Unintended Consequence of COVID-19 Vaccines–Permanent Installation of mRNA Genetic Code

When we heard about Operation Warp Speed there was sense of shock and awe. American greatness was poised to strike the “China Virus” and it was going to be defeated in a matter of weeks.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) created a project many years ago called ADEPT Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) whose stated goal was to “end pandemics in 60 days with mRNA technology.”[i] Our government has had a love affair with mRNA for over a decade for precisely a time such as the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.

Hardly a virus from China, we have learned that Dr. Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill has been publishing on coronaviruses since the 1990’s. Baric and his consortium including Harvard and two Swiss labs conceived the projects, wrote the federal grants, and once awarded, did their development work in the Wuhan Institute of Virology biosecurity annex level 4. The laboratory built by Stephane Bancel formerly at BioMérieux and now CEO of Moderna, the NIH partner in the mRNA patent.[ii]

I wonder in all the DARPA and NIH meetings that occurred in the last ten years on mRNA, did they ever consider reverse transcription?

If the mRNA stays long enough in the cytosol and is not dissolved by enzymes, the human cell could find base pairs of nucleic acids and create a mirror image of the genetic code which could be brought into the nucleus of the cell for insertion into the human genome. This is such a giant consideration because genetic code for a damaging and lethal protein installed into our own cells permanently would be passed down to somatic daughter cells and from spermatocytes and oocytes to an embryo.

Forever changing the human genome for future generations must have been a large part of the safety discussion in those DARPA and NIH transcripts—only investigation and release of documents will tell the story. In the meantime, Alden et al have demonstrated integration of the center 444 base pair amplicon or reporter region from the Pfizer vaccine into the human nucleus in a hepatoma cell line.[iii] This paper has not been challenged by any credible authority nor disproven by any other experiments.

Kyriakopoulos et al (including Dr. McCullough) have illustrated what the ramifications would be for those cells that have been permanently installed with Pfizer or Moderna genetic code.[iv] In addition to the nine well recognized effects of the Spike protein in the human body, one of the potential consequences is oncogenesis. By suppression of the natural tumor surveillance system(s) in even one cell, it is conceivable that reverse transcription could lead to cancer with a single ill-advised injection of mRNA if it was delivered to a cancer-prone cell line in a susceptible person.

At this time, it is fair to say reverse transcription of mRNA into the human genome is still theoretical. But it should be clear that more studies by independent laboratories should be funded immediately. The implications given the massive numbers of recipients are simply too large to ignore this long-term safety concern.

So the next time you see your doctor, ask him or her if they took an mRNA vaccine. When they say yes, ask them if they considered reverse transcription when the needle plunged into the arm. Did they ever think they would be changed permanently? When brushed aside with “the CDC says mRNA does not change the human genome” then forward this issue of Courageous Discourse and suggest a life-altering a five-minute read.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/unintended-consequence-of-covid-19-vaccines-permanent-installation-of-mrna-genetic-code_4895932.html

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FDA Trying to Rewrite COVID History on Prohibiting Ivermectin, Dr. Atlas Says

Boyden Gray & Associates filed a lawsuit in June on behalf of three doctors who allege that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) illegally interfered with their doctor–patient relationships, resulting in harm. They also claim that the FDA broke the law when the agency issued statements prohibiting the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

In response to the lawsuit, lawyers for the FDA claimed that its guidance for people to “stop” taking ivermectin for COVID-19 was informal and just a recommendation; as such, they weren’t mandating against it.

However, in an interview that aired on NTD’s “Newsmakers” on Nov. 23, Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, confirmed that the FDA did, indeed, take an “unprecedented” approach against ivermectin and said that their defense amounts to the FDA trying to rewrite COVID-19 history.

“This is unprecedented, frankly, in my 30 years as a doctor, where the use of an FDA-approved drug was somehow forbidden if you used it for off-label,” Atlas stated. “In the United States, that’s standard of care.”

The standard of care, Atlas explained, is that once the FDA approves a drug, doctors are allowed to use the drug to treat other conditions.

Atlas added that ivermectin was approved by the FDA and was found to be “so safe” that “billions of doses have been given.” He said that ivermectin is available over the counter in many countries without a doctor’s prescription.

“This was really a shocking interference of the ability of a doctor to do his job,” Atlas said.

Rewriting History

When asked why the FDA was attempting to rewrite history by stating that its guidance against ivermectin was a recommendation only, Atlas said that the rewrite on ivermectin is just the beginning.

“What we’re seeing is a complete Orwellian rewrite of all kinds of things during this pandemic,” Atlas told NTD. “Many colleagues of mine were always saying the truth will prevail. And once the truth comes out, that some of these drugs were either useful or safe … there’s a lot of ‘cover your behind.’”

Atlas then alleged that the FDA didn’t just forbid ivermectin. Instead, its language was such that pharmacists and pharmacies refused to fill prescriptions from doctors. Such a stance was “really unprecedented,” Atlas said.

Further, Atlas said, there’s an overall “Orwellian rewrite of what the advice was on a bigger picture.”

He pointed out that Dr. Deborah Birx, former White House COVID-19 response coordinator, claims that she opposed lockdowns, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, claims he opposed school closings.

Circling back to ivermectin, Atlas said the FDA’s prohibiting its off-label use to treat COVID-19 was “one of the bigger failures of the [National Institutes of Health (NIH)].”

“The NIH could have done definitive clinical trials in the Spring of 2020. Instead, they blocked those trials; they made people afraid of those drugs, so that even when trials were attempted, patients were not willing to enter into those trials,” he said.

Atlas then stated unequivocally that the position taken by the NIH and the FDA was an unethical abuse of public health.

Doctors File Suit; FDA Responds

Plaintiffs in the case against the FDA include Dr. Robert Apter, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, and Dr. Paul Marik. Lawyers for the plaintiffs allege that the FDA violated the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The lawyers also noted that if the court doesn’t rule against the FDA violating its statutory lane and unlawful actions, the FDA will continue to interfere with the practice of medicine.

Atlas agreed:

“Depending on the outcome of these, there will either be a real chilling of what doctors can say and do for patients—complete interference, in a doctor’s ability to help a patient! Or, if the lawsuits go the other way, we will hopefully see a restoration of freedom of medical practice.”

Atlas said that doctors are afraid to be honest with their patients because of what the NIH and FDA have done over the past few years.

“The cited statements were not directives. They were not mandatory. They were recommendations,” Isaac Belfer, one of the lawyers for the FDA, said during a Nov. 1 hearing in federal court in Texas. “They said what parties should do.

They said, for example, why you should not take ivermectin to treat COVID-19. They did not say you may not do it, you must not do it. They did not say it’s prohibited or it’s unlawful. They also did not say that doctors may not prescribe ivermectin.”

As further evidence that the FDA didn’t “prohibit” ivermectin’s use, Belfer added, “The plaintiffs, by their own admission, have continued to prescribe ivermectin. So they always had the authority. It may be that patients were not able to fill prescriptions, but the doctors themselves always had the authority.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/expert-confirms-fda-trying-to-rewrite-covid-history-on-prohibiting-ivermectin_4886032.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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Slew of Unusual Adverse Events Becoming More Common After COVID Vaccine Rollout

If we go to a doctor or clinic for a vaccination, be it an influenza shot or a COVID-19 vaccine, we go with the expectation that it is safe.

We usually dismiss mild symptoms, such as headaches, fever, pain, and redness at the injection site, since we are typically informed of them beforehand and expect them to be transient in duration. Thankfully, most of the time, people recover from them and proceed with their lives as before.

However, since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, a significant proportion of vaccinated people have experienced many unusual adverse events. Doctors are raising concerns. Public health officials and vaccine manufacturers are also addressing the high incidence of blood clots, myocarditis, pericarditis, and menstrual irregularities.

Yet, there are thousands more documented health conditions reported to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)—some appearing very frequently—that have not yet been given the same level of attention.

Since their rollout, COVID-19 vaccines have prompted more VAERS adverse event reports than all VAERS reports made in the previous 30 years, comprising over 55 percent of vaccine injury and death reports. These reports have thousands of different adverse event labels.

Although nearly 1.5 million COVID-19 vaccine injury and death reports have been made to VAERS, studies say the true number of adverse reactions is many times higher. The 2005–2009 HHS-funded Harvard Pilgrim study found that less than 1 percent of adverse events following 1.4 million vaccines administered were reported to VAERS; several independent analysts estimate that only 2.5 percent of COVID vaccine adverse reactions are reported to VAERS.

The system is also notorious for its redundancy: injection site swelling, vaccine site swelling, and swelling are recorded as separate events, and a person reporting to the system may select one or all three events.

Another study found that more serious adverse events are more likely to be reported.

This article examines several now-common adverse events following COVID vaccination. The figures are from the most recent update on Nov. 18, 2022

General Adverse Events:

General adverse events following COVID vaccination are the most common. This is reflected in both VAERS reports and Pfizer’s post-market adverse event reports.

Fatigue: Though fatigue is a common side effect for many vaccines, it is concerning and debilitating if prolonged. At least 121,200 cases of chronic fatigue have been reported to VAERS after injection with the COVID-19 vaccine, of which around 40 percent, or more than 49,000 cases, are reported as unrecovered.

