FDA advised to authorise Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for US children aged five to 11

An expert panel has voted overwhelmingly to recommend the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorise the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children aged five to 11, saying the benefits of inoculation outweigh the risks.

The vaccine, could be made available to those younger children in the US as early as next week. The FDA is not obliged to follow the advice of its outside experts, but usually does.

If the FDA authorises the shots for this age group, an advisory panel to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will meet next week to make a recommendation on the administration of the vaccine.

Pfizer and BioNTech, the companies behind the vaccine, have said the shot was 90.7 per cent effective against coronavirus in a clinical trial of children aged five to 11.

While children becoming seriously ill or dying from COVID-19 is relatively rare compared with adults, some develop complications, and infections in unvaccinated children have risen due to the highly transmissible Delta variant.

Amanda Cohn, a paediatric vaccine expert at the CDC and a voting member of the panel, said the question was "pretty clear". "We don't want children to be dying of COVID, even if it is far fewer children than adults, and we don't want them in the ICU," she said.

Pfizer and BioNTech are seeking clearance for a lower, 10-microgram dose of the vaccine in children, versus 30 micrograms for those aged 12 and older.

The advisers paid close attention to the rate of a heart inflammation, called myocarditis, that has been linked to both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, particularly in young men.

If the number of myocarditis cases in the younger age group was similar to that in 12 to 15-year-olds, the hospitalisations prevented for COVID-19 would outnumber those prevented for myocarditis in most scenarios analysed, FDA staff reviewers said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-27/fda-advisers-back-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-for-children/100571348

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Children Shouldn’t Get COVID-19 Vaccines, Harvard Professor Says

Children should not get vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19, according to Harvard University professor of medicine Martin Kulldorff.

“I don’t think children should be vaccinated for COVID. I’m a huge fan of vaccinating children for measles, for mumps, for polio, for rotavirus, and many other diseases, that’s critical. But COVID is not a huge threat to children,” he said on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. The full episode can be watched on EpochTV.

“They can be infected, just like they can get the common cold, but they’re not a big threat. They don’t die from this, except in very rare circumstances. So if you want to talk about protecting children or keeping children safe, I think we can talk about traffic accidents, for example, which they are really at some risk.

“And there are other things that we should make sure [of] to keep children safe. But COVID is not a big risk factor for children.”

Vaccinating older people and people of all ages with compromised immune systems against the coronavirus has drawn support from most medical experts. But vaccinating healthy young people, particularly children, has triggered more opposition, in part because of how little risk COVID-19 poses to them.

Children are more likely to contract serious disease or die from the annual influenza, or the flu, than COVID-19, according to data and studies that Kulldorff has reviewed. Just 195 children under the age of 4 and 442 between 5 and 18 have died from COVID-19 in the United States as of Oct. 20, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Children are 15 times less likely to be hospitalized with the disease than individuals who are 85 or older, and 570 times less likely to die, the agency says.

“One example is from Sweden, during the first wave in the spring of 2020, which affected Sweden quite strongly,” Kulldorff said. “But Sweden decided to keep daycare and schools open for all children ages 1 to 15. And there are 1.8 million such children who got through the first wave without vaccines, of course, without masks, without any sort of distancing in schools.

“If a child was sick, they were told to stay home. But that was basically it. And you know how many of those 1.8 million children died from COVID? Zero. Only a few hospitalizations. So this is not a risky disease for children.”

When weighing whether to vaccinate children, the risk of vaccine side effects must also be taken into account, Kulldorff said. The main risk to young people seen so far is heart inflammation, which has occurred post-vaccination at much higher than expected rates. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) added a warning label to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines over the summer about myocarditis and pericarditis, two types of heart inflammation.

“If you’re 78 years old, then it’s the no-brainer, in my view, because the benefits are so great that even if you have a small risk for some adverse reaction, the benefit far outweighs the risk,” Kulldorff said. “On the other hand, if you have already have immunity from having had COVID, then the benefits of the vaccines are much, much smaller. If you’re a child, even if you haven’t had COVID, the risk of serious disease or death is minuscule … So it’s not at all clear that the benefits outweigh the risks for children.”

Kulldorff was speaking ahead of an FDA advisory panel meeting. Members on Oct. 26 decided to advise drug regulators to authorize Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for use in children between 5 and 11. They said the benefits of vaccinating the age group, such as the predicted decrease in hospitalizations, outweighed the risks, including estimated incidence of myocarditis.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/children-shouldnt-get-covid-19-vaccines-kulldorff_4069255.html

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Moderna says COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective in children

Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective for children ages 6 to 12 years, the company announced on Monday (Oct. 25).

The findings are part of a clinical trial on the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine in around 5,700 children between the ages of 6 months and 12 years; More than 4,700 children between the ages of 6 and 12 years participated in the study and were given two doses of the vaccine 28 days apart, but at half the dose (50 µg) given to adults (100 µg).

The researchers found that the vaccine at this dose was "well tolerated," and side effects were similar to what was seen in adolescents and adults, according to a statement. The majority of adverse events were mild or moderate; and the most common side effects were fatigue, headache, fever and injection site pain, the company said.

They also found that the vaccine prompted a "strong immune response" one month after the second dose; children in this age group had 1.5 times higher antibody levels than those observed in young adults, the company said.

Moderna previously submitted data to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to get authorization for use of its vaccine in people ages 12 to 17, but the agency hasn't yet responded to the request. The company now plans to also submit this new data to the FDA and other regulatory agencies around the world.

Meanwhile, the researchers will continue to monitor the participants for 12 months after their second dose to assess long-term protection and safety.

Currently, Moderna is approved for those who are 18 years or older, while Pfizer is approved for those 12 years and older. Pfizer has already submitted a request to the FDA to authorize its vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, Live Science previously reported.

https://www.livescience.com/moderna-says-vaccine-safe-and-effective-children

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Vaccine Mandate Threatens Major Trucking Disruption, Industry Insiders Say

American truckers don’t like taking orders. But the Biden administration has increased pressure on some of them to take the vaccine—willing or unwilling.

All through the pandemic, truckers endured hardships to keep America’s infrastructure running. They waited in line for hours in sight of bathrooms they weren’t allowed to use. On the road, some died alone of COVID-19.

Now, with supply chains disrupted, Americans need them more than ever. But faced with the prospect of mandated vaccination, many drivers are considering quitting.

“I’d fight it,” said veteran trucker Mike Widdins, referring to a vaccine mandate. “I think a lot of us will be quitting. Who likes to be forced to do stuff you don’t want to do?”

Widdins isn’t alone in his willingness to leave trucking if he’s required to vaccinate. Polls by trucking publications Commercial Carrier Journal and OverDrive indicate that up to 30 percent of truckers will seriously consider quitting if required to vaccinate. If they quit, the consequences for America may be massive. US Transport estimates that 70 percent of American freight goes by truck.

“It would hurt shipping big-time,” Widdins said.

President Joe Biden ordered his administration to mandate vaccines for private companies with over 100 employees. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was charged with developing the rule, and the Office of Budget and Management is currently reviewing it. The review process can take as long as 90 days.

Most of the trucking industry consists of companies with fewer than 100 employees, though a significant portion would fall under the over-100-employee umbrella.

Most truck companies have six trucks or fewer, according to the American Trucking Associations.

Some experts say the selective reach of the mandate makes it ineffective. Barbara Smithers, vice president of the Indiana Motor Truck Association, told The Epoch Times via email that it makes little sense to “cherry-pick” who to vaccinate based on company size.

“Truck drivers spend most of their work hours alone in the cab of a truck—literally one of the safest places possible during a pandemic—so why do they need to be regulated in this way?” she said. “Testing hundreds of thousands of truck drivers moving across the country every day is a virtual impossibility.”

For mandate-affected companies, Biden’s decision may drive away employees at a time when America needs them most. The American Trucking Associations estimates that America needs 80,000 more truckers to meet transportation needs.

Whether America runs short on trucks depends on the Biden administration’s orders and how truckers respond.

In the eyes of drivers, Biden’s mandate is the last step in a long line of restrictions that don’t consider their needs or wants.

For many drivers, a vaccine mandate may prove to be the final straw. Some drivers don’t trust the vaccine because of how new it is. Some distrust it for personal medical reasons. Others distrust it because they don’t trust the government.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/biden-plays-chicken-with-semitruck-drivers_4063261.html

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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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CDC Director Reaffirms Forcing Vaccinated Children to Remain Masked, Dodges Question on Vaccine Mandates

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) made numerous Sunday show appearances this week, where she dodged questions on vaccine mandates and when children can stop having to wear masks in school.

