Thursday, July 27, 2023
Chase Shuts Down Accounts for Dr. Joseph Mercola’s Companies
JPMorgan Chase is shutting down accounts for companies owned by prominent COVID-19 vaccine critic Dr. Joseph Mercola.
The primary accounts for several Mercola-owned businesses, including Mercola Market, are being shut down in August, according to notices reviewed by The Epoch Times.
“Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor transactions that flow through our customers’ accounts,” the notices state. “After careful consideration, we decided to close your account because of unexpected activity on these or another Chase account.”
Accounts for Mercola, CEO Steven Rye, Mr. Rye’s wife, chief financial officer Amalia Legaspi, Mrs. Legaspi’s husband, and Mrs. Legaspi’s son are also being closed.
The accountholders are being given until Aug. 11 to move funds to another institution. They have struggled to get answers on what exactly precipitated the harsh action.
Anthony Anesi, a Chase vice president, told Mr. Rye in a voicemail that he asked for the reason and “was told for legal reasons they can not tell me why they are closing the account.”
Mr. Anesi requested copies of the notices so he could file for reconsideration. “It’s not a guarantee, once we put in for reconsideration, that they will keep the accounts open. There’s no guarantee of that. But we are going to try because you’re a good client of our institution,” Mr. Anesi said.
Mr. Rye told The Epoch Times that in phone calls with Chase representatives, they said changes were made in the backend and that they cannot access the backend to see the changes.
Mr. Rye said that he believes Chase either based its decision on illegal acts from accountholders, which he says did not take place, or from Chase itself, which could run afoul of a new Florida law that bars banks from denying services to people for their religious, political, or social beliefs.
Dr. Mercola has been a strong critic of the government’s response to COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccines. Some of his articles are republished by The Epoch Times.
Chase has “refused to provide any reason” for the debanking, Dr. Mercola said in a statement. “They won’t say, ‘Hey, what’s this wire for? What’s this transaction for?” Mr. Rye said. “We’ve been doing business for them forever, right? Even in that voicemail, Tony, who we’ve known forever, says, ‘You guys are great customers.’ I don’t know what’s happening.”
He added: “I think it was a little bit surprising to the timing. The COVID stuff has kind of died down. So I found that a little bit unusual. So I can only speculate. I don’t know exactly why they did it. But we’ve looked at everything within our records. There’s nothing that we did.”
Even if the decisions are reversed, it would be hard to trust Chase enough to keep the accounts, Mr. Rye said. He and others are preparing to move their money to other institutions before the deadline.
A spokesperson for Chase told The Epoch Times in an email that most account closures are done for anti-money laundering or identify verification purposes.
“For privacy reasons, we can’t discuss customer relationships, but we don’t close accounts because of political affiliations, and we didn’t do so in this case,” the spokesperson said.
Mr. Anesi did not respond to a request for comment.
Robert F. Kennedy, a Democrat running for president who has also been critical of the vaccines, was among those decrying what happened.
“Looks like Chase shut down long-time accounts of Mercola’s company, employees, and their family members. No reason given. I wonder if it has anything to do with their medical dissent?” Mr. Kennedy wrote on Twitter. “No payment platform should be allowed to discriminate against people for exercising their right to free speech.”
Chase has a history of shutting down accounts of people with certain beliefs. Chase shut down accounts of three right-wing personalities in moves that did not appear to be based on any official company policies, The Epoch Times reported in 2019.
That included an account for Martina Markota, a performing artist-turned-reporter who had worked for the Daily Caller and The Rebel, and an account for Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio.
Chase stopped providing services to Mr. Tarrio just one day after a reporter claimed an online store he owned was linked to the Proud Boys, which was described as a “hate group.”
A spokeswoman for Chase said at the time the events were unrelated. “He has gotten an email from us, and we have repeatedly talked to him with very clear reasons why. He knows why,” the spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in an email. “If he agrees in writing that I can share that email with you, I’m happy to do so. But as it stands, I’m not able to share it.”
She also said, “We have never, and would never, shut down any account due to political affiliation.”
In a recording of a call between Mr. Tarrio and a Chase representative, the Chase representative called the account closure “mind-boggling,” adding, “I see nothing that indicates any reason why the account should be closed.”
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COVID Vaccines Show 24 Times More Adverse Reactions Than Others
The latest report on adverse reactions to vaccines in Western Australia has revealed that COVID-19 vaccinations have 24 times the rate of adverse reactions in the state compared to all other vaccines.
According to the state’s vaccine safety surveillance report (pdf), COVID-19 vaccines showed that for every 100,000 COVID-19 vaccines administered, 264 adverse events following immunisations (AEFIs) were recorded.
For all other vaccinations, 11.1 AEFIs were recorded, making the COVID-19 vaccines 23.8 times more likely than non-COVID-19 vaccines to result in adverse events.
The rate of adverse events varied among different types of COVID-19 vaccines.
The Spikevax (Moderna) vaccine recorded 281.4 AEFIs per 100,000 doses, Comirnaty (Pfizer) recorded 244.8, and the Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) vaccine, which was removed from the vaccine program after reports emerged of blood clotting in younger people, recorded 306.
