Some optimism

My illness seems to have receded a little of its own accord so I have been able today to blog pretty much as per usual. It's too early to be sure of anything, though, so whether I will do much tomorow remains to be seen

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Biden Admin Concedes No Evidence Behind Recommendation for 6 COVID Booster Shots a Year

President Joe Biden’s administration concedes that there is no scientific evidence to support an apparent recommendation to receive as many as six COVID-19 booster shots in a year.

After Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Biden appointee, wrote in a social media post on Nov. 29, 2022, that people should get vaccinated “if it’s been over 2 months since your last dose,” the Functional Government Initiative (FGI) filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents supporting the statements.

The watchdog organization then sued after the administration didn’t comply with timelines laid out in the law.

FGI asked for, among other documents: “Any scientific support relied on by Secretary Becerra when approving or issuing the tweet recommending that all Americans receive a booster shot every two months” and “any study, synopsis, or similar statement or document of scientific, academic, or government research on whether a bi-monthly booster shot will effectively prevent the transmission or susceptibility to COVID-19 and known active variants as of November 2022.”

It also asked for internal communications regarding Mr. Becerra’s statements.

In a new response, the government said it had no evidence to support Mr. Becerra’s recommendation.

“The department reviewed 1,263 pages of potentially responsive records captured in the agency’s search for this FOIA request. After a careful review of these records, I determined the 1,263 pages were not relevant to your request,” Alesia Williams, an official in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told FGI.

“The lack of a single of a single record supporting Secretary Becerra’s bold public health recommendation for six COVID boosters a year is a startling development,” Pete McGinnis, a spokesman for FGI, said in a statement.

“It is tremendously irresponsible for the government’s chief health official to fire off tweets recommending frequent injections of a new vaccine booster apparently based on no academic or scientific support,” Mr. McGinnis added.

“How can the public be assured that the agency is ‘following the science’ on other important public health matters when it demonstrates such clear disregard for basic scientific integrity standards on an issue as important as COVID vaccine shots?”

The group noted that Mr. Becerra, a lawyer by training, lacks a background in health. Doctors typically lead that department.

Booster Recommendations

As newer COVID-19 variants have emerged, the vaccines have performed increasingly worse. Federal officials inside HHS first cleared booster shots in 2021 due to the flagging effectiveness, and have since authorized and recommended additional shots.

In the spring of 2023, regulators had authorized, without clinical trial data, newly formulated versions of the vaccines aimed at Omicron subvariants. Federal officials had said that people should get a booster if more than two months had elapsed since their most recent shot. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said most people should only receive one additional shot, but that certain groups could receive more.

In another statement promoting vaccination, Vice President Kamala Harris claimed that a single shot would protect people from COVID-19 for an entire year. There’s no evidence supporting that claim.

Mr. Becerra said the day after the initial post: “An updated COVID vaccine can help protect you from the worst outcomes of COVID. If it’s been over 2 months since your last dose, make a plan to get one now.”

He later wrote: “Time to get your updated COVID vaccine if 1) You haven’t gotten the updated vaccine yet & had the primary series or original booster 2+ months ago 2) It’s been 3+ months since you’ve had COVID If you have a big event in 2+ weeks, it’s a good time to go.”

FGI said the differing messages were causing confusion and made it appear as if Mr. Becerra was, at least at one point, recommending up to six shots in a year.

HHS has declined to comment on the suit.

“The clear message from across the Administration is: Don’t wait,” an HHS spokesperson previously told The Epoch Times, after being asked about Mr. Becerra’s statements. “Get your free COVID-19 vaccine. It’s safe and effective. People can go to vaccines.gov to find free and easily available vaccines in their community.”

New Vaccines Coming

The updated slate of vaccines isn’t working well, prompting plans to implement new formulations that, for the first time, won’t include components of the Wuhan virus strain.

The updated shots are expected to be rolled out in the fall.

The CDC’s new director, Dr. Mandy Cohen, said recently that the agency is poised to recommend annual shots.

“We anticipate that COVID will become similar to flu shots, where it is going to be you get your annual flu shot and you get your annual COVID shot,” Dr. Cohen said.

The CDC didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the U.S. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and other members asked the CDC (pdf) for information on the planned recommendation, noting that it would “mark a significant change in federal policy and guidance regarding COVID-19 vaccines and the way in which they are utilized.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/article/biden-admin-admits-no-evidence-behind-6-covid-booster-shots-a-year-recommendation-5449289

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UK Covid hotspots revealed as new variant Eris fuels surge in cases

With a new Covid-19 variant emerging across the UK, certain areas have seen an increase in cases and hospital admissions on the rise over the school summer holidays.

Named Eris after the Greek goddess of strife and discord, the descendant of the Omicron variant now accounts for as many as one in seven cases after it was first recorded in the UK last month.

The latest data from the UK Health Security Agency suggests that Eris, referred to as EG.5.1, represents 14.6% of all cases, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) adding it to the list of variants under monitoring.

However, health bosses at the UKHSA have said it is “not unexpected” to see new variants of Covid-19, with experts claiming it showed no signs of being more dangerous than previous strains.

This comes as hospital admissions have seen a recent spike, with an increase to 1.97 per 100,000 as of July 30. Data from the previous week recorded the hospital admission rate as 1.47 per 100,000, while those aged over 85 were the highest affected age group.

Hospitals in the South-West of England recorded the highest hospital admission rate, with an interactive map showing a 104% increase in Covid cases in Devon in the seven days leading up to 29 July.

Other Covid hotspots include Surrey, with a 103.3% increase, Derbyshire, with a 121.4% increase, as well as Cornwall, Somerset, Staffordshire, Darlington and Cumbria.

Experts have attributed the recent rise to a number of different reasons, including waning immunity, increased indoor mixing and the possibility that cinema trips to watch Barbie and Oppenheimer have caused the virus to spread.

According to the Zoe Health Study, estimated case numbers jumped by almost 200,000 last month, from 606,656 predicted cases on 4 July to 785,980 on 27 July.

Globally, the new variant Eris accounts for around 20% of Covid cases in Asia, 10% in Europe and seven per cent in North America. Common symptoms include a headache, mild or severe fatigue, a sore throat and a runny nose.

Independent Sage member Professor Christina Pagel told The Independent that she believed the UK is “definitely starting another wave” driven by the Omicron sub variants, Arcturus and Eris.

Sharing the latest Covid data, she said that there had been a 40 per cent jump in hospital admissions last week, with a 28 per cent jump in the number of patients in hospital primarily due to the disease.

However, the numbers overall remain low, with authorities continuing to monitor the situation as infection rates change.

Dr Meera Chand, Deputy Director of UKHSA, said: "It is not unexpected to see new variants of SARS-CoV-2 emerge. UKHSA continues to analyse available data relating to SARS-CoV-2 variants in the UK and abroad.

"EG.5.1 was designated as a variant on 31 July 2023 due to continued growth internationally and presence in the UK, allowing us to monitor it through our routine surveillance processes.”

"Vaccination remains our best defence against future COVID-19 waves, so it is still as important as ever that people come take up all the doses for which they are eligible as soon as possible.’’

Prof Francois Balloux, Professor of Computational Systems Biology and Director, UCL Genetics Institute, UCL, said: “The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant emerged nearly two years ago and rapidly became dominant worldwide. It has spawned a very large number of sub-variants constantly replacing other.

“The latest Omicron sub-variant to attract media attention is called EG.5.1. It is a direct descendent of the XBB.1.9.2 sub-variant, and carries one additional mutation in the spike protein. EG.5.1 is increasing in frequency and currently represents about 15% of the cases in the UK.

“Covid cases and hospitalisations have been going up slightly in the UK over recent days, but this starting from the lowest baseline since March 2020. As such, the recent increases in case numbers and hospitalisations may sound ominous when expressed in percentage increase, but the numbers remain small in absolute terms.

“The EG.5.1 variant plays only a minor role in the current increase in cases, which is driven primarily by the weather and constantly waning immunity. There is nothing that feels particularly concerning about EG.5.1, relative to the many other Omicron sub-variants in circulation.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/map-covid-cases-uk-eris-b2388876.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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End of my tether?

I am feeling very feeble indeed today for no obvious reason. Is the reason simply that I am 80? It's possible. Anyway I have put up a small offering on http://pcwatch.blogspot.com as usual

A Sabbath thought

Most Christians celebrate the pagan day of the Sun as their holy day. They justify that by saying that Christ rose from the dead on Sunday.  But he did not.  The women found the empty tomb on Sunday morning, which implies that he rose on the Saturday.  As it says in Matthew 28:

"After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he[a] lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead"

So Saturday is again the proper holy day

Still hanging in there

I am still in the grip of an ailment that deprives me of all of my energy. As before, however, I am battling on and have written something for http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH), which see

Another semi-hiatus

I am still in the grip of some mysterious illness that both gives me pain and saps me of all my energy. But you can't keep a good blogger down so I have once again written something for http://pcwatch.blogspot.com that I think will have wide interest

Still ailing

Despite still being rather fragile with ill health, I have managed to write something that I think will be of wide interest. It is now up on http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

Hiatus

I am not very well today so no blogging. I hope to be back tomorrow

Using vaccines as a political weapon, U.S. military leaders have wrecked the force’s combat readiness and morale

Under pressure from Republicans in Congress, the Defense Department announced at the start of this year that it would no longer require American service members to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

The policy change faced fierce resistance from the military’s top brass, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. In a memo sent in January repealing the requirement for soldiers to be vaccinated, Secretary Austin continued to credit the vaccine with “the many lives we saved … and the high level of readiness we have maintained.”