While on NBC's "Meet the Press," Dr. Walensky was asked by host Andrea Mitchell about masking at school once children have been vaccinated:

ANDREA MITCHELL:

What is your advice to parents and to schools regarding lifting mask mandates in schools once children are vaccinated?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

You know, our case numbers are coming down, and that is so encouraging. We still have 75,000 new cases a day of Covid, and we are still having death rates of about 1,200 to 1,500 deaths per day. As we roll out these vaccines for our children, and we are hopeful that we will be able to, it's also critically important that our kids are able to stay in school. We saw just a couple of weeks ago new science that demonstrated that schools that masked had three and a half times less likelihood of having outbreaks than schools that didn't. And so in my mind, the most important thing right now as we work to get our cases down, as we work to get our children vaccinated, is that we continue the masking to keep our kids in school.

Walensky and Mitchell had just been discussing how there will be an FDA advisory on Tuesday when it comes to vaccinating children ages 5-11 years old.

Such a non-answer is particularly troubling and disappointing because she had been given an opportunity to clarify her remarks from last Wednesday, but refused to take it. As Katie reported, Dr. Walenksy during a press briefing gave a disturbing directive that children will still need to wear masks at school.

"After we have authorization from FDA and recommendations from CDC, we will be working to scale up pediatric vaccination. That said, it will take some time. And as I just noted, as we head into these winter months, we know we cannot be complacent," the director said. "We are going to continue to recommend masks in all schools for all people in those schools, and we will look forward to scaling up pediatric vaccination during this period of time."

The following day, Katie also covered remarks from Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who said the data that children need to be masked is "very weak," saying that it is so weak "is a fact."

Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R-FL) executive order against schools issuing mask mandates is tied up in the courts, though a judge is set to decide soon. Schools are considering easing their mask mandates as cases drop, which they have been doing significantly in Florida.

The governor had issued his executive order in late July after consulting with experts in the field.

Mitchell also asked Walensky "did you move too soon on that? Was that a mistake?" with regards to telling people last May that they are safe if they're not wearing a mask and have been vaccinated. The direct provided another non-answer:

You know, that was at a time of the Alpha variant when vaccinated people if they were a breakthrough infection could not transmit the Alpha variant to someone else. This is really an opportunity to understand that we have to be humble with the science and to move with the science. As we have learned with this Delta variant, it's a different variant, it's a more transmissible variant, and it behaves differently in the context of breakthrough infection. So at the time, that's what the science told us we could do. We are in a very different moment with a very different variant.

It's not just Dr. Lapado who is concerned with masking children. As Emily DeCiccio reported for CNBC, Dr. Joseph Allen, who is an associate professor at Harvard University, during a Friday appearance on "The News with Shepard Smith" urged an easing of mask mandates for children.

As DeCiccio wrote:

“We have to be careful that, if we don’t set firm deadlines, it’s easy to see how we can sleepwalk into indefinite masking,” said Allen during a Friday evening interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.” “With the approval of vaccines, expected very shortly, for 5 to 11-year-olds, it makes sense that we should no longer have mask mandates in schools.”

Allen also highlighted that while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set metrics for masking for adults, the agency has “inexplicably” failed to set metrics on when kids can take away masks.

The CDC did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Dr. Allen does believe the best way to protect children from the virus is by vaccinating them, as well as adults, and is in favor of vaccine mandates for teachers. "We should be mandating vaccines for all adults in schools," he said.

While on "Fox News Sunday," Dr. Walensky was asked by host Chris Wallace if she was "still full speed ahead on mandates for essential workers to get vaccinated." She refused to directly answer, though:

We have seen that these mandates are getting more and more people vaccinated. Here's what we know. The most disruptive thing that you can do to a workforce is to have a covert outbreak and not workforce. That was definitely not only send people home but send people to the hospital and some may pass. What we know from the police workforce is there have been more deaths from the coronavirus over the last year and a half than all other causes of death for that workforce combined. So we believe it is very important to get these people vaccinated. There is a plan, should these people not want to be vaccinated, towards education and counseling to get people the information they need so that they are feeling comfortable in getting vaccinated.

President Joe Biden last month signed an executive order mandating federal workers be vaccinated.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2021/10/24/cdc-director-wont-say-when-children-can-stop-wearing-masks-at-school-n2597941

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Here's Why You Should Resist Mask Mandates

Many Americans have been taught to believe that masks work—at least a little—and that wearing them comes at a minimal cost. Nearly the opposite is true.

The best scientific evidence invites a far less rosy assessment of masks’ effectiveness than is broadcast by public health officials. In its worldwide impact, the COVID-19 pandemic has been the worst in a century. As a threat to Americans’ health, however, it is closer to the 1968 Hong Kong flu or the 1957 Asian flu—neither of which noticeably altered Americans’ everyday lives—than to the 1918 Spanish flu.

In a head-to-head comparison, COVID-19 makes the Spanish flu look like the Black Death of medieval Europe. According to the best available figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and elsewhere, the typical American under the age of 40 in 1918 was more than 100 times as likely to die of the Spanish flu than the typical American under the age of 40 in 2020 was to die of COVID-19.

Whereas COVID-19 sadly shortened the lives of many older people already in poor health, the Spanish flu took people in the prime of life and left orphans in its wake.

The Spread of Public Health Officials

Americans’ reaction to COVID-19, however, has been radically different from their behavior in 1968, 1957, or even 1918. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, the Hoover Institution’s Niall Ferguson recalls that President Dwight Eisenhower asked Congress for $2.5 million in additional funding for the Public Health Service during the Asian flu. Overall, Congress has authorized about 2 million times that much for COVID-19.

In 1957, there were no widespread school closures, travel bans, or mask mandates. Ferguson quotes one person’s recollection of those days: “For those who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing unusual about finding yourself threatened by contagious disease. Mumps, measles, chickenpox, and German measles swept through entire schools and towns; I had all four…. We took the Asian flu in stride.”

One major difference between then and now is the increased role of public health officials. Long before their ascension, Socrates made clear in Plato’s Republic that he did not want doctors to rule. Philosophers or even poets would be better governors of society because they at least attempt to understand political and social life in its entirety and minister to the human soul.

Doctors, by contrast, tend to disregard the soul: it is the nature of their art to focus on the body in lieu of higher concerns. Moreover, Greek philosophers and poets alike celebrated courage in the face of death—Plato’s Socrates and Homer’s Achilles were undeterred from their noble missions by fear of the grave. But rule by public health officials, under which we increasingly live today, encourages excessive risk-aversion and almost transforms cowardice into a virtue.

Wear the Mask, Neanderthal

Surgical masks were designed to protect patients’ wounds from becoming infected by medical personnel, not to prevent the spread of viruses. When COVID-19 hit our shores, the CDC initially recommended that most Americans not wear masks.

On April 3, 2020, the CDC abruptly reversed this position. Surgeon General Jerome Adams explained that “new evidence” had revealed that “a significant portion of individuals with coronavirus lack symptoms” and “can transmit the virus to others before they show symptoms” (emphasis added).

As a rationale for wearing masks, this did not entirely make sense. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “potentially pre-symptomatic transmission…is a major driver of transmission for influenza.”

Yet the CDC does not (yet) recommend that seemingly healthy people wear masks during flu season. It seems likely that the CDC panicked in April and wanted to be seen as doing something. Plus, public health officials are naturally enthusiastic about public health interventions.

The day after the CDC endorsed nationwide mask-wearing, President Trump announced, “I won’t be doing it personally.” From that instant, the mask quickly became a symbol of civic virtue—a sort of Black Lives Matter flag that could be hung from one’s face. For many it conveyed a trio of virtues: I’m unselfish; I’m pro-science; I’m anti-Trump.

What it also conveyed, incidentally, was a rejection of longstanding Western norms, unhealthy risk-aversion, credulous willingness to embrace unsupported health claims and a pallid view of human interaction.

Masking the Science

The most reliable science on whether masks are effective in stopping the transmission of viruses comes from randomized control trials (RCTs), almost all of which were conducted before COVID-19 began.

Randomized control trials have found little to no evidence that masks work to prevent viral transmission—either from the wearer to others or vice versa. In fact, some significant evidence from RCTs indicates that masks increase transmission.

A 2020 study by Professor Henning Bundgaard and his team in Denmark is the only RCT that has tested the effectiveness of mask-wearing against COVID-19. It found that 1.8 percent of those participants in the group wearing masks, and 2.1percent of those in the unmasked control group, became infected with COVID-19 within a month. This difference was not statistically significant. The study must have had difficulty getting published since it appeared months after it was conducted.

