I no longer post regularly on my Food & Health blog but I have just put up something there that should be of general interest -- An article about a link between antibiotics and bowel cancer
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Thursday, September 09, 2021
AstraZeneca boss says booster jabs may not be needed
Booster vaccines may not be needed for everyone in Britain, the boss of AstraZeneca has said.
Chief executive Pascal Soriot said that rolling out third doses too quickly would be an “unnecessary burden” on the NHS.
He also called for patience from the government, stressing the UK was “a few weeks away” from having a definitive answer on the effectiveness of two doses in providing long-lasting protection.
Mr Soriot said that shortly it will have been six months since the first people had their second jabs so the data would give “a clearer picture of the immune response needed to provide continued, protective immunity”.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Soriot, alongside the company’s executive vice-president of biopharmaceuticals R&D Sir Mene Pangalos, said: “Moving too quickly to boost across the entire adult population will deprive us of these insights, leaving this important decision to rest on limited data.
“A third dose for all may be needed, but it may not. Mobilising the NHS for a boosting programme that is not needed would potentially add unnecessary burden on the NHS over the long winter months.
“Because NHS staff and resources are scarce, another national mobilisation would potentially leave us with fewer resources for cancer screenings and the other care provided by doctors and nurses each day.”
Their comments come as Health Secretary Sajid Javid said on Wednesday he is “very confident” there will be a booster programme for coronavirus, but is awaiting advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
He told Sky News: “In terms of who actually gets it and when, we’re waiting for final advice which could come across, certainly, in the next few days from the JCVI.”
He said the advice is expected to include information on whether people should get different vaccines to the ones they have already had or the same ones, and added: “I’m confident that we can start the booster programme this month.”
However WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last month that booster shots should be delayed in highly vaccinated countries, like the UK, and the doses prioritised for countries will low vaccination rates.
He added that there is a debate in the scientific community about whether “booster shots are effective at all”.
The UK’s chief medical officers are currently reviewing the benefits of vaccinating 12 to 15-year-olds after the JCVI declined to recommend a widespread rollout to the age group on health grounds alone.
Mr Javid has said he expects to hear from the UK’s chief medical officers in the coming days on their views as to whether there should be a mass rollout of Covid-19 vaccines for young people.
He told Sky News: “I want to give them the breathing space, it’s their independent view and that’s exactly what it should be. But I would expect to hear from them in the next few days.”
https://au.yahoo.com/news/astrazeneca-boss-says-booster-jabs-094117895.html
******************************************Dr. Scott Atlas, Others Throttle Bangladesh Mask Study: 'Extremely Weak Tea'
I rubbished this study on 3rd.
Dr. Scott Atlas, former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, called a recent study purporting to measure the effect of masking on curbing the spread of Covid-19 in Bangladeshi villages "extremely weak tea" during a Fox News appearance earlier this month.
The randomized trial, the results of which were posted September 1 by the nonprofit organization Innovations for Poverty Action and are currently being peer reviewed, measured over 340,000 people in 600 villages. It claims to show that an increase in the usage of surgical masks can lead to a reduction in the spread of the virus in certain age groups (via NBC News).
For five months beginning last November, [study co-author Mushfiq] Mobarak and his colleagues tracked 342,126 adult Bangladeshis and randomly selected villages to roll out programs to promote their usage, which included distributing free masks to households, providing information about their importance and reinforcing their use in the community.
Among the roughly 178,000 individuals who were encouraged to wear them, the scientists found that mask-wearing increased by almost 30 percent and that the change in behavior persisted for 10 weeks or more. After the program was instituted, the researchers reported an 11.9 percent decrease in symptomatic Covid symptoms and a 9.3 percent reduction in symptomatic seroprevalence, which indicates tBangladeshhat the virus was detected in blood tests.
While the effect may seem small, the results offer a glimpse of just how much masks matter, Mobarak said.
"A 30-percent increase in mask-wearing led to a 10 percent drop in Covid, so imagine if there was a 100-percent increase — if everybody wore a mask and we saw a 100-percent change," he said.
The scientists said masks significantly reduced symptomatic infections among older adults, and found that surgical masks were more effective than cloth versions.
Appearing earlier this month on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle," Atlas called the fact that the study was randomized "important" before citing a similarly randomized study from Denmark conducted last year that showed that "individuals wearing masks do not have a lower risk of infection testing for virus than people not wearing masks."
"This is a different type of study," said Atlas, a frequent and early lockdown critic who briefly served as a member of former President Donald Trump's White House coronavirus task force last year. "This tests to see if people in a village get symptomatic Covid if the villagers wear masks versus other villages that don’t wear masks as much."
The Hoover Institution fellow went on to describe two results from the study before explaining why he feels it's hardly the definitive evidence pro-maskers have been searching for these past 18 months.
One, in people defining Covid as symptoms plus anti-bodies, there is no evidence that cloth masks have any impact, no significant impact with cloth masks for people who have Covid as defined by Covid symptoms with antibody documentation. So cloth masks are worthless according to this study.
The second part is the surgical mask study. And the surgical mask study shows that there is from my reading here about an 11% decrease in individuals having symptomatic Covid with antibodies. 11%. And basically only older people. So what this shows you after all is said and done is it confirms that cloth masks are worthless. It shows - if you take the data at face value - a very minimal impact, 11%, decrease in symptomatic cases in mask usage by the village.
And so, you know, of all the clamoring for something desperately to show that masks work, this is what I would call extremely weak tea. In fact, it confirms the reason why we have seen all over the world and in the United States that mask usage by the population does not significantly stop the spread of the virus.
It's being oversold, but people are desperate to find some pebble somewhere that shows masks work.
Atlas, by far, wasn't the only critic. Professor Francois Balloux, director of the UCL Genetics Institute and professor of computational biology at University College London, tweeted that it's "not obvious" from the study that masks are "statistically significantly associated with reduced transmission at the level of the population."
Nick Hudson, chairman of Pandata.org (PANDA), tweeted a blog post by Substack writer el gato malo titled, "bangladesh mask study: do not believe the hype," calling it "sound commentary."
From el gato malo's analysis:
To claim that masks caused any given variance in outcome, you need to isolate masks as a variable. They didn’t. This was a whole panoply of interventions, signage, hectoring, nudges, payments, and psychological games. It had hundreds of known effects and who knows how many unknown ones.
We have zero idea what’s being measured and even some of those variables that were measured showed high correlation and thus pose confounds. when you’re upending village life, claiming one aspect made the difference becomes statistically impossible. the system becomes hopelessly multivariate and cross-confounded.
The authors admit it themselves (and oddly do not seem to grasp that this invalidates their own mask claims)
Gato's post has gotten lots of attention on Twitter for its thoroughness.
Harvard professor Dr. Martin Kulldorff called it "odd" that "mask advocates are excited by this study."
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IN BRIEF
Texas governor signs GOP voting restrictions voting integrity into law (AP)
Dr. Anthony Fauci faces call to resign and answer for report about U.S. government-funded Wuhan research (Daily Wire)
Who’d a thunk it? Minnesota man freed by Kamala Harris-supported bail fund now charged with murder (Fox News)
Four Taliban members swapped for Bowe Bergdahl now in Afghan government (NY Post)
A trip down memory lane: Barack Obama’s prisoner swap broke the law, GAO says (NPR)
Chinese muscle in on Afghanistan’s rare earth mineral deposits, creating more headaches for Biden (Washington Times)
ICE counts 463 sanctuary jails and prisons in U.S. — and another 156 give limited cooperation (Washington Times)
House Republican demands Hunter Biden’s art dealer assist in investigating White House corruption (Breitbart)
Democrats poised for bitter September spending battle within their own ranks (Washington Examiner)
Human Rights Campaign fires its president, Alphonso David, after he advised Andrew Cuomo during sexual misconduct scandal (Daily Wire)
ACLU denounced pandemic mandates before COVID-19 (Fox News)
South Dakota governor bans telemedicine abortions (National Review)
Oregon residents outraged by video of flagrant shoplifting (National Review)
Odds of a “breakthrough” COVID infection worsen with Delta variant (Washington Times)
University of California doctors challenge its vaccine mandate as “irrational” (Just the News)
Biden’s inflation woes persist with production stoppages at “Big Three” automakers (Washington Examiner)
Catholics frustrated as increasing attacks on churches go unnoticed (Washington Times)
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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, September 08, 2021
'Mu' variant has been detected in EVERY US state except Nebraska
The Mu variant of COVID-19- which scientists fear could be more transmissible than Delta - has now been detected in all U.S. states with the exception of Nebraska.