But critics of the military’s COVID-19 policy, including active and former service members who spoke with Tablet for this article, tell a different story. They say that the requirement for troops to receive the new vaccines, which included those with natural immunity after recovering from previous COVID-19 infections, was damaging to morale and hurt the military’s combat readiness. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has repeatedly pointed to medical data which suggests that enforcing mass vaccinations on a generally young and healthy population may have actually caused an increase in non-COVID-19 related health problems in the force, though the Defense Department has not provided him or Tablet with a clear interpretation of that data.

By the time the Pentagon announced it was ending the mandate, 96% of service members across the armed forces had been vaccinated. However, a significant number of troops declined the shots, objecting on religious, scientific, or medical grounds. Of those objectors, 8,339 were kicked out of the military, a loss that was particularly acute coming in the midst of the worst recruitment crisis in 50 years, which saw the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force all struggling to attract or retain members. The number of ejected objectors might continue to rise, as more service members who declined to get the jab are penalized for “refusing to obey a lawful order.” Many of those who were forced out, meanwhile, were given a “general” discharge rather than an “honorable” one, putting them at a disadvantage for future employment.

While a 96% compliance rate suggests general cohesion and a functioning military, the lurking reality is that a large percentage of troops who got the vaccine appear to have done so under duress. Tablet spoke with eight active and former service people for this article who come from some of the Army’s most prestigious units, as well as the Coast Guard. They paint a picture of a force that is divided and embittered and say that many of their compatriots resented being forced to take the shots against their will or even conscience in order to keep food on the table for their families. One soldier estimated that as many as 90% of his unit didn’t want to get the shots, and that many who caved now feel they should have held out for the mandate to be repealed. Another said he only knew three people in his entire platoon that got the shots “of their own volition” prior to the implementation of the mandate.

John Frankman, who declined the shot and left the Army in July 2023 after eight years of active service, including three as a Green Beret, told Tablet, “I’m getting out specifically because of the shot, even though it’s not mandatory anymore. I’ve lost out on enough opportunities, it doesn’t seem worthwhile for me to stay in.”

An Army infantryman from an elite unit who wished to remain anonymous told Tablet that he saw a senior noncommissioned officer from his unit tell a group of vaccine holdouts that they “were the reason America was in decline.” A paratrooper who spoke with Tablet anonymously said that leadership in his unit began an intense campaign to pressure soldiers to get the COVID-19 vaccines months before the Army officially implemented its mandate on Aug. 24, 2021. The paratrooper says that he heard a company commander in his unit say that he would “make my soldiers’ lives as miserable as fucking possible until they get the shot.”

They paint a picture of a force that is divided and embittered and say that many of their compatriots resented being forced to take the shots against their will or even conscience in order to keep food on the table for their families.

For the commanders, meanwhile, who were tasked with enforcing public health positions that turned out to be false, there are now concerns about reputational damage. “Soldiers know your position. You can say some untruths [and] no one’s going to give you a hard time about that,” said one former company commander. “But when you’re changing the story every week and obviously just saying nonsense because your higher command is telling you that … I saw personally that we were alienating our rank and file in a big way. We were losing their trust, and I didn’t want to be a part of that.”

In many cases, commanders embraced these policies with a commitment that went beyond the zeal for enforcing Army policies that is common among junior officers, according to the paratrooper. Rather, he calls the push to make soldiers get the COVID-19 vaccine the single most “divisive and destructive” event he witnessed in the military in more than a decade of service. As he would later write in a formal complaint submitted to the Army that was reviewed by Tablet, the COVID-19 vaccination “became by far the most important issue in our brigade and in the division.” That memo continued:

In order to get reluctant soldiers to take these experimental vaccines, commanders […] were encouraged to use all manners of persuasion and bullying, and even to do things that were plainly illegal (such as denying soldiers the right to attend career-enhancing military schools based on their vaccination status).
From the military’s standpoint, the mandate was not just a matter of life and death but also of national security. If infections swept through the ranks due to troops refusing to take available vaccines, not only would that destroy morale and discipline, but it could also leave the country unable to respond to an attack or emergency.

The problem with this argument is twofold: First, COVID-19 never posed a significant acute risk to healthy young people—the very demographic that overwhelmingly makes up the military—which means the vaccination drive was, at best, unnecessary. And secondly, according to several sources, the military’s approach to the vaccines, rather than emphasizing combat readiness, was used as a disciplinary tool to enforce political conformity and punish independent thought and ideological dissent.

“I’ve seen everything from [Don’t Ask Don’t Tell] repealed to gay marriage legalized to people are allowed to put gay pride flags in their offices now,” said a member of an elite infantry unit with over a decade of service. The jarring thing, he explained, was that the same military that boasts about its tolerance became rigidly intolerant on the question of bodily autonomy and vaccines. “You can get exemptions for religious beards if you’re Muslim, you can get an exemption to wear headgear, instead of your issued hat. That’s fine. I’m all for it … If you can do the job you should be allowed to do it … But then for a vaccine that’s violating the Nuremberg Code, and all of the sudden we’re the problem, that’s what’s bizarre to me.”

Many of those who refused the vaccines did so on the grounds that the mandate violated the Nuremberg Code of ethics for “permissible medical experiments.” The first line of the code reads, “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.” Those citing the code point out that these COVID vaccines had not even finished their clinical trials at the time troops were being pressured and/or mandated to take them, and were therefore being asked to sacrifice their Nuremberg derived rights. Health authorities in the U.S. dismiss that claim on the grounds that the vaccines had received emergency authorizations and were therefore not strictly “experimental.”

With two exceptions, all the soldiers who spoke with Tablet insisted that they remain anonymous—even those who are already out of the service. One former officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, the Army’s legal branch, said: “The fact that I am not subject to the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice], that there is no way that they can touch me, and yet I still don’t want to identify myself, should tell you something.”

That attorney, along with several other soldiers interviewed for this article (all of whom come from different backgrounds and do not share a clear set of political views) painted a disturbing picture that went beyond concerns about vaccine mandates. Given how intensely polarized national debates around COVID became, the Pentagon’s vaccination push—even in a best case scenario—was likely to cause some dissension in the ranks. But according to these current and former service members, the policy was not the result of medical or warfighting needs. Rather, they say that the emphasis on vaccinations was part of a larger push to overtly politicize the military—one of the only institutions left in the U.S. that still retains a degree of broad bipartisan support.

It may be tempting to dismiss this account as merely the grumbling of an isolated group, but their concerns echo a larger public debate. A series of recent reports, insider leaks, and congressional hearings have highlighted the tension between the military’s newfound adoption of ideological causes and its traditional warfighting mission. Indeed, there is no real question that the military has become more ideological in recent years since the top brass, moving in step with the White House, now openly touts the embrace of progressive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. The debate is over whether such policies strengthen the military, as leaders from Secretary Austin down insist they do, or cripple it as whistleblowers, watchdog groups, and conservative politicians have claimed.

Last October, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar acknowledged that the military uses racial preferences as a criteria for acceptance to military service academies like West Point and ROTC contracts. The crucial point in Prelogar’s argument, and one that has been echoed by dozens of senior military leaders, including in an amicus brief filed to the Supreme Court last fall ahead of its ruling on affirmative actions policies in university admissions, is that engineering racial diversity is not simply a moral or social good but an imperative of warfighting. “It​​ is a critical national security imperative to attain diversity within the officer corps. And, at present, it’s not possible to achieve that diversity without race-conscious admissions,” Prelogar testified to the Supreme Court last October.

This is how the difficult and divisive questions about vaccinations—were they really necessary for healthy young people? Did the government and medical authorities misrepresent their risks and benefits?—became truly explosive. The Pentagon now treats its medical policies, diversity goals, and national security missions as inseparable if not interchangeable. That makes it nearly impossible for the military to do an honest internal assessment of how specific decisions affected the force and the nation’s overall warfighting capacity.

While the Pentagon at present may be ill-equipped to act as its own auditor, there is still a vital need for a clear-eyed assessment of how and why the military imposed vaccine mandates, and what the consequences of those mandates have been so far.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/thinning-the-ranks

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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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TrialSite in the Crosshairs: NewsGuard Attacks Any Media Countering “Official Truth”

Billing itself as “TRANSPARENT TOOLS TO COUNTER MISINFORMATION FOR READERS, BRANDS, AND DEMOCRACIES,” the nominally privately-owned NewsGuard is a fact-checker and browser tool which purports to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to truthful information. This firm has come under fire from both conservative and progressive media sources for its single-minded focus on allowing only one official version of reality to be presented to the public. Recently, NewsGuard contacted TrialSite (TSN) for the second time, essentially threatening to defame the site if it fails to take down or correct specific stories. All of this occurs in the context of 1) TrialSite currently suing the Trusted News Initiative for antitrust violations, and 2) a federal judge ordering the Biden administration to quit communicating with social media in efforts to stifle the First Amendment.

