Berthe Morisot Julie and her boat1884
For context, in the UK:
• same time last year, 40,000 daily cases of Covid
• this year, 90,000
• same time last year, 21,000 hospitalised
• this year, 8,000
Additionally, hospital stays will likely be much shorter this year.
First US death
Public officials and media reported that a man in Texas became the first American to die from the Omicron variant. I checked with the Harris County Public Health Department. Turns out that's not true.
Here's audio of my phone call. pic.twitter.com/fIDZNPzYuj
— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) December 22, 2021
“..if you believe in a God,” the rise of the omicron variant “looks an awful lot like a Christmas present.”
• Omicron Could Be ‘A Christmas Present’ – Malone (WND)
The new omicron variant that is causing renewed panic among government officials and media could turn out to be “a Christmas present,” says the inventor of the mRNA technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. Robert W. Malone, in a video interview Monday with WND, explained that while the original SARS-CoV-2 virus settled in the lungs, a new University of Hong Kong study that is still under peer review is among studies indicating omicron is settling in the upper respiratory tract. That makes it more transmissible but less virulent. Consequently, the new variant, which was first detected in South Africa on Nov. 25, could act similarly to a live attenuated virus vaccine, producing mild symptoms and natural immunity to COVID-19, Malone said.
He urged caution, noting a pre-print U.K. study by Imperial College of London reporting it is finding no difference in omicron hospitalizations compared to delta. However, the U.K. researchers acknowledged in their initial report that hospitalization data “remains very limited at this time.” In fact, South African officials reported last week that only 1.7% of identified COVID-19 cases were admitted to hospitals in the second week of infections in the fourth wave. That’s compared with 19% in the same week of the third delta-driven wave, South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla said at a press conference. [..] Malone also discussed in the WND interview a new study from Ontario, Canada, suggesting vaccination could predispose someone to a higher risk of infection by omicron.
“If so, that would be the clear indication of the vaccine-enhanced infection and disease risk that not just I had been concerned about, but that the FDA was concerned about,” he said. His main caution with the Ontario data is that there is no indication of how many cases were omicron and how many were delta.[..] Malone also commented on the new release of emails showing that outgoing National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins asked White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci to carry out a “quick and devastating published takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration in the fall of 2020. [..] “We have now clear, clear evidence of collusion by senior government officials to suppress scientific discussion and debate about one of the most crucial issues that we’ve addressed over the last two years, which is whether or not lockdowns make sense,” Malone said.
“And the data are overwhelming. They don’t.” And, he continued, “the worst part is the rest of the world looks to the U.S. for leadership.” “There’s a good chance that Australia wouldn’t be in this hellhole that they are now in if Francis Collins hadn’t substituted his opinions for actually looking at the data,” Malone said. On Friday, Malone told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that “if you believe in a God,” the rise of the omicron variant “looks an awful lot like a Christmas present.” He said that to “the experienced vaccinologist,” it looks “like a live attenuated virus vaccine that you might design for purpose.” “It’s going to elicit a strong mucosal immune response. This is about as good as we could possibly want right now, in terms of outcomes,” he said.
Yet, Ingraham noted, the media and political establishment are “freaking out,” calling for shutting things down again. “I think they’re disappointed with the good news,” Malone said.
Admitting your product is worthless, in an attempt to make even more money. And people will fall for it.
• BioNTech CEO Says ‘Even Triple-Vaccinated’ Transmit COVID (SAC)
While President Joe Biden and his coronavirus officials are bullying Americans into getting vaccinated or they will face a “deadly winter” for themselves and their families, “one of the scientists behind Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 show said Monday that he believes vaccines alone will not be enough to fight the Omicron variant.” BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told French newspaper Le Monde “even triple-vaccinated people can transmit the disease, and they will have to be tested, especially around vulnerable people.” “With the Omicron variant becoming dominant, protective measures will remain essential, especially this winter” he added, who says they are working on yet another version of the vaccine specifically tailored for the Omicron variant that could possibly be available by March.
