Just this morning, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, Czechia, UK and New Zealand announced record or near-record numbers of positive Covid numbers and/or deaths. Yes, here we go again. Sadly, all of it is completely preventable, and all of us choose to not prevent it, because most have never been told this. Once again, an overview.
In the UK, a report came out last week about the country’s Covid approach, written by politicians, from the government’s own party nonetheless. It’s titled “Coronavirus: Lessons learned to date”, which is kind of ironic, because the one thing WE learn, at least from the press coverage of it, is that not a single lesson has been learned. BBC:
The 150-page document, “Coronavirus: Lessons learned to date”, is from the Health and Social Care Committee and the Science and Technology Committee, and MPs from all parties.
[..] Conservative MPs Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark, who chair the committees, said the nature of the pandemic meant it was “impossible to get everything right”. “The UK has combined some big achievements with some big mistakes. It is vital to learn from both,” they said. Cabinet Office minister Stephen Barclay said scientific advice had been followed and the government had made “difficult judgements” to protect the NHS. He said the government took responsibility for everything that happened – saying the government would not shy away from any lessons to be learned at the full statutory public inquiry, expected next year.
What were those big mistakes, according to those 150 pages? These:
[..] the UK was not as open to different approaches on earlier lockdowns, border controls and test and trace as it should have been.
And the “big achievements”?
But their report highlighted successes too, including the vaccination rollout. It described the approach to vaccination – from the research and development through to the rollout of the jabs – as “one of the most effective initiatives in UK history”.
I kid you not, the biggest mistakes these politicians could come up with was that the UK should have locked down, shut its borders and start testing and tracing healthy people earlier. That’s it. But none of those come close to being the biggest mistakes. And that after 20 months they all still don’t appear to understand that is a sad, saddening and deadly “mistake” all by itself.
The real biggest mistake is the complete denial, and ignoring, of the crucial role prophylactics and early treatment could and should have played. And since neither plays such a role even today, yes, it will continue to be very deadly. The pharmaceutical industry prevents the use of -most- pharmaceuticals, and allows only the use of some of the newest and -therefore- most profitable ones. The promised “full statutory public inquiry” won’t change that.
But first, let’s look at the “big achievements”. Vaccination, “one of the most effective initiatives in UK history”, has resulted in the following picture:
“Cases” are, let’s say, “stubbornly high” again (they average about 45,000 recently, and on Monday reached almost 50,000):
Hospitalizations are high too, compared to other countries. Which is odd, since the vaccines were supposed to stop severe cases in every country, we were told. After the claims that they stop infection and transmission became untenable:
Deaths appear to have normalized a little more in the UK, but what’s worrisome in this graph is the “Other excess deaths”. What are they? Are they vaccine deaths? Hard not to think they may very well be. But also hard to know because information on this is so scarce. In any case, they appear to outnumber Covid deaths. Which is no surprise, but still “good” to see in a graph:
The UK is presently about 65% vaccinated, according to Our World In Data, after “one of the most effective initiatives in UK history”. 65%? How effective have other “initiatives” been? On the bright side, the unvaccinated 35% may well turn out to be the lucky ones.
But why were (and are) the “big mistakes” made? A clue is that lockdowns, closed borders, test and trace, and facemasks, are all non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI’s). Any and all things pharmaceutical have been ignored from the get go. And not just ignored: there have even been – and still are- extensive coordinated campaigns against ivermectin (IVM), hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), and recently even aspirin.
Never has there been any advice for people to boost their vit. C and D levels, or zinc and quercetin. Aspirin and melatonin are never mentioned. Still, it’s widely known that these substances can provide protection from Covid in their various ways. So how can it be that all those highly paid medical experts and scientists that advise their governments never seem to talk about them?
Perhaps you need to look at how the field is laid out. The pharmaceutical industry has the by far largest lobbying departments in the world (and you thought it was Big Oil). In Washington alone there are hundreds of lobbyists working for Big Pharma. Who not only support the politicians’ election campaigns, they also pay huge amounts to the same medical experts that advise the same politicians. Moreover, lobbyists often even write the laws for the politicians, who are not experts. Sort of a symbiotic relationship, if you will.
The problem that I have with this, and these people apparently don’t, is that this has cost enormous amounts of suffering and deaths. For no apparent reason at all. The UK, and any other -western- country, could have promoted vitamin D -and C-, plus zinc and quercetin, and added on ivermectin and/or HCQ, perhaps doxycycline, and only a fraction of the present victims would have died and/or been incapacitated.
And this is not a story about the past either: it continues to this day. There are no protocols for protecting people, and none for early treatment. It’s still: go home and wait till you get so sick you need a ventilator. What doctor signs up for that? Well, most of them do. Screw Hippocrates. 95% of the deaths and misery could have been prevented with cheap, available, run-of-the-mill pharmaceuticals. And your doctors refused to provide them for you.
We’ve all seen the horse dewormer campaign against ivermectin that especially outlets like CNN, and even Rolling Stone, have put so much energy in recently. But the real story of IVM is completely different. Here are a few countries and states, and their experiences with it.
Puerto Rico:
Uttar Pradesh:
Tokyo:
And Indonesia:
Indonesia ramped up ivermectin production and the government assured national distribution and fair prices. IVM is considered by the government a COVID medicine.
Good thing we didn’t take that horse dewormer. We were smart, we listened to “The Science”, and spend billions on vaccines. It’s too early to oversee the harm these substances have done and will do, and there’s a lot of pressure not to make it public, but we can get an idea from two countries that were initially spared much of what we experienced. They were genuine Covid success stories, like New Zealand was. Until they started vaccinating. Here’s Taiwan and Singapore.
Taiwan:
And here is Singapore, bit of a strange graph because the timeline is split in two, but obvious enough:
And now we’re sitting here without ivermectin, because it’s been banned in many places, but with increasing pressure to get jabbed with substances that look very suspect. And increasingly without the freedom to choose what we think is best for us and our families.
But you can still choose to boost your immune system with vitamin D, without which it can’t properly function, and vitamin C. Be careful with zinc, but do consider it; it keeps the virus out of your cells. And it works better with quercetin. And do tell your doctor that you would like a prescription for ivermectin -if only to see the reaction- or HCQ. Ask about melatonin. Get some low dose aspirin. Inform yourself.
Since I am not a doctor (I just listen to them a lot), let me close with an old favorite I haven’t used in a long time: This information is for entertainment purposes only.
PS: Oh, and no, these things are not mistakes. Mistakes are not deliberate.
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Looking worse, fast. I’m starting to think you will need ivermectin -and/or HCQ- to fight off the vaccine. Preferably, don’t get vaccinated, but if you have been, get ivermectin. And whatever you do, stay away from booster shots.
“We are very certain about this, the vaccine is directly killing individuals”.
“The growing consensus among vaccination researchers is that exposure to 5-8 of these mRNA jabs over a relatively brief period of time will – dependent on the underlying health of the individual – result in death.”
McCullough NZ the vaccine is directly killing individuals
THREAD
Dr. Peter A. McCullough:
"All of Hill's tenets of causality are fulfilled. We are very certain about this, the vaccine is directly killing individuals".
The Autoimmune Mechanism. THE SPIKE WILL NOT BE FOUND IN THE BLOOD. IT IS TRAVELLING “INCOGNITO” INTRACELLULARLY. WE KNEW IT ENTERED CELLS VIA ENDOCYTOSIS IN 2008! Yesterday I observed that every cell the Spike Protein invades seems to cause the body to develop autoimmunity against it. I believe I have discovered the mechanism. It is a very brief and straightforward mechanism. Most likely many spikes do NOT stay on the cell surface, once they are expressed via spike protein therapied. The Spike is proven to be brought into the cell by Endocytosis. The spike protein is internalized into cells rapidly and is detected in cells within 5 mi, a hallmark of endocytosis. The amount of spike protein in cells continues to increase for up to 30 min. Thus, SARS-CoV-2 spike protein enters cells via endocytosis.