This article takes a look at the ”fact checker” and finds an obviously state-sponsored entity. Notably, while NewsGuard has critiqued TrialSite for publishing stories about problems with the COVID-19 vaccines, TSN has in fact, been one of the very few willing the publish the good, the bad, and the ugly about these medical products. In other words, TrialSite is one of the few objective media specializing in biomedical and health research producing unbiased news and analysis covering a range of points of view and data sources. TrialSite’s founder brings over two decades of direct experience developing FDA-compliant systems for clinical trials for the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies; this compares to the NewsGuard health editor that has exactly zero pragmatic real-world experience not only in life sciences but in healthcare generally. Why would this group try to harass TrialSite? How about what appears as blatant attempts of censorship?

Former CIA Director on advisory board

The Federalist, a conservative media source, offered us some insights into NewsGuard in 2022. They reported on NewsGuard advisory board member Michael Hayden, the “former” Central Intelligence Agency director (many folks believe there is no such thing as an ex-spy). Hayden is quoted as saying he is “perfectly fine” with misinformation as long as it serves purposes he approves of. The ex-spook served in the George W. Bush administration and also presided over the National Security Agency during the intelligence failure that was 911; a failure of cataclysmic proportions.

He commented on the fact that he was one of 50 intelligence veterans who signed a group letter prior to the 2020 election asserting that the indisputably true Hunter Biden laptop story was actually Russian propaganda. And the laptop contents tend to show that “then-candidate Joe Biden was lying when he denied ever discussing Hunter’s business with him, ‘or with anyone else.’”

The Federalist reports that actually, Joe Biden had met with Hunter’s partners and also “stood to personally profit from his son’s potentially criminal overseas ventures.” Also, NewsGuard is, “being deployed in schools to indoctrinate students regarding acceptable news sources.” As per this outlet, the “claims of Russian disinformation surrounding the laptop were disputed by the FBI, the Department of Justice, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, and the Department of State all before Election Day.”

Report from the left

From the other side of the political spectrum, all the way back in 2019, The Black Agenda Report offered more scathing critiques of NewsGuard. Billing itself as “News, commentary and analysis from the black left,” this outlet argued that “it will soon become almost impossible to avoid this neocon-approved news site’s ranking systems on any technological device sold in the US.” In one example, MintPress Editor-in-Chief Mnar Muhawesh was “informed that it was under review by an organization called NewsGuard Technologies, which described itself to MintPress as simply a ‘news rating agency’ and asked Muhawesh to comment on a series of allegations, several of which were blatantly untrue.”

Yet an examination of the fact-checker shows that it is both funded by and connected to “the U.S. government, neo-conservatives, and powerful monied interests, all of whom have been working overtime since the 2016 election to silence dissent to American forever-wars and corporate-led oligarchy.”

The Report notes that NewsGuard was then lobbying hard to get its news site rankings “installed by default on computers in U.S. public libraries, schools, and universities as well as on all smartphones and computers sold in the United States.” And “Tom Ridge, the former secretary of Homeland Security…is on News Guard’s advisory board.”

Mainstream media misinformation given a pass

Per this left-wing media, NewsGuard’s bias can be seen in its high marks for CNN and the Washington Post, both of which have a history of their own misinformation. For example, in 2016, CNN reported that it was illegal for folks to read WikiLeaks releases and also “illegally colluded with the DNC to craft presidential debate questions.”

This CNN-Hillary Clinton collusion was quite clear at the time to savvy media consumers. Then in 2017, CNN published “a fake story that a Russian bank linked to a close ally of President Donald Trump was under Senate investigation. That same year, CNN was forced to retract a report that the Trump campaign had been tipped off early about WikiLeaks documents damaging to Hillary Clinton when it later learned the alert was about material already publicly available.”

And the Washington Post, “whose $600 million conflict of interest with the CIA goes unnoted by NewsGuard, has also published false stories since the 2016 election, including one article that falsely claimed that ‘Russian hackers’ had tapped into Vermont’s electrical grid.” Other NewsGuard advisors included Richard Stengel, a former Undersecretary of State who called his old government job “chief propagandist.”

And he has said that he is “not against propaganda. Every country does it and they have to do it to their own population, and I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.” Hypocritically, while NewsGuard judges media firms for transparency, its own “Securities and Exchange Commission Form D — which was filed March 5, 2018 — states that the company ‘declined to disclose’ the size of its total revenue.”

$749,387 from the Department of Defense

Further lack of transparency can be seen in the fact-checker’s “our investors” webpage. That page’s statement is, “Revenue Sources: NewsGuard’s revenue comes from Internet Service Providers, browsers, search engines, social platforms, education providers, hospital systems, advertising agencies, brand safety providers, researchers, and others paying to use NewsGuard’s ratings and Nutrition Labels and associated data.”

Yet publicly available data shows a $749,387 award from the US Department of Defense in 2021. Was this to vet COVID-19 information covering for Big Pharma?

And yet another conservative source, PragerU, has pointed out that “NewsGuard is partnered with Big Tech companies (like Microsoft), Big Pharma (like the PR firm for Pfizer—the maker of the COVID vaccine), government agencies (like the Department of Defense), and even national teachers unions (like the American Federation of Teachers) ‘to combat disinformation, especially around COVID-19 and elections’ according to the World Economic Forum.

They want to control the narrative on any and every topic—from climate change, COVID-19 treatments and vaccines to elections, Planned Parenthood, and the WEF (to name just a few!).”

Military contractor

Despite its limited description of its “investors” NewsGuard does acknowledge being a military contractor. Its own site says that its purview includes, “Equipping defense and military personnel with tools to track state-sponsored narratives---NewsGuard’s analysts are experienced journalists trained to identify and track state-sponsored disinformation sources and narratives targeting Western democracies. Using OSINT [Open-Source Intelligence] methods and a thorough, journalistic approach, NewsGuard’s team captures data and insights about disinformation sources and narratives that can be used by defense personnel as an early warning system about emerging threats and layered on to existing open-source collection and analysis tools to provide an additional layer of human-intelligence insights.” They go on to state that, “In 2020, NewsGuard was selected as a winner of a contest run by the National Security Innovation Network, a joint State Department and Department of Defense group seeking solutions that would help the agencies ‘evaluate disinformation narrative themes in near real-time.’ In the ensuing project, NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints were combined with AI/ML social listening tools to monitor content containing state-sponsored mis- and disinformation and to identify state-sponsored sources publishing those false narratives.”

NewsGuard censored lab-leak theory of COVID-19

It has been noted by a US House Judiciary Committee witness that “NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index, both taxpayer-funded, are urging advertisers to boycott disfavored publications and direct their funding to favored ones. The organizations have been caught spreading disinformation, including that the COVID lab leak theory is a debunked conspiracy theory, and seeking to discredit publications which accurately reported on Hunter Biden’s laptop, such as the New York Post[.]” A military contractor with the CIA director on its advisory board deciding what we are allowed to hear---What could go wrong?

Finally, the chap who harasses TrialSite this time is the group’s health editor. This questionable organization’s health editor is a graduate from Columbia College in Chicago and has exactly zero healthcare experience. Couple that with TrialSite’s founder who has spent over two decades developing FDA-compliant clinical and regulatory systems for some of the largest pharmaceutical companies on the planet including a sizable Pfizer contract in 2006. TrialSite's network of experts know far more about FDA-regulated research than anything NewsGuard can muster. Plus, how can the organization hire a health editor with no pragmatic healthcare experience? Well, that tells you something else about NewsGuard. This serves as a front to protect the markets of the largest media companies, and likely, as a front for more nefarious state-sponsored censorship, although this is not conclusively proven just because a key advisory director is ex-CIA director and they get sizable DoD contracts. It most certainly smells and doesn’t bode well for democracy.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/trialsite-in-the-crosshairs-newsguard-attacks-any-media-countering-official-truth-0f44ca22

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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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Hiatus

I will once again take a break from posting here on a Friday. I had lots of medical and social matters to attend to today so have had no time or energy for blogging. Being aged 80 does limit my energies. Sabbath tomorrow but I will be back on Sunday

Stanford Medicine POV: SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Far More Toxic that mRNA Vax-Elicited Spike—But is this Accurate?

A key component of the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein plays a crucial role in the virus’s ability to enter and infect human cells. Understanding spike protein is essential for the development of vaccines and therapeutics to combat the virus. Importantly the mRNA vaccines rapidly developed to help train the human body to fend off SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, also offers the host’s molecular machinery instructions to produce the spike protein.

While the spike protein associated with the mRNA vaccines are not supposed to remain in the individual vaccinated for more than a few days to a week or so, study after study now suggests that in some cases the mRNA-induced spike protein may persist in circulation in the human body for months, even over a year. In fact, nascent research points to the toxicity of this circulating “free” spike protein but mainstream medicine remains hesitant about the role of the mRNA vaccine induced spike protein and its role in COVID-19 vaccine injury. Recently published in Stanford Medicine’s Scope, science writer Bruce Goldman compares and contrasts the spike protein associated with the virus versus that of the vaccine. The Stanford science writer acknowledges that all is not perfect with the mRNA vaccines, in particular the elicited spike protein, but he doesn’t allow himself the intellectual curiosity to investigate and report on the growing body of research evidencing the potential risks associated with these vaccine-created spike proteins, especially when they continue to circulate, freely, not neutralized by antibodies. This latte scenario, although somewhat rare, can potentially lead to serious, even deadly consequences.

