How Vaccine Fanatics Fueled Vaccine Skepticism

The development of COVID-19 vaccines is one of the few successes during a pandemic that saw major failures in public health strategy and treatments. While the vaccines can’t prevent transmission, they have reduced mortality. Before the pandemic, there was almost universal trust in vaccines, and vaccine skeptics were a small but vocal minority.

With a life-saving vaccine during a major pandemic, one would expect more vaccine enthusiasm, but instead, it collapsed. What happened?

Ironically, the problem is vaccine fanaticism, which has caused vaccine skepticism, with problematic consequences extending beyond COVID-19 to trust in other vaccines. Vaccine fanaticism comes in many forms.

In their drive to increase uptake, the vaccine fanatics denied basic scientific facts, such as immunity provided by COVID recovery. This, despite numerous careful studies that showed that COVID-recovery provides better protection versus both infection and severe disease than the vaccine. Nevertheless, vaccine fanatics insisted that natural immunity shouldn’t “count” in the vaccine mandate schemes. By denying science, the vaccine fanatics created further public skepticism about the vaccines.

“If they’re lying about natural immunity, maybe they’re lying about vaccine efficacy,” many may have reasoned.

Despite lack of evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines could prevent transmission and mounting evidence in spring and summer 2021 that they couldn’t stop the spread of the disease, Dr. Anthony Fauci and others convinced themselves that COVID-19 could be conquered only if 70 percent, 80 percent, 90 percent, or more of the population was vaccinated. And when the vaccines didn’t live up to scientifically unproven promises, people’s trust in those who over-promised naturally collapsed.

In its pursuit of the impossible goal of COVID suppression by vaccines alone, public health vaccine fanatics induced many people to become skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccine’s benefits.

Public authorities espoused psychological manipulation to induce vaccine uptake. For example, in its April 2021 guidance on mask-wearing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gave permission only to the vaccinated to doff the mask. Their reasoning was based on a mistaken belief that vaccinated individuals can’t spread the disease, but also as an inducement to get people vaccinated since mask-wearing is unpleasant.

Encouraged by public health officials, Krispy Kreme offered free donuts to the vaccinated. Some people may have wondered: “If they understood public health, they wouldn’t try to fatten people with donuts. Maybe vaccines are also bad for my health?”

When these tactics failed, the public health establishment embraced vaccine coercion. They instituted vaccine passports to exclude the unvaccinated from participation in civil life, including access to libraries, museums, and restaurants. The federal government went further, using its vast regulatory powers to mandate vaccines as a condition of employment. These coercive actions effectively cast the unvaccinated into second-class citizenship. As they watched the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike contract COVID-19, they undoubtedly began to wonder whether public health truly had their best interests at heart.

Some vaccine fanatics have adopted the repellant tactic of falsely labeling people they disagree with as anti-vaccine. For instance, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a tabloid-style slander that epidemiologists and vaccine experts at Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford are opposed to “mass vaccination.” How might readers interpret that statement? “Well, if Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford professors are against the vaccines, maybe I should be too.”

Such false claims fuel vaccine hesitancy by putting the BMJ imprimatur on the lie that medicine and epidemiology professors are anti-vaxxers, when they aren’t. This damages vaccine confidence.

Vaccine fanatics have politicized the vaccine, using it to paint political opponents as science-denying troglodytes by falsely claiming that they’re against vaccines. If a person trusts a particular politician that’s falsely accused of being against vaccines, that person may only hear the false accusation and therefore reject the vaccine. In a public health crisis, such political gameplay has devastating consequences. What should have been a bipartisan achievement of a vaccine being developed and deployed in record time during a pandemic turned into just another tool for a political food fight, fueling vaccine skepticism.

Like all medical interventions, vaccines have some risks, which must be acknowledged in risk-benefit analyses for different population groups. For example, when there were reports of an increased risk of blood clots in young women receiving the J&J vaccine, it made sense to give them a different vaccine while the reports were investigated. Instead, the CDC “paused” J&J vaccinations in all age groups, including older people, for whom it was clear that there was no excess risk and for whom the benefit of the vaccine was the largest. (The CDC fired one of us for opposing that pause in older people.)

Though the CDC later cleared the vaccine, the J&J vaccine uptake never recovered in the United States, with detrimental effects on less affluent, more rural, and other hard-to-reach populations for whom this one-dose vaccine was ideal and life-saving.

In their bid to boost COVID-19 vaccine uptake, the vaccine fanatics have created a widespread movement of vaccine skepticism that didn’t previously exist. The consequences are dire not just for the COVID-19 vaccine but also for vital childhood vaccines. It may be too late for COVID-19, but regaining public trust is crucial to ensure the public’s confidence in other vaccines that are critical to the well-being of children everywhere.

In public health, it isn’t enough to be trusted by only half the population. Since widespread trust is essential, the only solution is for public health to eschew coercion and embrace its traditional principles. Public health should never again manipulate or deny authentic scientific results to manipulate the public’s behavior. It should dismiss practitioners who use public health as a weapon in a cultural or political war. It should reject slander, censoring, and ad hominem attacks.

Trust in vaccines can only be regained through honest, open dialogue, science-based policies, public education, long-term thinking, a strengthened vaccine safety monitoring system, and voluntary vaccinations. That is, it should return to the traditional principles of public health.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-vaccine-fanatics-fueled-vaccine-skepticism_4319309.html

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Alarming Warning About COVID Tests

The National Capital Poison Center reports on its website that many quick home COVID-19 antigen tests included a harmful chemical compound that may be dangerous to your children as well as you.

The chemical sodium azide is reportedly a preservative agent in fast antigen sets, consisting of BinaxNow, BD Veritor, Flowflex, as well as Celltrion DiaTrust.

Sodium azide, if ingested, can cause low blood pressure, dizziness, migraine, and heart palpitations.

Now, Ohio, as well as Texas, issued a warning after seeing a rise in records related to sodium azide poisoning, in the very same 500 million Covid test sets that Biden sent to the American public.

An “increase in accidental exposures to a substance in these kits,” was reported by Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

Cincinnati.com reported:

The substance is sodium azide, and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center’s Drug and Poison Information Center has seen a surge in calls about exposures to the chemical since more people started self-testing for COVID-19 at home.

“We started getting our first exposures to these test kits around early November,” said Sheila Goertemoeller, pharmacist and clinical toxicologist for the center. “It was, really, all ages.” The calls to the local center mirror what’s been happening nationally.

Sodium azide, often used as a preservative, is a liquid reagent in several of the COVID-19 test kits, she said. Ingesting it can cause low blood pressure, which can result in dizziness, headaches or palpitations. Exposure to it can also cause skin, eye or nostril irritation.

The Cincinnati Children’s based Drug and Poison Information Center has logged 38 cases of sodium azide exposure, with cases peaking in January. Adults exposed generally have experienced mild skin irritation, which can get worse if the area isn’t washed thoroughly, she said.

Nationwide Children’s Central Ohio Poison Center in Columbus also reported seeing an “uptick” in cases, as well, a spokeswoman said. The center did not immediately have a number of cases.

Last week, a cautionary notice was released by the West Texas Poisonous substance Center advising the citizens to read the directions prior to using any kind of at-home COVID-19 testing kits.

Local 12 additionally reported:

Sarah Watkins, medical director, for West Texas Region Poison Center, an Emergency Medicine Physician and medical toxicologist reported an increase of reports related to sodium azide poisoning.

“It has a chemical in it called sodium azide, which in large amounts can be really dangerous and even life-threatening,” Watkins said.

She said the majority of the calls made are from people who are not reading the instructions.

“We have gotten some calls here in the state of Texas about this,” Watkins said.

She said some people are putting the test swab in the solution and sticking it up their nose.

She said people are also confusing the substance for eyedrops.

“In-home covid tests, there is a dropper that comes in the test, and it looks a lot like eyedrops so it’s really easy to confuse with things that you’re supposed to put into your body,” Watkins said.

Watkins said sodium azide reacts on the body the same way cyanide does.

https://patriotunitednews.com/alarming-warning-about-covid-tests-biden-sent-americans/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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SARS-COV-2 Vaccines and Neurodegenerative Disease

Since December 2020, when several novel unprecedented vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 began to be approved for emergency use, there has been a worldwide effort to get these vaccines into the arms of as many people as possible as fast as possible. These vaccines have been developed “at warp speed,” given the urgency of the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic. Most governments have embraced the notion that these vaccines are the only path towards resolution of this pandemic, which is crippling the economies of many countries.

