The steady progression of my stomach cancer has left me with close to zero energy so I have no energy to blog at the moment. I am however undergoing a form of nuclear medicine today which could fix me. I think it will.
Friday, April 09, 2021
Tuesday, April 06, 2021
Here’s what we know about AstraZeneca and that rare blood clotting disorder
The Thrombosis and Haemostasis Society Australia and New Zealand, the country’s acting chief medical officer and the medical regulator, do not believe there is hard evidence yet of a link between AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine and a rare blood clotting syndrome.
A 44-year-old man who received the AstraZeneca vaccine remains in Melbourne’s Box Hill Hospital with a probable case of the rare syndrome, termed suspected vaccine induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia (VIPIT).
“We cannot say there is a causal link. That’s the bottom line,” said Associate Professor Vivien Chen, lead author of the Thrombosis and Haemostasis Society’s just-released guidance on VIPIT. “This is a new, emerging syndrome. The scientific investigations to show causality have not been done.”
However, Professor Jim Buttery, head of epidemiology and signal detection at the Victorian immunisation safety service, said he now believed there was evidence of a link.
“Although not conclusively proven yet, it is likely there is a causal link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and this rare subset of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia,” he told The Age via email.
“Based on the data available to date at the moment it appears the UK detected 30 cases from 18 million doses of vaccine, approximately 1 in 500,000 doses.”
Available evidence suggests the syndrome is extremely rare. Norway has reported a rate of 1 in every 25,000 doses, Germany has reported a rate of 1 in 100,000, while Europe’s overall figures are 1 in 210,000. Britain has recorded a much lower rate: 30 reported cases from 18.1 million AstraZeneca injections – around 1 in 500,000.
In comparison, a 65-year-old has between a 1 or 2 in 100 chance of dying if infected with COVID-19, with that risk continuing to rise with age.
The European Medicines Agency and Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration say the benefits of the vaccine continue to outweigh any risks.
Initially, much of the focus was whether AstraZeneca’s vaccine may raise the overall risk of blood clots. There is now evidence to show this is not the case. However, that concern turned out to be something of a red herring.
Our blood is filled with platelet cells, which are able to clot together when we are bleeding and clog the wound. This is why you stop bleeding soon after cutting yourself.
Cases of VIPIT are characterised by four things: low levels of platelets, high levels of blood clotting breakdown products, the formation of blood clots, and the presence of a specific antibody that over-activates platelets in the blood.
“It’s predominantly blood clots in what we would call unusual places,” said Dr Chen.
The unusual antibodies are a hallmark of the syndrome. They activate the platelets, which has the dual effect of causing blood clots to form while also removing other platelets from the bloodstream.
“There are several mechanisms by which the antibodies could develop , and as yet we don’t know the exact mechanism,” said Professor Paul Monagle, a paediatric haematologist at the University of Melbourne who is studying the syndrome.
“One possibility is it is creating antibodies, and those antibodies are recognising some sequence on the platelets, instead of the vaccine.”
Potential risk factors also remain unclear. Most of the cases reported so far were in women younger than 55.
That has led several European countries to stop giving AstraZeneca to people aged under 60. However, it could be that age and gender are not risk factors. Many European countries gave AstraZeneca to younger groups first, as well as healthcare workers – of which a large proportion are women.
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Scientists reworking abandoned University of Queensland COVID-19 vaccine
University of Queensland scientists are secretly reworking their cancelled COVID vaccine after a new study revealed it could have been the world’s best weapon in the fight against the deadly virus.
The University of Queensland’s abandoned COVID vaccine could have been the world’s best weapon in the fight against the deadly virus, with a new study revealing it was effective after just one jab and could be stored at fridge temperature.
Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, which are being relied on to protect the nation, require two doses each – a huge logistical challenge which is further complicated by Pfizer needing to be stored at -70C.
