Thursday, November 30, 2023
No proof face masks ever worked against Covid, claims UKHSA
There is no solid proof masks ever slowed the spread of Covid, England's former deputy chief medical officer said today.
Professor Dame Jenny Harries, who now heads up the UK Health Security Agency, said the evidence that coverings reduced transmission is 'uncertain' because it is difficult to separate their effect from other Covid curbs.
She also told the UK's Covid inquiry that government advice on how to make a mask using two pieces of cloth was 'ineffective'.
Studies showed at least three were needed for even a small effect on the spread of viruses, Dame Jenny said.
Meanwhile, she warned advice for the public to wear masks during the pandemic may even have given people a 'false sense of security' that they could reduce their risk of becoming infected if they wore one while mixing with others.
Dame Jenny wrote in her witness statement that the evidence base for using face masks in the community 'was, and still is to some degree, uncertain'.
She noted that the evidence for mask wearing varied depending on what materials it was made from. For example, a 'one or two layer cloth covering' is 'not particularly effective', she said.
And if someone doesn't wear it properly – fully covering the mouth and nose – 'it won't work', Dame Jenny added.
The inquiry was shown guidance on how people can make their own face masks from the first wave of the pandemic.
In response to the proposals in May 2020, Dame Jenny wrote that advice to use one or two pieces of fabric was 'ineffective'.
She told the inquiry that the evidence at the time said at least three layers were needed 'to give a positive impact' but even this finding 'was not very strong', so the advice was not effective.
Dame Jenny also warned that encouraging people to wear face masks led to a 'false sense of security' that people could mix more closely without risk.
Asked about a Government document recommending the use of face masks in May 2020, Dame Jenny said: 'We've got all sorts of safety issues here as well.
'One of the problems in May was when there were a lot of discussions about coming out of lockdown and opening up the economy and various other things – and the two metre, one metre (social distancing guidance).
'I think this was landing just about the same time as the "one metre plus" issue.
'The problem we had there was that there appeared to be a view permeating through, and a real concern and risk, that it was being conceived that if you did one metre and you wore a face covering slung round your cheek, or whatever it might be, that was fine.
'So, there was a risk that in encouraging face (masks) people would stop doing the thing that was really important, which was distancing and all the other things.'
Asked by inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett whether this led to a risk of a 'false sense of security', Dame Jenny replied: 'Yes, a false sense of security.
'But it was actually also overlapping with what was economically-driven policy, I think, to try and remove some of the distancing rules.'
She said, at the time, she and Professor Sir Jonathan Van Tam, England's former deputy chief medical officer, were 'really trying to highlight what we thought about the two metre and one metre rule discussions'.
Dame Jenny added: 'What was being conceived was if you wear a face covering and reduce everything to a metre, the face covering will make up for the difference, and the answer was no, it won't, and it definitely won't if it's ever not evidence based.'
Dame Jenny also revealed that she wrote to cabinet secretary Simon Case in May 2020, when he was No10 permeant secretary, expressing concern that people may believe they 'could go back to normal' wearing face coverings made from t-shirts, when there was no evidence base around the measure.
She told the inquiry: 'The first question was, shouldn't you be encouraging this? There's no harm'. 'The issue for me at that time, and I think Professor Van Tam shared it, was we definitely shouldn't be supporting something which was not evidence-based if it was going to promote a risk compensation.
'Of course, face coverings, as I know you'll be aware, is a wholly polarised debate and it's quite difficult to maintain a central position, if I'd said: "don't do any of this", somebody would have challenged back and said: "Well, surely there's no harm".
'My main concern was it would have been conceived as a safer way of moving about just when we got through the first tragic wave of a pandemic.'
Asked if she did anything about the concern, she added: 'Yes, well on the one metre, two metre (social distancing suggestion).
'I think this is very much around the same time that the CMO (chief medical officer), CSA (chief science adviser) and the two deputy CMOs wrote to Simon Case, because it was around lifting all the different industries and businesses and sectors at the same time.
'The anxiety was that if people just thought they could get a bit of t-shirt, put it around the face and that would solve all the problems and we could go back to normal, that was not going to be a good public health intervention.
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What's the latest on COVID antiviral drugs, and who is eligible?
Australia is experiencing a fresh wave of COVID, seeing increasing cases, more hospitalisations and a greater number of prescriptions for COVID antivirals dispensed over recent months.
In the early days of the pandemic, the only medicines available were those that treated the symptoms of the virus. These included steroids and analgesics such as paracetamol and ibuprofen to treat pain and fever.
We now have two drugs called Paxlovid and Lagevrio that treat the virus itself.
But are these drugs effective against current variants? And who is eligible to receive them? Here's what to know about COVID antivirals as we navigate this eighth COVID wave.
What antivirals are available?
Paxlovid is a combination of two different drug molecules, nirmatrelvir and ritonavir. The nirmatrelvir works by blocking an enzyme called a protease that the virus needs to replicate. The ritonavir is included in the medicine to protect the nirmatrelvir, stopping the body from breaking it down.
Molnupiravir, marketed as Lagevrio, works by forcing errors into the RNA of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) as it replicates. As these errors build up, the virus becomes less effective.
This year in Australia, the XBB COVID strains have dominated, and acquired a couple of key mutations. When COVID mutates into new variants, it doesn't affect the ability of either Paxlovid or Lagevrio to work because the parts of the virus that change from the mutations aren't those targeted by these two drugs.
This is different to the monoclonal antibody-based medicines that were developed against specific strains of the virus. These drugs are not thought to be effective for any variant of the virus from omicron XBB.1.5 onwards, which includes the current wave. This is because these drugs recognise certain proteins expressed on the surface of SARS-CoV-2, which have changed over time.
What does the evidence say?
As Lagevrio and Paxlovid are relatively new medicines, we're still learning how well they work and which patients should use them.
The latest evidence suggests Paxlovid decreases the risk of hospitalisation if taken early by those at highest risk of severe disease.
Results from a previous trial suggested Lagevrio might reduce COVID deaths. But a more recent, larger trial indicated Lagevrio doesn't significantly reduce hospitalisations or deaths from the virus.
Australia is riding another COVID wave — and the most vulnerable are the least vaccinated
As a new wave of COVID-19 hits Australia, why are so few aged care residents up-to-date with their COVID-19 vaccinations?
However, few people at highest risk from COVID were included in this trial. So it could offer some benefit for patients in this group.
In Australia, Lagevrio is not routinely recommended and Paxlovid is preferred. However, not all patients can take Paxlovid. For example, people with medical conditions such as severe kidney or liver impairment shouldn't take it because these issues can affect how well the body metabolises the medication, which increases the risk of side effects.
Paxlovid also can't be taken alongside some other medications such as those for certain heart conditions, mental health conditions and cancers. For high-risk patients in these cases, Lagevrio can be considered.
Some people who take COVID antivirals will experience side effects. Mostly these are not serious and will go away with time.
Both Paxlovid and Lagevrio can cause diarrhoea, nausea and dizziness. Paxlovid can also cause side effects including muscle aches and weakness, changes in taste, loss of appetite and abdominal pain. If you experience any of these, you should contact your doctor.
More serious side effects of both medicines are allergic reactions, such as shortness of breath, swelling of the face, lips or tongue and a severe rash, itching or hives. If you experience any of these, call 000 immediately or go straight to the nearest emergency department.
Be prepared
Most people will be able to manage COVID safely at home without needing antivirals. However, those at higher risk of severe COVID and therefore eligible for antivirals should seek them. This includes people aged 70 or older, people aged 50 or older or Aboriginal people aged 30 or older with one additional risk factor for severe illness, and people 18 or older who are immunocompromised.
A COVID infection now could spell trouble in three decades
Genes, environment and lifestyle are some of the risk factors for serious diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. This is why scientists believe COVID-19 infection should be added to the list.
If you are in any of these groups, it's important you plan ahead. Speak to your health-care team now so you know what to do if you get COVID symptoms.
If needed, this will ensure you can start treatment as soon as possible. It's important antivirals are started within five days of symptom onset.
If you're a high-risk patient and you test positive, contact your doctor straight away. If you are eligible for antivirals, your doctor will organise a prescription (either an electronic or paper script).
These medicines are available under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and subsidised for people with a Medicare card. The cost for each course is the standard PBS co-payment amount: $30 for general patients and $7.30 for people with a concession card.
So you can rest and reduce the risk of spreading the virus to others, ask your pharmacy to deliver the medication to your home, or ask someone to collect it for you.
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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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Wednesday, November 29, 2023
New COVID Variant Spreading in US, Experts Explain Risks
Compared to Eris, BA.2.86 has a significantly lower growth efficiency, meaning that it is less capable of replicating itself in the human bodies.
The new BA.2.86 variant, unofficially known as Pirola is taking hold in the United States.
Between Oct. 28 to Nov. 25, its prevalence increased from 1 to around 9 percent in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The World Health Organization designated Pirola as a variant of interest on Nov. 21, yet it also found the public health risk posed by BA.2.86 to be “low at the global level (pdf).”