Thus far, there are four different vaccines that have been approved for emergency use for protection against COVID-19 in the US and/or Europe. Two (the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine) are based on mRNA technology, whereas the other two (produced by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca) are based on a double-stranded DNA recombinant viral vector. The mRNA vaccines contain only the code for the SARS-CoV-2 envelope spike protein, whereas the DNA-based vaccines both contain an adenovirus viral vector that has been augmented with DNA that codes for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The DNA-based vaccines have a certain advantage over the RNA-based vaccines in that they do not have to be stored at deep-freeze temperatures, because double-stranded DNA is much more stable than single-stranded RNA. But a disadvantage is that those who have been exposed to natural forms of the adenovirus have antibodies to the virus that will likely block the synthesis of the spike protein, and therefore not afford protection against SARS-CoV-2.

In this regard, the AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine has a slight advantage over the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine because the virus normally infects chimpanzees rather than humans, so fewer people are likely to have been exposed to it. On the other hand, several studies have shown that viruses that normally infect one species can cause tumors if they are injected into a different species. For example, a human adenovirus injected into baboons caused retinoblastoma (cancer of the eye) in the baboons . So, it can’t be ruled out that the AZ vaccine could lead to cancer.

People don’t realize that these vaccines are vastly different from the many childhood vaccines we are now used to getting early in life. I find it shocking that the vaccine developers and the government officials across the globe are wrecklessly pushing these vaccines on an unsuspecting population. Together with Dr. Greg Nigh, I recently published a peer-reviewed paper on the technology behind the mRNA vaccines and the many potentially unknown consequences to health . Such unprecedented vaccines normally take twelve years to develop, with only a 2% success rate, but these vaccines were developed and brought to market in less than a year. As a consequence, we have no direct knowledge of any effects that the vaccines might have on our health over the long term. However, knowledge about how these vaccines work, how the immune system works and how neurodegenerative diseases come about can be brought to bear on the problem in order to predict potential devastating future consequences of the vaccines.

The mRNA in these vaccines codes for the spike protein normally synthesized by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, both the mRNA and the protein it produces have been changed from the original version in the virus with the intent to increase rate of production of the protein in an infected cell and the durability of both the mRNA and the spike protein it codes for. Additional ingredients like cationic lipids and polyethylene glycol are also toxic with unknown consequences. The vaccines were approved for emergency use based on grossly inadequate studies to evaluate safety and effectiveness.

Our paper showed that there are several mechanisms by which these vaccines could lead to severe disease, including autoimmune disease, neurodegenerative diseases, vascular disorders (hemorrhaging and blood clots) and possibly reproductive issues. There is also the risk that the vaccines will accelerate the emergence of new strains of the virus that are no longer sensitive to the antibodies produced by the vaccines. When people are immune compromised (e.g., taking chemotherapy for cancer), the antibodies they produce may not be able to keep the virus in check because the immune system is too impaired. Just as in the case of antibiotic resistance, new strains evolve within an infected immune-compromised person’s body that produce a version of the spike protein that no longer binds with the acquired antibodies. These new strains quickly come to dominate over the original strain, especially when the general population is heavily vaccinated with a vaccine that is specific to the original strain. This problem is likely going to necessitate the repeated rollout of new versions of the vaccine at periodic intervals that people will have to receive to induce yet another round of antibody production in an endless game of cat and mouse.

Like the mRNA vaccines, the DNA vaccines are based on novel biotech gene editing techniques that are brand new, so they too are a massive experiment unleashed on a huge unsuspecting population, with unknown consequences. Both DNA vector vaccines have been associated with a very rare condition called thrombocytopenia, in which platelet counts drop precipitously, resulting in system-wide blood clots and a high risk of cerebral hemorrhaging [5]. This is likely due to an autoimmune reaction to the platelets, and it comes with a high risk of mortality. In the case of the AZ vaccine, this has caused over 20 European countries to temporarily pause their vaccination programs [6]. And the United States called a temporary halt on the J&J vaccine.......

Summary

There are many reasons to be wary of the COVID-19 vaccines, which have been rushed to market with grossly inadequate evaluation and aggressively promoted to an uninformed public, with the potential for huge, irreversible, negative consequences. One potential consequence is to exhaust the finite supply of progenitor B cells in the bone marrow early in life, causing an inability to mount new antibodies to infectious agents. An even more worrisome possibility is that these vaccines, both the mRNA vaccines and the DNA vector vaccines, may be a pathway to crippling disease sometime in the future. Through the prion-like action of the spike protein, we will likely see an alarming increase in several major neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, CKD, ALS and Alzheimer’s, and these diseases will show up with increasing prevalence among younger and younger populations, in years to come. Unfortunately, we won’t know whether the vaccines caused this increase, because there will usually be a long time separation between the vaccination event and the disease diagnosis. Very convenient for the vaccine manufacturers, who stand to make huge profits off of our misfortunes — both from the sale of the vaccines themselves and from the large medical cost of treating all these debilitating diseases.

Much more here:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/sars-cov-2-vaccines-and-neurodegenerative-disease_4207235.html

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More inaction needed in dealing with Covid

Despite concerns about the damaging side-effects of restrictions, the public outcry for action in many countries exemplified the urge to act. We acted under the precautionary principle, that the disease was uncharacterised, and it was better to act rather than not, even though we were unsure of the efficacy of such policies. To a certain extent it’s something we are still doing now.

Our hospital and city are experiencing their first real wave of Covid cases, and therefore all staff are required to wear N95 masks, visors, and other PPE. This intervention has gone a long way to immiserating the workforce, many of whom are less than happy at the prospect. Yet despite this, many staff are sick with Covid. This is not a call to stop wearing PPE, but rather a reflection of the fact that there are limitations to our interventions, and regardless of our best intent and fastidious care, people still get sick. This is mirrored around the world where divisions of ‘Covid’ and ‘non-Covid’ areas of facilities have been shown to be arbitrary as infections spread, and, despite the best PPE, staff in these hospitals are still contracting the disease.

Similarly on the issue of vaccination, many of us had hoped this would be a sterilising vaccine, where receiving it reduces an individual’s ability to transmit the virus in a meaningful way. Sadly, this doesn’t appear to be the case. Although the vaccines go a long way to reducing morbidity and mortality in certain populations, they achieve less than we had hoped. With this in mind, the value of denying individuals entry to the public realm on the basis of vaccination status seems less pragmatic, and more moralistic. Similarly for healthcare professionals.

On issues such as border closures, Australia and New Zealand have demonstrated that it is possible to keep a pandemic from the shores for a period of time, but at escalating costs. We must ask ourselves if this is worth the price. Those who are foreign-born feel this most acutely – being unable to see friends and family, including unwell relatives and attending important life events. A great deal of suffering has been caused and now we open our borders millions will catch Covid anyway, and many will die. In defence of the government measures, hopefully many fewer than would have without the vaccines. Ultimately, border closures are not a sustainable policy, and do not allow us to avoid a pandemic.

Of all these interventions, some have more merit than others, indeed, some are more justifiable than others. However, we should be honest about their limitations.

One casualty of the pandemic has been our attitude towards science and the interrogation of ideas. Sadly, it may be that the medical profession has done this to itself. By our compulsion to act, and our hubristic attitude to what we can achieve, we have perhaps been blind to our limitations. Indeed, the fact we have acted to dismiss and belittle people with concerns (some valid, some less so) about our interventions, makes us even less able to impartially appraise our recommendations.

The lack of humility not only fails to reflect our limitations, but undermines the basis upon which we practice. I fear this has only been exacerbated by making certain interventions mandatory, as it will be much harder to admit to ourselves either their limitations or side-effects, if they emerge. This will have damaging consequences to the enquiring scepticism necessary for scientific improvement.

Ultimately, after two years of aggressive interventions, it does not appear that we have a clear panacea. There has been no way to avert mass infections, no way to categorically protect ourselves, and, except for vaccinations, very few interventions with clear-cut efficacy. As health professionals, none of us truly believe that wearing masks and visors will prevent us getting Covid, and experiences from the rest of the world corroborate this.

The Covid virus is here to stay. We do not know how it will affect us in the long-run, but we should perhaps have the humility to appreciate that some of our interventions do not work as well as we would like.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-danger-of-hubris

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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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Fauci’s New Actions Revealed After Seemingly Disappearing as COVID Narrative Disintegrates

The left’s favorite COVID scold, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has been conspicuously absent from the national media for the last few weeks, and the outlets he has been relegated to seem to underscore the Democrats’ new strategy on COVID.

Deservedly or not, Fauci has been the face of the Democrat response to the coronavirus, scolding Americans to give away their freedoms for “safety” from the “pandemic,” demanding that we all must be masked — with two masks, even — advocating for our jobs to be shut down and citizens to be locked in their homes and screeching for our schools to be closed. But since early in February, Fauci has gone from appearing on multiple news outlets per day to being nearly invisible to the news-viewing public.

His sudden disappearance, though, seems to coincide with the emerging realization among Democrats that their constant stream of fear porn over the coronavirus is hurting them politically, and their newly inculcated fear that their laser-like focus on draconian COVID mitigation is going to cost them during the 2022 midterm elections.