Before delving into Goldman’s overview a brief prime of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein,. What follows are key elements associated with the virus’s spike protein:

The spike protein is a common target for mutations in SARS-CoV-2. Some of these mutations can lead to the emergence of new variants of the virus, which may have altered transmissibility, virulence, or immune escape properties.

Vaccine Development

Many COVID-19 vaccines target the spike protein to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies and mount an immune response against the virus. Some vaccines use a small part of the spike protein (mRNA vaccines), while others use a weakened version of the virus containing the spike protein (viral vector vaccines).

Therapeutics

Some experimental treatments for COVID-19 focus on targeting the spike protein to prevent viral entry into cells or inhibit its function

Importantly a better understanding of the structure and function of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein has been crucial in the development of effective vaccines and treatments to combat the virus. Vaccines that elicit an immune response against the spike protein have been successful in reducing the severity of COVID-19 and preventing hospitalization and death. Ongoing research continues to deepen our understanding of this protein and its role in the virus's infectivity and pathogenicity.

Some Challenges not Widely Discussed

The Stanford Medicine science scribe points to the billions of doses of the mRNA vaccine administered during the pandemic, leading to an unquestionable saving of lives.

It’s been sort of taboo to offer any critical assessment of the mRNA vaccines in mainstream media, or even in the pharmaceutical trade press. Even with medical journals, case series or studies centering on serious side effects of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines must always come with an accompanying passage that essentially declares the risk benefit analysis favors vaccination over not getting vaccinated.

Problems arise with the mRNA vaccines when considering “the molecular delivery vehicles now used to transport mRNA to the right places into the body.” Why? Because as the Stanford Medicine writer points out sometimes these get delivered to the wrong places “or hold on to that cargo rather than letting it go once they get inside our cells.” In fact, Goldman points to research ongoing in Standard looking to overcome these challenges.

The Cargo

Transport mechanism aside and the mRNA vaccines, Stanford’s Goldman asks about the cargo itself—that is those “mRNA strands in the vaccine.” Or even “more specifically” he suggests the key question becomes “what about the protein that this cargo instructs our cells to make in profusion?”

Goldman shares in clear, easy to follow format:

“In the case of COVID-19, that would be the infamous spike protein, which dots SARS-CoV-2's coat, picks locks on cells' outer surfaces and catapults the virus into them.” Referring to the mRNA vaccine induced spike protein’s “multiple talents” which make it “essential to the virus’s ability to infect our cells.”

It’s designed perfectly to make itself an object of the human immune system writes, Goldman, with its many prominent spikes protruding outward according to Mark Davis, PhD, Stanford Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection who also according to Goldman happens to be an authority on immune response.

But is the mRNA induced spike protein toxic?

A growing number of front-line physicians, and independent scientists have claimed that the spike protein associated with the vaccine can in fact become toxic when it freely flows throughout the body.

In fact they claim that this toxic protein can, if in circulation, show up in various organs and cells. And in fact, TrialSite has reported on several if not a dozen studies that indicate this can and does occur.

While enormous pressure mounts to keep up a certain narrative about the mRNA vaccine induced spike protein (e.g., that it remains local near the injection, that it clears from the body via the lymphatic system within days and that its not linked to vaccine injury) the science unfortunately pulls in a different direction.

The mRNA vaccine induced spike protein now has been shown to be able to remain in the body for over a year, while it can show up in just about any organ or cell in the body. Mounting evidence points to the spike protein as a troublesome to even deadly trigger.

Stanford Medicine’s Bruce Goldman reports that “A number has flagged that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein may be toxic even on its own—say if released as debris from a shattered viral particle. And the science writer goes a step further acknowledging the nascent science pointing out that “contact with the spike protein appears to damage endothelial cells.” Of course, these ubiquitous cells cover all blood vessels throughout the human body “including the hundreds of billions in our lungs.”

The Big Question

Now the above points frames the big question, which frankly is about time that major academic medical centers start addressing.

“if spike proteins are toxic, wouldn't a vaccine that causes our cells to make them be toxic, too? Could the mRNA vaccines directed at SARS-CoV-2 trigger a deluge of that protein into the bloodstream, where it could wreak havoc with heavily vascularized organs such as the heart, intestine and, of course, lungs?”

Downplaying the Concern?

According to several Stanford Medicine experts, the logic that the mRNA spike protein is dangerous becomes less of a concern. For starters these experts would say “For virtually every spike-protein molecule induced by vaccination, the cell that made it becomes its jail cell.” Meaning overwhelmingly the molecular mechanism of action mitigates the potential for damage most of the time.

Stanford’s Mark Davis, again an expert in immune response says “The spike proteins made by SARS-CoV-2-infected cells and the spike proteins cells produced in response to the vaccine are nearly, although not exactly, identical.” And importantly form this point of view these differences are in essence, profound in terms of outcomes.

Dr. Davis points to the sticky transmembrane domains associated with the spike protein cells elicited by the mRNA vaccine. They play two roles including 1) riveting the protein to the intact pathogen’s fatty outer coat and 2) as a catalyzer, facilitating penetration of cells the SARS-CoV-2 virus attempts to penetrate.

Key Differences

According to Davis and the other Stanford experts, and that prominent Silicon Valley institution of higher learning clearly will have some of the best, the mechanisms of action of the spike protein inside the SARS-CoV-2 infected cell differ markedly from those that are generated form the mRNA vaccine process, goes the logic.

In this case the viral pathogen takes over the cell’s “protein-making machinery” thus forcing on a rapid fire replication of copies of the invading pathogen’s own proteins in addition to genetic material. As this process ensues, most new spike proteins are thereafter incorporated into new viral particles, capitalizing on their ability to evolve, finding and continuously exploiting novel ways of escaping from the cell that produced them. Thus these “particles are free to invade the cell next door o spill into the circulatory system” and elsewhere

Here Goldman reminds the reader “that the COVID-19 vaccine's cargo is a bunch of mRNA strands that, once safely inside a cell, direct the production of a whole lot of a single substance: the spike protein.” But he argues that “Once produced inside a vaccine-recipient cell, it has no escape accomplices (the other components of the viral structure) to latch onto, because the cell isn't making them.” Then goes the logic, the protein lacks any “dependable passage out of the cell.”

In fact, Stanford’s Dr. Davis told the science writer “the vast majority of vaccine-induced spike proteins float or are carried, either intact or sawed into snippets by enzymes inside the cell, to the cell's outer membrane.” Stuck there, they accumulate at this important location, one where “the immune system can most easily spot them and mount a coordinated response.” Peter Kim,a Stanford vaccinologist and biochemistry professor supports this argument stating “An intact vaccine-generated spike protein molecule, by virtue of its transmembrane domain, almost invariably sticks to the cell that makes it.”

Final Thoughts—Something Seems Off

Stanford’s Goldman pointed out in the medical school’s magazine:

“The sudden appearance of a new kind of vaccine has generated concerns ranging from the spurious to the undeniable.”

The writer attempts to mitigate the more severe damage from the COVID-19 vaccine’s rare, but real adverse outcomes by noting that “their lack of toxicity may not be absolute” they “are a good bet to be a lot less toxic than the spike protein produced during the vial infections the vaccines prevent.”

Actually, to clarify the vaccines have struggled preventing infection, due to variant mutation and durability challenges with the vaccines themselves, but they have helped reduce the probability of more severe infection. And as a consequence the COVID-19 vaccines have saved lives.

But importantly Goldman doesn’t go deep enough into the unfolding science of COVID-19 vaccine injury, or so-called “long Vax.” Basically establishing by his logic that the risk-benefit analyses by far benefit the COVID-19 vaccines because among other things (saving lives, and the like) the toxicity associated with the infection is far, far worse than those associated with the supposed cure.

Yet Goldman ignores significant emerging bodies of research emphasizing the concept of fee spike protein for example. As the spike protein does escape and thereafter circulates throughout the body, potentially acting as a toxic agent, it is supposedly neutralized by the antibodies elicited by the vaccine itself. However, for whatever reason this does not always occur.

Why are so many scholars and scientific journalists ignoring or downplaying the mounting literature raising the specter of concern? One recent example would be a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Circulation titled “Circulating Spike Protein Detected in Post-COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Myocarditis” authored by Lael Yonker, MD Massachusetts General Hospital and colleagues.

Does Goldman’s recent piece in Stanford Medicine’s Scope represent a more objective, unbiased comprehensive unfolding scientific view, or rather, is the analysis framed, directed by powerful underlying ideological forces permeating academic medical center labs, halls and offices?

A recent independent (non-industry ties) study out of Switzerland (University of Basel) found that nearly 3% of all healthcare professionals vaccinated had a form of myocarditis, albeit mild, most certainly jolting those independent thinkers into a heightened vigilance mode.

Why aren’t more scientists looking critically into the topic of free spike protein and the potential for toxicity and injury for example? According to Goldman, well, after talking to some experts at his institution the answer is clear—for the reasons mentioned above the spike proteins associated with the mRNA vaccines are just so much less toxic than the real thing. But is this really the kind of science that truly advances human knowledge? Or are powerful economic, political and social agendas inherently influencing science now?