Florida and California have reported 384 variant cases- the highest numbers among the 49 infected U.S. states.
Los Angeles County reported close to half of the California cases with 167.
The new cases however only reflect 0.2 percent of total variant samples from the state of California between June and August.
Alaska previously had the highest number of Mu variant cases with 146. That represented four per cent of all cases recorded in the isolated state.
Other U.S. states have also shared their Mu numbers, with 42 in Maine, 73 in Connecticut and 39 in Hawaii, according to Newsweek.
The Mu variant- which was identified in Colombia in January - has spread to 41 different countries including the United States, and is also feared to potentially be vaccine-resistant.
The variant became of interest due its potential to become more transmissible and vaccine resistant as discovered by the World Health Organization on August 30.
The CDC, however, has not shared this analysis.
Director of LA County Public Health Barbara Ferrer said in a statement: 'The identification of variants like Mu, and the spreading of variants across the globe, highlights the need for L.A. County residents to continue to take measures to protect themselves and others.
'This is what makes getting vaccinated and layering protections so important. These are actions that break the chain of transmission and limits COVID-19 proliferation that allows for the virus to mutate into something that could be more dangerous.'
Dr. Anthony Fauci also commented on the Mu variant claiming that it would not be the next dominant COVID strain. 'Even though it has not in essence taken hold to any extent here we always pay attention to at all times variants,' he said. 'We don't consider it an immediate threat right now.'
This mutant strain was first spotted in Colombia in January. It has since spread to more than 40 countries including the UK, US, France, Japan and Canada.
Is it increasing in prevalence?
There have been 4,000 cases detected to date, but this is thought to be an underestimate because many countries that have suffered outbreaks do very little surveillance for variants.
The number of cases blamed on the variant declined globally last month, amid the spread of the Delta strain.
In Colombia — where it was first detected — it is still behind around six in ten infections.
Can the strain dodge vaccine triggered immunity?
The variant carries the mutation E484K, which can help it escape antibodies.
This change is also found on the South African 'Beta' variant and Brazilian 'Gamma' variant.
A PHE study previously suggested it could make vaccines less effective. But UK health chiefs said more research was needed.
The variant has been further described by Fauci as 'a constellation of mutations that suggest that it would evade certain antibodies, not only monoclonal antibodies, but vaccine and convalescent serum- induced antibodies.'
The peak of Mu variant cases were present in mid-July and have been declining since. However, the fear is that the variant will strengthen again in the future.
The nation has eclipsed an average of 1,500 COVID-19 deaths per day, the first time the mark has been reached in six months - since the vaccination drive began in earnest.
Figures from Johns Hopkins University released early Tuesday showed that the US has recorded 40,018,318 cases of COVID since the pandemic began, with 647,072 people known to have lose their lives as a result.
When the 1,500 figure was last reached in March, though, the vaccines were not as widely available as they are now.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also reports that deaths increased by 131 percent in August compared to previous months.
COVID-19 cases are also 300% higher this year when compared to last year's labor day weekend - before any vaccines were available.
Hospitalizations nationwide have spiked as well, with August having double the amount of COVID-19 patients admitted than June did.
The rise in deaths corresponds with a rise in hospitalizations.
More than 102,000 American are hospitalized with the virus, and 75 percent of hospital beds nationwide are currently in use.
Nationwide, the U.S. has recorded over 40 million COVID-19 cases and 648,000 deaths from the virus, the most of any nation in the world in both categories
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9964415/Mu-variant-detected-U-S-state-except-Nebraska.html
*****************************************Delta transmission in children low, causes mild illness, report finds -- Australian report
There has been a five-fold increase in the spread of COVID-19 in educational settings but only 2 per cent of children who caught it during the latest outbreak have been hospitalised, and most experienced mild or no symptoms, a new report from the National Centre for Immunisation and Research has found.
Transmission between children has also been low, it found.
The report looked at transmission of COVID-19 in schools and households between June 16 and July 31, and found that the NSW experience was consistent with overseas studies showing the Delta variant was more transmissible and led to more infections among children and young people.
Professor Kristine McCartney, a specialist at The Sydney’s Children’s Hospital at Westmead, said the rate of transmission between children was low, and most of the transmission was between unvaccinated adults. “The spread between children themselves was very low,” she said.
“We’re very lucky to know, and it’s consistent with data over the course of the pandemic, that COVID-19 is mild among children.
“Only around 2 per cent will require hospitalisation and, for many of those 2 per cent, it’s for monitoring and social care. Unfortunately, often their parents are unwell with COVID-19 and that’s why they’re being cared for in the hospital.”
The report found that across 19 schools and 32 early childcare services, there were 59 people - 34 students and 25 staff members - who attended while infectious. From those primary cases, 2347 people were considered close contacts.
The overall transmission rate at early childhood centres was 4.7 per cent, with 106 secondary cases involving 69 students and 37 staff members. Transmission occurred in 19 of the 51 settings. The highest transmission in early childhood settings was between staff members, and from a staff member to children.
Transmission was lower in schools, the report said, at a rate of 2.1 per cent; there were nine secondary cases in 728 close contacts. “This was likely due to the school holiday period and subsequent limited onsite attendance in term 3,” the report said.
Dr Archana Koirala, a paediatric infectious disease specialist and University of Sydney lecturer, said full participation in education services was essential for children to learn and develop socially.
“These results should give confidence to families, schools and the community that we have robust evidence on how the Delta variant behaves in children,” she said.
The study found the so-called attack rate - or the transmissibility of the strain - was highest between adults (11.2 per cent) and second highest from adults to children (seven per cent). Between children it was 1.6 per cent and from children to adults it was 1.5 per cent.
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Toxic Double Standards Get More Blatant
Let’s take the shooting of Ashli Babbitt. When one compares it to some other high-profile shootings, like the Michael Brown case, for instance. Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson Police Department went through an ordeal, even though Brown had tried to take his gun, an action that warrants the use of deadly force.
Did Wilson ever get the “puff piece” interview with Lester Holt that the cop who pulled the trigger on Ashli Babbitt did? Many of the voices who condemned the clearly justified actions of Wilson also seemed to have no problems with the shooting of Babbitt. If anything, if it had been Donald Trump’s reelection that would have been confirmed by the electoral vote count, and a Capitol Police officer had fired a fatal shot in circumstances similar to those surrounding Ashli Babbitt, how would that have been covered by the biased media outlets?
The toxic double standards don’t stop there. We could also look at a tale of two lieutenant colonels. Marine Stuart Scheller called for accountability in the wake of the horrific bombing that killed 10 Marines, two soldiers, and a Navy corpsman during the dishonorable debacle caused by Joe Biden’s betrayal in Afghanistan and was immediately fired. He now expects to be court-martialed.
Contrast that to the hero treatment Alexander Vindman got for what Byron York describes as his political gamesmanship on behalf of the deep state. Never mind that Vindman was among a bunch of bureaucrats actively undermining his commander-in-chief. Just imagine the way the usual suspects at MSNBC would have reacted if Vindman had tried to mess with Barack Obama’s Iran giveaway or Iraq withdrawal the way he did with Trump’s policy vis-à-vis Ukraine.
Speaking of Trump’s Ukraine policy, remember how so many of those “news” outlets harped on that phone call with Ukraine’s president? Well, consider the lack of curiosity about Biden’s phone call this past July with the president of Afghanistan, one in which he allegedly expressed knowledge of the precarious situation preceding the dishonorable debacle the pullout became. If Biden is held to the standard Democrats demanded of Trump, he’d be impeached and removed.