Once it is in the cell, its signaling damages mitochondria. The team then replicated this process in the lab, exposing healthy endothelial cells (which line arteries) to the spike protein. They showed that the spike protein damaged the cells by binding ACE2. This binding disrupted ACE2’s molecular signaling to mitochondria (organelles that generate energy for cells), causing the mitochondria to become damaged and fragmented. Once the mitochondria are damaged, this then activates the autoimmune response of the body. The accumulation of defective mitochondria led to overproduction of an inflammatory protein called type 1 interferon.
The findings suggest that failed quality control of mitochondria may cause Sjogren’s, lupus, and other autoimmune diseases through production of interferon. The Spike Protein then proceeds to travel from cell to cell via EXTRACELLULAR VESICLES. This means, of course, they will NOT BE FOUND IN THE BLOOD. We would not have been aware all this time. As the S1 unit has been found in monocytes 15 months post infection, it may be traveling intracellularly, executing a “Sherman’s March Through Georgia” on the mitochondria, resulting in multisystemic autoimmunity. Again, we have known the spike enters cells via endocytosis since 2008.
israel has been playing an interesting role as a bit of a canary in the coal mine. They have been pushing vaccines, vaccine passports, and now boosters harder than just about anyplace else on earth. They also make a good lab as they report solid (by covid standards) data and occupy only one regional climate zone so we do not need to adjust for heterogeneous seasonal surges within the aggregate (as we do in the US). And one thing is becoming very clear: whatever they are doing is not working and even their health ministers are having to admit this. This dip was (as i expected) driven by a drop in testing and reporting due to rosh hashanah (and will likely dip again late this week for yom kippur) but next week, we should be starting to get clearer data again.
With over 30% of the total population now having had a booster shot since the commencement of that program in earnest on august 1st, we should be able to get a sense of efficacy. I ran the series of booster uptake and plotted it vs deaths per day. What i saw looked like cause for concern and appears to validate calls from the departing FDA vaccine experts to get a good, hard look at this data before doing anything aggressive. Boosters began to rise and by the time they hit even 0.5%, deaths were starting to rise with them. the two move in near perfect lockstep. Clearly, correlation is not proof of causality, but this is an awful lot of signal to ignore out of hand especially given our strong reasons to presume causal linkage. (that said, the alignment with seasonal surge poses difficulties in separating signal source)
It’s further worrying that even with a 67% vaccination rate at the beginning of this rise and a significant portion of the population having already had exposure to covid and cohorts of the highest risk already having been depleted in past waves, that we are seeing such a strong surge in deaths from a delta variant that looks to have a much lower CFR than prior variants. (0.4% vs 1.1% per UK variants of concern data) It has barely attenuated at all (and it’s not clear we’ve reached highs. Consider the “false flat” from last year and how much later this surge was this year. We could be at the half way mark. This will bear watching.)
“..if you have received a COVID injection, the CDC’s guidelines call for your PCR test to be run at a CT of 28 or less. If you are unvaccinated, your PCR test is to be run at a CT of 40..”
According to the CDC,6 you’re not counted as fully vaccinated until a full 14 days have passed since your second injection in the case of Pfizer or Moderna, or 14 days after your first dose of Janssen. This is how the CDC defines a vaccine breakthrough case: “… a vaccine breakthrough infection is defined as the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA or antigen in a respiratory specimen collected from a person ≥14 days after they have completed all recommended doses of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-authorized COVID-19 vaccine.” In other words, if you’ve received one dose of Pfizer or Moderna and develop symptomatic COVID-19, get admitted to the hospital and/or die from COVID, you’re counted as an unvaccinated case. If you’ve received two doses and get ill within 14 days, you’re still counted as an unvaccinated case.
The problem with this is that over 80% of hospitalizations and deaths appear to be occurring among those who have received the jabs, but this reality is hidden by the way cases are defined and counted. A really clever and common strategy of the CDC during the pandemic has been to change the definitions and goalposts so it supports their nefarious narrative. For example, the CDC has quietly changed the definition of “vaccine,” apparently in an attempt to validate calling the COVID mRNA gene therapies vaccines. In an August 26, 2021, archived version7 of vaccine, the CDC defines it as a “product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.”
But a few days later, a new definition appeared on the CDC’s website,8 which now says a vaccine is a “preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.” The differences in the definitions are subtle but distinct: The first one defined a vaccine as something that will “produce immunity.” But, since the COVID-19 vaccines are not designed to stop infection but, rather, to only lessen the degree of infection, it becomes obvious that the new definition was created to cover the COVID vaccines. It’s not just the CDC’s definition of a breakthrough case that skews the data. Even more egregious and illogical is the fact that the CDC even has two different sets of testing guidelines — one for vaccinated patients and another for the unvaccinated.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC has recommended a PCR test cycle threshold (CT) of 40.9 This flies in the face of scientific consensus, which has long been that a CT over 35 will produce 97% false positives, essentially rendering the test useless. In mid-May 2021, the CDC finally lowered its recommended CT count, but only for patients who have received one or more COVID shots. So, if you have received a COVID injection, the CDC’s guidelines call for your PCR test to be run at a CT of 28 or less. If you are unvaccinated, your PCR test is to be run at a CT of 40, which grossly overestimates the true prevalence of infection. The end result is that unvaccinated individuals who get tested are FAR more prone to get false positives, while those who have received the jab are more likely to get an accurate diagnosis of infection.
Go ahead Governors, let businesses mandate jabs and masks. Let Biden get away with his bull****. Don’t put in place E/Os and don’t call back the legislature into special session right here and now, today, and put a conclusive stop to all of it. I give this right up into the Christmas season when Biden’s mandate allegedly will go into effect before it totally screws the economy. With that, down goes the market, commercial real estate detonates (what happens when that Lowes closes due to lack of staff and so do another couple of nice big-box stores for the same reason down the street — everywhere at once!) and with it the debt markets.
There are already places where WalMarts are being forced to close to restock shelves as they’re so short of people and can’t hire more, having put in place employee mandates which enough prospective and current employees are responding to with “**** that!” that the only option remaining to them is to lock the doors and repurpose the few people they do have. This area is tourist-heavy and now, with schools allegedly back open, the traffic shifts — down a bit now, down more as we go into the winter. That local places still can’t manage to hire tells the tale — the people are tired of the abuse and, for the offered wage, they won’t apply or work. Give someone 18 months to figure out how to give you the finger and many will do exactly that.
On top of this you have all of those who complied with said mandates and now are out sick, many with the coof which, the company and the government assured us all would not happen if you just rolled up your sleeve. Of course they lied and still are, trying to claim it’s “rare” that people get materially ill after being vaccinated against Covid. That’s just the latest line of bull**** and, given the sick rate among those who have been jabbed it’s obvious if you pay a single bit of attention. Good luck Biden along with governors and local officials — you’re going to need it, and were I you in this market today I’d be rather careful if you’re not ok with a 201k — which is what you might have left of your 401k as we approach Christmas.
The National Centre for Immunisation and Research (NCIRS) in Australia are currently leading a collaboration with the Australia’s Government known as AusVaxSafety. The group has been conducting active vaccine surveillance of the Covid-19 vaccines in use in Australia to “ensure their ongoing safety”. Up to the 16th August 2021 over 1.4 million Austalians had partipated in the surveillance completing more than 2.4 million safety surveys, outlining their experience following the Covid-19 vaccination and the published results show the following –
Pfizer Vaccine – 1st DoseFollowing the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine 1,007,479 people responded to an SMS/email about their health in the three days after having the jab. The results show that 37.2% reported having an adverse reaction, with 374,832 reporting at least one adverse event. 0.5% of participants also reported seeing a doctor or attending hospital in the three days following vaccination due to an adverse reaction. This equates to 5,037 people. Whilst 6.7% of participants reported missing work, study or routine duties for a short period – meaning 67,501 people were left unable to perform daily activities following their first dose of the Pfizer mRNA Covid-19 injection.