So according to an actual scientist in an actual science-based company, even being “triple-vaccinated” will not stop people from the winter of death that Biden claims will happen to only those who are not vaccinated. Not only will vaccines and boosters not guarantee you can hug grandma, but there will be yet another vaccine created to push down our throats in the coming months. Sahin says unfortunately those who received the original Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will lose its efficacy over time. “It’s obvious we are far from the 95 percent effectiveness that we had against the initial virus. But after the third injection our vaccine seems to provide 70 percent or 75 percent protection against any form of the disease, which is still a good result for a vaccine in general — and I think we will be well beyond that for severe forms,” said Sahin.
When the Wall Street Journal Editorial board turns on Fauci, maybe there’s still hope.
• How Fauci and Collins Shut Down Covid Debate (WSJ Ed.)
In public, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins urge Americans to “follow the science.” In private, the two sainted public-health officials schemed to quash dissenting views from top scientists. That’s the troubling but fair conclusion from emails obtained recently via the Freedom of Information Act by the American Institute for Economic Research. The tale unfolded in October 2020 after the launch of the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement by Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff, Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya against blanket pandemic lockdowns. They favored a policy of what they called “focused protection” of high-risk populations such as the elderly or those with medical conditions. Thousands of scientists signed the declaration—if they were able to learn about it.
That didn’t please the lockdown consensus enforced by public-health officials and the press. Dr. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health until Sunday, sent an email on Oct. 8, 2020, to Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists . . . seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises,” Dr. Collins wrote. “Is it underway?” These researchers weren’t fringe and neither was their opposition to quarantining society. But in the panic over the virus, these two voices of science used their authority to stigmatize dissenters and crush debate.
A week after his email, Dr. Collins spoke to the Washington Post about the Great Barrington Declaration. “This is a fringe component of epidemiology,” he said. “This is not mainstream science. It’s dangerous.” His message spread and the alternative strategy was dismissed in most precincts. Dr. Fauci replied to Dr. Collins that the takedown was underway. An article in Wired, a tech-news site, denied there was any scientific divide and argued lockdowns were a straw man—they weren’t coming back. If only it were true. The next month cases rose and restrictions returned. Dr. Fauci also emailed an article from the Nation, a left-wing magazine, and his staff sent him several more. The emails suggest a feedback loop: The media cited Dr. Fauci as an unquestionable authority, and Dr. Fauci got his talking points from the media. Facebook censored mentions of the Great Barrington Declaration. This is how groupthink works.
On CBS last month, Dr. Fauci said Republicans who criticize him are “really criticizing science, because I represent science. That’s dangerous.” He isn’t “science.” And it’s also dangerous for scientific officials to mobilize to quash dissent, without which it’s easy to make tragic mistakes. A scientific debate over pandemic policy was and still is in the public interest, especially during a once-in-a-century plague. Focused protection of nursing homes and other high-risk populations remains the policy road not taken during the pandemic. Perhaps this strategy wouldn’t have prevailed if a debate had been allowed. But it isn’t enough to repeat, as Dr. Collins did on Fox News Sunday, that advocates are “fringe epidemiologists who really did not have the credentials,” and that “hundreds of thousands of people would have died if we had followed that strategy.”
“These are very disturbed people who have allowed a taste of power and influence to fuel an underlying narcissism.”
• Fauci Says Unvaxxed Relatives Not Worthy of Family Christmas Gatherings (CTH)
Dr. Anthony Fauci is a thin-skinned, unstable ideologue with visions of grandiosity. He has wreaked havoc on our nation and permeated a major crisis on the global stage with his poor advice on COVID-19. He personifies a mentally and emotionally unstable person within his worldview. Fauci is representative of a group of psychologically unstable people who need a career operating in government systems and institutions, because they could never be successful in the private sector. They can only succeed in academia and institutions without merit-based structures.