Radio host Chris Stigall, for instance, recently noted that election consultants are advising the Democrats to “declare victory over COVID and move on,” and quickly usher in a return to normalcy — and conveniently just before the 2022 elections, too.

Democrats are suddenly warning each other in private to drop further COVID restrictions, to open schools and to end mask mandates.

In light of that bubbling undercurrent in Democrat electoral plotting, Anthony Fauci has suddenly been removed from the powerhouse news outlets and has been relegated to lesser-known blogs, publications and the odd Youtube channel.

Indeed, as The Post Millennial noted, Fauci’s news section of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases website shows only one appearance in March (by March 5), and a scant 14 appearances in all of February. That is a heavy contrast to previous months. In January, for instance, the NIAID news tracker shows that Fauci made 17 appearances and he clocked a whopping 41 in December!

It certainly appears that the Democrat powers that be have decided that the celebrated doc is now a has-been that they don’t want seen by the American people.

Meanwhile, mask mandates are being dropped even by deep blue states. At the end of February, California, Oregon and Washington state all announced pullbacks on masking to various degrees, according to the Wall Street Journal. And by the beginning of February, even Biden’s homes state of Delaware told citizens that masks were no longer necessary.

The Centers for Disease Control also made an about-face and said that most people can doff the masks and added that masks in schools are not necessary.

The CDC’s new guidelines even prompted a group of researchers to urge schools to dump mask mandates for kids altogether.

The end of masking is also amusing. After all, mask zealots claim without evidence that masks “prevent” people from getting COVID, but now these same people are saying that the numbers are down, so we can throw away our masks. But if masks work, shouldn’t they want to stick with them until the numbers approach zero? Why the sudden decision to dump the masks? “Election Day” seems to be the answer to that question.

With all this just coincidentally occurring in time for the 2022 elections, the timing is suspicious, indeed.

Meanwhile, the vaunted Dr. Fauci’s star is dimming, as he appears on obscure YouTube-style channels in a desperate bid to stay relevant. One would think that appearing with an unknown left-winger on the obscure vlog called “WokeAF” is not the optimal exposure he has become used to.

In case you don’t get that title, “Woke” is clear enough, certainly, but the “AF” stands for “as f*ck.” So, now Fauci has been relegated to appearing on video channels with curse words in their title!

That is quite a fall from grace.

https://flagandcross.com/faucis-new-actions-revealed-after-seemingly-disappearing-as-covid-narrative-disintegrates/

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Time to put the Covid pandemic behind us

Comment from Australia

While we can safely rule out Vladimir Putin as a contender for this year’s Nobel peace prize, he may not yet be out of the running for the Nobel prize in medicine. After all, the invasion of Ukraine has put a stop to Covid-19, or at least the interminable conversations about a waning pandemic.

Omicron may be ripping through Australia and New Zealand somewhat faster than a fleet of Russian tanks but it presents less danger to human life and limb. Putin has presented the world with something far more frightening than a coronavirus mutation: a hostile invasion of a sovereign neighbour that may yet trigger a wider conflict.

The rains saturating the east coast have provided further distraction from the Covid dark opera. And when even The New York Times runs the headline, “Get Out of Your Pyjamas, the Pandemic is Over”, it should be time to call it quits.

International data should give us the confidence to declare that Covid-19 is in its death throes, having accomplished its mission of infecting every community on Earth, even NZ, where daily case numbers per 100,000 people last week were higher than the peaks in either Britain or the US. Thankfully, however, just like everywhere else, almost nobody is dying. The number of active cases across the world has been steadily declining since its Omicron peak in late January. The stockmarket saw it coming. Shares in Moderna and BioNTech are a quarter of the price they were in August and Pfizer has lost around 20 per cent of its value since December.

Last week, the US Senate narrowly passed a resolution to end the state of emergency. Republican senator Ron Marshall from Kansas, who introduced the measure, described it as “a symbolic victory to our citizens that normalcy is around the corner”. Mopping up the executive overreach, however, may be easier said than done.

Few in positions of authority have mustered the courage to declare the pandemic over. The deadly Wuhan virus, which prompted the World Health Organisation to declare a pandemic, is extinct. Omicron is far less deadly. Yet there appears little appetite to review the pandemic status, suggesting there are those who prefer to keep it in place. The people resisting a return to normality are generally in positions of power and influence. They have profited from the pandemic either financially or through a rise in the sense of their importance.

They include many in the mainstream media who, with some honourable exceptions, have kept their fingers on the panic button, even as the risk to public health has declined.

Two weeks ago, former deputy chief health officer Nick Coatsworth told Chris Kenny on Sky News that the Omicron variant was “clearly not” as dangerous to healthy adults and children as influenza. “If you had to give me a choice between which one I would vaccinate (my children) against, every time I would be choosing influenza over a Covid-19 vaccine,” he said. “That’s how I feel about the difference in severity between the two.”

Coatsworth’s advice was based on clinical experience and data. Yet, as Kenny reflected in The Weekend Australian the following Saturday, most of the rest of the media ignored the story. Taking away our liberties came much easier to the elite than handing them back.

Countless rules, regulations and protocols that were put in place when the risk was perceived to be rising remain in place with no prospect of any immediate review. Worse still, many of the measures were put in place without an expiry date, even though the pandemic was bound to pass.

We should have known after 9/11 that rushed measures to deal with a perceived emergency are hard to remove.

The security guards who were put in place to patrol the walkway on the Sydney Harbour Bridge have been strolling pointlessly up and down 24 hours a day for more than 20 years. No one can remember why they were put there, let alone who has the authority to stand them down, but perhaps someone should find out.

Hopefully, the mask “protocol” (not a rule or regulation) in airports and on domestic flights will be scrapped some time before 2040, but you wouldn’t put your money on it. The measure was agreed by national cabinet in January 2021 and updated in October. Transmission of the virus aboard an aircraft is far rarer than most would imagine, thanks to high-back, forward-facing seats and constant fresh air pumped through highly efficient filters. There is no conclusive scientific evidence that a scrappy mask, carelessly worn, is any more capable of stopping the Omicron variant than a hapless security guard could stop a low-flying 737. Yet the rule remains in place, serving as yet another barrier to civilised human interaction and a burden on those required to enforce it.

The absence of open debate is perhaps the most troubling restriction of all. Coatsworth is not the only person to harbour doubts about booster shots for children or whether universal booster shots, not just for the elderly or others at high risk, is a sensible or proportionate policy.

Questioning whether we really need to ostracise the unvaccinated remains a taboo even as state authorities are considering when dismissed workers could be invited back into their jobs to fill the vacancies for skilled staff in health and education.

Last week, the NZ High Court recognised the new reality by upholding an appeal by unvaccinated police and members of the NZ defence force, declaring their dismissal to be unlawful.

The court found their dismissal was not “a reasonable limit on the applicants’ rights that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”. The expert advice before the court did not show that the dismissal of unvaccinated workers made “a material difference” to health outcomes in the era of Omicron.

In other words, the only justifiable redundancies are the dispensing of superfluous rules.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/time-to-put-the-covid-pandemic-behind-us/news-story/cbc6ba92003db828f110358206f8fdc9

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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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Dodgy science behind British lockdown

Scientists did not have accurate Covid data when they predicted that 500,000 people could die if the UK took no action during the first wave of the pandemic.

Modelling from Professor Neil Ferguson and colleagues at Imperial College London published on March 16, 2020, predicted the NHS would be overwhelmed within weeks and a terrible death toll would arise if nothing was done to stop the spread of the disease.

Prior to the 'Report 9' paper, the Government's initial Covid strategy had been to 'mitigate' the spread and build up 'herd immunity' rather than suppress the first wave.

However, sticking to these plans – allowing the spread to continue but slowing it down with limited measures such as home isolation - would still have resulted in 250,000 deaths, according to Imperial’s mathematical model.

The stark modelling is understood to have single-handedly led to the decision to move away from herd immunity to a national lockdown on March 23.

But minutes from a SPI-M (Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling) meeting released to The Telegraph following a Freedom of Information request have shown that, a week earlier, the modellers remained 'uncertain' of case numbers 'due to data limitations'.

Modellers were still waiting for more comprehensive data on mortality from Public Health England and then best estimates on infection fatality rate, hospitalisation rates and the number of patients requiring ICU care were still uncertain.

The team is also understood to have believed that the modelling only showed 'proof of concept' that lockdowns could help deal with Covid, before warning that 'further work would be required'.

Following the release of its model, Imperial College held a press conference, followed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordering the public to avoid pubs, restaurants and non-essential social gatherings later the same day.

At the briefing, Prof Ferguson said new conclusions had been drawn as 'the last few days' had provided 'refinements' in estimates of intensive care and hospital demand.

Minutes now show, though, that SPI-M did not believe the data was complete.

The scientific paper published by Professor Ferguson and his colleagues on the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team was credited for persuading Boris Johnson's Government to ramp up their response to the coronavirus.