When combined with the many earlier cases of double standards, not to mention the lies and hateful rhetoric, abuses, and other assaults that defy any sense of fairness or common sense, it’s clear that much of the establishment media — and other defenders of so-called “norms” — have been running on double standards for a long time. The thing is, grassroots Patriots are tired of it, and they’re increasingly losing respect for those who not only impose double standards but also those who refuse to call them out. In the long run, that will have some dire consequences for the country.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/82512-toxic-double-standards-get-more-blatant-2021-09-07
***************************************IN BRIEF
President Biden’s approval tanks; only two others have had lower ratings at this point (Fox News)
DOJ vows not to protect preborn babies in Texas (Axios)
Only off by … well, nearly 100%: AP adds embarrassing correction to article claiming 70% of calls to Mississippi poison control were about Ivermectin ingestion (Daily Wire)
The end of enhanced unemployment benefits brings hope to small businesses (Fox Business)
In wake of Andrew Cuomo scandal, entire board resigns from Time’s Up, whose top leaders aided and abetted the disgraced ex-governor (Daily Wire)
Patriotic restaurants across America honored our troops killed in Kabul by reserving a table for them and setting out 13 beers
Apple wisely delays iPhone photo-scanning plan amid fierce backlash (AP)
Policy: Social Security bailout will create another set of problems (Market Watch)
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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, September 07, 2021
Promising drug a new weapon in curbing COVID’s worst effects
Comment from Australia
Yesterday 1281 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in NSW. By October many of these will be seriously ill in hospital, some in intensive care, and a few will die. Others will progress to indefinite multifaceted illness called “Long COVID”.
Can this miserable trajectory be modified, while we wait for the vaccination drive to “stop the spread”?
Clinical trials and overseas experience with a class of therapeutic drugs called monoclonal antibodies suggests that it can – but only when they are given early. COVID-19 patients treated in a trial of one such drug called Sotrovimab exhibited an 79 per cent relative reduction in hospitalisation and deaths. In March, the independent regulator halted patient recruitment because of “profound efficacy”. Even with small numbers, before the Delta outbreak, the statistics were persuasive.
The first of 7700 doses of Sotrovimab quietly slipped into Australia three weeks ago. We have waited some time. It now has Therapeutics Goods Administration provisional approval for vulnerable patients, such as the elderly and immunocompromised. It is being used in Shepparton, Victoria. What are the plans for NSW?
Sotrovimab is the latest and, possibly, best therapeutic monoclonal antibody to inhibit the COVID-19 virus attaching to human tissue. The US Federal Drug Authority authorised its emergency use in May. The headline cost is $US2100 a dose, and it’s free to vulnerable Americans.
President Trump was treated with, among other drugs, a duo of anti-COVID monoclonal antibodies labelled Regeneron, similarly authorised in America last November. The US National Institute of Health recommends either drug for vulnerable patients. Don’t mention them in the same breath as ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
With COVID on the march in America, antibody distribution has massively scaled up. The Texas state government has just established public antibody infusion centres.
Intravenous antibody infusions take an hour, in infectious patients. No small short-term imposition on overstretched health systems. Yet, one which could prevent a much greater hospital overload in the months which follow. Perhaps a treatment centre on an oval near a hospital should be considered. Like the precautionary Surge Centre in Canberra.
The United Arab Emirates, where Delta is prevalent, and logistics are military-grade, announced striking results, with no deaths among 6175 COVID-19 patients treated in July.
Nevertheless, and crucially, immunologists worry that indiscriminate use of a single antibody such as Sotrovimab might cause resistant variants to emerge and leak into the community. It is no substitute for vaccination. The ethical issues are obvious.
Monoclonal antibodies attack and disable unwanted targets. Think Herceptin for breast cancer, Keytruda for melanoma , Emgality for migraine and Humira for arthritis - all monoclonals, each created or modified for a very specific target. Each is a feat of structural molecular engineering.
It was Britain’s Cambridge scientist, Sir Gregory Winter, who devised and developed the generic technology that underpins monoclonal antibodies. At first, business failed to see their potential. And so, as he recounted in his 2018 Nobel address and at Sydney University in 2019, it was seed-funding from the Australian racing industry which launched monoclonal antibodies to market. The deal was done on a boat on Sydney Harbour. He overheard a whispered comment “Let’s give Greg the money. Let’s see how the boffin trots”. Annual monoclonal revenues now well exceed $100 billion, to untold human benefit.
The Australian perspective has come full circle. Professor Daniel Christ is a former PhD student of Winter’s and is now at the Garvan Institute. He sees a way around this antibody resistance problem. And he looks to the experience in treating HIV infection with three different drugs which curbed that epidemic.
Since early 2020, his team has worked flat out to create monoclonals against COVID-19. They now have three antibodies which are more potent than Sotrovimab in vitro, When used together, they should be very resistant to mutation escape.
If these ventures succeed, Australians will have good reason to be thankful for investment in science.
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New study finds AstraZeneca more effective against Delta strain
Deakin University Chair of Epidemiology Professor Catherine Bennett says the AstraZeneca vaccine is more effective than others against the Delta strain of COVID-19 in certain instances.
Professor Bennett cited a new study from Bahrain, conducted in partnership with Columbia University in the United States, which found “extraordinary differences” when comparing a number of vaccines.
“They found for those over 50 … 44 times less likely to end up in ICU if you have AstraZeneca, and I think it’s 33 times less likely with Pfizer,” Professor Bennett told Sky News host chris Kenny.
“Both extraordinarily effective, but AstraZeneca actually has the edge on that.”
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Suicide a bigger problem than Covid
Comment from Australia
One-in-four Australians say they know someone who died by suicide or attempted to take their own life in the past year – equivalent to five million adults – a new survey has found.
Suicide Prevention Australia chief executive officer Nieves Murray said major social and economic events had historically influenced suicide rates.
“We know social and economic isolation are the biggest drivers of suicide rates and Covid-19 has seen Australians subject to 18 months of rolling lockdowns and disruption to their personal lives, employment and businesses,” she said.
“We’ve seen how quickly Covid-19 cases can get out of hand and we need to have the same national policy focus and vigilance to stop suicide rates doing the same.”
The survey commissioned by Suicide Prevention Australia and completed by YouGov in August, found 25 per cent of adult Australians surveyed knew someone who had died by suicide or attempted to take their own life in the previous 12 months. About 15 per cent knew the person directly, while another 11 per cent knew them indirectly.
About 16 per cent said they had sought help or searched for advice from a suicide prevention service in the past 12 months, about 16 per cent said they had indirectly sought help.
Most people thought “social isolation and loneliness” was the biggest risk to suicide in the next 12 months, with 64 per cent rating it as an issue.
This was followed by unemployment and job security (58 per cent); family and relationship breakdowns (57 per cent); cost of living and personal debt (55 per cent); and drugs and alcohol (53 per cent).
While the latest data from suicide registers in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland do not show an increase in suspected suicide deaths in 2020, or since the Covid-19 pandemic began, Ms Murray said the number of deaths in 2019 had been the highest recorded in Australia, growing from 3093 in 2015, to 3318 in 2019.
“There have never been more lives lost to suicide in this country,” Ms Murray said.
Those surveyed were particularly worried about the suicide risk among young people aged 12-25 years old (42 per cent), followed by middle aged Australians aged 25-55 years old (29 per cent) and men (29 per cent).
Other people thought to be at risk were those living in regional and rural areas (24 per cent), LGBTQI Australians (21 per cent), Indigenous Australians (18 per cent) and those aged over 55 (18 per cent).
The survey also supported a stand-alone national suicide prevention act, similar to one introduced in Japan, which would require the Federal Government to consider and mitigate suicide risks when making all decisions, not just ones related to health.
About 66 per cent thought Australia should introduce similar legislation.
Ms Murray said legislation was the best prevention against suicide rates increasing.
“The heightened economic and social threat posed by Covid-19 means we cannot afford to wait to legislate,” Ms Murray said.
“Australia needs a national suicide prevention act and we need to act now. “We all have a role to play in preventing suicide. An act will legislate a whole-of-government priority to prevent suicide and focus the attention of every agency to address the risk of suicide across our community.
“Suicide prevention isn’t limited to health portfolios. Housing is suicide prevention, employment is suicide prevention, finance is suicide prevention, and education is suicide prevention.”
The organisation noted that more than three times the amount of people died from suicide in 2019 (3318 people) than have died from Covid-19 since the pandemic began (1019 people as of September 2).
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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, September 06, 2021
Worrying deaths among vaccinated service members
It seems that everyone is cheering now that the FDA has “approved” the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine which in some people’s minds deems it safe to use. There is plenty of debate if the vaccine was actually approved or if it was a different vaccine that will be made in the future but that nevertheless, there are still questions that have not been answered.
