe Rogan’s top-rated podcast, telling Rogan’s millions of listeners that his “dream is that every household has ivermectin in the cupboard” while suggesting that technology companies were censoring discussion of the drug.

All I can see in this is utter madness.

• US Bankruptcy Judge Approves Purdue Pharma’s $7 Mln Executive Bonus Plan (R.)

Purdue Pharma, the bankrupt maker of the OxyContin painkiller, on Monday obtained court approval to pay up to $7.1 million in incentive payments for five top executives if they meet certain goals, despite opposition from U.S. government lawyers. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York, signed off on the executive incentive plan at the conclusion of a virtual hearing. His ruling comes about two weeks after he said he would approve Purdue’s reorganization plan, which rests on a $10 billion settlement of opioid-related litigation. read more The judge said repeatedly during Monday’s hearing that he does not consider the incentive payments “bonuses” because even if they are paid out in full, the executives would still only fall in the middle of the total compensation range for executives at major pharmaceutical companies.

The incentive payments, he said, are essentially part of the executives’ salaries, he added. “It’s easy — too easy in fact — to say that an incentive program is always a bonus,” Drain said. “No doubt my ruling will be construed by some as authorizing large bonuses to executives. I do not believe that is in fact the case here,” he added. “A bonus is something you get over and above median compensation.” He rejected an argument from the U.S. Department of Justice’s bankruptcy watchdog, the U.S. Trustee, that Purdue failed to show that the 2021 incentive plan is truly incentivizing, rather than a bonus for executives who are simply showing up to work. The U.S. Trustee frequently objects to bonuses for executives of companies that are in bankruptcy.

[..] Drain approved Purdue’s reorganization plan on Sept. 1, but the process of implementing it is ongoing. The plan rests on a $10 billion settlement that resolves thousands of lawsuits accusing the company and its owners, the Sackler family, of fueling the opioid crisis through deceptive marketing of its products. The Sacklers contributed approximately $4.5 billion to the settlement in exchange for the release of future opioid-related litigation. Under the plan, Purdue will reorganize as a public-benefit company with profits steered toward victims of the crisis through opioid abatement programs. A handful of states that opposed the settlement have already filed appeals. More than 500,000 Americans have died since 1999 from opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Xi is taking a big risk not bailing them out.

• Evergrande Hires Bankruptcy Advisors As Investors Protest Imminent Default (ZH)

It took Evergrande less than a day to go from denying “rumors” of bankruptcy (as per a statement posted on its website earlier today), to confirming that a bankruptcy is imminent. In a filing on the Hong Kong stock exchange on Tuesday, Evergrande which was busy trying to convince angry Chinese mobs that they will get their money and/or apartments and that it has no plans of default, the company all but conceded that a bankruptcy is imminent when it said it has hired notable bankruptcy advisors Houlihan Lokey and Admiralty Harbour Capital as joint FAs to “assess the firm’s capital structure”, a well-known euphemism of “prepare to file for bankruptcy.” And just so there was no doubt as to what is coming next, the company said if it’s unable to repay debts on time or get creditors to agree to extensions or alternative arrangements, it may lead to cross-default.

It quickly went downhill from there, with the company saying that it expects “significant continuing decline” in contract sales in September, resulting in “continuous deterioration” of cash collection, according to the statement. That will place “tremendous pressure” on the group’s cashflow and liquidity. Finally, guaranteeing that a default is just a matter of days if not less, the company admitted that it has failed to make “material progress” on the sale of stakes in China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group Ltd. and Evergrande Property Services Group Ltd., while the sale of its office building in Hong Kong hasn’t been completed within the expected timetable.

In short a total disaster, and all this is happening a tens of thousands of Chinese are starting to feel insurrectiony – the real thing, not that January 6 tourist trap – and if they suffer losses, and in a company with $300BN in debt they will suffer major losses, their protests which have been largely peaceful to date will turn quite violent. As we reported this morning, police descended on Evergrande’s Shenzhen headquarters late Monday after dozens of people gathered to demand repayments on overdue wealth management products. Protesters numbered in the hundreds on Sunday, Caixin reported. In addition to equity investors who are about to lose everything, the company is also facing angry homebuyers, creditors and even its own employees… who are also about to lose everything.

“It looks like they are working on debt restructuring after no concrete results on asset disposals, and the first task is to stabilize the holders of wealth management products which could be a social issue,” said Daniel Fan, a credit analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “It seems the developer is working on rescheduling pretty much all onshore debt, and the next step is to do the same for offshore investors. Translation: a bond default is imminent, and the only question is what will creditors get in return.

Hesitancy

Wondering who fueled vaccine hesitancy? Watch this.pic.twitter.com/xsPzWXDhVo

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 14, 2021

Cat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1437071028744867842

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Debt Rattle August 29 2021

Aug 292021

August 29, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:08 am Finance Tagged with: Afghanistan, antibody resistant, breakthrough, CD8+, graphene oxide, Moderna, T cells, Twitter, Vitamin D 71 Responses »

Eugène-Louis Boudin Beach at Étretat 1890

• Covid Cases In England Are 26 Times Higher Than A Year Ago (G.)

• Vaccine-Resistant Viruses Are Driving ‘Breakthrough’ Covid Infections (MN)

• Antibody-Resistant SARS-CoV-2 Variants In Vaccine Breakthrough Cases (Medrxiv)

• Impact Of Daily High Dose Oral Vitamin D Therapy On Covid 19 Patients (Nature)

• 1 in 4 COVID Patients Hospitalized While Vitamin D Deficient Die – Study (ToI)

• Is It Time To Stop Obsessing Over Covid Figures? (DM)

• Differentiation of Long-Lived SARS-CoV-2-Specific CD8+ T Cells (JoI)

• Contaminant In 1.63m Moderna Vaccine Doses In Japan Believed To Be Metal (R.)

• Covid Vaccine Doubter Alex Berenson Permanently Banned From Twitter (NYP)

• Escapes From Afghanistan, Coordinated From A Home Office In Connecticut (CTM)

A full page ad in the Wall Street Journal paid for by the owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Sleepy Joe

Here’s Biden on the world stage again. He’s not only embarrassing America in his every waking hour, he’s doing it while asleep.

pic.twitter.com/a2JCDgqnlQ

— First Words (@unscriptedmike) August 28, 2021

Paris

WATCH: Big rally for freedom happening in Paris.

“No pass! No social credit!” reads one sign.

pic.twitter.com/MIDTGgvmPj

— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) August 28, 2021

So what happened? Well, we vaccinated everyone…

• Covid Cases In England Are 26 Times Higher Than A Year Ago (G.)

Coronavirus infections in England are now 26 times the levels that were experienced this time last year, according to the Office for National Statistics. Scientists described the figures as “sobering”. They warned that the reopening of schools in England this week was likely to trigger further rises in Covid cases – with more to follow when students return to universities and colleges. A fresh wave of infections could, in turn, lead to new social restrictions being imposed as winter approaches. As a result, pressure is mounting on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to approve the deployment of booster jabs for vulnerable people and the extension of vaccinations to most 12- to 15-year-olds.

The latter move would bring the UK into line with the US and most large European nations and is backed by most ministers. Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at Reading University, said that in the week ending 20 August, the ONS estimated that 756,900 people in England were infected with Covid-19, which equated to one person in 70. “This time last year, the ONS estimated that 28,200 people in England were infected. That is the equivalent of one person in 1,900 being infected with Covid-19. That means that community infections are 26 times more common now than they were a year ago, when the population was unvaccinated and the country was three months into its reopening.”

The fact that deaths and hospital admissions from Covid-19 are a fraction of their levels in August 2020 demonstrates the protective power of the vaccines – more than 60% of the UK population has had two jabs. “The last time infections were at their current level in England was late January,” said Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University. “There were around 2,300 daily hospital admissions and 1,100 deaths a day then. By contrast, the most recent daily figures for England are about 770 hospital admissions and about 80 deaths.”

“People who never develop symptoms during a “breakthrough” infection carry very low levels of virus..”

• Vaccine-Resistant Viruses Are Driving ‘Breakthrough’ Covid Infections (MN)

Waning immunity and ferocious contagion are known to be fueling the troubling surge in “breakthrough” COVID-19 cases among vaccinated people. But a new UC San Francisco analysis of 1,373 Bay Area cases reveals a third, and more ominous, problem: The coronavirus is learning to outsmart our immune system. Variants with antibody-resistant mutations are playing an ever-larger role in our highly vaccinated region’s pandemic, according to research by prominent virologist Dr. Charles Chiu. His team found that 78% of infections in fully vaccinated people among the study were caused by variants with these mutations, compared to 48% of the cases among unvaccinated people, who remained an easier target for earlier generations of the virus. Overall, the proportion of cases linked to these variants more than doubled between February and June.

The findings add to a growing list of studies that are unraveling why the vaccinated are still so susceptible to infection — and provide a deeper understanding of what we may encounter in the future. Vaccinated people are still much more protected from serious illness, hospitalization and death than unvaccinated people, the study confirmed. “But I worry that as long as the virus is circulating, it will continue to mutate and evolve, which will, in turn, allow it to continue spreading,” he said. The study suggests that new iterations of the virus will likely become even more resistant, over time, “until, eventually, you’re going to see the vaccine not work, or its efficacy will be reduced significantly,” he said. Our vaccines won’t suddenly become useless, he added. So far, it appears to be a gradual process. The resistant variants will slowly dominate over time, he predicted.

The team’s second major finding was more reassuring: People who never develop symptoms during a “breakthrough” infection carry very low levels of virus – a finding that should ease concerns that vaccinated people are unknowingly fueling the pandemic. However, vaccinated people who do have symptoms had the same levels of virus as infected unvaccinated people – so can spread the virus. This confirms a finding first revealed weeks ago by a CDC study in Provincetown, Massachusetts. “You’re essentially as infectious as someone who was unvaccinated,” he said. [..] Vaccination is not to be blamed for the increase in variants with these mutations, Chiu said. Because we naturally produce antibodies in response to exposure and infection, the virus is constantly changing to survive. “The virus is going to evolve to become antibody resistant, whether or not you deploy a vaccine,” he said. “But because we have a vaccine, there’s a way to prevent the virus from spreading and evolving further.”

“Fully vaccinated were more likely than unvaccinated persons to be infected by variants carrying mutations associated with decreased antibody neutralization [..] but not by those associated with increased infectivity..”

• Antibody-Resistant SARS-CoV-2 Variants In Vaccine Breakthrough Cases (Medrxiv)

Associations between vaccine breakthrough cases and infection by SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants have remained largely unexplored. Here we analyzed SARS-CoV-2 whole-genome sequences and viral loads from 1,373 persons with COVID-19 from the San Francisco Bay Area from February 1 to June 30, 2021, of which 125 (9.1%) were vaccine breakthrough infections. Fully vaccinated were more likely than unvaccinated persons to be infected by variants carrying mutations associated with decreased antibody neutralization (L452R, L452Q, E484K, and/or F490S) (78% versus 48%, p = 1.96e-08), (L452R and/or N501Y) (85% versus 77%, p = 0.092). Differences in viral loads were non-significant between unvaccinated and fully vaccinated persons overall (p = 0.99) and according to lineage (p = 0.09 – 0.78).

Viral loads were significantly higher in symptomatic as compared to asymptomatic vaccine breakthrough cases (p < 0.0001), and symptomatic vaccine breakthrough infections had similar viral loads to unvaccinated infections (p = 0.64). In 5 cases with available longitudinal samples for serologic analyses, vaccine breakthrough infections were found to be associated with low or undetectable neutralizing antibody levels attributable to immunocompromised state or infection by an antibody-resistant lineage. These findings suggest that vaccine breakthrough cases are preferentially caused by circulating antibody-resistant SARS-CoV-2 variants, and that symptomatic breakthrough infections may potentially transmit COVID-19 as efficiently as unvaccinated infections, regardless of the infecting lineage.

May 2021

60,000 IU per day.

• Impact Of Daily High Dose Oral Vitamin D Therapy On Covid 19 Patients (Nature)

COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus has created an unprecedented hardship in the recent times1,2. Serious consequences of COVID-19 were attributed to the immune dysregulation leading to the enhanced production of pro inflammatory mediators (cytokine storm). In the absence of a specific vaccine or a treatment, strategies to minimize the effects of COVID-19 have become extremely important. Recent observational studies have reported that the patients with higher levels of serum vitamin D (vit.D) had less severe symptoms and vice versa and have postulated the usefulness of vit.D in prevention and treatment of COVID-19. The beneficial effects of vit.D in COVID-19 were attributed to be mediated through its multiple actions on the immune system.

Vit.D is known to enhance the production of various anti-microbial peptides by the immune cells and vit.D modulates the immune system according to the internal milieu. It reduces the dysregulated production of self-damaging pro-inflammatory cytokines and promotes the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines by immune cells. The dynamic role of vit.D can be of immense value in the context of immune dysfunction observed in COVID-19 patients with cytokine storm and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Though the protective immuno-modulatory effects of vit.D were explored in many autoimmune diseases and respiratory tract infections, there is a dearth of information from the randomised clinical trials in COVID-19.

Pulse D therapy is a targeted approach to increase the serum vit.D level by using high dose (60,000 IUs) oral supplementation of vit.D daily for a specific period of time determined by the individual’s BMI, initial level of vit.D and the formulation19. This study aims to objectively investigate the role of vit.D and the impact of Pulse D therapy in reducing the inflammatory biomarkers of COVID-19.

June 2021

Anyone seen any vit. D campaigns yet?

• 1 in 4 COVID Patients Hospitalized While Vitamin D Deficient Die – Study (ToI)

Hospitalized COVID-19 patients are far more likely to die or to end up in severe or critical condition if they are vitamin D-deficient, Israeli researchers have found. In a study conducted in a Galilee hospital, 26 percent of vitamin D-deficient coronavirus patients died, while among other patients the figure was at 3%. “This is a very, very significant discrepancy, which represents a big clue that starting the disease with very low vitamin D leads to increased mortality and more severity,” Dr. Amir Bashkin, endocrinologist and part of the research team, told The Times of Israel. For much of the pandemic, many scientists have suggested that the so-called sunshine vitamin may help people fight the disease. The new study represents one of the most compelling pieces of supporting research yet.

“In short, after conducting this study I would say to people that during this pandemic, you certainly want to make sure that you have adequate vitamin D, because if you contract the coronavirus it will help you,” said Dr. Amiel Dror, who led the research. He analyzed data on 1,176 patients admitted to the Galilee Medical Center, 253 of whom had vitamin D levels on record, for a study that has been published online but not yet been peer-reviewed. Half of those with recorded levels were vitamin D-deficient. “We were very interested to see just what a big difference this made, with these patients some 14 times more likely, on average, to end up in severe or critical condition,” said Dror, who, like Bashkin, is a physician at Galilee Medical Center, as well as a researcher at Bar Ilan University.

Numerous studies have been conducted on the association between vitamin D levels and the SARS-CoV-2 infection, and they have produced mixed results. Most of them measured vitamin D levels once patients were already sick, which can complicate interpretation of the results. Israel’s centralized health record-keeping has allowed Bar Ilan researchers to easily access patient vitamin levels that are on record from before infection. This data led to an important study that lauded vitamin D’s prospects for fighting the disease last year, as well as the new study.

“This study is important because of the results, because of the fact that it uses data from before admission, and also because we were careful to isolate all factors like age and diabetes,” Dror said. “We saw that vitamin D deficiency is an independent factor that significantly influences the status of the patient.” Dror added that the fact that such a large proportion of patients were vitamin D-deficient in Israel, despite the abundance of sunshine, highlights the value of people around the world monitoring and potentially boosting their levels.

So soon?