The paper, released on March 17, and titled Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand, predicted that the Government's original plan to 'mitigate' the outbreak instead of trying to stop it could have led to a quarter of a million people dying.

Using data from Italy and China, the scientists predicted how different Government measures would have different impacts on the outbreaks.

If no action at all had been taken against the coronavirus it would have claimed 510,000 lives, the team's report said. Had the Government stuck with their strategy of trying to 'mitigate' the spread – allowing it to continue but attempting to slow it down – with limited measures such as home isolation for those with symptoms this number would be roughly halved to 260,000.

If the strictest possible measures are introduced, the number of deaths over a two-year period will fall below 20,000, the scientists said.

Other points in the Imperial College report, titled Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand, included:

Lockdown measures could be brought back if the virus resurfaces after this epidemic is over

The coronavirus outbreak is worse than anything the world has seen since the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic

Dramatic measures to suppress an outbreak carry 'enormous social and economic costs which may themselves have significant impact on health and well-being'

Virus transmission happens evenly – one third of cases are caught in the home, one third at work or school, and one third elsewhere in the community

People are thought to be infectious from 12 hours before symptoms start, or from four days after catching the infection if someone doesn't get symptoms

Patients who do get symptoms are thought to be 50 per cent more infectious than those who don't

People are thought to develop at least short-term immunity after catching the virus, meaning they can't catch it again

Approximately 4.4 per cent of patients need hospital care. 30 per cent of those need intensive care, and 50 per cent of intensive care patients can be expected to die, according to data from China

The average length of a hospital stay for a coronavirus patient is 10 days – eight days for those who recover quickly; 16 days for those who need intensive care

It comes after critics earlier described the coding used by Imperial as 'totally unreliable'.

John Carmack, an American developer who helped refine the code before the paper was published online two years ago, said some parts of the code looked like they were machine translated from Fortran', an old coding language.

After growing pressure, the Imperial team released their code, which simulates homes, offices, schools and people movement, and sceptics were quick to point out it was 13 years old.

Bob Seely, MP for the Isle of Wight, today described the the modelling as 'a national scandal'

On March 17, minutes show that the Department of Health wanted to ascertain whether Prof Ferguson had referenced other papers in the Imperial model.

The following day, both Imperial and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) were asked to renew their models ahead of a Sage meeting scheduled later the same day in which the idea of London-only lockdown would be reviewed due to rising cases.

Data continued to be uncertain throughout the remainder of the year, the minutes show, and on September 23 members said 'operational issues' with NHS Test and Trace had caused further problems and made it 'difficult to interpret trends in the data, and added further uncertainty to the modelling'.

They also show that NHS England was 'unwilling' to share timelines for the vaccine rollout, resulting in difficulty modelling the impact of the jab, while the following week modellers raised concerns over how different data streams were 'presenting conflicting messages' on how Covid was changing.

And models used by the Government for Covid Freedom Day on June 21 last year did not include the most recent figures on vaccine efficacy or Public Health England's weekly vaccine surveillance report.

Prof Ferguson described in December how he had become 'something of a marmite figure' as he admitted he 'made mistakes' and 'oversimplified things' during the pandemic.

The epidemiologist said while it had been challenging for most Western governments to act in a timely manner the science throughout the crisis 'had basically been right'.

However, he admitted he had 'made mistakes for which he apologised for'.

Prof Ferguson resigned from the government's scientific advisory group (SAGE) last year after claims emerged that Antonia Staats visited him at home - in breach of lockdown rules.

Imperial College said its team was 'always open about the uncertainty' of its modelling - especially during the early stages of Covid.

The modellers had been quick to raise concern about outbreaks in care homes and hospitals, while members agreed that 'transmission in healthcare is a significant contributor to cases in hospitals' and required further attention.

And speaking on BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Prof Ferguson said: ''I think the science we have done throughout this pandemic has basically been right, not absolutely every aspect but basically most of it.

'I suppose I didn't anticipate becoming the public figure I suppose I now am, something of a marmite figure if you put it like that.

He added: 'Half a million was if we did nothing at all which was never going to happen but quarter of a million was if we did plan B, if we just tried to flatten the curve.

'There, the point is, to give the population an assessment of the potential level of threat and in some sense the reason for doing that is to explain the need for certain measures.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10557635/Scientists-did-not-accurate-Covid-stats-prediction-500-000-killed.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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Scientists seek to solve mystery of why some people do not catch Covid

Despite quite a bit of exposure, I have had no Covid symptoms, so I may be one of those mentioned below. I do generally have a very good immune system. With a bit of a nudge it even wiped out some stomach cancer. I have had two AstraZenica shots but we know that vaccines are all but useless against Omicron

Phoebe Garrett has attended university lectures without catching Covid; she even hosted a party where everyone subsequently tested positive except her. “I think I’ve knowingly been exposed about four times,” the 22-year-old from High Wycombe said.

In March 2021, she participated in the world’s first Covid-19 challenge trial, which involved dripping live virus into her nose and pegging her nostrils shut for several hours, in a deliberate effort to infect her. Still her body resisted.

“We had multiple rounds of tests, and different methods of testing: throat swabs, nose swabs, other types of swabs that I’d never done before like nasal wicks – where you hold a swab in your nose for a minute – as well as blood tests, but I never developed symptoms, never tested positive,” Garrett said. “My mum has always said that our family never gets flu, and I’ve wondered if there’s maybe something behind that.”

Most people know someone who has stubbornly resisted catching Covid, despite everyone around them falling sick. Precisely how they do this remains a mystery, but scientists are beginning to find some clues.

The hope is that identifying these mechanisms could lead to the development of drugs that not only protect people from catching Covid, but also prevent them from passing it on.

Garrett is not the only challenge trial participant to have avoided becoming infected. Of the 34 who were exposed to the virus, 16 failed to develop an infection (defined as two consecutive positive PCR tests) – although around half of them transiently tested positive for low levels of the virus, often several days after exposure.

Possibly, this was a reflection of the immune system rapidly shutting down an embryonic infection. “In our previous studies with other viruses, we have seen early immune responses in the nose that are associated with resisting infection,” said Prof Christopher Chiu at Imperial College London, who led the study. “Together, these findings imply that there is a struggle between the virus and host, which in our ‘uninfected’ participants results in prevention of infection taking off.”

Some of them also reported some mild symptoms, such as a stuffy nose, sore throat, tiredness, or headache – although, since these commonly occur in everyday life, they may have been unrelated to virus exposure.

“Either way, levels of the virus didn’t climb high enough to trigger detectable levels of antibodies, T cells or inflammatory factors in the blood that are usually associated with symptoms,” Chiu said.

Other studies also suggest it is possible to shake off Covid during the earliest stages of infection, before it establishes a proper foothold. For instance, during the first wave of the pandemic, Dr Leo Swadling at University College London and colleagues intensively monitored a group of healthcare workers who were regularly exposed to infected patients, but who never tested positive or developed antibodies themselves. Blood tests revealed that around 15% of them had T cells reactive against Sars-CoV-2, plus other markers of viral infection.

Possibly, memory T-cells from previous coronavirus infections – ie those responsible for common colds – cross-reacted with the new coronavirus and protected them from Covid.

Understanding how frequently people abort nascent Covid infections in the era of Omicron is complicated because it requires intensive testing – for the virus, antibodies, T cells and other markers of infection – and because so many people have been vaccinated.

“It is likely vaccinated individuals are exposed to the virus, and block viral replication and detectable infection more commonly,” Swadling said.

There is also no commercially available test that can distinguish between immunity triggered by vaccination and the different variants – so unless a person has recently tested positive, it is almost impossible to know if they have been exposed to Omicron or not.

Seasonal coronaviruses may not be the only source of cross-protective immune responses. Prof Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, an immunologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, began investigating this possibility, after Sweden avoided being overwhelmed by cases during the pandemic’s first wave, despite its light-touch approach to restrictions. Mathematical modelling by her colleague, Marcus Carlsson at Lund University, suggested this pattern of infections could only be explained if a large proportion of people had some kind of protective immunity.

Her team scoured databases of protein sequences from existing viruses, hunting for small segments (peptides) resembling those from the new coronavirus, to which antibodies were likely to bind. When they identified a six-amino acid peptide in a protein from H1N1 influenza that matched a crucial part of the coronavirus spike protein, “I almost fell out of my chair,” Söderberg-Nauclér said.

They have since discovered antibodies to this peptide in up to 68% of blood donors from Stockholm. The research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, could suggest that immune responses triggered by H1N1 influenza – which was responsible for the 2009-10 swine flu pandemic – and possibly related subsequent strains, may equip people with partial, though not complete, protection against Covid-19. “It provides a cushion, but it won’t protect you if an infected person coughs in your face,” Söderberg-Nauclér said.