In an update published on Nov. 27, the CDC agreed with the WHO’s assessment “that the public health risk posed by this variant is low compared with other circulating variants, based on available limited evidence.”
Current Research Suggests Low Risk of Disease
Pirola is derived from BA.2, an earlier Omicron variant.
Other variants derived from BA.2 include XBB.1.5 which became the dominant strain in early 2023.
The current dominant variant is H.V.1, and it is derived from the variant EG.5, unofficially known as Eris, a previously dominant variant in the United States.
“At this time, BA.2.86 does not appear to be driving increases in infections or hospitalizations in the United States,” the CDC wrote.
Research outside of the United States similarly suggests that Pirola should not be more severe than current variants.
Researcher Yunlong Cao, who holds a doctorate in physical biochemistry from Harvard found that Pirola “exhibits lower cell infectivity” compared to XBB.1.5 and Eris.
A preprint study from Japan found that while Pirola may be more transmissible than Eris a previous dominant variant, it is less likely to cause disease.
Compared to Eris, Pirola has a significantly lower growth efficiency, meaning that it is less capable of replicating itself in the host, the authors wrote.
“This is not the second coming of omicron. If it were, it is safe to say we would know by now,” Bill Hanage, associate director and professor of epidemiology at Harvard wrote on X on Sep. 1 ,when the variant's prevalence was significantly lower.
Prior Infections Gives Immunity Against the New Variant
Compared to BA.2, its ancestral subvariant, Pirola has more than 30 mutations in its spike protein. The virus uses the spike protein to infect human cells.
The substantial number of mutations initially raised concerns among virologists, who feared this variant might partially evade earlier immunity from previous exposure, whether from natural infection or prior vaccination.
However, evidence is still lacking to predict if there will be more immune evasions as well as the severity of future Pirola cases.
Mr. Cao’s own research in mice who have been vaccinated or infected with XBB vaccines showed that the antibodies generated “cannot well recognize and neutralize BA.2.86,” he wrote in a thread posted on the social media platform, X.
However, Pirola had a low cell infectivity, which can affect the variant's transmission, he added.
In discussion of Mr. Cao’s findings, Mr. Hanage agreed that immune evasion is not a definite indication of more severe infection and transmission.
“Any hopeful virus has to have some immune evasion, because almost everyone has immunity,” he wrote.
The most recent research on Pirola's immune evasion abilities comes from a series of reports conducted by researchers at Columbia University.
The first study, published in Nature, tested Pirola, XBB1.5, and Eris spike proteins against antibodies produced from a breakthrough XBB infection.
These antibodies conferred robust neutralizing activity against Pirola. The authors also noted that Pirola's ability to evade immunity was no better than that of XBB1.5 and EG.5.
The same group of researchers then tested antibodies produced from the new XBB1.5 COVID vaccine against several variants, including XBB1.5, Eris, and JN.1, a derivative of Pirola. The findings were published in a preprint.
The authors found that, compared to all variants investigated, JN.1 was the most immune evasive against antibodies produced from the vaccine.
HV.1: The Current Dominant Variant
The current dominant subvariant is HV.1, a new variant derived from Eris. Eris is currently the most dominant globally and HV.1 succeeded Eris as the dominating variant in the U.S. on Oct. 28.
Like Pirola, the WHO has classified HV.1 as a variant with low public health risk. The variant accounted for about 31.5 percent of all cases in the United States as of Nov. 25.
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Is It Possible that COVID-19 Boosters Trigger a Cancer Relapse?
COVID-19 boosters are used to activate the immune response by synthesizing antibodies against foreign pathogens, however, some adverse events have been associated with these boosters. In the aggregate via published case series alone, over two hundred cases of cancer or cancer relapse have been reported yesterday by TrialSite. Yet none of these cases can prove causation (the studies aren’t designed for that), and the incidence remain rare given over 230 million people are considered fully vaccinated in America alone. Regardless, several cases of cancer relapse have been reported after the administration of COVID-19 boosters, according to Angus Dalgleish, a professor of oncology at St.George’s University of London. During an interview, he raised his concerns about the COVID-19 boosters’ long-term consequences, perturbation of the immune system, and the development or relapse of aggressive cancers. TrialSite investigates the reports of cancer related to COVID-19 vaccination.
Dr. John Campbell, a retired British nurse and healthcare educator, interviewed Professor Dalgleish to discuss his insights into boosters, immunity, and cancer risk. The focus of Dalgleish’s extensive research is immunotherapies and cancer vaccines. In this interview, he described his observations on patients suffering from melanoma.
Melanoma is a type of skin cancer that forms in the skin cells called melanocytes. These cells produce melanin which gives color to the skin. The exact cause of melanomas is still unclear, but it is widely accepted that exposure to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight is the reason for the rapid rise in melanoma cases worldwide. It is easy to treat it if it gets detected at an early stage.
Dalgleish’s observations on melanoma patients
Dalgleish observed cancer patients’ response to immunotherapies (use of the body’s own defense system to fight against diseases) and realized that vitamin D deficiency is associated with melanoma. Moreover, he added that improving the body’s vitamin D status can enhance immunotherapy outcomes.
Several studies support Dalgleish’s claim that vitamin D deficiency is associated with melanoma. A retrospective cohort study in 2022 found that vitamin D deficiency is responsible for worsening the overall survival of melanoma patients. Yet observational studies such as the latter cannot necessarily establish causation.
Additionally, an experimental study suggested that vitamin D deficiency is associated with thicker melanoma tumors, which can cause poor prognosis at the time of diagnosis.
Dalgleish also noted that melanoma patients often return with a cancer relapse even after 20 years. By observing their medical history, he noticed that these patients had experienced stress like divorce, bereavement, or bankruptcy, which caused immune suppression for a significant period. He also realized that there was another factor that increased the relapse rate – receiving a COVID-19 booster shot.
According to Prof. Dalgleish, these boosters are meant to enhance the immune response, but the relapse of cancer raises questions about their effect on immune response.
The mechanism behind the increased relapse
Dalgleish suggests the vaccines mostly deal with antibodies while laying more emphasis on the importance of innate immune response by activating T-cells. These cells effectively remove cancer cells and viral-infected cells. Also, these act during the time when the effective adaptive immune response (antibody production) is in the process of developing. T-cell activity reduces with age, particularly after age 55, which increases the incidence rate of cancer in elderly people.
The boosters do not cause the body to make IgG1 and IgG3, which are neutralizing antibodies, instead, they switch to IgG4 antibodies which are less effective in combating infection or disease. These IgG4 antibodies suppress the T-cell response which causes a suppression in the fast-acting innate immune response. This, according to the hypothesis, increases the chance of cancer relapse in people after getting COVID-19 boosters. But this would need to be fully investigated for any affirmative declarations, would it not?
Immune system perturbation linked to cancer
Dalgleish mentioned that there are many unnecessary antibodies formed inside the body following COVID-19 boosters. He called this “antibody-dependent enhancement.”
Antibody-dependent enhancement refers to a situation in which antibodies emerge during an immune response but do not prevent an infection. Instead, these antibodies actually help the virus penetrate the cells. Thus, Dalgleish claimed that boosters do not provide protection instead, they perturb the immune system and cause more aggressive forms of cancer. He gave an example case of lymphoma diagnosis in one of his colleagues after vaccination.
The London-based oncologist implies of the possibility of emerging cancers such as B-cell leukemia and renal cancers in the near future due to immune system perturbation induced by vaccines. Again this would need to be formally studied, as the observations of one physician or even a handful doesn’t equate to evidence.
Potential impacts of mRNA vaccines on the immune system
In the interview, Dalgleish also talked about mRNA vaccines. He expressed his frustration over the use of the SV40 promoter in mRNA vaccines and explained that it is an oncogenic promoter used for developing cancer in mice.
The oncologist suggests questions about the composition and potential risks of mRNA vaccines. He also extended his concern to the integration of DNA. TrialSite previously published an article analyzing these claims of DNA contamination in Pfizer and Moderna mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. While numerous activists critical of the COVID-19 vaccines have pounced on “plasmidgate,” TrialSite has been clear that some of the studies are questionable—such as the German study where most of the vaccine vials were opened upon arrival at the third-party lab doing the testing.
Given the testimony of Professor Philip Buckhaults in front of the South Carolina Senate on the matter TrialSite has suggested formal, government, and industry investigations.
TrialSite’s founder Daniel O’Connor, an expert in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulated clinical research process and technologies, was in touch with leadership at the regulatory agency who committed to passing along the information. But the TrialSite publisher told this writer, “The regulators don’t seem too concerned at all about the reports of DNA snippets in the vaccine samples.”
What about the Spike Protein?
There are claims that the spike protein, which was held responsible for vaccine injuries, remained at the injection site and did not integrate. The formal narrative has it that the spike protein flushes from the lymphatic system within a week or so but enough published material has emerged to refute that oversimplified claim.
Dalgleish challenges the premise powering claims for a lack of spike integration.
