Rescued
My summary blog has been restored. My son is a computer whizz. He earns his money fixing computer problems. So I got him onto the job and he found the problem. A file had somehow become corrupted. Links at the foot of today's posts
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CDC and FDA 'altered' Covid guidance and even 'suppressed' findings while under political pressure, bombshell report suggests
Investigators from the watchdog Government Accountability Office (GAO) spoke to more than a dozen directors and managers who worked at the agencies behind the country's pandemic guidance.
They unearthed allegations of 'political interference' in scientific reports, raising fears that research was tampered with.
In its 37-page report, the GAO warned that neither agency had a system in place for reporting allegations of political interference. It also said they had failed to train staff how to spot and report this.
Whistleblowers said they did not speak up at the time for fear of retaliation, because they were unsure how to report the issues or believed leaders were already aware.
This is just the latest in a growing patchwork of reports suggesting politicians influenced 'scientific' papers during the pandemic for their own ends.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration's top medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci declared the U.S. is now 'out of the pandemic phase' of Covid, citing low cases and hospitalizations.
But health experts were quick to question the claim — buried at the end of an interview with PBS' NewsHour — suggesting he may have bungled his words and should only have said the nation was in a phase of 'low hospitalizations'.
In the early phase the White House was accused of waging a war on science, with then-president Donald Trump repeatedly pushing for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports to be amended to support his views, as shown in emails made public by congressional investigators last April.
'A few respondents from CDC and [Food and Drug Administration] FDA stated they felt that the potential political interference they observed resulted in the alteration or suppression of scientific findings,' GAO investigators wrote in the report.
'Some of these respondents believed that this potential political interference may have resulted in the politically motivated alteration of public health guidance or delayed publication of Covid-related scientific findings.'
The GAO report published last week looked into the two agencies, alongside the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — America's top research institution— and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) — in charge of natural disaster response.
All are part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which in February was branded as at 'high risk' for fraud, mismanagement and abuse by the GAO in a separate report.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is at 'high risk' of fraud and mismanagement, a report published in February suggests.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) — which carried out the investigation — also said it was exposed to financial waste and abuse.
They pointed to a lack of leadership at the agency during the Covid pandemic, Zika outbreak and when natural disasters like hurricanes and forest fires sweep the U.S.
The Department is also responsible for the CDC and FDA which 'altered' findings during the pandemic due to political pressure, another report released this month suggests.
It is based on interviews with top-ranking officials at the agencies.
In the latest report, they defined 'political interference' as political influences seeking to 'undermine impartiality... and professional judgement'.
Investigators said they also set up an anonymous hotline for two months to allow employees to report instances, which received 'a few calls'.
No specific cases of altering advice were revealed for confidentiality reasons.
But the GAO mentioned in a footnote emails made public by congressional investigators last April that were sent between Trump officials and employees at the CDC.
They suggested the agency had bowed to political pressure over a study in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR) — a notice that documents current trends in U.S. health.
Former scientific advisor to the then-president Paul Alexander wrote in an email from 2020 that he had succeeded in getting the top line in one of its reports changed. He wrote: 'Small victory, but a victory nonetheless yippee!!!'
In the first year of the pandemic the FDA was also accused of 'grossly misrepresenting' the effectiveness of a blood plasma transfusion for hospitalized Covid patients, in a New York Times article that was also footnoted by the GAO.
Its press release thundered that the treatment was 35 percent effective against death, a figure which Trump branded 'tremendous'.
But scientists were taken aback by the figure, which was not mentioned in the official authorization letter or in the 17-page memo written by its scientist. It was also not in the analysis conducted by the Mayo clinic that was frequently cited.
Recently it has emerged that these transfusions actually provided little benefit to patients infected with Covid, and they are now no longer routinely offered by hospitals.
A state health official also alleged he had been reassigned after refusing to invest federal money in hydroxychloroquine, Stat News reported, which was previously touted by Trump as a possible Covid treatment.
Dr Fauci's comments yesterday were quickly blasted by other health officials, however, with Dr Louise Ivers, a global health expert at Harvard University, retorting 'there is a pandemic'.
The top medical adviser has doubled down on his personal policy of mask wearing and general isolation in spite of his comments yesterday.
He declined an invitation to the prestigious White House Correspondents Association Dinner this Saturday 'because of my individual assessment of my personal risk'.
The GAO report made seven recommendations to the four agencies it investigated for 'political interference'.
These included the agencies setting up a system for reporting potential interference, and training staff to notice and respond to it.
For the report they spoke to two former CDC directors, and four former FDA directors, as well as 17 employees.
The GAO pointed out it had not looked into the allegations to confirm whether political interference had led to changes to the science.
The HHS said in response: 'It is important to differentiate scientifically trained political officials engaging in the legitimate conduct, management, communication and use of science from political officials inappropriately breaching scientific integrity because of political motivations.'
They also 'concurred' with 'the recommendations that [HHS] should ensure that procedures for reporting and addressing potential political interference in scientific decision-making are developed and documented.'
It agreed that employees should be 'trained on how to report allegations of inappropriate political interference in scientific decision-making'.
It follows a report from the GAO in February which branded the HHS — that all four agencies sit under — as 'high risk'.
They warned of a 'lack of leadership and preparedness' in the department for dealing with either Covid or the zika virus outbreak, alongside natural disasters such as hurricanes and wild fires.
The HHS is at risk of financial waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement and other major shortcomings at times when it is required, they said.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://westpsychol.blogspot.com/ (The Psychologist -- backup)
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Friday, April 29, 2022
Thursday, April 28, 2022
Officials approve a Covid drug that does not work
“I am glad for Gilead as well.”
That was Dr. Clifford Lane, a deputy to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) boss Dr. Anthony Fauci, in an April 29, 2020 response to Tomas Cihlar, a senior vice president at the pharmaceutical company Gilead, developer of the drug remdesivir.
As the Epoch Times reports, recently revealed emails show Fauci and NIAID officials “scrambled in April 2020 to answer questions about altering the endpoint” in a trial of remdesivir. Once the drug was declared the new standard of care for COVID-19, as Forbes reported, Gilead’s stock surged more than 16 percent in overnight trading.
Cihlar and Lane had reason to be glad over what Fauci called “quite good news.” In its press release on remdesivir, also known as Veklury, Gilead claims that its FDA-approved drug “can help reduce disease progression across a spectrum of disease severity and enable hospitalized patients to recover faster, freeing up limited hospital resources and saving healthcare systems money.”
Scientific and medical journals were skeptical, to say the least.
As Jon Cohen and Kai Kupferschmidt noted in Science magazine, the European Union cut a deal in October 2020 with Gilead potentially worth $1 billion. Later that month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made remdesivir the first drug to receive approved status for COVID treatment.
The European Union settled on remdesivir pricing—$2,400 for a full course—one week before the Solidarity trial, and was unaware of the results. For its part, the Science authors charge, Gilead “knew the trial was a bust.” That didn’t sit well with Scripps Institute cardiologist Eric Topol.
“This is a very, very bad look for the FDA,” Topol told Science, “and the dealings between Gilead and EU make it another layer of badness.” The EU and American decisions, the Science authors noted, “baffled scientists who have closely watched the clinical trials of remdesivir unfold over the past six months—and who have many questions about remdesivir’s worth.”
One study found that remdesivir “modestly reduced the time to recover from COVID-19 in hospitalized patients with severe illness.” Other studies found remdesivir to have “no impact of treatment on the disease whatsoever.” The fourth and largest study, by the World Health Organization, “showed that remdesivir does not reduce mortality or the time COVID-19 patients take to recover.”
The Science authors cite Jason Pogue of the University of Michigan, president of the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists, that the FDA should not have approved remdesivir. There is not enough evidence that remdesivir works and “more questions than answers about the efficacy of remdesivir in hospitalized patients.”
Gary Schwitzer, publisher of HealthNewsReview.Org, found Fauci’s announcement of remdesivir as the standard of care “troubling.” Schwitzer also cited Dr. Eric Topol, who was “unimpressed” by the Gilead drug. As Schwitzer pointed out, “the primary endpoints or outcomes were shifted by the researchers in the NIH trial” (emphasis added). In the middle of that trial, the endpoint was changed from measuring the effectiveness against death and various forms of hospitalization on day 15 to time to recovery through day 29.