These are very disturbed people who have allowed a taste of power and influence to fuel an underlying narcissism. Their disorder exhibits as vengeful bitterness, the result of adolescent isolation and no emotional balance. History will not look well upon Anthony Fauci any more than history reflects well upon Josef Mengele. In this short Q&A snippet, Anthony Fauci reveals his bitter worldview by saying unvaccinated people should be told to stay away from family events this Christmas. Notice the reference point of the response is that people should appreciate being in his presence.
“..they control 61 per cent of the biomedical research on earth, so they control pretty much what gets funded.”
• An Interview With Fauci’s Nemesis (Beck)
SB: Have you received any legal challenges from Anthony Fauci or Bill Gates? RFK:There is nothing in that book that is untruthful. Secondly, I would welcome a lawsuit from Bill Gates and Tony Fauci, and they know that that would be a giant strategic mistake. Even if I did put something in that book that was defamatory, I don’t think they would challenge it. They’ve got so much to lose from the truth. Their only viable strategy is silence.
SB: What kind of reaction have you had from MSM? RFK: There’s no reviews in the papers [despite the book’s No 1 best-seller status]. I am now being targeted with a barrage of ad hominem articles about me, but they don’t even mention the book, which is weird. They do not want to talk about this book because it’s full of truth. The truth is their deadliest enemy.
SB: Have you ever met either Fauci or Gates? RFK:: I’ve met Tony Fauci. Our paths have crossed for many years. I’ve been working on vaccine issues since 2005 so I’ve seen him in action on many occasions. In 2016, President Trump asked me to run a vaccine safety commission. To do that I had a series of meetings with the regulatory leadership including Fauci and Gates. One of my challenges to them was to say: ‘You have never done a single double-blind placebo-controlled trial for any of the 72 recommended vaccines being given to children.’ Publicly, Fauci was saying I had not been telling the truth about this. I said to him: ‘Show me one trial for any of those 72 jabs.’ He made a show of looking through the files he’d brought with him. He said: ‘We don’t have them here; we’ll send them to you.’ He never did send them to me and a year later I sued them. We filed a suit asking them to show us any of those studies they had and after a year of litigation they came back and said we don’t have any. Ironically, Fauci is now saying that he can’t use ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid without back-up from a double-blind placebo-controlled trials.
SB: The impression I get of Fauci is that he knows what to say in public but he seems like he has a dark side to him. The only reason for providing toxic drugs to people, like remdesivir, that has been so harmful to people with Covid, is because you know many who receive it will die. Does he know that? RFK: Of course he does. He had remdesivir in a study in Africa to see if it worked against Ebola. In 2019, the Data and Safety Monitoring Review Board (DSMB) monitored his work. Two months later, the board was saying it’s not safe, it’s killing people. It’s produced by the pharmaceutical company Gilead which Bill Gates has a huge stake in. Coronavirus does not kill 50 per cent of people who get it whereas trials show that over 50 per cent of people treated with remdesivir died.
SB: In your book you talk about two types of scientists, those who allow Fauci to dictate their careers and those who don’t want to be compromised, but he seems to be very effective at crushing dissent. RFK: Between him, Gates and Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust [part of the Trust’s £29.1billion annual budget comes from Gates], they control 61 per cent of the biomedical research on earth, so they control pretty much what gets funded. Also, that funding power gives them the power to kill studies they do not want and to ruin scientists who are trying to do those studies and to bankrupt universities. I show how that works in the book. If you had a young scientist at let’s say UCLA Medical School, [University of California, Los Angeles] who says why don’t we study whether the vaccines are causing injury by doing a cluster analysis of medical records?
That’s an easy study to do. His dean will get a call from one of Tony Fauci’s flunkeys at the NIH [National Institutes of Health run by Fauci] saying you’d better stop that guy from doing the study, Tony doesn’t want it done. UCLA, like all the medical schools in this country, is getting hundreds of millions of dollars from Fauci and the NIH and are completely dependent on the royalties from pharmaceutical products that Fauci develops in his lab, farms out to the universities for phase 1 and phase 2 trials, then brings in a pharmaceutical company to produce the drug who then shares the patent with the university. Everybody is on the hook; everybody is making money and all of them have a huge incentive not to talk.