To examine these claims, autopsies need to be done but Dalgleish points to the difficulty of doing autopsies on patients who had died after vaccination. He said that it had been overruled despite obtaining relatives’ consent for post-mortems. This caused a lack of transparency.
Censorship and media influence also represent formidable issues because the government discouraged criticism of vaccines argues the oncologist. This hinders open discussions about vaccine safety and effectiveness.
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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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Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Covid-19 cover-up exposed – at last
SHARRI MARKSON
It’s astonishing to consider that Anthony Fauci stood on the White House podium in early 2020, beside the president of the United States, and resolutely told the world that Covid-19 was a natural virus.
Curiously, he failed to mention that his agency had funded coronavirus experiments in Wuhan so dangerous that they had been banned in the US by the Obama administration. Fauci knew, too, that eminent scientists privately harboured concerns Covid-19’s genetic sequence had unusual features inconsistent with evolutionary theory.
Yet he reassured the public that there was no reason to suspect a laboratory incident in Wuhan and, as he did so, Fauci cited as evidence a new scientific paper.
Far from being a conclusive, rigorous scientific study, it was, in fact, a piece of commentary that had been rejected from a prestigious medical journal.
This is not to blame Fauci for the pandemic, although his agency may have funded the research which created Covid-19.
The culpability truly lies in Wuhan where scientists were pushing the boundaries of acceptable experimentation on coronaviruses to make them more infectious and transmissible to humans.
For years the scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been playing God, and had grown increasingly bold and, as it turns out, shockingly careless, conducing their almost existential experiments in low-security laboratories.
But Fauci’s role in claiming the virus was natural, when he had no incontrovertible evidence to make such a claim, goes to the very heart of the cover-up over the origins of Covid-19. Instead of advancing the world’s understanding of what was unfolding, he was deliberately covering it up and, in doing so, creating confusion that crippled the world for years.
He also led desperate and diabolic anti-scientific efforts to shut down investigation into the origins of Covid-19; so anxious was he to divert attention from a lab leak and what would surely follow – accountability of him and his agency.
The early insistence of zoonosis from a such an esteemed and trusted figure saw the lab leak theory assigned to the conspiracy pile, censored by tech giants and ridiculed by the media.
Unravelling the web of cover-ups, conflicts of interest and false narratives surrounding the origins of Covid-19 has been a large part of my life over the past 3½ years.
I’ve written an investigative book, created a documentary and a podcast and written dozens and dozens of newspaper articles, features and television reports.
I’ve interviewed hundreds of scientists, government officials, investigators, intelligence agency insiders and whistleblowers from all over the world. They each share a common determination; to discover the truth of the origins of Covid-19.
Piecing together information from these individuals has helped to form a more complete picture of what we know about how the first pandemic in 100 years began.
As we near the fourth anniversary since Covid shook the world, there’s a new chapter in this investigation – a documentary airing on Tuesday night on Sky News called What Really Happened in Wuhan, the Next Chapter.
For the first time, Fauci’s boss, the former assistant secretary for preparedness and response, Dr Robert Kadlec, fronts the cameras to divulge their confidential conversations where they decided it would be best if they downplayed the possibility of a lab leak.
Ostensibly, this was to encourage co-operation from China, but Kadlec believes Fauci had reason to protect his own reputation and that of his institute which had funded research in Wuhan.
Haunted by the downstream effects of the decision they made to divert attention away from accusations of a lab leak, Kadlec says he still lies awake at night, reflecting on what they did.
So eager were scientists to shield China from any suggestion its scientific research had started the pandemic, and to protect their own research from being subject to new regulations, there was complicity among international scientists in downplaying or rejecting the lab leak theory.
As a result, there have been no moves to regulate or ban gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses or other pathogens with pandemic potential globally.
Yet scientists from the four groups within the US intelligence community that engage in scientific analysis all concur that SARS-CoV-2 was most likely genetically engineered.
In our new documentary, Kadlec warns that another pandemic could easily eventuate because the lessons haven’t been learned from Covid-19.
For all the excessive government intervention during the pandemic, the most fundamental step of having a conversation about whether scientists should stop dangerous experiments on coronaviruses hasn’t taken place.
It’s also incomprehensible that an event that killed seven million globally would not be deemed significant enough for our world leaders to raise at a diplomatic level with China.
It’s bewildering that there has been no serious investigation into the origins of Covid-19.
It speaks to the lack of courage and political conviction of our world leaders that it’s been left to congressional subcommittees, journalists and internet sleuths to investigate the most consequential period of our lifetimes.
And so, this latest Sky News documentary on Tuesday night plays a role in moving the public debate on this topic forward, providing fresh information about the scientific research that may have started the outbreak in Wuhan, and airing more staggering claims of how public debate was silenced at the highest levels.
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Government Deceit
John Stossel
“Experts” were confident that they knew what America should do about COVID-19. They were wrong about so much.
Officials pushed masks, including useless cloth ones. Dr. Anthony Fauci said, “Don’t wear masks”—then, “Do wear them.”
Some states closed playgrounds and banned motorboats and Jet Skis. Towns in New York banned using leaf-blowers. California pointlessly closed beaches and gave people citations for “watching the sunset.” The list goes on.
Sen. Rand Paul’s new book, “Deception,” argues that government experts didn’t just make mistakes; they were purposely deceitful. A few weeks ago, this column reported how Paul, R-Ky., was correct in accusing Fauci of funding virus research in Wuhan and lying about it.
In my new video, we cover other government deceit.
Paul says, “There’s been one set of truths in private and another set of truths for the people who aren’t smart enough to make their decisions.”
He points out that Fauci, in private, told fellow bureaucrats that masking is pointless. Fauci wrote in one email: “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.”
But in public, complains Paul, Fauci would sometimes wear multiple masks.
“Things that have no scientific basis in fact. … There’s two sets of information going out, one privately and one publicly.”
“Why?” I ask.
“They think that there could be hysteria. They’re in government. They need to do something. … So let’s get everybody occupied with wearing masks. … But in the end, the Cochrane analysis looked at 78 randomized studies and found that masks didn’t work at all.”
“N95 masks may work,” I say.
“The Cochrane analysis looked at the N95 and found they didn’t work very well,” Paul replies.
Another mistake: The virus is 500 times more likely to kill people ages 65 and up than kill kids. But our government told parents: Mask your children. Some states kept kids out of schools for two years.
Also, “When they approved the third vaccine for children,” says Paul, “the first committee was the [Food and Drug Administration] committee. … They came out with the advice: 65 and older. Nobody else. The [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] had another vaccine committee. … They said the same thing … [but] Rochelle Walensky, a political appointee of [President Joe] Biden, overrode both scientific committees and said the vaccine booster should be given to six months and up.”
“Why? What’s the motivation?” I ask. “Get more people frightened, and then they’ll take the vaccine and that will save America?”
Paul says, “I think most of them are not very smart and they just blindly think, ‘Take the damn vaccine, shut up and take it. It’s good for you.’”
Has he been vaccinated?
“God gave me my vaccine.” He tells me. “I was naturally inoculated. But members of my family, my wife, got vaccinated. We’re not against the advice.”
I clarify, “‘Naturally inoculated,’ meaning you got COVID?”
“I had COVID, so I have immunity,” he replies.
At the start of the pandemic, Sweden’s health officials did not shut down restaurants or other businesses. They also announced that they would not close schools for younger children.
For doing that, Sweden was repeatedly trashed by American government officials and the media. Time magazine called Sweden’s plan “a disaster.”
But the Swedish approach was right! Not only did Sweden escape the economic and social harm of lockdowns, but its COVID-19-related death rate was lower than that of most other countries.
“It turns out they did as well, or better, than most parts of Europe,” says Paul.
“Better,” I point out.
“They also didn’t mandate masks in schools [or] close the schools. Everything we did in this country was wrong.”
I push back. “On balance, vaccines were a good thing. They work for older people, people my age.” In fact, Republican anti-vax “messaging may have killed people!” Before the vaccine came out, an equal number of Republicans and Democrats died. But once the anti-vax messages spread, Republicans had a higher death rate.
Paul replies, “Vaccine hesitancy comes from people’s disbelief in government.”
He adds, “I think people learned from this … [learned] what to trust and what not to trust. People will be smarter the next time around.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/11/15/government-deceit/ ?