Asthenia: Though often used synonymously with fatigue, asthenia defines a sense of weakness and lack of mental and physical energy. More than 34,000 cases have been reported, mostly in adults aged 30 or older, with almost 41 percent reported as unrecovered.

Death: More than 12,000 cases of deaths have been reported to VAERS following COVID-19 vaccinations. Independent researchers point to the varying ingredients and batch inconsistency of these vaccines. They also mention that it may be driven by blood clots and arterial blockages. Research funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) speculates that anaphylaxis (severe allergic reactions), among other adverse events, may have contributed to such deaths. More than 25 percent of these reported deaths occurred within the first seven days after vaccination.

Night sweats: Night sweats, with 3,100 cases reported, are far less common after vaccination than excessive sweating, with more than 24,000 cases reported. Although night sweats independent of other symptoms are usually benign, this should be paid attention to if they become prolonged, disturb sleep, and come with other symptoms such as fatigue and weight loss.
Immunological Adverse Events

COVID-19: Listed as the ninth most common adverse event, more than 68,000 cases of COVID-19 infection following vaccination have been reported to VAERS. Several studies have indicated that a few months after administration of mRNA vaccines, individuals’ immunity to symptomatic COVID infections fall from positive efficacy—with immune defense present—to negative efficacy (studies 1, 2). Scientists generally understand negative efficacy in vaccines to mean that the vaccine would “induce a greater degree of susceptibility” to the disease in “vaccinated individuals relative to unvaccinated individuals.”
Therefore, negative efficacy indicates that the effects of the shots will not just wane, but also that a vaccinated individual is more susceptible to COVID than an unvaccinated person.

All of the COVID vaccines are designed to expose the body to a spike protein—a distinctive structural feature of the COVID virus that has an essential role in its pathogenesis—and studies have shown that exposure to the protein can cause immune cells to become less reactive and switch off important first-line immune pathways, which may lead to an untimely response in the event of infection (studies 1, 2, 3). Additionally, a new study found that when mice were injected with the lipid nanoparticles used in mRNA vaccines, cell count and immune responses were reduced in their first- and second-line cells, respectively

Herpes zoster virus (VZV): More than 7,700 reports of VZV infection following COVID vaccination have been reported. It is not specified if these cases are new infections or relapses; several studies (1, 2) have documented relapse of the virus in COVID-vaccinated individuals. Relapse of latent viruses such as VZV from vaccinations has previously been quite rare, and often occurs later in life or when the infected individual is frail, and is therefore often seen as a sign of immunosuppression.

Hypersensitivity: More than 4,900 cases of allergic responses have been reported. Allergic responses are mechanistically related to inflammation, causing swelling, redness, itchiness, and, in the cases of anaphylaxis, difficulty breathing. Allergic responses after vaccinations can be triggered by the contents of the vaccines.

Inflammation: Inflammation is a common physical response activated whenever the body experiences an injury or encounters something foreign or toxic. Any disease or condition where a person experiences pain, redness, swelling, and even difficulty breathing is very likely driven by inflammation. Studies on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein have shown that it is highly inflammatory. This mechanism can therefore provide a cause for many of the symptoms reported after vaccination.

Neurological Symptoms

Changes in sensation: This includes onset of the “pins and needles” sensation (more than 25,500 reports) and loss of sensation (more than 24,300 reports) following COVID-19 vaccination. These can be signs of neural disease, injury, or reduced blood flow to the neurons, leading to neural dysfunction.

Pain: Pain at the injection site is a common adverse event from vaccination. However, pain in the extremities (more than 78,000 reports) and neuralgia—sharp nerve pain—(more than 2,900 reports) can be a sign of neural injury or possibly autoimmunity. Studies have linked neuralgia with mRNA and adenovirus vaccines, although the causes are not well understood (studies 1, 2).

Tinnitus: Overactivity of the auditory nerves can cause ringing in the ears. Tinnitus has rarely been reported following previous vaccinations but is highly prevalent among people who received the COVID-19 vaccines. COVID vaccine-related cases comprise more than 16,000 of the roughly 19,900 vaccine-related tinnitus cases reported to VAERS. An increasing amount of research is being done on vaccine-associated tinnitus.

Insomnia: Sleep problems are a fairly common adverse event, described as due to hyperactivity of the brain, with more than 9,800 cases reported. It is likely that some of these insomnia cases are related to vaccine-associated tinnitus, which can impact sleep.

Tremor: Described as involuntary shaking or movement, tremors associated with COVID vaccines are estimated to affect 0.002–0.02 percent of the vaccinated population. Though tremors themselves usually do not cause health problems, they are commonly associated with other neurological diseases including Parkinson’s disease. Other common post-vaccine symptoms such as muscle spasms and twitches can be confused for tremors, but muscle spasms are involuntary muscle contractions, and muscle twitches are fine movements of a small portion of a large muscle. So far, more than 15,000 cases of tremor have been reported to VAERS.

Anxiety: As a psychiatric symptom reportedly affecting more than 9,000 people after COVID vaccination, anxiety is hypothesized to be due to an imbalance of the emotional control centers in the brain, and has been associated with altered chemical levels.

Brain fog: The VAERS database has over 6,700 cases of vaccinated people reporting confusional states, with over 2,200 reporting memory impairment and over 560 reporting thinking problems. “Brain fog” is a colloquial term that describes a bundle of symptoms often including but not excluded to confusion and dysfunction in thinking, memory, focus, and clarity. A 2020 study on mice published by Nature showed that spike proteins can cross the usually impervious blood-brain barrier. Another study documenting several autopsies on vaccinated individuals found spike proteins in neurons and the blood vessels in the brain.

Changes in taste and smell: After COVID vaccination, many people report a loss of taste (more than 5,500) and smell (more than 4,400), or a change in taste (more than 4,900), and olfactory alterations where something that once smelled pleasant is perceived as smelling foul; these symptoms are similar to those experienced by many individuals infected with COVID. These changes can occur independently and can impact a person’s enjoyment of food, causing possible weight loss. They can also be a sign of neurodegeneration or deterioration.

Bell’s palsy: This is a relatively rare and usually temporary condition where facial muscles become paralyzed or weak, often resulting in a face droop. It is usually associated with viral infections and is caused by inflammation or swelling of the facial nerves. The condition usually affects one side of the face, though in rare cases, both sides can be affected. So far, more than 3,700 cases have been reported to VAERS. A 2022 paper evaluating 17 reports on Bell’s palsy and the COVID-19 vaccine found that affected individuals typically experience paralysis on the left side of their face, which can occur up to 48 days of vaccination. This has also been reported in Pfizer’s post-market adverse event report. The condition is usually harmless and can usually be reversed, though symptoms may return.

Musculoskeletal Conditions

Musculoskeletal symptoms: These are well documented in relation to the COVID-19 vaccines, including weakness and stiffness in the muscles and joints, impaired mobility, and balance problems and falls. A study published in BMJ found that 66 people experienced short-term inflammation in the joints 11 to 13 days after vaccination, despite having no history of previous or related symptoms. The vaccine may also be able to trigger autoimmune musculoskeletal diseases; in one study that followed 1,519 people with musculoskeletal diseases, 5 percent experienced a flare-up and 0.1 percent experienced severe symptoms following vaccination.

Cardiovascular Adverse Events

Heart palpitations: Over 16,300 cases of palpitations, described as faster, louder, or irregular heart pulses, have been reported to VAERS. Complaints of palpitations are common and usually benign. They are often associated with anxiety, but can be a sign of concerning and potentially life-threatening problems including tachycardia and tachyarrhythmia.

Hypertension: Over 7,700 cases of hypertension (high blood pressure), which is associated with and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, have been reported. A review that analyzed six studies of 357,387 individuals found that 3.2 percent—13,444 patients—reported abnormal or higher blood pressure after COVID vaccines. Another hypertension report found that nine hypertension patients increased blood pressure to stage 3 hypertension—blood pressure higher than 180/110—within minutes after vaccination (pdf).

Tachycardia: This is a concerning condition that occurs when a person’s heart rate increases past 100 beats a minute. It is a strong predictor of hypertension and cardiovascular diseases, with more than 7,000 cases reported to VAERS.

Pallor: Contrary to the effects of high blood pressure, pale facial features indicate reduced blood flow and are warning signs of low blood pressure. This is especially concerning if the pallor is sudden, as the person may faint from a sudden drop in blood pressure, and it could also be a sign of anaphylaxis. Over 6,300 cases of pallor have been reported.

Blood clots: The FDA has mostly focused on the association between the J&J COVID vaccine—which employs a disabled adenovirus rather than mRNA—and increased risk of blood clot formation. VAERS has documented over 5,100 reports of blood clots reported after COVID vaccinations, but blood clots reported after Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccine administration take up the majority of these reports, with over 3,900 cases.
mRNA vaccines have been administered much more broadly than adenovirus vaccines. Studies have shown that the mRNA vaccines’ spike protein is able to bind to red blood cells and thus may cause the formation of blood clots (studies 1, 2).

Along with blood clots, more than 3,800 cerebrovascular events, more commonly known as strokes, have also been reported. Strokes are usually caused by clots in the blood vessels supplying the brain.