• Is It Time To Stop Obsessing Over Covid Figures? (DM)

They’re the figures that have ruled our lives for the past 18 months; decided our freedoms; deepened our fears. The Covid dashboard published on the UK Government website has offered the public a window into the state of the UK’s epidemic, displaying daily Covid cases, hospitalisations and deaths, both nationally and regionally, since April 2020. Some people have avoided looking at the figures – published at 4pm every day, including weekends. But a surprising number of us have become secretly addicted to poring over them. Back in January, the dashboard attracted 76 million views in a single day. In more recent months, the dashboard has offered a source of celebration, thanks to the addition of the vaccination tally.

Scientists and politicians alike agree the UK’s Covid dashboard has been a resounding success, allowing the public to draw their own conclusions about the level of threat the virus poses to them. It’s also been a crucial yardstick for how stretched the NHS is, providing exact figures of how many Covid patients are in each hospital around the country. But now, with nearly eight in ten Britons protected against getting seriously ill, thanks to the vaccine, are daily Covid figures still necessary? After all, as Health Secretary Sajid Javid said of the virus earlier this summer: ‘We cannot eliminate it, instead we have to learn to live with it.’ There is growing concern from experts that the endless figures do more harm than good. Some have declared the tally of daily infections ‘completely meaningless’.

‘It shouldn’t really matter how many people are catching the virus – as long as they are protected,’ says Professor Jackie Cassell, public health expert at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Other scientists have warned of the psychological impact of constant reminders of how many people are still catching Covid. ‘There’s a worry, that in the scramble to get out these daily updates, we’re alarming people disproportionately,’ says Professor Robert Dingwall, sociologist at Nottingham Trent University and former Government scientific adviser. ‘People see spikes in the data, and this is often the cause of great anxiety, which might lead them to limit their daily activities unnecessarily.

‘It stops people being able to acclimatise to a post-vaccine world, which is exactly what the jabs were intended to do. And if you look more widely you’ll find the majority of infections are in the younger, festival-going age groups, and didn’t reach the vulnerable or elderly.’ Others argue that the continued obsession over Covid figures overshadows the record-high demands on the NHS.

Journal of Immunology.

• Differentiation of Long-Lived SARS-CoV-2-Specific CD8+ T Cells (JoI)

CD8+ T cells can potentiate long-lived immunity against COVID-19. We screened longitudinally-sampled convalescent human donors against SARS-CoV-2 tetramers and identified a participant with an immunodominant response against residues 322 to 311 of nucleocapsid (Nuc322–331), a peptide conserved in all variants of concern reported to date. We conducted 38-parameter cytometry by time of flight on tetramer-identified Nuc322–331–specific CD8+ T cells and on CD4+ and CD8+ T cells recognizing the entire nucleocapsid and spike proteins, and took 32 serological measurements. We discovered a coordination of the Nuc322–331–specific CD8+ T response with both the CD4+ T cell and Ab pillars of adaptive immunity.

Over the approximately six month period of convalescence monitored, we observed a slow and progressive decrease in the activation state and polyfunctionality of Nuc322–331–specific CD8+ T cells, accompanied by an increase in their lymph node–homing and homeostatic proliferation potential. These results suggest that following a typical case of mild COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2–specific CD8+ T cells not only persist but continuously differentiate in a coordinated fashion well into convalescence into a state characteristic of long-lived, self-renewing memory.

It reacts to magnets. Welcome to graphene oxide.

• Contaminant In 1.63m Moderna Vaccine Doses In Japan Believed To Be Metal (R.)

A contaminant found in a batch of Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccines delivered to Japan is believed to be a metallic particle, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported, citing sources at the health ministry. Japan on Thursday suspended the use of 1.63 million doses shipped to 863 vaccination centres nationwide, more than a week after the domestic distributor, Takeda Pharmaceutical, received reports of contaminants in some vials. NHK, in a report published late on Thursday, cited ministry sources as saying the particle reacted to magnets and was therefore suspected to be a metal. Moderna has described it as “particulate matter” that did not pose a safety or efficacy issue. A health ministry official said the composition of the contaminant has not been confirmed.

In a statement, Takeda said it asked Moderna to investigate the issue and that it would work with the health ministry to replace the affected vaccine supply. News of the contaminant could provide a fresh setback for Japan’s inoculation drive as it struggles to persuade many – particularly young people — to get vaccinated. On Friday, eight more prefectures entered a state of emergency meaning about 80 per cent of Japan’s population is under coronavirus restrictions. The government reported nearly 25,000 new infections and severe cases at a record 2,000 for Thursday. The ministry has said the suspension of the Moderna batches was a precaution but it prompted several Japanese companies to cancel worker vaccinations and the European drugs regulator to launch an investigation.

Airline ANA Holdings Inc said it had secured more Moderna supplies and would resume inoculations on Saturday after a two-day suspension of the shots. Spanish pharma company Rovi, which bottles Moderna vaccines for markets other than the United States, said the contamination could be due to a manufacturing issue on a production line. A spokesperson said the company could not say anything more while it was investigating. Moderna put the lot in question and two adjacent ones on hold. Another health ministry official said it would take “some time” to confirm how many shots from the contaminated batch had been administered in Japan. Kyodo News reported that at least 176,000 shots have been used based on its own tally of figures reported by municipalities.

Misinformation? Really?

• Covid Vaccine Doubter Alex Berenson Permanently Banned From Twitter (NYP)

Conservative commentator and vaccine doubter Alex Berenson has reportedly been permanently suspended from Twitter for violating the social media platform’s COVID-19 misinformation rules. Berenson’s account was banned Saturday after “repeated violations” of the rules, a Twitter spokesperson told NBC News in a statement. Berenson, a one-time New York Times reporter, addressed the suspension in a Saturday night post to his Substack page, blaming his removal from Twitter on a recent post where he was critical of the coronavirus vaccine. “It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine,” the tweet read.

“Think of it — at best — as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS.” Berenson, in his Substack post, defended the tweet in question as “entirely accurate.” In a statement to The Post, the Yale-educated writer and novelist blasted Twitter’s decision. “We have reached a dangerous moment. Social media companies that have audiences which dwarf any other are now actively censoring reporters at the behest of governments,” he said. “I will continue to fight to get out the truth and am considering all legal options.”

In the wire.

• Escapes From Afghanistan, Coordinated From A Home Office In Connecticut (CTM)

Across the hall from his twin daughters’ sun-splashed bedroom, where Mickey Mouse and a menagerie of stuffed animals stand watch from bunk beds, Alex Plitsas typed furiously on his iPhone, relaying encrypted messages to a terrified Afghan family outside the airport at Kabul. The Afghan father had been beaten the previous day by the Taliban, his pregnant wife whipped across the back. Plitsas sent a signal to them to flash to American personnel who would admit them to the airport gate. To the Americans at the airport gate, he relayed a photo of the family, a hollow-eyed selfie. They were just four meters from the gate, an exit from Afghanistan.

Improbably, they had been guided there by Plitsas, an Army veteran and suburban dad standing in stocking feet in a home office in a tidy neighborhood on the other side of the world. He is one of the many players in a crowd-sourcing exercise that, at least for Plitsas, would reach a crescendo Thursday night. An interpreter he helped already had flown to safety. The pregnant woman was under the care of American medics. And a more difficult case, coordinating the rescue of four unaccompanied minors whose plight had been the subject of a CNN story, had found a happy ending. At 11:07 p.m., a text message arrived with a picture of four children and three words: “In the wire.”

The wire was the fence separating the American-controlled portion of Hamid Karzai International Airport from the chaos and carnage of Kabul. On a day when suicide bombers killed 13 U.S. troops and scores of Afghan civilians outside the airport gate, four kids were saved. There were others, their stories certain to unfold over time. All were beneficiaries of a network of military veterans and others with contacts in Afghanistan. They used social media, off-the-shelf encryption communication apps and satellite maps in what’s been dubbed the “Digital Dunkirk,” a nod to the civilian flotilla that evacuated trapped British troops after the fall of France. As midnight approached, the end of a frenetic 36 hours, Plitsas struggled to explain what he felt. It had been a day of frustration, false starts, grievous losses and scattered gains. Finally, he said, “I could throw up right now.”

Killed by US

"Most victims of #KabulAirportBlast were not killed by the blast but by bullets fired at them by the Americans."

Faisal of Kabul Lovers channel interviewed aid workers at Emergency Hospital in #Kabul and this is what they have to say: pic.twitter.com/vvQETq6uEe

— Sangar | سنګر پیکار (@paykhar) August 28, 2021

Eric Clapton – This Has Gotta Stop

Geese
https://twitter.com/i/status/1431521290922479616

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Debt Rattle July 15 2021

Jul 152021

July 15, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:40 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Bayesian, breakthrough, Greece, Indonesia, ivermectin, Merkel, natural immunity, T cells, unvaccinated 104 Responses »

Utagawa Hiroshige Sudden Evening Shower on the Great Bridge near Atake 1857

• Are Recovered Covid Patients More Protected Than The Vaccinated? (ToI)

• 4,450 Breakthrough Cases, 79 Deaths Among Fully Vaccinated In Massachusetts (CBS)

• Indonesia Regulator Allows Ivermectin Use For Covid Treatment (ZH)

• Bayesian Meta Analysis of Ivermectin Effectiveness in Treating Covid-19 (RG)

• Prior SARS-CoV-2 Infection Rescues B And T Cell Responses To Variants (SciMag)

• Yep *******s, And It’s About DAMNED TIME (Denninger)

• Canada Clinic Network to Track COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events (TSN)

• The Approaching Storm (CJ Hopkins)

• Which Would You Rather Have? (Denninger)

• Merkel Rejects Calls For Compulsory Vaccination Of Key Workers (IT)

• Mass Protests In Greece As Unvaccinated Banned From Indoor Public Spaces (RT)

• Assange May Never Recover From ‘Torture’ At Belmarsh – Doctor (RT)

“FOI request to the Scottish Government regarding deaths after vaccination, I received my reply, it stated from December 17th 2020 to June 21st 2021, just 6 months;

5,522 people have died within 28 days of receiving a covid vaccination”

Note Ilargi: Scotland population is about 5.5 million, so 1 in 1,000 died from vaccination. Remember, these are just the ones that are registered as such. Of course, people die from other causes after vaccination, but that distortion is more than made up for by the distortion of not filling in vaccination as cause of death. We need openness, but we’re not going to get it.

Do the math for your own country. And yes, it means 60,000 British deaths, and 320,000 Americans. From vaccination.

Did this really turn from a fact into a question just because Fauci said vaccine protection is superior?

• Are Recovered Covid Patients More Protected Than The Vaccinated? (ToI)

Citing very preliminary data, Channel 13 reports that those who recovered from COVID-19 may be better protected from reinfection than those who received the vaccine. Since May 1, 72 people who previously had COVID were infected again, accounting for 1 percent of confirmed new cases, while 3,000 who were vaccinated have been infected — 40% of confirmed new cases. Some experts conclude that those who had COVID are relatively safe from reinfection. But other health officials counter that the data does not take into account that new outbreaks did not spread in areas that previously saw massive outbreaks during the pandemic, such as in the ultra-Orthodox community, reports Channel 13

See if you can find the numbers near you. Then multiply them by 10 or 100.

• 4,450 Breakthrough Cases, 79 Deaths Among Fully Vaccinated In Massachusetts (CBS)

According to new numbers from the Massachusetts Department of Health, there are 4,450 breakthrough COVID cases and 79 deaths among the fully vaccinated population in the state. As of July 10, only 0.1 percent of the 4,195,844 fully vaccinated people in Massachusetts tested positive for the virus after getting the vaccine. The number of vaccinated people includes those who have been administered both doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Among the 4,450 cases, there were 4,124 people who did not need hospitalization. There were also 247 people that were hospitalized, but did not die.

“All available data continue to support that all 3 vaccines used in the US are highly protective against severe disease and death from all known variants of COVID-19,” the Department of Public Health said. “People who are unvaccinated should continue to wear masks, especially indoors. And individuals who are feeling ill, should get tested for COVID-19.”

“..greatly hated by the establishment due to its low price and its ability to eradicate the covid plague which the establishment desperately needs to perpetuate a state of constant near-panic..”

• Indonesia Regulator Allows Ivermectin Use For Covid Treatment (ZH)

Merely mentioning the name of the vaccine-busting drug Ivermectin in the US is enough to get you carted off for “questioning” to the nearest illegal CIA blacksite, have the NSA leak all your private information to MSNBC, WaPo and the NYT and quietly shipped off to Guantanamo for permanent re-education under the daily auspices of Critical Race Theory. But not in the “banana republic” of Indonesia, where on Thursday, Ivermectin was officially approved for covid treatment in a vicious blow to the “buy my vaccine” pharmaceutical lobby around the world. According to Bloomberg, Indonesia’s food and drug regulator, known as BPOM, has issued a letter approving the distribution of Ivermectin, Remdesivir, Favipiravir, Oseltamivir, immunoglobulin, Tocilizumab, Azithromycin and Dexametason to be used in treatment of Covid-19, according to a statement from the agency. The latter, Bloomberg adds, was issued as guidance for distributors of the drugs.

The startling development – if only to the anti-Ivermectin oligarchs in “developed” Western nations – takes place two weeks after eight hospitals in Indonesia began conducting clinical trials on Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medicine that has appeared to be a potential Covid-19 medication and which is greatly hated by the establishment due to its low price and its ability to eradicate the covid plague which the establishment desperately needs to perpetuate a state of constant near-panic not to mention enabling trillions in fiscal and monetary stimulus, following a permit issued by the national agency of drug and food control. BPOM’s head Penny K. Lukito said at a press conference on Monday (June 28) that global data and guidelines from the WHO show that Ivermectin, previously used for deworming, can also be used for Covid-19 treatment.

However, while the BOMP said on June 28 that data are still being collected and the results are not conclusive, it appears that two weeks later it has found enough conclusive data to formally approve Ivermectin for covid treatment. Indonesia is scrambling to contain the covid pandemic, having overnight surpassed India’s daily Covid-19 case numbers, and becoming Asia’s new virus epicenter as the spread of the highly-contagious delta variant drives up infections in Southeast Asia’s largest economy The country has seen its daily case count cross 40,000 for three straight days — including a record high of 54,517 on Wednesday — up from less than 10,000 a month ago. Officials are concerned that the more transmissible new variant is now spreading outside of the country’s main island, Java, and could exhaust hospital workers and supplies of oxygen and medication. That said, Indonesia’s current numbers are still far from India’s peak of 400,000 daily cases in May, and its total outbreak of 2.7 million is barely a tenth of the Asian giant’s 30.9 million.

Neil and Norman Fenton Risk Information and Management Research School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London.

• Bayesian Meta Analysis of Ivermectin Effectiveness in Treating Covid-19 (RG)

Abstract – A recent peer reviewed meta-analysis evaluating ivermectin (Bryant et al, 2021) concluded that this antiparasitic drug is a cheap and effective treatment for reducing Covid-19 deaths. These conclusions were in stark contrast to those of a later study (Roman et al, 2021). Although (Roman et al, 2021) applied the same classical statistical approach to meta-analysis, and produced similar results based on a subset of the same trials data used by (Bryant et al), they claimed there was insufficient quality of evidence to support the conclusion Ivermectin was effective. This paper applies a Bayesian approach, to a subset of the same trial data, to test several causal hypotheses linking Covid-19 severity and ivermectin to mortality and produce an alternative analysis to the classical approach.

Applying diverse alternative analysis methods which reach the same conclusions should increase overall confidence in the result. We show that there is overwhelming evidence to support a causal link between ivermectin, Covid-19 severity and mortality, and: i) for severe Covid-19 there is a 90.7% probability the risk ratio favours ivermectin; ii) for mild/moderate Covid-19 there is an 84.1% probability the risk ratio favours ivermectin. Also, from the Bayesian meta-analysis for patients with severe Covid-19, the mean probability of death without ivermectin treatment is 22.9%, whilst with the application of ivermectin treatment it is 11.7%. The paper also highlights advantages of using Bayesian methods over classical statistical methods for meta-analysis.