For the general public, Schwitzer wrote, “this is somewhat akin to the football field being shrunk so that the goal line is not 100 yards away but only 50 yards away—after the game has already begun.” And it was only after scientists and journalists pointed to evidence that the goalposts had been moved “that any public discussion or explanation was made by the researchers.”
It was this shift that Fauci and his aides scrambled to answer. In his public statement in April 2020, Fauci said the trial results proved remdesivir “can block the virus” that causes COVID-19, but the NIAID boss didn’t mention the change in endpoint. If anybody thought Fauci was rigging the trial to get the outcome he and Gilead wanted, it would be hard to blame them. And it wouldn’t be the first time.
Fauci’s favored treatment for AIDS was AZT (azidothymidine) marketed as Zidovudine. This DNA chain terminator is highly toxic and does not prevent or cure AIDS. Even so, in 1987, the FDA approved AZT at lightning speed, which disturbed molecular biologist Harvey Bialy, then scientific editor of Biotechnology.
“I can’t see how this drug could be doing anything other than making people very sick,” Bialy said. On the other hand, AZT was making some people very rich. At a price of $8,000 per patient per year, AZT was the most expensive drug ever marketed at the time. After FDA approval, Burroughs Wellcome stock went through the roof.
Fauci’s NIAID funded trials of AZT and other dangerous drugs on foster children in New York, nearly all of them African American or Latino. The BBC told the story in the 2004 documentary Guinea Pig Kids. According to one nurse, some 80 children died in the experiments. (For further reading, see Poison by Prescription: The AZT Story, by John Lauritsen.)
Cohen and Kupferschmidt cite a disproportionately high number of liver and kidney problems in patients receiving remdesivir, compared to other drugs. In The Real Anthony Fauci, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. cites the “toxicity” of remdesivir, Fauci’s “vanity drug.” Remdesivir shows “no clinical efficiency” against COVID, but at approximately $3,000 per treatment, remdesivir is much more expensive than either hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, treatments that Fauci opposes.
As Kennedy explains, Fauci’s deputy Cliff Lane co-chaired the NIH treatment guidelines panel that supervised the remdesivir trials and stood to share in the patent rewards. So Lane was “doubly conflicted.”
“I am glad for Gilead as well,” Lane told Gilead boss Tomas Cihlar in April 2020. As the Epoch Times noted, “the first part of Lane’s response was redacted,” like other NIAID emails obtained by a FOIA request. Whitecoat supremacists enjoy protection from disclosure, on top of their vast power and privilege.
Meanwhile, as the prophet said, “is there no balm in Gilead?” Not this time, but there is a great deal of money. As Brian Robertson recently explained, “following the money has been the key to uncovering the corruption surrounding COVID-19; now it may be the key to providing a solution to it.”
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14147
**********************************************White House announces new steps to make COVID-19 oral antivirals easier to access
The Biden administration announced new actions it intends to take to expand the country’s infrastructure for testing and treating the coronavirus, including making oral antivirals and preventative options easier to access for everyday Americans.
Senior administration officials at the White House discussed new steps Monday to ramp up distribution capacity, which included nearly doubling the number of places oral antivirals are available, and the new installation of federally-supported test-to-treat sites.
This image provided by Pfizer in October 2021 shows the company's COVID-19 Paxlovid pills. U.S. health regulators on Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2021 authorized the first pill against COVID-19, a Pfizer drug that Americans will be able to take at home to head off the worst effects of the virus. (Pfizer via AP)
This image provided by Pfizer in October 2021 shows the company's COVID-19 Paxlovid pills. U.S. health regulators on Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2021 authorized the first pill against COVID-19, a Pfizer drug that Americans will be able to take at home to head off the worst effects of the virus. (Pfizer via AP) (Pfizer via AP)
"These actions will help strengthen and further build the infrastructure to ensure that lifesaving treatments for COVID-19 are quickly distributed around the country, widely available and easy to access," the officials said.
"To date, the administration has worked with pharmacies, long-term care facilities, community health centers, and other health care settings to establish more than 2,200 tests-to-treat sites around the country, including sites specifically for military families and veterans," the White House added. "As a result, usage of oral antivirals has more than doubled over the last several weeks. But more is needed to make these treatments even easier to access and make sure health care providers and patients know about their safety, efficacy and availability."
The White House also specified its intention to support medical providers with more guidance and tools to understand and prescribe treatments, and to communicate these new safe treatment options to the American people.
First on the Biden administration’s agenda is to nearly double the places where oral antivirals can be accessed, a process which could take several weeks.
"Starting this week, the administration will allow all pharmacy partners in the federal antivirals pharmacy program representing tens of thousands of pharmacy locations nationwide to order free antiviral treatments directly from the federal government," officials said.
These pharmaceutical drugs will soon be available in more than 30,000 locations, a number the administration hopes to swell to 40,000 through a partnership between the Department of Health and Human Services and its pharmacy partners, it said.
One specific oral antiviral the administration is looking to swiftly move into circulation is Pfizer’s pill Paxlovid.
The administration described the pill as "the most effective available treatment… which has been shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization or death by about 90%."
"The U.S. has committed to purchase 20 million treatment courses—more than any other country in the world," it added.
Next, the Biden administration also intends to expand federally-supported COVID-19 tests-to-treat sites, working alongside state governments, local health agencies, and their respective jurisdictions to ensure wide availability.
"These sites will be targeted to meet demand and increase equitable access to lifesaving COVID-19 treatment and will function in direct collaboration with state and local health agencies," officials said.
Lastly, the administration intends to keep healthcare providers across the country informed on the latest effective prescription of COVID-19 treatments, as well as patient side effects and risk factors.
"The administration has been working for months with health care providers around the country to inform them about new treatments with weekly webinars, with state and territorial health officials, health care and medical organizations," the White House said. "The administration will continue actively engaging the clinical community to broaden awareness and understanding of these treatments and to make sure that health care providers are counseling their patients about these effective treatments, prescribing them when appropriate and helping patients identify where their prescription can be filled."
These additional measures, however, will require securing additional funding from Congress, the administration said.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-announce-new-steps-covid-19-oral-antivirals-easier
********************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://westpsychol.blogspot.com/ (The Psychologist)
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Wednesday, April 27, 2022
Site down
As most readers here will be aware, I put up 6 blogs 6 times a week. Most of my posts I put up without comment from me. They are simply my selection of good recent posts by others that I agree with or find interesting.
Sometimes, however, I add a substantial comment of my own to an article that I put up. I do that in the form of a comment added to the beginning of an article.
So that readers will not have to look up 6 posts to see my current personal comments, however, I draw together those articles that have my comments added onto a separate "summary" blog, called THE PSYCHOLOGIST. That blog has now been blocked, by whom and for how long I do not know. I have therefore now transferred operations to a new summary blog, also called The Psychologist.
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Some Vaccine Injured Getting Better While Others See Little Improvement
Some people who experienced adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccines are recovering from their injuries after spending months working to find treatments, though others have seen little improvement.
Dr. Danice Hertz, who was diagnosed with an adverse reaction to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, has had ups and downs since getting the jab in December 2020. During one of the more recent stretches, she was “constantly in horrible pain.”
That changed in February, when she began infusions of immunoglobulin, or antibodies, a type of protein that helps protect the immune system.
“That’s what my doctor recommended, and it’s really helped me,” Hertz, a retired gastroenterologist who lives in California, told The Epoch Times. “I would say it’s at least 50 percent improvement, maybe a little more than that.”
The drug is being covered by Medicare, as Hertz recently turned 65.
Hertz isn’t the only person to have responded well to immunoglobulin, which can be administered intravenously (IVIG) or subcutaneously (SCIg).
Brianne Dressen, who suffered severe neurological problems after getting AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine on Nov. 4, 2020, was advised by an expert in Germany to try the drug.
The expert also said two other treatments could work: rituximab, a monoclonal antibody typically used to treat autoimmune diseases, or plasmapheresis, an elaborate process that involves removing blood from a patient, separating the plasma, and returning it to the same patient.
The recommendations eventually led to Dressen getting IVIG at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Maryland in June 2021.
“IVIG and plasmapheresis are standard treatments for immune-mediated neurological diseases where an underlying immune process is suspected and acute in nature,” Dr. Avindra Nath, a senior investigator at the agency and part of the team that treated Dressen, told The Epoch Times via email.