In attempting to justify its mask guidance on its website, the CDC has relied almost entirely on observational studies while studiously disregarding RCTs.

Anyone who thinks the CDC is an impartial, politically neutral agency, dedicated solely to the pursuit of scientific truth, should perhaps consider the recent e-mail evidence that the teachers union and Joe Biden’s White House effectively rewrote sections of the agency’s return-to-school guidance.

Like so many unelected leaders, CDC officials consider themselves more accountable to “stakeholders” than to the American people. Legislatures have largely been AWOL during the coronavirus period, while public health officials and executive branch leaders have reveled in their newfound powers.

https://heartlanddailynews.com/2021/10/the-masking-of-america-commentary/

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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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Yale Study: Natural Immunity Protects Against COVID Three Times Longer Than Vaccine

To their dismay, the Yale School of Public Health just concluded that immunity acquired by COVID-19 infection lasts three times longer and is stronger than that provided by vaccination. Naturally, the Yale Daily News downplayed the info under the headline, “COVID-19 reinfection is likely among unvaccinated individuals, Yale study finds.”

The Yale study concluded that the risk of COVID-19 reinfection stands at 5% at three months after recovery and decreases to 50% at 17 months. By contrast, COVID-19 vaccine protection against infection can wane to a mere 20% as early as five months after full vaccination. Now, I may not be a Fauci-approved Scientist, but I’m also not stupid.

The Yale study joins the ever-growing compendium of studies that attest to the superiority of natural immunity over-vaccination for protection from COVID infection. It’s worth clicking over to the linked article because you probably had no idea there was already so much Science! proving the point.

Here are a few highlights from the Blaze Media listicle by Daniel Horowitz:

New York University, May 3, 2021

The authors studied the contrast between vaccine immunity and immunity from prior infection as it relates to stimulating the innate T-cell immunity, which is more durable than adaptive immunity through antibodies alone. They concluded, “In COVID-19 patients, immune responses were characterized by a highly augmented interferon response which was largely absent in vaccine recipients.”

Cleveland Clinic, June 19, 2021

In a study of 1,359 previously infected health care workers in the Cleveland Clinic system, not a single one of them was reinfected 10 months into the pandemic, despite some of these individuals being around COVID-positive patients more than the regular population.

Israeli researchers, August 22, 2021

Aside from more robust T cell and memory B cell immunity, which is more important than antibody levels, Israeli researchers found that antibodies wane slower among those with prior infection. “In vaccinated subjects, antibody titers decreased by up to 40% each subsequent month while in convalescents they decreased by less than 5% per month.”

Irish researchers, published in Wiley Review, May 18, 2021

Researchers conducted a review of 11 cohort studies with over 600,000 total recovered COVID patients who were followed up with over 10 months. The key finding? Unlike the vaccine, after about four to six months, they found “no study reporting an increase in the risk of reinfection over time.”

I could link these all day, but I’m sure we both have other things to do. The point is that the Science! is more consensus-y every day: those who have already recovered from a COVID infection—even a mild or asymptomatic one—have naturally superior protection from future infection than those who are merely vaccinated, and are also safer to be around than people who have been vaccinated but never had an infection.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t get vaccinated if you already had COVID, especially if you are tolerant of the vaccine’s side effects. According to the experts, you would be even better protected than people who are either only naturally immune or only vaccinated. But if you have recovered from an infection, you’re manifestly as safe as if you were only vaccinated.

Clearly, it’s time for public safety policy to recognize natural immunity as equal to vaccination.

Of course, the government-pharma complex isn’t going to give up its advantage without a fight. Big Pharma has a lock on all that sweet vaccine cash, and our leaders simply love their hot new emergency powers. But cracks are finally appearing in the “crisis” power apparatus. The more Americans insist we Follow the Science™ and grant equal rights to the naturally immune, the faster this much-needed transformation can occur.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2021/10/22/yale-discovers-natural-immunity-protects-against-covid-three-times-as-long-as-vaccine-downplays-finding-n1526017

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Sweden extends pause of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine in young people under 30 due to concerns the shot causes rare heart inflammation

Swedish health officials are extending the pause of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine in young people over continued concerns that the shot causes rare heart inflammation cases.

The pause was initially supposed to last until December 1, but will now last beyond that to a date that is yet to be announced.

Sweden is one of four Nordic nations that restricted the use of the jab in young people this month, with a fifth, Norway, also discouraging younger males from getting the Moderna shot.

Despite the concerns arising about the vaccine in Europe, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stood by its authorization of the shots, and even authorized booster shots of the vaccine earlier this week.

Sweden paused usage of the Moderna COVID-19 shot in everyone born after 1990 earlier this month.

The decision came after health officials viewed data that found the shots were causing cases of myocarditis in young people who got the vaccine.

Sweden's Public Health Agency says that the unpublished data signals 'an increased risk of side effects such as inflammation of the heart muscle or the pericardium' - the double-walled sac containing the heart and the roots of the main vessels. It added: 'The risk of being affected is very small.'

That data is still not publicly available.

Denmark followed Sweden's lead, and restricted access to the vaccine to anyone under the age of 18 as well.

The Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare said earlier this month that authorities won't give the vaccine to males under age 30, and they will be offered the Pfizer-BioNTech immunization instead, also citing the heart inflammation data.

Iceland also paused use of the vaccine citing concerns from the same data.

Norway, another Nordic country, has not taken as drastic action as its neighbors, with health officials urging people under 30 to opt for the Pfizer vaccine instead.

Myocarditis and pericarditis, both types of inflammation of the heart, are known side effects of the Covid vaccines, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) even warns that the condition may develop in young males after vaccination.

Heart inflammation is also a symptom of many viral infections like COVID-19, though, and the likelihood of developing the inflammation after infection is much higher than it is after vaccination.

Those conditions involve an inflammation of the heart or its lining.

On Thursday, data on the Moderna vaccines likelihood to cause heart inflammation was presented to a CDC advisory panel.

The presentation showed that males were much more likely to develop the condition than females - with those aged 18 to 24 at most risk, and the 25 to 29 group at risk as well.

The second dose of the vaccine is also the one that usually causes the condition.

Myocarditis risk falls off after age 30, though.

The data also shows that people who receive the Moderna shot are more likely to develop myocarditis.

For every one million doses of the Moderna shot administered, there are 13.3 more cases of myocarditis detected compared to every one million of the Pfizer jab. The reason for this is now yet known. The increased risk seems to appear for both males and females.

'The connection is especially clear when it comes to Moderna's vaccine Spikevax, especially after the second dose,' the Swedish health agency said.

A Moderna spokesperson said in an email last week that the company was aware of the decisions by regulators in Denmark and Sweden to pause the use of its vaccine in younger individuals because of the rare risk of myocarditis and or pericarditis.

'These are typically mild cases and individuals tend to recover within a short time following standard treatment and rest,' they wrote.

'The risk of myocarditis is substantially increased for those who contract COVID-19, and vaccination is the best way to protect against this.'

According to one U.S. study that has yet to undergo peer review, young males under age 20 are up to six times more likely to develop myocarditis after contracting COVID-19 than those who have been vaccinated.

Denmark said that, while it used the Pfizer vaccine as its main option for people aged 12 to 17 years, it had decided to pause giving the Moderna vaccine to people below 18 according to a 'precautionary principle'.

In June, the CDC issued a warning that young males were at an increased risk of myocarditis after receiving the vaccine.

The label for both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were changed in the U.S. to reflect the warning, though usage was never paused.

Cases of inflammation after vaccination are rare, though they do occur often enough to concern regulators.

A recent study from Kaiser Permanente Southern California found that around seven out of every one million people that receive a two-shot COVID-19 vaccine will develop myocarditis.

The same study found that 47.5 out of every one million Covid patients experience heart inflammation.

While myocarditis will often resolve itself, it can be dangerous. Heart inflammation can often lead to fatigue, shortness of breath and chest pain for patients. People with inflamed hearts are at a higher risk for heart failure, heart attacks and strokes.