Now, the Pentagon has mandated that the injections must be given to all active-duty service members. The majority of service members have already taken the jab under extreme coercion, but there are thousands of troops have resisted the jab until this point.
However, expect more pressure than ever before for them to submit to taking the experimental jab.
Sadly, what you won’t hear on the mainstream media is that many troops that have been forced to take this medical experiment have severely been impacted healthwise.
Let us have an honest moment between us now. The men and women that sign up for the military are typically the healthiest groups of young people, right? So, why are they having these types of condition?
Now, a military doctor has come forward to shed some light on the recent developments that should send a chill down your spine.
Dr. Lee Merritt stated the experimental jabs have killed more active-duty service members than COVID-19 itself.
Dr. Merritt recently addressed the American Frontline Doctors and discussed how all through 2020 there were only 20 deaths among all active duty military personnel related to COVID. However, there are now many reports of tumors and over 80 cases of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart), which has a 5-year mortality rate of around 66%, following the COVID-19 shots given to the military.
With the vaccine program we’ve ostensibly killed more of our young active duty people than COVID did.
This is the not the first time the military has been implicated in killing active duty military with experimental vaccines. It happened also during the Gulf War with the experimental anthrax vaccine, which some estimates claim killed 35,000 military people with what was originally termed “Gulf War Syndrome.”
There has been no long time date to suggest what the potential side effects could be down the road so that is even more concerning for anyone who is reading this.
The future of our men and women is at stake and no one can give us the answers as to if this is something everyone should be injected with. Sadly, with our current administration, we may never know.
https://dailyheadlines.net/what-this-military-doctor-just-said-about-the-vaccine-is-just-ghoulish/
****************************************Here’s what we know about the mu variant
A coronavirus variant known as “mu” or “B.1.621” was designated by the World Health Organization as a “variant of interest” earlier this week and will be monitored by the global health body as cases continue to emerge across parts of the world. It is the fifth variant of interest currently being monitored by the WHO.
The variant was first detected in Colombia in January 2021, where cases continue to rise. It has since been identified in more than 39 countries, according to the WHO, among them the United States, South Korea, Japan, Ecuador, Canada and parts of Europe.
About 2,000 mu cases have been identified in the United States, so far, according to the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID), the largest database of novel coronavirus genome sequences in the world. Most cases have been recorded in California, Florida, Texas and New York among others.
However, mu is not an “immediate threat right now” within the United States, top infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci told a press briefing on Thursday. He said that while the government was “keeping a very close eye on it,” the variant was “not at all even close to being dominant” as the delta variant remains the cause of over 99 percent of cases in the country.
It’s unclear how much protection the vaccines offer against this variant. “The Mu variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape,” the WHO said in a statement Tuesday, raising concerns that it may be more resistant to coronavirus vaccines than other variants. “But this needs to be confirmed by further studies,” it added.
Fauci said that while laboratory data had shown that the mu variant can evade certain antibodies — among them those induced by vaccine shots — there is currently a lack of clinical data and other research involving people, showing this. He underscored that in general, vaccines remain effective and the best protection against the coronavirus.
Vaccine maker Pfizer told The Post in an email that it was studying the mu variant and expected to share data soon with a peer-reviewed journal. “To date, we are encouraged by both the real-world data and laboratory studies of the vaccine and see no evidence that the virus or circulating variants of concern regularly escape protection,” said Pfizer’s spokesperson Kit Longley.
Is the mu variant more transmissible?
Paúl Cárdenas, a professor of infectious diseases and genomics at Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador, has studied mu and told The Post that current evidence showed that it was likely “more transmissible” than the original coronavirus strain. Mu has “been able to outcompete gamma and alpha in most parts of Ecuador and Colombia,” he said.
However, there was no sign yet that people should be more worried, Cárdenas added. “People should know that these variants emerge all the time and it is important that they are characterized in order to be tracked,” he said.
Most viruses change over time, and although some mutations have little to no impact on the virus’s properties, others can change how it spreads, its severity and the effectiveness of vaccines or other medicines.
For now, the WHO says more studies are needed to understand the characteristics of the mu variant — and that it will monitor how it may interact, in particular, with the more common delta variant.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/03/mu-coronavirus-variant-explained/
****************************************IN BRIEF
Jobs report disappoints — only 235,000 positions added vs. expectations of 720,000 (CNBC)
President Biden rips SCOTUS, orders federal crackdown on Texas over “heartbeat” law (Daily Wire)
Nancy Pelosi: House will vote to codify Roe v. Wade (National Review)
Settled science? Senior FDA officials to step down over disagreement with White House on booster shots (Fox Business)
Twenty states sue feds over foolish transgender mandate in schools (Daily Wire)
Friendly fire: Republican Liz Cheney promoted to vice chair of select committee investigating U.S. Capitol riot (Washington Times)
Joe Manchin calls on Democrats to “pause” $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, citing inflation concerns (National Review)
Biden claims he visited Pittsburgh synagogue that was attacked. Synagogue says that's false. (Daily Wire)
House GOP demands full, unedited transcript from Biden-Ghani phone call (Daily Caller)
Republicans question number of Americans left in Afghanistan as horror stories roll in (Washington Examiner)
The Biden administration can’t reach one-in-three released migrant kids (Axios)
Non compos mentis: Biden helps secure Tajikistan’s border amid U.S. border crisis (Fox News)
Former Georgia prosecutor indicted over handling of Ahmaud Arbery’s case (CBS News)
Charges filed against “transgender” sex offender for exposing himself to women in a spa (The Federalist)
We’re shocked — shocked! Taliban announces China will be their main partner (Human Events)
Inmates running the asylum: Taliban victory parade features dozens of armored U.S. military vehicles and tons of weapons (Not the Bee)
Islamist stabs six at New Zealand supermarket; suspect dead (Fox News)
USA Today (sort of) retracts “fact-check” against Gold Star families to protect Biden after he dishonored slain soldiers (PM)
Biden administration erased Afghan weapons reports from federal websites (Forbes)
Biden to go back on vacation, even as his own people are horrified Americans were left behind (RedState)
Judge conditionally approves Purdue Pharma opioid settlement (AP)
Belly Laugh of the Week: Federal government looking into McDonald’s ice cream machines (Daily Wire)
******************************************
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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Sunday, September 05, 2021
Lessons from the "Diamond Princess"
There are a number of articles circulating that see governmental reactions to Covid as the product of malign conspiracies. And it is true that government Covid policies are not well justified by the science.
There is however an old provrerb that says never attribute to malice what can equally be attributed to stupidity or folly. And it is my view that the lockdowns etc. are just the sort of stupidity that we expect from politicians rather than being due to anything more devious.
The conspiracy articles oftem preent a good case for a very different response to the virus but the paranoia in them makes for a tedious read. Below however I present an excerpt from one of the conspiracy articles that seems to me well reasoned
I have always argued that government responses to the virus should have been limited to particularly vulnerable groups
The outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship served as an inadvertent petri-dish to study the COVID virus. Thanks to that example, by the end of February 2020, we knew that COVID was not some monster virus like the 1918 Spanish Flu but was simply another coronavirus strain that was closely related to previous coronaviruses and that most of us already carried some level of cross-reactive immunity to protect us.
How do we know that? The virus circulated freely onboard the ship, yet age corrected lethality remained between 0.025% and 0.625% (that's on the order of a bad flu season and nothing at all like the fatality rate of the 1918 Spanish Flu, which was between 2% and 10%). Only 26% of the passengers tested positive for the virus and of those that tested positive 48% remained completely symptom free despite the advanced age of most of these passengers!
The Diamond Princess didn't turn into the floating morgue of bygone eras when ships carrying a disease were forced into quarantine. That should have been the first clue that this virus was anything but novel in the colloquial understanding of the term. Like most cold and flu viruses, only those with weak immune systems were in danger while everyone else got off with little or no symptoms. That is simply not how a truly novel virus behaves when it encounters a population without any pre-existing cross-reactive immunity. The only plausible explanation for that lack of deadliness (deadly for some, annoying for some, and asymptomatic for most others) is that most people already have sufficient pre-existing cross-reactive immunity from exposure to other coronaviruses.