Nath has said he believes side effects following vaccination are immune-mediated, or the result of an irregular response by a person’s immune system, and that treatment with therapies that modulate the immune system may be the best approach to resolving the issues.
Dressen felt better after receiving IVIG. But the Utah resident saw her heart rate shoot back up and other symptoms return after flying home.
She tried to obtain the treatment locally. IVIG is expensive and difficult to get in the United States.
Dressen was eventually administered the treatment as a test of effectiveness. It sent her heart rate down again. That convinced her health insurance to cover the treatment and doctors to give it regularly.
“It’s helping a lot,” Dressen, who helped start React19, a nonprofit that aims to offer support for people suffering from lingering effects that stem from adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines, told The Epoch Times.
“There’s people in our group that, obviously, they can’t get it, there’s no access to it,” she added. “Those are the ones that are like ‘I just want to die, I can’t do this anymore’ because they’re being tortured all the time. That’s really sad.”
Over 807,000 people in the United States have experienced side effects from the COVID-19 vaccines, according to reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a federally-run passive reporting system. Some reactions are minor, but not all. Some are reported to have led to death; others to debilitating disabilities.
Patients looking for treatments for vaccine injuries have often run into difficulties. They typically have to see multiple specialists, who can be reluctant to link any conditions with a vaccine. In the end, many of the drugs prescribed prove ineffective.
A lack of federal guidance on treatments for serious vaccine reactions has left some patients disheartened. They feel that’s had a chilling effect on doctors, and contributed to problems getting insurance to cover treatments like immunoglobulin.
Seeking more information, patients have formed groups like React19, usually connecting through the internet. Peers have helped collect studies, patient reports, and other information regarding possible treatments for dissemination. A small number of researchers are studying the problems and potential solutions.
Kristi Dobbs saw her immunoglobulin G (IgG) levels plunge after suffering what was diagnosed as an allergic reaction to Pfizer’s vaccine in early 2021. She dealt with symptoms like nerve pain, heart palpitations, and seizures.
The symptoms eased after she saw a functional medicine doctor, who concluded Dobbs had mast cell activation syndrome—a common diagnosis for people who suffer adverse reactions to the vaccines—and prescribed supplements and a dramatic dietary change, advising his patient to cut out dairy, gluten, and sugar, and minimize histamine.
But the IgG levels remained low, and some symptoms lingered, prompting the Missouri resident to seek SCIg, which helps replenish the antibodies.
Dobbs received a letter in the mail in April from her insurer saying the company had decided to cover the treatment. But days later, the insurer said the request was being denied because it was not deemed medically necessary.
“Needless to say, I am sad, mad, confused, and most of all let-down, due to the fact that I have advocated to prove my vaccine injury for so long, and I finally have all the tests to prove my injury and then the door to health is slammed in my face,” Dobbs, of Missouri, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Dobbs was in contact with NIH scientists, including one who said she had a “vaccine reaction,” according to emails reviewed by The Epoch Times. They said she was likely suffering from immune-mediated small fiber neuropathy, a neurological disorder, and/or nerve dysfunction, with steroids or IVIG being the best treatments.
Dobbs feels she was let down by the government, a common theme among the vaccine injured.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the NIH, has confirmed it treated about 10 patients with suspected or confirmed vaccine reactions. It has said it submitted a paper with the details of the workups, but that paper has not yet been published.
Asked what treatments he’d recommend to those with vaccine reactions, Nath, the clinical director of the institute, declined to answer. “It will require clinical trials to identify the best modes of treatment,” he said.
The government has been conducting trials of certain issues triggered by the vaccines, including allergic reactions.
Immunoglobulin Helps, at Least for Some
Immunoglobulin is perhaps the most promising treatment for vaccine injuries. They have been used in the past to treat neurological problems such as Guillain-Barre syndrome as well as blood clotting, two known post-vaccination issues.
The therapy “is used in the treatment of a wide variety of diseases,” researchers wrote in 2015, reporting that the treatment was becoming more expensive and shortages were appearing.
The pooled antibodies are believed to work by neutralizing anti-PF4 antibodies, which cause clotting, among other mechanisms.
Case studies indicate that immunoglobulin performs well against vaccine injuries, including clotting.
Dr. Masatoshi Inoue, of Tajimi Hospital in Japan, treated a middle-aged woman who was diagnosed with SCLS, a rare syndrome, after receiving Pfizer’s shot, with IVIG. The treatment appeared to help initially, Inoue and colleagues reported. The woman had to stop the treatment due to financial reasons but after she returned to the hospital with generalized malaise and elevated hemoglobin levels, more IVIG improved the symptoms, Inoue told The Epoch Times in an email.
“We believe IVIG is effective for SCLS,” Inoue said. At the same time, “We have not seen indications that IVIG worked well against other health issues recorded following COVID-19 vaccination.”
The drug is one that helps recalibrate the immune system, which is needed after reactions, Dressen said.
Her heart rate was normal when she got vaccinated as part of a clinical trial but shot up afterwards, according to Apple Watch data. The first time she received a five-day course of IVIG, her heart rate dropped. It dropped again after she started receiving the treatment regularly.
Still, what works for some has not worked for all patients who have received it. And immunoglobulin has side effects, such as headache, fever, and blood clotting.
“There’s still a high-risk profile. And that’s what’s really unfortunate with all of the treatments that are available to us, is all of them have very dangerous side effects that accompany the medication,” Dressen said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which describes itself as the nation’s health protection agency, primarily in its messaging promotes vaccination, with little focus on side effects. Serious reactions are repeatedly described as rare, even afflictions seen at higher rates following vaccination than with COVID-19 infection. The agency did not respond to a request for comment for this article, nor did the Food and Drug Administration, which authorized the shots. Pfizer and Moderna have not returned inquiries regarding side effects.
‘A Roller Coaster’
In a recently completed survey of 508 React19 members, just 35 percent said they’ve been getting better over the past six to eight months. The most common answer, when asked what was helping with symptoms, was time, followed by rest, supplements, and gentle exercise.
IVIG was listed, but only by three people. Steroids, the antiparasitic drug ivermectin, antihistamines, and the nerve pain drug gabapentin were also named by some.
About 15 percent of respondents said they were getting worse; the rest said they were not getting better or were “staying the same.”
Nikki Holland, who suffered a suspected vaccine reaction, hasn’t experienced a breakthrough for a while. She was in and out of hospitals in 2021 with symptoms including difficulty breathing. Holland, who has also experienced neurological issues, had not heard of IVIG.
Many patients who have improved still deal with a variety of symptoms.
Skylar Bush, an Oregon resident who was diagnosed with a severe allergic reaction to Moderna’s vaccine after receiving the shot in April 2021, has dealt with lingering symptoms like dizziness to this day.
What has helped Bush the most was electric shock therapy involving low levels of shock while the patient is doing muscle movements, vision therapy, a good diet, and meditation. “No silver bullets yet, though,” Bush told The Epoch Times.
Depression has set in at times, especially when symptoms surge back. “There’s only so much your mind can take, so I think I’ll start to see a psychologist soon,” Bush said.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Tuesday, April 26, 2022
BA.2.12.1: New Omicron sub-variant on the rise across US as first cases detected in UK
BA.2.12.1 currently accounts for roughly 1 in 5 new cases in America, though BA.2 still remains dominant
A new Omicron sub-variant, thought to be the most infectious yet, is becoming more prevalent in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
BA.2.12.1, which is estimated to be 23 to 27 percent more transmissible than its predecessor, BA.2, currently accounts for roughly 1 in 5 new cases across America.
The variant is fuelling a resurgence in Covid cases seen in upstate New York, the State Department of Health reported last week.
“BA.2.12.1 has increased rapidly in proportion in the US compared to other BA.2 sublineages,” especially in the region that includes New York and New Jersey, CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund told CNN.
Five cases of BA.2.12.1 have also been detected in the UK. Covid Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK), which monitors the spread of new strains in Britain, says the variant was first picked up on 23 March.
The variant has also been spotted in Australia, Israel, Denmark and Austria.
There’s no evidence to suggest that BA.2.12.1 causes more severe disease than the original Omicron variant and its various spin-offs.
The majority of cases in the US — around 75 percent — are still caused by BA.2, which has been the country's dominant variant since late March.
It’s unclear whether BA.2.12.1 is spreading more quickly than other Omicron sub-variants because it is more contagious or better at evading the body’s immunological defences.