Pfizer Vaccine – 2nd Dose Following the 2nd dose of the Pfizer vaccine 770,864 people responded to an SMS/email about their health in the three days after having the jab. The results show that 56.4% reported having an adverse reaction, a significant increase on the percentage of people who reported having an adverse reaction after having their first dose of the Pfizer jab. 1.3% of participants also reported seeing a doctor or attending hospital in the three days following vaccination due to an adverse reaction. This equates to 10,021 people – double the number of people who reported seeking medical attention after having the first dose despite there being 237,000 less particants in the 2nd dose survey. However, a huge 21.2% of participants were left unable to perform daily activities, that’s 163,423 people who reported missing work, study or routine duties.
Dr Stuart Waiton is a senior lecturer in sociology and criminology at Abertay University. He is a columnist for the Glasgow Herald, author of three books, and is currently writing a book entitled The Criminalisation of Everything.
The illiberal actions of Western nations over Covid are as much about a worrying shift in politics as it is about ‘the science’. Some very basic freedoms that we have traditionally enjoyed are in grave danger. In America, Joe Biden is putting pressure on workers to get the vaccine. Without proof that you do not have Covid, or evidence of vaccination, you will no longer be able to enter a workplace that has more than 100 staff. This policy will affect two-thirds of the workforce – around 100 million people. While many liberals in America have understandably reacted with outrage at changes to abortion regulations in places such as Texas, the idea of bodily autonomy as a basic human right, a right that should apply to vaccinations, barely gets a mention.
In France, vaccine passports have been introduced in cultural and leisure venues – cinemas and museums, as well as bars, restaurants, cafés, trains… Basically anywhere and everywhere you go in that country, you will be expected to show your papers. In England, thus far, vaccine passports have been ruled out. However, in Scotland, the governing Scottish National Party (SNP) have once again shown that it is always prepared to take authoritarian measures one step further than their English counterparts by introducing passports for major venues. Suggesting a puritanical dimension to this policy, not only are outdoor venues of 10,000 people and indoor venues of 500 being targeted, but all “sexual entertainment venues” will need evidence of vaccination.
Despite the fact that 84% of over-18s have had both jabs, the policy in Scotland is being introduced, in part, and arguably in large part, to put pressure on younger people to get a vaccination for a virus that has little or no effect on them.
Just over 90% of students in China aged 12-17 have received two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, state media has revealed. Despite the high inoculation rate, the Ministry of Education has urged caution in schools over the virus.
On Wednesday, People’s Daily shared that the two-dose vaccination rate of teachers and students over 18 years old stands at 95%, slightly higher than the rate among younger pupils. Despite the wide vaccine coverage among China’s school children, the Ministry of Education has issued a notice imploring institutes and schools to make Covid prevention and control a top priority.
The statement came after China’s National Health Commission warned that coronavirus infections were circulating at a primary school in Putian, a city home to three million in East China’s Fujian Province. The region has recorded over 150 local cases in five days, prompting some cities in other parts of the country to impose travel warnings before major holidays. A number of cities in Fujian province, such as Quanzhou and Fuzhou, have decided to suspend primary schools and kindergartens, with others switching classes to online learning.
The Chinese government has manufactured and authorized two of its own Covid jabs. While the domestically produced vaccines have been given the green light for administration to children as young as three, authorities have yet to expand the inoculation campaign to the under-12s. Several regions across China started vaccinating its teenagers against Covid in July, including the capital Beijing. Figures from the National Health Commission showed that China has so far managed to administer close to 2.16 billion vaccine doses.
The FDA just released its briefing book for Pfizer’s request for a third dose of Comirnaty (or is that BNT162b2? No matter! It’s approved either way, sorta). It is every bit the mess we all expected. Let’s go to the highlights: Pfizer basically hasn’t bothered to test the booster AT ALL in the people actually at risk – it conducted a single “Phase 1” trial that covered 12 people over 65. The main Phase 2/3 booster trial (beware efforts to cover multiple “phases” of drug research at once, you want it bad you get it bad) included no one over 55. No one. As in NONE. Which makes total sense – why test the booster in people who actually need it because they’re at high risk from the ro? Nothing good can come of that. So that’s our trial design. Now safety:
Of the 300 people who received the booster, one had a heart attack two months later. No worries, Pfizer concluded it wasn’t related. Yay! Five percent of recipients had enlarged lymph nodes. How about effectiveness? Well, we don’t have enough data – or any data, really – telling us how well the booster will work. But the FDA made Pfizer go back and review its data from the pivotal clinical trial from last year. Pfizer compared people who received the vaccine with those who received the placebo and THEN the vaccine (the best we can do at this point, since Pfizer blew up the trial by giving placebo subjects the vaccine, double-yay!) Pfizer concluded that your annual risk of getting Covid-19 IF YOU ARE VACCINATED is about 7 percent.
Further: “An additional analysis appears to indicate that incidence of COVID-19 generally increased in each group of study participants with increasing time post-Dose 2 at the start of the analysis period.” Oh. But don’t worry, Uncle Joe already told you you can get your booster on September 20. If it’s good enough for our fearless leader, it should be good enough for the FDA, amirite? SCIENCE!
“The growing consensus among vaccination researchers is that exposure to 5-8 of these mRNA jabs over a relatively brief period of time will – dependent on the underlying health of the individual – result in death.”
One can observe categorically that medical researchers in Australia, India, France, the US, Germany and Japan are showing why the mRNA Covid “vaccines” tested by Oxford Recovery on dogs killed all the vaccinated animals. The detailed nature of deadly Cytokinic overreaction is closely allied to the study of how ‘autoantibodies’ develop. These little mothers are not always good news. Antibodies are produced by our B cells in two ways: (i) randomly, and (ii) in response to a foreign protein or substance within the body. Initially, one B cell produces one specific kind of antibody. In either case, the B cell is allowed to proliferate or is killed off through a process called clonal deletion. Normally, the immune system is able to recognise and ignore the body’s own healthy proteins, cells, and tissues.
But sometimes, the immune system ceases to recognise one or more of the body’s normal constituents as “self,” leading to production of pathological autoantibodies. When this happens, these psycho antibodies go into a frenzy of destruction. The more the body is exposed to mRNA formulations, the more certain death becomes. That certainty helps to explain the emerging narrative about “booster” shots of “vaccine”. This is Anthony Fauci of the US CDC from a live media interview five days ago: “You know, I think we are going to need boosters. And I think very likely, when we look back on this, the proper complete regimen for good full protection will almost certainly be three shots – the first two that we’ve spoken about and a late third boost several months later.”
For the already vaxxed, that would make five jabs in all….and no doubt, a new strain would miraculously appear to justify a 6th and 7th top-up. The growing consensus among vaccination researchers is that exposure to 5-8 of these mRNA jabs over a relatively brief period of time will – dependent on the underlying health of the individual – result in death. In a bid to head off awkward questions about the efficacy of such drugs, Fauci then resorted to the current default lie: “This is still an outbreak, a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And when you look at the percentage of cases, particularly those that wind up with severe consequences leading to hospitalization, it is overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated.”