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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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Monday, November 27, 2023
Interesting Swedish study
Lots of vaccinated people got Covid but vaccination did tend to protect them from long Covid
A large, population-based cohort study-- part of the project SCIFI-PEARL, a nationwide linked multi-register, observational study of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden—was organized to investigate the effectiveness of primary COVID-19 vaccination, defined as the first two doses plus the first booster dose (3 doses) within the recommended schedule targeting post-COVID condition (PCC) another term for long COVID. The study included all Swedish adults aged 18 years and up with COVID-19 first registered between December 27, 2020, and February 9, 2022, totaling 589,722 persons across the Scandinavian nation’s two largest regions. Capitalizing on a health system with rich data collection and management, the study team monitored the study participant data from one of the following data points whichever came first: COVID-19 infection until death, emigration, vaccination, reinfection, a PCC diagnosis—based on ICD-10 diagnosis code U09.9, or end of follow-up period which was November 30, 2022. In the study, persons receiving at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine prior to infection were deemed vaccinated. The study authors represented by corresponding author Maria Bygdell, a research fellow and Doctor of Medicine with the University of Gothenburg, and colleagues established a primary endpoint of PCC (long COVID) clinical diagnosis, while the team employed use of Cox regressions adjusted for age, sex, comorbidities (e.g. diabetes, cardiovascular, etc.), number of healthcare contacts during 2019 and other socioeconomic factors plus virus variant prevalent at time of infection for the study. While this observational study cannot prove causation, and the study has some glaring limitations (don’t factor in reinfection) the outcomes demonstrate a robust association between COVID-19 vaccination prior to infection and lower risk of PCC (long COVID) diagnosis.
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Excess mortality and Covid vaccination: is there a correlation?
Since the introduction of Covid vaccines, the official narrative in Australia (and other parts of the world) is that these vaccines are safe, efficacious, and working well. However, this claim is considered to be untrue, as demonstrated by both the science and the statistics.
There is compelling evidence that the official narrative promoted by politicians and health bureaucracies, and enforced by politicised police forces, is misleading and even irresponsible in the light of the demonstrable side-effects of mRNA vaccines.
The Australian government effectively treated any reasonable concern about the safety of Covid vaccines as a form of domestic terrorism. From 2017 to 2022, the Department of Home Affairs petitioned social media sites to censor information about these matters no less than 13,646 times. This included suppressed Covid posts from doctors who disagreed with, or even questioned, official public health and vaccine information.
Especially egregious was the admonishment and de-registration of Australian medical doctors who attempted to provide vaccine exemptions or prescribe alternative medicine to alleviate or prevent Covid. ‘The conclusion taken from the collective authoritarian decisions is that medical choice is no longer a prerogative of the doctor-patient relationship in Australia,’ said Robert Clancy AM, a clinical immunologist and emeritus professor of medicine.
We now know that mRNA vaccines prevent neither infection nor transmission of the Covid virus. For example, a recent study by Cleveland clinic researchers concluded that people who received two or more doses of the vaccine were more likely to get infected with Covid. They found that, among 48,344 working-aged clinic employees, those not ‘up-to-date’ on vaccination had a lower risk of Covid than those ‘up-to-date’.
‘If a vaccine fails to stop disease transmission, then the idea that you need to vaccinate other people so that I’m protected is just false,’ said Dr Jayanta Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine and health research and policy at Stanford University.
To make it worse, a comprehensive comparative research analysis has found that Covid vaccines are directly associated with the disturbing rise in the mortality rate among countries of the Southern Hemisphere.
Denis Rancourt is a former professor of physics at the University of Ottawa. Maurine Baudin has a PhD in microbiology from the Université Paris Sud (Paris XI). Joseph Hickey is a data research scientist with a PhD in Physics. Jérémie Mercier is a chemist and health educator with a PhD in environmental research. Together these researchers have recently produced an empirical research paper entitled Covid vaccine-associated mortality in the Southern Hemisphere.
17 countries were studied by these researchers: Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Suriname, Thailand, and Uruguay). Together these countries comprise 9.10 per cent of worldwide population and 10.3 per cent of worldwide Covid vaccinations (vaccination rate of 1.91 injections per persons, all ages) through virtually every vaccine type and manufacturer.
According to these researchers, ‘All-cause mortality by time is the most reliable date for detecting and epidemiologically characterising events causing death, and for gauging the population-level impact of any surge or collapse in deaths from any cause.’ In these 17 countries, they found no evidence of any beneficial effect of Covid vaccination on all-cause mortality, nor any proportional reduction in the mortality rate. On the contrary, the opposite is true.
In that research paper, the authors also showed that every country with sufficient mortality data (Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, and Uruguay) invariably exhibited an unprecedented and relatively sharp peak or surge in all-ages deaths during or after January-February 2022, which was synchronous with or immediately preceded by a rapid rollout of a Covid vaccine booster, dose 3 or 4, depending on the country.
Regarding the evidence provided in support of causality and toxicity, the authors of this research paper include examples where no detectable excess mortality occurred until the vaccines were rolled out, thus concluding that ‘it is well-established that Covid vaccine injections have caused and are likely to cause the deaths of individuals’. These researchers, in their own words:
‘…have found no evidence in [their] extensive research on ACM [All-deaths Cause Mortality] that Covid vaccines had any beneficial effect. If vaccines prevented transmission, infection or serious illness, then there should have been decreases in mortality following vaccine rollouts, not increases which were observed in every elderly group subject to rapid booster rollouts. And, mortality would not have increased solely when vaccines were rolled out, where no excess mortality occurred prior to vaccine rollouts, as we have documented in 9 countries across 3 continents.’
These researchers previously reported several instances in which anomalous peaks in all-cause mortality appear to be associated with rapid Covid vaccine-dose rollouts, as well as instances where the start of the vaccination campaign coincided with a new period of sustained elevated mortality. These are countries in which, for approximately one year after the WHO’s 11 March 2020 declaration of a pandemic, ‘there were no net extra deaths that could be attributed to a pandemic or to pandemic-response medical or government measures’.
Since the excess mortality in these countries occurred only after vaccine rollouts, the authors conclude that these vaccines certainly did not reduce serious illness (as claimed by manufacturers) enough to reduce any risk of death. On the contrary, according to them, there is strong evidence for a causal correlation between rapid first-doses and booster rollouts and immediate peaks in all-cause mortality, including peaks of mortality in seasonal cycles when peaks never occur. These findings appear to be conclusive and indicate that such vaccines lead to the deaths of individuals, which the researchers then remind us has already been demonstrated by:
Many detailed autopsy studies (reference provided)
Adverse effect monitoring (reference provided)
Studies of vaccine-induced pathologies (reference provided)
An established causal link to vaccine-induced pathology, by histopathology and immunohistochemical staining of skin biopsy specimens (reference provided)
Secondary analysis of serious adverse events reported in placebo-controlled, industry phase III randomised clinical trials (reference provided)
More than 1,250 peer-reviewed publications about Covid vaccine adverse effects (reference provided)
The known vaccine injury compensation programs of states worldwide, which include death resulting from the Covid vaccines (reference provided)
All 17 countries in their comparative research analysis had transition regimes of high all-cause mortality after the vaccines were deployed and administered. Accordingly, unprecedented peaks occurred precisely in January-February of 2022, which are synchronous with rapid booster-dose rollouts of Covid vaccination. The clearest example provided is the sharp all-cause mortality peak occurring in January-February 2022 in Australia, which is concomitant with the rapid rollout of dose 3 of the vaccine in the country.
Like Australia, countries such as Chile and Peru had a sharp all-cause death peak occurring over that same period, which is concomitant with the rapid rollout of Chile’s dose 4 and Peru’s dose 3 of the vaccine. In fact, the authors found the same phenomenon everywhere that data was available, thus making these findings rather conclusive. ‘There can be little doubt that the mass Covid vaccination campaigns caused the temporally associated excess mortality in the 17 countries of the present study, and in other countries studied to date.’ Accordingly, ‘There occurs an onset or increase of a large excess ACM on rolling out the Covid vaccines, in every country and state or province, studied to date, on virtually all continents, including for initial rollouts…’
Rancourt et al are therefore satisfied that the information available extensively demonstrates that Covid vaccines can cause death and that they did not save lives. On the contrary, these vaccines appear to be lethal toxic agents ‘with a high degree of certainty’. This leads the authors to state that adverse-effect monitoring, clinical trial reports, and death-certificate statistics have greatly underestimated the fatal toxicity of Covid vaccines.
These concerns are too serious to ignore. The suspicion that some people have been misled about the safety and efficacy of these vaccines has been further strengthened by the empirical data. The potential for severe injury by these vaccines is a matter that deserves more serious reflection. None were more instrumental in causing this tragedy than the Australian government and their loyal mouthpieces in the media. According to Professor Clancy,
‘The media has a concerning role in the propagation of misinformation, preferring to support an ideologic narrative, rather than to engage in responsible journalism. Misinformation driven by pharmaceutical companies to protect their vaccines, and strongly reinforced by academic, government and health authorities, leads to many unnecessary hospital admissions and deaths’.
So, the question is: Have the Australian governments and the mainstream media colluded in order to ensure an increase in Big Pharma’s corporate profits, which however, does not prioritise the protection of public health?
Be that as it may, it is increasingly difficult to hide the fact that people have died from these vaccines. The tragic consequences of mandatory vaccination are now all too visible in our society.