UQ’s crack vaccine team is now working behind the scenes to move the vaccine technology forward after the research, released today, showed if it was reworked and problems ironed out it could still be a boon in the fight against COVID-19 and future global novel viruses.
“We are working day to day and moving the technology forward but we are trying to stay under the radar as the focus needs to be on the AstraZeneca vaccine that is being rolled out as it is our best line of defence,” the professor said.
The local vaccination trial was unceremoniously terminated last year after some patients recorded false-positive HIV results.
This was due to the trial’s unique ‘clamp’ technology that fused two fragments of a protein found in HIV.
When the vaccine was administered these proteins prompted the production of antibodies that were picked up in HIV tests.
But the release of new “success” data shows the technology is highly effective after just one jab and is stable at fridge temperature – something the successful Pfizer vaccine doesn’t achieve.
The research Clinical & Transitional Immunology was published on behalf of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology.
All of Queensland was behind the UQ team who worked night and day to fast-track their COVID-19 vaccine.
Human trials began last July with 120 volunteers in Brisbane.
Due to the race for time to find a protective vaccine, in December CSL decided to cancel further development of the vaccine.
Then Prof Young said that while his team was “devastated”, they would pick themself up and keep going.
Dr Russell Basser from Seqirus, a CSL company, said then that public confidence was a big driver in the decision to shelve development of the UQ vaccine.
“We have come to a mutual agreement with the Government. Public confidence is critical and if there were no other vaccines in the works we may have persisted. Even though the vaccine was safe “the burden to move forward was too great,” he said.
The UQ vaccine was one of four the Federal Government had committed to purchasing with plans to produce 51m doses.
The study findings were from the university’s original animal trials.
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Democrats: Stupid Or Liars?
Abrams is Georgia’s Governor-in-exile. This gap-toothed hypocrite has become the go-to stercoraceous for liberal media on all things “voter suppression.” She’s also raised a small fortune for the “cause,” which is a bit like getting rich off pre-selling unicorns.
In the course of amassing that fortune, she’s had to become unburdened by reality. First, the reality that the 2018 election was stolen from her. She knows she lost fair and square, but her ego wouldn’t allow her to accept it. Now, her relevance won’t allow her to admit it. Everything she is depends on that lie continuing.
In the course of building that lie, Abrams may well have begun to believe it. You can only have so much smoke blown up where last night’s dinner resides before you begin to crave a cigarette. But that lie has now backfired.
Stacey Abrams has cost the people she hopes to lead the opportunity to honor a hero, she’s cost vendors and merchants a lot of money, and she has embarrassed the state. Nothing she has said about the new Georgia voter integrity law is true, and those who don’t know it now will eventually.
The only way she could undo the damage of chasing away the All-Star Game is to admit she’s been lying. She can’t do that. So is she more stupid or liar?
Joe Biden has slightly more of an excuse. He’s stupid, always has been. But he’s also always been a liar. Then there’s the possibility that in his diminished capacity his staff has simply lied to him. Not being very bright, he wouldn’t question the absurdity of Republicans imposing “Jim Crow 2.0” or “Jim Crow on steroids” when briefed on the law. Never a deep thinker, it wouldn’t occur to him to ask relevant questions like, “How do these minor changes to the law compare to the voting laws in my home state?” Turns out, not too favorably…for Delaware.
In reality, even a child reading the actual text of the law would see it’s much easier to vote in Georgia now than it has ever been to vote in Delaware. Easy access to absentee voting, drop boxes, and more time for early voting (by a lot) than the President’s home state. If Georgia is “oppressive,” why has he remained silent his entire life about the oppression in his home?
Because he doesn’t know, or he doesn’t care. Stupid or liar?
The liberal media, naturally, has unquestioningly parroted every Democrat talking point on the subject. MSNBC is the “Jim Crow 2.0” network. From the goons on Morning Joe to the frauds at night, they steadfastly insist having to write your driver’s license number on an absentee ballot is the modern equivalent of separate drinking fountains. Personally, I believe black people are capable of anything, particularly the simple task of easily proving you are who you say you are. But then holding anyone who would willingly marry Mika Brzezinski, especially after having failed so spectacularly in 2 previous marriages, as your standard bearer lends itself to thinking very little of the intelligence of everyone else.