Research subsequently confirmed what the Diamond Princess outbreak revealed. Cross-reactive immunity. As I mentioned before, studies like this one demonstrated that up to 90 - 99% of us already have some residual level of partial protection to COVID. And we also subsequently found out that most people who were exposed to the deadly SARS virus in 2003 have little to fear from COVID, again because of cross-reactive immunity. COVID was never a mortal threat to most of us.
The important thing to remember is that the Diamond Princess data was already publicly available since the end of February of 2020. Operation Warp Speed, the vaccine development initiative approved by President Trump, was nevertheless announced on April 29th, 2020. Thus, our health authorities knowingly and opportunistically recommended lockdowns and promoted vaccines as an exit strategy after it was already clear that the majority of us had some kind of protection through cross-reactive immunity. The Diamond Princess example provided the unequivocal proof that the only people who might benefit from a vaccine, even if it worked as advertised, were the small number of extremely vulnerable members of society with weak immune systems. Likewise, lockdowns should have been recommended only for nursing home residents (on a strictly voluntary basis to protect their human rights) while the pandemic surged through the rest of us.
https://www.juliusruechel.com/2021/09/the-snake-oil-salesmen-and-covid-zero.html
*****************************************How long does immunity last after COVID vaccination? And do we need booster shots?
An important factor in achieving herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is is how long the vaccines protect you.
If a vaccine continues to work well over a long period, it becomes easier to have a significant proportion of the population optimally protected, and in turn suppress or eliminate the disease entirely.
As the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines continues, public attention is increasingly turning to booster shots, which aim to top up immunity if it wanes. But is a third dose needed? And if so, when?
Let’s take a look at what the data tell us so far about how long immunity from COVID-19 vaccines might last.
Immunity after a COVID-19 infection?
The presence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 is used as an indicator of immunity, with higher levels indicating greater protection.
Once antibody levels drop below a particular threshold, or vanish completely, the person is at risk of reinfection.
Initially, scientists observed people’s antibody levels rapidly decreased shortly after recovery from COVID-19.
However, more recently, we’ve seen positive signs of long-lasting immunity, with antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow identified seven to eight months following infection with COVID-19.
In addition, scientists have observed evidence of memory T cells (a type of immune cells) more than six months following infection.
A study of more than 9000 recovered COVID-19 patients in the United States up to November 2020 showed a reinfection rate of only 0.7 per cent.
These findings closely align with a slightly more recent study suggesting reinfection after COVID-19 is very uncommon, at least in the short term.
While it seems likely there’s some level of lasting protection following COVID-19 infection, if you’ve had COVID, getting vaccinated is still worthwhile.
There’s some evidence vaccination after recovery leads to a stronger level of immunity compared to “natural” immunity from infection, or immunity from vaccination alone.
People with so-called “hybrid immunity” appear to exhibit a more diverse range of antibodies.
How long does immunity from vaccines last?
The vaccines deployed against COVID-19 in Australia and most of the western world come from two classes.
Those produced by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are viral vector vaccines. They use an adenovirus (which causes the common cold) to prime the immune system to respond to SARS-CoV-2.
The vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna use mRNA-based technology. The messenger RNA gives your cells temporary instructions to make the coronavirus’ spike protein, teaching your immune system to protect you if you encounter the virus.
For the viral vector vaccines, despite ongoing trials, there’s little data available on the duration of the antibody response.
The original studies showed efficacy for one to two months, however the duration of protection, and whether a booster will be needed, require further evaluation.
Notably, a vaccine similar to AstraZeneca against a related coronavirus (Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS) showed stable antibody levels over a 12-month follow-up period. This gives hope for lasting protection against similar coronaviruses.
The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are the first vaccines based on mRNA technology to be approved for human use. So there’s still significant research required to evaluate the nature and duration of immunity they induce.
Interestingly, “germinal centres” have been identified in the lymph nodes of people vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine. These act as training sites for immune cells, teaching them to recognise SARS-CoV-2, indicating a potential for long-lasting protection.
Initial studies only evaluated short-term efficacy, however recent research has found strong antibody activity at six months.
What about Delta?
Variants such as Delta, which are more transmissible and potentially more dangerous, are likely to increase interest in booster programs.
All vaccines show modestly reduced efficacy against Delta, so any decrease in protection over time could be more problematic than with the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, or other variants.
A recent preprint (a study yet to undergo peer review) found protection against the Delta variant waned within three months with both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines.
This research from the United Kingdom showed the Pfizer vaccine was 92 per cent effective at preventing people from developing a high viral load at 14 days after the second dose, but this dropped to 78 per cent at 90 days.
AstraZeneca was 69 per cent effective against the same measure at 14 days, dropping to 61 per cent after 90 days.
This study shows vaccinated people who become infected with Delta still carry high amounts of virus (viral load).
Third booster doses will be important to reduce these breakthrough infections and subsequent transmission.
Although the UK study looked at infections rather than hospitalisations or deaths, data from around the world continue to show the unvaccinated are making up the vast majority of patients who develop serious illness.
Nonetheless, scientists are continuing to investigate how waning immunity could affect protection against the more serious outcomes of COVID-19.
OK, so what now?
Pfizer has reported positive results from trials of a third dose to boost immunity, and the company is seeking formal approval for a booster from the United States Food and Drugs Administration.
The United States has announced it will begin distributing third doses next month to people who received an mRNA vaccine eight months ago or more.
Other countries, such as Israel, have already begun rolling out boosters.
The move to offer third doses in some high-income countries has raised ethical concerns, with many people around the world still unable to access a first or second dose.
A number of countries have authorised booster doses for at-risk populations in response to the rise of the Delta variant.
This includes older adults and those with compromised immune systems, to combat the increased risk of severe disease and diminished vaccine protection in these people.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/coronavirus/2021/08/30/covid-vaccination-booster/
******************************************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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Saturday, September 04, 2021
My Sabbath today
Before my illness I was posting to 6 blogs every day except Saturday and I am now back to that
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Friday, September 03, 2021
Much-touted Bangladesh study of masks is a snark
Multiple accounts have popped up (e.g. here) saying that the study vindicates mask-wearing. It does not. Just two quotes from the study abstract tell the tale:
"Neither participants nor field staff were blinded to intervention assignment"
"The proportion of individuals with COVID-like symptoms was 7.62% (N=13,273) in the intervention arm and 8.62% (N=13,893) in the control arm"
For a start, the study was of people with "COVID-like symptoms", not actual disease and there was NO data on deaths. So there is a lot of room for slippage there. How often were the "symptoms" actually indicative of COVID infection?
Secondly, the figures for mask-wearers and non-mask-wearers differed only slightly (7.62% vs 8.62%) -- to a degree readily explainable by the fact that the study was not blinded. The experimenters knew who the wearers and non-wearers were and it is routine that such a circumstance gives results favourable to the hypothesis.
Not blinding the study was a huge breach of scientific protocol and renders the results of zero authority.
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1st Patient Begins Pfizer’s Oral COVID-19 Drug Trial
The first patient in a clinical trial analyzing Pfizer’s oral COVID-19 drug has received the first dose of the medication, the company announced on Sept. 1.
The study is analyzing a protease inhibitor known as PF-07321332. The drug is meant to combat COVID-19 in patients who experience symptoms from the disease, but don’t require hospital care.
The randomized, double-blind trial will enroll about 1,140 participants, approximately half of whom will receive a placebo. The participants will receive the drug or the placebo every 12 hours orally for five days.
People who are given the drug will also receive ritonavir.
“If successful, we believe this therapy could help reduce severity of illness among a broad population of patients,” Rod MacKenzie, Pfizer’s chief development officer, said in a statement.
The company has already begun a separate trial that’s testing a different protease inhibitor, this one administered via IV.
Inhibitors are a type of medication that stops viruses from replicating.
Antiviral pills against COVID-19 have yet to be developed. The IV-administered remdesivir, produced by Gilead Sciences, was approved by U.S. drug regulators in 2020.
Other companies are also attempting to produce the medicines, including Merck and Roche.
Merck has already begun a late-stage trial analyzing its pill candidate, dubbed molnupiravir. Interim results from a phase two trial for Roche’s pill, AT-527, have shown promising results, Roche and its partner Atea Pharmaceuticals stated in July.