Above all, we are convinced that it is important to open up this type of conversation, lift the media suppression, and eliminate the muzzling and penalties imposed on those with alternate views or with a desire to promote further discussion. Then society will have to work out the issues of blame and penalties.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/excess-mortality-and-covid-vaccination-is-there-a-correlation
********************************************************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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Sunday, November 26, 2023
Britain's Covid Inquiry has unmasked the flaws in trusting ‘the science’
There is something therapeutic and healing in watching Professor Chris Whitty give evidence to the independent public inquiry into the Covid pandemic – the sense of calm emanating from the man, his occasionally Panglossian self-satisfaction, his refusal to become anything more than barely ruffled even when his interlocuters gently venture forth the suggestion: ‘Overreaction?’ The impression one gets, or perhaps is supposed to get, is of a very clever, terribly rational man in a world full of thicko scumbags.
This lack of debate was exacerbated in the country at large by that curse of our age, political polarisation
I watch a little daytime TV at the moment as part of my rest and recuperation programme following that car crash I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. More usually it is one of the quiz shows, such as Tipping Point, where the contestants are from the very opposite end of the intellectual scale to Chris and can only enrage with their stupidity. No, Shenille – sadly, Tony Blair was not prime minister at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar. Listening to Whitty’s comforting emollience, I can almost feel my hitherto distraught muscles knitting back together, repairing themselves, filling with blood and blooming. He is like a very expensive balm.
What we learn from this inquiry – that the scientists are convinced we should have imposed lockdown earlier and harder, for example – is maybe less interesting than what one might read between the lines. Or, as those scientists would disdainfully put it, speculation. The first and most obvious thing is the withering contempt in which the scientists held the politicians, which must surely have made the management of the pandemic more problematic than it needed to be.
We can infer this from the testimony of the former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, for example. With scarcely disguised scorn, Vallance suggested that science was not Boris Johnson’s ‘forte’ and that the then prime minister needed to have fairly simple graphs explained to him over and over again until he finally grasped the point. This contempt occasionally broke cover during that long, rather wonderful summer of 2020, not least over Rishi Sunak’s fairly ridiculous Eat Out to Help Out scheme, with newspapers reporting disquiet among the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) at one or other governmental misstep. In fairness to the scientists, they were dealing with a government which had chosen the intellectual titan Matt Hancock to be in charge of the country’s health, which he did with a kind of messianic idiocy.
The second is the make-up of that very committee, Sage – the people who for a year or so effectively became our unelected government. Its membership was rather closely confined and, during cross-examination, Whitty admitted that at first it was probably too narrow in its membership. According to him it later became much broader, but when asked more specifically about who might have been co-opted to give a differing view, he channelled Dr Pangloss again and suggested that in theory an infinite number of scientists might have been invited to provide their expertise, but that too many voices would have made consensus more difficult to achieve. Hmm – this is rather the problem, the nature of that consensus. Whitty admitted – indeed stated almost with pride – that no economists had been consulted, for example.
The issue here is that too great a proportion of the scientists had intellectual skin in the game. Science is perhaps mankind’s greatest achievement, but we sometimes forget that it is practised by humans, with all their frailties and inclinations. The point being that Sage may have been providing the government with advice with which all or most epidemiologists might concur – but without the corrective advice that might be provided by an economist or, for that matter, an oncologist. The advice was always about the immediate, and while Whitty insisted that he and his colleagues were at pains to alert ministers to the potential downsides of action taken to prevent the spread of the virus, we might infer that those downsides were flagged up with rather less avidity than would have been the case if the committee had heard from one or two dissenting voices from different scientific disciplines.
This lack of debate was exacerbated in the country at large by that curse of our age, political polarisation: many of those who might have raised a warning about the long-term effects of sequential lockdowns – the teachers, for example – were too often ideologically committed to what became the leftish view that no lockdown could possibly be sufficiently stringent and they should continue ad infinitum. We have seen more recently the effect this has had on schoolchildren.
Faced with this, one understands a little better the mindset which seems to have established itself in our politicians, including the mindset which led them to enjoy riotous parties when everybody else was confined to barracks. They were given advice which was far, far too narrow and, put simply, they didn’t entirely trust it. Vallance remarked that Johnson had particular difficulty understanding the consequences of government interventions (such as lockdowns) on the spread of the virus. My suspicion is the former PM was at heart deeply sceptical – for ideological as well as perfectly rational reasons – about these interventions and needed convincing that he was being told the
unvarnished truth.
In short, it was a government that had pledged to ‘follow the science’ but was always doubtful about its veracity. The final break came when Johnson refused to impose a lockdown during the Christmas of 2021, a decision which history suggests was unquestionably correct: the scientists at the time begged to differ and of course the Scots went their own way. The lesson to be learned, I reckon, is that it is no use following the science if the science comes from only one direction and there is no open debate about its efficacy or otherwise./>
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Virology poses a far greater threat to the world than AI
Matt Ridley
Sam Altman, the recently fired (and rehired) chief executive of Open AI, was asked earlier this year by his fellow tech billionaire Patrick Collison what he thought of the risks of synthetic biology. ‘I would like to not have another synthetic pathogen cause a global pandemic. I think we can all agree that wasn’t a great experience,’ he replied. ‘Wasn’t that bad compared to what it could have been, but I’m surprised there has not been more global coordination and I think we should have more of that.’
He is right. There is almost no debate about regulating high-risk virology, whereas the world is in a moral panic about artificial intelligence. The recent global summit at Bletchley Park essentially focused on how to make us safe from Hal the malevolent computer. Altman has called for regulation to stop AI going rogue one day, telling Congress: ‘I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong… we want to be vocal about that. We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.’
Bad actors worldwide know how easy it would be to use virology to bring the world economy to its knees
In contrast to that still fairly remote risk, the threat the world faces from research on viruses is far more immediate. There is strong evidence that Covid probably started in a laboratory in Wuhan. To summarise: a bat sarbecovirus acutely tuned to infecting human beings but not bats, which contains a unique genetic feature of a kind frequently inserted by scientists, caused an outbreak in the one city in the world where scientists were conducting intensive research on bat sarbecoviruses. That research involved bringing the viruses from distant caves, recombining their genes and infecting them into human cells and humanised transgenic mice; three of the scientists got sick but no other animals in the city did.
Yet calls to regulate this frankly idiotic corner of virology – gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens – are met with libertarian shrieks of outrage from scientists that even the new President of Argentina would be embarrassed by: leave us alone, we know what we are doing! Most of us were blissfully unaware that a small handful of virologists were being handed huge sums by the US and Chinese governments to see if they could find a virus capable of causing the next pandemic and bring it to a big city, then juice it up in a low–biosafety lab. Only governments, by the way, would fund that kind of work: no venture capitalist would touch it.
Yet now, compared with four years ago, the risk from such research is bigger, not smaller. Even if the recent pandemic did not begin in the Wuhan lab, the fact it could have done has alerted bad actors worldwide to how easy it would be to use virology to bring the world economy to its knees. From Pyongyang to Tehran to Moscow, ears have pricked up. The research proposal writes itself: ‘Dear Kim/Khamenei/Vladimir, if we don’t do this research our enemies will. Please can we hire some virologists and start sampling bats?’
It’s not just rogue regimes thinking this way. So are criminals. Last month, in Fresno, California, police arrested a Chinese national, who had changed his name multiple times, on charges of selling misbranded Covid-19 tests. That allegation is the tip of the iceberg. According to a report from a congressional committee, the man – part of a transnational criminal enterprise funded from China and on the run from a court ruling in Canada – was operating a large, chaotic, secret laboratory in which were found samples of viruses including Covid, HIV, hepatitis B and C, dengue and rubella, plus, according to a label on a freezer, ebola. Oh, and a thousand genetically engineered mice.
When the story first surfaced, after a council officer in the small town of Reedley in California spotted a garden hose leading into the warehouse, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention seemed remarkably uninterested. The CDC declined to test some of the samples before they were destroyed, so we do not know whether there was ebola in that freezer or not. The media moved to damp down ‘conspiracy theories’ that this was a Chinese government operation to start another pandemic. All those transgenic mice, the Associated Press told us, were ‘simply used to grow antibody cells to make test kits’. Right.
Even if he was just a rogue criminal with no connection to the Chinese government, it is alarming because, as the congressional committee put it, ‘a disturbing realisation is that no one knows whether there are other unknown biolabs in the US because there is no monitoring system in place [and] the US currently does not conduct oversight of privately funded research, including enhancement of potential pandemic pathogens’. There could be labs like this all over America, let alone Asia.
I find myself in a strange position here. I usually argue that regulation stifles innovation far more often than it encourages it, and that tying things like genetically modified crops up in impossible red tape has done great harm. Golden rice – genetically enhanced with vitamin A precursor – could have saved half a million lives a year in the 24 years since it was invented by the Swiss biotechnologist Ingo Potrykus, for example. But Greenpeace campaigned relentlessly against it, pushing governments to impose impossibly tight regulation, a stance that more than 150 Nobel Prize winners have condemned in strong words: ‘How many poor people in the world must die before we consider this a “crime against humanity”?’