As corporations cave to this unholy alliance of ignoramuses, you’d think someone would actually read the damn law and care that they’re all getting it wrong. It’s not that hard, even one fact-checker at the Washington Post was able to do it, awarding Biden their highest score on their BS-meter.
So are these people stupid or liars? And how much of each are they? There’s no wrong answer, just as there is no good answer. It just is. It’s who they are.
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2021/04/04/democrats-stupid-or-liars-n2587370
****************************************IN BRIEF
Bipartisan worry grows over national debt, which now totals $85,210 per person (Just the News)
We're shocked — shocked! Cities that foolishly slashed police funding inundated by spike in homicides (Washington Times)
A record-setting 19,000 unaccompanied migrant minors crossed into the U.S. in March (PM) | Border Patrol predicts more than one million migrant encounters in 2021 (Hot Air)
Some 533 million Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online (Insider)
USAID failed to ensure Palestinian aid dollars kept from terrorists (Free Beacon)
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis formally bans "vaccine passports" with executive order (PM)
With lockdowns easing, economy added 916,000 jobs in March as service-sector hiring booms (Fox Business)
Derek Chauvin trial enters second week, will feature testimony from Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo (UPI)
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signs law allowing permitless handgun carry (Des Moines Register)
Voter identification requirements are supported by 72% of the public (AP-NORC)
Keep your powder dry: 4.69 million gun background checks break single-month record in March (AMN)
What could possibly go wrong? U.S. grant to Wuhan lab to enhance bat-based coronaviruses was never scrutinized by HHS review board (Daily Caller)
Ukraine says Russia massing troops on border (AFP)
Policy: Four reasons gun control can't solve America's violence problem (FEE)
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS -- Daily)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Monday, April 05, 2021
Unbelievable: Biden Wants to Spend $20 Billion to Destroy 'Racist' Highways with His Infrastructure Bill
President Joe Biden’s $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan is a wretched mess of bloat, giveaways and Green New Deal-style posturing. It intends to tax-and-spend our way out of the pandemic funk by raising taxes on businesses already battered by lockdowns and spending that money on liberal agenda items that make Democrats feel warm and fuzzy but do little to make America’s infrastructure better.
If you want an object lesson in just how broken this plan is, look no further than the New Orleans neighborhood of Tremé, where Biden would spend federal money to destroy a highway that’s already been built in the name of “advanc[ing] racial equity and environmental justice.”
Or look to Syracuse, New York, where the same thing would happen to a section of Interstate 81.
Or Houston, where an Interstate 45 expansion was paused recently at the behest of Biden’s Department of Transportation because some in the community deemed the expansion to be “racist.”
These are the priorities of an infrastructure plan that Biden said, in his opening pitch Wednesday, would “grow the economy, make us more competitive around the world, promote our national security interest and put us in a position to win the global competition with China in the upcoming years.”
In New Orleans, it would do this by tearing down the Claiborne Expressway. Quoth The Washington Post’s Ian Duncan, the highway, built in 1968, is “an example of a historic inequity that President Biden’s new infrastructure plan would seek to address through billions in new spending.”
Tremé resident Amy Sally has waged a campaign for years to have the expressway, which cuts through a predominately black neighborhood, removed.
Duncan said Sally “struggled to get support from local leaders. Neighbors considered the quest to be wishful thinking.”
“Nobody thinks you can get rid of a highway,” she told The Post.
They do when the president thinks a fund that apportions billions to destroy existing infrastructure in the name of equity is an example of “building back better.”
“I’m floored,” she said Wednesday. “I’m thrilled to hear President Biden would call out the Claiborne Expressway as a racist highway.”