The variant has acquired one mutation of particular interest, called L452Q, in its spike protein — the part of the virus responsible for binding and gaining entry to human cells.
“We're now starting to see the evolution of new potentially impactful sublineages of Omicron,” tweeted Trevor Bedford, a virologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
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Masks and the Lack of Trust in the CDC
After a federal judge ruled that the Biden administration’s mask mandates violate federal law, organizations rushed to declare that they no longer required them to be worn, despite the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC’s) continued recommendation that people wear them.
All the major airlines said they would no longer ask people to wear them. Uber sent out emails saying they no longer require drivers or passengers to wear them. Even the TSA, a federal agency, said it would no longer be enforcing the CDC’s recommendation.
The judge said in the ruling that she was not passing judgment on whether wearing masks was an effective way to reduce the transmission of disease, only that the mandate went beyond the administration’s legal authority.
The reaction to this ruling shows the lack of trust people have in the CDC’s public health advice. The ruling didn’t say masks were not effective, and airlines, Uber, etc., could have continued advising people to wear them even absent the legal requirement. But they didn’t. The reaction to the court ruling shows the widespread lack of public trust in the CDC and the Biden administration.
Before the ruling, people wore masks because they were forced. If you didn’t wear your mask, you would be pulled from your flight and possibly barred from future flights. People were not wearing masks because they thought it was a good idea to protect their health.
I’ve done a fair amount of travel in the past few weeks, to South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Nevada, and I observed that the only place where people wore masks was airports. Sure, a few people wore them in other areas, but the vast majority did not. People were already disregarding the CDC’s advice when they could get away with it.
The CDC might be right, so I’m not passing judgment on whether their advice to mask up is medically sound. I’m observing that most people don’t trust the CDC’s advice, and when they have a choice, they choose to disregard it (with regard to masks, anyway).
Government authority is undermined when people don’t trust the government. Perhaps the widespread disregard of the CDC’s public health advice is a good sign. People will think for themselves and make their own decisions rather than uncritically doing what the government tells them they should do.
https://blog.independent.org/2022/04/19/masks-trust-cdc/?omhide=true
********************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Monday, April 25, 2022
Immigration
I am still pretty disabled due to the pain from a cracked rib but I can do a bit of blogging so I have decided to revive my Immigration Watch blog. So go there and have a look. Immigration is such a big issue at the moment that I should have plenty to post.
Friday, April 22, 2022
Probable hiatus
I am at the moment in a lot of pain from a cracked rib -- and it is getting worse.
So I am in no form to do much blogging at the moment.
I try to put something up but may not be able to do so for a while
JR
Thursday, April 21, 2022
The Democrat Party, Not Climate Change, Is the Existential Threat
The Biden Administration, the Democrat Party, and Democrat leaders in Congress have sponsored separate policies, laws, and initiatives that when viewed as a whole reveal one profound commonality, an intent to knock down every pillar of our free society: to sacrifice individual and parental rights; to destroy our free-market economy; to abandon our border defenses against illegal immigration, cross-border drug, sex, and arms trafficking, and terrorist infiltration; to defund the police and halt detention, prosecution, and incarceration of criminals; and to destroy the nuclear family. In short, the Democrat Party’s platform is one of nihilism.
The Democrat Party calls its suicidal ideations and policies by the collective term “transformational change,” a term Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer uses (and celebrates) almost daily. By transformational change, the Democrat Party seeks to empower and enrich those in government and those who are politically preferred and to disempower and impoverish all others. In effect, rights are deprived of protection and all social and economic opportunities are denied unless in furtherance of politically preferred objectives. In this way individual sovereignty is replaced with state sovereignty and the government becomes an ultimate master, not the intended servant of the people. All private wealth is redirected through regulation or confiscated through taxation, ultimately to afford more power and wealth to political elites and their allies.
The Democrat Party calls for a massive tax and redistribution of income from high-income earners and the middle class (that is, from the productive) to the politically preferred.
It calls for elimination of legal protections for the property and lives of individuals and the welfare of communities and states via abandonment of border defenses and of legal interdictions to stop drug, sex, and arms traffickers, gangs, and terrorists crossing our Southern border.
It calls for defunding the police (euphemistically referred to as “reimagining policing”) and cessation of law enforcement against crime, enabling violent criminals to remain on the streets incentivized to increase their criminal activity. They call for destruction of the fossil fuel backbone of the American economy, encouraging inflation but also an ultimate collapse of the economy.
They call for massive socialist spending, pumping trillions of dollars into the market, the predictable effect of which is runaway inflation. They call for official sanction of child abuse in K-12 whereby children are taught to view the absence of pigment as proof of one’s perpetual status as an oppressor and the presence of pigment as proof of one’s perpetual status as a victim (the skewed, left-eye lens of Marxist critical race theory).
They call for official sanction of even more horrific child abuse in K-12 whereby children are robbed of their innocence, sexualized prematurely, taught that they must discover their gender identity, and made to believe gender not a fact but a choice, optional and fluid, and appropriately reassigned through physical mutilation via chemical hormone suppression and surgical sex change (even to the extent of encouraging pre-pubescent youth to take hormone suppressive drugs and undergo castration or reconstructive genital surgeries without parental consent).
In short, the Democrat Party, the Biden Administration, and the Democrat Congress are at war with American liberty, American law, and American values. They have endorsed nihilism. They wish to lead Americans, as if lemmings, off the cliff of civilization into an abyss of total destruction. They plan to stand atop the ruins, all-powerful and to whom all will be dependent.
They do not support individual freedom of choice; rather, theirs is a collectivist agenda in which leaders define acceptable “rights” and insist that only those be upheld in law. They do not support freedom of speech and press; rather, they demand those who convey a conservative message be silenced in favor of an interminable liberal echo chamber where only politically preferred views may be heard. They do not support free enterprise; rather, they insist on government-planned economies where the politically preferred receive anticompetitive protection and where those in disfavored enterprise (e.g., the fossil fuel industry) are destroyed.
For the first time in American history, we have witnessed a governing party abandon all connection with that irreducible principle of our republic, the one responsible for American greatness without which we cannot be great: individual liberty. By individual liberty I mean the term as Thomas Jefferson defined it, which is the meaning understood and endorsed by all of the Founding Fathers. In his April 4, 1819 letter to the lawyer Isaac Tiffany, Jefferson explained: “Liberty . . . in the whole plenitude of its extent, . . . is unobstructed action according to our will, but rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the meaning of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.”
It was to ensure broad legal protection for individual liberty that the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence and later endorsed for ratification the Constitution of the United States. It is that very liberty which has defined Americans sense of self throughout our history and has become the meaning of America understood by the world. It is the heart of our nation, and it is that very heart which the Democrat Party, this Administration, and the Democrat leaders in Congress mean to cut out from the body politic and discard forever.
Rather than talk of the rights of individuals (e.g., to dissent from officially sanctioned views on everything from racism, abortion, gender politics, religion, to COVID-19 vaccination and treatments), the Democrat Party condemns dissent, equates it with a lack of patriotism, and calls for voices of opposition to be canceled and banned from the information and idea marketplace. Facilitating this tyranny are the owners of Big Tech. So much for the adage, once celebrated by those who called themselves liberals: While I wholly disapprove of what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Instead, by word and deed, the Democrat Party has adopted politicized rather than blind justice—a political justice characteristic of totalitarian regimes in China and Russia. It does not recognize, let alone defend, individual rights unless consistent with the official orthodoxy of the party.
It rejects the foundation of American jurisprudence: equal justice under law. The “rules for thee but not for me” mentality and practice permeates the Party at all levels. Unequal justice expresses itself in, among other profound examples, rabid refusal to allow any meaningful criminal investigation into the unlawful and corrupt foreign influence peddling by the Biden family or to require criminal accountability by Hillary Clinton for violations of the Espionage Act and her campaign and agents’ financing of the fraudulent Steele dossier and false complaint to the FBI against candidate and President Trump.
While refusing to apply the law in those contexts and refusing to prosecute Antifa and BLM rioters for looting, arson, assault, battery, and murder nationwide, the Democrat Party vehemently insists on arrest, lengthy pre-trial incarceration (including in certain instances solitary confinement) and prosecution of hundreds allegedly associated with the January 6 events at the Capitol despite an absence in most cases of bona fide evidence of criminality and of criminal intent.