Yet when a genuine risk is posed by one small part of virology, those of us calling for more regulation are somewhat lonely. Led by Bryce Nickels of Rutgers University, a group of scientists have founded an organisation called Biosafety Now but they are getting scant support from the scientific establishment. Greenpeace has, as far as I can tell, said nothing about that irresponsible research in Wuhan.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/virology-poses-a-far-greater-threat-to-the-world-than-ai
**********************************************New Zealand Government to End All COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates
The incoming New Zealand government, under Prime Minister-elect Christopher Luxon, has brokered a historic deal with New Zealand First, led by Winston Peters, to terminate all COVID-19 vaccine mandates and establish an inquiry into the pandemic.
Although Employment New Zealand currently reports no government vaccine mandates at present, it acknowledges that some employers may still require vaccinations based on health and safety legislation.
During COVID-19, while Jacinda Ardern was prime minister, New Zealand introduced vaccine mandates for workers in certain settings and a vaccine pass for the public.
Chris Hipkins, who was a health minister during COVID-19, took over from Ms. Ardern as Prime Minister in January.
During the election campaign, he sparked a massive reaction online when he claimed "there was no compulsory vaccination."
In addition to ending vaccine mandates, an urgent and comprehensive independent COVID-19 inquiry will be conducted, featuring both local and international experts. The inquiry will look into how the COVID-19 pandemic was handled in New Zealand, including the use of multiple lockdowns and the efficiency of vaccine procurement.
Ahead of the election, Mr. Peters campaigned for possible vaccine compensation for those who lost their jobs or were proven injured by the vaccine.
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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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Saturday, November 25, 2023
Another Friday hiatus
Both medical and social matters once again kept me too busy to blog. Sabbath tomorrow so back Sunday
Thursday, November 23, 2023
An Open Letter To The Lancet
The Lancet is prestigious and publishes some good studies but it is under heavily Leftist influence. It published, for instance, an article that criticized the American invasion of Iraq. And Leftists like the authoritarian responses to Covid. They took the heavy-handed Chinese Communist approach as their model
A Lancet paper has made outrageous claims that Covid vaccines are highly effective in reducing Covid and all-cause mortality for older Australians. This paper, used by the Australian Government to support more boosters for the elderly, is debunked in the following open letter:
Open letter to Bette Liu, Sandrine Stepien, Timothy Dobbins, Heather Gidding, David Henry, Rosemary Korda, Lucas Mills, Sallie-Anne Pearson, Nicole Pratt, Claire M. Vajdic, Jennifer Welsh, and Kristine Macartney, authors of “Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination against COVID-19 specific and all-cause mortality in older Australians: a population based study”. The Lancet, Vol. 40, 100928, November 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanwpc.2023.100928
also to Richard Horton (editor of the The Lancet)
and Paul Kelly (Australian Chief Medical Officer)
Concerns Regarding Data Integrity And Analysis
The retrospective, observational study of 3.8 million Australians of over 65 years, during eleven months of 2022, has reached the following broad conclusion:
“COVID-19 vaccination is highly effective against COVID-19 mortality among older adults although effectiveness wanes with time since the last dose.
Our findings emphasise the importance of continuing to administer booster doses, particularly to those at highest risk.”
This paper and its conclusion have been cited by the Australian Chief Medical Officer in an Australian Senate Estimates inquiry [1] to support government policy of continued vaccination for older adults.
The research has been funded by the Australian Government through various government agencies and by pharmaceutical companies.
As it stands, the conclusion of the paper is unclear, if not invalid, because it states that vaccination is “highly effective”, but “wanes over time”. Can a vaccine be “highly effective” only for a limited time? How limited?
The time limit to effectiveness is one of the key issues to be discussed below.
Data Integrity Issues
Most of the paper, consisting of four large tables occupying most of a printed page each, is a presentation of dosage statistics of the Australian population, which, while not irrelevant, are not germane to the main subject of the paper.
The space could be better used. The main subject and conclusion of the paper depend critically on analysis of the data relating dosage to COVID-19 and all-cause mortality shown in Figures 1 to 3.
These “death by vaccination status” data, central to the study, are largely absent from the paper. Importantly, the conclusion quoted above requires analysis of accurate Australian COVID data which are well-known to have serious integrity issues, which have errors originating from data collected from disparate sources and from flawed data recording procedures.
For example, someone who dies soon after being vaccinated with one dose may be recorded as the death of an unvaccinated person [2].
Also, COVID-19 mortality is intrinsically an unreliable statistic, because attribution of a COVID death may be erroneous. A death (ICD 10 code U07.1) could be with COVID (defined by a positive PCR test) rather than from COVID (the disease).
Sometimes, COVID deaths (ICD 10 code U07.2) have been assigned by judgement without doing any tests.
Raw COVID-19 mortality data by dosage, essential to the paper have not been disclosed in the paper, even in a summary form. How did they select and validate COVID-19 mortality data? The authors need to discuss the data of Figure 1 and 2 and should publish their compilation of the raw data, so that readers can replicate the results of their paper.
A further deficiency is: that measuring vaccination effectiveness (VE) by survival rates against only COVID-19 mortality is inadequate because it assumes falsely that vaccination does not have lethal side effects. Even the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has admitted [3] that there were 14 COVID vaccine-induced deaths to March 2023.
With mass vaccination, non-COVID excess deaths have reached about double COVID-19 deaths [4], which should be investigated for association with vaccination. Yet, with only a brief discussion suggesting how vaccination may reduce all-cause mortality, the authors have inserted “all-cause mortality” in the title of the paper, insinuating vaccination is also effective against all-cause mortality.
Method And Analysis Issues
Even ignoring data integrity issues, ignoring non-COVID excess deaths and supposing VE is validly measured against only COVID-19 mortality, the paper still suffers seriously from methodological and analytical defects. Vaccination, COVID-19 mortality and all-cause mortality data are available since 2021 and well into 2023.
Why does the paper select and analyze only eleven months of 2022? There were surges in deaths in 2022 accompanying the rollouts of the first and second boosters, but the paper does not consider that they may be related to vaccinations, rather than only to the COVID disease.
Instead of analyzing 2022 data as a whole, COVID and all-cause mortality data are analyzed in two separate periods: one five-month period and one six-month period. For different dose groups, vaccine effectiveness (VE) is evaluated by COVID-19 survival effectiveness for three windows: less than three months, three to six months and more than six months.
Such divisions of time periods need to be discussed, because analyzing survival over multiple fixed time periods involves unstated assumptions about the time taken for vaccines to have their effects, and the delay effects should be discussed.
The risk of errors increased due to survivorship bias, where deaths may “fall between the cracks” between survival windows. With two data periods, three dosage groups and three survival windows, there are 18 different vaccine mortality rates to compare to two unvaccinated mortality rates.
As may be expected, there are 18 different VE measures with a wide range of results depending on the various combinations. Importantly, the results appear random with no consistent VE pattern across the two time periods or between the dose groups.
In their main findings, the best and most convenient cases were selected for reporting. For example, from Figure 1 in the first period, the main finding reported was “VE of a 3rd COVID-19 vaccine dose within 3 months was 93 percent (95 percent CI 93–94 percent) whilst VE of a 2nd dose >6 months since receipt was 34 percent (26–42 percent)
Among unfavourable findings (see below), the most favourable finding has been cited by the authors to show COVID-19 vaccination is highly effective, but only relatively and “wanes with time”. Some of those unfavourable findings are masked by what appear as glaring anomalies, probably serious errors collected in table below.
From Figure 1 of the paper, the “Dose3>180 days” group has higher mortality rate (per 100 person-year) than the unvaccinated, yet they have positive vaccine effectiveness of 63.4 percent (COVID-19 VE (percentage) column below).
This and few other examples are shown in the table below, where a “Relative Risk Reduction (percentage)” column (should be the same as COVID-19 VE (percentage)) has been added here with shaded cells, simply calculated from the mortality rates given.
In the June to November period of Figure 1, the “Dose2 8-90 days” group had 1.218 mortality rate per 100 PY, compared to 0.49 for the unvaccinated. This shows that even in the short-term of less than three months, that vaccinated group (second shaded cell from the bottom) had 2.5 times higher risk of dying from COVID than the unvaccinated.
How could the authors claim for that case (second last column in the above table) a positive VE of 13.9 percent in their paper?
The paper needs to disclose the sorts of adjustments used to achieve positive “COVID-19 VE (percentage)” for those cases where the vaccinated groups had higher mortality rates than the unvaccinated. Those negative relative risk reduction results calculated here for those cases, if unexplained, would invalidate the main conclusion of paper that COVID-19 vaccination is highly effective.
Similar criticisms can be raised against the analysis in Figure 2 and Figure 3, where the method of adjustment for obtaining VE results for all-cause mortality is also not transparent, even though the raw all-cause data would be more accurate than COVID-19 data for reasons explained and discussed above.
On all-cause mortality the authors made unsubstantiated comments such as “COVID-19 vaccines also appeared effective against other specific causes of death…those who are more likely to get multiple vaccine doses, or to be vaccinated earlier are healthier and less likely to die from any cause…”. Emphasis added.