Myocarditis: Despite many media reports and research on post-COVID-vaccine myocarditis, out of all the cardiovascular adverse events listed in this article, myocarditis had the lowest number of events reported. More than 2,800 cases are reported, with serious cases comprising almost 70 percent of all myocarditis reports. It is likely that many mild myocarditis cases have not been reported or haven’t been diagnosed. According to VAERS data, young males under the age of 40 who have received mRNA vaccines appear to be more affected than any other group. Depending on the seriousness of the case, patients may be able to make a full recovery. Chronic myocarditis, however, is associated with enlargement of the heart and other cardiac problems, all of which may lead to cardiovascular diseases further down the line.

Pulmonary Adverse Events

Pneumonia: More than 5,000 cases of COVID-19 pneumonia and 4,100 cases of pneumonia have been reported following COVID vaccination, both of which are signs of a weak or dysregulated immune system (studies 1, 2), as people with a strong immune system are normally able to clear out a pulmonary infection before it progresses into inflammation and fluid retention in the pulmonary air sacs. COVID vaccines can induce or exacerbate pneumonia (studies 1, 2) and inflame the lungs after vaccination (studies 1, 2). The biopsy of a vaccinated person found spike protein present in the lung cells nine months after the individual was vaccinated. According to the report, the patient had suffered respiratory symptoms since vaccination.

Pulmonary embolism: This is a serious condition where blood clots are formed in the blood vessels in the lungs, which can reduce blood flow to the lungs, cause tissue damage, and therefore impair lung function and reduce blood oxygen levels. Affected individuals may cough frequently and experience difficulty breathing. At least two case studies have documented pulmonary embolisms after COVID-19 vaccinations in the United States (studies 1, 2). Pulmonary embolisms have also been reported after COVID-19 infections, but a study showed that there is very little literature to support the theory that infection greatly increases the risk of this condition. More than 3,700 cases have been reported after vaccination.

Acute respiratory failure: With more than 3,200 reports after vaccination, this life-threatening condition occurs when a person’s lungs cannot meet oxygen demand or are unable to adequately remove carbon dioxide. Depending on the trigger, physicians may be able to reverse the condition.

Endocrine-Related Adverse Events

Menstrual changes: More than 11,500 people have experienced cases of menstrual changes after COVID-19 vaccinations. This includes menstruation that is abnormally heavy, prolonged, more frequent, irregular, inconsistent, or light, and cessation of menstruation. These changes are more commonly observed in menopausal women aged 45–55, and perimenopausal women, usually 40 to 44 years of age. However, these events are also reported in children and adolescents. Alarmingly, several cases include 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, women aged 60 to over 80, and, in very rare instances, infants—all of whom are people who should not be menstruating. The menstruation cycle is a carefully orchestrated rise and fall of estrogen and progesterone, and a sudden change can be indicative of endocrine dysfunction, formation of fibroids—muscular tumoral growths in the uterus—or other less common but concerning health problems.

Hot flashes: These sudden sensations of heat in the face, neck, and upper body typically occur in females during menopause, when estrogen and progesterone levels fall. Though far less common, hot flashes (or hot flushes) can also happen during menstrual cycles, mostly affecting women in their 40s who are experiencing perimenopause. VAERS contains 1,241 reports of hot flashes among women and girls of pre-menopausal age, including 31 cases in girls aged 6 to 17. There are also 727 cases reported in men. Studies on men have shown that hot flashes are usually due to reduced testosterone, such as may occur during hormonal-suppressant cancer therapy or because of testicular dysfunction. (studies 1, 2).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/slew-of-unusual-adverse-events-becoming-more-common-after-covid-vaccine-rollout_4872672.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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Elon Musk scraps Twitter's Covid misinformation policy that censored tweets questioning vaccines and lab leak origin theory

Twitter has dropped its COVID-19 misinformation policy as part of new owner Elon Musk's pro-free speech agenda for the platform.

Last night, some Twitter users noticed that the change had been implemented on November 23. They had seen a post on the 'transparency' page of the company's website which said: 'Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misinformation policy.'

Twitter developed the rules in 2020 to filter out 'harmful misinformation' about COVID and vaccines. They were able to censor and label tweets deemed to contain misleading information that the company considered posed considerable harm to public health.

Between January 2020 and September 2022, Twitter suspended more than 11,200 accounts for breaking their policy as well as removing nearly 100,000 pieces of content.

It comes as Musk vowed to soon reinstate previously banned Twitter accounts which could include some of the 11,000 suspended under the previous coronavirus rules.

The platform had labeled one of Trump's tweets about coronavirus in the past but the policy has now been outlawed
The platform had labeled one of Trump's tweets about coronavirus in the past but the policy has now been outlawed

Upon his multi-billion-dollar takeover of Twitter, Mr Musk billed the social media giant as a bastion for free speech. He wanted to reduce content moderation on the site due to this, something that critics warned would lead to a spike in abuse, harassment and other harmful behavior.

He has also voiced his plans to reinstate some of the most controversial accounts, calling for 'general amnesty.'

Prominent figures on the platform who had been banned in the past for violating Twitter's anti-misinformation policy have since been reinstated, including Georgia far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green.

Rep Green attacked the platform's decision to freeze her account last January, tweeting from her congressional account: 'I'm the only Member of Congress the unelected big tech oligarchs permanently banned... On January 2, 2022, they violated my freedom of speech and ability to campaign & fundraise crying 'covid misinformation.''

The reason for the major policy change as well as its quiet debut remain unclear. The billionaire has proven a staunch opponent of draconian social distancing measures and vaccine mandates over the past couple of years.

Mr Musk backed an anti-vaccine mandate protest , writing 'Canadian truckers' rule, in response to a January demonstration.

In September 2020, Mr Musk said that he would decline the Covid vaccine because 'I'm not at risk for Covid, nor are my kids.' He has since been vaccinated against Covid.

The billionaire also urged for an end to early 'fascist' isolation practices that he said in April 2020 constituted ''forcibly imprisoning people in their homes' against all their Constitutional rights.'

Since Mr Musk's takeover, Twitter has seen a spike in transphobic, antisemitic, racist, and otherwise offensive speech.

His decision to outlaw the coronavirus misleading information policy comes as America is still seeing 305,000 cases and 2,600 deaths a week, according to the CDC.

He has also made a huge number of other changes at Twitter to misinformation policies and procedures.

One change announced days ago was that suspended Twitter accounts will be offered an 'amnesty' from this week after a poll revealed a landslide of users support the move.

The Twitter CEO, who completed a $44 billion takeover in October, said accounts for users will be restored as long as they have not broken the law or spammed people on the social media site.

The declaration opens up the possibility that thousands of suspended accounts will be immediately reinstated. It has not been revealed if there will be a vetting process before the reactivation or if there will be a mass reactivation.

Musk has already restored Donald Trump, Kanye West, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson and Marjorie Taylor Green's accounts. It is likely that he could also reinstate other controversial Twitter accounts including figures such as Steve Bannon, Wiley and Katie Hopkins.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Mr Musk has also dramatically reduced the size of the team devoted to tackling child sexual exploitation on the platform.

The report suggests that the team of specialists that review and escalate reports of child sexual exploitation has more been halved.

Last week, Mr Musk tweeted that 'removing child exploitation is priority £1'.

And earlier this month, in another change, Musk fired Twitter contractors responsible for battling misinformation on the site. The social media giant fired its contractors that track hate and other harmful content.

Musk said on Oct. 29 he would set up a content moderation council with 'widely diverse viewpoints'.

Meanwhile, in the early days after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October and dismissed its board of directors and top executives, the billionaire Tesla CEO sought to assure civil rights groups and advertisers that the platform could continue tamping down hate.

Musk's decision to drop the Covid-19 misinformation policy has materialized after he came under fire previously for expressing controversial opinions on vaccines and coronavirus. He said in 2020 that fears of the virus were 'dumb' and falsely claimed that children were 'essentially immune' before branding lockdowns 'fascist.'

But he backtracked in 2021, saying on Twitter: 'I do support vaccines in general and covid vaccines specifically' and said that 'rare' allergic reactions can be 'easily addressed.'

He wrote: 'To be clear, I do support vaccines in general & covid vaccines specifically. The science is unequivocal.

'In very rare cases, there is an allergic reaction, but this is easily addressed with an EpiPen.'

He had previously stirred up concerns about vaccine safety when he suggested that the second dose could be harmful.

Musk was replying to a post someone had shared about their parents' refusing to get the vaccine 'based on stuff they saw on Facebook.'

He appeared to add fuel to the so-called 'Facebook brainwashing effect' cited by the social media user when he raised concerns about 'quite a few negative reactions' to the second shot.

It came after the lab leak was censored and denounced by Twitter as a possible cause for how the coronavirus pandemic started- but is now one of the leading theories.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11481189/Twitter-drops-Covid-19-misleading-information-policy.html

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Bombshell as two Australians WIN their Supreme Court case over Covid fines - and it means as many as 45,000 penalties could be struck down

Thousands of Covid-19 fines worth millions of dollars could be ruled invalid after two Sydneysiders won a landmark test case in the New South Wales Supreme Court.

The man and woman claimed their infringement notices were issued in such vague terms they could not be legally enforced and would be difficult, if not impossible, to challenge in front of a magistrate.

On Tuesday morning, barrister David Kell SC for the Commissioner of Police told the Supreme Court the pair's Covid penalty notices would no longer be enforced.