Adverse events following vaccination can range from mild, such as a sore arm, to serious conditions, such as anaphylaxis, thrombosis with thrombocytopaenia syndrome (TTS), Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), myocarditis, and pericarditis.
Collaboration Continues With 3-in-1 Super Jab
Meanwhile, despite these concerns, the Australian government’s partnership with Moderna to produce vaccines using experimental messenger RNA technology to prepare for the next pandemic means these vaccines are here to stay.
The company has been forming a trifecta jab to address the main respiratory viruses—influenza, COVID-19, and RSV to maintain its market share amid the falling revenue of vaccine companies as the health crisis subsides.
Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine sales of US$18.4 billion in 2022 are expected to dive to $5 billion this year.
Recently, it was granted expedited approval by Australia’s authority for medicines for its mRNA-1345 (RSV vaccine), meaning that the company will be able to launch the vaccines in Australia before any other country in the world.
A spokesperson from Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration told the Epoch Times that Moderna was granted an accelerated approval process on March 30 after satisfying all of the following criteria:
the medicine is new
the medicine is for the treatment, prevention, or diagnosis of a life-threatening condition
no other medicines that are intended to treat, prevent or diagnose the condition are included in the Australian drug register or there is substantial evidence that this medicine provides a significant improvement in efficacy or safety of the treatment, prevention or diagnosis of the condition compared to those goods already included in the register
there is substantial evidence that the medicine provides a major therapeutic advance.
However, phase 3 clinical trials for Moderna’s mRNA version of the seasonal influenza vaccine have been underwhelming, showing a high rate of side effects.
Although the vaccine generates a strong immune response against the A strains of the flu, its efficacy against B strains is not better than existing approved vaccines.
Additionally, 70 percent of trial participants who received the shot reported adverse reactions such as headaches, swelling, and fatigue compared to 48 percent for the conventional flu vaccine.
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Yale Study Finds Death Rates for Covid Higher for Republicans
Probably a social class effect
In the fall of 2022, with the United States politically divided over Covid, the Yale University School of Public Health released a report about a working study which found excess deaths due to the Covid pandemic were along partisan political lines even after the coronavirus vaccines were made available to the public. The study was released as a working paper and emphasized the fact that Republican voters in two U.S. states had more deaths than Democratic voters after vaccines for Covid-19 became widely available to counter the disease.
Additionally, this discrepancy didn’t exist prior to the vaccines. The two states were Ohio and Florida. The study found the excess death rate for Republican voters was 5.4 percentage points, or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democratic voters. “The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available,” the authors said in the study.
The authors, Jacob Wallace, assistant professor of public health, Jason L. Schwartz, associate professor of public health and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, assistant professor at the Yale School of Management conducted the research using a novel linkage of political party affiliation and mortality data to assess whether there were differences in COVID-19 excess death rates between Republican and Democratic voters. Now, the authors have published their study.
Final study published
The cohort study itself was published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine. The Yale researchers examined the deaths of 538,139 people 25 years and older in Florida and Ohio, between January 2018, and December 2021, with researchers linking them to party registration records. Researchers found the excess death rate for Republicans and Democrats was about the same at the start of the pandemic in March 2020. The following winter members of both political parties experienced a similar sharp increase in deaths, but after April 2021, the number of Republicans who died exceeded the number of Democrats by 7.7% which came out to a 43% rise in deaths for members of the GOP. The median age of death was 78.
“In this cohort study evaluating 538?159 deaths in individuals aged 25 years and older in Florida and Ohio between March 2020, and December 2021, excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before. These differences were concentrated in counties with lower vaccination rates, and primarily noted in voters residing in Ohio. The differences in excess mortality by political party affiliation after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults suggest that differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republican and Democratic voters may have been a factor in the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the US.” The study was a “cross-sectional comparison of excess mortality between registered Republican and Democratic voters between March 2020, and December 2021 adjusted for age and state of voter registration was conducted. Voter and mortality data from Florida and Ohio in 2017 linked to mortality records for January 1, 2018, to December 31, 2021, were used in data analysis.”
Conclusion
As reported by the study’s authors:
“In this cross-sectional study, an association was observed between political party affiliation and excess deaths in Ohio and Florida after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults. These findings suggest that differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republican and Democratic voters may have been factors in the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the US.” The data didn’t look at voters without a political party affiliation and was limited to Ohio and Florida. “We’re not saying that if you took someone’s political party affiliation and were to change it from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party that they would be more likely to die from Covid-19,” Jacob Wallace said. However, “Our study found evidence of higher excess mortality for Republican voters compared with Democratic voters in Florida and Ohio after, but not before, COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults in the US. These differences in excess death rates were larger in counties with lower vaccination rates. If differences in COVID-19 vaccination by political party affiliation persist, particularly in the absence of other pandemic mitigation strategies, the higher excess death rate observed among Republican voters may continue through subsequent stages of the pandemic.”
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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