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/stanford-medicine-pov-sars-cov-2-spike-protein-far-more-toxic-that-mrna-vax-elicited-spikebut-is-this-accurate-d3cde594

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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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Dr. Anthony Fauci is caught in his biggest COVID lie yet

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has announced a criminal referral of Dr. Anthony Fauci to the Department of Justice over his apparent lying during congressional testimony in 2021.

Fauci insisted repeatedly that the National Institutes of Health had never funded any gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Paul contended at the time, in arguing with Fauci, that the research done on viruses at WIV — which got US funding — matched the NIH’s own description of gain-of-function research and accused Fauci of playing word games.

Now Fauci is damned by his own words.

A newly surfaced February 2020 email about a COVID task-force call between him, his associates and UK science big Dr. Jeremy Farrar shows Fauci not only using the term “gain-of-function” to describe the work at Wuhan, but highlighting serious misgivings about the virus being of natural origin.

So not only does it look like Fauci was at the very least obfuscating during the 2021 testimony; it shows that he and other senior scientists (including then-NIH head Francis Collins, who was on the call) also took the lab-leak origin theory of COVID seriously.

Rand Paul announces ‘official criminal referral,’ says email shows Fauci COVID testimony ‘absolutely a lie’
At least before they panicked and launched a massive behind-the-scenes effort to suppress it — likely to hide their own possible complicity in funding work that might’ve unleashed COVID on the world.

To do that they bullied scientists dependent on the millions in grant money they controlled and whipped compliant media into a frenzy over “disinformation.”

In fact, that very same month a Post op-ed by Steven Mosher got smothered by Facebook and Twitter for suggesting the exact same thing Fauci & Co. admitted they were worried about to Farrar.

That view — that COVID came from a lab — is now increasingly the belief of the US federal government.

And of every thinking person, especially after evidence appeared indicating the first three Patients Zero of COVID were WIV employees.

But we may never know for sure, in part thanks to Fauci & Co’s fight to prevent any real inquiry within China at the pandemic’s start. That leaves the whole world more vulnerable.

How many more of these damning revelations is it going to take before Fauci & Co. face a single consequence for their actions?

https://nypost.com/2023/07/31/dr-anthony-faucis-caught-in-his-biggest-covid-lie-yet/

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Australia's ABC is sticking to its wrong call

No admission that they could have got it wrong. They are Leftists and Leftists have a soft spot for Communist regimes so they are still trying to protect China

New claims that America’s leading infectious diseases adviser ­Anthony Fauci downplayed concerns that Covid-19 originated from a laboratory will not be ­acknowledged by the ABC’s Media Watch program and its host Paul Barry until a lab leak “proves to be the source of the Covid-19 outbreak”.

Since the pandemic began, the TV presenter has on numerous ­occasions been highly critical of Sky News host Sharri Markson’s reporting, including concerns in the science and intelligence ­community that a lab leak was plausible.

A world exclusive by Markson published in The Weekend Australian on Saturday included her interview with Robert Kadlec, ­former assistant secretary for ­preparedness and response at the US Department of Health.

Dr Kadlec said that he, Dr Fauci and National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins had discussed how they could “turn down the temperature” on accusations against China during the early days of the pandemic.

Dr Kadlec, in his first ever ­interview, told Markson that they tried to encourage a group of ­leading international scientists to reduce speculation about the ­origins of the virus. In a phone call on February 1, 2020, the scientists discussed concerns that SARS-CoV-2 looked like it might have been genetically engineered.

“When we talked about this in advance of that call, he (Fauci) would just try and see if he could get the scientists to take the temperature down, turn the rhetoric down, to at least find, we’re going to look into this, but we don’t know,” Dr Kadlec told Markson.

The Australian contacted Barry about the latest revelations on the weekend, but he did not ­respond. However, Media Watch executive producer Timothy Latham responded on his behalf in an email: “As Paul has previously said, if the Wuhan lab proves to be the source of the Covid-19 outbreak, we will update viewers and apologise to Ms Markson for our criticism.”

He included a link to an article The Australian published in 2021 asking Barry if he would acknowledge fresh allegations that were ­revealed in a Sky News documentary, What Really Happened in Wuhan, presented by Markson.

In a Media Watch segment on May 5, 2020, Barry dismissed Markson’s initial reporting on the origins of Covid-19 and repeatedly used the phrases “conspiracy theories” and “conspiracy theorists”, finishing his segment by saying: “Conspiracy theories like this are so hard to kill.”

He told viewers in the same report: “So how likely is it that the virus escaped from that Chinese lab? Well in short, it’s not.”

Among those to initially refute claims the virus could have originated from a lab leak was the ABC’s health expert Dr Norman Swan who in 2020 said he had “looked into this and other journalists have looked into this as well as scientists and there really is very little evidence”. “It’s on the outer bounds of possibility, but really so unlikely that you could say … it’s not the case,” he said.

However in May 2021 he said “in recent weeks alternate views of the sequencing have emerged which are quite compelling and a growing number of respected scientists are making a good argument”.

An ABC spokesman would not comment on the criticisms of Markson’s reporting and there was no response from chair Ita Buttrose.

It has also been revealed on the weekend, by The Wall Street Journal, that Facebook removed content relating to Covid-19 in response to pressure it received from the Biden administration.

The newspaper’s report included revelations about internal company communications, including emails divulging details of executives of Facebook (whose parent company is Meta) discussing how they handled users’ posts about the origin of a pandemic and the administration was seeking to control the narrative. “We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more,” responded a Facebook vice-president in charge of content policy, speaking of the Biden administration. “We shouldn’t have done it.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/business/abc-media-watch-program-wont-correct-record-on-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-until-it-proves-to-be-source-of-covid19/news-story/4db7cfd046aa4225618f185d90e0cd63

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Smell and Taste Disorders After COVID-19 Vaccination: Case Series

Post-vaccination conditions related to olfactory (sense of smell) and gustatory (sense of taste) dysfunctions have been reported in the literature with case studies. On the other hand, these dysfunctions are unknown by many clinicians and their underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. In this article, we summarize a report that included six cases with taste and smell problems to shed light on this issue. TrialSite continuously reports case studies about neurological conditions attributed to COVID-19 vaccines.

A 2021 article published in Ear, Nose & Throat Journal entitled “COVID-19: Post-vaccine Smell and Taste Disorders: Report of 6 Cases” is summarized in this article. Although organizations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) refer to available vaccines as safe and effective, there are case studies demonstrating temporal associations between vaccines and adverse effects.

Sample and methodology

Patients were recruited from five European hospitals including Sassari University Hospital (Italy), Ferrara University (Italy), Foch Hospital of Paris (France), CHU Brugmann (Belgium) and CHU Saint-Pierre (Belgium). Patients must have self-reported smell and taste issues days after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination to be included. Taste problems were operationally defined as an impaired perception of salty, sweet, bitter or sour. Patients who had a history of COVID-19 throughout the six months before the vaccination and who had a positive COVID-19 reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) were excluded.

Findings

Six patients were included in the study. Five of them were female and their age range was 25 to 50 years.

Case 1: A 25-year-old female with an unremarkable medical history received the first shot of AstraZeneca vaccine and developed a partial loss of smell. Her olfactory and gustatory evaluations demonstrated hyposmia (partial or complete loss of smell). She did not experience any taste problems. Her smell problem lasted for 10 days and her examination 40 days after the onset demonstrated normal results without any treatment. She received a second vaccine dose and did not experience any side effects.

Case 2: A 27-year-old female presented with a partial loss of smell. It lasted for two months after the first shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine when she presented. No other symptoms were reported including taste problems and the patient had no prior medical history. Without any formal treatment, she reported experiencing an improvement in her sense of smell nine days after the first vaccine shot. 40 days later, her examination showed a normal sense of smell. No adverse effects were reported after the second dose of vaccine.

Case 3: A 51-year-old female presented with a total loss of smell two days after her first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine. She also reported other symptoms such as fever, chills and arthralgia (joint pain). The smell dysfunction lasted seven days and improved gradually after that. She also reported fever and arthralgia after the second dose was administered.

Case 4: A 30-year-old female with no prior medical history reported a total loss of smell after the second shot of Pfizer vaccine. She did not report any side effects after the first administration. Within days after the second vaccination, she also reported rhinorrhea, a runny nose. Four days after the onset of her smell dysfunction, she reported a gradual improvement.

Case 5: A 44-year-old male presented with arthralgia, myalgia (muscle pain), and abdominal pain 10 days after the first shot of AstraZeneca vaccine. The patient had a history of renal lithiasis, a disease caused by the presence of kidney stones. His taste for sweets increased significantly, while his perception of salty taste disappeared. His exams showed no signs of cleft inflammation. Taste examination confirmed the loss of saltiness while other tastes were normal. Symptoms disappeared after 10 days except for the taste disorder (dysgeusia) that lasted for seven weeks. No adverse effects were reported after the second dose of vaccine.

Case 6: A 33-year-old female reported severe parosmia (a distorted sense of smell) and phantosmia (a sense of odors even in the absence of odorant triggers) after the second dose of Pfizer vaccine. She also reported myalgia, arthralgia and fatigue. After seven days, these symptoms resolved. She also had a history of COVID-19 eight months prior with a loss of smell lasting one week. After vaccination, hyposmia was found on examination which confirmed the self-report. She received oral corticosteroid treatment for a week along with vitamins. Her symptoms had resolved completely six weeks after vaccination.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/smell-and-taste-disorders-after-covid-19-vaccination-case-series-2282f861

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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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Subclinical Heart Damage More Prevalent Than Thought After Moderna Vaccination: Study

Damage to the heart is more common than thought after receipt of Moderna’s COVID-19 booster, a new study indicates.