In fact, according to E&E News, the $621 billion that the Biden administration wants to spend on infrastructure is meant to address “historic inequities and build the future of transportation infrastructure.”
“The President’s plan includes $20 billion for a new program that will reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments and ensure new projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access,” a fact sheet from the White House read.
It name-checked two highways in particular: “Too often, past transportation investments divided communities — like the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans or I-81 in Syracuse — or it left out the people most in need of affordable transportation options.”
In the case of I-81, color Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York thrilled.
“It is wonderful for Syracuse that President Biden listened to us and included the vital I-81 reformation as a poster child for enlightened infrastructure policy, calling for new investment to help communities pay for tearing down urban highways to reconnect and transform neighborhoods previously left behind,” Schumer said in a statement, according to Syracuse.com.
“The $2 billion plan would reroute highway traffic onto nearby Interstate 481 and rebuild part of Interstate 690 that crosses downtown,” the outlet reported.
The argument is that these highways, though intended to reduce travel times, were built through black neighborhoods.
The paradox, however, is that I-81 and the Claiborne Expressway, part of Interstate 10, were built as part of the massive Interstate Highway System project — mentioned not infrequently by Biden on Wednesday as a polestar for his new infrastructure plan.
For example, he said the initiative is “not a plan that tinkers around the edges, it’s a once-in-a-generation investment in America, unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the Interstate Highway System and the space race decades ago.
“In fact, it’s largest American jobs investment since World War II. It’ll create millions of jobs, good-paying jobs. It’ll grow the economy, make us more competitive around the world, promote our national security interest and put us in a position to win the global competition with China in the upcoming years.”
And it’ll do this by destroying highways to build highways. It’s Keynesian ditch-digging, all in the name of racial equity.
Not that we shouldn’t have seen this coming. In December, Pete Buttigieg, then the nominee to head the Department of Transportation, said this on social media:
“Black and brown neighborhoods have been disproportionately divided by highway projects or left isolated by the lack of adequate transit and transportation resources.
“In the Biden-Harris administration, we will make righting these wrongs an imperative.”
In early March, we saw the nascent practical effects of this when the Department of Transportation effectively put a hold on an expansion of Interstate 45 in Houston, first by sending a letter to the Texas Department of Transportation asking it to stop the project and then by sending the Federal Highway Administration to sue Texas, as Bloomberg reported.
“Basically we’ve for decades been prioritizing highways over the ability to get around. We need to be smarter about this,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said during a news conference, according to Bloomberg. (County judges are basically county executives in Texas.)
“The way we build should not focus on what’s easiest for cars,” Hidalgo said. “It should focus on what improves quality of life. That is not only the right thing to do but necessary to make sure our region remains competitive as the world continues to evolve and we work to retain and recruit the smartest people into our region.”
However, many of the concerns were focused around racial equity.
In a letter to the Texas DOT, Air Alliance Houston said the I-45 extension would “have a severe and disparate impact on generational Black and Hispanic/Latinx neighborhoods and Black and Hispanic/Latinx individuals.”
“Others wrote similar letters, including U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and the community organization Texas Housers,” Bloomberg reported.
“Those letters are what prompted the federal action from the highway administration, which says it will evaluate concerns raised under Title VI, the provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that forbids discrimination on ‘the ground of race, color, or national origin’ in federally funded programs or activities.”
At least the I-45 extension hasn’t been built and addressing it doesn’t necessarily appear to be a part of the Biden administration’s $20 billion bulldozer equity grab-bag — at least not yet.
However, it’s a glimpse into the mindset that will undergird one of the most misguided parts of a thoroughly injudicious infrastructure plan that deals with actual infrastructure problems (when it deals with them at all) through the lens of social engineering.
There’s another irony there, though: These highways exist because of the Robert Moses-style social engineering that went into designing projects such as the Interstate Highway System.