Attempting strenuous physical activity with an inflamed heart could also potentially lead to sudden cardiac arrest, or even death.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10116783/Sweden-extends-pause-Modernas-COVID-19-vaccine-young-people-30.html

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IN BRIEF

Biden says police officers and first responders should be fired for refusing jab exercising individual liberty (Fox News)

Friendly fire fact-check: Biden overstates his record on COVID vaccine (AP)

Merrick Garland grilled on Loudoun County case, says he “doesn’t know” about alleged hellacious assault by boy in girls’ bathroom (Daily Wire)

“I’m comfortable with zero”: Joe Manchin reportedly willing to tank reconciliation to avoid overspending (Daily Caller)

Scranton Joe keeps telling bizarre Amtrak story that was already debunked (Fox News)

House votes to hold Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress (New York Post)

Federal Reserve imposes new restrictions on investments after trading controversy (NPR)

NIH admits to funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan but disingenuously blames EcoHealth for violating reporting requirements (National Review

Afghan placed in Montana by Biden administration charged with raping teen (Daily Wire)

Once again, COVID hospitalizations are increasing in the North, declining in the South (National Review)

Bunch of liars: Email from Loudoun County superintendent alerted school board on day of bathroom assault (WTOP)

Man who allegedly dressed as woman charged with child porn, reportedly used pen cameras laced into sneakers (Daily Wire)

“We’re hiring”: Indiana invites Chicago cops to move to state (Daily Wire)

Policy: What is the root cause of our supply chain problems? (Daily Signal)

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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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Pfizer says its COVID-19 vaccine is more than 90% effective against infection in children aged 5-11

Pfizer-BioNTech says their COVID-19 vaccine is about 91 percent effective against infection in elementary school-aged children.

Details of the study were posted online on Friday as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers expanding Covid vaccinations to youngsters between ages five and 11.

If federal regulators give the go ahead, shots could begin rolling out early next month, meaning the first children in line could be fully inoculated by Christmas.

Parents have been split 50/50 over vaccinating children because kids rarely get severely ill and make up less than 0.1 percent of all Covid deaths in the U.S.

According to clinicaltrials.gov, Pfizer recruited 2,268 children between ages five and 11 for the study. About half of the kids were given two doses 21 days apart and the other half were given placebo shots.

The team then tested the safety, tolerability and immune response generated by the vaccine by measuring antibody levels in the young subjects.

Pfizer said it had selected lower doses for COVID-19 vaccine trials in children than are given to teenagers and adults.

Those aged 12 and older receive two 30 microgram (μg) doses of the vaccine. However, children between ages five and 11 were given 10 μg doses - one-third of the size given to adolescents and adults.

Sixteen children who received the placebo contracted COVID-19 compared with three in the vaccinated group - while Pfizer said equates to 90.7 percent efficacy.

In the vaccination group, one participant each had two, three and four Covid symptoms.

Comparatively, in the placebo group, half of the pediatric patients had five or more symptoms.

No life-threatening adverse events were reported with the most common side effect being pain at the injection site, reported in more than 70 percent of kids.

This is about equal with the up to 83 percent of 16-to-25-year-olds in the adult clinical trial who reported the same thing.

Other common side effects included fatigue, headache and redness/swelling at the site of injection.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10120283/Pfizer-says-COVID-19-vaccine-90-effective-kids.html

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Why even fully vaccinated older people are at high risk for severe COVID-19

Many factors weaken the aging immune system. But vaccines—and booster doses—do offer protection from hospitalization and death.

Mounting data suggest that older people are at higher risk of severe disease from a breakthrough infection of COVID-19—and scientists say that should come as no surprise. After all, older age brackets have been disproportionately at risk throughout the pandemic, and that continues to be true even once someone is fully vaccinated.

Concerns about breakthrough infections bubbled up again this week when news broke on October 18 that former Secretary of State Colin Powell had died after contracting COVID-19. Powell was 84, but his cause of death was more complex: The former statesman suffered from multiple myeloma, a cancer of white blood cells. People with this form of cancer tend not to respond well to vaccines.

But in addition to the immunocompromised, health officials are seeing worrying evidence that older age groups continue to be at higher risk from the pandemic. According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people over 65 account for 67 percent of hospitalizations and 85 percent of deaths from breakthrough cases. And recent media reports citing data from Seattle, Washington, and the United Kingdom show that older vaccinated people face similar—and, in some cases, greater—risks of severe disease than unvaccinated children.

“The huge risk factor is age,” says William Petri, an immunologist at the University of Virginia. That’s why the U.S. prioritized vaccinating older people and those in long-term care facilities when it first rolled out the vaccines, he explains. “If you’re under 45, your chances of dying are almost nonexistent, and then it increases exponentially.”

Concerns over breakthrough infections are also why U.S. regulators have approved booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine for people over 65—and are poised to do the same for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson jabs. (Why the CDC and FDA only approved booster shots for some Americans.)

Here’s what scientists know about the aging immune system—and why breakthrough infections don’t change the fact that COVID-19 vaccines remain remarkably effective for people at any age.

Aging immune systems

Experts say they still don’t have an adequate explanation for why older people were more susceptible to COVID-19 even before vaccines were available. “It’s just one of the great mysteries of the virus,” says Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona.

Scientists who study aging say it likely has to do with some of the hallmarks of getting older. For example, the human body normally clears away cells that have become damaged due to disease, injury, or stress. But as the body ages, this process becomes less efficient, and it starts to accumulate so-called senescent cells, which are damaged but won’t die. These cells secrete chemicals that damage neighboring healthy cells and trigger inflammation. Senescent cells thus weaken the body and make it harder to fight off infections.

But there’s a lot more going on in an aging body, and many elements of aging likely work together to undermine the immune response, says Eric Verdin, president and chief executive officer of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, a biomedical research group based in California.

Among older people, he says, there are two broad abnormalities of the immune system: a hyperactive innate response, and an underactive adaptive response.

Innate immunity is the defense system you were born with—and the first to respond to invaders. It doesn’t target a specific pathogen, but rather mounts a generic inflammatory response. When that response is inappropriately intense, as happens in older people, it can trigger a cascade of damage throughout the body, from the lungs to the heart to the kidneys. (Here’s what the coronavirus does to the body.)

The adaptive immune response targets a specific invading pathogen. Vaccines provide a preview of the germ and teach the body how to create antibodies that recognize and latch onto a virus and block it from entering any of the body’s cells. If the virus does manage to break through, then T cells join in and kill the infected cell. Verdin likens it to an army that defends the body from attackers. If the amount of virus is small, the antibodies and T cells can easily defeat it.

A larger viral force, however, can overwhelm the adaptive immune system. Older people, who are less able to mount a vigorous adaptive response, may therefore be particularly susceptible to breakthrough infections.

“Everything gets worse with age, is the bottom line,” Bhattacharya says.

Breakthrough infections

Annual flu shot drives have shown that age can dampen the effectiveness of some vaccines. Verdin says a third of people over age 70 don’t respond at all to the flu vaccine, which is why it still kills a disproportionate number of older Americans every year.

On the other hand, responses to COVID-19 vaccines have been a lot stronger. “I think one of the more surprising things is how well the mRNA vaccines did with those older populations,” Bhattacharya says. “If you look at the initial immune responses, they weren’t very much different at all between people over 65 and those below. So that was a pretty pleasant surprise.”

However, in September the CDC reported that the vaccines are only about 78 percent effective at preventing infection among people of all ages after six months. It’s unclear exactly what is responsible for this drop in effectiveness. Bhattacharya says some studies do show that immunity is waning in people over 65, but he points out that it could also be caused by the rise of the Delta variant, which has proven better able to evade the body’s immune response.

In late September, New York magazine’s David Wallace-Wells wrote of “the overwhelming age skew of the disease” even among the vaccinated, citing data from the United Kingdom showing that vaccinated people over 60 died from COVID-19 at higher rates than unvaccinated people under 50. The New York Times also recently wrote about hospitalization rates in the Seattle area, which show that the risks for vaccinated people in their 50s are similar to the risks for unvaccinated children under age 15.

Bhattacharya says he doesn’t like comparing the two age groups, arguing that it’s much more important to compare the risks among unvaccinated versus vaccinated people no matter their age. These data clearly show that everyone benefits from a vaccine: In the U.K., for instance, the death rate for unvaccinated adults is several times higher than it is for vaccinated adults in every age group.

And despite the drop in effectiveness in preventing infection, the Pfizer vaccine remains 90 percent effective at preventing hospitalization, which shows that it remains a solid defense against severe disease and death. A recent report published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that vaccines “may have helped prevent hundreds of thousands of new COVID-19 infections and tens of thousands of deaths among seniors.”

Bhattacharya says that federal regulators in the U.S. have approved boosters for people over 65—and not the general population—because of the extra risks that they face. He and other scientists emphasize that high-profile breakthrough infections and the approval of booster shots should not discourage anyone from getting vaccinated. On the contrary, it should be seen as confirmation that the vaccines work.

“Rest assured, these are the best vaccines we’ve ever had,” Petri says.