A small proportion of people may even be genetically resistant to Covid-19. In October, an international consortium of researchers launched a global hunt to find some of them, in the hope of identifying protective genes.

“We are not looking for common gene variants that provide modest protection against infection, what we are looking for is potentially very rare gene variants that completely protect someone against infection,” said Prof András Spaan at the Rockefeller University in New York, who is leading the research.

They are particularly interested in people who shared a home and bed with an infected person, and avoided infection themselves. “For instance, the other day I was talking to an elderly lady from the Netherlands, who took care of her husband during the first wave. The husband was eventually admitted to the ICU, but she spent the week before taking care of him, sharing the same room, and without access to face masks,” said Spaan. “We cannot explain why she did not get infected.”

Such resistance is known to exist for other diseases, including HIV, malaria, and norovirus. In these cases, a genetic defect means some people lack a receptor used by the pathogen to enter cells, so they cannot be infected. “It could well be that, in some individuals, there is such a defect in a receptor used by Sars-CoV-2,” Spaan said.

Identifying such genes could lead to the development of new treatments for Covid-19, in the same way that the identification of CCR5 receptor defects in HIV-resistant people has led to new ways of treating HIV.

Spaan thinks it is unlikely that the majority of those who have avoided Covid are genetically resistant, even if they have some partial immune protection. This means there is no guarantee they will not eventually become infected – as Garrett found out in late January. Having dodged the virus for almost two years, she was shocked when a routine lateral flow test produced an ominous second red line. Shortly afterwards, she developed mild Covid symptoms, but has since recovered.

The irony is that, having avoided catching Covid from close family, friends and in a specialist medical laboratory, it was probably a relative stranger who infected her. “I have no idea where I got it from; it could have been someone in my local choir, or maybe from the gym,” she said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/02/scientists-seek-to-solve-mystery-of-why-some-people-do-not-catch-covid

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Time to Defund Vaccine and Mask Mandates

President Biden has declared victory over COVID. Congress should take him at his word and defund all of the vaccine and mask mandates now.

Just two weeks ago, Congress received 25 million emails urging them to defund the vaccine mandates in the Continuing Resolution to fund the government. Unfortunately, the Senate failed to do the job by voting 46-47 against a Senator Mike Lee vaccine mandate defund amendment and 44–49 against a separate amendment to defund mask requirements by Senator Ted Cruz.

The vaccine mandate defund amendment lost because four GOP Senators, Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, James Inhofe and Richard Burr chose to miss the vote.

Now, with every member of Congress able to be in the Capitol mask free as Democratic pollsters cry to their clients that they need to get beyond COVID for their political survival in November, defunding the enforcement of President Biden’s vaccine mandates in the upcoming Omnibus funding bill must be a Congressional priority.

Even the far left Fairfax County School District, where many federal bureaucrats send their children, have ended their mask requirements. The Washington, D.C. government, a vanguard of wokeness, has ended their draconian vaccine passport policy that prevented the unvaccinated from eating in restaurants or going into hotels, even as they were allowed to work in those same establishments.

But unless Congress defunds the enforcement of the regulations and Executive Orders mandating vaccinations, these onerous restrictions will linger in our health care systems, military, federal civil service and defense contractors like the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of employees.

The enforcement of many of these edicts remains unresolved in the federal Courts but the threat to people’s livelihoods will remain so long as the regulations and Executive Orders remain on the books unless Congress defangs them through refusing to provide funding for their enforcement.

This should not be controversial. With Democrats desperate to move on from COVID, there should not be a single vote in the House or Senate against Congress asserting their rightful power of the purse by ending funding for the enforcement of these mandates. Not one.

As rare as it might be, this is one time when both those who supported and opposed the mandates should be able to agree that they should be ripped out by the roots rather than being left on the books like dangling live electrical wires waiting to shock unsuspecting passersby who inadvertently brush up against them.

At this time in history, we need every health care worker working. We need every member of our armed services ready to jump into action. We need our federal contractors planning to potentially ramp up production of military equipment and materiel. What we don’t need is for leaders in these areas to worry about the application of arbitrary and out-of-date health rules. We don’t need those who work in these fields looking over their shoulders out of concern for their livelihood due to their religious or health-related choice to not get vaccinated.

https://townhall.com/columnists/rickmanning/2022/03/02/time-to-defund-vaccine-and-mask-mandates-n2603979

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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’s COVID-19 Vaccine Goes Into Liver Cells and Is Converted to DNA: Study

Confession: I scoffed when I heard early claims that Covid vaccine alters your DNA. It seems that reality beats the improbable as far as the Pfizer vaccine is concerned. I am glad I had the more conventional AstraZenica shot, not available in the USA due to pressure from America's Big Pharma.

The academic journal article is here. The study was of "in vitro" liver cells but cells elsewhere would presumably be similarly affected. The big question is how extensive such effects are

The messenger RNA (mRNA) from Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is able to enter human liver cells and is converted into DNA, according to Swedish researchers at Lund University.

The researchers found that when the mRNA vaccine enters the human liver cells, it triggers the cell’s DNA, which is inside the nucleus, to increase the production of the LINE-1 gene expression to make mRNA.

The mRNA then leaves the nucleus and enters the cell’s cytoplasm, where it translates into LINE-1 protein. A segment of the protein called the open reading frame-1, or ORF-1, then goes back into the nucleus, where it attaches to the vaccine’s mRNA and reverse transcribes into spike DNA.

Reverse transcription is when DNA is made from RNA, whereas the normal transcription process involves a portion of the DNA serving as a template to make an mRNA molecule inside the nucleus.

“In this study we present evidence that COVID-19 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 is able to enter the human liver cell line Huh7 in vitro,” the researchers wrote in the study, published in Current Issues of Molecular Biology. “BNT162b2 mRNA is reverse transcribed intracellularly into DNA as fast as 6 [hours] after BNT162b2 exposure.”

BNT162b2 is another name for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine that is marketed under the brand name Comirnaty.

The whole process occurred rapidly within six hours. The vaccine’s mRNA converting into DNA and being found inside the cell’s nucleus is something that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said would not happen.

“The genetic material delivered by mRNA vaccines never enters the nucleus of your cells,” the CDC said on its web page titled “Myths and Facts about COVID-19 Vaccines.”

This is the first time that researchers have shown in vitro or inside a petri dish how an mRNA vaccine is converted into DNA on a human liver cell line, and is what health experts and fact-checkers said for over a year couldn’t occur.

The CDC says that the “COVID-19 vaccines do not change or interact with your DNA in any way,” claiming that all of the ingredients in both mRNA and viral vector COVID-19 vaccines (administered in the United States) are discarded from the body once antibodies are produced. These vaccines deliver genetic material that instructs cells to begin making spike proteins found on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 to produce an immune response.

Pfizer didn’t comment on the findings of the Swedish study and said only that its mRNA vaccine does not alter the human genome.

“Our COVID-19 vaccine does not alter the DNA sequence of a human cell,” a Pfizer spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. “It only presents the body with the instructions to build immunity.”

More than 215 million or 64.9 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated as of Feb. 28, with 94 million having received a booster dose.

The Swedish study also found spike proteins expressed on the surface of the liver cells that researchers say may be targeted by the immune system and possibly cause autoimmune hepatitis, as “there [have] been case reports on individuals who developed autoimmune hepatitis after BNT162b2 vaccination.”

The authors of the first reported case of a healthy 35-year-old female who developed autoimmune hepatitis a week after her first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine said that there is a possibility that “spike-directed antibodies induced by vaccination may also trigger autoimmune conditions in predisposed individuals” as it has been shown that “severe cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection are characterized by an autoinflammatory dysregulation that contributes to tissue damage,” which the virus’s spike protein appears to be responsible for.

Spike proteins may circulate in the body after an infection or injection with a COVID-19 vaccine. It was assumed that the vaccine’s spike protein would remain mostly at the injection site and last up to several weeks like other proteins produced in the body. But studies are showing that is not the case.

The Japanese regulatory agency’s biodistribution study (pdf) of the Pfizer vaccine showed that some of the mRNAs moved from the injection site and through the bloodstream, and were found in various organs such as the liver, spleen, adrenal glands, and ovaries of rats 48 hours following injection.

In a different study, the spike proteins made in the body after receiving a Pfizer COVID-19 shot have been found on tiny membrane vesicles called exosomes—that mediate cell-to-cell communication by transferring genetic materials to other cells—for at least four months after the second vaccine dose.

The persistence of the spike protein in the body “raises the prospect of sustained inflammation within and damage to organs which express the spike protein,” according to experts at Doctors for COVID Ethics, an organization consisting of physicians and scientists “seeking to uphold medical ethics, patient safety, and human rights in response to COVID-19.”

“As long as the spike protein can be detected on cell-derived membrane vesicles, the immune system will be attacking the cells that release these vesicles,” they said.