Vaccines are destroying T cells?

• Prior SARS-CoV-2 Infection Rescues B And T Cell Responses To Variants (SciMag)

During clinical trials of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 vaccines, no one who had survived infection with the virus was tested. A year after the pandemic was declared, vaccination of previously infected persons is a reality. Reynolds et al. address the knowledge gap in a cohort of UK health care workers given the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in which half of the participants had experienced natural virus infections early in the pandemic (see the Perspective by Crotty). Genotyping indicated that a genetic component underlies heterogeneity in immune responses to vaccine and to natural infection.

After vaccination, naïve individuals developed antibody responses similar to those seen in naturally infected persons, but T cell responses were more limited and sometimes absent. However, antibody and memory responses in individuals vaccinated after infection were substantially boosted to the extent that a single vaccine dose is likely to protect against the more aggressive B.1.1.7 variant. It is possible that the messenger RNA vaccine has an adjuvant effect, biasing responses toward antibody generation.

“..no state agency has the right to coerce, cajole or lead minors to do something that is demonstrably stupid on the arithmetic and stick the parents with the cost when the bet goes bad.”

• Yep *******s, And It’s About DAMNED TIME (Denninger)

Oh look, backlash. “On June 25th, Fiscus asked about reminder postcards that were scheduled to go out to teens who had received a first dose of the COVID vaccine and were due to receive a second. State epidemiologist Dr. John Dunn answered: “Hold all program communications about immunizations until further notice.” Do you know why? Because Fiscus decided to trumpet the so-called mature minor doctrine and thus not require minors to obtain parental consent to get the Tard Shot. She also had TNDOH running paid Twitter ads aimed directly at minors which is a wildly inappropriate act. Problem: Said minor, if they had an adverse event, obligated their parents to pay for the adverse event up to and including permanently obligating them to care for said person for the rest of their lives.

This could trivially destroy said adults both personally (through loss of their child) and financially without them having any input into the process. An adult, of course, is free to make such a decision and eat the consequences, up to and including death or permanent disability. Given that Johns Hopkins now publishes an online calculator and has since December of 2020 that makes clear the risk of death from Covid-19 is lower than that of the jabs by a factor of 10 or more for people who are not seriously compromised medically as an adult if you decide to get jabbed and lose the bet that’s your problem. Yes, the odds are low but when the odds are 10x lower you’ll get killed by the infection itself, with zero long-term data on those risks which are in addition to immediate, short-term death on nothing more than mathematics taking the jab is stupid.

Further, it is now clear on data from Israel that if you were previously infected you have nearly seven times less risk of being re-infected than if you get vaccinated. This in turn means the shots are worthless in previously-infected persons, wildly unethical and administering one constitutes gross malpractice because there is no possible benefit and only risk. Any medical treatment of any sort which cannot confer benefit but has, as do all treatments, risk is by definition of both ethics and law improper and under long-standing law is cause for termination of one’s medical license. You have the right, as an adult, to engage in behavior that might seriously injure or kill you. You can cave-dive. You can skydive. You can have unprotected anal sex. You can bicycle without a helmet.

You can make medical decisions that are irrational on a cold, statistical basis of mathematical risk assessment when you have other alternative courses of action available to you because you are scared or because you are stupid, just like you have the right to do all manner of other things and potentially ruin your life. That freedom — and the consequences, for good or bad, is what being an adult is. But no state agency has the right to coerce, cajole or lead minors to do something that is demonstrably stupid on the arithmetic and stick the parents with the cost when the bet goes bad. State agencies, when it comes to mandates, coercion or cajoling people, especially minors where the person in question is neither personally or financially responsible for outcomes, have a duty to NOT engage in pressure campaigns where the underlying statistical risk of harm calculation for the person in question is negative, as is clearly the case for Covid-19 vaccines in virtually all minors.

First thing they say: “The COVID-19 vaccines authorized by Health Canada have been incredibly safe..”

Can you be more biased? Maybe someone else should do the tracking.

• Canada Clinic Network to Track COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events (TSN)

The Canadian government’s COVID-19 Immunity Task Force (CITF) and Vaccine Surveillance Reference Group (VSRG) announced an $800,000 investment as part of a quest to better understand how to improve Canada’s identification and response to the adverse events people may experience following COVID-19 vaccination across 10 provinces. This is an extension of an existing vaccine safety initiative that was set up to offer public health information about adverse events following immunization for all vaccines authorized for use in adults and children in the nation. The funding propels a study forward, allowing a more methodical and systematic tracking of adverse events associated with the COVID-19 vaccines authorized in Canada.

Although it may not seem like big news, this announcement is tacit recognition of mounting safety reports associated with vaccines that at least in America, are still considered investigational—that is, they are not formally approved or registered but authorized under emergency use in the nation to the south. In Canada, Dr. Karina Top, Principal Investigator (PI) for this initiative as well as lead investigator of the Canadian Immunization Research Network’s (CIRN) Special Immunization Clinic (SIC) Network, which conducts the study, commented, “While the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccination continue to outweigh the risks, when a patient develops an unexpected or serious adverse event that requires medical attention, it is important we determine the possible role of the vaccine and the safety of giving future vaccine doses to this specific person or to people with similar adverse events.”

[..] Of course, it makes sense to have a surveillance study like this—it’s to be applauded. But the investigators involved must be mindful of each and every word uttered. Dr. Scott Halperin, the Vaccine Surveillance Reference Group (VSRG) Co-Chair, is a case in point. He also serves as co-investigator on this study and PI of CIRN. Dr. Halperin declared, “The COVID-19 vaccines authorized by Health Canada have been incredibly safe, especially considering the millions of people worldwide who have received a vaccine and the small number of adverse events to date.”

“NO FREEDOM FOR THE UNVACCINATED!”

• The Approaching Storm (CJ Hopkins)

Brainwashing the masses is all fine and good, but, at some point, you need to goad the people who are resisting your new totalitarian “reality” into getting unruly, so you can crack down on them, and transform them into official enemies, which appears to be what is happening currently. GloboCap is dialing up the totalitarianism, and they are rubbing it in our faces. Here in New Normal Germany, prominent health officials are openly barking out Goebbelsian slogans like “NO FREEDOM FOR THE UNVACCINATED!” and “THE UNVACCINATED ARE A DANGER TO SOCIETY!” All over Europe, including the UK, where “Freedom Day” is fast approaching, pseudo-medical social-segregation systems are being implemented. In France, Greece, and many other countries, people who refuse to be “vaccinated” are being stripped of their jobs and otherwise punished.

In the USA, where the Unvaccinated are also being segregated, New Normal goon squads are going door-to-door, bullying “vaccine hesitant” families into conforming to the new official ideology. And so on … I’m tired of citing the facts. They do not make the slightest difference to the vast majority of New Normals, anyway. As I’ve noted in several previous columns, these people have surrendered their rationality, and have been subsumed into a totalitarian movement, which has become their perceptual and social “reality,” which their “sanity” now depends upon defending, so the facts mean absolutely nothing to them. And you already know the facts. Yes, you. Us. The others. The Unvaccinated. The “Covid deniers.”

You don’t really think any hardcore New Normals have made it this far into this column, do you? They haven’t. If they stumbled into it on the Internet and accidentally started to read it, their brains switched off in the opening paragraph … literally, neurologically, switched off. They recognized it as a threat to their “reality” and instantly erased it from their consciousness, or they reported it to the proper authorities, perhaps the FBI, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, or Facebook, or some other global corporation. This is what it has come to, folks … people are reporting other people’s “thoughtcrimes” to global corporations and the law enforcement agencies of “democratic” governments in the hopes of destroying or damaging their lives, or, at the very least, getting them censored, or otherwise erased from public view.

“..that statement was a bald-faced lie intended to induce you to do something that was, on-balance, known to be dangerous simply because we deliberately did not take the time to find out.”

• Which Would You Rather Have? (Denninger)

You have two choices:

• Risk Covid-19 infection. Do what you can to blunt and prevent it up front. You may be resistant (80% of the population was and is) by cross-reaction, but there is no cheap and available way to know, nor to quantify how resistant; it could range from “immune” to “will get sniffles” to “will get a mild flu.” If you get infected anyway then choose to either (1) tough it out and do nothing or (2) hit it immediately with drugs that we have decades of data on — they may do nothing or they may help but the odds are overwhelming that they will not kill you. Either way, once you get infected you have a measure of immunity. This is what everyone has done with every respiratory pandemic in history up until this one, except that until the last 30 or 40 years there were no early treatments at all, so “tough it out” it was.

• Take a lightly-tested shot. With that option you get some measure of immunity. However, the usual testing for adverse effects was truncated severely. There was no, for example, sample group of 1,000 where everyone got blood drawn and a panoply of tests run every few days for a couple of months to gauge immediate adverse effect impact. The usual dose-ranging studies were truncated, so whether you really needed the “full dose” or a quarter of it would do the same thing is unknown, and whether the adverse effects were more-severe with a higher dose is also unknown. Pharmacological distribution studies, also part of the usual testing paradigm for a drug, were either not done at all or not published, so where the shot accumulates along with its products were…. unknown (now known due to a leak of a paper out of Japan, and it’s not good.)

The claim, made without evidence, was that the immunity provided by the second choice was at least as good if not better than that provided by the first choice. There was zero scientific evidence for this; that statement was a bald-faced lie intended to induce you to do something that was, on-balance, known to be dangerous simply because we deliberately did not take the time to find out.

There is now evidence emerging that the second choice is wildly dangerous. Emerging evidence is that six in ten jab recipients in a small study have elevated clotting indications. For comparison in healthy adults about 1 in 10 has an elevated level in this test without showing pathology. It is very likely this is not harmless but at present we have exactly zero data on how dangerous that elevation will prove over time. I note that clotting disorders of any sort are the kind of thing that produce both heart attacks and strokes, and if you are diagnosed with this under ordinary circumstances doctors get real worried about what might happen either immediately or in the foreseeable future. We didn’t know this up front because we did not look but it correlates with the examples of sudden stroke and heart attack that are being occasionally reported soon after getting the jabs. Is the risk immediate and then over? We don’t know.

Myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle, is a serious condition now associated with these jabs. It occasionally shows up in people as a result of viral infection. It is now showing up at a significantly elevated rate after taking the jabs, especially in young men. We do not know why. We do not know why because, once again, we did not do the work early on to detect troponin and d-Dimer elevation during the early tests. This work was not done because it takes time and it was most-important for TRUMP and BIDEN to both start jabbing people immediately and then for both, along with Governors and State Health Department officials, to coerce people by lying to them about safety and claiming that these jabs were in fact tested and known to be safe. So-called “private entities” including businesses and colleges jumped on the bandwagon. Note that neither private firms or colleges are immune from suit for getting it wrong; the drug companies are but not educational institutions or employers, including medical employers.

Imagine living on the -wrong side of the- French-German border.

• Merkel Rejects Calls For Compulsory Vaccination Of Key Workers (IT)

German chancellor Angela Merkel has dismissed calls for compulsory vaccinations among key workers, and urged citizens to get their jabs against Covid-19 jabs – and lobby friends and family to do the same. Dr Merkel said Germany was determined to avoid a fourth wave but, as cases involving the Delta virus variant rise, it would not follow France and Greece and require healthcare and other workers to be vaccinated. “The more people are vaccinated, the more free we will be again, the more freely we will be able to live again,” she said. “We are in the phase where we are still promoting vaccines voluntarily, and my request to you all is to make the case for the vaccine, everywhere there are people who know and trust each other.”

She was speaking after visiting the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s infectious diseases body which has co-ordinated the pandemic response. It says some 43 per cent of German residents have been fully vaccinated while just under 60 per cent have received one shot. RKI officials say they will need a vaccination quota of at least 85-90 per cent to protect the population through so-called herd immunity. “We are seeing only a very small section of the populace where . . . they won’t let themselves be vaccinated,” said Dr Lothar Wieler, RKI president, placing their number at under 10 per cent. Germany’s federal health minister Jens Spahn said that, unlike the early days of the vaccination programme, there were no vaccine supply problems any more and thus “no excuses”.

“Whoever doesn’t let themselves be vaccinated today cannot complain tomorrow that he isn’t invited to a party,” said Mr Spahn, predicting growing social pressure on the unvaccinated. He is calling on German sports and culture clubs to boost the vaccination drive by arranging vaccination evenings with a local doctor. From Friday, drive-in vaccinations will be available at a Berlin Ikea furniture store. With an eye on the new school term, however, some advisers to the government are demanding greater efforts to protect schoolchildren, who have yet to be vaccinated. “We need mandatory vaccination for personnel in schools and nurseries,” said Prof Wolfram Henn, a geneticist and member of the German Ethics Council. “Anyone who chooses of their own free will to work with vulnerable people takes on a special professional responsibility.”

Recent weeks have seen Germany’s seven-day incidence rate notch upward but, at 6.5 cases per 100,000 people over seven days, it is a long way from the rates above 170 seen in the springtime third wave.

Still a society drenched in totalitarianism, and the kind of reaction that comes with that.

• Mass Protests In Greece As Unvaccinated Banned From Indoor Public Spaces (RT)

Thousands took the streets in two of Greece’s largest cities to protest new health mandates – which bar the unvaccinated from many public spaces and require medical staff to take the shot – as well as plans to immunize teenagers. Large crowds of demonstrators were seen in Athens and Thessaloniki on Wednesday, numbered in the thousands according to the Associated Press, some reportedly chanting “Hands off our kids!” while others hoisted banners reading “We say no to vaccine poison.” The protests come on the heels of several new pandemic measures, one of which effectively closes all indoor public places to the unvaccinated, including bars, restaurants, theaters and other entertainment venues.

The policy takes effect on Friday and will remain at least until the end of August, part of an effort to curb transmission at crowded bars and clubs, which the government has blamed for a recent surge in cases. “After a year and a half, no one can claim ignorance about the coronavirus anymore,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said earlier this week. “The country will not shut down again due to attitudes adopted by certain people … It’s not Greece that’s a danger, but unvaccinated Greeks.” Nursing home staff will also be required to be vaccinated starting on August 16, facing suspension without pay if they fail to take the shot. A similar rule will come into force in September for workers at all public and private hospitals.

Clinics that flout the new restriction could be slapped with a 50,000-euro fine. In another controversial move set to begin on Thursday, the government will also allow teens as young as 15 to receive the coronavirus vaccine with the consent of a parent or guardian. Despite their size and energy, Wednesday’s protests appeared to remain peaceful. While helmeted riot police were seen in some images, the law enforcement presence was not apparent in much of the footage circulating online. No clashes were reported.

In your name.

• Assange May Never Recover From ‘Torture’ At Belmarsh – Doctor (RT)

A doctor who has joined other medical professionals in calling for Julian Assange’s release from prison told RT that the WikiLeaks co-founder’s arbitrary and cruel detention continues to put him at risk of suicide. The same concerns about Assange’s mental health that led to the High Court in London blocking his extradition to the US in January are still relevant, perhaps even more so, today, Dr. William Hogan, a specialist in internal medicine and professor of biomedical informatics at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, said. Hogan was among more than 200 medical experts who signed an open letter published last month in the respected medical journal The Lancet, which demanded an end to the “torture and medical neglect” faced by the Australian journalist as he languishes in London’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison.