'These two notices do not sufficiently state or describe the offences in general terms,' Mr Kell said.

The two claimants, Brenden Beame and Teal Els, will have their fines refunded. A fine issued to a third claimant, Rohan Pank, had already been repaid.

The ruling could set a precedent that sees many of more than 45,000 unpaid penalty notices for Covid-related public health order breaches in NSW withdrawn.

Kate Richardson SC, for the claimants, said there were 32,648 fines - totalling almost $33million - issued for the same reason as that given to Mr Beame so 'in all likelihood' they too would be declared legally invalid if challenged.

She has asked Justice Dina Yehia to publish detailed reasons for the fines being declared invalid to make it 'absolutely plain' why they were withdrawn.

'This is a case that has ramifications beyond Ms Els and Mr Beame,' Ms Richardson said.

Ms Els was fined $3,000 for unlawfully participating in an outdoor public gathering.

A class action in NSW could now go ahead and similar law suits would likely be pursued in other states. There were 19,000 fines handed out in Victoria for breaches of Covid lockdown laws, and tens of thousands across the rest of Australia.

Redfern Legal Centre ran the case against the NSW Police Commissioner and Commissioner of Fines Administration on behalf of Mr Beame and Ms Els.

Mr Pank had his $1,000 fine withdrawn in July after the administrative law court action was launched.

When the matter was before in court in July it was heard if the claims succeeded fines worth millions of dollars issued across NSW could be invalidated.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11479153/Redfern-Legal-Centre-WIN-Covid-fines-Supreme-Court-case-45-000-penalties-struck-down.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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Activating the Enemy Within: COVID Jabs Might Reactivate Virus and Diseases in Your Body

New evidence in the scientific community indicates that there is a strong correlation between COVID-19, its related vaccines, and the reactivation of other viruses which have previously infected the host. This article will dive deeper into the nuances.

How Can Viruses Be Reactivated?

In the number of years I spent in the military as a microbiologist, I’ve always been quite impressed with how shrewd viruses can get.

During viral infections, viruses have to deal with the defense of the immune systems. If the immune system has the upper hand and defeats the viruses, viruses might develop mechanisms to stay dormant and become inactivated.

One such mechanism is to insert their viral DNA into cells’ chromosomes, staying in latency without active replication. Other mechanisms might involve promoting epigenetic silencing of the viral genome, meaning they stay “muted” in activity, but present and lying in wait.

Host cells will then reproduce cells still carrying the viral genetic information. Then, viruses might come back years, or even decades later, reactivating the viral replication when the immune system degrades. This prudent strategy where viruses turn into a latent enemy within the host is quite an effective strategy against the enemy, whether in the military or the human body.

The scientific community is very familiar with five types of viruses that are able to “hibernate” and reactivate given suitable conditions:

Herpes simplex virus, which causes blisters in the mouth and genital herpes. It is extremely common;

Varicella zoster virus (VZV), more commonly known as chickenpox;

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which causes mononucleosis or “mono,” the “kissing disease,” as it can be transmitted when people kiss each other;

Cytomegalovirus (CMV), which usually causes a great deal of trouble for immunocompromised people but not really otherwise;

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS; this virus can stay in your body for more than a decade before becoming activated.

Let’s take VZV, or chickenpox, as an example. In the usual sense, everybody gets chickenpox in their life. This usually happens early on and is quite itchy for the patient but doesn’t have a lot of other severe complications.

After the patient initially overcomes VZV, it never truly goes away. It has the possibility of coming back, especially with the weakening of the immune system. It can attack again in a more severe form called shingles or Herpes Zoster. Shingles is a very painful rash that develops on one side of the body. In some cases, it may also cause chronic nerve pain or other serious complications, including blindness.

Shingles can also be caused by advanced age, stress, diseases (chronic or acute), cancer, or various other sources. In fact, the aforementioned factors usually also lead to the reactivation of other viruses. Chronic fatigue might lead to reactivating EBV, herpes might be reawoken with surgery, and HIV might be kickstarted by tumors.

A popular theory behind why viruses can be reactivated is that, after the initial wave of viruses was defeated, the body has a large fleet of naive CD-8 T-killer cells (immune cells that get rid of pathogens they don’t recognize) which serve to keep the remaining number of viruses in check.

When the immune system is placed under a lot of stress, such as during acute infection, when battling cancer, or after an organ transplant (due to the administered immunosuppressant drugs), those naive CD-8 cells go down in number one way or another. The virus then seizes the chance to proliferate when defenses are down.

Can COVID-19 Reactivate Latent Viruses?

Although it is unclear what exactly lets the viruses know that the immune system is compromised or otherwise occupied, there is now an increasing pool of data that strongly correlates the reactivation of previous viruses and a COVID-19 infection or even vaccination.

For example, in the journal Cell, scientists published a study that followed around 300 COVID-19 patients and tested their blood serum for viral fragments including from the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), the Cytomegalovirus (CMV), as well as SARS-CoV-2 itself.

The researchers recorded fragment levels two to three weeks after clinical diagnosis of COVID-19, two to three weeks after acute disease onset, and two to three months after initial symptoms. The researchers found that although viral fragment levels of other diseases were never higher than that of SARS-CoV-2, EBV fragment levels were still quite high.

Then, is this due to coinfection of COVID and EBV, or reactivation of latent EBV after COVID infection?

Actually, studies have found that the fluctuation patterns of antiviral IgG levels can indicate whether this is coinfection or reactivation of latent EBV.

So, there are two major differences: one is that IgG antibody levels against viral capsid protein (VCA IgG) will be low during the initial one to two days of infection, while VCA IgG will start from a high level if it is a reactivation case.

The second difference is that the IgG against nuclear antigen (NA protein) will have a slow curve to increase its level if it is related to acute EBV infection on top of COVID, but the NA IgG will start from medium to high level if it is a reactivation of latent EBV.

Long COVID and Virus Reactivation

COVID-19 sometimes leads to an infamous syndrome called long covid, also known as post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC). Long covid patients often experience “unremitting fatigue, post-exertional malaise, and a variety of cognitive and autonomic dysfunctions” for a prolonged period of time.

This means that the immune system is under a terrific amount of stress struggling with these symptoms, which some scientists speculated to be quite the precursor to the reactivation of various hibernating viruses.

In a cross-sectional study, 215 participants were analyzed for key features that distinguished long COVID.

The results were surprising in the sense that many antibody responses were raised against not only SARS-CoV-2, but also other viruses such as EBV and VZV.

Using a process called rapid extracellular antigen profiling (or REAP), scientists were able to identify an elevated REAP score for many viruses belonging to the family herpesviridae, indicating that these viruses were reactivated during a COVID-19 infection.

Long COVID is known to cause a lot of issues even disregarding the reactivation of previous viruses, but what about the COVID-19 vaccines? Will they cause something similar?

Can the Jabs Reactivate Viruses as Well?

COVID-19 vaccines simulate the COVID-19 infection in a special way and force the immune system to adaptively react to it.

During the time when the immune system is processing the vaccine, it effectively redirects the attention of a lot of the naïve CD-8 T-killer cells to the COVID-19 spike proteins, and might leave a fleeting moment for some viruses from past infections to resurface.

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV or mono) is ubiquitous in the global population and usually doesn’t cause a lot of trouble. Only in patients with severe immune deficiencies, such as after an organ transplant, will EBV lead to severe or even fatal complications.

One study looked at patients with an organ transplant history and analyzed their EBV fragment levels before and after receiving a full course of COVID-19 vaccination. They found that EBV levels in this category of patients were significantly higher after vaccination.

Another case study related to EBV analyzed its reactivation in a young and healthy man after he was administered a COVID-19 vaccine. This was the first case of EBV reactivation in a healthy, immunocompetent adult post-COVID-19 vaccination. These incidences indicate a strong correlation between the vaccine and dormant virus reactivation.

According to the REAP data above, shingles or herpes zoster (HZ) was another virus that correlates to COVID-19 in terms of reactivation. An Indian case study analyzed 10 cases of shingles directly after the COVID-19 vaccine, where the onset of symptoms occurred within 21 days post-vaccination.

In the study, 80 percent of the patients in the study didn’t have any other factors which might have led to the reactivation. Two patients, who had diabetes as the only other possible factor, already had it well under control before the vaccination. This is not the only case report in relation to shingles.

An article published in The Lancet reveals that 16 and 27 cases of shingles were discovered after the administration of CoronaVac (Sinopharm) and BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech) vaccines when analyzing vaccination records from the Hong Kong Department of Health. The study concluded that shingles would likely occur in about seven or eight in 1 million doses administered. A more systematic case report which summarized 91 cases of post-vaccine HZ found that the mean symptom onset time was just under six days, with hypertension as the most common comorbidity and autoimmune conditions being fairly prevalent among the patients.

Data from the WHO global safety database shows that there are already over 7000 cases of HZ found worldwide, meaning that this is not an isolated issue.

By May 2022, the United States Vaccine Adverse Event Report System (VAERS) has already reported 4,577 cases of HZ post-vaccination, and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MRHA) of Great Britain reported 2,527 HZ cases. It is important to note that HZ is likely an underreported occurrence as a post-vaccination complication.