Dr. Peter McCullough, an internist, cardiologist, and epidemiologist, wrote on Twitter that the Swedish study’s findings have “enormous implications of permanent chromosomal change and long-term constitutive spike synthesis driving the pathogenesis of a whole new genre of chronic disease.”

Whether the findings of the study will occur in living organisms or if the DNA converted from the vaccine’s mRNA will integrate with the cell’s genome is unknown. The authors said more investigations are needed, including in whole living organisms such as animals, to better understand the potential effects of the mRNA vaccine.

“At this stage, we do not know if DNA reverse transcribed from BNT162b2 is integrated into the cell genome. Further studies are needed to demonstrate the effect of BNT162b2 on genomic integrity, including whole genome sequencing of cells exposed to BNT162b2, as well as tissues from human subjects who received BNT162b2 vaccination,” the authors said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/pfizers-covid-19-vaccine-goes-into-liver-cells-and-is-converted-to-dna-study_4307594.html?slsuccess=1

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Explaining vaccine rejection

The 2020–2022 pandemic split parties and ideologues, separated friend from friend and family members from family members. Neighbors were dangerous, and strangers even more so: the invisible enemy stalking our lands overturned every other concern in life: The conflicts it spurred replaced bonds of affection with fear and hatred.

More than ever, we need calm and level-headed thinkers, honest and willing to admit past errors, with eyes wide open for the corruption of industry or government itself. In other words, we need as little politics as humanly possible. As I wrote in a previous piece: we need “people without a clear ideological position, and who can thus appeal to audiences across the political spectrum.”

Two sane figures recently attempted the impossible: to speak calmly to the other side, trying earnestly to explain what happened—Konstantin Kisin, of the popular show Triggernometry, and Columbia sociology professor Musa al-Gharbi.

Kisin begins his monologue with “You’re struggling to understand why some people are vaccine hesitant. Let me help you.”

He uses no study result, no appeal to the biological effect of the drug that has become the main symbol of the Covid conflict; no death rates or R0; no projection of spread or what number of lives lockdowns may or may not have saved. Instead Kisin, for 13 spellbinding minutes, walks us through the many good reasons that people had—before and during Covid—to distrust the elites in politics, business, and media. If this is a question of (dis)trusting the establishment (including “the” Science), you must ask what the establishment did to no longer deserve that trust.

The tale begins years ago, with the Brexit vote and with the election of Donald Trump. Those events shocked the pompous leaders of the universities, the pollsters who confidently said it wouldn’t happen, the media pundits who so convincingly described to us the madness of such prospects.

For a brief moment after the unthinkable had happened, if you recall, there was an earnest desire for inclusivity—for inviting in the views that had gone overlooked in the other half of these countries. Outlets like the New York Times made an effort to portray conservative views and show the kinds of people who had long felt alienated and ostracized from civilized society. As despicable and difficult it was for their core audience to see, revealing perspectives and objections is better than silencing and hiding them.

The efforts didn’t last long and in 2019 and 2020, the monolithic thoughts that dominate these institutions willingly put their blinders on—tighter and more aggressively than before.

Kisin’s final minute is the most powerful thing in these disease-ridden past two years:

“The same people who told you Brexit would never happen; Trump would never win, and that when he did win, it was because of Russian collusion, then because of racism; that you must follow lockdown rules while they don’t; that masks don’t work and then that they do; that protests during lockdowns are a health intervention; that ransacking black communities in the name of fighting racism is mostly peaceful justice; that Jussie Smollett was the victim of a hate crime; that men are toxic; that there’s an infinite number of genders; that Covid didn’t come from a lab, and then that it probably did; that closing borders is racist, and then that it’s the most important thing to do; that the Hunter Biden story is Russian disinformation, and then that it’s not; that they would not take Trump’s vaccine, and then that you must take the vaccine; that Governor Cuomo is a great Covid leader, and then that he’s a granny killer and a sex pest; that the number of Covid deaths is one thing and then another; that hospitals are filled with Covid patients, and then that many of them caught Covid in hospital.

These are the same people now telling you that the vaccines are safe, you must take it, and if you don’t you will be a second-class citizen.

Understand vaccine hesitancy now?”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/skepticism-as-a-new-way-of-life_4302371.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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Russian Invasion Turns to Terrorism as Civilians and Landmarks Targeted

I am very pro-Russian. I am as pro-Russian as I once was anti-Soviet. I have several Russian-speaking friends. But it is clear that the invasion of Ukraine has no moral justification.

But it does have a pragmatic justifiation. Adding Ukraine's great natural resources to those of Russia itself would make Russia an economic world power as well as a military one. It would give Russia power over Europe and many other places as well. Supplying or witholding things like coal, gas and aluminium would become conditional on Russia's approval and would make a strong lever to force policies that Russia wants.

But in this day and age moral consciousness is at a high level and without that the consent of the governed will be absent. And it seems clear that Ukrainians as a whole will not bow to Russia. That intransigence exists despite the great similarities between the two countries. Even the Ukrainian language is just a dialect of Russian.

Ukrainians have always been disapproving of Russia for little reason. They resemble the attitudes of Canadians to the USA and New Zealanders to Australia. Or Scots to England. Big brother is resented

Such attiudes normally matter little but in the Ukrainian case they have come to the fore during the invasion and have energized resistance to any attempt at conquest by Russia. Russia cannot now succeed in gaining control.

Putin is being made to look a fool, and he’s taking his frustration out on the innocent people of Ukraine.

As the Russian military continues to flounder in their pursuit of toppling the democratic nation of Ukraine, it appears as though they are also turning far more desperate as well.

First and foremost, a vast number of Russian troops appear to have been tricked by the Kremlin into even participating in the invasion in the first place, with a great number of captured soldiers being extremely young and also of the belief that they were simply heading to Belarus for training. This has led to mass desertions in the ranks, and has snarled the Russian military’s supply chain logistics.

And then there are the harrowing tales of Ukrainian bravery, in which the once-feared Russian army has been made to look soft and weak.

Vladimir Putin, a man who despises being considered soft or weak has now commenced a campaign of terror in Ukraine, bombing landmarks and targeting civilians.

Russian missiles and rockets have hit the cultural heart of Ukraine’s second largest city in what officials said was a deadly and “cruel” attack.

An opera house, concert hall and government offices were hit in Freedom Square, in the centre of the north-eastern city Kharkiv.

At least 10 people were killed and 35 more were injured, local authorities have said.

Leaders in the region were quick to condemn Putin’s horrific tactics.

The attack came as Ukraine’s president said Russia was committing war crimes.

“This is the price of freedom,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said. “This is terror against Ukraine. There were no military targets in the square – nor are they in those residential districts of Kharkiv which come under rocket artillery fire,” he added.

And, even more condemnable were reports of the bombing of Babyn Yar – the site of a horrific massacre of Jews by the Nazis in World War II, which has since been turned into a memorial site in Ukraine.

https://flagandcross.com/russian-invasion-turns-to-terrorism-as-civilians-and-landmarks-targeted/

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Covid vaccines offer almost NO protection against infection for young children just weeks after their second dose, top Australian expert warns

An Australian Covid expert has warned new data shows the Pfizer vaccine offers very little protection against infection for young children.

New York Health Department researchers found the two-dose Pfizer shot was only 12 percent effective at preventing Omicron infection in children aged five to 11 after only a month.

Protection against catching the virus was about 67 per cent after the second jab, but dropped rapidly by 28 to 34 days.

Australian National University professor Peter Collignon discussed the results on his social media, noting the vaccine's ineffectiveness against the dominant strain.

'While protection against hospitalisation is still strong, the vaccine offered almost no protection against infection, even just a month after full vaccination,' he wrote.

ATAGI recommends everyone five or older get a Covid vaccine - with only Pfizer available for those under five, and both Moderna and Pfizer for six to 11.

New York researchers gathered data 852,384 children aged 12 to 17 and 365,502 aged five to 11 for the study.

The study, which is pre-print and pending peer-review, gathered data from the Omicron period of the pandemic, from December 2021 and January 2022.

Participants in the study were followed up with and compared to general figures from unvaccinated populations.

Pfizer's effectiveness at preventing infection dropped from 66 per cent to 51 per cent in older children when up against the Omicron variant - and in younger children dropped from 67 per cent to just 12 per cent.

The most dramatic difference in numbers was noted between 11 and 12-year-olds in the week leading up to January 30 where those aged 12 had 67 per cent protection and those aged 11 had just 11 per cent protection.

'The difference between the two age groups is striking,' Florian Krammer, an immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, said.

One major difference between the study groups is the dosage of the vaccine. Children aged 12 and older receive a 30 microgram shot, but only 10 micrograms for the five to 11 age group.

'This is super interesting because it would almost suggest that it's the dose that makes the difference. The question is how to fix that,' Dr Krammer said.

The findings have far reaching implications on the use of the vaccines, and whether parents will want to get their children jabbed.