Speaking to RT, the American doctor and academic cited expert testimony suggesting that Assange suffers from “severe signs of mental illness and mental stress,” including auditory hallucinations that are “persecutory” in nature. Securing Assange’s release would be the first step in trying to mend the extensive psychological damage, Hogan explained. While stressing that he was not a psychologist, the doctor said Assange would require “intensive treatment” and that some aspects of the trauma would likely be “permanent.” The problem is potentially life-threatening, Hogan claimed, pointing to Belmarsh’s high suicide rate and noting that an inmate had recently taken his own life after just two days in the prison. Assange has endured some eight months without visitors due to Covid restrictions, and was only recently able to see his fiancée.

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Debt Rattle July 6 2021

Jul 062021

July 6, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:53 am Finance Tagged with: Delta, dollar, experimental, HIV, immune, Israel, Lambda, Moderna, sin, T cells 85 Responses »

Edourd Manet A Bar at the Folies-Bergère 1882

• Israel Sees Plunge In Pfizer Vaccine Efficacy Rate Due To Delta Variant (BBG)

• Lambda Covid-19 Variant From Peru May Be Resistant To Vaccines (NYP)

• 9 Reasons Not to Support, Mandate Investigational COVID19 Vaccines (McCullough)

• The Chicken-and-Egg Problem (Which Came First?) (VanDen Bossche)

• How the Moderna Covid-19 mRNA Vaccine Was Made So Quickly (CNBC)

• Can Immune Responses Alone Reveal Which Covid-19 Vaccines Work Best? (Smag)

• T Cells: Why Immunity Is About More Than Antibodies (CEBM)

• Refusing To Be Vaccinated Against Covid A ’Sin’ – Russian Orthodox Church (RT)

• Relaxing Of Covid Restrictions In England Sparks Social Media Meltdown (Clark)

• HIV Vaccine Trial Launched At Oxford In Bid To End ‘40-Year Wait’ (RT)

• The Dollar’s Declining Status as Dominant “Global Reserve Currency” (WS)

• The Ice-Cream Flavor Next Time (Kunstler)

Suramin

Suramin – conspiracy theory or… pic.twitter.com/NIrMBwNAuJ

— Husserl (@husserl80) July 5, 2021

VanDen Bossche?

• Israel Sees Plunge In Pfizer Vaccine Efficacy Rate Due To Delta Variant (BBG)

Israel has recorded a steep drop in the efficacy rate of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in preventing coronavirus infections, due to the spread of the Delta variant and the easing of government restrictions, Ynet news website reported, citing Health Ministry data. At the same time, the decline in protection against serious cases and hospitalisation is considerably milder, the website said. The figures show that between May 2 and June 5, the vaccine had a 94.3 per cent efficacy rate. From June 6, five days after the government cancelled coronavirus restrictions, until early July, the rate plunged to 64 per cent. A similar decline was recorded in protection against coronavirus symptoms, the report said. At the same time, protection against hospitalisation and serious illness remained strong.

From May 2 to June 5, the efficacy rate in preventing hospitalisation was 98.2 per cent, compared with 93 per cent from June 6 to July 3. A similar decline in the rate was recorded for the vaccine’s efficiency in preventing serious illness among people who had been inoculated. These figures are in line with ministry data that show many of the new cases are among people who have been vaccinated, while the number of serious cases is rising much more slowly, Ynet said. Last Friday, 55 per cent of the newly infected had been vaccinated, the website said. As at July 4, there were 35 serious cases of coronavirus in Israel, compared with 21 on June 19. [..] Israel had one of the world’s most effective coronavirus inoculation drives. Some 57 per cent of the general population is fully vaccinated, including 88 per cent of the population above the age of 50 – the group considered most at risk for serious cases.

The more vaccinations, the higher the chance for more variants. The official narrative has this completely upside down, but it will take a lot for them to declare defeat. Booster shots sounds a lot better to them.

• Lambda Covid-19 Variant From Peru May Be Resistant To Vaccines (NYP)

Scientists fear that a highly contagious new COVID-19 variant that is ravaging Peru may be resistant to vaccines. The Lambda mutation, or C.37, appears to have emerged in Peru last August — and is now being blamed for the country having the highest pandemic death rate in the world. The concerning strain has since spread to around 30 countries, mostly in Latin America — but also as far as the UK, which has recorded at least eight cases, according to government figures. There are no known cases of the Lambda strain in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Peru, Lambda has accounted for 81 percent of new infections tested for variants since April, according to the World Health Organization.

The South American nation currently has by far the highest mortality rate in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University data. There, nearly 10 percent of those recorded as being infected end up dying — with the death rate of nearly 600 for every 100,000 citizens almost double that of the next nation, Hungary, the data shows. The US is 21st with just under 185 deaths per 100,000. Lambda was last month declared a Variant of Interest by the World Health Organization (WHO), which noted that it was “associated with substantive rates of community transmission in multiple countries.” “Lambda carries a number of mutations” that may have led to “potential increased transmissibility or possible increased resistance to neutralizing antibodies,” the WHO said.

Scientists in Chile — where Lambda is blamed for more than a third of the country’s infections — also warned in a recent study, published in a preprint last week, that it appears to evade vaccines better than other strains. “Our data show for the first time that mutations present in the spike protein of the Lambda variant confer escape to neutralizing antibodies and increased infectivity,” wrote the researchers from the University of Chile in Santiago. That could explain why it has been able to take hold despite Chile “undergoing a massive vaccination program,” the study warned.

McCullough is clear and concise. Wonder how long LinkedIn will keep this up.

• 9 Reasons Not to Support, Mandate Investigational COVID19 Vaccines (McCullough)

1. COVID-19 vaccination is voluntary research. The COVID-19 public vaccination program operated by the CDC and the FDA is a clinical investigation and under no circumstance can any person receive pressure, coercion, or threat of reprisal on their free choice of participation. Violation of this principle of autonomy by any entity constitutes reckless endangerment with a reasonable expectation of causing personal injury resulting in damages.

2. COVID-19 vaccines do not work well enough. The current COVID-19 vaccines are not sufficiently protective against contracting COVID-19 to support its use beyond the current voluntary participation in the CDC sponsored program. A total of 10,262 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine breakthrough infections had been reported from 46 U.S. states and territories as of April 30, 2021. Among these cases, 6,446 (63%) occurred in females, and the median patient age was 58 years (interquartile range = 40–74 years). [..]

3. COVID-19 vaccines have a dangerous mechanism of action. The Pfizer, Moderna, and JNJ vaccines are considered “genetic vaccines” or vaccines produced from gene therapy molecular platforms.[i] [ii] They have a injurious mechanism of action in that they all cause the body to make an uncontrolled quantity of the pathogenic spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is unlike all other vaccines where there is a set amount of antigen or live-attenuated virus. This means for the Pfizer, Moderna, and JNJ vaccines it is not predictable among patients who will produce more or less of the spike protein. The spike protein itself has been demonstrated to injure vital organs such as the brain, heart, lungs, as well as damage blood vessels and directly cause blood clots. Additionally, because these vaccines infect cells within these organs, the generation of spike protein within heart and brain cells in particular, causes the body’s own immune system to attack these organs. [..]

7. People are dying and being hospitalized in record numbers in the days after COVID-19 vaccination. Based on VAERS as of June 25, 2021, there were 6,985 COVID-19 vaccine deaths reported and over 23,257 hospitalizations reported for the COVID-19 vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, JNJ). By comparison, from 1999, until December 31, 2019, VAERS received 3167 death reports (158 per year) adult death reports for all vaccines combined. Thus, the COVID-19 mass vaccination is associated with at least 39-fold increase annualized vaccine deaths reported to VAERS. COVID-19 vaccine adverse events account for 98% of all vaccine-related AEs from Dec 2020 through present in VAERS.

Bell’s palsy

pic.twitter.com/q3400uaMF9

— Nashville Angela (@Angelasfreenews) July 5, 2021

VanDen Bossche reacts to the CNN article I cited on July 4, Unvaccinated People Are “Variant Factories” – Infectious Diseases Expert.

“..not the non-vaccinated individuals but the vaccinees are now responsible for driving Sars-CoV-2 evolutionary dynamics..”

• The Chicken-and-Egg Problem (Which Came First?) (VanDen Bossche)

As already mentioned on multiple occasions, molecular epidemiologists have shown that population-level S protein-directed immune pressure is now driving the propagation of variants that are increasingly evolving mutations enabling resistance to S-specific antibodies (as now massively induced by the ongoing vaccination campaigns). As more infectious variants bind to the cellular Ace-2 receptor with enhanced binding strength, the Ace-2 receptor more readily outcompetes S-specific antibodies for binding to these variants. Consequently, these variants gain a competitive advantage when replicating in individuals who exert strong S-directed immune pressure on the virus (i.e., in vaccinees!), especially upon incorporating additional mutations (within the RBD) that prevent direct binding of S-specific vaccinal antibodies.

Variants that are increasingly resistant to S-specific antibodies (e.g., delta and delta plus variant) can only adapt to the population provided the S-directed immune pressure is widespread in the population. This is, of course, the case if larger parts of the population get vaccinated and when vaccinees can easily transmit the variant due to relaxation of infection prevention measures. In principle, non-vaccinated individuals who are in good physical and mental health can deal with all variants, provided the infectious viral pressure does not exceed a certain threshold. This is because their innate antibodies have relatively lower affinity for the virus.

However, breeding of more infectious and more anti-S antibody-resistant variants in vaccinees will inevitably enhance viral replication and transmissibility in vaccinees, thereby raising the infectious pressure and increasing the likelihood for non-vaccinated subjects to become re-infected while their natural/ innate antibodies (Abs) are being suppressed by short-lived S-specific Abs (elicited as a result from previous asymptomatic infection). So, ‘yes’, some non-vaccinated people will become susceptible to the disease and then contribute to further propagation of these variants. It’s important to note, however, that this is a result and not the source of the enhanced evolution of the virus.

So, not the non-vaccinated individuals but the vaccinees are now responsible for driving Sars-CoV-2 evolutionary dynamics. It’s also important to note that non-vaccinated people will not contribute to natural selection as they will either eliminate the virus (thanks to their innate antibodies in synergy with natural killer cells) or become susceptible to Covid-19 disease due to suppression of their innate immune defense. Short-term shedding of low concentrations of viral variants by asymptomatically infected, non-vaccinated people is a direct consequence of shifting natural immune selection forces that are increasingly coming into play as a result of mass vaccination. This will ultimately put the vaccinees in much worse shape than the non-vaccinated as the latter will still be able to rely on their innate Abs.

For 10 years, Moderna could get no approval for anything. Then it got one in weeks. Pfizer may have played a key role in that.

• How the Moderna Covid-19 mRNA Vaccine Was Made So Quickly (CNBC)

Almost all people hospitalized for Covid-19 are not vaccinated — 99.9% as of May to be exact, according to a recent Associated Press report. Yet 13% of U.S. adults said they will “definitely not” get a COVID-19 vaccine as recently as late May, according to Kaiser Family Foundation COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor. Another 12% wanted to “wait until it has been available for a while to see how it is working for other people.” Vaccinating the majority of the population is the best way to help avoid further surges from constantly evolving variants, like the current delta variant, which is quickly spreading in the U.S. and other countries. Still, Moderna co-founder Noubar Afeyan understands the hesitation to get a new vaccine.

“The vaccines came out in such a [short] timeframe that people assumed automatically, it can’t possibly be safe,” Afeyan said during a talk at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May. “In fact, many, many people were on television espousing the view that — experts for that matter — that if it’s done in less than five years, it’s got to be unsafe, all of which is untrue. “Nevertheless, people get confused.” What people might not understand is that extensive research was being done on mRNA technology and other mRNA vaccines for years. That decade plus of experience and the innovation of mRNA technology itself is what allowed Moderna to produce its Covid mRNA vaccine so quickly as the pandemic struck. And it could also change the future of medicine.

Here’s what you need to know about how the Moderna Covid-19 mRNA vaccine was developed. It is true that Moderna’s mRNA vaccine was ready remarkably fast, as was Pfizer’s. Chinese scientists put the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus online on Jan. 11. Over the next two days, the NIH and Moderna used it to plot out a vaccine. Afeyan remembers getting a key call about the development of the Covid-19 vaccine. “January 21st, my daughter’s birthday…. I got a call from Davos [during The World Economic Forum] from the CEO of Moderna,” he says. Bancel had been approached by a number of public health groups at the conference “urging” him to work on a vaccine. “We literally Decided overnight…to try and do this,” Afeyan said at MIT.

Moderna delivered the first doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to the NIH for testing on Feb. 24, 2020, and “the first Moderna shot went into a volunteer’s arm in Seattle on March 16, 2020,” according to Afeyan. After testing the Moderna vaccine on 30,000 volunteers, on Dec. 18, 2020, the FDA authorized it for emergency public use, and three days after that, the first Moderna vaccines were administered to front-line health workers, according to Afeyan. One of the reasons Moderna’s mRNA Covid vaccine development moved so quickly is because scientists had been working with mRNA for years. [..] And Moderna has been working with mRNA technology “since its inception in 2010 for myriad therapeutic areas,” including cancer therapies, Afeyan tells CNBC Make It (by way of a publicist), and with clinical development of mRNA-based antiviral vaccines since 2015.

Science Mag sees testing protocols primarily as a nuisance because proven vaccines are now available. Proven before they were tested, that is. With a vague bit about T cells thrown in.

• Can Immune Responses Alone Reveal Which Covid-19 Vaccines Work Best? (Smag)

Other than running a placebo-controlled, clinical trial lasting many months and involving tens of thousands of people, is there any way to be sure a COVID-19 vaccine will work? Many researchers contend that the success of several vaccines now widely in use offers a shortcut: Simply gauge a vaccine’s ability to elicit so-called neutralizing antibodies, which bind to the virus and prevent it from entering cells. But several recent studies, the latest published as a preprint on 24 June, point to other “correlates of protection”: “binding” antibodies—which latch on to the virus but don’t block entry—and another set of immune warriors called T cells.

Vaccine decisions may soon depend on a better understanding of these supporting actors. Several companies are developing updates of their COVID-19 vaccines tailored to protect against new viral variants, and they hope regulatory agencies won’t require that they show efficacy in big clinical trials, which are not only time-consuming and expensive, but also increasingly ethically fraught because some of the participants receive a placebo even though proven vaccines are now available. With an established correlate of protection, trials can give an updated vaccine to a much smaller group of participants and then check whether they produce the telltale immune responses. (That’s how the annual updates of flu vaccines are approved.) Health officials may also turn to correlates when they consider prioritizing existing COVID-19 vaccines, authorizing new “mix and match” combinations, or even when making decisions about entirely new vaccines.

But finding robust correlates has been challenging. During the megatrials that led to the authorization of COVID-19 vaccines, investigators monitored antibody responses and tried to correlate them with their odds of participants getting sick. Different trials, however, used different antibody assays and different definitions of mild COVID-19, the main endpoint in the trials. “It’s anarchy because it’s always been anarchy,” says John Moore, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medicine. “You’re dealing with different academic labs and different companies, and companies tend not to talk to each other.” Many trials also lacked the statistical power to measure protection from hospitalization and death, arguably a COVID-19 vaccine’s most important task. And few trials even looked carefully at T cells, which are far more cumbersome to measure.

[..] Penny Moore and colleagues also found support for a role for T cells. In an 11 June preprint, they reported that 96% of participants in an efficacy trial of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) made antibodies that neutralized a viral strain from early in the pandemic but only 19% had antibodies that neutralized the Beta variant, which is widespread in South Africa and infamous for dodging neuts. Yet despite the variant, the vaccine remained protective against moderate and severe COVID-19. “I think it’s entirely plausible … that T cells are doing something really useful here,” Penny Moore says.

And you thought spike proteins were bad…
https://twitter.com/i/status/1412287378568384515

I was reading this yesterday (twice), how the immune system fights off Covid.