Verdin agrees: “Getting vaccinated really puts things on your side. Think about it as a war where you want to have all the ammunition that you can possibly have.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/why-older-vaccinated-people-face-higher-risks-for-severe-covid-19

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Study finds no link between COVID-19 vaccine and pregnancy loss

An international study has found no link between COVID-19 vaccinations and miscarriages early in pregnancy.

The study, conducted by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, found no evidence of a direct effect of the vaccination on pregnancy and miscarriages.

Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study used 20,000 Norwegian registries on first trimester pregnancies to perform the case-controlled research. Each pregnant woman's COVID-19 vaccination status, background characteristics and underlying health conditions were considered as factors.

Of the 13,956 women with ongoing pregnancies 5.5 per cent were vaccinated, and of the 4521 women with miscarriages 5.1 per cent were vaccinated.

Following the analysis, it concluded that there was "no evidence of an increased risk for early pregnancy loss after Covid-19 vaccination".

Australia's Department of Health cites pregnant people as a priority group for COVID-19 vaccination with Pfizer as the recommended vaccine.

"Pregnant people have a higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19 and their babies have a higher risk of being born prematurely. Vaccination is the best way to reduce these risks", their website states.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/health/medical/study-finds-no-link-between-covid-19-vaccine-and-pregnancy-loss/ar-AAPOp4o

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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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Scottish study: Vaccines '90% effective' at preventing Delta variant deaths

Vaccination is 90% effective at preventing deaths from the Delta variant of Covid-19, researchers say. The data, released by the University of Edinburgh, was gathered using a Scotland-wide Covid surveillance tool.

Figures suggest the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 90% effective and the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab 91% effective at preventing deaths.

It looked at people who have been double-vaccinated but who have tested positive for Covid in the community.

The study is the first to show across an entire country how effective vaccines are at preventing death from the Delta variant, which is the most dominant form of Covid in the UK.

Researchers defined death from Covid as anyone who died within 28 days of a positive PCR test, or with Covid recorded as a cause of death on their death certificate.

The study analysed data from 5.4 million people in Scotland between 1 April and 27 September this year.

During this period, 115,000 people tested positive for Covid using a PCR test in the community, rather than in hospital, and there were 201 Covid-related deaths recorded.

Tracked in real time

No deaths have been recorded in those who have been double-vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine in Scotland, according to the data.

Researchers said it is therefore not possible to estimate this particular vaccine's effectiveness in preventing Covid-related deaths.

The research team from the University of Edinburgh, University of Strathclyde and Public Health Scotland analysed the dataset as part of the EAVE II project - Early Pandemic Evaluation and Enhanced Surveillance of Covid-19.

It uses anonymised, linked-patient data to track the pandemic and the vaccine rollout in real time.

Age groups second dose

So far, 87.1% of adults in Scotland have taken a second dose of the Covid vaccine.

Third "booster" doses are being offered to everyone over 50, along with frontline medical staff and younger adults with some underlying health conditions.

Prof Aziz Sheikh, director of the University of Edinburgh's Usher Institute and EAVE II study lead, said: "With the Delta variant now the dominant strain in many places worldwide, and posing a higher risk of hospitalisation than previous variants seen in the UK, it is reassuring to see that vaccination offers such high protection from death very shortly after the second dose.

"If you still have not taken up your offer to be vaccinated, I would encourage you to do so based on the clear benefits it offers."

Follow-up studies

Prof Chris Robertson, of the University of Strathclyde and Public Health Scotland, said: "This study shows the value of carrying out analyses of routine healthcare data available in near real-time.

"Our findings are encouraging in showing that the vaccine remains an effective measure in protecting both ourselves and others from death from the most dominant variant of Covid-19."

He added that it was important to validate these early results with follow-up studies.

The team behind the study said due to the observational nature of the figures, data about vaccine effectiveness should be interpreted with caution and said it was not possible to make a direct comparison between both vaccines.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-58987835

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England data: How are COVID vaccines faring against Delta?

New research, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, has confirmed that both AstraZeneca and Pfizer COVID vaccines have a lower efficacy against Delta, with a single dose of either vaccine around 30% effective against the strain, compared to 48% for the Alpha variant.

However, after two doses, only modest differences were observed, with Pfizer 88% effective against Delta compared to 93% for Alpha, and AstraZeneca 67% effective against Delta and 74.5% for Alpha.

So how is this playing out in the UK?

With Delta now the dominant strain, case numbers have started to soar, with more than 330,000 people testing positive in the past seven days. Hospitalisation rates have also started to increase, with 4510 people admitted between 8–14 July, up 38.6% on the previous seven days, and 366 deaths recorded between 15–21 July, up 59.8% from the past week.

That is with 69.1% of the adult population fully vaccinated and 88.1% having received one dose.

But infectious diseases physician and microbiologist Associate Professor Paul Griffin told newsGP that the findings are not unexpected as Delta is more infectious, and that the reduced efficacy is ‘not all that significant’.

‘We know people that are fully vaccinated can still get infected,’ he said.

‘But what we also know is that they’re, at least modestly, reduced in terms of their ability to transmit, and have very significantly reduced chances of getting really sick, being hospitalised and dying.

‘And, again, that doesn’t mean that the numbers of deaths will go to zero. Even if we had 100% of people vaccinated, there’d still be one or two people per 100, and there’d still be 10 people that do get sick – but it’s significantly reduced.

‘We just have to look at the proportion that get really sick, and make sure that that doesn’t jump up indicating that our vaccines are no longer working. But we’re clearly not at that point yet.’

In Israel, where Delta is causing a fourth wave, health officials are less certain.

The country’s Ministry of Health earlier this month lowered its projection of Pfizer being 95.3% effective to just 64% against Delta, and warned that it could be even lower, as about 90% of new confirmed cases in those aged over 50 are fully vaccinated.

However, it is worth noting that while case numbers have risen from zero on 5 June to 668 on 19 July, deaths have remained low, with only two recorded on 19 July.

With 85% of adults vaccinated in Israel, Associate Professor Griffin says that in and of itself could be why the proportion of cases who are vaccinated appear to be overrepresented, but that more information is needed.

‘It’s hard to know what those case numbers would have been had they not had so many people vaccinated,’ he said.

‘So, it’s not really, at this stage, data that lends itself to concluding that the vaccine performs less well there.

‘I think part of it is a bit of a skewing of the numbers. The key thing there will be looking at, again, the serious cases, hospitalisations, and deaths. If they truly climb there would be concern about the actual efficacy being less than we think.’

Comparing Delta waves in countries with a high proportion of vaccinated adults to those with low vaccination rates, also suggests current vaccines are effective at reducing hospitalisations and deaths.

Likewise, the UK research, funded by Public Health England, has concluded the findings support efforts to maximise vaccine uptake with two doses among vulnerable populations.

As children appear to be more susceptible to the Delta variant, a number of countries have already approved COVID vaccination in children, including Israel, the US, France and Italy, with the UK set to offer vaccination to those aged 12–15 who are at higher risk of COVID due to disability or illness.

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/how-are-covid-vaccines-faring-against-delta

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Pfizer says COVID-19 booster shot showed high efficacy in large study

Berlin: A booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and German partner BioNTech restored efficacy to 95.6 per cent against the virus, including the Delta variant, data released by the companies from a large study shows.

The companies said in a press release that the trial, which has not been peer-reviewed, tested 10,000 participants aged 16 and older, and found that the booster shot had a favourable safety profile.

Dr Walid Gellad, a professor at University of Pittsburgh’s medical school, said there seems to be a benefit of having the third dose in the Delta wave for symptomatic COVID-19.

“I’m just still very curious if this is primarily in people who are much, much older. Because what we don’t want to do is run out and give boosters to 25-year-olds who had COVID before and got two doses of the vaccine, just based on this press release,” Gellad said.

Pfizer had said its two-shot vaccine’s efficacy drops over time, citing a study that showed 84 per cent effectiveness from a peak of 96 per cent four months after a second dose. Some countries had already gone ahead with plans to give booster doses.

The trial results come a day after the US Food and Drug Administration authorised booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, and said Americans could choose a different shot from their original inoculation as a booster.

The agency previously authorised boosters of the Pfizer/BioNTech shot at least six months after the first round of shots to increase protection for people aged 65 and older, those at risk of severe disease and those who are exposed to the virus through their work.

The drugmakers said on Thursday, local time, the median time between the second dose and the booster shot or the placebo in the study was around 11 months, adding there were only five cases of COVID-19 in the booster group, compared with 109 cases in the group which received the placebo shot.

The median age of the participants was 53 years, with 55.5 per cent of participants between 16 and 55 years, and 23.3 per cent at 65 years or older.

Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said the trial results add to mounting data that boosters could help in providing long-lasting protection from symptomatic infection.

There were no reported cases of severe disease, suggesting robust protection from infection with only the primary vaccination series, Yee wrote in a note.

The companies said they would submit detailed results of the trial for peer-reviewed publication to the US FDA, the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory agencies, as soon as possible.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/pfizer-says-covid-19-booster-shot-showed-high-efficacy-in-large-study-20211022-p5926c.html

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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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FDA Authorizes Moderna and J&J Boosters, Backs ‘Mix-and-Match’

The Food and Drug Administration authorized booster shots for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccines on Wednesday.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel will issue recommendations on Thursday regarding which groups should receive boosters and on what timeframe. Once those recommendations are made, booster shots for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines could be available within days, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The FDA also authorized mixing and matching coronavirus vaccines, allowing Americans to receive a different vaccine for their booster shot than their original vaccine.

Some research has indicated that mixing coronavirus vaccines may produce stronger immune responses, and several European countries as well as Canada have already allowed residents to mix vaccines prior to booster shots. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau received an AstraZeneca vaccine for his first shot and Moderna for his second.

The FDA authorization allows any recipient of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine to receive a second dose of either the Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, or Pfizer vaccines, at least two months after the first shot.

However, recipients of the two-dose Moderna and Pfizer vaccines must wait at least six months before receiving a booster. For now, seniors or people at higher risk of COVID-19 because of underlying medical or workplace conditions may receive a booster shot.

The Biden administration authorized boosters for the Pfizer vaccine last month for seniors and immunocompromised Americans. That decision came following some confusion over the authorization timeline, after the president claimed in August that boosters would soon be authorized for the general population.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/f-d-a-authorizes-moderna-and-jj-boosters-backs-mix-and-match/

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Kyrsten Sinema Is Arizona’s New Maverick

Nothing reveals the double standard by which Beltway Washington deals with mavericks than the different treatment accorded two independent-minded senators in recent years.

The late John McCain of Arizona was celebrated for going against his party, never more so than when, in 2017, his one vote killed a GOP repeal of parts of Obama­care. But now, for standing up to the $3.5 trillion Biden budget extravaganza, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema is fast becoming a pariah in her party, as McCain was in his.

Media scorn has been brutal. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times attacked her. Saturday Night Live portrayed her as obstructionist and came as close as one is still allowed in these PC times to saying that she was a dumb blonde. Liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias denounced her as a tool of corporate lobbyists and asked, “Is Kyrsten Sinema on the take?”

Her former colleagues in the House have singled her out. “This is not progressives versus moderates,” said Representative Ro Khanna (D., Calif.), a progressive and the assistant whip of the House Democratic caucus. “This is the entire Democratic Party and Joe Biden versus Kyrsten Sinema.”

Back home in Arizona, the state Democratic Party just passed a resolution criticizing her and hinted at a possible primary challenge in 2024. Angry, hectoring left-wing activists pursued her into a public restroom and proudly posted a video of their stunt.

Key Washington Democrats have effectively disowned her. When Dem­ocratic leaders issued a joint statement condemning the bathroom harassment, Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) withheld his endorsement because the statement didn’t include a rebuke of Sinema’s policy views.

President Biden was little better. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan pointed out his passive-aggressive response: “I don’t think they’re appropriate tactics, but it happens to everybody. . . . It’s part of the process.” Noonan noted that “to announce it is part of the process is to make it part of the process. It was as if he were saying: Yeah, she’s got me mad. Hound her some more.”

The left-wing anger against Sinema may in part be explained by her having once been such a strong progressive. A bisexual triathlete who was raised in poverty and became a social worker, Sinema in 2013 became the first member of Congress to list “None” as her religion. In the early 2000s, she was the spokeswoman for the Green Party and dressed up in a black veil and a pink tutu to protest the war in Iraq. As a Democrat, she was elected to the state house in 2004 and retained her bomb-throwing zeal.

When I met her at an immigration conference in Phoenix in 2006, she introduced herself by extending her hand and saying, “Hi. I’m Kyrsten. I’m in the Arizona house and I’m a socialist.” The lefty Phoenix New Times named her “Best Local Lefty Icon” as late as 2011, praising her as “a valiant champion for the poor, the underprivileged, and the state’s immigrant population.”

But glimmers of a changed attitude and a suspicion of the limits of impersonal government programs could be seen early on. In her 2009 book Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win and Last, she wrote dismissively of “the dread disease” of “identity politics” and how liberals too quickly embraced the “mantle of victimhood.” When she ran for Congress in 2012, she said her social-work ethos prompted her to pledge to govern “the same way I try to live my life — which is to seek understanding of those around me rather than to move forward with a combative attitude.”

Once in Congress, Sinema did follow that new course. She sought out Re­publicans to co-sponsor her bills, she tempered her rhetoric, she became a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, and she voted three times against electing Nancy Pelosi as speaker. When she ran for the Senate in 2018, one of her ads deplored how people in Washington “are more interested in their talking points and their ideology than getting stuff done.”

In her first year in the Senate, the nonpartisan GovTrack survey found her to be the most conservative Democrat. One notch less conservative than she was eclectic libertarian senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.).

In May, the Arizona Republic asked her what her long-term goals in the Senate were. She replied:

Most folks in Arizona aren’t thinking to themselves, “What is the government doing for me today?” They’re often thinking about what the government is doing to me today, right? . . . I want Arizonans to, one, not have to think about their government very much. But, two, when they do, to think to themselves: “Well, that it is at least a little less bad than it used to be, it’s less painful than it used to be and Kyrsten has done some work to help make my life a little bit easier and a little bit better.”

It’s no wonder that such a minimalist governing agenda prompted a senior Senate Democratic aide to describe her as “an enigma shrouded in mystery.”

But perhaps she isn’t. She has long held out McCain as a political role model, and in her first speech as a senator she called him “a personal hero.”

“I think she definitely would like for her legacy to be ‘the maverick’ like him,” Grant Woods, a former state attorney general of Arizona and a former chief of staff to McCain, told Time magazine. “He was instinctively drawn to doing the opposite of what he was told and what people expected. She’s definitely attracted to that image.”

On substance, she has emulated McCain in putting herself in the room where deals are cut, as she did when she helped broker the COVID-19 relief package in March and, in August, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package that won 19 Republican votes in the Senate.

But the media clearly reject any comparisons to their hero McCain. “Sinema is missing perhaps the most important facet of McCain’s persona — the glue that, more than any stubbornness or mavericky vote, . . . was responsible for his exalted status,” explained Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy. “He absolutely craved the spotlight. He practically had an endowed chair on Meet the Press. He appeared in Wedding Crashers. When McCain died, several thousand reporters all filed stories at once about his famous press scrums in the Capitol or on the campaign trail.” In other words, McCain treated the media as the important players they like to see themselves being. Left unsaid was the fact that McCain was the most prodigious leaker of Senate insider stories that body had ever seen. The media reward loose lips.

Sinema doesn’t leak, distrusts the media, and avoids giving interviews in nonnational outlets. In 2018, National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar laughed that “trying to report on Sinema’s Senate campaign was like having to deal with an incompetent cable company. Calls and e-mails to her campaign went unreturned for days.”

The liberal sources the media rely on have long made clear their view of her as a non–team player. In 2016, she was nowhere to be seen at a massive Hillary Clinton pre-election rally at Arizona State University, which is in her home district and where Sinema teaches. A Democratic operative spotted her at a local coffee shop instead, holding a campaign event for herself at the same time.

To pressure Sinema to pledge her vote for Biden’s $3.5 trillion bill, progressives have tried everything, from accosting her on airplanes to putting her face on a milk carton at local football games. They are actively recruiting Representative Ruben Gallego, who took Sinema’s House seat, to primary her in 2024.

But defeating her won’t be easy. She has $3.6 million in her campaign ac­count, and an OH Predictive Insights poll found her overall favorability rating roughly equal to that of fellow Arizona Democratic senator Mark Kelly. Sinema is less popular among Democrats but has a 40 percent favorability rating among Republicans.

In addition, it’s entirely possible that Sinema could win her primary even if most Democrats vote against her. Arizona law allows unaffiliated voters — one in three of all those registered — to vote in any primary. In both 2010 and 2016, John McCain lost the votes of registered Republicans in his party primary but prevailed by cleaning up with independents.

Some Sinema sympathizers also believe she can build back some goodwill within the party if both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a pared-back version of Biden’s social-welfare extravaganza eventually become law.