Back then, automobile transport was seen as the wave of the future. The engineers and bureaucrats who mapped out the system didn’t have the racial sensitivities of 2021, but they were also utopian do-gooders who believed that by breaking a few eggs, you’d get a whole lot more in return. If you had to run a highway through a neighborhood, sorry — but fast and accessible car travel makes things better for everyone else.
Such are the pitfalls of central planning and a government determined to “go big” at all costs.
The infrastructure is there, however, and it serves its purpose. Now, the new enlightened Robert Moseses of the Biden administration want to spend $20 billion to tear it down because our 21st-century utopian do-gooders have come to the conclusion that, at a time we’re bleeding money like a drunken poker player, what our nation’s infrastructure needs is less infrastructure.
Then, presumably, we’ll need more infrastructure where the old infrastructure used to be, except more equitable.
Keep in mind, this is only $20 billion of $2.25 trillion in spending that’s being proposed. The same misguided spirit permeates the entire plan — which aims to build, repair and replace infrastructure through the lens of ideology under the assumption that’ll make America competitive.
Of course, even though the plan is oft-compared to the Interstate Highway System, it’ll lead to no externalities like these “racist” highways in the Interstate Highway System that are such a blight on equity they need to be torn down.
Rest assured, our benevolent central planners know better these days. You can trust them to socially engineer with the $2.25 trillion they want — more than $6,800 for every American — with the same wisdom they plan on spending that $20 billion in places like New Orleans and Syracuse.
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How To Destroy a Nation
One year has passed since restaurants, bars, places of worship, and our children’s schools were shut down by power-hungry politicians. Government officials around the nation, blatantly ignoring the Constitution and preying on the fears of Americans, imposed draconian lockdowns that changed our way of life.
It was also one year ago that millions of us began to realize how easily our most basic liberties could be taken away by our elected leaders.
Before March of last year, most of us believed we had rights enshrined in the Constitution and a free market economy.
We thought that government agencies would publish information intended to help us, rather than take away our freedoms.
We trusted schools and teachers to have our children’s best interest at heart. There was no doubt that America was the greatest nation in the world.
Unfortunately, the America we believed in was a fantasy.
The freedoms we enjoyed were an illusion, and our trust in government was misplaced. Millions of Americans quickly learned that their government could force them to stay in their homes indefinitely, mandate masks on the beach, and cancel church services.
Government officials even prevented their constituents from hosting Super Bowl parties in their own homes.
And that’s not all. Governments can hack into and track phones without a warrant, so the right to privacy is a mirage. Freedom of speech only applies if we don’t question government edicts or the prevailing media narrative--if we do, we are suppressed. Just ask Dr. Pierre Kory of the FLCCC Alliance, who advocated for the use of non-vaccine therapeutics that greatly improved outcomes for patients who contracted COVID-19. Copies of his Senate testimony last year were quickly removed from YouTube and C-SPAN.
It doesn’t end there. We thought we had a right to keep our businesses open and allow customers to assess their risk, but this was also an illusion.
Throughout the pandemic, bureaucrats have claimed total authority in deciding which businesses stay open and even in which items customers are allowed to purchase.
Some of the Americans that refused to comply with ridiculous, unscientific mandates were jailed in the name of "public safety."
Throughout our nation’s history, Americans dutifully paid taxes, voted, and drove on the right side of the street because we believed we had a contract with our government and with each other.
Over the past year, we’ve seen that this "contract" is nothing more than a collectively-held myth.
We thought that the government existed to protect our liberties, deriving its authority from the consent of the governed. But now, if our elected leaders suspend our freedom indefinitely, we’re expected to comply, no questions asked.
Many of our leaders insisted, and continue to insist, that the COVID-19 pandemic warranted an unprecedented expansion of government authority. Without this, they claimed that millions of Americans would die.
Of course, they were wrong. States that implemented the restrictions our nation’s "experts" recommended have had similar or worse COVID-19 numbers relative to states that remained open.
But it turns out that scaring millions of Americans was enough to make this power grab a reality. The words written in the Constitution, intended to constrain government and preserve individual liberty, proved to be largely meaningless. Political leaders forced us to swallow the destruction of our way of life in the name of "safety."