Former French Health Minister Agnès Buzyn faces a possible prison term and heavy fine for “endangering the life of others” in her mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, as France leads the way in making its leaders accountable. Despite the massive failures by governments and public health officials across the globe in dealing with the pandemic, it’s only the dead that really pay any sort of price. Most of the so-called experts simply move on, retire, or fade back into academia or big pharma where many of them came from. Not so in France, where the appetite for accountability has landed former Health Minister Agnès Buzyn in la merde,having just been indicted by the Court of Justice of the Republic – a special court established specifically to hold government ministers accountable for their actions – for “endangering the life of others” through mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has cost the French 115,000 lives. If found guilty, she faces a year in jail and a €15,000 fine.
Buzyn, a former doctor, did not have a good pandemic. She stood on the steps of the Elysee Palace in January last year and foolishly declared, “The risks of the coronavirus spreading to the population are low.” Ooops. But Buzyn is not the only French politician with their neck on the block. Her successor, Health Minister Olivier Véran, is also under investigation, along with former Prime Minister Edouard Phillippe. Surely, this is the sort of ministerial accountability that every democratic nation should be enforcing. Too often, incompetent, bungling, and plainly dishonest politicians escape sanction when they step aside, trying to present their resignation – or sacking – as some kind of noble gesture for which they should be congratulated, not imprisoned.
[..] But what about the rest of the Covid clowns around the world, with their misinformation, backtracking on guidance, exaggeration, underestimation, and sheer, cack-handed incompetence? Right up there is WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who, when meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, was full of praise for China’s containment of the coronavirus. The very least we could expect would be the WHO boss clearing his desk. In the US, Dr Anthony ‘Flip-flop’ Fauci faced his own messaging problems, having initially announced that the pandemic posed a “very, very low risk to the United States,” in January 2020. Since then, there have been more than 40 million reported covid cases in the US and around 652,000 deaths. I hope he likes golf, because Dr Fauci might soon have a lot more time to work on his handicap.
There are no active cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in 33 districts of Uttar Pradesh, the state government informed on Friday. About 67 districts have not reported a single new case of the viral infection in the last 24 hours, the government said, noting the steady improvement of the Covid-19 situation in the state. [..] Overall, the state has a total of 199 active cases, while the positivity rate came down to less than 0.01 per cent. The recovery rate, meanwhile, has improved to 98.7 per cent. As per the state’s health bulletin, Uttar Pradesh reported only 11 new Covid-19 cases and zero deaths in the last 24 hours. The fresh cases came out of 2.26 lakh samples that were tested in the last 24 hours.
As of Friday, the state government has conducted 7.42 crore tests, according to the data published by Uttar Pradesh’s health department. On the vaccination front, around 7 crore people in the state have received their first dose of the jab. The vaccination coverage in the state has exceeded 8.47 crores, out of which, 12 lakh people have been inoculated in the last 2 hours. Meanwhile, the overall nationwide tally climbed to 33,174,954 after recording 34,973 cases in the last 24 hours. This was around 19% lower than Thursday when the country had logged 43,263 fresh infections. The death toll stands at 442,009.
As prices are soaring all over Europe, the EU keeps playing politics. My guess is Merkel will put a stop to that. She does’t want to leave her country in a state of huge unrest.
Despite the completion of Nord Stream 2, Europe should not expect the Russian pipeline to start deliveries this year due to bureaucracy within the EU, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned on Wednesday. “Now the process of obtaining the necessary permits from the German regulator is underway. The process is not fast. The beginning of 2022 has been indicated,” Lavrov told the press. Experts say this could be the reason behind the current surge in gas prices, which have been smashing records for several days now. According to the press secretary of the German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA), Fita Wolf, Nord Stream 2’s certification may take several months, a prospect which practically forces market participants to raise prices.
To add to the problem, the pipeline’s main adversaries, Ukraine and the United States, have both vowed to complicate the certification procedure. According to Lavrov, there will be many roadblocks before certification is finally granted. “I have no doubt that attempts to attack this gas pipeline will continue,” the Russian foreign minister said. Gas prices in Europe have risen 20% since the start of trading on Wednesday. The price of October futures on the Dutch TTF exchange exceeded $964 per 1,000 cubic meters by 11am GMT, ICE data shows.
On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, in a conversation with RT, award-winning director Oliver Stone condemned the US response as rooted in “exaggerated hype to go to war” and a misguided attempt at revenge-seeking. Stone condemned the bloody-minded drive for vengeance that characterized the US’ reaction to the attacks from the outset. “‘We’ve gotta get them for this’ – [but] we didn’t even know who ‘them’ were!” he exclaimed to Going Underground’s Afshin Rattansi on Wednesday, pointing out that it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, rather than the better-known terrorist bogeyman Osama Bin Laden, who put together the entire plan “in his brain.”
“We lost focus in that moment – we were terrified, horrified, but we didn’t really look at what happened. We should have looked at why. A lot of [the government’s reasoning] was BS. A lot of it was exaggerated hype to go to war by the US and Israel,” Stone explained. Regarding US President Joe Biden’s controversial pullout from Afghanistan, Stone’s was a rare voice of support, insisting he “didn’t think it was a bad withdrawal at all” and that the sense of crisis was inflated by the media. “I appreciate a man who isn’t rushing to judgment like Bush was or Trump would be. A man who thinks about things and is deliberate … Most American presidents would fold – change their minds because of the polls,” which are “always tough on presidents.”
Stone observed that the reasons the terrorists gave for the 9/11 attacks were relatively simple: former president George H.W. Bush’s decision to station US troops on Saudi holy land and the US’ increasingly ‘one-sided’ support for Israel, despite international law. “We should have looked at why [the attacks occurred]. Bush said they envy our freedoms, but that was nonsense. They did it because of two reasons, as Osama stated very clearly,” Stone continued. “Instead of disengaging when the war was over in November, we sent in a huge amount of troops, didn’t understand the landscape, went out again and again on patrols, and, as we did in Vietnam, [the US Army] antagonized people by just being there.”
Special counsel John Durham reportedly is seeking a grand jury indictment against Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer at a Democratic-allied law firm that represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. According to the New York Times, the charge is said to be related to an alleged false statement to the FBI about a client’s identity when Sussmann pushed now-debunked claims about secret communications between Russia’s Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. Durham “has told the Justice Department that he will ask a grand jury to indict a prominent cybersecurity lawyer on a charge of making a false statement to the FBI,” the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing “people familiar with the matter.”
Prior testimony and documents show Sussmann, who worked at Perkins Coie, delivered allegations about the Alfa server to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in fall 2016. Baker has told invetsigators Sussman told him his approach was not on behalf of any client. But Sussmann told Congress he made the approach on behalf of a computer security client. The newspaper said Durham’s team has obtained records showing Sussmann billed work on the Alfa Bank matter to the Clinton campaign, the newspaper said. Sussmann’s lawyers, Sean M. Berkowitz and Michael S. Bosworth, acknowledged Wednesday that they expected him to be indicted, but denied wrongdoing.
“Mr. Sussmann has committed no crime,” they told the Times. “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work. We are confident that if Mr. Sussmann is charged, he will prevail at trial and vindicate his good name. Durham has until the weekend to charge Sussmann because of a five-year statute of limitations, the newspaper said.
We’ve been saying this for months now, in many variations, but the mass vaxx programs just continue. And that has to stop. We need to save lives not take them. And yes, the vaxxers have managed to propagandize -almost- everyone into believing the exact opposite of what is happening: you now believe that mRNA substances save lives.
Problem may be that they do, but only for a few weeks or months, and then you need another booster, while in the meantime, your body is filling up with cytotoxic spike proteins. The vaccines don’t kill the virus, they leave it alive while enhancing your body’s protection against it a bit, and for a short time.