Pfizer said that if its trial shows PF-07321332 is safe and effective, it could ask regulators for authorization in the fourth quarter of 2021.
******************************************
The developer of ivermectin is performing late-stage trials on a drug that could actually prevent COVID-19
Merck & Co partnered with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics to develop molnupiravir.
Enrollment for late-stage trials for their drug have already started.
The companies hope the drug could prevent COVID-19 infection in patients, but have yet to share further detail of how exactly it will be used.
Merck is also the developer of ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug that has gained infamy due to false claims that it could combat the virus - which is the real use for molnupiravir.
Molnupiravir could fill the role that many are currently incorrectly using ivermectin for.
A study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that the drug could prevent replication of viral cells of COVID-19 and other similar viruses.
The drug, which can be taken via a pill, is now entering late stage trials in the United States as Merck plans to eventually seek FDA approval.
Over 1,300 volunteers aged 18 or older will be recruited for the study and live in a house with someone who has a symptomatic case of the COVID-19.
Merck also plans to use the drug in some lower income countries in the meanwhile, attempting to acquire emergency authorization.
The company has partnered with Indian generic drug manufacturers to produce and sell versions of molnupiravir in the country, pending approval from local regulators.
Merck hopes the drug could help alleviate these countries COVID-19 situations while they await a larger supply of the vaccine. '
Only around 36 percent of Indians have received at least one shot of the virus, and less than 11 percent are fully vaccinated.
******************************************
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)
*************************************
Thursday, September 02, 2021
The Afghanistan Disaster — Trump or Biden?
In the wake of our nation’s disgraceful and disastrous retreat from Afghanistan (AFG), which I detailed yesterday in “The War Is NOT Over,” there is a lot of deliberate obfuscation about the difference in the Afghan exit plan negotiated by Donald Trump and that executed by Joe Biden. Of course, Biden’s Beltway cadres and their Leftmedia parrots are leading that disinformation campaign.
The line goes something like, The longest war is over, the exit happened under Biden, but it was Trump’s fault because he negotiated with the Taliban, thus he bears responsibility. But thanks to Biden, America’s longest war is over and it would have ended badly regardless.
That is a colossal dumper full of pig manure.
Typical of the leftists’ rhetoric is this from Juan Williams, Fox News’s perfunctory peddler of Biden’s party-line tripe: “I think this is a bold headline day for America that forever war is over. I think we accomplished the goals that we set when we went in there 20 years ago, that Afghanistan was not used as a terrorist launching site. The American people want this war over. And when you think about the 13 heroes whose bodies came home this weekend … you know what, those people died in a good cause. They are the last people who will have died in this, you know, America’s longest war…” (Killed by terrorists harbored by the Taliban.)
In fact, assuming the American citizens Biden abandoned behind enemy lines get out safe, this war is far from over for the Afghan allies we left behind, some 80,000 of whom were already approved “special immigration visa” holders, and who will now be targeted for extinction. And this war is far from over for those who will become targets of violence perpetrated the Taliban’s terrorist surrogates worldwide in the coming years.
Williams then invoked the blame-spreading: “I think that when you look at this, and you’re looking at four presidents, you look at President [George W.] Bush, who chose to go in there and didn’t know how to get out. You look at President [Barack] Obama… He really didn’t know how to get out. Trump negotiating with the Taliban. And now, President Biden underestimated the strength of the Afghan government. There are a lot of mistakes here.”
Let’s clear up who is responsible for the deadly exfil “mistakes.”
In recent days, Biden has repeatedly attempted to blame-shift his AFG failure to Trump.
Asked last week who was responsible for the Kabul bombing and AFG cluster, Biden correctly said, “I bear responsibility for, fundamentally, all that’s happened of late.”
Predictably, he qualified that response: “But here’s the deal: You know — I wish you’d one day say these things — you know as well as I do that the former president made a deal with the Taliban…”
That was a lie. Trump’s exit plan was with the Afghan government but included terms that the Taliban had to meet.
Ironically, moments later, Biden attempted to defend his own coordination with and dependence on the Taliban by insisting the bombing was ISIS-Khorasan (ISK), not the Taliban. He lied about this distinction.
For the record, this is the same Sunni Islamist Taliban who, according to the Department of Defense (DoD), just released “thousands” of Sunni Islamist ISK terrorists from Bagram Air Base just 30 miles north of Kabul a week earlier, and the same Taliban whose leader proclaimed last week that Sunni Islamist Osama bin Laden had no connection to the 9/11 Islamist attack on our country.
And recall that the Taliban “head of security” in Kabul, Khalil Haqqani, is a U.S. government-designated terrorist and has a $5 million bounty on his head. What could go wrong?
Political analyst Rich Lowry describes Biden’s remarks last week as “the arsonist bragging about how many fires he has put out,” and notes, “Honor has always had an enormous influence on human affairs and the conduct of governments — until, evidently, the advent of President Joe Biden in the year 2021.”
Biden and his cadre spent the last month speaking of the Taliban as if they were some trustworthy and legitimate government entity, rather than the amalgam of violent Sunni Islamist terrorists who invaded Afghanistan from Pakistan after the Soviet retreat — and have now rapidly reconstituted. There is virtually NO degree of ideological separation between the so-called “Taliban government” thugs and their surrogate terrorist groups, just doctrinal differences. And there is now no doubt that the more violent Sunni ISK Islamists (also from Pakistan) and Sunni al-Qa'ida Islamists have risen just as rapidly as surrogates under the Sunni Taliban protectorate. To insist that ISK and al-Qa'ida are not under the Taliban umbrella is a distinction without a difference.
Then yesterday, defending his decision to abandon Americans behind enemy lines, Biden again blamed Trump while taking credit for “the extraordinary success of this mission.” “Extraordinary success”? Perhaps from the Taliban’s perspective.
Biden insisted: “My predecessor, the former president, signed an agreement with the Taliban to remove U.S. troops by May 1, just months after I was inaugurated. … The previous administration’s agreement said that if we stuck to the May 1st deadline that they had signed on to leave by, the Taliban wouldn’t attack any American forces. … But if we stayed all bets were off, so we were left with a simple decision. Either follow-through on the commitment made by the last administration and leave Afghanistan or say we weren’t leaving and commit another tens of thousands more troops going back to war. That was the choice — the real choice. I was not going to extend the war.”
After making sure to mention the retreat plan “was based on the unanimous recommendation of my civilian and military advisors — the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all the service chiefs, and the commanders in the field,” he then added, “I take responsibility for the decision.”
To be clear, as I noted in “Biden’s Afghan Blowup,” Trump’s drawdown plan had two primary and finite conditions: First, that the Taliban had demonstrably cut their ties with al-Qa'ida, ISK, and other terror groups, and second, that they successfully negotiate and maintain peace with the AFG government.
With Trump gone, the Taliban summarily discarded those conditions and ousted the AFG government. And why wouldn’t they? Obviously, they had no fear of Biden enforcing those terms. Former Director of National Intelligence Rick Grenell concurs: “The Taliban onslaught started coming once Joe Biden got into the White House. The Taliban knew they couldn’t make the move when Trump was in office.”
According to seasoned political analyst Brit Hume, “If you believe the Biden administration’s claim it was bound by the Trump-Taliban deal and thus had to get out fast,” you need to get your facts straight.
Referencing an investigative report published a week earlier, “Was Biden handcuffed by Trump’s Taliban deal in Doha?” the authors concluded: “U.S. officials made clear at the time that the agreement was conditions-based and the failure of intra-Afghan peace talks to reach a negotiated settlement would have nullified the requirement to withdraw. One day before the Doha deal, a top aide to chief U.S. negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad said the agreement was not irreversible, and ‘there is no obligation for the United States to withdraw troops if the Afghan parties are unable to reach agreement or if the Taliban show bad faith’ during negotiations.”
Hume noted: “The president is fond of saying, ‘Well, we were bound by the Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban.’ In fact, when that deal was struck in February 2020 [our negotiators] made it very clear that this was conditions-based and if the Taliban did not [meet those conditions] we were under no obligation to remove our troops. One of the key provisions of that deal was that the Taliban and the Afghan government would negotiate a [peace agreement]. They never did that.”
Hume concludes, “On that score alone, Biden was not obligated to pull our troops out.”