• T Cells: Why Immunity Is About More Than Antibodies (CEBM)

The CD4+ T cell response in COVID-19 Some studies have shown that in patients with severe COVID-19 there is evidence of impaired function of CD4+ T cells, including reduced IFN ɣ production [16], while others seem to suggest over-activation of these T cells [17]. Overall, the CD4+ T cell response in acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, whether impaired, over-activated, or inappropriate, and how this relates to disease outcomes, remains to be elucidated and is an important question. A particularly high frequency of CD4+ T cell responses specific to virus spike protein has been observed in patients who have recovered from COVID-19, which is similar to what has been reported for influenza virus infections [11]. In one small study of 14 patients, circulating virus-specific CD4+ T cells were identified in all of those who recovered from SARS- CoV-2, which also suggests the potential for developing T cell memory [18] and perhaps longer-term immunity.

The CD8+ T cell response in COVID-19 There appears to be heterogeneity in the immune response between patients. Some studies have reported that CD8+ T cells from patients with severe COVID-19 had reduced cytokine production following in vitro stimulation, and some have shown evidence of possibly exhausted T cells; in contrast, other studies have reported an overaggressive CD8+ T cell response or highly activated CD8+ T cells with increased cytotoxic response in patients with COVID-19 [14]. It is still unclear how the heterogeneity of the CD8+ T cell response relates to disease features, which could be driven by, for example, patient immunotypes [17,19] or the nature of the interaction between respiratory epithelial cells and cytotoxic T cells and the level of response.

Several chemokine receptor genes (including CCR9, CXCR6, and XCR1) and the locus controlling the ABO blood type have been identified as being associated with severe disease; however, whether these genes are directly or indirectly related to T cell responses in COVID-19 remains unknown [14]. A higher proportion of CD8+ T cell responses was observed in patients who only developed mild disease, suggesting a potential protective role of CD8+ T cell responses [11]. Most of the CD8+ T cell responses were specific to viral internal proteins, rather than spike proteins, which should be considered in vaccine development [4]. SARS-CoV-2-specific CD8+ T cells are present in about 70% of patients who have recovered [18], which is evidence of a virus-specific CD8+ T cell response and the presence of CD8+ T cell memory. However, the ability of these cells to protect from future infection remains to be determined.

Role of T cells in response to COVID-19 infection: adapted from The trinity of COVID-19: immunity, inflammation and intervention. Nat Rev Immunol. 2020 Jun;20(6):363-374. doi: 10.1038/s41577-020-0311-8.

How clear is the bible on this?

• Refusing To Be Vaccinated Against Covid A ’Sin’ – Russian Orthodox Church (RT)

Those who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19 are committing a sin they will have to repent for the rest of their lives. That’s according to the Russian Orthodox Church, whose spokesman said rejecting a jab is selfish. Speaking to TV channel Russia 24, the head of the Russia Orthodox Church’s Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Hilarion, explained that his parishioners regularly repent to him for not being vaccinated. They feel guilty because they passed the virus on to someone else who eventually died, he claimed. “They come and say, ‘How am I supposed to live with this now?’ And it’s hard for even me to say how to live with it,” he explained. “All your life, you have to make up for the sin you committed.”

The sin is thinking about yourself instead of thinking about other people,” the metropolitan said. “We are responsible – each of us – not only for ourselves and not only for our loved ones, but also for all those who come into contact with us.” In recent months, the Church has been more vocal about its support for the government’s vaccination program. Metropolitan Hilarion has regularly spoken on TV about the need to follow the rules and take precautions to avoid infection. In June, the cleric revealed his “positive attitude” towards the government initiative to impose compulsory vaccination on those working in the service sector. “Of course, it is desirable to observe the principle of voluntariness in relation to vaccinations – the principle that was stated from the very beginning,” he explained. “But there is also the principle of people’s responsibility for the lives of other people.”

Seen this a lot in the UK: people who say it’s criminal to expose kids to Covid, and therefore they should be injected. How do you get the world so wrong side up?

• Relaxing Of Covid Restrictions In England Sparks Social Media Meltdown (Clark)

Boris Johnson has announced that masks and social distancing are likely to end on July 19, which has, predictably, been met with a hysterical, irrational response by those who don’t seem to want life ever to return to normal. Talk about being triggered. Boris Johnson’s press conference on Monday sent #wearamask Twitter into a hyperbolic meltdown of epic proportions. The PM announced that the public would have independence from burdensome domestic Covid restrictions- which were supposed to have lasted for only three weeks but instead have lasted for sixteen months- on 19 July 19, with confirmation of this coming on July 12. The relaxing of restrictions had been foreshadowed in an article in the Mail on Sunday by the new UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid, in which he said Britain would need to learn to live with Covid.

While we should all remain cynical about what the government may have planned for the autumn, Javid declared –rightly, in my view– that opening the country up would actually make us healthier, physically and mentally. Cue the most incredible Twitter meltdown ever seen. What the government was proposing was ‘genocide.’ “Why are the British people accepting this? We need to close borders, effective test and trace, social distancing (through bi-weekly remote and in person education) in schools, masks indoors, work from home and vacs until infections are really low. Then re-cover (sic), slowly” opined one Tweeter ironically with the moniker ‘Freedom.’ Citing Orwell (again, who said satire was dead?), the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr tweeted “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Health is the deliberate mass infection of an entire nation’s children with a novel & mutating virus with unknown long-term consequences.”

The hashtag #WearAMask was trending with a whole succession of self-righteous virtue signallers telling the world that they would continue to mask up after July 19, whatever the government announced. Repeat after Me: People who wear masks are Good People, People who don’t are Bad People (and probably supporters of Brexit and Donald Trump). “The thing about mask wearing is it protects others more than you” declared Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who piously informed us she’d continue to wear a mask indoors after July 19. As if we had to know. The Liberal Democrat-supporting author Emma Kennedy tweeted: “In a nutshell, post July 29 there will be people prepared to wear masks because they care about other people. And those who don’t. And that’s it, isn’t it.”

If it doesn’t have any mRNA, we’re not interested.

• HIV Vaccine Trial Launched At Oxford In Bid To End ‘40-Year Wait’ (RT)

Researchers at the UK’s University of Oxford have administered the first doses of a potential HIV vaccine to participants, as part of a Phase-One clinical trial launched on Monday. The trial, called HIV-CORE 0052, aims to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of the HIVconsvX vaccine, the University said. The project is part of the European Aids Vaccine Initiative, funded by the European Commission. The jab is known as a “mosaic,” meaning it can target a broad range of HIV-1 variants and potentially become a suitable vaccine for use around the world. Scientists will give two doses of the vaccine four weeks apart to 13 healthy, HIV-negative adults, aged between 18 and 65, who are not considered at risk of infection. “An effective HIV vaccine has been elusive for 40 years,” Tomas Hanke, the trial’s lead researcher and Professor of Vaccine Immunology at the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, said in a statement.

“This trial is the first in a series of evaluations of this novel vaccine strategy in both HIV-negative individuals for prevention and in people living with HIV for cure.” The Oxford solution works by stimulating the body’s immune response via T cells which kill specific pathogens, unlike most other HIV vaccine candidates, which induce antibodies created by B-cells to fight the virus. HIV attacks the body’s immune system and can develop into life-threatening AIDS if left untreated. In 2014 the UN announced a ‘fast-track’ target of decreasing the number of people newly-infected with the virus to 500,000 by 2020. However, last year there were approximately 1.5 million new cases. The Oxford team expects to report its results by April next year. There are also plans to start similar trials in Europe, Africa and the US.

Always amusing. But mostly led by what people wish for, not what is reality.

• The Dollar’s Declining Status as Dominant “Global Reserve Currency” (WS)

Yes, the Fed is a drunken reckless money-printer, and the US government has been high for years on deficit spending, but other major central banks and governments do the same or worse. The long-term trends are clear, however. The global share of US-dollar-denominated exchange reserves ticked up to 59.5% in the first quarter of 2021, after having dropped to a 25-year low in Q4 2020, according to the IMF’s Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) data released at the end of June. Dollar-denominated foreign exchange reserves are Treasury securities, US corporate bonds, US mortgage-backed securities, US Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities, and other dollar-denominated financial assets held by foreign central banks. Q1 was a ripple in the long-term trajectory.

Since 2014, the dollar’s share has dropped 6.5 percentage points, from 66% to 59.5%, on average 1 percentage point per year. At this rate, the dollar’s share would fall below 50% over the next decade. Since 1999, when the euro arrived, the dollar’s share of foreign exchange reserves has dropped 11.5 percentage points, from 71% to 59.5% (year-end shares, except Q1 2021):

Exchange rates between the dollar and other currencies change the valuations expressed in dollars of non-dollar reserves, such as German government bonds. Yes, but… The Dollar Index (DXY) moved substantially since 1999, up and down, but it is now roughly back where it was in 1999. This means that nearly all of the decline in the share of the dollar as foreign exchange reserves since 1999 was due to central banks unloading dollar-denominated assets, and not due to exchange rates.

“..decoding the foreign policy moves signified in “Joe Biden’s” ice-cream flavor choices. (Rocky Road means: Oh, let China have that….)”

• The Ice-Cream Flavor Next Time (Kunstler)

A nation mesmerized by its own weakness wanly celebrated the long-ago and faraway memory of standing up for itself, while it passively endures the current orgy of tyrannical cancellation and suppression of anyone talking back to the present folks-in-charge. Over just a few years, this tyranny has grown like a toxic slime mold from such an unlikely place, the Internet social app ecology of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, as they took over the public arena — where the battle of ideas is supposed to live — and did the government’s dirty work, complete with adorable emojis. You’re fired! Who will stand up to Zuck, Jack, and Sundar Pichai? Who elected these megalomaniacs boss of the USA? What will it take to end their reign of terror? Some sort of… revolution? (Shhhh! That must be a dirty word, even considering we just celebrated the high point of the American Revolution: The Declaration of Independence, signed July 4, 1776.)

Don’t look to “Joe Biden,” the nation’s putatively elected leader — about whose election back in November, 2020, you are liable to hear more about as the summer stickily unspools. Zuck, Jack, and Sundar managed to protect “Joe Biden” from the stupendous depredations of his offspring, Hunter Biden, recorded in explosive detail on a laptop the public was not allowed to hear about. Don’t look to the Department of Justice, supposedly “investigating” that horde of memos and emails detailing the Bidens ’influence-peddling to the CCP and others — they’re busy surveilling “white supremacists” on the apps run by Zuck, Jack, and Sundar. And for sure don’t look to the news media, that coalition of sell-outs and quislings, busy decoding the foreign policy moves signified in “Joe Biden’s” ice-cream flavor choices. (Rocky Road means: Oh, let China have that….)

Wondering who is actually running the “Joe Biden” government? Some of us out here are. (Do you think we’re allowed to say that?) For instance, have you tried googling the name Susan Rice lately? Remember her? Maybe not. “Joe Biden” appointed her Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. From the looks of things across the country, you’d think her plate would be heaped mighty high, what with “insurrection” and other white mischief threatening to take down the republic. Anyway, I googled “news” for her. Hardly a goshdarn thing came up that wasn’t from months ago, and most of that was sheer puffery about how accomplished she is, and what a fabulous person. Don’t you wonder what her phone log looks like? All those calls to the Obama residence, day after day, hour after hour?

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The Great Big Delta Scare

Jul 042021

July 4, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 4:07 pm Finance Tagged with: antibody, Delta, early treatment, fear, immune system, ivermectin, prophylactic, T cells, vaccines 21 Responses »

Edward John Poynter Erato, Muse of Poetry 1870

Why the Delta scare? As a virus mutates, it becomes more contagious and less lethal. And then eventually it mostly disappears. Many voices claim that Delta will be with us for a very long time, but we should be so lucky. It’s way more likely that it will soon be followed by a next variant that will in turn become dominant. And more contagious and less lethal.

And no, that’s not because of unvaccinated people, or at least there’s no logic in that. If most people are not vaccinated, the virus has no reason to mutate. If many people are, it does. So this CNN piece is suspect. Vaccinated people are potential variant factories, just as much, if and when the vaccines used don’t stop them from being infectious, as the present vaccines don’t, far as we know.

Unvaccinated People Are “Variant Factories,” Infectious Diseases Expert

Unvaccinated people do more than merely risk their own health. They’re also a risk to everyone if they become infected with coronavirus, infectious disease specialists say. That’s because the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person. “Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN Friday. “The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply,” Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said. “When it does, it mutates, and it could throw off a variant mutation that is even more serious down the road.”

“Even more serious”? Well, yes, it can become more contagious, but then it loses lethality. Maybe that’s what we want. Maybe we want a virus that everyone can be infected by, and build resistance to, without serious consequences. Maybe that’s even what we should aim for. And also, maybe that’s what we already have, with survival rates of 99.99% among most people.

And maybe, just maybe, a one-dimensional “solution” in the shape of an experimental vaccine is the worst response of all. Because it doesn’t protect from anything other than more severe disease, while unleashing potential adverse effects for decades to come in the inoculated. Maybe one dimension simply doesn’t cut it. Maybe we should not refuse to prevent people from becoming infected, or to treat them in the early stages of the disease.

Maybe the traumatic effects of lockdowns and facemasks should be part of “benefits and risks” models. And maybe we should start trying vitamin D, ivermectin and HCQ on a very large scale. No research, you say? There’s more research for those approaches than for the vaccines. But it’s largely been halted in the west to maintain the viability of the one-dimension “solution”; the medical Siamese twin of the Trusted News Initiative, one might say. Of which The Atlantic is also a valued member, look at this gem:

The 3 Simple Rules That Underscore the Danger of Delta

2. The variants are pummeling unvaccinated people.

Vaccinated people are safer than ever despite the variants. But unvaccinated people are in more danger than ever because of the variants. Even though they’ll gain some protection from the immunity of others, they also tend to cluster socially and geographically, seeding outbreaks even within highly vaccinated communities.

The U.K., where half the population is fully vaccinated, “can be a cautionary tale,” Hanage told me. Since Delta’s ascendancy, the country’s cases have increased sixfold. Long-COVID cases will likely follow. Hospitalizations have almost doubled. That’s not a sign that the vaccines are failing. It is a sign that even highly vaccinated countries host plenty of vulnerable people.

[..] And new variants are still emerging. Lambda, the latest to be recognized by the WHO, is dominant in Peru and spreading rapidly in South America. Many nations that excelled at protecting their citizens are now facing a triple threat: They controlled COVID-19 so well that they have little natural immunity; they don’t have access to vaccines; and they’re besieged by Delta.

First, the vaccines don’t confer immunity on the jabbed, there is no evidence of that. Second, a large majority of healthy people have an immune system strong enough to fight off the infection, even without ever being infected. So to suggest that unvaccinated people might “gain some protection from the immunity of” the vaccinated is simply nonsense.

As for “Delta’s ascendancy”, yes, cases are rising in the UK and Israel, two highly vaccinated countries. Not that anyone would acknowledge a possible connection there: it’s all despite the vaccines, not because of them. But as the graph below shows, while cases there are up a lot, hospitalization and deaths are not over the past month. They barely register.

On January 20, the UK had 1,823 deaths. Today, they had 15.

I even enlarged the hospitalizations a bit, or you wouldn’t see anything.

“Hospitalizations have almost doubled”, says The Atlantic. Yeah, but they’re still very low, as are deaths. And perhaps that’s not all that surprising, because the Delta variant doesn’t appear to be the big killer that everyone wants to close their borders and restaurants for again. There’s no conclusive evidence, it’s too early, but this is what we know today.