One in 35 health care workers at a Swiss hospital had signs of heart injury associated with the vaccine, mRNA-1273, researchers found.

“mRNA-1273 booster vaccination-associated elevation of markers of myocardial injury occurred in about one out of 35 persons (2.8%), a greater incidence than estimated in meta-analyses of hospitalized cases with myocarditis (estimated incidence 0.0035%) after the second vaccination,” the researchers wrote in the paper, published by the European Journal of Heart Failure.

In a generally healthy population, the level would be about 1 percent, the researchers said.

The group experiencing the adverse effects was followed for only 30 days, and half still had unusually high levels of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T, an indicator of subclinical heart damage, at follow-up.

The long-term implications of the study remain unclear as little research has tracked people over time with heart injury after messenger RNA vaccination, which is known to cause myocarditis and other forms of heart damage.

“According to current knowledge, the cardiac muscle can’t regenerate, or only to a very limited degree at best. So it’s possible that repeated booster vaccinations every year could cause moderate damage to the heart muscle cells,” University Hospital Basel professor Christian Muller, a cardiologist and the lead researcher, said in a statement.

Moderna did not respond to a request for comment.

None of the patients experienced a major adverse cardiac event, such as heart failure, within 30 days of booster vaccination, and none had electrocardiogram changes.

The people with elevated levels were advised to avoid strenuous exercise, which may have mitigated more serious problems, the researchers said.

No imaging was done to examine the participants’ hearts, despite imaging being recommended by many cardiologists in cases of suspected vaccine-induced myocarditis.

It’s possible that imaging would have revealed inflammation, which could cause scarring or irregular heartbeat, Dr. Andrew Bostom, a heart expert in the United States who was not involved in the research, told The Epoch Times.

Dr. Anish Koka, an American cardiologist, said that the findings were “super useful to see how ‘cardioactive’ the booster is” but that it was hard to say how significant the elevated troponin levels were, particularly without a comparison to baseline levels. “There is really nothing clinically concerning at 30 days to report,” he said on Twitter.

Study Methods

Researchers posited that the incidence of vaccine-associated heart injury was more prevalent than previously thought following messenger RNA booster vaccination because of a lack of symptoms or mild symptoms.

They defined injury as a sharp increase in high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T on the third day after vaccination without evidence of an alternative cause. The levels of cardiac troponin had to hit the upper limit of normal, 8.9 nanograms per liter in women and 15.5 nanograms per liter in men.

All workers at the University Hospital Basel scheduled to receive a Moderna booster for the first time were offered a chance to participate in the study, unless they experienced a cardiac event or underwent heart surgery within 30 days of vaccination. The workers received a booster, which is half the dosage level of the primary series shots, from Dec. 10, 2021, to Feb. 10, 2022. The cohort ended up being 777 workers, including 540 females. The median age was 37 years.

Among the participants, 40 had elevated levels of cardiac troponin. Alternative causes were identified in 18. For the other 22, the researchers determined they had “vaccine-associated myocardial injury.” The median age of the 22 was 46. All but two were women, making the percentage of women with elevated levels higher than the percentage of men (3.7 percent versus 0.8 percent), which contrasts with most of the previous literature on vaccine-induced myocarditis. That could stem from women receiving a higher vaccine dose per body weight, the researchers said.

Baseline levels were not recorded because the hospital’s COVID-19 task force and the researchers decided that the study “should interfere as little as possible with the motivation of the hospital staff to obtain the mRNA-1273 first booster vaccination and the logistics of booster vaccination itself.”

None of the people with elevated markers had a history of heart disease. While half experienced symptoms, most symptoms were nonspecific like fever. Two participants suffered from chest pain. And two, according to the Brighton Collaboration case definition, likely suffered myocarditis.

Testing was done for high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T because of its sensitivity.

“This marker is extremely sensitive—with other methods such as MRI we wouldn’t have been able to detect any damage to the cardiac muscle, as it only becomes visible once the damage there is about three to five times greater,” Dr. Muller said.

The researchers were not able to figure out the mechanism for the vaccine hurting the heart muscle.

The authors reported some conflicts of interest, including Dr. Muller reporting grants from drugmakers such as Novartis and Roche. The study was funded by the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel.

Limitations include the lack of baseline levels and lack of imaging.

Previous Findings, and Pending Study

Several other prospective studies examine myocarditis following Pfizer vaccination.

In Thailand, researchers found that 29 percent of 301 adolescents developed cardiovascular effects, including chest pain, after a second Pfizer dose. Seven were diagnosed with heart inflammation.

Researchers in Taiwan established baseline electrocardiogram levels before a second Pfizer dose and recorded abnormal results following the administration in one percent of 4,928 primary school students. That included five students diagnosed with myocarditis or an abnormal heartbeat.

And an Israeli study of 324 health care workers with a median age of 51 who received a second Pfizer booster identified two cases of vaccine-induced heart injury on day three.

Other recent studies have confirmed that vaccine-induced myocarditis can kill, including a South Korean study that ruled out all other possible causes for eight sudden deaths following messenger RNA vaccination. Myocarditis was not suspected as a clinical diagnosis or cause of death before autopsies were performed, researchers said.

The Swiss researchers said more prospective studies are needed to examine post-vaccination heart injury. Long-term problems from the injuries, they stressed, remain unclear.

Moderna was required by U.S. authorities to conduct a prospective study to assess the incidence of subclinical myocarditis following a booster among adults, with a projected completion date of June 30, 2023. Neither the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) nor Moderna have disclosed the results of the study as of yet.

Pfizer was required to conduct a similar study, with results due on Dec. 31, 2022, but the FDA changed the end date at the request of Pfizer.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/subclinical-heart-damage-more-prevalent-than-thought-after-moderna-vaccination-study-5423864

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The damage of Covid lockdowns is only now becoming apparent

Ross Clark

There are still those, like Matt Hancock, who think that lockdowns were an unalloyed good – who, indeed, believe that in a future pandemic we must lock down harder and faster. But for the rest of us, the appalling toll of Covid lockdowns continues to become apparent.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) reveals today that the number of people who are economically inactive due to long-term sickness has grown by 400,000 to 2.5 million since 2019. More than half of these people – 135,000 – report depression and anxiety as either the primary or secondary cause of their absence from the workplace.

Where is the outrage over these figures?

The pandemic has left us with virtually zero economic growth, much of which is blamed on high inflation and rising interest rates. But an important underlying cause too often goes without comment: a sharp rise in economic inactivity.

We cannot grow richer as a country if ever more people are unproductive. Yet the figures for economic inactivity tend to get smothered by the more frequently-reported unemployment statistics. Since the 1990s, these have been based on answers to the Labour Force Survey (an ONS questionnaire) and do not include people on long-term sickness benefits.

Meanwhile, the Centre for Social Justice has published its latest termly tracker of school absence for the autumn term of 2022, showing that school attendance has not even nearly recovered from repeated lockdowns. It reveals that 1.7 million pupils – 24 per cent of the total – missed more than 10 per cent of their lessons. Meanwhile 125,000 pupils missed more than half their lessons. This latter figure has more than doubled since before the pandemic; by contrast it was 60,000 in the same term of 2019.

The implications of all this for society are still fully to be felt. There is a long-established link between school absence and the descent into crime. The rise in school absences suggests that there could be an extra 9,000 young offenders, 2,000 of them violent criminals, by 2027.

Yet where is the outrage over these figures? The scandal of school absences hardly shows up in the news agenda. Disgracefully, the whole issue of missed education was pushed aside by artificially inflated exam grades in 2020 and 2021, when GCSE and A level results were based on teachers’ predictions for their pupils, not on actual exam results. On paper we have a generation which looks extremely well-educated – yet which in reality has huge gaps in its education.

The government’s considered pandemic plan prior to Covid 19 was not to close schools. But, come March 2020, advisers and ministers panicked, dumped the plan and imposed lockdown, closing schools for months on end. We will be living with the consequences for a very long time.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/the-damage-of-covid-lockdowns-is-only-now-becoming-apparent/

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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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Pediatrician Fired After Raising Alarm on COVID-19 Vaccines During US Senate Event

A medical expert was terminated by one of her employers after raising concerns about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines during an event held by a U.S. senator, according to newly disclosed documents.

After Dr. Renata Moon (who will appear on "American Thought Leaders" premiering Mon. Aug. 30, 7:30pm ET) testified during the December 2022 event on Capitol Hill, Washington State University officials told her that they were alerting a state medical commission because she allegedly promoted misinformation, one of the documents shows.

The Washington Medical Commission (WMC) has said that doctors who offer misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and preventative measures "erode the public trust in the medical profession and endanger patients," that people should lodge complaints against doctors who allegedly provide misinformation, and that it may revoke the licenses of doctors who are found to have spread misinformation.

Drs. Jeff Haney and James Record, Washington State University officials, referenced the commission in a letter to Dr. Moon dated March 3, 2023.