There is in this an assault on individual liberty, on equal justice under law, on impartial justice, and on the rule of law. It will not be enough for Republicans to take back control of the House, Senate, and White House. Once in power, they must act to restore America’s foundational principles through dismantlement of the nihilistic policies, laws, and initiatives of the Biden Administration and the Democrat Congress.
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Alternative framings of the Ukraine war
The hysteria has moved on from Covid to Ukraine. Given official and media propaganda on lockdowns and vaccines on their own people, scepticism on their trustworthiness about a foreign war waged by Russia is understandable. The mainstream media and all Western leaders have echoed President Joe Biden’s Manichean framing of the war as a ‘great battle’ between democracy and autocracy, liberty and repression and a rules-based order and ‘one governed by brute force’. President Volodymyr Zelensky has been unexpectedly heroic, courageous and inspirational. But the ‘democracy-autocracy’ narrative is seriously defective. Ukrainians are fighting for their nation, not for universal freedoms. Fragmenting Western societies seem to have forgotten patriotic determination to defend one’s country as a universal civic virtue. The same fierce resistance to invaders was demonstrated in Vietnam and Afghanistan, highlighting both the power of the weak when fighting for the homeland and the fragility of the strong when engaged in imperialism.
The 2014 Maidan revolution was a de facto coup to oust the democratically elected pro-Russian president with ‘a deep degree of US involvement’ (Washington Post) in Ukraine’s internal affairs. In the annual report from Freedom House, Ukraine’s score of 61/100 put it in the same ‘partly free’ category as Colombia, Serbia, Liberia, El Salvador and the Philippines. After the 2014 coup, the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion – that’s a Daily Beast label from 2019 – was incorporated into President Petro Poroshenko’s military and security apparatus and has remained there. Zelensky has seized the opportunity of the war to ‘suspend’ eleven opposition parties, including the biggest with 44 MPs in the 450-seat parliament, and nationalise several media outlets to implement a ‘unified information policy’. In Transparency International’s 2021 corruption index published in January, Ukraine’s score was 32/100, making it Europe’s most corrupt country (cue Hunter Biden’s laptop). Russia is even worse. So pardon me for not joining in the rapturous standing ovations to Zelensky that has become part of the ritualised theatre of his Zoom addresses to Western parliaments.
Western countries have themselves witnessed grievous assaults on freedoms and curtailment of civil liberties and democratic practices in the last two years, with Canada and the state of Victoria being among the worst offenders. The media propagation of the Trump–Russia collusion hoax for three years and the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, not to mention the pattern-defying anomalies, compromised the legitimacy of the 2020 US presidential election. This is not to imply a moral equivalence between imperfect Western democracies and Russia, but to explain non-Western dissent from how Biden framed the Ukraine war.
A second framing alleges Russian violations of foundational global norms on state sovereignty, territorial integrity and the use of force. The lopsided General Assembly vote, followed by this month’s suspension of Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, shows that most countries do care about core global norms and share in the repugnance at atrocities against civilians. Unfortunately, every charge levelled against Russia applies also to the US. It’s used force overseas more often than any other country since 1945, including Iraq in 2003. It rejected the World Court’s judgment on aggression against Nicaragua and threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions for daring to investigate possible war crimes by US soldiers in Afghanistan, but backs the two courts vis-à-vis Russia in Ukraine. The downing of a Malaysian Airline flight over Ukraine in 2014 is comparable to the downing of an Iran Air flight by a US warship in 1988. Both Moscow and Washington rejected the World Court’s 1996 opinion on the legal obligation on nuclear disarmament.
The first two frames together, in combination with the global dominance of Western media, explain why Westerners conflate their local consensus into a global consensus that simply doesn’t exist. Much of the non-Western world views the Ukraine conflict within a third frame of an ongoing recalibration of the European balance of power since the Cold War ended. A continual readjustment of geopolitical frontiers along historical faultlines and buffer states is part of human history. Afflicted by hubris, the US and Nato effectively treated Russia as a permanently defeated enemy instead of one in temporary retreat. As Nato kept incorporating former Warsaw Pact members in a steady eastward expansion to Russia’s borders, the repeated proclamation of red lines over Georgia and Ukraine were contemptuously brushed aside. In a cable sent home on 1 February 2008, William Burns, then ambassador to Russia and current CIA director, concluded: ‘While Russian opposition to the first round of Nato enlargement in the mid-1990s was strong, Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully to what it perceives as actions contrary to its national interests’. Nato policy on Ukraine provoked but did not deter Russia. Last month, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said: ‘The war could have been avoided if Nato had heeded the warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region’. This helps to explain why half of African countries refused to endorse the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Arabs too have misgivings about the consistency of US policy between Ukraine and the Middle East.
Let’s also examine the war as contestations over Russia’s place in the European security, economic and political orders. Boris Yeltsin was told in October 1993 by Secretary of State Christopher that the US was pursuing, not Nato membership for selected but a Partnership for Peace for all European countries. When Yeltsin interrupted to make sure he had understood correctly that all Central and Eastern European countries and Russia would be treated equally in an all-inclusive partnership, Christopher replied, ‘Yes, that is the case’. Yeltsin responded, ‘This is a brilliant idea, a stroke of genius’. Within a year the US changed policy. Russia was frozen out. The rest is history.
But that history has regional resonance for Europe, not global resonance. Asian countries that did not join last month’s UN condemnation of Russia include Bangladesh, China, India, Laos, Mongolia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Singapore was the only one of the Asean ten to condemn Russia. Shivshankar Menon, India’s former National Security Adviser, writes in Foreign Affairs that the Ukraine war will transform Europe’s geopolitical landscape but is not a transcendental conflict between autocracies and democracies, will not reshape the global order and has only limited relevance for the Indo-Pacific. China’s rise is far more consequential for reconfiguring the emerging global order on both the geopolitical and normative axes than the protracted death rattles of the Soviet empire that expired in 1990/91
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Masks off: US judge throws out Biden’s face-covering mandate
Washington: Put it on or leave it off?
That’s the question airline passengers and public transport users across America were left asking after a federal judge in Florida struck down a national mandate that required masks to be worn on planes, trains, and buses to protect people from the pandemic.
Less than a week after the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention extended the mandate, a judge appointed by former president Donald Trump, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, ruled the health agency had overstepped its legal authority by imposing the order that has been in place since February last year.
The move is a blow to the Biden administration, which appeared to be caught off-guard by the ruling and is now “reviewing the decision and assessing potential next steps”.
But it’s also created another grey area in one of the most polarising debates the US has faced over the past few years, and has prompted the question: was the mandate unlawful all along?
America’s COVID-19 rules are confusing at the best of times. In Washington DC, for example, you can attend a packed nightclub or sit next to a stranger at a communal cafe table without wearing a mask; yet, you must put one on the moment you walk into the subway – even if you’re the only person on the platform waiting for the train.
Inconsistencies even when it comes to President Joe Biden himself have not gone unnoticed: sometimes he wears a mask indoors, sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes his administration abides by CDC guidelines; other times it doesn’t.
The Florida ruling has resulted in even greater uncertainty, with the transport industry left scrambling as they awaited federal guidance over how quickly airlines and train operators should stop forcing passengers to wear masks.
The Transportation Security Administration said it would no longer enforce the mask requirement, causing airports in Houston and Dallas to almost immediately do away with their mandates.
Some groups, such as New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Chicago Department of Aviation announced they would continue to abide by the previous order as they reviewed the ruling, whereas certain airlines, such as United, said they would drop the requirement in most cases.
“Effective immediately, masks are no longer required at United on domestic flights, select international flights (dependent upon the arrival country’s mask requirements) or at US airports,” it said in a statement.
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FDA Authorizes Breath Test to Detect COVID-19
For the first time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized for emergency use a breath test to detect COVID-19.
The InspectIR COVID-19 Breathalyzer is the “size of a piece of carry-on luggage” and can analyze chemical compounds in breath samples to test for COVID-19, the FDA states.
Samples can be collected and analyzed in the same place in less than three minutes, which enables it to be carried out in places such as doctor’s offices, hospitals, and mobile testing sites.
The test uses gas chromatography mass-spectrometry (GC-MS) to isolate different chemical mixtures and quickly detect certain compounds—referred to as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)—associated with COVID-19 infection in the breath samples.