In one particularly devastating summation, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) made clear who failed: “The President made the decision to trust the Taliban. The President made the decision to set an arbitrary August 31st deadline. The President made the decision to abandon Bagram Air Base. The President made the decision not to expand the perimeter around Karzai International Airport. The President made the decision to undermine our NATO allies. The President made the decision to break our word to our Afghan partners. The President made the decision to tell one lie after another as the crisis unfolded. The President made the morally indefensible decision to leave Americans behind. Dishonor was the President’s choice. May history never forget this cowardice.” (At least Biden kept his promises to the Taliban…)
Worth including in that list is the fact that in June, Biden waved a federally-required mandate that the Department of Defense provide a detailed assessment of risks if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan. So DoD never produced that assessment for the chambers controlled by Pelosi and Schumer. Hmmm.
National Review’s senior political analyst Jim Geraghty outlined the disastrous sequence of events from Biden’s claim in July: “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” That comment sure didn’t age well.
Commentator Tammy Bruce observed: “Biden says Taliban was in its strongest position ever when he came into office. … Then how is it that he insisted just a few weeks ago that the Taliban we’re not going to take over the country?”
After issuing those false assurances, a month before the Taliban swept over Kabul, Biden instructed Afghan president Ashraf Ghani: “I am not a military man…but…the perception around the world…is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. There’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
Barack Obama’s former senior adviser, David Axelrod, concluded: “You cannot defend the execution here. This has been a disaster. … It is heartbreaking, it is depressing, and it’s a failure. And he needs to own that failure.” (Recall that during last year’s Demo primary, Obama said, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f—k things up.”)
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich observed: “We have not seen a president this incompetent. We haven’t seen a president surrender to an enemy in the way that Joe Biden has. And he’s allowed a seventh-century tribal group to defeat the most powerful country in the 21st century. It’s an astonishing outcome.”
Fact is, Trump was this nation’s strongest domestic and foreign policy leader in decades.
Anyone — ANYONE — who believes that the resurgence of the Taliban and their ISK and al-Qa'ida thugs would have occurred under a second Trump term is so deeply deluded as to be in a state of complete denial.
When Trump left office, we had about 3,000 troops left in AFG. There had not been a military death in over a year until last week, when 13 Americans were murdered — the worst loss of American lives in a decade.
For context, the U.S. has about 750 military base sites in almost 80 countries. We have almost 54,000 personnel in Japan and 26,000 in South Korea. In Europe we have 35,000 Americans in Germany, 13,000 in Italy, and 9,000 in the UK. In the Middle East, we have 4,000 personnel in Bahrain, 1,800 in Turkey, 1,500 in Saudi Arabia, and 1,100 in Kuwait.
But only one country has sponsored a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and that was AFG. Trump’s conditions for removing most of our remaining military personnel from that nation was a good plan. Then Joe Biden happened.
Given the resurgence of the Taliban, there is now a very real renewed threat of terrorist assaults on American soil and Americans abroad. Recall that Biden’s director of national intelligence warned him in April that the Taliban rise would result in an imminent and perilous threat to the continental U.S.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was clear about the looming national security threat. He noted, “This is one of the worst foreign policy decisions in American history, much worse than Saigon,” because the withdrawal from Vietnam did not signal a significant threat to Americans. To that point, he added: “Just because we decided to stop fighting doesn’t mean the terrorists go away. So they’re still out there. They’re invigorated. They’re emboldened. They’re excited about the success they see in bringing America to its knees in Afghanistan.”
Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton was very clear about that threat: “This was a known. By canceling the insurance policy of having American and NATO forces fighting the terrorist … in Afghanistan, made it less likely we would have to fight them in the streets and skies over America. What has happened here is seen as a Taliban victory over the United States … and has given terrorists all over the Middle East a huge psychological boost. … There are many reports of foreign terrorist fighters already coming into Afghanistan … and we are going back to the pre-9/11 environment.”
So we leave the AFG theater after two decades with the Taliban thugs in a much more powerful position than when we arrived in 2001. In great measure, they are far more dangerous and deadly because of billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment Biden left behind.
Secretary of State Tony Blinken put a smiley face on it: “A new chapter of America’s engagement with Afghanistan has begun. It’s one in which we will lead with our diplomacy. The military mission is over. A new diplomatic mission has begun.”
Laughably, Biden’s State Department spokesman issued this directive: “The Taliban needs to meet its commitments and obligations in Afghanistan on freedom of travel, respecting basic rights of the people, upholding its commitments on counterterrorism, not carrying out reprisal violence against those who stayed, and forming an inclusive government.”
Or what? And who is going to confirm the Taliban is meeting its “commitments and obligations”? Maybe the UN can send in its inspectors…they have a great track record.
Apparently now, Blinken believes his leverage is giving the Taliban direct financial aid, ostensibly to help clean up the humanitarian mess Biden left.
Biden’s ineptitude, and that of his feckless administration, is epic, reckless, and deadly.
As I outlined previously:
The intermediate concern of Biden’s failure is the consequences for tens of thousands of Afghan allies, civilians, and families whom Biden abandoned. As the Taliban firms up its organizational structure and returns to its extremist tyrannical control, the bloody purges will be underway.
The extended concerns are that Biden has reseeded the al-Qa'ida and [ISIL](https://patriotpost.us/alexander/38936] turf, putting the U.S. homeland at risk of another terrorist attack.
The consequences of Biden’s now-obvious failure as commander-in-chief have immediate and dire implications for our national security that extend far beyond the borders of Afghanistan. Biden’s AFG retreat will embolden far more powerful tyrants, notably our near-peer adversaries China and Russia, and of course Iran and North Korea are on the move.
Power does not tolerate a vacuum.
The catastrophic failure of our AFG mission and retreat was certainly not because of any deficit of courage and commitment from our warfighters, but abject dereliction of duty by Biden’s senior military leaders.
But the buck stops with Biden. The catastrophe in AFG was not, first and foremost, the plan; it was the man. The Taliban, ISK, ISIL, and al-Qa'ida all feared Trump — none fear Biden. But even most of Biden’s conservative media critics have yet to wake up to that reality as they keep focusing on his failed plan.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley just couldn’t figure this out: “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.”
However, what Milley, SecDef Lloyd Austin, and the rest of Biden’s Beltway high command failed to see was the red flag right in front of them the whole time: Joe Biden. And it is because the Taliban had no fear of Biden that this evil overran the Afghan government and its people in just days. Again, with Trump gone, the Taliban summarily discarded all the conditions he set for withdrawal and ousted the Afghan government.
Back in 2010, even Osama bin Laden declared that then-VP Biden should not be targeted, because if he became president, he would “lead the US into a crisis.”
For Biden’s boundless ineptitude, we will pay a price much higher than the disaster we left in Afghanistan.
Last week, before the Kabul bombing, our national security analyst, Gen. B.B. Bell (USA, Ret.), strongly condemned Biden’s disgraceful exit from AFG, noting his “shameful presidential dereliction of duty” and declaring emphatically that not only should Biden’s military leaders resign, but also: “He should be impeached and removed from office immediately, and criminal charges should be considered.” That clarion call is even louder now.
Finally, amid all the exit fanfare from feckless Joe Biden and his inept senior military and diplomatic cadres, I was deeply moved by a single sentence that sums up what was conceived as an orderly troop drawdown under Donald Trump, but devolved into a disgraceful and deadly retreat by Biden.
“In what f***ing world was it a good idea to just hand over a country to these people?” Those words were from Operation Enduring Freedom combat veteran and former Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw (R-TX).
Crenshaw and many other AFG war veterans are deeply concerned about the fate of Afghan security force allies with whom they worked. The Taliban has been brutal in its slaughter of those allies, thousands of civilians. and journalists as they advanced to Kabul.
The purge has just begun.
Notably, two days ago when Crenshaw and other congressional veterans attempted to name, on the congressional floor, their 13 military brothers and sisters killed last week, they were blocked by Democrats.
Combat veteran Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), who was severely wounded in AFG, protested: “We took a moment of silence with pretty much all Republican veterans, then asked to be recognized to read names [of those killed]. [Democrat leaders] did not acknowledge us, and just closed the House down.” Combat veteran Greg Steube (R-FL) also protested: “House Democrats just refused to recognize Republican veterans on the House Floor to read the names of our fallen service members in Afghanistan. That’s how far our nation has fallen.”