Important to remember: “Every single attempt at vaccination against a coronavirus in the past in both man and beast has failed to produce durable immunity.”
• Here’s A Reality Check (Denninger)
Pfizer has disclosed in their own data that for young people the shots are as dangerous, as measured in hospitalization, for ***** as they are for caused myocarditis. Since infection is never certain but inoculation, once you take it, is, there was never an argument for authorizing these jabs in healthy young people simply on the math. We did it anyway and we’re still advocating it. That is just one condition but let’s be clear: If you jab your kid you’re putting them at equal or greater risk of being hospitalized from one side effect of the ******* alone as from *****-19 itself. If you do that as a parent you’re a monster. If you do it as a young adult on your own absent some individualized risk you’re stupid.
Anyone who believes that an agent injected into the muscle of the arm that can and does sometimes cause inflammation of the heart will not also cause inflammation of other tissues and, through doing so, also cause damage to other tissues has rocks in their head. The scope of that additional damage is completely unknown because we’re not performing any surveillance nor did we originally. We have never, for example, taken a group of 100 people, pulled full blood work including markers for inflammation, cardiac damage and others, then vaccinated them and repeated said tests on a 2, 4, 8 and 16 week interval to determine if we got negative metabolic changes and if we did, whether they were transient or durable. Nobody knows because we never did the work.
But it is entirely reasonable to expect that additional risk of stroke, heart attack, pulmonary embolism and more, all of which are life-altering, produce permanent disability and can be fatal, would be made materially more-likely by an agent that causes myocarditis. Indeed that would be a reasonable medical presumption; inflammation in the body is a known contributing factor to strokes and VTE which encompasses pulmonary embolisms. Given the billions that these companies have made you’d think we would have required such in-detail tracing, collection of information and publication of the results. We did not then and still haven’t. Omicron has now thrown mud in everyone’s eye by doing exactly what every coronavirus has done through time — mutationally evaded the neutralization potential of vaccination.
Every single attempt at vaccination against a coronavirus in the past in both man and beast has failed to produce durable immunity. Several attempts have resulted in wildly-enhanced disease. We’re seeing the latter now with attack rates in vaccinated people exceeding that for unvaccinated with Omicron. The only good news is that it may be true that Omicron is less-virulent; there is some early evidence that it is much less replication-competent in the lungs. That’s a good thing because upper respiratory infection is not serious; it is the lung infection that gets you. In other words it may be that Omicron is a nasty cold. That it is more-able to infect vaccinated people than not is troubling but if its less-virulent it may not matter — indeed it may be a blessing. We don’t yet know and won’t for a few months, and that assumes we get honest data — which we may not.
The moment such people say this, you better prepare for number six. Israel just officially announced number 4. Your country will follow soon.
• Prepare For Fourth Covid Jab, Tony Blair Institute Says (RT)
The research institute founded by former UK prime minister Tony Blair has called on the government to create a command-and-control team that could help it remain “ahead of the curve” and quickly roll out more vaccines. In a paper published on Tuesday, the Tony Blair Institute said the British government should seek to develop infrastructure that would allow it to mobilize new vaccination campaigns within 48 hours. With the prospect of yet more Covid variants emerging, it highlighted that “a fourth dose of the vaccine may soon be needed.” The institute contended that the ability to respond to future Covid strain outbreaks would depend on whether administrations could implement “a better approach to ‘command and control’ through a strong and coherent public-health emergency operations center.”
The non-profit organization said the emergence of Omicron highlighted the fact that governments are often forced to react, rather than working to “stay ahead of the curve.” “To achieve this, we need to take decisions fast, take them in a coordinated manner, and execute effectively and at speed. Be prepared at all times,” the paper reads. Noting examples from other nations, the institute said the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation should be doing more, including “rapidly” approving the use of Covid-19 vaccines in children aged five to 11 in an effort to reduce transmission.