Other viruses mentioned in the beginning, such as the Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and the cancer-inducing Kaposi’s Sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus (KSHV) have also seen case reports or studies that document their reactivation after the administration of anti-COVID-19 drugs. Scientists are even discussing whether SARS-CoV-2 itself can embed itself in humans only to become reactivated in the unforeseeable future, but it is generally too early to tell.

The hotly contested issue at hand is how we should treat the issue of vaccination for those at risk of having their old diseases “rise from the dead” or “wake up from hibernation.” The discussion of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), which raises the risk of booster vaccines causing more severe illness than otherwise, begs the question of whether vaccines effectively lead to easier infections, whether COVID or old viruses and diseases.

It is important to note that the studies validate the correlation between the COVID-19 infection or vaccine and the reactivation of various viruses from their dormant period, but it is in no way meant to indicate causation.

However, there needs to be a well-calibrated balance between administering vaccines to individual groups with different risk factors.

The official guidelines are to get the elderly vaccinated first in order to protect them from strong ramifications as a result of a COVID-19 infection. It is true that most coronavirus deaths are from that age group and that the elderly suffer the most under this virus.

However, we have to keep in mind that, empirically, this age group is precisely the group at high risk of having other viruses reactivated when their immune system has a burden to face.

This is why a delicate balance of risks and benefits must be maintained when operating under the assumption and guise of prevention and protection.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/activating-the-enemy-within-the-covid-jabs-might-reactivate-virus-and-diseases-in-your-body_4858112.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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Finally! The Vindication of the Anti-Vaxxer

Lawrence Johnson comments:

On the evening of October 30th, 1938, 23-year-old Orson Welles began a broadcast at 8pm entitled “War Of The Worlds,” that changed America forever.

That Saturday night, millions of listeners were tuned in as Welles’ program depicted an attack by invaders from Mars landing on a farm in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. The actual fake news managed to fool millions.

In 2020, 82 years after Welles’ famous broadcast, America fell for an even greater hoax- COVID-19, a.k.a. Coronavirus.

Originally known as the China-Virus and the Wuhan flu due its geographical origin (or WuFlu as Kevin Jackson coined it), it quickly gained steam due to its flu-like symptoms, its spreadable, contagious abilities and solid, unending support from most media outlets. Although it was not the deadliest Pandemic/virus, nor even the first COVID (hence the number 19), it was perpetuated as such. Within days of the breakout reports, we began to see the COVID effect.

Long Lines and Sold-out Signs

Everywhere you looked, lines were forming around corners as limitations on basic food items such as milk, eggs and even bread were sternly being enforced. Shelves were emptying out all over the United States as hand sanitizer, toilet paper, paper towels, dry goods, canned goods, and cases of water were being purchased literally by the truckload.

Despite the questionable writing on the wall of oversaturation, America by-and-large came to a virtual
halt. Billions were spent on PPE protective gear and plastic dividers to separate us from this invisible threat. However, while schools, churches and small businesses were shut down (in many cases never to re-open), bars, cannabis establishments and abortion clinics like Planned Parenthood and its outlets remained up, open, and
operational.

Many states and municipalities paid the ultimate price, losing thousands daily by emptying their shops and streets of consumers and patrons who would otherwise share their hard-earned money.

While there were millions of deaths attributed to COVID, several factors became blatantly apparent very soon:

∙Those that were dying of COVID had pre-existing conditions.

∙The common-cold, Influenza, and Pneumonia cases instantly became extinct- now EVERYTHING was COVID.

∙Not one adult or child’s death to date had been factually attributed directly to COVID.

∙Masks were virtually ineffective.

∙Vaccines were producing unmistakable side-effects.

∙30 days did not slow the spread; 6 feet did not prevent it.

∙Rioters and mob groups did not fall under the same restrictions as other gatherings.

More to the Story

All these factors soon revealed themselves as components of a much larger narrative. In fact, though California’s population was twenty million greater than Florida, the Sunshine state’s only temporary closure versus the Golden State’s year’s long lockdowns resulted in negligible differences in the respective death tolls.

As a result of the insanity, it wasn’t long before America revealed just how divided she truly was. Stories of fights and shoppers being harassed and accosted for not wearing masks by those by those did. Court cases that continue to this day over employees in various industries including the military, hospital nurses and staff fighting to either retain their jobs or to get them back after being fired for refusing to get a non-FDA-approved vaccine.

Then, as suddenly as the panic had begun- it was over. As the election mid-terms approached, the tide began a most abrupt turn. The mask mandates were eroding. COVID rules had now become guidelines. The reports calling COVID refuters’ stories disinformation and misinformation, now ran alongside those that simply disagreed with the lockdowns and regulations.

It was as if it was all a bad dream.

On Saturday, November 5th, 2022, however- the antivaxxer was vindicated- and slapped in the face at the same time. On that night, SNL (a.k.a. Saturday Night Live) performed a skit entitled “Thanks COVID.”

Today.com framed it this way: The sketch, tweeted by the “Saturday Night Live” account on Nov. 6, shows three people who tested positive for COVID-19 enjoying, as the voiceover calls it, a “guaranteed … five and sometimes even 10-day vacation from all of life’s problems.” One of the characters grabs a backpack and heads to a cabin; another spends the week in her bed, not working but still getting paid by her employer; and a third stays at home alone after her husband leaves with three rowdy kids. “I needed a break, just some time away from everyone, so my doctor suggested I get COVID, and it was the greatest week of my life,” one character tells the camera.

“At first, I was worried about getting COVID, but my doctor assured me it’s fine that I’m triple vaxxed, quadruple if you count HPV,” says another. Then the voiceover quips, “Side effects of COVID include having COVID, which is still kind of bad, but doesn’t it seem different now?” One character explains that her symptoms were like a bad cold, and shortly after, the sketch references a few telltale long COVID signs. “There might be long-term memory problems, but that would honestly be amazing because there’s so much, I want to forget,” one actor says. “My brain’s already really bad. If it gets 10% worse but I don’t have to talk to a single person for a week, I’ll take that deal in a horse beat,” adds another, poking fun at brain fog, which can causes challenges with language.

“COVID, go ahead, you deserve a break,” the ad concludes.”

While those in the Mainstream media feigned gasps of disbelief, shock, and awe, many of us in America collectively rolled our eyes at the fact that an exceptionally large cat was released from an enormous bag. Despite all the masks, double-masks, double, and even triple vaxxing and boosting, the locking-down of offices, schools, churches, restricted weddings, funerals and hospital visits, of family members and neighbors snitching on each other- the truth was revealed by the same group that manufactured, pushed and perpetuated the lie: the COVID scare was a hoax.

Real Virus, Fake Hype

It’s not that real lives weren’t lost, because that was certainly true. However, lives through other diseases were lost as well- many times over. Through the words of that skit, MSM reminded us all how easily we fell for something innocuous to most of us. In the words of the late Winston Churchill, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Though Churchill’s point was to find a silver lining in even the darkest clouds, there are those like ex-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others that likened that statement to milking all the money, power and control out of every crisis that came across their collective desks.

This was the latest hoax- but not the last. In fact, this hoax was birthed out of a sea of lies and deception in its adolescence. The point: this will get worse before it gets better. Because absolute power corrupts absolutely, the free pass that those “pimping” the COVID scare narrative will eventually try this again. The only way through is for us to start paying attention.

Much like when magicians lose their “magic” after the cards up their sleeves are revealed, or how Oz the Great was not so Powerful once they saw the man behind the curtain, we must be apprehensive to believe, or worse, to blindly act on what we’re being told. Unfortunately, the results of the Mid-term elections show that many of us are still not paying attention. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Be advised, no matter how it looks, the next “trick” is right around the corner with no “treat” in sight. You’ve been warned.

https://theblacksphere.net/2022/11/finally-the-vindication-of-the-anti-vaxxer/

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Public Health Leaders, Scientists Owe Americans Apology for Harms of Lockdowns: Dr. Scott Atlas

Americans have lost their trust in science, and it can’t be repaired without public health leaders and scientists admitting and apologizing for their wrongs during the pandemic, said former White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Scott Atlas.

While serving in the Trump administration’s pandemic task force in 2020, Atlas was attacked by the mainstream media and academia over his advocacy for “focused protection,” a strategy aimed to speed up herd immunity and minimize collateral damage by allowing the virus to spread freely among younger, healthier Americans while keeping the older, more vulnerable population from getting infected. The ensuing Biden administration ended up rejecting that strategy in favor of widespread lockdowns in an attempt to control the virus transmission.

Public health leaders like Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, as well as academics who supported lockdown measures, have left behind a harmful legacy that Americans are still grappling with today, Atlas said.

“Their legacy is: number one, the history’s biggest public health failure; number two, massive avoidable deaths in society’s most vulnerable; and number three, ongoing enormous health damages to low-income families and to children,” Atlas told The Epoch times in a recent interview.

“They have created a severe loss of trust in public health and science, and left us as a public in a situation where we cannot trust guidance,” he added. “Because the experts have been exposed—like in the story, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’—as being non-expert, politicized, and simply unfit to hold the public trust.”

According to the latest survey by Pew Research Center, just 29 percent of American adults say they have “a great deal of confidence” in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public, down from 43 percent who said so in April 2020, when state and local governments started to roll out lockdown measures in accordance to federal guidelines.