Rand Paul Cites 0.08% Delta Variant Death Rate Among Unvaccinated

Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul is telling Twitter followers to not let the ‘fearmongers’ win, amid growing concerns about the newest delta variant of the coronavirus. Paul, who is a doctor with a degree in medicine from Duke University, cited a study of the strain that shows only a 0.08% death rate among unvaccinated people. “Don’t let the fearmongers win. New public England study of delta variant shows 44 deaths out of 53,822 (.08%) in unvaccinated group. Hmmm,” he tweeted Tuesday to his 3.2 million followers. The variant, which has caused virus outbreaks in Australia and other countries, has resulted in officials reimposing recently lifted health-safety orders including mask-wearing.

In another graph, the Delta variant Case Fatality Rate in the UK even appears 8 times higher among the fully vaccinated than the unvaccinated. Maybe the press should pay a little more attention to that, instead of the Great Big Delta Scare. All they do today is sell fear and vaccines, but that will backfire, promise.

And what goes for the press is also valid for politicians and their “experts”: there will come a day that people realize you could have focused on prophylactics and early treatment, but chose not to. And that this cost a lot of lives and other misery. What are you going to do then? Apologize?

Let’s not miss this from the past week: strong immune systems kill the virus before antibodies are formed. Which means an antibody test won’t show anything, but a PCR test will come back positive because there are dead virus bits. And everyone will cry: vaccinate! vaccinate!

Maybe it’s finally time for some real science, instead of clickbait and fear and gene therapy.

Pre-existing polymerase-specific T cells expand in abortive seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection

Individuals with likely exposure to the highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 do not necessarily develop PCR or antibody positivity, suggesting some may clear sub-clinical infection before seroconversion. T cells can contribute to the rapid clearance of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronavirus infections1–5 . We hypothesised that pre-existing memory T cell responses, with cross-protective potential against SARS-CoV-26–12, would expand in vivo to mediate rapid viral control, potentially aborting infection.

We studied T cells against the replication transcription complex (RTC) of SARS-CoV-2 since this is transcribed first in the viral life cycle13–15 and should be highly conserved. We measured SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells in a cohort of intensively monitored healthcare workers (HCW) who remained repeatedly negative by PCR, antibody binding, and neutralisation for SARS-CoV-2 (exposed seronegative, ES).

16-weeks postrecruitment, ES had memory T cells that were stronger and more multispecific than an unexposed pre-pandemic cohort, and more frequently directed against the RTC than the structural protein-dominated responses seen post-detectable infection (matched concurrent cohort). The postulate that HCW with the strongest RTC-specific T cells had an abortive infection was supported by a low-level increase in IFI27 transcript, a robust early innate signature of SARS-CoV-2 infection16.

We showed that the RNA-polymerase within RTC was the largest region of high sequence conservation across human seasonal coronaviruses (HCoV) and was preferentially targeted by T cells from UK and Singapore pre-pandemic cohorts and from ES. RTC epitope-specific T cells capable of cross-recognising HCoV variants were identified in ES. Longitudinal samples from ES and an additional validation cohort, showed pre-existing RNA-polymerase-specific T cells expanded in vivo following SARS-CoV-2 exposure, becoming enriched in the memory response of those with abortive compared to overt infection. In summary, we provide evidence of abortive seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection with expansion of cross-reactive RTC-specific T cells, highlighting these highly conserved proteins as targets for future vaccines against endemic and emerging Coronaviridae.

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Debt Rattle July 3 2021

Jul 032021

July 3, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:57 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Bali, birthday, blood clots, Hunter Biden, immune system, net zero, T cells, YouTube 44 Responses »

Julian Assange turns 50 today, in isolation

• Polymerase-specific T Cells Expand In Seronegative SARS-CoV-2 Infection (Mxiv)

• Clot Death Risk To 18-39s From AZ Vaccine Is 2x Covid Death Risk (IE)

• French Senate Considers Mandatory Covid Vaccines For Adults Aged 24-59 (RT)

• Bali Swept Up In Indonesia’s Harsh Lockdown Despite 71% Vaccination Rate (RT)

• Tech Giants Still Not Coming Clean About Covid-19 Disinformation, Says EU (TC)

• Vatican In Push Against Vaccine Scepticism (RT)

• “Intellectual Capture?” On YouTube’s Demonetization of Bret Weinstein (Taibbi)

• Stumbling Toward Reality (Kunstler)

• Natural Resource Drain Created By “Net Zero Emission” Targets (ZH)

• Biden Aide Charges “Sabotage” Of Harris (Axios)

• New Emails Raise New Allegations of Influence Peddling By Hunter Biden (Turley)

• Key Assange Witness Recants – With Zero Corporate Media Coverage (Fair)

Delta Case Fatality Rate in UK appears 8 times higher among the fully vaccinated than the unvaccinated

Early intervention

Dr. Richard Bartlett, MD about ignoring early treatment for Covid pic.twitter.com/cVm9OVHmPK

— Husserl (@husserl79) July 2, 2021

In the strongest immune systems, T cells kill the virus so fast the body has no time (or reason) to create antibodies. So an antibody test will raise an alarm: there are none! A PCR test will likely show the virus though, even though it’s dead. You can’t win. Both test results will lead to a call for a vaccine.

• Polymerase-specific T Cells Expand In Seronegative SARS-CoV-2 Infection (Mxiv)

Individuals with likely exposure to the highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 do not necessarily develop PCR or antibody positivity, suggesting some may clear sub-clinical infection before seroconversion. T cells can contribute to the rapid clearance of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronavirus infections1–5 . We hypothesised that pre-existing memory T cell responses, with cross-protective potential against SARS-CoV-26–12, would expand in vivo to mediate rapid viral control, potentially aborting infection. We studied T cells against the replication transcription complex (RTC) of SARS-CoV-2 since this is transcribed first in the viral life cycle13–15 and should be highly conserved. We measured SARS-CoV-2-reactive T cells in a cohort of intensively

monitored healthcare workers (HCW) who remained repeatedly negative by PCR, antibody binding, and neutralisation for SARS-CoV-2 (exposed seronegative, ES). 16-weeks postrecruitment, ES had memory T cells that were stronger and more multispecific than an unexposed pre-pandemic cohort, and more frequently directed against the RTC than the structural protein-dominated responses seen post-detectable infection (matched concurrent cohort). The postulate that HCW with the strongest RTC-specific T cells had an abortive infection was supported by a low-level increase in IFI27 transcript, a robust early innate signature of SARS-CoV-2 infection16.

We showed that the RNA-polymerase within RTC was the largest region of high sequence conservation across human seasonal coronaviruses (HCoV) and was preferentially targeted by T cells from UK and Singapore pre-pandemic cohorts and from ES. RTC epitope-specific T cells capable of cross-recognising HCoV variants were identified in ES. Longitudinal samples from ES and an additional validation cohort, showed pre-existing RNA-polymerase-specific T cells expanded in vivo following SARS-CoV-2 exposure, becoming enriched in the memory response of those with abortive compared to overt infection. In summary, we provide evidence of abortive seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection with expansion of cross-reactive RTC-specific T cells, highlighting these highly conserved proteins as targets for future vaccines against endemic and emerging Coronaviridae.

But the benefits still outweigh the risks, says the Irish health body. Who are these people?

• Clot Death Risk To 18-39s From AZ Vaccine Is 2x Covid Death Risk (IE)

The HSE has admitted a greater risk of blood clotting in younger people still exists for the AstraZeneca vaccine, but that risk is now outweighed by a need to speed up public vaccination. A new modelling study published in the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control’s (ECDC) medical journal has concluded that the dangers presented to younger people by the AstraZeneca vaccine are greater than the benefits. The study, published in the weekly edition of the Eurosurveillance journal, models four months of a vaccine distribution strategy in France involving Vaxzevria (commonly called AstraZeneca) from May 2021, and concludes that using the vaccine on the entire adult population there would avert 10 deaths from Covid among 18-39-year-olds, but would be associated with 21 deaths from blood clotting in the same age grouping over the same time period.

“Our results highlight the clear benefit of the distribution of Vaxzevria towards the population aged 55 years and older and provide valuable insight for public health decision making,” the study concludes. Last April, the National Immunisation Advisory Committee’s (Niac) recommended that AstraZeneca should only be given to people over the age of 60 in Ireland due to the risk of very rare blood clots and the fact older people are more susceptible to severe Covid infection than their younger counterparts. The move followed a wave of similar decisions across other European health bodies as details of the clotting risk solidified. However, in light of dire projections earlier in the week from Nphet concerning the potential spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19, the HSE announced that from Monday, July 5, all 18-34-year-olds will be able to avail of Janssen vaccines, administered by 750 pharmacies.

Illegal. Simple.

• French Senate Considers Mandatory Covid Vaccines For Adults Aged 24-59 (RT)

The French Senate is considering implementing obligatory vaccinations for those aged 24-59 to help the country weather the anticipated next spike of coronavirus infections in what would be a fourth wave of cases. The body published a report from its Common Mission of Information on Thursday, advocating for mandatory vaccinations of young to middle-aged adults on the grounds it could significantly lower hospitalization rates and deaths. The report issued a stern warning: “act now to limit impact”. The report follows Prime Minister Jean Castex’s announcement on Wednesday that he will consult elected officials and chairmen of parliament on the compulsory vaccination of caregivers, with senators pushing for this to also include 24-59 year olds.

The age group was chosen as over 90% of people infected with Covid are under 60 in France, the Pasteur Institute said. To prevent hospitalization rates rising like last year, the Institute found that among 12-17 year-olds, a 30% vaccination rate was needed, and 70% among 18-59s. A vaccine uptake of 90% for those over 60 was deemed necessary. However, France’s vaccination campaign – which has prioritized those most susceptible to catching Covid, such as healthcare workers and people over 65 – is lagging behind these targets. Among 18-29 year-olds, 15.36% are fully vaccinated. Just under a quarter of those aged 30-49 have been inoculated, while the figure rises to half among 50-64 year olds.

260 million people stretched out over countless islands. Give them IVM.

• Bali Swept Up In Indonesia’s Harsh Lockdown Despite 71% Vaccination Rate (RT)

Hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints have been erected across Indonesia as authorities attempt to enforce a harsh lockdown aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19, which has surged in the country in recent weeks. “We are setting up [patrols] in 21 locations where typically there are crowds,” Istiono, the head of Indonesia’s national traffic police, who goes by only one name, told reporters on Friday night. “Where there are street stalls and cafes, we will close those streets, maybe from around 6pm until 4am.” The beefed-up patrols and roadblocks will focus on the islands of Java – the country’s most populous, where the national capital of Jakarta is located – as well as Bali, a common tourist destination.

Some 21,000 police officers and soldiers will enforce the new restrictions, according to a police spokesman cited by Reuters. They will also administer random coronavirus tests at checkpoints. The move comes soon after President Joko Widodo declared a new lockdown earlier on Friday, set to last into late July, though it could be extended. The order requires all “non-essential” businesses to shut their doors, while Java- and Bali-based students will have to learn from home if possible. Parks, malls, indoor restaurants and places of worship, among other public spaces, have also been closed.= Some exceptions were made for those who are both vaccinated and test negative for the virus, as they were permitted to travel long-distance in the affected areas.

Indonesia is currently facing one of Asia’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, tallying more than 20,000 cases each day in recent weeks – many believed linked to the Delta variant first observed in India – and that only accounts for those verified by testing. The country has smashed its own daily infection record for the last 12 days, according to Reuters, reporting 25,830 cases on Friday, as well as a high of 539 fatalities. While a national vaccination drive is underway, largely relying on a shot developed by China’s SinoVac, only about 5% of Indonesia’s 260 million-strong population has been fully immunized against the virus, according to figures compiled by Our World in Data. That amounts to about 13.7 million people.

“They simply cannot police themselves alone.” Orwell.

• Tech Giants Still Not Coming Clean About Covid-19 Disinformation, Says EU (TC)

European Union lawmakers have asked tech giants to continue reporting on efforts to combat the spread of vaccine disinformation on their platforms for a further six months. “The continuation of the monitoring programme is necessary as the vaccination campaigns throughout the EU is proceeding with a steady and increasing pace, and the upcoming months will be decisive to reach a high level of vaccination in Member States. It is key that in this important period vaccine hesitancy is not fuelled by harmful disinformation,” the Commission writes today. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, TikTok and Twitter are signed up to make monthly reports as a result of being participants in the bloc’s (non-legally binding) Code of Practice on Disinformation — although, going forward, they’ll be switching to bi-monthly reporting.

Publishing the latest batch of platform reports for April, the Commission said the tech giants have shown they’re unable to police “dangerous lies” by themselves — while continuing to express dissatisfaction at the quality and granularity of the data that is being (voluntarily) provided by platforms vis-à-via how they’re combating online disinformation generally. “These reports show how important it is to be able to effectively monitor the measures put in place by the platforms to reduce disinformation,” said Vera Jourova, the EU’s VP for values and transparency, in a statement. “We decided to extend this programme, because the amount of dangerous lies continues to flood our information space and because it will inform the creation of the new generation Code against disinformation. We need a robust monitoring programme, and clearer indicators to measure impact of actions taken by platforms. They simply cannot police themselves alone.”

You would think the pope has better thinngs to do?!

• Vatican In Push Against Vaccine Scepticism (RT)

The official bioethics academy of the Catholic Church has come forward alongside a host of global medical associations to demand an end to the “myths and disinformation” interfering with the fight against Covid-19. The Pontifical Council of Life (VPCL) and several international physicians’ groups spoke with reporters on Friday in what was described as an “all-out effort” to set straight the disinformation surrounding the vaccine’s place in religious doctrine, insisting the pharmaceutical mixture was not only safe and effective but also ethical under the Catholic faith. While acknowledging that some reluctance to take the jab in “disadvantaged communities” was linked to previous “breaches of trust in medical research” and overall “suspicion” of pharma firms, Friday’s joint statement said a “more pernicious form” of vaccine hesitancy was fueled by “unfounded and misleading claims and myths” and amplified on social media.

“Considered one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine, vaccines play a vital role in the prevention of infectious diseases,” they said. The groups noted the problem becomes even more complex given the vaccine skepticism within many religious groups, and even the medical community, calling for a united front against disinformation among spiritual leaders and healthcare professionals. All relevant stakeholders must exhaust all efforts to confront vaccine hesitancy by sending a clear message about the safety and necessity of vaccines and counteracting vaccine myths and disinformation The statement followed a day-long online seminar sponsored by the VPCL, along with the World Medical Association of France and the German Medical Association.

Fitting on Assange’s Bday.

• “Intellectual Capture?” On YouTube’s Demonetization of Bret Weinstein (Taibbi)

YouTube’s decision with regard to Weinstein and Heying seems part of an overall butterfly effect, as numerous other figures either connected to the topic or to DarkHorse have been censured by various platforms. Weinstein guest Dr. Robert Malone, a former Salk Institute researcher often credited with helping develop mRNA vaccine technology, has been suspended from LinkedIn, and Weinstein guest Dr. Pierre Kory of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) has had his appearances removed by YouTube. Even Satoshi Omura, who won the Nobel Prize in 2015 for his work on ivermectin, reportedly had a video removed by YouTube this week. There are several factors that make the DarkHorse incident different from other major Silicon Valley moderation decisions, including the fact that the content in question doesn’t involve electoral politics, foreign intervention, or incitement.

The main issue is the possible blurring of lines between public and private censorship. When I contacted YouTube about Weinstein two weeks ago, I was told, “In general, we rely on guidance from local and global health authorities (FDA, CDC, WHO, NHS, etc) in developing our COVID-19 misinformation policies.” The question is, how active is that “guidance”? Is YouTube acting in consultation with those bodies in developing those moderation policies? As Weinstein notes, an answer in the affirmative would likely make theirs a true First Amendment problem, with an agency like the CDC not only setting public health policy but also effectively setting guidelines for private discussion about those policies. “If it is in consultation with the government,” he says, “it’s an entirely different issue.”