InspectIR says it is the first company to make a commercially available miniature mass spectrometer to analyze breath samples directly.
If the test detects the presence of five VOCs associated with COVID-19, it will give an unconfirmed positive test result, which would need to be confirmed with a molecular test.
Negative results don’t rule out COVID-19 and “should not be used as the sole basis for treatment or patient management decisions, including infection control decisions,” the FDA noted. Negative results “should be considered in the context of a patient’s recent exposures, history, and the presence of clinical signs and symptoms consistent with COVID-19.”
The breathalyzer was studied on a group of 2,409 people with and without symptoms. Per the study, the device had 91.2 sensitivity—it was able to correctly identify 91.2 percent of positive COVID-19 cases. It also showed 99.3 specificity, meaning it gave false positive results in 0.7 percent of cases.
The test also gave similar sensitivity in a follow-up clinical study focused on the Omicron variant, the FDA noted.
“Today’s authorization is yet another example of the rapid innovation occurring with diagnostic tests for COVID
https://www.theepochtimes.com/fda-authorizes-breath-test-to-detect-covid-19_4405804.html
*******************************************Inequality and the Piketty Accounting Error
The political left’s love affair with steep progressive taxation got an academic boost with the publication of Thomas Piketty’s bestselling 2014 book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” Appealing to the New Deal era, Mr. Piketty proposed a simple explanation and remedy for rising economic inequality: The concentration of income among the top 1% could be mitigated by strategically targeting wealth with the tax system.
Mr. Piketty based his theory on a historical argument taken from his own empirical work with fellow economist Emmanuel Saez. When Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt hiked the top marginal income-tax rate to 91% during the New Deal and World War II, they allegedly broke up the concentration of the capital stock at the top of the income ladder. Inequality declined to a midcentury trough, where it remained until the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s. Inequality then rebounded to form a centurylong U-shaped pattern. The solution, then, is to restore tax rates to their FDR levels.
But the Piketty-Saez theory is less a matter of history than an accounting error caused by their misunderstanding of World War II-era tax statistics. That’s the main conclusion of a new analysis of top income concentration in the U.S. between 1917 and 1960, which we recently published in the Economic Journal.
Progressives embraced Messrs. Piketty and Saez’s historical account after it appeared in an influential academic paper in 2003. Their story undergirds the wealth-tax proposals of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Heather Boushey, a member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, is also a fan. Even the New York Times’s “1619 Project” draws on Messrs. Piketty and Saez to proclaim confidently that “progressive taxation remains among the best ways to limit economic inequality.”
Our findings paint a different picture. It’s true that income inequality declined in the early part of the 20th century, but the cause had more to do with the economic devastation of the Great Depression than the New Deal tax regime.
To see how, we must first turn to Messrs. Piketty and Saez’s inequality statistics. Their data show a rapid decline in top income shares between the 1929 stock-market crash and the end of World War II—a period economists have dubbed the “Great Leveling.” In their version, the sharpest decline took place between 1940 and 1945, just as the 91% top marginal rate schedule became a fixture of midcentury tax policy. Their statistics imply that more than 34% of the decline in the top 1%’s income share occurred in this brief period, as did an astounding 73% of the decline in the top 10% of earners.
Our investigation of the Piketty-Saez data reveals that they failed to account properly for historical changes in how the Internal Revenue Service reported income-tax statistics. As a result, their numbers systematically overstate the levels of top income concentrations by as much as a third, while also distorting the trend line during the “Great Leveling” period. The combination of these errors creates an illusion that FDR’s tax hikes caused inequality to fall.
Messrs. Piketty and Saez’s mistakes arise from how the IRS tabulates income. Between 1943 and 1944 the tax collection agency shifted from tracking “net income” to “adjusted gross income,” or AGI. The latter category, a truer depiction of annual earnings, includes both taxable earnings and deductible income such as charitable giving and state and local tax payments. Yet Messrs. Piketty and Saez didn’t bring pre-1944 IRS records into line with AGI accounting standards. Instead, they applied a fixed and arbitrary adjustment to all years before the AGI accounting change that conveniently scaled upward to the highest income brackets.
At the same time, Messrs. Piketty and Saez mishandled how they estimate the top 1%’s income shares. In addition to IRS records of tax payments, this calculation requires a measure for all personal income earnings. We found that in every year prior to 1960, the IRS’s numerator is mismatched to the total income denominator used by Messrs. Piketty and Saez. They used the wrong accounting definition for personal income and neglected to adjust their data for wartime distortions on tax reporting. When we corrected these problems, something stunning happened. The overall level of top income concentration flattened, and the timing of its leveling shifted away from the World War II-era tax rates that Messrs. Piketty and Saez place at the center of their story.
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First infection of new Covid variant detected in Australia
NSW has reported a case of Omicron XE infection brought in by an overseas traveller.
The state was also the first to report a case of another recombinant strain dubbed Deltacron, with that variant spreading two Queensland within 24 hours of being detected.
There are fears a further relaxing rules for international arrivals will see more - and potentially deadlier - variants enter the country.
XE is a combination of the two Omicron variant subtypes BA.1 and BA.2.
The variant is what’s known as recombinant, meaning it is a mixture of the two different strains and has characteristics of both.
More than a thousand cases of XE have been recorded in the UK and cases have also been detected in Thailand, India and Israel.
It’s presence around the world suggests it has been spread by open borders and international travel.
From Monday, international arrivals will no longer need to test negative to Covid-19 before leaving for Australia, meaning more cases of new variants could arrive in the country.
“As the Covid pandemic has progressed, we’ve repeatedly seen the arrival of new viral variants,” University of Leeds virologist Grace Roberts wrote in The Conversation.
While the properties of XE are not yet well known, Dr Roberts said there did not appear to be cause for additional concern.
“We know that Omicron XE has the majority of its genetic information, including the spike protein, from the Omicron sub-variant BA.2, which is the variant predominating in the UK at the moment,” she said.
“ It is likely, therefore, that the characteristics of omicron XE (such as transmissibility, severity of disease and vaccine efficacy) are similar to those of BA.2.”
NSW recorded 17,856 positive cases of Covid on Thursday, with a total 1582 Covid cases admitted to hospital, including 71 people in intensive care, 23 of whom require ventilation.
The state also recorded 21 Covid-linked deaths on Thursday, including one person who was over 100-year-old. Of those that died, three people were not vaccinated
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Heart problems as a Covid vaccine side-effect may be more common than is usually admitted
Report from Australia
It started with the ambulances. Queensland recorded its fourth-highest number of triple-0 calls for a single day last Monday with paramedics waiting up to three hours to offload patients and nine ambulances waiting outside a major hospital because there were no beds.
Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath was flummoxed. ‘I don’t think anyone can explain why we saw a 40 per cent increase in code ones,’ she told journalists. ‘We had a lot of heart attacks and chest pains and breathing/respiratory issues. Sometimes you can’t explain why those things happen.’
Ambulance ‘ramping’ has been at crisis point in every state in Australia over the summer. In Western Australia, just 70 per cent of priority one emergency call outs in March were responded to within 15 minutes. March was also the busiest month ever for paramedics in Tasmania with a 15 per cent increase in callouts. Ambulance Victoria experienced its busiest quarter on record, a 16 per cent increase on the same period last year. In South Australia, ramping was so bad that it became an election issue. Paramedics in New South Wales were so angry about staff shortages that they went on strike this week.
Part of the problem was the callous and stupid decision to sack paramedics during a pandemic because they refused to be immunised with a vaccine which, as it turns out, has almost no efficacy in preventing infection with the omicron variant. So, staff numbers have been reduced by mandates, by infection with omicron, and by the need to quarantine.
But what explains the increase in demand which has occurred in summer, not during the winter flu season? It’s not the pandemic. NSW, for example, has a combined private and government hospital capacity of 12,500 beds including 1,000 in intensive care units, but there are only 1,583 people admitted to hospitals ‘with’ Covid, and only 71 in intensive care. The chief executive of Ambulance Tasmania offered a clue saying that while a lot of the patients had respiratory complaints or chest pain in line with Covid, there was also an increase in mental health cases and in falls. What caused them?