This eroded trust can be rebuilt, Atlas said, but public health officials and academic experts have to first admit that the lockdowns have not only failed to stop the spread of the virus or reduce the number of deaths, but also added suffering to low-income families and children.

“Trusted is granted by privilege from the citizens of this country,” he told The Epoch Times. “We need a public admission from Dr. Fauci, Dr. Burks, and the university scientists who supported their policies. We need a public admission of error and an apology. That’s the first step in restoring the trust that they squandered.

When asked about the proposal of “pandemic amnesty,” which asks Americans to forgive decisions made with a lack of understanding of the virus, Atlas said he “completely disagrees” with the idea, which apparently is based on a “false premise.”

For example, it was already known in the spring of 2020 that healthy children had an extremely low risk of becoming severely ill or dying from COVID. The fact that school closures and social isolation were leading to a dramatic rise in mental illness, suicides, and drug abuse among children and adolescents was also known at that point, he added. Yet the schools remained closed in some of the nation’s largest public school districts.

What Americans need, according to Atlas, is not amnesty, but accountability.

“We need to not turn the page, we need an investigation—an non-partisan exposure of what happened,” he said. “Only public accountability will prevent the repetition of this heinous, destructive policy by those in power.”

Atlas pointed to several of the Biden administration’s public health policies, which are still in place despite not being backed by science or reason.

“We are the only country of civilized nations in the world that still requires proof of vaccination to enter this country,” he said. “This is bizarre, particularly since well over 90 percent of Americans have already had COVID. This is simply nonsensical.

“We have a government leadership that continues to insist there’s a public health emergency when there is not a public health emergency. We have a government leadership that’s allowing emergency use authorization of an experimental vaccine on infants and children,” he added. “So we are still in a country that is denying science.”

“We need good people, rational people to have the courage to rise up and speak up, as you are expected to do in a free ethical society.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/public-health-leaders-scientists-owe-americans-apology-for-harms-of-lockdowns-dr-scott-atlas_4886101.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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Fauci Defended Lockdowns During Deposition, Said China Was the Inspiration

A top U.S. health official who publicly backed lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic defended his position during a deposition on Nov. 23, according to people who were present for the questioning.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, also said the inspiration for the lockdowns was communist-run China, one of the people said.

Fauci sat for the seven-hour deposition in Bethesda, Maryland, where the headquarters for the institute’s parent agency are located.

He was forced to answer questions under oath on orders from a federal judge who is set to decide whether the government should be blocked from pressuring Big Tech firms into censoring posts and users.

While Fauci often could not recall actions he took during the pandemic, he did talk about his role in advocating for lockdowns.

Fauci said that Dr. Clifford Lane, a deputy director at the NIAID, reported back to him after Lane went to China soon in early 2020, a few months after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan.

Lane reported China appeared to be controlling the COVID-19 virus through harsh lockdowns, and Fauci soon decided the United States needed to emulate China, at least to an extent, according to Jenin Younes, one of the lawyers present for the deposition.

“This is what we had to do. There were freezer trucks in New York full of bodies,” Fauci said, Younes told The Epoch Times.

New York was hit hardest by the pandemic. Critics say that unusual policies, such as one that forced nursing homes to accept people who tested positive for COVID-19, led to the elevated number of deaths. Tens of thousands of people died in New York nursing homes with COVID-19.

Chinese officials, meanwhile, told residents in various areas to remain inside their homes, and forced many to comply by barricading their doors. China is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, which regularly commits human rights abuses against Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, and others.

“The question of human rights didn’t factor in” to Fauci’s mindset, according to Younes, a lawyer with the New Civil Liberties Alliance who is representing some of the plaintiffs in the case.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican, also said that Fauci defended the lockdowns while answering questions under oath this week.

Fauci and NIAID have not responded to requests for comment on the deposition. Lane, who wrote in a February 2020 email (pdf) that “China has demonstrated this infection can be controlled, albeit at great cost,” declined to comment.

Lane was also part of the World Health Organization team that, along with Chinese scientists, called for countries to “Prepare to immediately activate the highest level of emergency response mechanisms to trigger the all-of-government and all-of society approach that is essential for early containment of a COVID-19 outbreak” in a February 2020 report (pdf).

Backed Harsh Measures

Fauci, who helped lead the federal government response to the pandemic during President Donald Trump’s administration, repeatedly backed harsh measures that were believed to help contain COVID-19.

In early 2020, for instance, Fauci said on CNN that he supported policies that would lead to “a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in restaurants and in bars.”

“For a while, life is not going to be the way it used to be in the United States,” he said on Fox News around the same time. “We have to just accept that if we want to do what’s best for the American public.”

Fauci was successful in convincing Trump to advocate for “15 days to slow the spread,” according to accounts from Dr. Deborah Birx and others who worked closely with the doctor. Birx said in her book, “No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it.”

The federal government later added additional weeks to their recommendations, which triggered mass closures of schools and private businesses on orders from governors across the United States.

Multiple governors, including South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, soon balked at the recommendations, though the harsh measures continued in a number of states into 2021.

Studies have since identified the measures as contributing to jumps in suicides, mental health crises, learning loss, and delayed health treatments.

Fauci did not express regret during the deposition for helping trigger the lockdowns, Younes said. Fauci has claimed publicly that he never recommended lockdowns.

Could Not Remember Specifics
Fauci’s NIAID gave grants to the high-level laboratory located in the same Chinese city where the first COVID-19 cases appeared. Some experts believed early on that the illness stemmed from a laboratory accident or purposeful release, but Fauci has repeatedly said all evidence points to a natural origin.

Scientists, though, have never been able to pinpoint such an origin.

Fauci was told early on by top U.S. health officials that a natural origin was “highly unlikely,” while several other scientists told Fauci during a call that the odds were the virus emerged from a lab, according to documents that emerged later in the pandemic.

Those same scientists later penned an influential paper that was widely cited, including by Fauci, in dismissing the lab origin theory. Fauci neglected to reveal his role in shaping the paper.

That private call on Feb. 1, 2020, which included experts from multiple countries, was brought up during the deposition but Fauci said he could not recall the specifics of the discussion, according to Younes.

“He claimed that he couldn’t [recall] the contents of the call, nothing specific,” Younes said. “That was the theme. Everything was ‘I can’t remember anything specific.’ What he does is he says he can’t remember anything specific … so if he’s confronted with something then he could say ‘well, I didn’t lie. I just couldn’t recall.'”

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who was also at the deposition, told The Epoch Times that Fauci could not recall “practically anything” when questioned on his actions during the pandemic.

Censorship

The case that led to the deposition alleges the government violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment by pressuring Big Tech firms to censor users.

Documents produced in discovery show government officials repeatedly urging companies to take action against certain users and certain posts, alleging efforts against purported misinformation and disinformation weren’t sufficient. Some officials made similar statements in public, including Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a Biden appointee. The government has said the documents do not show First Amendment violations, and has asked for the case to be dismissed.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee overseeing the case, said while ordering the depositions that emails “prove that Dr. Fauci was communicating and acting as an intermediary for others in order to censor information from being shared across multiple social-media outlets.”

Fauci “has yet to give any statements under oath in this matter,” Doughty said, adding that “the Court has no doubt that Dr. Fauci was engaging in communications with high-ranking social-media officials, which is extremely relevant in the matter at hand,” and that all three points showed any burden Fauci would face for a deposition was outweighed by the importance of the allegations.

Fauci told lawyers in the deposition that he doesn’t use social media and does not have anything to do with it, according to Younes.

She represents two of the three co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a 2020 document that challenged the prevailing view that the COVID-19 response needed to include abnormal actions such as school closures in favor of focusing on protecting the high-risk groups, including the elderly.

“I was too busy running a six billion institute to be concerned about things like the Great Barrington Declaration,” Fauci was quoted as saying in the deposition.

But publically released emails show Fauci and his boss at the time, Dr. Francis Collins, were concerned about the declaration. Collins told Fauci he wanted a “quick and devastating published takedown of its premises,” and Fauci sent over an article from Wired that he claimed “debunks this theory.” Fauci said in one email the theory reminded him of “AIDS denialism.” Fauci also spoke publicly against what he interpreted as the document’s main thrust, which he described as “let things rip and let the infection go,” and has stood by his criticism into 2022.

The National Institutes of Health, which Collins led at the time, cited Wikipedia when asked for a source for the claims against the declaration.

“I think he obviously knew what the crux of the lawsuit was and claimed sort of upfront that it’s his opinion that the best way to deal with bad ideas is more speech rather than trying to censor, so I think he was trying to get in front of any allegation,” Younes said of the deposition.

Fauci’s belief was that Collins calling for a “takedown” meant “offering an article refuting it,” Younes added.

Fauci also denied that any of his conversations with Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, dealt with censorship.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fauci-defended-lockdowns-during-deposition-said-china-was-the-inspiration-lawyer_4885460.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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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‘Died suddenly’

Roberto Garin was only 52 when he ‘died suddenly’ on 28 July last year. The healthy father of two teenagers began feeling ill 48 hours after his first Pfizer shot and dropped dead in front of his terrified wife Kirsti six days later while she was on the phone to paramedics.