But as Benjamin Franklin said: "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
A year after the first lockdowns were imposed, Americans should ask some difficult questions, the answers to which are becoming increasingly clear: Were the lockdowns justified? Did we really need to close our schools?
Were social distancing and mask mandates effective?
A sober examination of America’s response to this pandemic is needed, not just because it was used as the justification to ruin countless lives, but because it’s the only way we’ll learn the right lessons from this unprecedented event.
There is no doubt that COVID-19 has devastated America, but it’s the government’s response to this pandemic, not the virus itself, that has taught us how to destroy a nation.
https://www.newsmax.com/adambrandon/freedomworks-economic-america/2021/03/30/id/1015757/
****************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS -- Daily)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Sunday, April 04, 2021
After Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx Criticized the COVID Task Force, Dr. Scott Atlas Couldn't Stay Silent
I just finished an interview with Dr. Scott Atlas. Dr. Atlas was a member of President Donald Trump's COVID task force. He's a well-known health care policy advisor, a Senior Fellow at Standford's Hoover Institution and was Chief of Neuroradiology at the Stanford University Medical Center.
He's also been an outspoken critic of the widespread lockdown strategy recommended by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx and employed by the vast majority of American governors over the past year.
Generally, when I sit down for an interview with a figure like Dr. Atlas, my goal is to elicit some response or statement that separates this "media hit" from any other interview Dr. Atlas may have committed to. The thought process is: "If I can generate one good headline out of this interview, I've done good work."
Well, Dr. Atlas went above and beyond here. He is so candid and so direct in his observations and criticisms of his former colleagues and those now directing policy for the Biden White House I'm at a loss as to where to begin.
One good headline? How about several?
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Dr. Scott Atlas: The COVID Vaccine Was NOT Fauci's Triumph
O'CONNOR: Could you lend a little bit of context to Dr. Fauci taking credit for the vaccine?
ATLAS: The vaccine development was first initiated by the president's realization that he was going to do what turned out to be a very smart thing, which was to take the risk away from the company's developing the vaccines and just paying for hundreds of millions of doses and development and production in advance of them even having the vaccine developed, and that was a smart gamble. But then after that, the point of the development and vaccine distribution and everything was done by other people.
Dr. Slaoui was in charge of the vaccine development program. General Perna and FEMA and other people were in charge of logistics and distribution planning. Alex Azar the Secretary of HHS and his team were overall in charge of Operation Warp Speed.
The name that you mentioned earlier is missing from the list of people that were involved in the vaccine.
O'CONNOR: That'd be Dr. Anthony Fauci. I just want to quote him, "When I saw what happened in New York City almost overrunning our healthcare system, that's when it became very clear: the decision we made on January 10th to go all out and develop a vaccine may have been the best decision that I've ever made with regard to intervention as a director of the institute." From your first-hand knowledge of this situation, this was not his decision?
ATLAS: For him to claim credit for that is sort of unconscionable.
Dr. Scott Atlas: CNN Did Not Invite Me for The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out Program
O'CONNOR: Several other doctors that were involved in the Trump team, they're featured on CNN... by the way, I noticed you weren't there. Did they invite you to be a part of that conversation about your first-hand experience as a doctor on the COVID-19 task force under President Trump?
ATLAS: No, but they did ask for comments, which I chose not to give because there's no point in giving comments to people who are going to lie and distort about what you said so... no point.
Dr. Scott Atlas: Birx, Fauci "Despicable People Lying to Distort History"
O'CONNOR: It sure seems like they had a whole lot of criticism about the people that they were working with in the White House that they never voiced when they actually had some level of influence and could have made a difference if they really had those problems.