Children do not suffer much of a risk from the virus, with hospitalizations and deaths being especially rare.

The main argument in favor of vaccinating them is to prevent them from spreading the virus, though these findings imply that the vaccine does little to prevent that.

The Omicron variant, though causing less severe symptoms, is far more contagious and more children were hospitalised during this wave than at any other point in the pandemic.

As well as illness directly from Covid, there is growing evidence of associated conditions that can appear weeks after infection.

A study from Italy showed a link to severe gastrointestinal illness in children 4-6 weeks after infection, while in the US more than 7,000 children have been diagnosed with multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a rare but serious condition.

While the Omicron wave has largely subsided, experts agree more Covid variants will appear.

Pfizer and BioNTech are testing a third vaccine dose in children aged 5 to 11 based on a third dose significantly improving immune system response in adults against Omicron.

Several labs around the world are also working on a pan-sarbecovirus vaccine - a single dose vaccine to protect against all future variants of Covid.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10562335/Australian-professor-warns-Covid-vaccine-offers-NO-protection-infection-young-children.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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The CDC — which is withholding information — has a hidden agenda

By Marty Makary, MD, MPH (a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine)

People say the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a messaging problem. But the CDC’s problem is not messaging — it’s issuing flawed guidance while covering up the data.

Case in point: pushing boosters for young people.

After the Food and Drug Administration inexplicably bypassed its expert advisory committee to authorize boosters for all young people, the CDC director overruled her own experts’ down vote of the boosters-for-all proposal. That’s the magic of a call from the White House. Two top FDA officials, including the agency’s vaccine center head, quit over White House pressure to authorize boosters for the young.

But after the FDA and CDC rammed through the recommendation, they made sure the public wouldn’t see the real-world data. Despite repeated pleas to release all its data, the CDC only posted stats on boosters in people over age 50.

What have they been hiding? As a proxy, let’s take a look at what the CDC just published on people 50 to 65: For the fully vaccinated, the booster reduces the risk of COVID death from 4 per million to 1 per million. Who are those three helped by a booster? They’re not healthy people. One study of breakthrough hospitalizations found 75% had at least four comorbidities.

So the three people age 50 to 65 per million saved by a booster are almost certainly immunosuppressed individuals, a subgroup for whom boosters have long been recommended. Of course, the CDC doesn’t disclose what medical conditions those few who died had — it only has 21,000 employees to collect that information.

We once again have to look overseas for reliable data. An Israeli population study in the New England Journal of Medicine compared boosted vs. nonboosted people with the primary vaccine series. The risk of COVID death among nonboosted people under age 30 was zero — the same as it was among boosted.

A note for college administrators enforcing booster mandates: You can’t reduce a mortality risk of zero any lower with a booster.

The CDC claims it didn’t release booster data because it feared the information would be misinterpreted. No, it’s because the stats don’t support its agenda. Yet public health officials continue to beclown themselves by demanding all Americans over age 12 get boosted.

Most of the media have fallen for it. Throughout the pandemic, the New York Times and other outlets have only sourced doctors on the establishment groupthink bandwagon, dangled fear to young people and blindly amplified every edict government doctors fed without asking questions, just as the press did with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

We’ve seen medical bandwagon thinking hurt us before. The dogma that COVID spreads by surface transmission, children must be shut out of school and the barbaric separation of Americans from their dying loved ones. Our public health leaders continue to make critical mistakes and affirm each other with groupthink while journalists give them a megaphone to broadcast their agenda, unchecked, failing to ask basic questions, like: Where’s the supporting data? What’s the incidence of myocarditis after a booster in young people?

This week, one Times reporter finally picked up on what many of us have been saying about the CDC’s deception.

Similarly, the CDC put out two highly flawed studies to promote mask mandates. Now the last people in America required to cover their faces are children, waiters, waitresses, servers, and staff — people who are powerless.

The American people are hungry for honesty. They see the inequity of COVID policies and want the data straight, not politically curated by a small group of like-minded scientists.

If I were advising President Biden, I would tell him the CDC needs to restore public trust by making all its data available to researchers in real time. It’s time we end secret data laboratories in government.

The American people realize public health officials have been lying to them. A response to a national health emergency should warrant more data transparency, not less.

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Natural Immunity Denialism Responsible for Needless COVID-19 Discrimination, Job Losses

In a superb opinion piece in The Hill on Feb. 3, Drs. Jeffrey Klausner and Noah Kojima lauded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for finally recognizing that naturally acquired immunity to COVID-19 is superior to that induced through vaccination.

That was the undeniable conclusion of a study conducted in California and New York.

Understandably, as medical professionals, the authors did not take the extra step of blaming the CDC for nearly two years of botched policy.

Instead, they explained that the new report “finally acknowledges what many have suspected for a long time—that surviving COVID-19 provides excellent natural immunity not only [to] repeat infection, but also to hospitalization and death for the delta variant of COVID-19.”

Klausner and Kojima are too generous. The scientific fact of naturally acquired immunity has not merely been “suspected” for some time. It was well-established through numerous rigorous, large-scale studies, including—but not limited to—one from the Cleveland Clinic (last June), another from Israel (last August), and a third from Qatar (last December), all of which confirm what humans have known for centuries; namely, recovering from a viral infection confers (often long-lasting) immunity.

Instead of incorporating this incontrovertible evidence into its COVID-19 vaccination guidance and recommending that recovered individuals should be exempt from mandates, for months the CDC doubled down on its false mantra that vaccine-induced immunity is superior to that following recovery from the virus, so everyone should get the vaccine.

It has done this through sleight of hand. Because vaccination may slightly elevate the levels of antibodies in COVID-19-recovered individuals for a brief period, the agency has run misleading headlines, claiming that certain studies prove even the naturally immune should get the vaccine.

But as many scientists have noted, this transient antibody boosting does not necessarily equate to a clinical benefit. In other words, it may not result in more robust immunity, and regardless, any increase is negligible.

Furthermore, the insistence upon recommending vaccination in this context does not account for potential adverse side effects.

Many naturally immune individuals—especially younger people—may reasonably conclude that the risk of, for example, myocarditis outweighs any marginal benefit for them.

The CDC’s refusal to change its stance despite voluminous evidence has led to real-world harm.

First, it has negatively impacted millions of naturally immune people in the United States because employers and governments enforcing mandates have refused to exempt them from vaccine requirements.

Many individuals with naturally acquired immunity lost their jobs, suffered discrimination, or suffered mental distress as a result of being coerced into receiving an unnecessary medical procedure.

These ill-conceived policies have, in a sick irony, led some states to permit health care workers currently infected with COVID-19 to treat patients, due to employee shortages resulting from termination of workers who declined the vaccine—many of whom possess natural immunity and thus were safer employees to have around.

Second, the CDC’s inexplicable natural immunity denialism has sown distrust in public health.

Americans caught on to the deceptive tactics that the agency was wielding in its push to vaccinate everyone.

As a lawyer challenging vaccine mandates in court, I speak to many individuals who have naturally acquired immunity and legitimate concerns about receiving the vaccine unnecessarily.

For instance, one young man about 30 years of age, who had been vaccinated in the spring, then caught COVID-19 in December. His employer, New York University, insisted that he get the booster.

Given his age and the potential myocarditis risk, along with his recent recovery, he determined that a booster was not in his interests. He faces loss of a job he worked hard for years to obtain.

Just days ago, Paul Offit, one of the country’s most zealous vaccine advocates, described the CDC’s meeting in which the decision was made to recommend that natural immunity not be recognized as equivalent to that attained through vaccination.

Offit explained that this approach, at odds with the science, was advocated for by Drs. Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins and was “bureaucratic more than anything else.”

Perhaps Fauci and Collins did not foresee the social and economic upheaval that would result from their natural immunity denialism.

Regardless, their refusal to follow the science and the elevation of bureaucratic concerns above all else have greatly diminished the public’s trust.

If the CDC is to have any chance of recovering its reputation and credibility, it must acknowledge its error immediately, recommend that anyone who has COVID-19 antibodies be exempt from any vaccine mandates, apologize to the American people (especially those who have lost their jobs) for what it has done to them, and encourage employers to hire back employees (and schools to reenroll students) with natural immunity.

Employers and others must stop treating nonbinding guidance as gospel. As the CDC has proven, agencies are fallible.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/02/17/natural-immunity-denialism-is-responsible-for-needless-covid-19-discrimination-job-losses

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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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Even more infectious sub-variant of Omicron is now DOMINANT in England but health chiefs insist BA.2 strain is no more lethal

BA.2 was behind 52 per cent of all Covid infections in the seven days to February 20, up from 19 per cent a fortnight ago, the UK Health Security Agency found.

The sub-variant has completed its rapid rise to dominance just a month after it was first spotted in the UK.

But the scientific community has said there is no reason to panic, with the variant already almost every case in Denmark but leading to no effect on hospitalisations or deaths.