Garin’s family immediately suspected the vaccine caused his death. Kirsti was told her husband was the first person to die after a Pfizer shot. In fact, 176 deaths following Pfizer jabs had already been reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, starting in the first week of the vaccine rollout.

But when Kirsti shared her concerns with filmmaker Alan Hashem, who released the video together with the accounts of other vaccine injuries and deaths, it unleashed a storm.

‘Misinformation researchers’ published by the ABC dismissed Kirsti’s ‘claims her 52-year-old husband died from “sudden onset myocarditis” after receiving the Pfizer vaccine’ because it didn’t ‘square with official data’.

Yet that was exactly what forensic pathologist Bernard l’Ons wrote in a brilliant report on his autopsy stating that the deceased’s heart showed a clear transition to severe giant cell myocarditis that could be ‘histologically dated to the time period of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccination’ and it was ‘reasonable to state that the deceased’s previously undiagnosed cardiac sarcoidosis may have transitioned to a fulminating myocarditis as a result of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination’ noting that myocarditis had been reported in reactions to the Pfizer vaccine. L’Ons proposed a mechanism by which the vaccine could trigger fatal myocarditis and advised that a possible therapeutic implication was that sarcoid patients be given an echocardiogram to detect whether their heart was affected in which case alternative vaccination types could be considered.

All of this was ignored by [Australia's] TGA which refuses to admit to this day that any death can be attributed to a Pfizer vaccine and was parroted by the ABC. The TGA did admit that as of 22 August it had received ‘235 reports of suspected myocarditis, (inflammation of the heart muscle) and/or pericarditis (inflammation of the membrane around the heart) following vaccination’ with Pfizer but said, ‘These reports reflect the observations of the people reporting them and have not been confirmed as having been caused by the vaccine,’ and that ‘some events may be coincidental and would have happened anyway, regardless of vaccination.’

This is a particularly misleading statement. Four out of five reports to the TGA are submitted not by random ‘people’, but by highly qualified health professionals and in Garin’s case by a forensic pathologist.

Why would the TGA dismiss these reports? That’s a question Associate Professor Michael Nissen could perhaps shed light on. He was appointed to the TGA in February 2021, just as the Covid-19 vaccines were rolled out, to lead its Signal Investigation Unit which investigates safety issues that arise with vaccines in adverse reports or are raised by international regulators or the medical literature.

Prior to his appointment, Nissen was the Director of Scientific Affairs and Public Health at GSK Vaccines from October 2014 to January 2021, a period during which GSK and Pfizer entered into a joint venture. Nissen worked concurrently in hospital-based medical care and academia. He has led over 40 clinical trials and authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications including vaccine studies. In all these areas pharmaceutical companies are a major source of funding.

The TGA is sensitive about managing conflicts of interest for advisory committee members but offers no guidance on its website with regard to staff members although presumably the same principles should, at least in theory, apply. It notes that shares, involvement in clinical trials, employment, contracts, consultancies, grants, sponsorships, board memberships and so on, may give rise to a conflict of interest.

Robert Clancy, an Emeritus Professor of Pathology at the University of Newcastle Medical School and a member of the Australian Academy of Science’s Covid-19 Expert Database wrote in Quadrant online last week that ‘the power of the pharmaceutical industry and its pervasive influence at every level of political and medical decision-making’ has been underestimated in shaping the pandemic narrative which has been driven by commercial imperatives to such an extent that it has crushed scientific debate.

Clancy recounts that his approach to the College of Pathology (of which he was a Senior Fellow, a foundation Professor of Pathology, and past-Chairman of the College committee for undergraduate pathology education) calling for a national study to determine whether Covid vaccination was responsible for the increase in excess mortality in Australia and elsewhere by developing a protocol for post-mortems ‘to answer what is arguably the most important question facing medicine’ met with a rejection and a suggestion to take it instead to the TGA.

Nowadays, dying suddenly has become ominously familiar. According to a new film Died Suddenly available as of this week to stream via Twitter, in the last 18 months, the term ‘Died Suddenly’ has risen to the very top of ‘most searched’ Google terms. The film documents the surge in excess mortality in highly vaccinated countries. Dr. Peter McCullough, internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and one of the top five most-published, and most censored, medical researchers in the US, says that sudden death frequently occurs because the heart has been damaged by inflammation caused by Covid vaccines.

Papers that Pfizer and the Food and Drug Administration tried to hide for 75 years show that Pfizer knew in 2020 that myocarditis and pericarditis could be caused by its vaccine.

And in the Pfizer trial in Argentina, a report on a healthy 36-year old participant – Augusto German Roux – who developed pericarditis immediately after his second Pfizer jab, mysteriously disappeared from the published trial results.

The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) and the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ) belatedly published a warning about myocarditis and pericarditis in September this year.

It was too late for Garin. Had his doctors known, his life might have been saved. His grieving family have still not received a cent in compensation. But Pfizer has apparently grossed nearly $100 billion from its sales of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/died-suddenly/

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Cardiologist calls for an end to mNRA booster shots - as teen, 18, tells how her reaction to the jab saw her miss her Year 12 exams:

A teenage schoolgirl has revealed how she had to miss her HSC exams after a mandatory Covid jab left her with an agonising heart condition for months.

Now a Sydney cardiologist has called for an end to the use of mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna, after seeing a rise in jab-related heart conditions.

Monica Eskandar, 18, was rushed to hospital with terrifying chest pains just hours after her first Covid vaccination in September last year.

Doctors later diagnosed her with pericarditis, a condition linked with mRNA Covid jabs like Pfizer and Moderna, which causes painful inflammation of the heart lining.

'Getting Covid is ten times worse than getting vaccinated - but we don't need to use mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna,' cardiologist Dr Ross Walker told Daily Mail Australia.

'We have to put COVID in perspective where it is right now, not where it was 12 months ago, because it has changed and I think we are seeing a change.'

The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation last year mandated mRNA vaccines for all booster shots unless it's specifically dangerous for individuals.

But Dr Walker said he has no idea why. 'We have alternatives like AstraZeneca and Novavax which are just as good,' he said.

'I've seen many people getting vaccine reactions, who get symptoms for about three to six months afterwards.

'I’ve seen 60-70 patients in my own practice over the past 12 months who have had similar reactions.

'I’ve seen other people with chest pain, shortness of breath, heart palpitations.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11464097/Covid-Australia-2022-Teen-misses-HSC-pericarditis-jab-reaction-cardiologist-issues-warning.html

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FDA Says Telling People Not to Take Ivermectin for COVID-19 Was Just a Recommendation

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) guidance for people to “stop” taking ivermectin for COVID-19 was informal and just a recommendation, government lawyers argued during a recent hearing.

“The cited statements were not directives. They were not mandatory. They were recommendations. They said what parties should do. They said, for example, why you should not take ivermectin to treat COVID-19. They did not say you may not do it, you must not do it. They did not say it’s prohibited or it’s unlawful. They also did not say that doctors may not prescribe ivermectin,” Isaac Belfer, one of the lawyers, said during a Nov. 1 hearing in federal court in Texas.

“They use informal language, that is true. It’s conversational but not mandatory.”

The hearing was held in a case brought by three doctors who say the FDA illegally interfered with their ability to prescribe medicine to their patients when it issued statements on ivermectin, an anti-parasitic that has shown positive results in some trials against COVID-19.

Ivermectin is approved by the FDA but not for COVID-19. Drugs are commonly used for nonapproved purposes in the United States; the practice is known as an off-label treatment.

The FDA created a webpage in 2021 titled “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19” and later posted a link to the page on Twitter while writing: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

A second post stated: “Hold your horses, y’all. Ivermectin may be trending, but it still isn’t authorized or approved to treat COVID-19.”

On a separate page, the FDA stated: “Q: Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? A: No.”

Those actions interfered with the doctors’ practice of medicine, violating the laws including the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the lawsuit alleges.

It asked the court to rule the actions unlawful and bar the FDA from directing or opining as to whether ivermectin should be used to treat COVID-19.

Jared Kelson, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, told the court during the hearing that that informal claim “doesn’t explain the language they actually used: ‘Stop it. Stop it with the ivermectin.'”

The FDA’s actions “clearly convey that this is not an acceptable way to treat these patients,” he argued.

Plaintiffs in the case include Dr. Paul Marik, who began utilizing ivermectin in his COVID-19 treatment protocol in 2020 while he was chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School and director of the intensive care unit at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.

After the FDA’s statements, Marik was told to remove the protocol from the school’s servers while Sentara issued a memorandum to hospitals telling them to stop using ivermectin against COVID-19, with a citation to the FDA.

Marik was forced to resign from his positions because he couldn’t prescribe ivermectin because of the FDA’s statements, the suit alleges.

The government has moved to dismiss the complaint, asserting plaintiffs lack standing because the injuries can’t be traced back to the FDA.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fda-says-telling-people-not-to-take-ivermectin-for-covid-19-was-just-a-recommendation_4873897.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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Cardiologists Come to the Same Conclusion Regarding COVID Jab Side Effects

“The Covid mRNA vaccine has likely played a significant role or been a primary cause of unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure since 2021…”

Until the British cardiologist, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, expressed grave concern about the safety of Covid mRNA vaccines, he was one of the most celebrated doctors in Britain. In 2016 he was named in the Sunday Times Debrett’s list as one of the most influential people in science and medicine in the UK in a list that included Professor Stephen Hawking. His total Altmetric score (measure of impact and reach) of his medical journal publications since 2013 is over 10,000 making it one of the highest in the World for a clinical doctor during this period.