But don’t bet on it. The Hill reported that other issues will continue to stick in the craw of progressive groups, chief among them her stubborn support of the Senate filibuster.

So if progressives continue to find reasons to lust for a primary challenge, they should realize they are putting her Senate seat at risk. Many Democrats aren’t convinced that a liberal such as Gallego could win the general elecyion after a bloody internecine primary. “There’s a near zero chance he would win statewide,” a Democratic operative told The Hill. “That’s something Democrats will really have to ask themselves in seeking to defeat Sinema, is do they want someone to primary her who will almost certainly hand the seat to Republicans?”

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/11/01/kyrsten-sinema-is-arizonas-new-maverick/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

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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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Another Leftist Myth Debunked: Stats Show More COVID Deaths on Biden's Watch Than Trump's

Biden’s bid for the presidency was focused largely on his promise to effectively fight the spread of the virus. Despite the fact that he had vaccines, therapeutics and mandates at his disposal, he has failed to deliver.

The fact is that 372,000 Americans have died from COVID during Biden’s presidency while 352,000 died during Trump’s. The numbers come from John’s Hopkins University, as reported by host Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Some say they doubt the validity of the numbers. Who can blame them? Everything can be doubted in a world where all is relative and facts are what you make of them. Confusion is the new plague.

It’s also a fact that the virus was just amping up when Trump was in office. It should be noted that Trump’s total was from a 10-month period and Biden surpassed that total in just 8 months.

Trump took on the virus with a fighting spirit and masks. Biden had a toolbox full of options and didn’t manage to make a dent.

Biden has to come to terms with the facts. Instead, Democrats are using the emergence of the delta variant to explain away their numbers. There is truth to this assertion, but only if you add the fact that the Biden administration catalyzed vaccine hesitancy with horrendous messaging.

Officials with the Coronavirus Research Center recently observed that “vaccine hesitancy continues and testing has lagged.”

“So I would say the simple strategies are, first, to listen to what the concerns are and try as best as possible to understand them,” Dr. Bill Moss, the center’s vaccinology lead, said, according to the Washington Times.

“If it’s due to misinformation or disinformation, having the right messenger convey that information to the target audience is really critical, and that’s a person who the community or individual trusts, whether that’s a religious leader or a celebrity or sports figure.”

Biden and company are clearly not the “right messenger.” Too many people simply do not trust the administration.

COVID vaccines, instead of being a reasonable option for American citizens, are now divisive. The unvaccinated beware: Biden’s “patience is wearing thin.” The unvaccinated are being treated as enemies of the state.

Reasonable people have legitimate concerns about taking the vaccine, largely due to Biden’s misinformation about everything from Facebook “killing people” to red-state election laws being the new Jim Crow.

The administration has downplayed the effectiveness of natural immunity. They have also encouraged Big Tech to silence discourse around the vaccine.

Instead of treating reasonable people like deplorable idiots, it might help to treat them as citizens and address their concerns with understanding instead of malice.

Faith alone won’t work when it comes to COVID vaccines. People will need to be convinced through reason before they decide whether or not to take that leap.

The Biden administration chose to run the country’s COVID response much differently than Trump. They now have to own the 372,000 deaths. Mr. President, please stop blaming your mistakes on the citizens of the United States.

https://www.westernjournal.com/another-leftist-myth-debunked-stats-show-covid-deaths-bidens-watch-trumps/

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Former CDC Director Gives Disturbing Statistic on Fully Vaccinated COVID Deaths

Deaths were rare but 40 percent of people who did die in Maryland were fully vaccinated

Speaking during an interview with Fox News Monday afternoon, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said that more than 40 percent of people who have recently died from the coronavirus in Maryland were fully vaccinated.

"A lot of times people may feel it's a rare event that fully vaccinated people die. I happen to be the senior advisor to Governor Hogan in the state of Maryland. In the last 6-8 weeks, more than 40 percent of people who died in Maryland were fully vaccinated," Redfield said, responding to the death of former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

At the time of his death from virus complications, Powell was also fighting a blood cancer that lowers the ability to stave off infection. According to the Maryland Department of Health, 65.7 percent of adults in the state are fully vaccinated.

Redfield served as CDC director under President Donald Trump and currently works as an advisor for Maryland's Republican Governor Larry Hogan.

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The likelihood of catching Covid-19 if you’re fully vaccinated

The Australian data

Covid-19 has a mortality rate of 1.06 per cent in Australia. Around 1,400 Aussies are currently in hospital with the virus, including 288 people in Intensive Care Units across the country.

The Health Minister said getting the jab would diminish most people’s risk of being hospitalised with Covid-19 to almost nothing. “We do know that what vaccination does is it reduces significantly your risk of getting the disease, but it doesn't prevent it,” Mr Hunt said.

“In the best case study, 47,000 people in NSW and the ACT between the ages of 16, and I believe 65, have been diagnosed. Of those, only four per cent have been fully vaccinated.”

And even if you catch Covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated, Mr Hunt says the chance of becoming seriously ill is still very low for Australians who are double-dosed.

“It reduces very significantly your risk of serious illness or hospitalisation,” the Health Minister said.

Of the 47,000-person case study in NSW and the ACT, Mr Hunt said only one per cent of positive cases who died from the virus were fully vaccinated.

Australia’s Intensive care units reflect a similar trend. According to NSW Health, less than 2 per cent of people admitted to intensive care in NSW in the first 11 weeks of the state’s most recent outbreak were fully vaccinated.

Of the 4654 people hospitalised with Covid-19 over that period, just three per cent were double-dosed.

Eighteen per cent of hospitalisations were partially vaccinated, and the remaining 79 per cent were either unvaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown.

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/health/greg-hunt-reveals-the-likelihood-of-catching-covid19-if-youre-fully-vaccinated/news-story/96153496de15c50e4749e998974aff66

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GOP Reps Introduce Bill Requiring Federal Agencies to Recognize Natural Immunity Against COVID-19

On Monday, Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN) introduced a bill requiring federal agencies to take into account naturally acquired immunity from a previous Wuhan coronavirus infection when issuing any measures aimed at stopping the spread of the virus.

The bill, titled the “Natural Immunity is Real Act” states that agencies are to “truthfully present, and incorporate, the consideration of natural immunity as it pertains to COVID-19” and that nothing in the Act “shall be construed to allow for, or authorize, a Federal vaccination mandate.”

As we’ve previously covered, last month, President Biden announced new COVID-19 vaccine mandates that would require all federal workers to be vaccinated and require employers with over 100 workers to require the vaccine or be subject to regular testing. Shortly after, the Biden administration began pushing a booster shot campaign.

“[T]he Biden Administration must ‘follow the science’ and be open, honest and transparent about the millions of Americans who have natural immunity against the COVID-19 virus,” Harshbarger said in a press release. “[M]y bill is a necessary and timely legislative action resulting from President Biden’s continued politicization of COVID-19 which continues to create deep divisions among Americans, such as when he chillingly said his national vaccine mandate requirements are ‘not about freedom or personal choice.’

Now more than ever, we need to pursue every scientific measure — such as natural immunity — that can help mitigate the pandemic without threatening people’s jobs, our economy, or denying Americans access to everyday life activities based on COVID-19 vaccination status.”

“We are over a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has failed to recognize the effectiveness of natural immunity,” Van Drew said in the press release. “We know vaccines work, but natural immunity could be equally or similarly as effective in certain individuals. If the CDC would devote time into its research, we would have robust, evidence-based research that could help America finally move on from this virus.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2021/10/19/gop-reps-introduce-bill-requiring-federal-agencies-to-recognize-natural-immunity-n2597653

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IN BRIEF

State Department IG to probe Biden administration’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal (Fox News)

“I will share my thoughts in the coming days and weeks”: Top U.S. envoy to Afghanistan steps down (Washington Examiner)

Midnight runs: Biden secretly flying underage migrants into New York in the dead of night (New York Post)

Haiti kidnappers demand $17 million ransom for missionaries (BBC News)

The writing is on the wall: House Democrat retirement rush continues with two new departures (Politico)

Supreme Court protects cops from lawsuits in two qualified immunity cases (Fox News)

China’s GDP slows to disappointing 4.9% in third quarter (The Hill)

U.S. careening into another recession as worried consumers flash warning signs (New York Post)

LA ports a ghost town much of the weekend despite President Biden’s goal to move cargo (Washington Examiner)

Climate backfire: Coal-fired power jumps as natural gas prices soar (Washington Times)

City leaders, police departments push back over impending COVID vaccine mandates (USA Today)

Nick Rolovich fired as Washington State football coach after refusing COVID vaccine (The Oregonian)

Jury selection moving slowly in Ahmaud Arbery slaying trial (AP)

Ten absurdly wasteful items tucked into the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend monstrosity (Daily Signal)

DOJ ignores Washington Post-prompted death threats against Waukesha, Wisconsin, school board member (The Federalist)

Silent disgrace: Where is the national media on abandoned Americans in Afghanistan? (Hot Air)

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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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FDA Panel Unanimously Recommends Authorization of Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Booster

Moderna officials presented data from clinical trials, including a small trial that studied the safety and effectiveness of a booster shot, as did officials from Israel, one of the first countries in the world to start giving booster shots, and the FDA, which performed an analysis of Moderna’s data but didn’t support or oppose the company’s application for an emergency use authorization expansion.