On Pfizer/BioNTech’s COMIRNATY vaccines alone, the TGA’s DAEN database [5] recorded (subject to underreporting) over 82,000 adverse events associated with many different diseases. Moreover, those comments are contradicted by the authors’ own analysis.
Figure 3 of the paper shows clearly that the authors’ own calculated VE against all-cause mortality (rates not shown) are all negative for those cases shown in the above table (last column).
Therefore, COVID-19 vaccination was ineffective and had increased all-cause mortality among some groups of older adults. Their evidence of ineffectiveness is consistent with Australian macro-data where all-cause mortality have increased significantly for older Australians vaccinated since 2021 [4].
Summary Of Critique
The approach of this study depends on official COVID data which have integrity issues, which the paper does not acknowledge.
Only 11 months in 2022 of official data out of possibly more than 24 months have been selected for the study.
The “death by vaccination status” data which link dosages with mortality data have not been discussed or disclosed. The key data used need to be publicly available for replication of the findings.
The unseen key data collection has been selectively analyzed, by dividing into separate time periods, dose groups and survival durations, producing 18 comparisons. The method of analysis is unsound and has led apparently to random results, without identifiable regularity.
The vaccination effectiveness results were not simply calculated, but adjusted. The details of the adjustments need to be disclosed.
The unadjusted results contradict the general conclusion that “COVID-19 vaccination is highly effective against COVID-19 mortality among older adults”.
Out of 18 comparisons of adjusted results, the most favourable and convenient findings have been selected and presented to draw the main conclusion which is not generally valid.
Conclusion
As it stands, the paper has serious deficiencies in data integrity, data selection bias, flawed methods of analysis, undisclosed adjustments of results, selective reporting of findings and the drawing of invalid conclusions.
The Australian Government has chosen to take this paper as authoritative evidence to justify its health policy, which has been associated with many excess deaths particularly in older Australians, but those deaths have been brushed off without investigation as coincidental, unrelated to vaccination.
The paper, in its currently published form, has serious methodological and analytical defects, resulting in errors and misleading conclusions.
Therefore, the paper needs substantial revision to address the issues raised or it should be retracted.
https://principia-scientific.com/an-open-letter-to-the-lancet/
********************************************************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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Wednesday, November 22, 2023
Study Reveals Most Common Chronic Symptoms After COVID-19 Vaccination
A new study shows some of the most common chronic symptoms among people who began experiencing the problems after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.
The most common symptoms were exercise intolerance, excessive fatigue, numbness, brain fog, and neuropathy, researchers reported in the paper.
Insomnia, palpitations, myalgia, tinnitus, headache, burning sensations, and dizziness were also experienced by at least half of the participants in the study, which was funded in part by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Participants reported a median of 22 symptoms, with a ceiling of 35.
The study focused on people "who report a severe, debilitating chronic condition following COVID-19 vaccination" that "began soon after COVID-19 vaccination and persisted in many people for a year or more," the researchers said.
The study was led by Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and Yilun Wu of the Yale School of Public Health's Department of Biostatistics.
It was published on Nov. 10 as a preprint ahead of peer review.
Methods
The paper comes from Yale's Listen to Immune, Symptom and Treatment Experiences Now (LISTEN) research, which examines both so-called long COVID and post-vaccine adverse events.
Researchers began recruiting participants in May 2022. Participants filled out a survey, and researchers had access to their health records.
The study featured adults who reported post-vaccination problems from May 2022 through July 2023. The 388 people who also reported so-called long COVID, or lingering symptoms after COVID-19 infection, were excluded. Another 146 people who didn't completely fill out the survey were also ultimately left out.
The median age of the participants was 46, and 80 percent were female. Approximately 88 percent live in the United States.
The design of the study means no causality could be confirmed, the researchers said. While they acknowledged the chronic symptoms could be caused by the vaccines, they alleged they could also be unrelated and have occurred by change, but also said the clustering of symptoms soon after vaccination "suggests a potential relationship."
Known side effects of the vaccines include heart inflammation, severe allergic shock, and Guillain-Barré Syndrome.
Other issues have been linked to the vaccines by some but aren't recognized as widely as confirmed side effects.
The symptoms could be quite painful. Participants reported a median of 80 on a scale of 100 when asked how bad their symptoms were on their worst days.
Lingering Symptoms
In the week before completing the survey, 93 percent of participants said they felt unease at least once.
More than eight out of 10 reported feeling fearful, and 81 percent reported feeling overwhelmed by worries.
Feelings of helplessness, depression, hopelessness, and worthlessness were also commonly reported.
Nearly the entire group said they felt rundown and 91 percent said they suffer from sleep problems.
On the other hand, half of participants reported being in good, very good, or excellent condition. Still, the rest reported fair, poor, or unknown status.
The symptoms started for many people soon after vaccination. The median time of symptom onset was three days. Seventy-seven percent of people experienced the symptoms after their first or second shot.
The study followed an NIH-authored paper that detailed 23 people who experienced persistent symptoms following COVID-19 vaccination.
A number of participants in the new study received new diagnoses after receiving a vaccine, including anxiety, neurological conditions, gastrointestinal issues, and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.
Problems Before the Pandemic
Nearly half the participants had allergies before the pandemic, according to the study. About three quarters of the participants in total had at least one comorbidity, such as allergies.
Behind allergies, the most common comorbidities were gastrointestinal issues, with acid reflux as an example; anxiety disorders; depressive disorders; and asthma.
Arthritis, an autoimmune disease, high cholesterol, hypertension of high blood pressure, and migraines were also reported each by more than two dozen people.
Treatments Tried
Many participants tried multiple treatments for their symptoms. Nearly all tried probiotics, which help boost good bacteria in the body.
Vitamins and supplements were also frequently turned to, with vitamins b12, c, and d and ibuprofen being the most popular.
Anti-inflammatory drugs, including ibuprofen, were used by a majority of participants.
Oral steroids such as dexamethasone were used by about half of the group.
Lifestyle changes were also common, with 51 percent limiting exercise or exertion, 44 percent cutting alcohol or caffeine, and 44 percent increasing or decreasing how much salt they consumed. Another approximately four in 10 changed their diet.
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U.S. Army Begs Soldiers to Come Back After They Were Forced Out for Not Getting the COVID Vaccine
Soldiers who were forced out of the U.S. Army because they refused to follow the Biden Administration’s draconian COVID-19 mandates are being asked to come back as a potential war looms.
This week, the United States Army sent letters to service members inviting them back to their branch despite being ousted over their refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
In February, the U.S. Army rescinded its order requiring service members to be vaccinated in order to fight for their country.
The letter reads:
Dear Former Service Member, We write to notify you of new Army guidance regarding the correction of military records for former members of the Army following rescission of the COVID-19 vaccination requirement. As a result of the rescission of all current COVID-19 vaccination requirements, former Soldiers who were involuntarily separated for refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccination may request a correction of their military records from either or both the Army Discharge Review Board (ADRB) or the Army Board for Correction of Military Records (ABCMR). Individuals may request a correction to military personnel records, including records regarding the characterization of discharge. Individuals who desire to apply to return to service should contact their local Army, U.S. Army Reserve (USAR), or Army National Guard (ARNG) recruiter for more information.
At the height of the Left’s COVID hysteria, the Biden Administration claimed that unvaccinated soldiers “present risk to the force and jeopardize readiness.”
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More Than Half Of Vaccinated People Feel Ill A Year Later
Why to do many people feel sick nowadays? A recent study from India suggests the COVID-19 vaccine is causing prolonged symptoms in over half of unwary recipients
Shrestha and Venkataraman published a study of data collected from September 2021 and May 2023, in a descriptive, follow-up cohort study that was conducted, having enrolled participants who were 18 years of age or older, met the vaccination requirements established by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, and had completed the primary immunization series with the AZD1222® (adenoviral) or BBV152® (whole-virion inactivated vaccine).
The prevalence of post coronavirus vaccine syndrome (PCVS) and the QoL measured using EQ-5D-5L were assessed at one month, six months, and 12 months post-COVID-19 vaccination.
The authors found more than half of subjects at 12 months were reporting symptoms of PCVS.
These data fit what I am seeing in clinical practice.
This study provides a strong rationale for most vaccinated individuals to undergo McCullough Protocol Base Spike Detoxification for 3-12 months with:
-Nattokinase 2000 FU (100) bid
-Bromelain 500 qd
-Curcumin 500 mg bid (nano, liposomal, or with piperine)
These are starting doses which can be increased if well tolerated.
No therapeutic claims can be made since there are no large, prospective, randomized double-blind clinical trials completed.
Unfortunately, no such trials are planned or registered at this point in time.
https://principia-scientific.com/more-than-half-of-vaccinated-people-feel-ill-a-year-later/
********************************************************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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Tuesday, November 21, 2023
Long Covid is a vaxx injury
The ‘midwit’ really came into their own during Covid and what a curse on the world they all were, these individuals of above average intelligence, but not too far above, who nevertheless liked to think of themselves as far wiser than the common pleb. Every state Chief Medical/Health Officer in Australia was, in my opinion, a classic midwit, diving into complex, multi-faceted public health issues with simplistic notions and infantile policies.