As member countries ponder a 3 month gap between jabs/boosters, the EU goes for 9?!
Interesting that the “primary vaccination schedule” is still just 2 jabs.
• EU Sets Binding 9 Month Validity Of Covid-19 Travel Pass (R.)
The European Commission on Tuesday adopted rules that will make the European Union Covid-19 certificate valid for travel nine months after the completion of the primary vaccination schedule. The proposal comes as several EU states introduce additional requirements on travellers in a bid to reduce the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant. EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders told Reuters the EU Commission was against additional requirements, and was assessing the measures. The new rules will be binding on the 27 EU states from Feb. 1. The rule can be blocked by a qualified majority of EU governments or a simple majority of European Parliament members, but officials have said there is sufficient support for it. The rule replaces a non-binding recommendation the EU Commission put forward in November.
Once the rule is effective, EU states will be obliged to let fully vaccinated travellers with a valid pass access their territory. However, as an exception justified by a deteriorating situation, they could still impose further requirements, such as negative tests or quarantines, as long as they are proportionate. Seven EU states are currently requiring fully vaccinated travellers from other EU countries to also show a negative Covid-19 test upon arrival, measures some see as damaging the credibility of the EU pass. The states are Italy, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Latvia, Cyprus and Austria. “We prefer to use for the free movement in Europe only the certificate without additional measures,” Reynders said. He noted that the additional requirements could be justified by concerns caused by the spread of the Omicron variant, but governments had to prove they were proportionate and necessary.
[..] A primary vaccination schedule for Covid-19 is currently composed in the EU of two shots of vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech , AstraZeneca and Moderna, or a single jab of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“The vaccine refusenik hunters will receive a wage of 2774 euros, which will be paid 14 times a year, making an annual income of 38,863 euros.”
• Austria Hiring People to “Hunt Down Vaccine Refusers” (SN)
The Austrian government is hiring people to “hunt down vaccine refusers,” according to a report published by Blick. Yes, really. The burden for enforcing the fines unjabbed Austrians will have to pay as part of their punishment will fall to their employers, necessitating a new army of ‘inspectors’ to ensure that process is running smoothly. The city of Linz, which is home to 200,000 inhabitants, has a relatively low vaccination rate of 63 per cent. In response, “Linz now wants to hire people who are supposed to hunt down vaccine refusers,” reports Swiss news outlet Blick. The role of the inspectors will be to check on “whether those who do not get vaccinated really pay for it.” The vaccine refusenik hunters will receive a wage of 2774 euros, which will be paid 14 times a year, making an annual income of 38,863 euros.
Nice work if you can get it. “The job includes, among other things, the creation of penal orders as well as the processing of appeals,” according to the report, adding that workers need to be “resilient” and willing to work a lot of overtime. The jobs are only open to Austrian citizens, all of whom will either have to be vaccinated against or fully recovered from COVID. As we previously highlighted, the unvaccinated in Austria could find themselves imprisoned for a year under a new administrative law that would force them to pay for their own internment. Austrians who don’t get vaccinated by February face fines of up to €7,200 ($8,000) for non-compliance, and those who refuse to pay would also face a 12 month jail sentence.
It’s clear who the idiot is here, but then again he’s just another propaganda victim, like 99.9% of people.
• Ryanair CEO Calls For Unvaccinated “Idiots” To Be Ostracised From Society (SN)
Michael O’Leary, the CEO of Ryanair has declared that anyone who remains unvaccinated should be completely cut off from society, including not being allowed to travel, go to the supermarket to get food, or the pharmacy to get medicine. “If you’re not vaccinated, you shouldn’t be allowed in the hospital, you shouldn’t be allowed to fly, you shouldn’t be allowed on the London Underground, and you shouldn’t be allowed in the local supermarket or your pharmacy either,” the airline executive said, as reported by The Telegraph. “You can sit at home and you know, get your deliveries of medicines and food. But you should not, you know, go to work or go on public transport unless you have a vaccine certificate,” O’Leary clarified.