The FDA can overrule the panel’s recommendations but rarely does so. If the recommendation is approved, anyone aged 65 and older will be able to get a Moderna booster shot if they’ve received the primary two doses of the Moderna series. People between the ages of 18 and 64 who are deemed “at high risk of severe COVID-19” or whose “frequent institutional or occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2 puts them at high risk of serious complications of COVID-19” will also have access to the booster shot.

The boosters would be a 50 microgram dose for people at least six months after they’ve received their second dose, which is itself typically administered one month after the initial dose. The primary two-dose series is 100 micrograms each.

Moderna said its small trial, consisting of just 171 people who got the regular primary series and a half-dose booster, showed a smaller amount could still bolster protection against CCP virus infection.

Officials discussed how data from other trials signal that the vaccine is still holding up well against severe disease, but that there’s been plummeting effectiveness against infection, particularly after the Delta variant became dominant in the United States.

Some panel members struck a skeptical tone on widespread boosters, pointing to the small number of people who got another shot and were studied and highlighting how some populations, including young, healthy people, don’t seem to need another shot.

“I’m not wild about a bunch of 20-year-olds going out and getting a booster dose, unless they’re at increased risk of either exposure or severe outcome,” Dr. Mark Sawyer, professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of California–San Diego School of Medicine and a temporary panel voting member, said before the vote.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel will ultimately make the decision on who should get a Moderna booster, Sawyer said, though it’s in danger of being overruled by the agency’s head, as happened with Pfizer’s additional shot.

There was discussion about amending the third piece of the recommendation, but a number of members brushed aside the talk, in part because of a desire to match the recommendation the same panel gave for a booster for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in September. No one dissented.

“We already approved it for Pfizer. I don’t see how we can possibly not approve it for Moderna and not have most U.S. folks be completely confused. I know that’s not part of what we’re supposed to think about, but I think it’s a pragmatic issue,” said Dr. Stanley Perlman, a temporary voting member and a professor in the University of Iowa’s Departments of Microbiology and Immunology.

Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at the Tufts University School of Medicine and a panel member, twice asked for evidence that people can be at high risk for serious complications based on their work. Dr. Doran Fink, an FDA official, said there was no “specific data,” but that there’s concern about so-called long COVID, or alleged problems that stem from COVID-19 and are seen even after somebody stops testing positive for the disease.

Meissner endorsed the recommendations, but warned the panel against voting for evidence-free language. “If we can’t defend these recommendations based on evidence, it’s going to further complicate getting this vaccine into every single adult American, and that’s really what we want to do,” Meissner said.

Dr. James Hildreth, president and CEO of Meharry Medical College and a temporary voting member (pdf), challenged Meissner, saying that the only evidence he needed for the occupational risk advice was that minorities are more likely to have underlying conditions, putting them at higher risk of severe cases of COVID-19.

Perlman said the piece was important because the United States can’t afford to have health care workers test positive for COVID-19, because that means they’ll have to miss work, even if they’re not showing symptoms.

Many spoke in favor of advising the FDA to widen the emergency use authorization again, after previously allowing people with weak immune systems to get a third dose of the vaccine. They said the fact that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are similar means that data regarding Pfizer booster shots, including virtually all the information from Israel, informed their decision, as did the millions of Americans who have already gotten the third shot. “We need boosters in some populations,” Sawyer said.

Dr. Patrick Moore, a temporary voting member and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, said his vote was based on “more of a gut feeling” than serious data.

“The data itself is not strong but it is certainly going in a direction that is supportable of this vote,” Moore said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/fda-panel-unanimously-recommends-authorization-of-moderna-covid-19-vaccine-booster_4049572.html

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Is America Repeating Cultural Split Between Rome and Byzantium?

In A.D. 286, the Roman emperor Diocletian split in half the huge Roman Empire administratively—and peacefully—under the control of two emperors.

A Western empire included much of modern-day Western Europe and northwest Africa. The Eastern half controlled Eastern Europe and parts of Asia and northeastern Africa.

By 330, the Emperor Constantine institutionalized that split by moving the empire’s capital from Rome to his new imperial city of Constantinople, founded on the site of the old Greek polis of Byzantium.

The two administrative halves of the once huge empire continued to drift apart. Soon there arose two increasingly different, though still kindred versions, of a once unified Romanity.

The Western empire eventually collapsed into chaos by the latter fifth century A.D.

Yet the Roman eastern half survived for nearly 1,000 years. It was soon known as the Byzantine Empire, until overwhelmed by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 A.D.

Historians still disagree over why the East endured while the West crumbled. And they cite the various roles of differing geography, border challenges, tribal enemies, and internal challenges.

We moderns certainly have developed unfair stereotypes of a supposedly decadent late imperial Rome of Hollywood sensationalism that deserved its end. And we likewise mistakenly typecast a rigid, ultra-orthodox bureaucratic “Byzantine” alternative that supposedly grew more reactionary to survive in a rough neighborhood.

Yet in both cases, separate geography multiplied the growing differences between a Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian and older civilization in the East, versus a more or less polyglot and often fractious Christianity in the Latin West.

Byzantium held firm against ancient neighboring Persian, Middle Eastern, and Egyptian rivals. But the West disintegrated into a tribal amalgam of its own former peoples.

Unlike in the West, the glue that held the East together against centuries of foreign enemies was the revered idea of an ancient and uncompromising Hellenism—the preservation of a common, holistic Greek language, religion, culture, and history.

By A.D. 600, at a time when the West had long ago fragmented into tribes and proto-European kingdoms, the jewel at Constantinople was the nerve center of the most impressive civilization in the world, stretching from the Eastern Asia Minor to southern Italy.

There is now much talk of a new American red state/blue state split—and even wild threats of another civil war. Certainly, millions of Americans yearly self-select, disengage from their political opposites, and make moves based on diverging ideology, culture, politics, religiosity or lack of it, and differing views of the American past.

More conservative traditionalists head for the interior between the coasts, where there is usually smaller government, fewer taxes, more religiosity, and unapologetic traditionalists.

These modern Byzantines are more apt to define their patriotism by honoring ancient customs and rituals—standing for the national anthem, attending church services on Sundays, demonstrating reverence for American history and its heroes, and emphasizing the nuclear family.

Immigration in fly-over country is still defined as melting pot assimilation and integration of new arrivals into the body politic of a hallowed and enduring America.

While red states welcome change, they believe America never had to be perfect to be good. It will always survive, but only if it sticks to its 234-year-old Constitution, stays united by the English language, and assimilates newcomers into an enduring and exceptional American culture.

In contrast, the more liberal blue state antithesis is richer from globalist wealth. The West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego, profits from trade with a thriving Asia. It is bookended by the East Coast window on the European Union from Boston to Miami.

The great research universities of the Ivy League—the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Caltech, Stanford, and the University of California System—are bicoastal. Just as Rome was once the iconic center of the entire Roman project, so blue Washington, D.C., is the nerve center for big-government America.

The salad bowl is the bicoastal model for immigration. Newcomers can retain and reboot their former cultural identities.

Religion is less orthodox; atheism and agnosticism are almost the norm. And most of the recent social movements of American feminism, transgenderism, and critical race theory grew out of coastal urbanity and academia.

Foreigners see blue coastal Americans as the more vibrant, sophisticated, cosmopolitan—and reckless—culture, its vast wealth predicated on technology, information, communications, finance, media, education, and entertainment.

In turn, they concede that the vast red interior—with about the same population as blue America but with vastly greater area—is the more pragmatic, predictable, and home to the food, fuels, ores, and material production of America.

Our Byzantine interior and Roman coasts are quite differently interpreting their shared American heritage as they increasingly plot radically divergent courses to survive in scary times.

But as in the past, it is far more likely that one state model will prove unsustainable and collapse than it is that either region would ever start a civil war.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/10/14/is-america-repeating-the-cultural-split-between-rome-and-the-byzantine-empire/

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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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