The Government there deemed the strain such a non-threat that it has ended virtually all Covid restrictions — like England did this week.

There is so far no evidence BA.2 is more severe or better at evading vaccine-induced immunity than the original Omicron.

And Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious diseases expert at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline it was unlikely to even cause cases — which have been falling for weeks — to pick back up.

Writing in today's report, the UKHSA also revealed 32 cases of 'Deltacron' had now been spotted in England.

The hybrid of Omicron and Delta emerged January 7, in a person who had both variants at the same time.

It has triggered just two infections in the past week.

Britain's Covid cases have fallen consistently for the last three weeks, while deaths and hospitalisations are already trending downwards.

BA.2 carries many of the same mutations as Omicron alongside many new ones that make it more transmissible. But, unlike its parent, it carries an S-gene meaning it can be easily distinguished from the original Omicron without the need for genomic sequencing.

UK's £5.6bn Covid jabs rollout was 'good value' for money
Britain's Covid vaccination drive was good value for money, No10's public spending watchdog has claimed.

The National Audit Office heaped further praise on the £5.6bn jabs rollout – adding that far fewer doses were wasted than predicted.

It claimed securing a supply of vaccines early on in the pandemic was 'crucial' to its success and this helped to 'save lives and reduce serious illness and hospitalisation'.

The independent watchdog warned there were still risks ahead for the programme, however, including staff burnout.

In a report released today, covering a period up to the end of October 2021, the NAO said wastage of about 4.7 million doses – 4 per cent of the total – had been 'much lower than the programme initially assumed'. UKHSA scientists used this to estimate BA.2's prevalence.

Delta also has an S-gene, but the variant has been completely eradicated in the UK by the two much more virulent strains.

London had the highest share of BA.2 (63 per cent of Covid cases), followed by the South East (57 per cent), East of England (53 per cent), North West (51 per cent) and West Midlands (50 per cent).

The regions where it was not dominant were the East Midlands (49 per cent), Yorkshire and the Humber (43 per cent), North East (33 per cent) and South West (33 per cent).

Professor Hunter said: 'Ultimately, we could have done without BA.2, but it will not make too much of an impact.'

He added: 'I don't think BA.2 is going to undermine the current drop in cases. 'The consensus opinion of epidemiologists that I've listened to is that it is probably not going to be something that will undermine our position.'

A fortnight ago the UKHSA revealed it had spotted the UK's first case of the so-called Deltacron in England.

The agency said they were keeping tabs on the hybrid, but that it was not concerning because there was no noticeable uptick in cases.

Scientists also called for calm, saying it 'shouldn't pose too much of a threat' because the UK has such high levels of immunity against both Omicron and Delta strains.

Despite the rise in BA.2, Government dashboard data shows that Britain's cases, hospitalisations and deaths are all trending downwards even as the more infectious version of Omicron became dominant.

It has given Boris Johnson the confidence to lift the final Covid restrictions, with self-isolation coming to an end yesterday for the first time in almost two years.

Free Covid tests are also set to end from the start of April, ministers have announced, in a drive to save £2billion a month.

Mr Johnson said he could lift the final Covid restrictions because of widespread immunity and the mildness of Omicron. But he warned this was not victory over the virus, adding that it was not yet 'going away'.

SAGE scientists have warned the mildness of Omicron may be a 'chance event', and say it is a 'common misconception' that viruses become weaker overtime.

But other scientists argue that high levels of immunity in the country mean it will not experience a Covid wave like in March 2020 again.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10551843/Even-infectious-sub-variant-Omicron-DOMINANT-England.html

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Australian health authorities have treated our kids shamefully during Covid

Some sections of our community have had a ‘good’ pandemic. If you’re a cold-eyed capitalist with a flair for early adoption and lobbying, you’ve made a motza from masks and RAT riches. If you’re a middling health bureaucrat with a dour expression and a flair for the dramatic, you’ve clogged our television screens for hours at a time and not lost a single day’s pay.

Not everyone has been so lucky. While our public health overlords strenuously ignore it, it is clear the worst effects of the Covid panic have been suffered by children. Lockdowns were particularly troubling. A Unesco report in 2021 examined the adverse consequences of school closures. The report details the effects felt by children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. From missing out on meals to increases in unreported sexual abuse, poorer children suffered the most. Protecting the vulnerable, indeed.

These lockdowns and restrictions trapped children in the home with their abusers. Kids Helpline reporting data demonstrate a 49 per cent increase in sexual abuse reports in the home during lockdowns. Anecdotal evidence from police officers indicates that this is probably far greater, as children have gone unseen by health services, schools or community groups which otherwise might notice and file mandatory reports.

Children have borne the brunt of the effects of draconian policies and those who have been born during this era will feel the effects well into their futures. Babies born recently will be victims of missed screenings that identify early childhood issues, like deafness or astigmatisms, which, if diagnosed early, can result in better outcomes over the course of a lifetime.

This is coupled with foolish policy decisions like the cancellation of home visits by community nurses in South Australia. They only serve to punish newborns that will be victims of missing checks identifying physical safety concerns or domestic violence, putting them at risk of SIDS, the third highest cause of death in children under one. Without a rigorous cost-benefit analysis against the risk of Covid in children under one it is an arbitrary and potentially dangerous decision.

The ongoing Resonance Study at Brown University in the United States recently released a pre-print paper indicating that children born during the pandemic in the USA experienced declines in verbal, motor and cognitive performance and an average decline in standardised IQ testing of 22 points. If this is even half correct, it’s still cause for alarm.

As with all the pandemic’s negative effects, authorities and commentators are quick to castigate parents, rather than cast so much as a glance at their own policy failure, blaming any loss in children’s cognition or speech on parental neglect, when so many of them were trying to work, keep house and teach children all at once as required by health department diktat.

Childcare, going to playgroup or shopping with a parent or carer are all regular routines that promote socialisation and help develop verbal and emotional skills. These mundane societal interactions help shape children’s development, and their loss has had a devastating effect.

For children turning four this year and entering preschool, half their lives have been shaped by inane rules, denial of simple pleasures and lack of social contact. This drives an increase in social isolation and bleeds into the poor educational outcomes that older children experience.

Ironically, bureaucratic overreach and Covid theatre have created a situation where children who truly require medical attention can’t receive it. When my own son was ill and I was nervous about pneumonia, I was forced to first have a farcical telehealth consult (‘shall I hold the phone up to his chest for you?’) before being ushered to a sweltering back room along with supplies and an old fax machine, because his complaint was ‘respiratory’ in nature. Covid cases in Adelaide at the time? Zero.

Other longer-term medical concerns for children’s health have also been obliterated due to Covid monomania. At a time when children’s obesity rates have been steadily rising, we have abandoned them to devices and screens, further entrenching the sedentary lifestyles already commonplace prior to the pandemic. Once again, it is our poorest children that end up worst off here, with obesity rates in children from lower socio-economic areas 2.4 times greater than children from our most wealthy areas. Anyone who has tackled obesity from childhood knows how hard it is to reverse. Protecting our health system, indeed.

The irrationality of decisions about children’s participation in activities that would help to reverse obesity trends knows no bounds. The same children that play sports together at weekends are banned from interschool sports in South Australia, while unvaccinated teens are locked out of community sports in Victoria. Some of the more ludicrous decisions made about children’s lifestyles in South Australia are all the more galling given the chief public health officer, Professor Nicola Spurrier, is a paediatrician by trade. Perhaps, in all her pronouncements of ‘do not touch that ball’ or the ‘pizza box strain’, she simply forgot about the children.

The rhetoric across Australia has become increasingly shrill. One of the ugliest scenes recently was breakfast television host Natalie Barr and media identity Mayor Basil Zempilas cheering on the idea floated by the WA government that would see unvaccinated parents restricted from accompanying or visiting sick children in hospital. Any civil society ought to reject outright such a vile notion, if not for the parents, at least for the sick children unduly punished by the edict.

Of course, the media in Australia have a case to answer for in championing these policies and their less-than-subtle attempts to shift the Overton Window to make outlandish restrictions seem required by the masses. Children have been scared witless by news coverage throughout attempting to paint Covid as the peril of our lifetime. The relentlessness of the pandemic news coverage cannot have been good for children’s mental health. Banning breakfast television has been one of the simplest and easiest mental health boosters in this household.

From failing young children through reducing their verbal skills, to creating the sadness of teenagers missing out on school formals due to ridiculous vaccine mandates, there has been no end to the cruelties foisted on our kids.

Our children have had a terrible pandemic. Nelson Mandela said, ‘The true character of society is revealed in how it treats its children.’ Australia’s bureaucrats have demonstrated that children are at the absolute bottom of the pile when it comes to wearing the consequences of poor policy and draconian crackdown. We should all hang our heads in shame.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/suffer-the-little-children-during-covid/

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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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