"The WMC has asked the public and practitioners to report possible spread of misinformation. There are components of your presentation that could be interpreted as a possible spread," they wrote. "As such, we are ethically obligated to make a report to the WMC to investigate possible breach of this expectation."

The university informed Dr. Moon in June 2023 that it was effectively firing her by not renewing her appointment as a clinical associate professor of medicine, according to other documents reviewed by The Epoch Times.

"At this time, the needs of the college are moving in a different direction and your participation is no longer required," Drs. Haney and Record wrote.

More detailed reasoning was not provided.

"This is not about my personal situation with the school. This is about freedom of speech for all Americans," Dr. Moon told The Epoch Times in an email. "We must create an ethical healthcare system that is concerned only with the well being of individual patients and not the financial interests of massive corporations. We are dealing with conflicts of interest that are larger than any of us ever imagined."

Testimony

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) convened Dr. Moon and other experts, including Drs. Peter McCullough and Robert Malone, to talk about COVID-19 vaccines. The event was titled, "COVID-19 Vaccines: What They Are, How They Work, and Possible Causes of Injuries."

Dr. Moon testified that she had only seen two or three cases of myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, while practicing for more than 20 years. But after the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, she said, she has been seeing more cases, and heard about others from fellow doctors.

"There's clearly been a massive increase," Dr. Moon said.

Dr. Moon also pulled out the package insert for the vaccines, or a piece of paper that typically outlines warnings, ingredients, and other information for a vaccine. The insert for the COVID-19 vaccines has no information and says, "intentionally blank," the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged.

"How am I to give informed consent to parents when this is what I have?" Dr. Moon said.

Regulators say people can access the information that is usually on the paper on the administration's website. One of the vaccine manufacturers has said that the COVID-19 vaccine inserts were left blank because the information was being updated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I have a government telling me that I have to say 'safe and effective' and if I don't, my license is at threat. We're seeing an uptick in myocarditis. We're seeing an uptick in adverse reactions. We have trusted these regulatory agencies—I have—for my entire career up until now," Dr. Moon testified. "Something is extremely wrong, and that is the anecdotal story that I have."

Myocarditis is caused by the COVID-19 vaccines, U.S. officials have confirmed. The heart inflammation primarily affects younger males and can cause death.

"It's my obligation to speak out. It's the obligation of any physician who thinks that there is a problem with a product to speak about that product, whether, honestly, whether they're right or wrong," Dr. Moon said on EpochTV's "ATL: Now." "And in this case, everything I said was completely factual."

Other Concerns

Drs. Haney and Record claimed Dr. Moon failed to request and report an absence in order to travel to Washington and testify on the panel, which would violate faculty rules.

They also said that Dr. Moon did not make clear she was not speaking on behalf of Washington State University, another possible rule violation, and that other parts of the roundtable were "inconsistent with expectations of the evidence-based medical education expected in developing a future generation of physicians."

They added, "The expressed views will require us to review your teaching assignments in the frame of the education of our students."

Emails reviewed by The Epoch Times show Dr. Moon did not list the university in a bio she provided Mr. Johnson's office. The bio stated that her views were her own and that she was not speaking on behalf of any institutions with which she has or is affiliated.

Mr. Johnson, in introducing Dr. Moon, did not mention any institution but also did not mention the latter part of the bio.

Dr. Moon's placard did not list an institution. One of the video streams of the panel listed Washington State University. A university investigator noted that in one email.

"I was unaware of this happening and did everything in my power to prevent it by sending the press release and making sure not to mention the name of any employer either with my words or on the cardboard placard in front of me," Dr. Moon told The Epoch Times.

According to other emails, Dr. Moon requested substitutes for Dec. 6, 2021, and Dec. 8, 2021, the days before and after the panel. She was not scheduled to teach on the day of the panel. University employees responded to the messages by saying they were looking for or had found substitutes, and the university investigator confirmed that substitutes were ultimately found for both days.

"I did it the way we've always done it. My senior physicians approved it; we had substitutes for my classes," Dr. Moon told The Epoch Times.

A university spokesman declined to comment on the situation.

"As a matter of policy WSU does not comment on personnel matters," the spokesman told The Epoch Times via email.

It's unclear if the university ultimately referred Dr. Moon to the medical commission. Dr. Moon is part of a lawsuit against the commission for enforcing its misinformation statement without proper adoption. She says the threat of having her license revoked caused her to not renew her license and has impacted her constitutional right to free speech.

Trend?

Dr. Moon said she's concerned about medical schools no longer serving as venues for discussion and critical thinking.

She recalled being called into the office of a superior over student complaints. She learned that the students complained about Dr. Moon noting correctly that some information about the COVID-19 vaccines was unknown, such as where in the body the ingredients were distributed and whether they would cause certain health problems.

"I just engaged in some critical thinking with my students. I thought it was something that we're supposed to do in discussion groups, and they had asked me, right?" Dr. Moon said.

"They said that I had caused them trauma and harm by telling them that the vaccines might not be 100 percent safe. Again, these are medical students. This is a medical school. Nothing is 100 percent safe, not even aspirin is 100 percent safe. Everything has the potential for a reaction. So to have that be a complaint against me really surprised me and it really concerned me."

Another complaint related to how Dr. Moon, after students asked how her week in the clinic had gone, relayed how she had seen anxious and depressed children.

Dr. Moon attributed the problems to the harsh lockdowns imposed in Washington state, like much of the country, and questioned why those policies were put into place when children face little risk from COVID-19.

"I just said to my students, I think we need to rethink this masking that we're doing and the social distancing and isolating, I wonder if CDC has considered that we need to think about isolating our more vulnerable in our communities and keeping them more safe and keeping them at home but letting our kids go out there," Dr. Moon said, referring to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"My students again stated that they were traumatized and harmed by that discussion, in a discussion group in a graduate-level medical school," Dr. Moon said. "This is happening nationwide. Our students have lost that ability, I think, to tolerate critical thinking, and to hear perspectives that are different than the main narrative or the main party line that is being pushed."

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/pediatrician-fired-after-raising-alarm-on-covid-19-vaccines-during-us-senate-event-5431515

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A completely dishonest scientific paper

"We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible." That's the key sentence in an article published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, titled "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2."

It's also a prime example of eminently credentialed and government-subsidized scientists saying the exact opposite of what they believed in an attempt -- successful at the time, but now, three years later, exposed -- to deceive the public.

The article appeared, as the date indicates, just as the spread of COVID was becoming apparent. It also appeared after Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in January 2020 that the virus could have leaked from "China's only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world's most deadly pathogens" in Wuhan.

Cotton was careful to say that a lab leak was not proven and that the virus could also have been transmitted through an animal, and he dismissed the possibility of an intentional leak.

The Washington Post quickly dismissed A lab leak origin as a "fringe theory" and a "conspiracy theory" by The New York Times. Those characterizations were attributed to government and government-financed scientists -- the same bunch who would shortly produce the "Proximal Origin" paper.

The pushback against the lab leak theory has now been revealed as a fraud, thanks to the work of journalist Matt Taibbi, academic Roger Pielke Jr., and the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

The real conspiracy had roots in a February 2020 conference call led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the time, and Dr. Francis Collins, his boss as head of the National Institutes of Health, and including the four scientists who would co-author the "Proximal Origin" paper.

In February, as the House subcommittee documents reveal, all four were expressing thoughts directly contrary to what they put their names to in March.

-- "I really can't think of a plausible natural scenario," wrote Dr. Robert Garry. "In the lab it would be easy."

-- "The only thing here that strikes me as unusual," wrote Dr. Andrew Rambaut, "is the furin cleavage site," something much more likely to be produced by a lab than by natural transmission.

-- Dr. Edward Holmes wrote he was "60-40 lab."

-- The main work over the last couple of weeks wrote Dr. Kristian Andersen, "has been focused on t(r)ying to disprove any type of lab theory, but we are at a crossroads where the scientific evidence isn't conclusive enough to say we have high confidence in any of the three main theories."

Not exactly "We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible," eh?

Why the change? As one conference call participant put it, "further debate about" a lab leak would "do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."

Unstated but known to every one of the scientists was that Collins and Fauci had approved cooperation with the Wuhan lab and controlled millions in research dollars coveted by every scientist.

Their intentions were not in doubt. On April 16, Collins told Fauci he hoped "Proximal Origin" would put down "the very destructive conspiracy" of the lab leak theory and on April 17, Fauci recommended it to reporters as the product of a "group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists," without mentioning his own role.

That same month, Andersen, in emails, admitted that a lab leak was possible and bragged about misleading New York Times reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr.

I found the cynicism revealed in these emails shocking, even though I have written critically, in July 2021 and March 2023, about government scientists' attempts to discredit the lab leak theory. I note that statistics guru Nate Silver, not a member of any right-wing conspiracy, is now similarly appalled.

"I'm deeply disappointed by the scientists' conduct here and how unmoored they were from any attempt at truth-seeking," he wrote last week. "The COVID origins story has also been a journalistic fiasco," he added, opining that "journalists are more prone toward being manipulated by bad apples in academia and science than they were ten or twenty years ago."

Evidence for that predilection comes from New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who last week tweeted that a House Republican hearing "raised thorny questions about free speech in a democratic society: Is misinformation protected by the First Amendment? When is it appropriate for the federal government to seek to tamp down the spread of falsehoods?"