The CHOs/CMOs appeared to be entirely unaware of the limits to their public health omniscience, but their omnipotence was, alas, very real. They could issue legally enforceable, but patently absurd, Public Health Orders of great scope. Cheered on by media flattery, they went about stuffing up entire economies and ruining or degrading many people’s lives with bull-in-a-china-shop effectiveness.
Most of the Covid midwits have receded into the intellectual swamp they came from because no one is listening to them anymore. In America, for example, only 2 per cent of the population have availed themselves of the latest ‘bivalent’ booster that is supposed to protect against two new horror strains. In Australia, a mere 8.1 per cent of Australians aged 18-64 were ‘fully immunised’ at September 27 and less than half (44.3 per cent) of people aged 75+ (those allegedly most vulnerable to the Worst Disease Ever) have bothered to seek out the recommended up-to-date jab. We are over it.
Some Covid midwits, however, are still valiantly fighting a rearguard action. They are like that Japanese soldier, second-lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, who did not surrender and who hung out as a guerrilla fighter for 29 years in the Philippines after the end of the war in the Pacific. He must have been an inspiration for Australia’s own ‘Never Surrender’ Covid warriors who are manning the ‘Long Covid’ redoubts, masks in hand and boosters at the ready. These include some doctors who staff Australia’s 80-odd ‘Long Covid’ clinics where the lost war against Covid is still being fought.
An enthusiast from one of these clinics recently took to the trenches of social media to come to the aid of the Canadian branch of the Ever-Covid Resistance, one of whose fighters had complained of having twice ‘gotten Covid’ in the last month. Their Downunder ‘Long Covid’ clinic comrade, and fellow Covid magnet, agreed that recurring Covid infections are real and how three times in a year, in March, June and August of 2022, they had contracted Covid despite being ‘fully-immunised’ with each infection as grim as the last.
It seems that all their friends are getting Covid about every five weeks, leading them to conclude that it is now possible to be infected, not just frequently, but even by more than one Covid variant at the same time. Covid doesn’t even wait for the last infection to end anymore. That’s one dangerous viral enemy out there!
It had to be Covid that was responsible because, like Caesar’s wife, the Covid vaccine remains above suspicion. The possibility that, booster by booster, people have been trashing their immune systems in addition to picking up a host of other vaccine injuries, is not considered. One Australian Long Covid champion alleges the following gems on social media:
100 per cent of the clinic’s ‘Long Covid’ patients have microclots in their blood (nothing else could be causing that, doctor?).
Covid increases your risk of heart attacks, strokes, and clots (see above).
Covid can persist in tonsils, the brain, the lymph nodes, the heart, generally anywhere.
‘Generally anywhere’! This pretty much sums up what happens when a toxic spike protein travels throughout the body, courtesy of the blood vessels, and transfects millions of cells through the LNP cell-penetrating delivery system (whilst a respiratory virus stays put in just the respiratory system – the clue is in the name).
19 per cent of Long Covid patients have myocarditis. (Which other group of the population is getting myocarditis which used to be quite rare until something new and toxic came on the scene?)
The clinic’s patients include 14-year-olds who present with fast heart rate and chest pain, contributing to ‘mass disablement – especially of young people’. (Seek Covid and ye shall find Covid; do not seek vaccine injury and ye shall not find vaccine injury…)
It is further claimed by some doctors that unjabbed people are also getting Covid all the time but they just don’t know it because they aren’t testing for it! How will anyone know they are sick with Covid if they don’t test for it? They probably think they are perfectly fine, or have a common cold or something… Those complacent fools! ‘So, please stop saying Long Covid is just a cold when it really, really isn’t!’ Or so they insist. Well, that is kind of correct. What would have been ‘just a cold’ for almost everyone may have been turned into something far, far worse following vaccination.
Online defences of ‘Long Covid’ are notable for what they don’t say. By now, it appears that even medical midwits are losing faith in the vaccine. As some lament, despite their repeated grim infections they have stopped mumbling the once-routine phrase, ‘Thank goodness I was fully vaccinated because otherwise it would have been so much worse!’ Indeed, that flimsy last line of vaccine defence has faded from the entire narrative except at government headquarters where it still gets an increasingly desultory run as the sole remaining virtue of the dud vaccines.
Even though the top generals of the Covid war effort have shown cowardice in the face of the viral enemy, according to the remaining midwits (who are particularly cross about the World Health Organisation ending the formal ‘global health emergency’) there is still a war to be won because ‘someone is dying every three minutes [from Covid] and 10 per cent of all those infected will get Long Covid’.
All is not lost! For the midwits, there is still The Mask, that insignia of the Covid midwit army. The Mask represents midwittery at its most moronic.
The media allies of the Covid Midwits are lending vital auxiliary support in the never-ending defence of Covid hysteria. In South Australia, there is another dogged pocket of resistance to Covid sanity – ‘South Australians suffering debilitating symptoms from Long Covid are being forced to wait up to ten months to see experts in one of the state’s Long Covid Assessment Clinics at the Royal Adelaide Hospital’, reports InDaily.
‘Long Covid’ is the new virus ogre in town these days, superseding the now frankly toothless and boring old ordinary Covid ‘case’ count. Despite the odd article emerging to scare us about ‘cases’ (which ‘continue to plague the state with weekly reported cases of 645’) this sort of dodgy statistic doesn’t turn a hair these days (remember when we shut the state down for a handful of ‘cases’?). Now it’s the turn of ‘Long Covid’ and its myriad discontents.
Covid of the ‘Long’ variety can leave you wiped out for months or years on end and everyone who gets Covid is potentially at risk of Long Covid. ‘SA Health estimated 35,000 South Australians can expect to contract long Covid’. Cue the alarm bells because the Covid astrologers have spoken. Mind you, it may be yet more worthless Covid modelling but, despite that, it gives us some sort of bargain basement government estimate for the number of serious Covid vaccine injuries to come but no alarm bells will be rung for that and no Long Vaxx clinics will ever be established.
Demand for the ‘Long Covid’ clinics in South Australia is already through the roof from people who, for more than 12 weeks, have been experiencing ‘complex symptoms and significant functional impairment, with symptoms ranging from severe fatigue to brain fog and breathlessness’, drastically ‘impacting their return to work, study or social roles’. The clinics have been forced to triage the wave of patients so that those with the most severe symptoms are seen first, leaving those with less chronic symptoms waiting for nearly a year to be seen.
I think, in retrospect, what the Long Covid midwits are fretting about isn’t just a cold, or even post-viral syndrome (which is possible after any viral infection), but vaccine injury. The harms of the Covid vaccine are being swept under the rug of ‘Long Covid’. Long Covid is Long Vaxx Injury. It really really is.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/last-of-the-covid-midwits/
******************************************************NY Times says school COVID closures may be ‘most damaging disruption’ to kids’ education in U.S. history
The New York Times editorial board penned a new editorial on Saturday stating that the school closures enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic "may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education."
The editorial provided a reflection on the "significant" learning losses stemming from keeping around 50 million kids out of the classroom because of the virus, and urged elected officials and the education community to move quickly to heal some of the damage.
The paper came to these points after certain mainstream media outlets supported these same closures. Some media figures have continued arguing they were good decisions.
The editorial opened with a dire assessment of what COVID-19 closures did to America’s schoolchildren. It stated, "The evidence is now in, and it is startling. The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education."
"It also set student progress in math and reading back by two decades and widened the achievement gap that separates poor and wealthy children," it added.
To compound the issue, the board noted that learning losses "will remain unaddressed when the federal money runs out in 2024."
As such, this generation of students "will experience diminished lifetime earnings and become a significant drag on the economy," The Times added, citing economists.
The editorial lamented that school administrators and politicians are not mobilizing the country to meet this issue, noting that combating it requires a "multidisciplinary approach," starting with "getting kids back on solid ground," and replacing "the federal aid that is set to expire."
It also detailed how an "epidemic of absenteeism" is compounding the challenge of rehabilitating these students.
The board wrote, "students who grew accustomed to missing school during the pandemic continue to do so after the resumption of in-person classes. Millions of young people have joined the ranks of the chronically absent — those who miss 10 percent or more of the days in the school year — and for whom absenteeism will translate into gaps in learning."
The piece also mentioned how these kids are "also vulnerable to mental health difficulties that worsened during the pandemic."
Citing the CDC, the Times said, "more than 40 percent of high school students had persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness; 22 percent had seriously considered suicide; 10 percent reported that they had attempted suicide."
The editorial concluded, "The learning loss crisis is more consequential than many elected officials have yet acknowledged. A collective sense of urgency by all Americans will be required to avert its most devastating effects on the nation’s children."
Despite its current concern over the closures’ harm to American students, New York Times reporting in 2020 advocated for school closures despite the risks.
In a March 2020 piece, the Times wrote, "More and more schools have chosen to close in the past few days, reflecting a growing consensus that the benefits of closings outweigh the harms, especially since many of the harms can be mitigated."
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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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