ATLAS: It's more than that. It's really a completely false story that they're trying to perpetrate to the public. Dr. Birx, Dr. Fauci, the other people... their decisions, their recommendations were to do the lockdowns, the curfews, the significant restrictions on freedom, the school closures, all of these things. And those recommendations were then implemented all over the country, with some rare exceptions of a couple of states like Florida or South Dakota. Their recommendations were followed by the governors who did the implementation.
They're lying basically, they're trying to distance themselves from responsibility. This is obvious. They're trying to distance themselves from the accountability as if someone who complained or criticized the policies that they recommended were to blame for the implementation of the policies that they recommended. In other words, it's just like "Alice in Wonderland" here, except it's worse because it's really just people, despicable people lying and trying to distort history. They're rewriting history, you know. The reality is Dr. Birx was the task force coordinator, her recommendations were being given to the governors. Dr. Fauci's recommendations... they're all over the media giving the recommendations. We know what they said and what they said was done, you know. So this is the historical fact, and no matter what they say to change that, you know, I'm sorry, but the truth matters.
Dr. Scott Atlas: Florida Did Better Than Other States By Refusing Lockdowns
O'CONNOR: You mentioned Florida here as being one of the outliers with regard to not, you know, taking as Gospel and not taking this directive from Dr. Birx and the team with regard to lockdowns. They did go a different direction, and I mean, the data is in is it not?
ATLAS: This is the point. There should be no mistake here. The burden of saying "you did something good" is on the people who did these impositions of unprecedented restrictions on individuals... closing medical care, closing schools, all these things. If they cannot prove that they did something better than the people who governed in a more sensible way, they failed. Those policies failed. Florida, for instance, they opened their schools. All Florida schools, 100%, are open in-person and have been so for months. There are still options for parents if they want to do distance education. But, in terms of the policy, it's open. There are no mask mandates in Florida. The businesses are not closed like the people who recommended the lockdowns, and it turns out not only did Florida do just as well, they actually did better if you look at the excess mortality rate increase - in other words, of the deaths over and above what would have been predicted without the pandemic - and the percentage increase... Florida did better than 2/3 of the states, and the states that they did better than all did the lockdowns.
Dr. Scott Atlas: We Have a Massive Public Health Crisis Because of Lockdowns
ATLAS: We have a massive public health crisis because of the lockdown. Four hundred thousand new deaths from tuberculosis this year in the world because of diversion of medical resources. One hundred and thirty million new people in abject starvation level poverty in the world because of the diversion of lockdown resources and blockage of international economic development. We had half the people in the United States almost... had chemotherapy skipped, their chemotherapy for cancer, you know, we missed something like up to 78% of cancers that would newly be diagnosed because they didn't come in for their screening. We had one out of four people 18 to 24-years-old that thought about killing themselves. We had a 300% increase in teenage medical visits from teenagers to doctors for self-harm. I mean, this is a massively destructive policy. the question isn't even did it work or not, the question is what are we doing here? We're killing people, destroying people, particularly the low-income people and, you know, while the rich guys and the affluent people sit at home and work from their computer, and you know, "it's inconvenient" as Dr. Fauci said.
Dr. Scott Atlas: CDC Dir. Walensky Should be FIRED for "Impending Doom" Hysterics
O'CONNOR: You've said it's no longer acceptable to be able to make these decisions and claim you're just doing it out of fear. Just this week, we had our current head of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, say that she was - these are her words - "scared" and she felt "impending doom" about where we're headed. From a public policy standpoint, and also just based on where the numbers and data are, is that kind of language helpful number one and even justified?
ATLAS: The person should be fired immediately for saying something like that. That is completely unprofessional and honestly unacceptable for a leader of public policy to say something like that. I don't even know how to express... I've had people from all over the world... world-renowned medical scientists and infectious disease and in public policy, contact me and say, "What is going on in the United States?" This kind of talk disqualifies someone from being in a position of leadership in my view, completely and totally.