To get some clues out, you needed to turn on the Footy Show. Discussing Brownlow medallist Ollie Wines, who was taken to hospital at half time where he was diagnosed with a ‘heart irregularity’, former Richmond forward Nathan Brown asked, ‘Is there a lot of this going on in world sport?’, clarifying that he was referring to the side effects of Covid vaccine booster shots. Journalist Damian Barrett said the question was being asked, ‘by a lot of people’ and that it wasn’t just the heart issues’. Essendon star Matthew Lloyd, another panellist on the show that night confirmed that he had Bell’s palsy – and that both heart issues and Bell’s palsy had ‘gone through the roof since the boosters and Covid issues’. He added that 3AW sports journalist Michelangelo Rucci had said that there’s a ward in Adelaide filled with people with similar symptoms to Ollie Wines – nausea, heart issues – ‘so there has to be something more to it’.
That Covid vaccines can cause myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) and pericarditis (inflammation of the sac around the heart) as well as other severe reactions, including death, is a taboo topic in mainstream media. The Daily Mail accused the Footy Show hosts of making a ‘shocking claim’ for suggesting Wine’s heart issues could be linked to the Covid vaccines.
Yet as the Therapeutic Goods Administration confirms, myocarditis is a known side effect of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. So far there have been 1,168 reports of myocarditis to the TGA (10 fatal) and another 3,215 of pericarditis (1 fatal).
The TGA claims that only 593 are likely to be confirmed as myocarditis. But the Myocarditis Foundation in the US warns that nearly 20 per cent of sudden cardiac deaths are linked to myocarditis because common symptoms are misinterpreted. They include many reported to the TGA including chest pain (11,976 reports), shortness of breath (9,519), fatigue (14,569), palpitations (5,249), tachycardia (2,428), fainting (3,424), dizziness (2,843), and peripheral swelling (1,057). If any of these symptoms are detected, the foundation urges people to see a doctor straight away because myocarditis is the third leading cause of death in children and young adults and discouraging talk about the symptoms of post-vaccination myocarditis is dangerous, especially for young athletic men and boys who are at the greatest risk.
In less than three months, since Covid vaccines were rolled out to children aged 5-11, three have died. A 7-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl suffered cardiac arrests, the worst outcome of myocarditis, and a 6-year- old boy also died but whoever filed his report simply described his medical reaction as an ‘adverse event following immunisation’, a description that provides no useful information to investigators and has been used in 755 reports, 161 of them fatal.
There have also been 49 reports of adverse reactions in babies via exposure their mothers’ breast milk including trouble breathing, chest pain, fatigue, dizziness – all symptoms of myocarditis. One infant suffered Bell’s palsy. There have been 244 reports of spontaneous abortions, 14 stillbirths, 11 reports of foetal deaths, 11 of foetal hypokinesia (decreased bodily movement of the foetus). The vaccines were not tested on pregnant or breast-feeding women. The TGA had no clinical basis to say they were safe.
Since the vaccines were rolled out in February last year, 19,926 people have reported adverse reactions and 815 people have died. More than two every day. Compare that to influenza vaccines – 21 deaths in 47 years, less than one death every two years. Are any of these tragedies caused by the Covid vaccine? Is anyone at the TGA trying to find out? When the US government rushed out a swine flu vaccine to 45 million people in 1976, the program was halted when it was reported to have caused one case of Guillain-Barré syndrome per 100,000 persons vaccinated, and 53 deaths. To date in the US there have been 26,693 deaths, including those Pfizer, Moderna and J&J have reported occurring abroad, 49,516 people are permanently disabled, and the mainstream media says nothing.
Why the difference? In 1976, vaccine manufacturers could be sued for injury and death. Now they have immunity from prosecution unless they can be shown to have engaged in fraud or to have hidden safety data. While courageous scientists, doctors and whistleblowers sound the alarm about damning evidence, no one who has been coercing people to get vaccinated – government, media, employers – wants to admit that there might be a problem. Like ramping ambulances, nobody wants to explain why those things happen
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/04/vaccine-mysteries-need-explaining/
*************************************************California Bill Would Allow Doctors to Lose Licenses over COVID ‘Misinformation or Disinformation’
A new bill under consideration by the California State Legislature would allow the state’s medical board to discipline doctors who provide what is considered “misinformation or disinformation” about COVID-19 — and even strip them of their licenses.
The bill, AB 2098, introduced in February, “would designate the dissemination or promotion of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct. The bill would require the board to consider specified factors prior to bringing a disciplinary action against a physician and surgeon. The bill would also make findings and declarations in this regard.”
The legislation also declares: “Major news outlets have reported that some of the most dangerous propagators of inaccurate information regarding the COVID-19 vaccines are licensed health care professionals.”
It specifies:
(a) It shall constitute unprofessional conduct for a physician and surgeon to disseminate or promote misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.
(b) The board shall consider the following factors prior to bringing a disciplinary action against a licensee under this section:
(1) Whether the licensee deviated from the applicable standard of care.
(2) Whether the licensee intended to mislead or acted with malicious intent.
(3) Whether the misinformation or disinformation was demonstrated to have resulted in an individual declining opportunities for COVID-19 prevention or treatment that was not justified by the individual’s medical history or condition.
(4) Whether the misinformation or disinformation was contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus to an extent where its dissemination constitutes gross negligence by the licensee.
According to one law firm that represents physicians in disciplinary proceedings in California, if a doctor is found to have committed professional misconduct, “the minimum penalty is a stayed revocation with 5 years of license probation, with a maximum penalty of revocation.”
Stanford Medical School Professor Jay Bhattacharya, one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which favores “Focused Protection” over lockdowns during COVID surges, wrote at Bari Weiss’s Substack site that the California bill mirrors the way communist China has treated physicians merely for telling the truth about the coronavirus:
The language of the bill itself is intentionally vague about what constitutes “misinformation,” which makes it even more damaging. Doctors, fearing loss of their livelihoods, will need to hew closely to the government line on Covid science and policy, even if that line does not track the scientific evidence. After all, until recently, top government science bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci claimed that the idea that Covid came from a Wuhan laboratory was a conspiracy theory, rather than a valid hypothesis that should be open to discussion. The government’s track record on discerning Covid truths is poor....
What is abundantly clear is that this bill represents a chilling interference with the practice of medicine. The bill itself is full of misinformation and a demonstration of what a disaster it would be to have the legislature dictate the practice of medicine....
We are not the Soviet Union, of course, nor are we ruled by Chinese Communists. California lawmakers thankfully do not have the power currently being exercised in Shanghai. But this bill follows the same dangerous principle that government-authorized science should permit no opposition from people with the credentials and knowledge to oppose it. The false medical consensus enforced by AB 2098 will lead doctors to censor themselves to avoid government sanction. And it will be their patients, above all, who will be harmed by their silence.
Bhattacharya noted the current coronavirus lockdowns in Shanghai, China — ostensibly that country’s freest city — which have resulted in reported food shortages, the killing of household pets, and other abuses by the communist regime.
AB 2098 is sponsored by Assemblymember Evan Low (D-Silicon Valley), who tweeted a racist cartoon supporting Black Lives Matter in 2020 — before the murder of George Floyd:
Low recently co-sponsored a law that requires toy stores to include gender-neutral sections.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Monday, April 18, 2022
The Nation’s Top Scientists Lied
Scott Atlas
CDC Director Robert Redfield’s congressional testimony on Sept. 23, 2020, immediately caught my attention. I watched in disbelief as Redfield told Congress that “more than 90 percent of the population”—more than three hundred million people in the United States—remains susceptible to the illness.
The statement was based on incomplete and outdated data, as well as an apparent lack of understanding of the literature, and it struck me as one of the most erroneous and fear-inducing proclamations of any public health official to that moment. Approximately two hundred thousand Americans had already died from COVID; the last thing the public needed was an exaggeration of the future risks, implying to some that ten times that number could still die.
First of all, the numbers didn’t add up. At that point, confirmed cases in the United States already totaled approximately seven million, and the CDC itself had estimated that approximately ten times the number of confirmed cases, a very conservative estimate, were likely to have had the infection. A Stanford seropositivity study back in April had shown that confirmed cases underestimated the total infections by a factor of approximately forty times. It made no sense that only 9 percent, or thirty million Americans, had been infected.
Second, the 9 percent calculation was blatantly wrong. That number came from antibody testing by the states. I looked at the CDC website myself, and sure enough, the data was based on antiquated testing from several states.