O’Leary admitted that making vaccines compulsory is “an infringement of your civil liberties,” but added that the way around it is “you simply make life so difficult. Or [make it that] there are lots of things that you can’t do unless you get vaccinated.” Calling the unvaccinated “idiots,” the Ryanir boss further stated “I don’t think that governments should permit those people who are not vaccinated to go and infect everybody else.” O’Leary sardonically stated “We recognise the rights of everybody to decide not to get vaccinated if you so want. If you personally object to vaccination, because it’s some huge government/big pharma conspiracy; apart from the fact that you would be plainly an idiot, we respect your right to be an idiot.”
Ryanair was previously punished by the advertising standards agency in the UK after running a campaign promoting the sale of summer flights with a “Jab & Go!” gimmick despite having previously stated that it wouldn’t require passengers to take a COVID vaccine before they fly. As we previously reported, other airlines have indicated they will not allow passengers who haven’t had the vaccine to fly, including Singapore Airlines, which became the first carrier to officially launch a COVID passport.
I’ll admit, I’m getting confused.
• Judge Blocks Biden’s Vaccine Mandate for Federal Contractors in 10 States (ET)
A federal judge in Missouri has issued a temporary hold on the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors in 10 U.S. states while litigation plays out. “We just beat the Biden Administration in court again,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced on Twitter late Monday. “This afternoon, we obtained a preliminary injunction against the vaccine mandate on federal contractors, halting enforcement of that mandate in Missouri and the other states in our coalition.” The preliminary injunction, issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge David Noce, applies to Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
Schmitt and Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, both Republicans, on Oct. 29 co-led the 10 states in suing the Biden administration over the mandate, calling it “unconstitutional, unlawful, and unwise.” “It will not harm the federal government to maintain the status quo while the courts decide the issues of the President’s authority and the implications for federalism. The Court concludes that, on balance, consideration of the harms and the public interest weigh in favor of a preliminary injunction,” reads the Monday preliminary injunction order from U.S. Magistrate Judge David Noce. A nationwide preliminary injunction is already in place blocking the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors, after a federal court in Georgia on Dec. 7 granted the injunction in a separate seven-state lawsuit led by Georgia.
This should be checked for every country.
• Covid Modelling Shows The Most Worrying Scenario, Not The Most Likely (G.)
Much of the pandemic modelling to make news headlines since Covid-19 hit has depicted concerning scenarios involving high case numbers and hospitalisations. On Thursday, modelling from the University of NSW and cited by NSW health minister Brad Hazzard found Covid-19 cases in the state could reach 25,000 a day by the end of January. The latest modelling to raise alarm bells came from the Doherty Institute and was leaked to the media on Tuesday after being sent to politicians ahead of a meeting of national cabinet on Wednesday. It said Australia could see 200,000 new Covid cases a day by late January or early February. Early into the pandemic in 2020, other models predicted “hundreds of thousands” of Australian deaths, while health workers in NSW were told to prepare for 8,000 deaths in the first-wave.
But these are worst-case scenario models and are just one scenario out of dozens of different scenarios that are calculated by epidemiologists and biostatisticians. What is often lost in the reporting of these worst-case models is that they rarely ever eventuate, but are calculated to allow governments to see what might happen if they did nothing at all to control an outbreak, and to plan accordingly. The leaked Doherty Institute modelling projecting 200,000 cases came with an important caveat; this would only eventuate if nothing was done, including if people did not change their behaviour at all of their own accords. It also assumed no change to the pace of booster roll-outs, and that only very basic restrictions such as requiring masks in hospitals are maintained.
[..] Ahead of national cabinet meeting on Wednesday the chair of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, Prof. Paul Kelly, said of the 200,000 figure “presents one of the worst case of all potential scenarios including assumptions that the Omicron variant is as severe as the Delta variant, an absence of hospital surge capacity, a highly limited booster program, no change to baseline public health and social measures and an absence of spontaneous behaviour change in the face of rising case numbers”. “None of these five assumptions represent the likely state of events, let alone all of them together, therefore presenting that scenario as the likely scenario that will occur is highly misleading.”