Leave aside the deliciously Orwellian flavor of her verb "tamp down" and her astonishing ignorance of First Amendment law and reflect on how "Proximal Origin" suggests that the government and government-financed credentialed experts are often better at generating misinformation and falsehoods than at detecting them.

https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbarone/2023/07/28/the-proximal-origin-of-a-scientific-fraud-n2626304

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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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Covid cover-up: how the science was silenced

America’s top infectious diseases adviser, Anthony Fauci, deliberately decided to downplay ­suspicions from scientists that Covid-19 came from a laboratory to protect his reputation and deflect from the risky coronavirus research his agency had funded, according to his boss, one of the most senior US health officials during the pandemic.

In an exclusive interview, Robert Kadlec – former assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the US Department of Health – told The Weekend Australian that he, Dr Fauci and National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins privately discussed how to “turn down the temperature” on accusations against China in the early days of the pandemic while they were trying to encourage Beijing to co-operate and share a sample of the virus.

But the senior US health official – who worked for George W. Bush and Donald Trump and went on to lead American efforts to develop a Covid-19 vaccine – said Dr Fauci mostly kept his knowledge of virologists’ concerns about a lab leak from Wuhan to himself.

The Weekend Australian revealed in 2021 that the National Institutes of Health and other US agencies funded 65 scientific projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology over the past decade, many involving risky research on bat coronaviruses.

‘Vaccine research was the proximate cause’

Dr Kadlec’s comments give the closest insight to date on how Dr Fauci – who led coronavirus policy for two presidents and influenced the worldwide ­approach to the pandemic – handled the link between Covid-19 and China. They came as US congressional investigations in the past month revealed how scientists worked to silence concerns about a lab leak.

“I think Tony Fauci was ­trying to protect his institution and his own reputation from the possibility that his agency was funding the Wuhan ­Institute of Virology researchers who, beyond the scope of the grants received from the ­National Institutes of Health, may have been working with People’s Liberation Army researchers on defensive coronavirus vaccines,” Dr Kadlec said.

“I think it’s evident from his later released emails (obtained via Freedom of Information requests) that he had more sense of what his institute had funded at that moment. This was a reputational risk to him and his ­institute and certainly he probably sided with the international scientists that ­believed that false or unsubstantiated accusations could have a chilling effect on scientific collaboration between the western world and China.”

Dr Kadlec, in his first ever media interview, added: “We think vaccine research resulted in the pandemic – that vaccine ­research was the proximate cause.”

In an extraordinary admission, Dr Kadlec said they decided to try to encourage a group of leading international scientists to calm down speculation on the origins of the virus.

The scientists held a phone call on February 1, 2020, in which they discussed concerns that SARS-CoV-2 looked like it may have been genetically engineered.

“When we talked about this in advance of that call, he (Fauci) would just try and see if he could get the scientists to take the temperature down, turn the rhetoric down. to at least find, we’re going to look into this but we don’t know,” Dr Kadlec said.

As both Mr Bush’s biodefence adviser and Mr Trump’s assistant health secretary for preparedness, Dr Kadlec has decades of experience in fighting public health crises. He created Operation Warp Speed, the plan to accelerate the development of a Covid-19 ­vaccine, and is credited for leading the push to vaccinate Americans. In 2018, he warned Congress the US was ill-prepared for a pandemic.

‘Turn the temperature down’

Dr Kadlec’s personal approach was to ask the National Academy of Sciences in late January 2020, to formally examine the sequence of SARS-CoV-2, to understand its origin. But publicly, he felt it was important to achieve co-operation from China from a public health perspective. Beijing had not yet shared a sample of the virus, critical for developing an effective vaccine.

“We decided to engage our national experts to look at this, the National Academy of Sciences,” he said. “It would take time to figure out what was going on. We were trying to prevent people from saying this was a bioweapon when we didn’t really know. That was my intent. It was Dr Fauci’s idea to see if he could get international scientists to examine the origins in a similar fashion. The object was to prevent speculation and turn the temperature down. There was something that could be said to turn the temperature of rhetoric down and avoid the wild speculation, of a bioweapon, that had already started at that point in time.”

That phone call was at the instigation of Dr Fauci after he spoke with scientist Kristian Andersen who expressed concern that SARS-Cov-2 may have been genetically engineered, because of its unusual features. In an email, Dr Andersen said “some of the features (potentially) look engineered” and several leading virologists “all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”

Dr Kadlec said Dr Fauci kept these suspicions, privately expressed by leading virologists that the virus had been engineered in a laboratory, mostly to himself.

The full extent of those suspicions is now laid bare in emails subpoenaed by US congress and published in recent weeks. In those emails, some scientists discussed the “shit show” that would eventuate if anyone serious accused China of, even accidentally, starting the pandemic. They also discussed the impact such an accusation would have on scientific research and international relations. But, publicly, they insisted the possibility of an inadvertent laboratory leak was a conspiracy and authored a paper published in Nature Medicine, that argued SARS-Cov-2 was almost certainly a natural virus. Dr Kadlec acknowledges the power of that paper, titled the Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2, as becoming the official word that a laboratory leak was a conspiracy theory.

“Their paper did result in casting the die for what would then be the international scientific response going forward,” he said.

“I found it really odd that in light of the now revealed private musings of some of the scientists indicated the sequence looked unusual, that the authors decided to draft a letter as an opinion piece.

“Many people were confused or mistaken by what they wrote as more of a peer-reviewed paper.”

Wuhan ‘fingerprints’

Dr Kadlec accused the scientists of having personal agendas that might have influenced their decision to author a paper that suggested a laboratory leak was a conspiracy theory. “Their initial opinion was likely shaded by their personal professional equities or the belief that what was going on in the US – statements by political leaders- could be problematic for world relations for China but also their professional interests in science,” he said.

Dr Kadlec alluded to the febrile political atmosphere in the US under Mr Trump as a likely influence on the scientists, although the scientists’ deliberations began in late January, and the former president did not make any public comment about a potential laboratory origin of Covid-19 until April.

The authors of the Proximal Origins paper have argued in the media and congressional hearings that later virus research had led them to scotch their first fears of a lab leak – and to conclude instead that the origins of Covid-19 were zoonotic: i.e. the virus had been passed from animal to human, possibly via a Wuhan wet market.

However, new emails and posts over the Slack messaging platform that have surfaced in recent weeks pinpoint the ­moment this group began steering world attention away from the Wuhan lab. It was not months, or even weeks, but within days and hours of their realisation that the virus may contain “fingerprints” that connected it to the Wuhan ­Institute of Virology. The scientists are facing allegations that they embarked on a campaign of subterfuge that has rocked Washington.

’Blueprint for Covid-19’

Dr Kadlec has now spent a year and a half formally investigating the origins of the pandemic, putting together an A and B team to gather evidence for both a natural and laboratory origin respectively.

Gain-of-function research was banned by the Obama administration but lifted during the Trump era. Dr Kadlec says this was at the behest of the NIH. “Francis Collins and Fauci both had a similar world view which was scientists know best and there should be few restrictions on research,” he said.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology and EcoHealth Alliance drew up a proposal for grant funding for coronavirus research, which international scientists now believe could be the “blueprint” of Covid-19. Dr Kadlec chaired a committee to authorise whether gain-of-function could proceed. The proposal from the Wuhan institute was bouncing around US Government agencies, in search of funding, but it never went through his committee. “It shows you the fallibility or vulnerability of the oversight system,” he said.

Dr Fauci has denied his agency funded gain-of-function research, but Dr Kadlec said this wasn’t true. “It’s evident NIH supported research that has the potential for, and it at least one case resulted in gain of function,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/covid-coverup-wuhan-lab-leak-suspicions-anthony-fauci-and-how-the-science-was-silenced/news-story/3e2669c7983b6a66a2bcc535c1e4c6be

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Who made Covid? US spy agencies have a name

US intelligence agencies are understood to be examining the possibility that Chinese military scientist Zhou Yusen’s research to develop a coronavirus vaccine led to the creation of Covid-19, and the first cluster of the pandemic.

The decorated Chinese scientist died about May 2020 in circumstances that Five Eyes intelligence agencies have long suspected was at the hands of the People’s Liberation Army. The Weekend Australian can reveal that the FBI has, on at least two occasions since mid-last year, spoken with a close relative of Zhou who is now residing in the US. The individual is understood to be a crucial new witness.

For the individual’s safety and protection, The Weekend Australian has chosen not to name the relative, who is understood to be “nervous”. The family member did not respond to requests for comment in the weeks leading up to publication of this article.

FBI director Christopher Wray has said publicly that a laboratory leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology led to the pandemic. “The FBI has assessed for quite some time that the origins … are a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Mr Wray told Fox News in April. “You’re talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans.”

’Highest-risk’ vaccine research

In June 2021, The Australian revealed that Zhou was listed as the lead inventor on Chinese ­patent documents, translated by The Australian, for a Covid-19 vaccine. The patent was dated February 24, 2020.

Zhou died about three months later. Despite his illustrious career, there were no published mentions of this celebrated military scientists in the Chinese press.

Five Eyes intelligence agencies suspected he had been killed.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/covid19-origins-may-be-traced-to-chinese-military-scientist-zhou-yusen/news-story/916e55a6285b243c0a357c6dcb560c66

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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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