Whether that means you should label them “non-sterilizing vaccines” or not vaccines at all is something I get tired of discussing, because that merely distracts from the main issue: these things have not been properly tested while they’re very invasive and long-lasting, and therefore potentially very dangerous.
One of the biggest dangers is that they trigger the virus into mutating. That’s what “non-sterilizing vaccines” do. Months ago, Geert VandenBossche started warning about this, many other doctors and medical specialists have followed, but they all get banned and deleted and censored. Never state the obvious!
Perhaps the No. 1 peril behind mRNA substances is something many of the same doctors warn about, an emerging auto-immune disease called antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), which emerged through years of trials of these same substances in labs and animal tests, all of which were conveniently stricken from the propaganda record. But they still exist.
Here’s another graph. I have these graphs and articles every single day here at the Automatic Earth. And I don’t go out looking for them, they come to me. This one shows that Covid variants began after vaccinations started. No surprise here, it’s predictable and was predicted that the virus would react this way. If you don’t kill it, but you do challenge it, it mutates into a form that the vaccine can’t harm.
And then you can repeat-jab all you want with boosters that inject another 14,000 trillion cytotoxic (yes that means they kill your cells) spike proteins per jab into a patient victim’s body, but that can only lead to another jab x months down the road, because the virus is not being killed.
If you have a 5, even a 3-year-old kid, explain this and ask them. They will get it right much more often than all your experts and politicians and pharma salesmen. And it’s getting tiresome having to talk about this all the time, just because those are the people who have a stranglehold on the media and get to define there what “the Science” is. While in reality they’re just killing people. But we can’t say that, can we?
I like this graph from nextstrain.org. They have a grant from the Gates foundation, and I hope for them, after seeing this, that that’s not their main grant. Because this graph exposes everything wrong with the mass vaccination surge. All variants of any consequence have appeared ONLY as a reaction to the vaccines. As we said, and many others with us did, first of all Geert VandenBossche. Here is what inevitably happens, in living color:
And there IS a different way, whether they want to hide or ban or delete it or not. Another little graph just from today, like the one above. Again, I get things like this every single day. Read the Automatic Earth daily, and you will find out how and why.
India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, with 230 million inhabitants, started distributing ivermectin to all its people on May 14.
Here is what happened. When it did at first we thought it was solely a sign that the Delta variant was especially harmless. We now think perhaps that is not the only reason. The ivermectin program was announced on May 12, when the vaccination rate was 2.8%. That rules out vaccines as a factor, entirely.
Even if those rates have increased a little; they’re still today just 9%. If any part of the US or Europe had that rate, Fauci et al would be screaming blue murder.
Before they announced the ivermectin plan, Uttar Pradesh was at over 30,000 cases per day:
Yesterday, they had 26 (I read 19 in another source, but hey…)
As for deaths, the numbers are a bit less spectacular, they never got to “great heights”, but they’re clear nonetheless.
And yesterday they had 1.
Comparison: Uttar Pradesh is 20 times the size of Greece population wise, and 2/3 of the US. Greece yesterday had over 4,200 new cases vs Uttar Pradesh’s 26, and today had 25 new deaths vs Uttar Pradesh’s 1.
This is the umpteenth time I’ve been saying the same thing, always trying to find new ways and angles to say it. The vaccines are not safe, they are very dangerous both short term and especially long term (ADE). A single mRNA shot triggers your body to produce 14,000 trillion spike proteins, that don’t just disappear, or stay in the injection spot, they move through your body, which also gets triggered to keep producing them.
Then antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) appears. Antibodies that are supposed to get rid of the spike proteins, instead bind to them and help them invade your cells. Which then either get killed and/or turn into factories to produce more spike proteins. Which have been registered as long as 6 months after injection time. In many of the tests I referred to earlier that involved ADE, all test animals were wiped out.
Count your blessings. All our responses to Covid, lockdowns, masks, you name it, have one thing in common: they are one-dimensional. The mRNA vaccines are not just the cherry on the 1 dimension cake, they are our crowning achievement in utter stupidity. We could be Uttar Pradesh. But we are not, and we have only ourselves to blame for that. Your government? Yeah, idiots. Their experts? Utter fools. But in the end it’s you yourselves. It’s your responsibility to look out for your kids and loved ones, not your government’s.
Here, again, is the article about how Uttar Pradesh turned to ivermectin. Maybe you should too.
The Uttarakhand government will be distributing Ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug, among the residents of the state as a preventive medicine against the spread of COVID-19, a senior official said. The Uttarakhand government’s announcement comes after Goa and Karnataka issued similar directions. The decision was taken on the recommendation of the state-level clinical technical committee, an order issued by Chief Secretary Om Prakash to all district magistrates said.
The panel has recommended the Ivermectin tablet as “mass chemoprophylaxis” to effectively control the surge of COVID-19 infection apart from the vaccination drive, the order said. The 12 mg tablets of the drug will be distributed in a kit to all families through the health department and district magistrates, the order said. Usually, Ivermectin tablets have to be taken by adults and those above 15 years twice daily for three days after breakfast and dinner. One person will thus need six tablets and a family of four will need 24 tablets. Hence, each kit will contain two dozen tablets, the order said.
Children between 10-15 years will take only one tablet daily whereas those aged between 2 to 10 years can be administered the drug only after doctor’s advice. The tablet cannot be given to children below two years, pregnant women and those suffering from liver diseases, it said. The kit will come with directions on how to consume the medicine and dosage for different age groups. Information related to the daily distribution of the kits should be sent to the state nodal officer, the order said.
Goa Health Minister Vishwajit Rane had on Monday said all people above 18 years will be given Ivermectin drug irrespective of their coronavirus status to bring down the number of deaths due to the viral disease. Rane had said that people will be given Ivermectin 12 mg for five days as expert panels from the UK, Italy, Spain and Japan have found a statistically significant reduction in mortality, time to recovery and viral clearance in COVID-19 patients treated with this medicine.
On Tuesday, Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister and state’s COVID task force head CN Ashwath Narayan said 10 lakh (1 lakh=100,000) Ivermectin tablets have been procured and their supply will begin on May 14. It has been further decided to procure 25 lakh tablets and make them available in all hospitals across the state, he said. Medical experts, however, have questioned the efficacy of the five-day duration of the drug regimen announced by Goa government saying the treatment should not be given for a short period but ideally be continued till the pandemic is brought under control.
Stop mass vaccination NOW. Before millions of people are killed. That is a risk that is much higher than that of more contagious but less severe mutations such as delta. Against which down the line no booster can protect you no matter what. We are not faster than a virus is. We can only hope to be smarter. But 20 months in, we look like utter utter fools.
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New Zealand will enter a snap nationwide lockdown at its highest level on Tuesday night after a 58-year-old man from Auckland tested positive for COVID-19, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced. This is the first coronavirus case detected in NZ’s community for 170 days and officials are concerned the man may have the highly contagious Delta variant. New Zealand has only experienced a level 4 nationwide lockdown once before. This is only the second lockdown for communities outside Auckland, NZ’s most populous city, since the pandemic began. Ardern noted at a news conference Tuesday that although it was unknown what strain of the virus the man had, most of the infections in managed hotel quarantine had the Delta variant.
The level 4 national lockdown will last for three days, from 11:59 p.m. Tuesday. Auckland and the Coromandel Peninsula, which the recently man visited, will likely experience this for seven days. New Zealand has largely contained COVID-19 cases to managed hotel quarantine facilities. Under alert level 4 restrictions, schools move to remote classes and non-essential businesses close — including food delivery services. Only essential travel is permitted, and water activities like swimming are banned. People must remain at home unless they’re exercising outdoors and locally and within their household “bubbles.” The country has paused vaccinations for the duration of the lockdown.