Some antibody totals were pulled from several months earlier, before many of those states had experienced a significant number of cases. It therefore grossly underestimated the number of cases that had already occurred. The data was simply not valid, but you needed to pay attention to the details.
More importantly, Redfield’s basic claim was fundamentally flawed. The conclusion that serum antibody testing revealed the entire population of those protected from COVID was counter to an entire body of published literature and contrary to fundamental knowledge of immunology, including other coronavirus infections.
It was well known that antibody tests showed one cross-section in time—they were transient—even though immune protection can last. From studies on SARS-2 and most other viruses, antibody levels change over a span of months. They typically appear in the first couple of weeks, peak in a few months, and then decrease over a span of several months.
The literature on COVID had already shown these patterns. A month before this press conference, a Nature Reviews Immunology study on COVID-19 explicitly stated, “The absence of specific antibodies in the serum does not necessarily mean an absence of immune memory,” and explained, “memory B-cells and T-cells may be maintained even if there are not measurable levels of serum antibodies.”
Japan’s study demonstrated this dramatically. In their study, antibody levels increased from 5.8 percent to 46.8 percent over the course of the summer. The most dramatic increase occurred in late June and early July, paralleling the rise in daily confirmed cases within Tokyo, which peaked on Aug. 4.
Out of the 350 individuals who completed both offered tests, 21.4 percent of those who tested negative became positive, and 12.2 percent of initially positive participants became negative for antibodies. A striking 81.1 percent of IgM-antibody-positive cases at first testing became negative in only one month. They stated that “[antibody tests] may significantly underestimate previous COVID-19 infections.” It had also been widely reported in several major scientific journals that antibody responses are not necessarily detectable in all COVID patients, especially those with less severe forms.
But the flaws in Redfield’s estimate extended deeper. Even those familiar with first-year college biology know that other components of the immune system, memory B-cell and T-cells, provide protection from virus infections. Some T-cells kill the virus, and they also help antibodies form. T-cells develop and provide protection that lasts far longer, even after antibodies disappear—sometimes for years in other SARS viruses.
T-cells for this virus had already been documented, even in people unexposed to SARS-2, meaning that in these cases, cross-protection was present from T-cells originating in response to other coronaviruses. T-cells had also been found in individuals with completely asymptomatic SARS-2 infections.
NIH Director Francis Collins had highlighted that very data in his Director’s Blog a few weeks earlier, writing, “In fact, immune cells known as memory T cells also play an important role in the ability of our immune systems to protect us against many viral infections, including—it now appears—COVID-19.”
Scientists from some of the top research institutions in the world, like Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, San Diego’s La Jolla Institute, Duke University, Berlin, and others had published this evidence. Karolinska demonstrated T-cell immunity in both asymptomatic and mild cases of COVID—even if antibody-negative.
Singapore researchers had noted robust T-cell responses to this virus, SARS2, from seventeen-year-old SARS1 samples. Since T-cells are obviously not discovered by antibody tests, those individuals were not included in Redfield’s count. Yet he apparently had not considered this essential, indeed fundamental, point as he testified to Congress and made headlines.
After watching this debacle on TV, I knew full well what was coming later that day. The media would latch on to this and create even more public panic. I also knew that the responsibility for clarifying this grossly erroneous statement would be mine. There was no question it would come up at the president’s press conference, and even if it did not, it still needed to be explained.
I rushed over to Derek Lyons’s office to update him and to make sure we would alert the president beforehand. A few others in the West Wing were there, so I summarized to them what had been said to Congress.
The mood ranged from amazement to dejection to frustration. An advisor to the president on legal matters warned me, with a smile on his face, “Scott, don’t just bluntly say, ‘Redfield is wrong!’ Say something softer, like ‘He misstated things.’”
I nodded, knowing that I needed to restrain my words, even though this was the same man who had tried to destroy me in the national press a few days earlier. But this wasn’t personal at all. Clarifying the facts about the pandemic and countering the unending barrage of misinformation and pseudoscience about it, in this case coming from within the administration itself, was one of my most important roles in this national crisis.
During the pre-brief in the Oval Office a few hours later, I outlined the issue to the president. It was decided, as expected, that I would answer the question when it came up. And so it did.
A reporter from ABC News directly asked me if Redfield’s statement that more than 90 percent of Americans remained susceptible to the disease was true. I took the friendly advice I had received earlier in the day.
“I think that Dr. Redfield misstated something there,” I said, and then did my best to calmly explain the problems with outdated information and the contribution of cross-reactive T-cells and T-cell protection that would not have been included in his data. I correctly stated what was widely known and factual—that the protection from the virus “is not solely determined by the percent of people who have antibodies.” During my answer, as I fended off interruptions, I tried to explain in understandable language as best I could.
I also made a serious effort to be somewhat delicate, because I felt extremely uncomfortable about having to correct the director of the CDC on the national stage.
Unfortunately, my disgust with the confrontational mood in that press room prevented me from being more diplomatic when that reporter asked, “Who are we to believe?” My reflexive answer was “You’re supposed to believe in the science, and I am telling you the science.” Then I referred him to several expert scientists by name. However, I had the strong sense that he was not really interested in the facts at all. Rather, it was another attempt to amplify discord.
After exiting the press room, I walked alongside the president. He briefly stopped to check the news coverage on the set of TV monitors outside the briefing room, as he typically chose to do. After some banter between the president and the staff standing in the area, we began walking back toward the Oval Office.
President Trump turned to me on his right, smiling wryly but with a genuinely puzzled look on his face. “Is Redfield political or just stupid?” he asked, subtly shaking his head. I looked right back at the president and hesitated. The answer was obvious to both of us.
Needless to say, the media immediately played up the disagreement between me and Redfield. It fed into their narrative of conflict between me and the other Task Force doctors, one that Redfield personally caused with his offensive and unwarranted remark that everything I said was “false.”
Later, Dr. Fauci appeared on TV and criticized my straightforward attempt to clarify important information as “extraordinarily inappropriate.” I wondered if he was more concerned with protecting his bureaucrat colleague’s reputation and undermining mine than ensuring that correct information was being told to the American public.
Martin Kulldorff, the world-renowned Harvard epidemiologist, posted his reaction on Twitter: “Scott Atlas stated the simple fact that immunity is higher than those with antibodies, whereupon Dr. Fauci criticizes him without contradicting what was actually said. Stating a simple scientific fact is not ‘extraordinarily inappropriate.’ What is going on?”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-nations-top-scientists-lied_4407355.html
**************************************************Reports of Rare Vulvar Ulcers in Adolescent Girls Following Pfizer COVID-19 Injections
Cases of rare vulvar ulcers have been diagnosed in adolescent girls after receiving a second dose of the Pfizer messenger RNA (mRNA) shot, according to the April edition of the Journal of Pediatric & Adolescent Gynecology.
Six cases of adolescent girls ages 12 to 16 developing painful genital ulcers within four days of their second vaccine dose were reported in the medical journal, including two cases occurring after infection with COVID-19.
This is the first time that cases of vulvar ulcers in adolescents and young women are being addressed and discussed in the medical literature.
Doctors of these cases say that it is “important to identify and explain possible adverse effects to help dispel the hesitancy some patients might feel about receiving a novel vaccine.”
The vulvar ulcers—known as vulvar aphthous ulcers, lipschütz ulcers, or acute genital ulcerations—are non-sexually acquired painful lesions formed on the external structures of the female genitalia, or the vulva. The condition mainly affects adolescents and young women, but cases of older women have also been reported.
Unlike mouth sores which are an established adverse reaction of certain vaccines, including the COVID-19 injections administered in the United States, vulvar ulcers are not.
A simple search on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) for aphthous ulcer, vaginal ulceration, vulval ulceration, and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, resulted in 282 total events as of April 14.
Of those, over 40 reports were related to genital ulcers in adolescents and young women several days after the second Pfizer shot, while the rest were reports of mouth ulcers. Several cases have also occurred following the first and third dose.
The youngest to experience the vulvar ulcers was a 10-year-old girl from North Carolina, who developed several painful lesions 24 hours after her second Pfizer injection on Jan. 29, 2022, [VAERS ID number: 2087752-1]. She tested negative for the herpes simplex virus. The report did not mention whether a COVID-19 test was administered.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cautions that reports made to VAERS do not necessarily prove causation.
“While very important in monitoring vaccine safety, VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness,” the CDC wrote.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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