In the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Britain, he advocated the injections for the general public. However, in July of 2021, he experienced a terrible personal loss that caused him to reevaluate the shots—namely, the sudden and unexpected death of his 73-year-old father. His father’s death made no sense to him because he knew from his own examination that his father’s general and cardiac health were excellent. As he put it in a recent interview:

His postmortem findings really shocked me. There were two severe blockages in his coronary arteries, which didn’t really make any sense with everything I know, both as a cardiologist—someone who has expertise in this particular area—but also intimately knowing my dad’s lifestyle and his health. Not long after that, data started to emerge that suggested a possible link between the mRNA vaccine and increased risk of heart attacks from a mechanism of increasing inflammation around the coronary arteries. But on top of that, I was contacted by a whistleblower at a very prestigious university in the UK, a cardiologist himself, who explained to me that there was a similar research finding in his department, and that those researchers had decided to essentially cover that up because they were worried about losing funding from the pharmaceutical industry. But it doesn’t stop there. I then started looking at data in the UK to see if there had been any increase in cardiac arrest. My dad suffered a cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death at home. Had there been any change in the UK since the vaccine rollout? And again those findings were very clear. There’s been an extra 14,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests in 2021 vs 2020.

The more Dr. Malhotra looked into it, the more he felt the same concern about the safety of the mRNA vaccines that Dr. Peter McCullough had felt since the spring of 2021. The alarming incidence of sudden, unexpected deaths during the latter half of 2021 and the first eight months of 2022—especially among the young and fit—strengthened his grave concern and suspicion.

In September of 2022,—after a thorough investigation of the growing volume of data—he came to his conclusion:

The Covid mRNA vaccine has likely played a significant role or been a primary cause of unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure since 2021 until proven otherwise.

His conclusion, including his precise verbal formulation of it, was identical to the conclusion drawn by Dr. Peter McCullough. Though the two doctors ultimately established contact to compare notes, they reached their conclusions based on their own, independent inquiries, before they spoke with each other.

Recently the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation produced Until Proven Otherwise— a short video documentary about the corroborating findings of these two leading cardiologists. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the gripping, four-minute video is a MUST SEE for everyone. Please share it with your family and friends.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/cardiologists-come-to-the-same-conclusion-regarding-covid-jab-side-effects_4874934.html

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Why Do So Many COVID Sufferers Reject Paxlovid?

Paxlovid is a paradoxlovid. The game-changing antiviral swooped in during the pandemic’s worst winter with the promise of slowing COVID deaths to a trickle. But since it became widely available this spring, death rates have hardly budged.

According to the White House, the problem is not the drug but the fact that too few people are taking it. A recent CDC report found that from April to July, less than one-third of America’s 80-plus-year-olds with COVID ended up taking Paxlovid, even though they had the most to gain from doing so. What gives? Some Americans may be having trouble accessing Paxlovid, but clearly, a significant proportion of patients and doctors are just saying no to antiviral drugs. There are no national statistics on Paxlovid refusal, so I talked with physicians around the country to learn more about their motivations. Who are the anti-Paxxers, and how dangerous is their dogma?

First things first: Paxlovid hesitancy does seem to be political, but that’s not the whole story. As a rule, fewer prescriptions of the drug are given out per capita in red states than in blue ones: Wyoming, for example, appears to be the nation’s leading anti-Paxxer state, with just one course of treatment given out for every 125 residents; in Rhode Island, the most Pax-enthusiastic state, it’s one in 28. (I’m using courses of treatment per capita rather than per COVID case because of the general unreliability of case data these days and differences in testing and reporting practices among states.)

Still, clinicians working in deep-red parts of the country told me that, on this matter at least, their patients are not significantly divided by politics. “Republicans and Democrats both love Paxlovid,” says Jason Bronner, the medical director of primary care at St. Luke’s Medical System, in Idaho. Some 20 to 30 percent of his COVID patients decline to take the drug, he told me, but they don’t appear to be driven by the same polarized attitudes he sees around vaccines. Jessica Kalender-Rich, a geriatrician at the University of Kansas Health System, told me that she still gets occasional requests for ivermectin, and that some of her patients insist that COVID is a hoax. But the ones who outright refuse Paxlovid are not obsessing over microchips or government overreach. Instead, they mostly tell her that they’re worried about treatment side effects and rebound infections of the virus.

Rebound COVID came up again and again when I asked doctors why their patients are hesitant to take Paxlovid. The link between the drug and a return of symptoms after an initial recovery has been the subject of much concern and debate since the spring; just last week, researchers reported in a study that has not yet been peer-reviewed that symptom rebound is more than twice as common among Paxlovid takers than among those who decline it. The fact that so many prominent figures in the federal government—including President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, and White House Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci—have now had rebound certainly doesn’t help inspire confidence. One of Kalender-Rich’s patients specifically cited Fauci’s experience when refusing the drug. (The next day, the patient felt worse and accepted a prescription.)

Rebound may not be dangerous, but you have to admit that it doesn’t sound like a good time. “People will say, ‘I’d rather be really sick for four or five days than just kind of sick for two weeks,’” says Adam Fiterstein, the chief of urgent care at the New York medical network ProHealth. The threat of rebound might be especially scary for geriatric patients and their family, because it means spending more time alone. “For some of these older adults, that isolation time is actually way worse than the virus at this point in the pandemic,” Kalender-Rich said. Paxlovid mouth—a bitter, metallic taste that can last throughout the course of treatment—can also be a concern for the elderly, who may already suffer from lack of appetite or other issues that restrict their eating.

Drug interactions are another source of worry for the anti-Paxxers. Official COVID-treatment guidelines warn that the antiviral may have ill effects when combined with any of more than 100 other medications. Geriatric patients in particular might need to tweak their daily regimens of pills while under treatment with Paxlovid, Kalender-Rich told me. That’s hardly ever a problem medically, she said, but some people are still reluctant to make the change, especially if a previous doctor told them to never, ever skip a dose.

These potential downsides are extra salient for people who don’t fear COVID like they used to. The patients who refuse Paxlovid are the ones who are doing well, Bronner said: “They don’t feel totally sick and are not scared like they were in previous waves.” Hundreds of Americans are still dying daily from COVID, but any given community might have seen only a handful of severe cases and deaths since the spring. Many patients “don’t feel like they need to take a medicine, because their neighbor was fine,” Kalender-Rich said.

Doctors too can be anti-Paxxers. Hans Duvefelt, a primary-care physician in rural Maine, won’t prescribe Paxlovid to his patients. He told me via email that he avoids it on account of rebound risk, side effects, kidney concerns, and drug interactions. “Paxlovid is an inferior choice,” he said, when compared with molnupiravir, another COVID antiviral. To be clear, the data hold that molnupiravir is less effective than Paxlovid at preventing hospitalization and death. Also, a June preprint found that patients treated with molnupiravir rebounded at least as often as those treated with Paxlovid. Duvefelt did not respond to follow-up questions, so I couldn’t ask him about these data.

Other doctors believe in the good Paxlovid can do but still struggle with the decision to prescribe. “This is a much more nuanced risk-benefit discussion than giving somebody amoxicillin for strep throat,” Jeremy Cauwels, the chief physician at Sanford Health in South Dakota, told me. “If you’re looking at that as an ER doctor, who by definition has no follow-up with the patient, it’s very hard to say, ‘I’m going to give you a drug that interacts with lots of medications.’” Persistent uncertainty about exactly how much Paxlovid helps people who are up to date on their COVID shots doesn’t help.

Regardless of what’s causing Paxlovid hesitancy, the exact stakes are difficult to define. Last month, Ashish Jha, the Biden administration’s COVID-19 response coordinator, told The New York Times that daily deaths from the pandemic could drop by almost 90 percent if every COVID patient over the age of 50 were treated with Paxlovid or monoclonal antibodies. The doctors I spoke with mostly didn’t dispute this; Kalender-Rich said she “would believe a number closer to 75 percent” but agreed with the general sentiment. That said, none of the doctors I spoke with could point me toward any specific cases where one of their patients refused Paxlovid only to end up severely ill or dead. And no one knows how many deaths could be reduced specifically by attacking anti-Paxxer beliefs as opposed to, say, removing barriers to access and encouraging more testing.

Because anti-Paxxerism appears to be less organized and ideological than anti-vaxxerism, some favored strategies to combat the latter—targeting influencers on social media, for example—might not work. The doctors I spoke with said that the best venue for changing minds is the exam room. “It really comes down to a face-to-face conversation” about the risks and benefits of the drug, Cauwels said: “Our patients still trust us enough to have that conversation.”

Pax-hesitant providers, on the other hand, may just need a bit more time to feel convinced that the drug is safe and effective when used correctly; some may be waiting on more data from large, randomized clinical trials. “Across different parts of the country, adoption of new things is always going to be slower,” Kalender-Rich said. That’s not exactly a comforting thought when hundreds of people are still dying every day, but it does suggest, at the very least, that we have something to look forward to.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/11/paxlovid-covid-drug-hesitancy/672210

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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