Uttar Pradesh on Monday witnessed the steepest decline in the number of fresh cases as the state limited the infections to just 17, making it the lowest ever daily-case count. Uttar Pradesh has restricted the daily-case count below 100 for over 5 weeks now. The downward trajectory of the virus has continued for the consecutive 14th week. In another significant achievement, the state registered a drop in the daily Covid test positivity rate (TPR) — the number of positive cases against the total tests done — to 0.01 percent. This rate was at its highest at 16.84 percent on April 24 and now remains even lower than the lowest post the first wave of Covid-19. The active caseload in the most populous state now stands at 419, from its peak at 3,10,783 cases on April 30.
On the contrary, sparsely populated states like Kerala, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu account for a heavy active caseload of 1,78,640, 64,219 and 20,458, respectively. In another major relief, none of the 75 districts reported fresh infections in double-digits, indicating signs that the pandemic is receding. Uttar Pradesh is rapidly moving towards being coronavirus-free as active and fresh cases in as many as 17 districts have declined to zero. In its bid to become self-reliant in terms of producing life-saving medication, as many as 317 of the 556 oxygen plants have already been established and are functional, while work on the remaining plants is going on in Uttar Pradesh.
New South Wales police issued nearly 600 infringement notices to people flouting tough new health orders on the first day of a three-week crackdown designed to get the state’s escalating Covid crisis under control. The deputy commissioner, Mal Lanyon, said some people were still not complying even after a 5km travel rule came into effect for greater Sydney and the state reported a record 478 new local Covid-19 cases and eight deaths on Monday – the state’s worst day of the pandemic. “Yesterday we issued 579 infringement notices which is disappointing. It shows that people are still not complying. Thirty-four people received court attendant notices,” he told the Nine Network on Tuesday. Police also conducted 3,800 welfare checks to see if people were following stay-at-home orders.
Seven weeks of lockdown in Sydney (NSW)
One Covid-positive man from the hotspot of Fairfield in Sydney’s south-west wasn’t home when police arrived and was later unable to provide an excuse for his actions, Lanyon said. The entire state is now locked down and a 21-day police blitz came into effect on Monday to enforce new regulations, with almost 18,000 police officers supported by 800 members of the Australian defence force. Tougher noncompliance fines of up to $5,000 are in place with people in greater Sydney confined to within 5km of their homes. Police commissioner Mick Fuller warned that officers have been told to adopt “a no-nonsense approach” to people deliberately flouting laws.
OzStudents
Breaking: Australia will vaccinate 24,000+ students without parents present and they will not be allowed to be there. Parents are writing me completely outraged at what is happening to their children and what is happening to society and this entire planet! pic.twitter.com/27gPuOr4II
— Erin Elizabeth Health Nut News (@unhealthytruth) August 16, 2021
“All of us have been fully vaccinated (with two doses),” “All of us have been tested for COVID this week. And all of us have to take the second test tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,”
A spokesperson for the Chinese National Health Commission Mi Feng said at a press conference on Friday: “As of now, the diagnosed local [COVID-19] cases have risen for 19 consecutive days, and involved 16 provinces.” On Saturday and Sunday, the regime announced more infections but many people interviewed by the Chinese-language Epoch Times said they didn’t believe the numbers because of the regime’s past underreporting on COVID-19. The regime has reported relatively small-scale local outbreaks this year until July 20, when Nanjing in eastern Jiangsu Province announced airport workers were diagnosed with COVID-19. Since then, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, has spread to dozens of cities across the country.
In its counting of COVID-19 cases the Chinese regime doesn’t include infected people not showing obvious symptoms. The regime also claims that anyone found to have COVID-19 who travelled overseas in the past month must have contracted the CCP virus when they were out of China, and count them as imported cases. Local cases end up being those who haven’t visited other countries in the past months and have symptoms. In Zhengyang County in central Henan Province, the regime only announced one person diagnosed with COVID-19 in recent weeks, but have locked down residential compounds and villages. The regime even planned to test all residents in the county again on Friday, although it didn’t report any infections in a first round of tests carried out two days earlier.
As of around midday Monday local time, Zhengyang County government had only announced that it had found one case that tested positive on Aug. 9 and another that was counted as an individual showing symptoms on Thursday. However, the county has strictly controlled people’s movements. On Saturday, local residents in the county said lockdown measures meant they couldn’t leave home and many believed the real infection figure must be larger than what the authorities are admitting. “All of us have been fully vaccinated (with two doses),” Wang, a staff member of Zhengyang train station, said in a phone interview on Saturday. “All of us have been tested for COVID this week. And all of us have to take the second test tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” Wang said. “The outbreak is very severe here.”
The Zhengyang City government announced that no private or business vehicles were allowed on roads from Saturday. Only ambulances, garbage trucks, and other emergency vehicles were allowed to use the roads. A Zhengyang farmer told the Chinese-language Epoch Times on Saturday that even farmers aren’t allowed to leave their homes or work their fields. “If there’s only one infection [in Zhengyang], the regime shouldn’t be so nervous, and shouldn’t ask us to test at night. They said we will be tested again,” the farmer said. “They [the regime] don’t allow us to farm our lands, don’t allow us to visit the city, don’t allow us to visit our friends and relatives. All schools and after-school classes were closed,” she said.
In June 2020, HWs in the Johns Hopkins Health System provided oral informed consent to participate in a longitudinal study of S1 spike antibodies in which serum samples and survey responses were collected every 3 to 4 months. Ethical approval was obtained from the Johns Hopkins University Institutional Review Board. The HWs who participated for a study visit between March 10 and April 8, 2021, were included in this analysis if their serum sample was collected 14 or more days after receiving dose 2 of either mRNA vaccine. Using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (Euroimmun), IgG antibody measurements were determined based on optical density ratios with an upper threshold of 11 based on assay saturation.
Prior SARS-CoV-2 infection was defined as having (1) a positive SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction test result prior to 14 days after dose 2 or (2) S1 spike IgG measurement greater than 1.23 prior to vaccination.5 Participants self-reported symptoms following vaccination as none, mild (injection site pain, mild fatigue, headache), or clinically significant (fatigue, fever, chills). Logistic regression models were used to explore the association of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccine type with symptoms following each dose, adjusting for sex and age. A linear regression model was used to explore the association between magnitude of antibody response (log-transformed) and age, sex, prior infection, vaccine type, symptoms, and time after 2 doses of vaccine. Analyses were performed in R, version 4.0.2 (R Foundation).
Results
A questionnaire and serum sample were collected 14 or more days following dose 2 for 954 HWs. Clinically significant symptoms were reported by 52 of the 954 (5%) after dose 1 and 407 (43%) after dose 2. After adjusting for prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, age, and sex, the odds of clinically significant symptoms following either dose were higher among participants who received the Moderna vs the Pfizer vaccine (dose 1: odds ratio [OR], 1.83; 95% CI, 0.96-3.50; dose 2: OR, 2.43; 95% CI, 1.73-3.40) (Table). Prior SARS-CoV-2 exposure was associated with increased odds of clinically significant symptoms following dose 1 (OR, 4.38; 95% CI, 2.25-8.55) but not dose 2 (OR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.36-0.99), after controlling for vaccine type, age, and sex.
Regardless of symptoms, the vast majority of participants (953 of 954, greater than 99.9%) developed spike IgG antibodies 14 or more days following dose 2; 1 participant who was taking immunosuppressant medication did not develop IgG antibodies. Reporting clinically significant symptoms, age younger than 60 years, female sex, receipt of Moderna vaccine, and prior SARS-CoV-2 exposure were independently associated with higher median IgG measurements, after adjusting for time after dose 2.