“One can only assume that the provincial health authorities’ relationship-splitting social engineering interventions will increase loneliness and isolation and associated risks for depression, anxiety, PTSD, self-harm, suicide, and drug toxicity for all. This is psychology 101.”
• A Letter from a Concerned Psychologist (Nicassio)
Attachment and the need to belong refer to the fundamental human need to maintain close social bonds and stay connected in psychologically and physically safe relationships from cradle to grave. One of the major contributions of psychology research has been to demonstrate that maintaining healthy and secure attachment and belonging is more than a psychological need: Attachment and belonging are primary and critical determinants of mental and physical health. Research in social psychology and neuroscience demonstrates that human beings’ neurobiological response to social exclusion mirrors their response to physical pain and suggests that social exclusion is one of the most painful and threatening events a person can experience.
While it’s not surprising that social exclusion and disturbances in attachment lead to negative emotions and thoughts, what’s less intuitive is that a large body of research has demonstrated that social exclusion is toxic to humans, leading to enduring changes in the brain and biological systems that regulate stress, weakening of the immune system, mental and physical illness, and earlier death. To date the narrative around social restrictions has been, “Well yes, social isolation is hard but restrictions are for the greater good!” But let’s be clear: The newest restrictions are not your run-of-the-mill isolation requirements. These restrictions require British Columbians to selectively exclude and marginalize their unvaccinated friends and loved ones during the most significant season for social gatherings and celebrations.
This is painful for everyone involved, but especially those who will be excluded and spending the holidays alone. It is also qualitatively different from previous social isolation requirements where we were all in it together. Sadly, social exclusion is actually an extremely harmful form of bullying. It’s clear to anyone with an understanding of psychology that these restrictions will cause relational fracturing and personal suffering that will last well beyond the holiday season. Not only is there strong scientific evidence that social exclusion leads to increased morbidity and mortality, but research consistently demonstrates that social exclusion, loneliness, and isolation are predictors of self-harm and suicide. The latest data have also shown a huge escalation in drug toxicity deaths since social restrictions began and this is the tip of the iceberg. One can only assume that the provincial health authorities’ relationship-splitting social engineering interventions will increase loneliness and isolation and associated risks for depression, anxiety, PTSD, self-harm, suicide, and drug toxicity for all. This is psychology 101.
As we prepare to get rid of Fauci, let’s do the same with Victoria Nuland. Make the world a better place.
• Americans Warned About Risk Of Russian Invasion Of Ukraine (RT)
American citizens considering traveling to Ukraine have been advised by Washington to reconsider the trip, citing persistent claims that Russia could be planning an all-out offensive against its Eastern European neighbor. On Monday, the US State Department updated its recommendations for the country, warning that “citizens should be aware of reports that Russia is planning for significant military action against Ukraine.” Americans were informed that this “would severely impact the US Embassy’s ability to provide consular services,” including assisting people in departing from the region in an emergency. The travel notice also continued to advise against travel due to the Covid-19 risk in Ukraine, a recommendation in place for several months.
Guidance urging US citizens to rethink their journey to the former Soviet republic because of its high rates of coronavirus infection had been issued at the end of September. The advisory came after Kiev’s intelligence services and Western officials sounded the alarm in recent weeks, insisting that Moscow could soon launch an all-out offensive against its neighbor. However, the Kremlin has repeatedly rejected the accusations, instead arguing that the prospect of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO destabilizes the situation. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned at the beginning of December that the further expansion of the organization toward Russia is a red line, and that Ukraine’s hopes to be admitted were unacceptable. She accused the US of pulling Kiev into the orbit of the military bloc and turning it into a “bridgehead” of confrontation with Russia, which she warned could cause conflict on the European continent.
“Goldman Sachs Bank USA had $387 billion in assets versus $48 trillion (yes, trillion) in notional (face amount) derivatives.”