Finally, let me emphasize that the objective of Biden’s compressed Afghan exit schedule has been, for months, to time the exit in order to provide him a political “I got the troops out” victory lap ahead of the 20th observance of the 9/11 Islamist attack on our nation.
There will be NO victory lap.
There WILL be more Islamist attacks against the U.S. and our people and installations abroad.
The Taliban will celebrate 9/11 in our abandoned Kabul embassy.
Brace yourself, America.
https://patriotpost.us/alexander/82415-the-afghanistan-disaster-trump-or-biden-2021-09-01
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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, September 01, 2021
Blogging revival complete
I am now once again posting on TONGUE-TIED. So I am back to where I was before I got cancer. I am posting on 6 blogs daily. I was previously posting on 6 days a week only -- nohing on Saturday. And I think I will revert to that also
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Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine creates TWICE as many antibodies as Pfizer's, study finds
Those who receive Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine produce twice the protective antibodies of those who receive the Pfizer vaccine, a new study suggests.
Researchers from East Limburg Hospital in Belgium compared antibody levels produced by both vaccines among about 1,600 hospital workers, finding that Moderna recipients produced 3,600 antibody units per milliliter while Pfizer recipients produced only 1,400.
While the findings may suggest that Moderna is more effective against Covid, scientists are still working to understand how antibodies contribute to protection - as Pfizer and Moderna have both proven very successful in preventing infections.
More research is needed to compare the vaccines and study how long immunity lasts, as the U.S. prepares to roll out booster shots in September.
The Covid vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have both proven to be very effective at protecting people against the virus. Both vaccines demonstrated over 90 percent efficacy in clinical trials.
Since the vaccines' roll out in the U.S., they've protected millions from severe Covid symptoms, hospitalization and death from the virus.
Out of over 170 million Americans fully vaccinated, just 11,000 have contracted a breakthrough infection leading to hospitalization or death. That's about 0.006 percent.
As the Indian 'Delta' variant drives case surges across the U.S., however, some scientists and leaders are concerned that these vaccines become less effective as time passes after vaccination. These concerns have led the federal government to announce a plan for booster shots starting in late September.
The study addresses vaccine efficacy concerns by examining the immune system's response to vaccination.
This study - published Monday in JAMA - is unique in that it's the first to directly compare antibody response resulting from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
Antibodies are proteins in the body's immune system that recognize - and neutralize - foreign invaders, such as viruses and bacteria.
Scientists measure antibody levels by taking patients' blood samples, then introducing a specific foreign invader - such as the coronavirus spike protein - into the sample.
If a patient's immune system is prepared to respond to the invader, antibodies will multiply and trigger other immune system actions.
The Belgian researchers measured Covid antibody levels among about 1,600 healthcare workers at their healthcare facility.
All the healthcare workers had received two doses of an mRNA vaccine - about 700 received the Moderna vaccine and just under 1,000 received the Pfizer vaccine.
The researchers tested these workers' antibody levels before they were vaccinated and six to ten weeks after their second doses.
Those workers who received the Moderna vaccine had much higher antibody responses to the coronavirus spike protein than those who received Pfizer, the researchers found.
Moderna recipients had an average antibody titer of 3,800 units per milliliter, while Pfizer recipients had an average titer of 1,400 units per milliliter.
Antibody levels among the Moderna patients were 2.7 times higher.
The researchers suggested that this big difference may be a result of a longer wait time between doses for the Moderna vaccine (four weeks as opposed to three weeks for Pfizer), as well as a higher concentration of Covid mRNA in Moderna's vaccine.
While these results appear to suggest that Moderna recipients are better protected against Covid than those who got Pfizer's jabs, outside researchers have cautioned that antibody levels do not exactly correspond with protection.
'I would urge caution in making the conclusion that because Moderna demonstrated a slightly higher peak on average that its efficacy will be slower to wane,' David Benkeser, a biostatistician at Emory University, told Bloomberg. 'Such a conclusion requires a host of assumptions that have not yet been evaluated,' he said.
The researchers themselves acknowledge that more study is needed to determine the relationship between antibody levels and Covid protection - along with how long protection lasts.
Scientists also continue to evaluate the vaccines' ability to protect against Delta and other concerning variants.
'Still, it's possible that higher initial antibody levels might correlate with longer duration of protection against mild breakthrough infections,' Deborah Steensels, a microbiologist at East Limburg Hospital and lead author on the study, told Bloomberg.
'Also, if higher antibody levels are confirmed to be important, then the Moderna vaccine might be better for immunocompromised people who don't respond well to vaccines, she said.
This study follows other recent research that has suggested Moderna's vaccine may be more durable - and better at protecting recipients against breakthrough cases - than Pfizer's.
In addition to comparing the vaccines against each other, the researchers also compared antibody levels between those patients who did and did not have a prior COVID-19 infection.
A small number of healthcare workers in the study had previously faced Covid infection, including 22 percent of the Moderna group and 13 percent of the Pfizer group.
The researchers found that these previously infected workers had much higher antibody levels - about 9,500 units per milliliter, compared to 1,600 units per milliliter for those who weren't infected.
That's a six-fold difference. This finding suggests that, for people who both experience a Covid infection and get vaccinated, the infection may act as a natural booster shot - providing extra protection against future interactions with the coronavirus.
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Corporate Social Justice Programs Don't Work
According to a new report from The Washington Post, America's corporations have committed "at least" $49.5 billion to the cause of "racial justice" since the George Floyd murder last year riveted our national attention on race.
This amounts to a little over $1,100 for every Black man, woman and child in America.
Or, from another perspective, about $16,500 for every Black household earning $25,000 or less.
But we're not talking about corporate America, despite their deep concern for racial justice, just simply giving black Americans cash. As much as they undoubtedly care about these Black citizens, they would never trust them to just take the money and spend properly.
These corporate executives nationwide have concluded that they can justify taking a huge chunk of their shareholders' funds -- an amount equal to the entire economy of the state of Alaska -- and spend it in a way that will produce more racial justice.
It is reasonable to ask why they believe they can achieve this.
It goes against all experience we have had with government.
The federal government has been spending trillions since the war on poverty began in the 1960s -- $20 trillion, by some estimates -- and the incidence of poverty over these years has hardly budged.
Apparently, these corporate executives feel they have some insight that has eluded politicians all these years.
A large percentage of these funds is earmarked for loans and investments in housing and business loans.
According to the report, $28 billion flows from a pledge by JPMorgan Chase to move 40,000 families into home ownership over the next five years.
But, again, special loans and grants to encourage minority home ownership are nothing new.
Government has been doing this for years, causing more damage than good.
Most should recall that we had a major financial crisis in our country in which we saw a collapse in financial markets in 2008 that was the worst since the Great Depression.
According to research at the American Enterprise Institute, this collapse was driven by the bursting of a highly inflated bubble in housing prices, the result of widespread deterioration in lending standards driven by government affordable housing goals and mandates.
Black citizens, who these government programs were designed to help, were disproportionately hurt when housing prices collapsed as a result of the plethora of bad loans.
The great mystery is why the principles that made and make our country great are nowhere to be found in the various ideas and programs being promoted with this vast sum of funds.
Why have so many in corporate America signed off on left-wing dogma that American principles -- principles of protection of life, of liberty, of property -- are the problem rather than the solution?
A healthy portion of American Blacks are doing very well because of these American principles.
Per the Census Bureau's recent annual report -- Income and Poverty in the United States, 2019 -- a larger percentage of Black households, 29.4%, were earning $75,000 or more than the percentage earning $25,000 or less, 28.7%.
Those left behind need liberation from government control of their lives. Less government-created ghettos from federal housing programs, more freedom from failing government schools and from broken government entitlement programs such as Social Security.
I started promoting the idea 25 years ago of releasing low-income earners from the Social Security payroll tax and allowing them to invest those funds in a personal retirement account. Back then, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 10,000. Today, it stands at 35,000.
The very naysayers I heard back then are the ones bleating today about unfairness and the wealth gap.
Rather than betraying the tradition of free enterprise capitalism that built corporate America, America's corporations should be promoting these values. This is the path to more prosperity, more justice, for all Americans.
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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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