Asked specifically after Weinstein’s demonetization if the “guidance” included consultation with authorities, YouTube essentially said yes, pointing to previous announcements that they consult other authorities, and adding, “When we develop our policies we consult outside experts and YouTube creators. In the case of our COVID-19 misinformation policies, it would be guidance from local and global health authorities.”

“Dr. Fauci’s role looks like a species of generic egomania with a top hat of greed (considering his financial interests in vaccines).”

• Stumbling Toward Reality (Kunstler)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who answers to the title “The Science” in certain circles, said this week that there are going to be two Americas, the vaxed and the unvaxed. Earth to Dr. Fauci: we are already two Americas: the reality-onboard and the reality-optional. One reality is that vaccines developed at “warp speed” appear to have gnarly side-effects that can outweigh the risk of the disease they’re engineered to protect against. Another reality is that the Delta variant of SARS-Covid-19 is more contagious, but also weaker, less likely to result in hospitalization among the unvaxed. Yet another reality is that the Delta variant also infects the fully-vaccinated. Oh, what to do?

Consider not allowing yourself to be jerked around by US health officials who have trouble keeping their story straight, for instance, Dr. Anthony Fauci (a.k.a. The Science) who, records show, apparently assisted the bio-warfare division of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at the Wuhan lab in the development of a world-beating, gain-of-function bat virus — which, halfway through year-two of its run, seems to be following the usual trajectory of viral epidemics by growing weaker before it disappears altogether. And then we’ll see what happens longer-term among the vaxed, who were subjected to flurries of toxic spike proteins.

It’s the opinion of some — though not myself — that the Covid-19 episode was unleashed upon the world to allow “the elite” to execute a “controlled demolition of the global economy” so as to quash climate change (by reducing carbon emissions), and therefore ensure a brighter future for said elite, while cruelly throwing the rest of the world’s population overboard. Oh, I dunno…. Klaus Schwab and his minions of The Great Reset seem more like hapless control freaks than persons actually able to control anything, least of all the whole world. Dr. Fauci’s role looks like a species of generic egomania with a top hat of greed (considering his financial interests in vaccines). The reality is that the global economy, such as it’s a high-tech industrial economy, is shooting its own wad very nicely without a whole lot of assistance from alleged nefarious parties.

Green turns sour.

• Natural Resource Drain Created By “Net Zero Emission” Targets (ZH)

While the idea of implementing net zero emissions by certain deadlines has sounded great for the companies, countries and states that have set targets, the reality of making it happen is slightly more difficult. That’s what the U.K. is finding out after Natural History Museum Head of Earth Sciences Prof Richard Herrington penned a letter to the Committee on Climate Change on the vast amount of natural resources that will be necessary to make the conversion. The letter was delivered to Baroness Brown, who chairs the Adaption Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change. In addition to noting that the U.K. would need a 20% increase in UK-generated electricity, the release also notes that “to meet UK electric car targets for 2050 we would need to produce just under two times the current total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production.”

The letter reads: “The urgent need to cut CO2 emissions to secure the future of our planet is clear, but there are huge implications for our natural resources not only to produce green technologies like electric cars but keep them charged. “Over the next few decades, global supply of raw materials must drastically change to accommodate not just the UK’s transformation to a low carbon economy, but the whole world’s. Our role as scientists is to provide the evidence for how best to move towards a zero-carbon economy – society needs to understand that there is a raw material cost of going green and that both new research and investment is urgently needed for us to evaluate new ways to source these. This may include potentially considering sources much closer to where the metals are to be used.”

It then points out obvious challenges in meeting the needs of converting all cars and vans to electric vehicles, especially as it relates to cobalt: To replace all UK-based vehicles today with electric vehicles (not including the LGV and HGV fleets), assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation NMC 811 batteries, would take 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate (LCE), at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, in addition to 2,362,500 tonnes copper. This represents, just under two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production during 2018. Even ensuring the annual supply of electric vehicles only, from 2035 as pledged, will require the UK to annually import the equivalent of the entire annual cobalt needs of European industry.

Strange battle going on.

• Biden Aide Charges “Sabotage” Of Harris (Axios)

Top White House officials are mobilizing to defend Vice President Kamala Harris amid a gusher of leaks about dysfunction and infighting in her office. Driving the news: White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told Axios in a statement: “The President’s trust and confidence in her is obvious when you see them in the Oval Office together.” Biden senior adviser Cedric Richmond said in an interview late Thursday night: “It’s a whisper campaign designed to sabotage her.” Their responses came after Axios approached the White House with new reporting about growing tensions between West Wing officials and the Harris team, including chief of staff Tina Flournoy.

Some White House officials have been frustrated by a series of missteps from Harris and increasingly public bickering in her orbit, which spilled out in a Politico story on Wednesday. Flournoy’s old boss, former President Bill Clinton, came to her defense with a statement calling her “an extraordinary person. 2024 is the elephant in the room. While Biden aides overwhelmingly believe he’ll be the Democratic nominee, they also know he’d be 81 when seeking re-election. An operation sometimes visibly out of sync with Biden’s — and missteps during a recent trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, following a scrutinized interview with NBC’s Lester Holt — have reignited questions from Harris’ 2020 primary bid.

Harris would be the presumptive nominee if Biden didn’t run. Administration sources believe it would be nearly impossible to unseat the first Black woman vice president. Yet many Democrats, including some current senior administration officials, are concerned she could not defeat whomever the Republican Party puts up — even if it were Donald Trump. One Democratic operative tells Axios’ Alayna Treene that most Democrats aren’t saying, “‘Oh, no, our heir apparent is f***ing up, what are we gonna do?’ It’s more that people think, ‘Oh, she’s f***ing up, maybe she shouldn’t be the heir apparent.'” Some Democrats close to the White House are increasingly concerned about Harris’s handling of high-profile issues and political tone deafness, and question her ability to maintain the coalition that Biden rode to the White House, sources tell Axios’ Hans Nichols.

Relations between the West Wing and the Vice President’s office are tense. Several administration officials used “shitshow” when describing Harris’ office, and contrast her operation with disciplined, virtually leakproof Biden aides. Some Biden officials view the Harris operation as poorly-managed and staffed with people who don’t have long-term relationships with her. They feel she’s gotten bad advice from her press and communications shop and think it’s telling that she’s already lost two advance aides and a digital director.

“It is clear that Hunter Biden was selling access and influence. It appears that Joe Biden was aware of that effort. That is very serious.”

• New Emails Raise New Allegations of Influence Peddling By Hunter Biden (Turley)

The new emails include references to the use of Air Force II by Hunter Biden to pursue the deals — a similar pattern revealed with regard to the China dealings. The emails detail a number of visits to Mexico, including a February 2016 flight on Air Force II with his father. On the plane was his business partner Jeff Cooper, who ran Illinois-based SimmonsCooper. That is one of the largest asbestos litigation firms in the country and Hunter was given 3 percent of Cooper’s venture capital firm Eudora Global, according to emails. President Biden’s brother (who featured in past controversial deals) was also reportedly involved in some of these efforts. These dealings continued into 2018 as Hunter pushed for deals with Slim. One text message from July 24, 2018 reads “Spoke to my dad about ‘Slim ask” and Cooper responds “Oh that sounds SO F’ING GOOD.”

It obviously does not sound quite so good if you are a reporter who has been repeatedly assured by President Biden that he had no knowledge or involvement in any dealings with Hunter. That was previously refuted by various sources. Hunter himself contradicted his father’s repeated denial. Then there are the emails referring to the “Big Guy”, which witnesses say was Joe Biden. Then there is Tony Bobulinski who stated that he personally met with Joe Biden to discuss Hunter’s business dealings. Bobulinski is repeatedly praised by Hunter Biden in the emails and identified as the person in control of transactions for “the family.” He has directly contradicted Joe Biden’s denial of any knowledge or involvement in his son’s dubious dealings.

The new emails contain additional information directly contradicting President Biden. In addition to earlier pictures from golf trips and references to his involvement or knowledge, new material refers to a notable dinner arranged in Washington, D.C. Hunter arranged for then Vice President Biden to have dinner on April 16, 2015 with his Ukrainian, Russian and Kazakhstani business associates. They appropriately chose a private room at Café Milano, a Georgetown restaurant that brags that it is “Where the world’s most powerful people go.” After the dinner, Hunter received an email from Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, to thank him for introducing him to his father: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”

It is clear that Hunter Biden was selling access and influence. It appears that Joe Biden was aware of that effort. That is very serious. If these emails are false, this is a major story. If they are true, this is a major scandal. Presumably, however, this story will result in another run to the nearest ice cream shop for breathless coverage on the current frozen delights of the President.

Lots of similarities between Assange coverage and that of vaccines.

• Key Assange Witness Recants – With Zero Corporate Media Coverage (Fair)

A key witness in the Department of Justice’s case against Julian Assange has admitted that his entire testimony is false, a revelation that could be the death knell for US attempts to prosecute the Wikileaks founder. Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, often known as “Siggi the Hacker,” made the confession to Icelandic outlet Stundin (6/26/21) last weekend. The article details how Thordarson, a convicted felon, pedophile and diagnosed sociopath, used his position to steal money from Wikileaks, and received immunity from prosecution from the FBI in a quid pro quo. Such a blatant and juicy piece of important news should have made worldwide headlines. But, instead, as of Friday, July 2, there has been literally zero coverage of it in corporate media; not one word in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC News, Fox News or NPR.

A search online for either “Assange” or “Thordarson” will elicit zero relevant articles from establishment sources, either US or elsewhere in the Anglosphere, even in tech-focused platforms like the Verge, Wired or Gizmodo. The other major development in the case, according to the Canary (6/30/21), is Jeremy Corbyn delivering a letter from 20 MPs to the prison where Assange is held, demanding the right to visit him and treating him as a political prisoner. The news is not some sort of esoteric knowledge known only to those carefully watching Icelandic affairs. The story trended worldwide on Twitter on the weekend, with a number of prominent accounts or figures like Wikileaks itself, Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald tweeting about it.

Not only that, Thordarson’s confession was well covered by alternative news sites with a tiny fraction of the resources establishment media have (e.g., Consortium News, 6/27/21; World Socialist Web Site, 6/27/21; Canary, 6/30/21). The story led Democracy Now!’s Monday show (6/28/21), which featured an in-depth interview with Assange’s legal advisor, Jennifer Robinson. This distinction once again highlights the gaping chasm between corporate and alternative media, suggesting that certain subjects are simply no-go zones for the former. It is not that the corporate press are completely uninterested in Assange. A number of outlets have covered the news this week that he and his partner Stella Morris are planning to get married (e.g., SBS, 6/27/21; Daily Mail, 6/28/21; Evening Standard, 6/28/21; London Times, 6/29/21). Yet none of these articles mentioned the far more consequential news about Thordarson and how it undermines the entire prosecution of Assange.

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Debt Rattle May 17 2021

May 172021

May 17, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: airborne, diabetes, fear, Fed, obesity, Robinhood, T cells, terror, testing, vaccines 57 Responses »

Vincent van Gogh Landscape with Couple Walking and Crescent Moon 1890

• Second Stage Terror Wars (Edward Curtin)

• Fear Is the Mind-Killer (Alice)

• How To Cure Type 2 Diabetes – Without Medication (G.)

• Covid-19 Testing Turns To T Cells (Nature)

• Interview with Dr Bhakdi (Schultz)

• The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill (Wired)

• War of Words Over Inflation Stirs Questions for the Fed (Judy L. Shelton)

• Druckenmiller: “There’s Been No Greater Engine Of Inequality Than The Fed” (ZH)

• ‘$40 Billion’ Robinhood App Tries To Vault SEC Hurdles (NYP)

• Italian Port Workers Refuse To Load Arms Shipment Destined For Israel (NA)

“According to the scientific data…

Vaccinating 300,000 people under 18yo is statistically likely to prevent one COVID death and likely to cause 3 vaccine-reaction deaths.”

Testing? That’s so yesterday.

Must read.

• Second Stage Terror Wars (Edward Curtin)

It is well known that the endless US war on terror was overtly launched following the mass murders of September 11, 2001 and the linked anthrax attacks. The invasion of Afghanistan and the Patriot Act were immediately justified by those insider murders, and subsequently the wars against Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. So too the terrorizing of the American people with constant fear-mongering about imminent Islamic terrorist attacks from abroad that never came. It is less well known that the executive director of the U.S. cover story – the fictional 9/11 Commission Report – was Philip Zelikow, who controlled and shaped the report from start to finish.

It is even less well known that Zelikow, a professor at the University of Virginia, was closely associated with Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Dickey Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Brent Scowcroft, et al. and had served in various key intelligence positions in both the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations. In 2011 President Obama named him to his President’s Intelligence Advisory Board as befits bi-partisan elite rule and coverup compensation across political parties. Perhaps it’s unknown or just forgotten that The Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission repeatedly called for Zelikow’s removal, claiming that his appointment made a farce of the claim that the Commission was independent. Zelikow said that for the Commission to consider alternative theories to the government’s claims about Osama bin Laden was akin to whacking moles.

This is the man, who at the request of his colleague Condoleezza Rice, became the primary author of (NSS 2002) The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, that declared that the U.S. would no longer abide by international law but was adopting a policy of preemptive war, as declared by George W. Bush at West Point in June 2002. This was used as justification for the attack on Iraq in 2003 and was a rejection of the charter of the United Nations. So, based on Zelikow’s work creating a magic mountain of deception while disregarding so-called molehills, we have had twenty years of American terror wars around the world in which U.S. forces have murdered millions of innocent people. Wars that will be continuing for years to come despite rhetoric to the contrary. The rhetoric is simply propaganda to cover up the increasingly technological and space-based nature of these wars and the use of mercenaries and special forces.

Simultaneously, in a quasi-volte-face, the Biden administration has directed its resources inward toward domestic “terrorists”: that is, anyone who disagrees with its policies. This is especially aimed at those who question the COVID-19 story. Now Zelikow has been named to head a COVID Commission Planning Group based at the University of Virginia that is said to prepare the way for a National COVID Commission. The group is funded by the Schmidt Futures, the Skoll Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and Stand Together, with more expected to join in.

“This ideological mass psychosis is religion—not science.”

• Fear Is the Mind-Killer (Alice)

Can you imagine what master propagandist Edward Bernays would have done with access to today’s mainstream media conglomerate combined with the global surveillance infrastructure of Big Tech? And you really think that’s not happening now—with another century of psychological, neurological, and technological research under their belts? The present ability to curate reality and coerce obedience is unprecedented, far beyond what Orwell envisioned in 1984, Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, Huxley in Brave New World, and Burgess in A Clockwork Orange. A textbook example of Problem Reaction Solution, the current tsunami of worldwide hysteria is the latest and potentially most threatening example of mass control in history.

The recipe is simple. Take a naturally occurring phenomenon, say a seasonal virus, and exaggerate its threat far beyond every imagining—despite exhaustive evidence to the contrary. Suppress, silence, ostracize, and demonize every individual who dares present facts that expose the false mono-narrative. Whip up a witches’ brew of anger, envy, and, most importantly, fear, escalating emotions to a boil so as to short-circuit our faculties of reason and logic. Isolate us from one another, supplant real-world interactions with virtual feuds, label nonconformists as a threat to the group, and pump the public with a disinformation campaign designed to confuse and atomize. In essence, foster a cultlike mentality that shuts down thought to guarantee assent.

Cultivate and wield our cognitive biases—especially ingroup bias, conformity bias, and authority bias—against us in a comprehensive divide-and-conquer policy that keeps us too busy squabbling amongst each other to recognize and unite against those corralling us into a Matrix-like collective delusion that enables the powerful to extract our resources for their own gain. This ideological mass psychosis is religion—not science. If this were about science, the Media–Pharmaceutical–Big-Tech complex would not be memory-holing every dissenting voice, vilifying every thought criminal, and censoring every legitimate inquiry in quest of the truth.