Martin Kulldorff started relying on LinkedIn to share news and views on COVID-19 policy after Twitter suspended the Harvard Medical School professor for a month for questioning the protective power of masks. Now the Microsoft-owned professional social network is scrutinizing his posts, going so far as to remove two for violating its misinformation policy. It’s at least the second action LinkedIn has taken this summer against a vaccine scientist who questioned COVID-19 orthodoxy. It suspended Robert Malone, who credits himself as the inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, for alleging dangers from the “spike protein” in mRNA vaccines, citing heart-inflammation reports in some vaccinated young people and highlighting Big Tech censorship and conflicts of interest. A LinkedIn “senior executive” personally apologized to him for wrongful removal, Malone said.
Kulldorff made a similar cost-benefit argument against mandatory COVID vaccinations for young people in a June op-ed. He directed Twitter followers to find the op-ed on his LinkedIn page because “Twitter does not allow vaccine scientists to freely discuss vaccines.” Now he’s directing Linkedin followers to find him on Twitter, though the scientist confirmed to Just the News that he is concerned about further censorship there, “so I self-censor on Twitter.” One of Kulldorff’s Harvard Med colleagues spoke against LinkedIn for the censorship. “The point is not whether a minority viewpoint is right,” bioethics professor Jonathan Darrow, who cowrote a journal article with Kulldorff last year, wrote in an email. If such views are silenced, “public health options may be closed off prematurely, matters may be erroneously believed to be settled, and needed research may never be conducted.”
[..] COVID-19 orthodoxy has “unjustifiably tarnished” the reputations of scientists such as Stanford University’s John Ioannidis, “one of the most well-respected luminaries” in evidence-based medicine, Darrow said. Ioannidis lost that respect “because he publicly presented data about COVID’s infection fatality rate that were politically unpopular.” Censorship is also “communicable,” according to Darrow, “potentially tipping the scales of public judgment one way or the other and leading to a downward spiral of intolerance in which minority views are increasingly suppressed.”
The suspension of flights leaving Kabul has left countless civilians at the mercy of the Taliban. But even if flights resume, Afghans fleeing the country will still need to test negative for Covid, according to a baffling report. Soon after the Taliban seized the Afghan capital on Sunday, hundreds of civilians began to pour into Kabul’s international airport in hopes of being airlifted to safety. But by Monday morning, commercial airlines had halted operations in the Afghan capital due to gunfire around the air hub – caused at least in part by US soldiers firing warning shots at civilians gathering on the tarmac. But the suspension of regular outbound flights is just one of several hurdles facing Afghans seeking a one-way ticket out of the country: airlines operating in the Afghan capital ask for passengers to provide a negative coronavirus test.
The arguably ill-timed flight requirement was spotted at the end of an Atlantic article chronicling the frustrating story of an Afghan interpreter, Khan, and his family as they try to secure safe passage out of the country. “Today, Sunday, the Taliban are in Kabul… The neighborhood where Khan was renting a room has become dangerous, and he and his family have fled, walking six miles to another hiding place. He needs to find a facility that will administer the Covid-19 tests required by the airlines. He needs to get his family to the airport. He needs two more days,” reads the last paragraph of the article.
World number three Stefanos Tsitsipas said he would only get the Covid-19 vaccine if it became mandatory to compete in tennis. While the men’s ATP Tour has publicly encouraged players to get vaccinated, the 23-year-old Greek is among those who still have reservations. “No one has told me anything. No one has made it a mandatory thing to be vaccinated,” he told reporters, when asked if he would seek a vaccine while competing in the US. “At some point I will have to, I’m pretty sure about it, but so far it hasn’t been mandatory to compete, so I haven’t done it, no,” added Tsitsipas, who received a first-round bye in the Masters 1000 tournament in Cincinnati.
He reached the French Open final in June but suffered a shock, first-round exit at Wimbledon, where he told reporters he found it challenging to live and compete in the Covid-19 “bubble.” The Covid-19 vaccine has divided opinion within tennis. World number one Novak Djokovic said in April he hoped the Covid-19 vaccine would not become mandatory for players to compete and has declined to answer questions regarding his own vaccination status. However, fellow 20-time Grand Slam winners Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal feel athletes need to play their part to get life back to some form of normality.
Federer said in May that he received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, while Nadal said: “The only way out of this nightmare is vaccination. Our responsibility as human beings is to accept it. “I know there is a percentage of people who will suffer from side effects, but the effects of the virus are worse.” Spectators will not be allowed to attend qualifying rounds at this month’s U.S. Open due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) said last week. The USTA previously said it would allow full fan capacity for the main part of the tournament.
The geopolitical value of Afghanistan is no less than that of Taiwan island. Around Afghanistan, there are the US’ three biggest geopolitical rivals – China, Russia and Iran. In addition, Afghanistan is a bastion of anti-US ideology. The withdrawal of US troops from there is not because Afghanistan is unimportant. It’s because it has become too costly for Washington to have a presence in the country. Now the US wants to find a better way to use its resources to maintain its hegemony in the world. Taiwan is probably the US’ most cost-effective ally in East Asia. There is no US military presence on the island of Taiwan. The way the US maintains the alliance with Taiwan is simple: It sells arms to Taiwan while encouraging the DPP authorities to implement anti-mainland policies through political support and manipulation.
As a result, it has caused a certain degree of depletion between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits. And what Washington has to do is only to send warships and aircraft near the Straits from time to time. In general, the US does not have to spend a penny on Taiwan. Instead, it makes money through arms sales and forced pork and beef sales to the island. This is totally a profitable geopolitical deal for Washington. Once a cross-Straits war breaks out while the mainland seizes the island with forces, the US would have to have a much greater determination than it had for Afghanistan, Syria, and Vietnam if it wants to interfere. A military intervention of the US will be a move to change the status quo in the Taiwan Straits, and this will make Washington pay a huge price rather than earn profit.
Some people on the island of Taiwan hype that the island is different from Afghanistan, and that the US wouldn’t leave them alone. Indeed, the island is different from Afghanistan. But the difference is the deeper hopelessness of a US victory if it gets itself involved in a cross-Straits war. Such a war would mean unthinkable costs for the US, in front of which the so-called special importance of Taiwan is nothing but wishful thinking of the DPP authorities and secessionist forces on the island.
Afghans have no confidence in the US and US-supported regimes. I believe their distrust reflects the fact that the entire world has lost confidence in the US: Editor-in-Chief Hu Xijin #HuSayspic.twitter.com/yrcLPPxAwf
This weekend the US experienced another “Saigon moment,” this time in Afghanistan. After a 20 year war that drained trillions from Americans’ pockets, the capital of Afghanistan fell without a fight. The corrupt Potemkin regime that the US had been propping up for two decades and the Afghan military that we had spent billions training just melted away. The rush is on now to find somebody to blame for the chaos in Afghanistan. Many of the “experts” doing the finger-pointing are the ones most to blame. Politicians and pundits who played cheerleader for this war for two decades are now rushing to blame President Biden for finally getting the US out. Where were they when succeeding presidents continued to add troops and expand the mission in Afghanistan?
The US war on Afghanistan was not lost yesterday in Kabul. It was lost the moment it shifted from a limited mission to apprehend those who planned the attack on 9/11 to an exercise in regime change and nation-building. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks I proposed that we issue letters of marque and reprisal to bring those responsible to justice. But such a limited and targeted response to the attack was ridiculed at the time. How could the US war machine and all its allied profiteers make their billions if we didn’t put on a massive war? So who is to blame for the scenes from Afghanistan this weekend? There is plenty to go around. Congress has kicked the can down the road for 20 years, continuing to fund the Afghan war long after even they understood that there was no point to the US occupation.