• The Fed Gets Its Ducks in a Row for the Next Wall Street Bailout (Martens)
Last Friday, with the public’s attention diverted to the surge in Omicron variant cases of COVID in the U.S. and holiday travelers’ attention focused on the safety of air travel and family gatherings, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York quietly announced, in a one sentence statement, that it was adding the following three federally-insured banks to its list of counterparties for its newly-minted $500 billion Standing Repo Facility: Citibank, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, and the New York Branch of Mizuho Bank. If you’re stunned that Goldman Sachs is allowed to own a federally-insured bank under existing U.S. law, see our previous report: Goldman Sachs’ Rich Man’s Bank Backstopped by You and Me. If you’re stunned that a New York branch of Mizuho Bank, part of the Japanese conglomerate Mizuho Financial Group, is able to have federal deposit insurance backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer, welcome to the world of borderless global banking for the one percent.
These three banks have a number of things in common: (1) each financial institution already has a broker-dealer affiliate that is already one of the Fed’s 24 primary dealers that participates in the Fed’s repo operations; (2) each of the three banks’ primary dealer affiliates took large, secret loans from the Fed’s repo facility when credit collapsed on Wall Street on September 17, 2019; (3) all three institutions have trillions of dollars in exposure to derivatives according to data from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). If all three banks already have broker-dealer affiliates participating in the Fed’s repo loan facility, why would another affiliate be added? The first thought that comes to mind is the fact that the Fed puts a daily cap on the dollar amount that each counterparty can borrow per day. By having two affiliates as counterparties, the amount that can be borrowed is doubled.
Why would these three banks need to have a sugar daddy at the Fed to loan them money in a financial crisis? Because all three banks have huge exposure to derivatives. According to the latest report from the OCC, as of September 30, 2021, Goldman Sachs Bank USA had $387 billion in assets versus $48 trillion (yes, trillion) in notional (face amount) derivatives. Citibank had $1.7 trillion in assets versus $44 trillion in notional derivatives. Mizuho’s bank holding company had $48.8 billion in assets versus $6 trillion in derivatives.
Musk is … different, and that is refreshing.
• “If You Could Die Of Irony, She Would Be Dead”: Musk Slams Liz Warren (ZH)
Elon Musk just sat down with the guys from the Babylon Bee for a 54-minute interview, where the Tesla and SpaceX founder savaged Sen. Liz Warren, and described woke culture as a “mind virus.” “You were pretty mean to Senator Warren there on Twitter recently,” said Babylon Bee EIC Kyle Mann. “Ya slammed her man.””Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen,” he continued – citing Musk’s December 14th response to Warren slamming him for not paying ‘enough’ taxes. To which Musk replied: “She struck first, obviously. She called me a freeloader and a grifter who doesn’t pay taxes, basically. And – I’m literally paying the most tax that any individual in history has ever paid, this year, ever. And she doesn’t pay tax… basically at all. And her salary is paid for by the taxpayer, like me.”
“Could you even use the term irony, would that work?” asked one of the Bee guys. “If you could die of irony, she would be dead.” Musk also opined on woke culture – calling it a “mind virus,” and “arguably one of the biggest threats to modern civilization.” “Wokeness wants to make comedy illegal,” Musk continued, adding “Do we want a humorless society that is simply rife with condemnation, and hate? At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary and hateful. It basically gives mean people a shield to be cruel, armored in false virtue.” When asked why Musk wasn’t appearing on, say, CNN, he replied: “I’m not perverted enough?” perhaps referencing their recent pedo outbreak.
Bee CEO Seth Dillon asked Musk if he gets sick of people badgering him about his wealth, to which he said that until he sold stock, he maintained relatively little cash balances – and that he happens to own 20% of a company that people decided was worth a trillion dollars. He also defended ‘not paying taxes,’ explaining that in 2017 he overpaid, which netted out in 2018, and that since the majority of his wealth is in stock anyway that he wasn’t incurring taxable events. “What am I supposed to do, send shares to the government, somehow?” said Musk.
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