With obesity such a major factor in Covid deaths, two birds with one stone.

• How To Cure Type 2 Diabetes – Without Medication (G.)

[..] Modest words for a man whose “useful contribution to society” has given hope to the 3.9m people diagnosed with the condition in the UK and who has shown doctors a new way to fight a disease which causes 185 amputations and 700 premature deaths every week. Now, he wants to go one step further and share everything he has learned directly with the public, in a new book, Your Simple Guide to Reversing Type 2 Diabetes. It’s a 153-page paperback that takes you through the latest research on how the disease develops and explains why rapid weight loss can be so effective at reversing the condition in the early stages – which usually means during the first six years of a diagnosis.

“If people really do want to make it happen, then in the first few years of diagnosis, it’s almost universal that their health can be returned to normal,” says Taylor, who is professor of medicine and metabolism at Newcastle University. In one study, he found that nine out of 10 people with “early” type 2 diabetes were cured after losing more than 2 1/2 st (15kg). The book also explains who is at greatest risk and why some people who have a “normal” Body Mass Index (BMI) develop the disease, when many people who are more overweight – or even obese – do not. Taylor’s “Newcastle” weight loss programme is a clinically proven method of reversing early type 2 diabetes and his approach is currently being rolled out to people with the condition by the NHS. It involves cutting your calorie intake to 700-800 calories a day.

In the book, he explains how the people in his programme managed to do this – typically by consuming only slimming meal shakes and non-starchy vegetables, plus one cup of tea or coffee each day with skimmed milk – lost a life-changing amount of weight in just eight weeks. And how you can do the same, safely, at home. [..] One of Taylor’s most important new discoveries is that everyone has their own fat threshold: an individual level of tolerance for levels of fat in the body. “It’s a personal thing. It’s nothing to do with the sort of information that’s often provided about obesity, which is about average BMI and what the population is doing. The bottom line is, a person will develop type 2 diabetes when they’ve become too heavy for their own body. It doesn’t matter if their BMI is within the ‘normal’ range. They’ve crossed their personal threshold and become unhealthy.”

He is currently in the middle of research to find out whether there’s any way of discovering, via a blood test, when people are heading into this dangerous territory and their fat cells are putting out what he describes as “distress signals”. What we do know already is that our bodies start to have trouble controlling blood sugar when fat can no longer be stored safely under the skin and it spills over into the liver and then the pancreas. If these organs get clogged with fat, they stop functioning properly and that is when you develop type 2 diabetes.

Does this address only vaccine-related T cells?

• Covid-19 Testing Turns To T Cells (Nature)

A diagnostic test based on sequencing long-lived SARS-CoV-2–specific memory T cells provides a complement to antibody testing for determining previous exposure to SARS-CoV-2. Following last month’s US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Emergency Use Authorization for Adaptive Biotechnologies’ T-Detect COVID-19 test, routine T-cell testing has entered a new era. The Adaptive test involves laboratory-based next-generation sequencing to identify T cells that recognize SARS-CoV-2 antigens. The test is not intended for the diagnosis of active infection but is a complement to antibody tests used to confirm recent or previous infections. The lab-based procedure, which has a seven- to ten-day turnaround time, is now authorized for use on samples taken from individuals at least 15 days after the onset of symptoms.

Increasing interest is focused on the role of T-cell immunity in fighting SARS-CoV-2 infection and in providing resistance to re-infection. A new analysis of T cells from people who recovered from COVID-19 has confirmed that they remain active against three of the new SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern: B1.1.7, B.351 and B.1.1.248. The study, conducted by a team from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Singapore-based biotech company ImmunoScape, will further boost confidence that the efficacy of vaccines developed against the original pandemic strain will not be overly compromised as these new variants—and others—spread more widely.

Until now, researchers have mostly relied on the use of lateral flow assay or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) tests for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies to determine whether a person has been exposed to the virus. Understanding the neutralizing antibody response has been considered central to establishing protection against the virus. “It’s easy to test,” says Andrew Redd of NIAID, who led the recent study. Although critical, antibodies are part of a larger and incompletely understood set of humoral and cellular immune responses, which has received little attention. These include additional antibody functions, such as antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity, complement activation and phagocyte recruitment. Unravelling their contribution to SARS-CoV-2 immunity is an ongoing challenge. “There are assays to do that, it’s just complicated to do,” says Redd.

The same can be said for assaying T-cell-mediated immunity. The NIAID study relied on a complex laboratory test to identify T-cell epitopes specific to SARS-CoV-2, employing a combination of mass cytometry and combinatorial staining of peptide–major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-bound tetramers. The complexity of the assay and data generated necessarily confine the assay to use in specialist laboratories. “The data that it generates are massive. The analysis side of it is a big lift,” Redd says.

You tell me what you think of the man.

• Interview with Dr Bhakdi (Schultz)

According to the UK Government’s figures, more than 1,100 people have died due to an adverse effect caused by one of the vaccines currently being rolled out via Emergency Use Authorisation. But Dr Bhakdi reveals that worse is yet to come, with manufacturers, he says, creating a false sense of security. “It’s so easy to manipulate the nano-particles,” he said. “All you need to do is take out one component, one lipid, and the vaccine will not be taken up by the cells any more. And then you have no side-effects. And you will have a vaccine that is well-tolerated. “That is what’s happening now with the mRNA vaccines, so the AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Sputnik will be removed from the market. So there will be a monopoly of the mRNA vaccines, which are being backed by Bill Gates.

“This plan was conceived years ago. Once this vaccine gets legally, fully approved, not approved for emergency use, but fully approved, no more risk analysis needs to be done. “Pfizer are going to submit an application for this in June. And the authorities have already released underground information that the approval will probably be given in October. When this happens, it means that every subsequent vaccine is automatically approved. They have to sign no more application, there will be no more trials, no more risk-benefit analysis. No more notification of side effects. “It’s such a nightmare. They can say, ‘well the care homes are overcrowded. India and South Africa…

“You know that with each subsequent vaccine the chances rise that you are going to kill people. That’s why they are starting to vaccinate children – they are going to show that the vaccine is tolerated by children – then they are going to use this wherever they want to. “Once that has come through, these guys have a free hand to do whatever they want, wherever they want. And no one can do anything about it. It’s so horrible. “How can people be so evil? How can people be so ignorant? It’s that combination of evil and ignorance that is making the world a living hell. And the only people who can do anything about it is us because we have to get the world around us to stand up and realise that they are being led to a living hell.

“It’s a devilish plan, satanic. But the very, very small chance we have is that they made a mistake, which was they thought that this vaccination programme would go through smoothly, as they were not aware that the adverse effects would be so severe and so widespread. “This is where they may trip if we can force them to turn back on the vaccination programme. Now there have been legal charges brought against the EU, for nullification against all the vaccines.”

“Trapped in their group-specific jargon, the two camps on Zoom literally couldn’t understand one another.”

• The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill (Wired)

Early one morning, Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces began to appear. She also saw a few people she didn’t know, including Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for Covid-19, and other expert advisers to the WHO. It was just past 1 pm Geneva time on April 3, 2020, but in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Marr lives with her husband and two children, dawn was just beginning to break.

Marr is an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech and one of the few in the world who also studies infectious diseases. To her, the new coronavirus looked as if it could hang in the air, infecting anyone who breathed in enough of it. For people indoors, that posed a considerable risk. But the WHO didn’t seem to have caught on. Just days before, the organization had tweeted “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne.” That’s why Marr was skipping her usual morning workout to join 35 other aerosol scientists. They were trying to warn the WHO it was making a big mistake.

Over Zoom, they laid out the case. They ticked through a growing list of superspreading events in restaurants, call centers, cruise ships, and a choir rehearsal, instances where people got sick even when they were across the room from a contagious person. The incidents contradicted the WHO’s main safety guidelines of keeping 3 to 6 feet of distance between people and frequent handwashing. If SARS-CoV-2 traveled only in large droplets that immediately fell to the ground, as the WHO was saying, then wouldn’t the distancing and the handwashing have prevented such outbreaks? Infectious air was the more likely culprit, they argued. But the WHO’s experts appeared to be unmoved. If they were going to call Covid-19 airborne, they wanted more direct evidence—proof, which could take months to gather, that the virus was abundant in the air. Meanwhile, thousands of people were falling ill every day.

On the video call, tensions rose. At one point, Lidia Morawska, a revered atmospheric physicist who had arranged the meeting, tried to explain how far infectious particles of different sizes could potentially travel. One of the WHO experts abruptly cut her off, telling her she was wrong, Marr recalls. His rudeness shocked her. “You just don’t argue with Lidia about physics,” she says.

Morawska had spent more than two decades advising a different branch of the WHO on the impacts of air pollution. When it came to flecks of soot and ash belched out by smokestacks and tailpipes, the organization readily accepted the physics she was describing—that particles of many sizes can hang aloft, travel far, and be inhaled. Now, though, the WHO’s advisers seemed to be saying those same laws didn’t apply to virus-laced respiratory particles. To them, the word airborne only applied to particles smaller than 5 microns. Trapped in their group-specific jargon, the two camps on Zoom literally couldn’t understand one another.

Trump nominated her to the Fed. Her nomination stalled on November 17, 2020, with a 47–50 vote in the Senate.

• War of Words Over Inflation Stirs Questions for the Fed (Judy L. Shelton)

Does it make sense, for a nation founded on the notion of individual liberty, equality under the law, and personal property rights, to allow a government agency to manipulate the value of the currency used by its citizens? Would it be better to have a stable monetary foundation to facilitate free-market outcomes, rather than empower the Federal Reserve to distort interest rates and dilute dollars in the service of government policy? It’s not as if we haven’t been here before. The question of whether rules-based monetary stability historically delivers better economic results in terms of increasing middle-class incomes than relying on the discretionary judgment of central bankers has been wholly analyzed and resolved.

In the 2015 Economic Report of the President issued under the Obama administration, a special section describes the period from 1948 to 1973 as the “Age of Shared Growth”—characterized by accelerating labor productivity, falling income inequality, and increased workforce participation. The report makes little mention of the fact that this period of remarkable growth, which increased living standards across all income levels, coincided with the existence of the Bretton Woods international monetary system under which the U.S. dollar was convertible into gold at a fixed price. The report does posit that if post-1973 productivity growth had continued at its pace from those previous 25 years, “incomes would have been 58% higher in 2013” and “the median household would have had an additional $30,000 in income.”

All of which should give pause to those who belittle the uneasiness felt by conservatives who fear that compromising monetary integrity not only violates founding principles but also economic rationality. And it’s not just conservatives per se, but rather an increasingly larger segment of the population expressing concerns about the wisdom of government officials and the correctness of government policies.

Well, that’s what it’s for.

• Druckenmiller: “There’s Been No Greater Engine Of Inequality Than The Fed” (ZH)

After his status-quo-shattering appearance on CNBC this week, during which he warned that “Fed policy is endangering the dollar’s reserve status,” billionaire fund manager Stan Druckenmiller spoke to The USC Marshall Center for Investment Studies’ Student Investment Fund Annual Meeting via Zoom, and shocked the on-lookers with his frank assessment of our current perceptions and realities. After The Bank of Canada sheepishly admitted this week that “some of the monetary policy tools it is using to address the COVID-19 pandemic, such as quantitative easing (QE), could widen wealth inequality,” Druckenmiller drops the proverbial hammer on all the hedged-speak (“could”), and blasts that

“I don’t think there has been a greater engine of inequality than the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States… so hearing the Chairman [Powell] talking about visiting homeless shelters is very rich indeed…” The outspoken fund manager went on to note that “everyone wealthy that I know is making fortunes” because “this guy [Powell] is printing money like there’s no tomorrow” adding that the kids is Harlem are not benefitting from money-printing but wealthy people are, exclaiming that “…for the life of me I can’t understand why the left is so excited about money-printing when all the data shows that the people who benefit from money-printing are rich people.”

“The odds-on bet is that we’re going to have inflation,” he continues: “and inflation is going to hurt poor people, again, a lot more than rich people.” How does this all end? “The asset bubble which [Powell] is blowing up into unbelievable proportions busts before the inflation ever really manifests itself, that’s what happened in the housing bubble in 08/09. We never really got to the inflation because the asset bubble burst… not dis-similar to what happened in 1929.” And Druck reminds us all, “there is no one, no group, that will be hurt more by a bust than the poor… they will be first in line to get screwed.”

Here's the clip. This is epic. pic.twitter.com/TRg49e47wG

— Rudy Havenstein, Gain-Of-Function Fintwit. (@RudyHavenstein) May 16, 2021

Gasparino.

• ‘$40 Billion’ Robinhood App Tries To Vault SEC Hurdles (NYP)

It’s a lot of money for a stock-trading app that’s supposedly free. Robinhood is slated to launch an initial public offering before summer’s end that could value the Silicon Valley-based company at $40 billion or more, people close to the underwriting group say. That would make it among the biggest deals of the year – and certainly the most anticipated as the day-trading app became a cultural phenom during the pandemic. A blowout IPO would be remarkable for a company created only in 2013 and which has survived its share of controversies. Last summer, I warned that Robinhood was luring in amateurs stuck at home during the COVID lockdowns who took on day trading as a sport. They would eventually lose their shirts trading stocks on its free and easy-to-use platform, and regulators would pounce.

The party, I predicted, wouldn’t end well and it almost didn’t. Amateur traders are the lifeblood of Robinhood and its user growth, and they lost lots of money on the wrong side of bets. Then came January’s meme – stock controversy, where clearing problems stymied trading of some high-volume stocks on the app, angering customers. The company s business model came under scrutiny. Congress held hearings about the episode following the wild swings in various stocks that traded over the platform, and the IPO that was planned for March was pushed off indefinitely. But for all the noise, the clients just kept coming – and the IPO is back on. The reason is simple, company execs tell me: Robinhood is printing money. Despite the hiccups, Robinhood added some 6 million additional new customers for its crypto platform alone in the first two months of the year.

Now the app’s explosive user growth has investors clamoring for a piece of the action, people close to the deal say. And mind you, underwriters and company officials are quietly calculating their $40 billion valuation for a product that founder Vlad Tenev essentially conjured up in his dorm room.

While the US still blocks a UN ceasefire resolution.

• Italian Port Workers Refuse To Load Arms Shipment Destined For Israel (NA)

A syndicate of port workers in the Italian city of Livorno in Tuscany on Friday protested a weapons and explosives shipment after discovering it was destined for the Israeli port of Ashdod. “The port of Livorno will not be an accomplice in the massacre of the Palestinian people,” said L’Unione Sindacale di Base (USB). The USB added that the ship contained “weapons and explosives that will serve to kill the Palestinian population, already hit by a severe attack this very night, which caused hundreds of civilian victims, including many children”. A report by The Weapon Watch, a Genoa-based NGO that monitors arms shipments in European and Meditteranean ports, informed the syndicate of the destination of the ship and its contents. The NGO urged the Italian government to consider whether it was “suspending some or all Italian military exports to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict areas.”

“The Union on Saturday will also be in the square in Livorno in solidarity with the Palestinian population and to ask for an immediate stop to the bombings on Gaza and a stop to the ‘expropriations’ Palestinian homes that have lived under military occupation for years,” the USB said in a statement. Although the shipment eventually embarked its journey to Naples, as most other port workers continued to load the ship, other Italian workers’ groups have called for increased coordination between port workers to prevent shipment of weapons that could be used to bomb Gaza. Protests took place in various Italian cities this week, following Israeli forces’ attacks against Palestinians in Jerusalem and its escalation on the blockaded Palestinian Gaza Strip.

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