There were some efforts by some Members to end the war, but most, on a bipartisan basis, just went along to get along. The generals and other high-ranking military officers lied to their commander-in-chief and to the American people for years about progress in Afghanistan. The same is true for the US intelligence agencies. Unless there is a major purge of those who lied and misled, we can count on these disasters to continue until the last US dollar goes up in smoke. The military industrial complex spent 20 years on the gravy train with the Afghanistan war. They built missiles, they built tanks, they built aircraft and helicopters. They hired armies of lobbyists and think tank writers to continue the lie that was making them rich. They wrapped their graft up in the American flag, but they are the opposite of patriots.
[..] Political control in Afghanistan has returned to the people who fought against those they viewed as occupiers and for what they viewed as their homeland. That is the real lesson, but don’t expect it to be understood in Washington. War is too profitable and political leaders are too cowardly to go against the tide. But the lesson is clear for anyone wishing to see it: the US global military empire is a grave threat to the United States and its future.
Vet
This Afghanistan vet just blew up MSNBC’s entire Biden-simping Afghanistan narrative LIVE ON AIR.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, when asked months ago about the possibility that there might be a “significant deterioration” of the security picture in Afghanistan once the United States withdrew its forces, said, “I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.” Blinken’s Nostradamus moment was somehow one-upped by that of his boss, Joe Biden, who on July 8th had the following exchange with press: “Q: Your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse. BIDEN: That is not true, they did not reach that conclusion… There is going to be no circumstance where you see people lifted off the roof of an embassy… The likelihood that you’re going to see the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”
[..] The pattern is always the same. We go to places we’re not welcome, tell the public a confounding political problem can be solved militarily, and lie about our motives in occupying the country to boot. Then we pick a local civilian political authority to back that inevitably proves to be corrupt and repressive, increasing local antagonism toward the American presence. In response to those increasing levels of antagonism, we then ramp up our financial, political, and military commitment to the mission, which in turn heightens the level of resistance, leading to greater losses in lives and treasure. As the cycle worsens, the government systematically accelerates the lies to the public about our level of “progress.”
Throughout, we make false assurances of security that are believed by significant numbers of local civilians, guaranteeing they will later either become refugees or targets for retribution as collaborators. Meanwhile, financial incentives for contractors, along with political disincentives to admission of failure, prolong the mission. This all goes on for so long that the lies become institutionalized, believed not only by press contracted to deliver the propaganda (CBS’s David Martin this weekend saying with a straight face, “Everybody is surprised by the speed of this collapse” was typical), but even by the bureaucrats who concocted the deceptions in the first place.
The look of genuine shock on the face of Tony Blinken this weekend as he jousted with Jake Tapper about Biden’s comments from July should tell people around the world something important about the United States: in addition to all the other things about us that are dangerous, we lack self-knowledge. Even deep inside the machine of American power, where everyone paying even a modicum of attention over the last twenty years should have known Kabul would fall in a heartbeat, they still believe their own legends. Which means this will happen again, and probably sooner rather than later.
“..if you don’t see this US policy debacle increases the risks of ‘red-line’ incidents in the Asia/Indo-Pacific, perhaps you should look for a desk job at the CIA.”
The US Beltway experts who six weeks ago said the Taliban could not establish an Islamic Emirate for at least a year, and then suddenly revised that down to six weeks, and then to 72 hours, still got it wrong: it happened on Sunday evening. The Afghan president has fled, along with his artificial $88bn “army”, but the actual weapons are now in the hands of the Taliban. Crowds of desperate Afghans are flooding the runway of Kabul airport –requisitioned by the US Army because it surrendered Bagram airbase without warning weeks ago, and the Taliban now control it– in scenes that look like Saigon in 1975. Or, tragically, like the Khmer Rouge entering Phnom Penh in ‘The Killing Fields’ (in Cambodia, a few years later); and there seems a very real risk the comparison won’t stop there.
Yes, markets will try to brush this geopolitical earthquake off: It’s just Afghanistan; It’s a long way away; We never wanted to go on holiday there anyway; They don’t even buy much cheese. There will probably be attempts to talk of a ‘New Taliban’, as we did with New Labour in the UK, brushing over the fact that the latter ‘New’ was vs. 1970’s socialism, and the former is vs. 7th century fundamentalism. Indeed, the Taliban seem to now realize which Western memes make it look more palatable, and are promising to be “inclusive”. They may only need to throw in “diverse”, “equity”, “green”, and “sustainability” for Wall Street to perk up and ask “Are you in favour of free trade and QE?”, and for EU foreign policy representatives to sit next to them.
But what to do? Michael Bloomberg has already penned an editorial that says “The US Can’t Walk Away From Afghanistan”, which is correct: the US *ran* away in the eyes of Afghans. He then Bloombergs that: “Words are easy. Solutions are hard,” and suggests the US continue to fund the Afghan government and army as long as viable (too late!), help people to flee (where?), and use airstrikes and special forces to keep terrorism at bay, which will involve “Cajoling neighbouring countries for intelligence support and basing rights.” (Neighbours like China; Turkmenistan; Tajikistan; Uzbekistan; Iran; and Pakistan.) Hey, words *are* easy! And solutions hard. Yet Bloomberg is right in that this geopolitical nightmare is almost certainly only just beginning.
As noted here on Friday, if you don’t see this US policy debacle increases the risks of ‘red-line’ incidents in the Asia/Indo-Pacific, perhaps you should look for a desk job at the CIA. The US now looks like it is flailing around like a social-media influencer discovering not just a micro-aggression, or that life contains people who don’t agree with you, but that there are people who aren’t even on Twitter that can punch you in the face and break your nose and teeth (and far, far worse). Geopolitically, opportunists of all stripes may now be considering if they may not be able to earn theirs, so to speak, by kicking the US while it is down. And yet the US is clearly swinging most of what is still the world’s most formidable military muscle squarely towards the Asia/Indo-Pacific region, and will almost certainly not want to be seen to ‘do a Kabul’ in that jurisdiction too. Or a Nord-Stream 2. Or an Iran.
Well, we’ve become an ossified, administrative nomenklatura of Deep State flunkies as the Soviets were, and lately we’re just as lawless as they used to be, constitution-wise — e.g., the abolition of property rights via the CDC’s rent moratorium… the prolonged jailing in solitary confinement of January 6 political prisoners… the introduction of internal “passports.” The USA is running on fumes economically as the Soviets were. Our dominant party leadership has aged into an embarrassing gerontocracy. Is it our turn to collapse? Kind of looks like it. The days ahead are liable to be a rough ride. Surely China has taken the measure of our Woke military and is weighing the seizure of Taiwan in our moment of signal weakness.
No more computer chips for you, Uncle Sam! Do we come to Taiwan’s defense with guns blazing, or perhaps nukes? And what if that doesn’t work out so well? I’ll tell you what: a major geopolitical reordering of things, leaving us… where? Unable to enforce our will around the world as has been the case for eighty years. Floundering. Friendless. Broke. Broken! Of course, the domestic situation in our land has not been so fraught and overwrought since 1861. Everything is politicized, which is to say: used as a truncheon to beat-up adversaries and, let’s face it, mostly in the sense of Left against Right. This is especially true for the Covid-19 soap opera, which more and more pits the sanctimoniously vaccinated “progressives” against the recalcitrant conservative no-vax free-choicers — that is, coercive government trying to force supposedly free citizens to accept a pretty dubious experimental medical treatment.
Since when did the American Left become so pro-tyranny, and how’d that even happen? I have friends and relatives — I’m sure you do, too — who knocked themselves out in the 1960s protesting against the war, the government, the FBI, and the CIA… who fought in the streets for free speech and raged against official propaganda — and today they can’t get enough of coercing, punishing, brain-washing, and cancelling their fellow citizens. They’re going so far now as to engineer their vicious narrative to brand their opponents as “domestic terrorists.” Think that’s going to work?
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