Dr. Scott Atlas: Empirical Data Proves Mask Mandates Don't Work
O'CONNOR: I'd love you to comment on the state of Wisconsin. The Supreme Court just struck down a statewide mask mandate and, of course, you know, we're getting hysterical responses about this... "If you don't have a state mandate to wear masks that just means we're going to have another spread of the virus and it's going to be devastating!" At this point, your impression of the masks and how it's been implemented, and the effectiveness of a mandate. There's one thing to think that it's good to wear a mask, there's a second when the government now says you must wear a mask.
ATLAS: There are two separate issues: one is the issue of a mask themselves and another is the issue of the power of the government. If you just want to talk about the mask themselves, the mask mandates do not work. That's not even necessarily saying that masks don't work, but we know places that have mask mandates did not have an impact. There is no scientific evidence that mask mandates have stopped the spread of the disease. In fact, they did not. Empirically, this is not an opinion it's factual, it's inarguable. The second point is when we see what's going on now, if people are worried that cases are coming up in certain parts of the United States and so the response of these same people is, therefore, the states like Texas or Florida, they should never have said, "Don't have a mass mandate." Why did we not make the obvious observation here that the cases are exploding in places with the mask mandates? They are not exploding in Texas and in Florida like they are in places with the mask mandates like Michigan, for instance. Or in New York, New Jersey, have higher increases in cases right now than the places that we don't have a mask mandate. I don't understand that disconnect between fact here. There's some denial of fact going on.
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Biden Now Admits His Tax Hike Could Include Those Making $200,000
When Joe Biden unveiled his $3 trillion infrastructure bill, he told the American people that no one making less than $400,000 a year would have their taxes raised. He said, “No one making under $400,000 will see their federal taxes go up, period.”
In the immortal words of Independence Day Defense Secretary Albert Nimziki, “That’s not entirely accurate.”
On Friday, the president said that a two-partner family would be impacted if their combined income crosses $400,000. He also claimed that jacking up corporate and business taxes right at the beginning of the recovery from the pandemic “will not slow the economy at all.”
Does anyone else get the feeling that Biden and his advisors are just a bit delusional?
“It is a once-in-a-generation investment in our economic future, a chance to win the future — paid for by asking big corporations, many of which do not pay any taxes at all, just to begin to pay their fair share. And it won’t raise a penny of tax on a family making less than $400,000 a year, no federal tax, no addition,” he said.
New York Post:
The president’s description of the tax hike as applying to any “family” that makes more than $400,000 per year is a significant change from his earlier remarks, and could mean families on the cusp of affluence in areas with high costs of living are impacted.
[…]
In an interview last month with ABC News, Biden said, “If you make less than $400,000, you won’t see one single penny in additional federal tax.”
The number of families with two incomes exceeding $400,000 is a lot more than single taxpayers earning that amount. And if you have two children and a house and live in an expensive real estate market, even $400K doesn’t make one “wealthy.”
But it’s the rise in business taxes that should worry us all. Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, Biden insists that raising taxes doesn’t slow the economy. “Raising taxes, the studies show, will not slow the economy at all,” he said.
When Biden starts talking about corporations and “the wealthy” paying their “fair share” in taxes, be afraid. Be very afraid.
Biden spoke after surprisingly strong job growth figures for March that indicated nearly 916,000 new jobs were created, lowering the unemployment rate to about 6 percent.
Biden’s plan would boost the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent. It was lowered in 2017 by President Donald Trump’s tax reform law from 35 percent. The plan also would impose new taxes on overseas business profits and could include an increase on capital gains taxes on investments like stocks and real estate.
Republicans in Congress oppose tax increases, but Democrats who narrowly hold the House and Senate may attempt to ram through the bill under special budget reconciliation rules that avoid the usual 60 votes needed in the Senate.
Another problem with raising taxes is that it never generates the tax revenue promised by politicians. This has been proved over and over again in Europe when “wealth taxes” have been tried.
A growing economy would probably generate as much tax revenue as Biden’s grandiose tax-raising schemes. Maybe someday, politicians will figure that out.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS -- Daily)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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