Australian expert claims coronavirus likely started in China following WHO investigation

An Australian virus expert who recently travelled to China to investigate the coronavirus pandemic is convinced it originated there.

NSW Health infectious diseases expert Professor Dominic Dwyer was part of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) 14-strong virus investigation team which visited Wuhan for two weeks to study the outbreak’s source.

While the investigation did not definitively declare China as the source, Prof Dwyer, who is now in quarantine following his return to Australia, told Nine he believed COVID-19 “started in China”.

“I think the evidence for it starting elsewhere in the world is actually very limited. There is some evidence but it’s not really very good,” he said.

The WHO team visited a number of placed linked to the initial outbreak, including the Huanan Seafood Market, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Hubei Province Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Hubei Provincial Hospital.

Prof Dwyer also added bats were the “most likely” source of the virus but that it had been active in the community for “weeks’ before the outbreak connected to the wet market in late 2019.

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/australian-expert-claims-coronavirus-likely-started-in-china-following-who-investigation/news-story/5f3a6b8037bebe52c9e9fcc1fdd4fee0

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The Left's 'Insurrection' Hypocrisy

They demand that rioters and inciters be held accountable. Unless they're on the Left.

It’s telling, isn’t it, how Democrats supported a summer’s worth of deadly and costly rioting all across our nation’s inner cities and yet squealed like stuck pigs when a single short-lived eruption came too close for their Capitol Hill comfort.

In an all-too-predictable display of liberal privilege, they trotted out endless encouragement of and justification for the former, and nonstop denunciations of the latter; a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for the former, and a presidential impeachment for the latter.

“They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop,” said then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. “This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And everyone should take note of that. They’re not gonna let up and they should not.”

And they should not.

How is such overt sanctioning of mob violence not a disqualifying act? After uttering those remarks, Harris shouldn’t have been able to run for dog catcher, much less vice president of the United States. But she’s a leftist, so she’s immune from accountability.

“To the media,” as Pat Buchanan writes, “the long hot summer of rioting, looting and arson that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis was driven by ‘racial justice’ protests against a ‘systemic racism’ that permeates society. … Joe Biden and his party have responded by setting as a goal the replacement of ‘equality of rights’ with ‘equity,’ an equality of results, where gaps in test scores, incarcerations, incomes and wealth between white and black are to be closed by government action.”

Ah, equity — that sweet-sounding word with the sourest of meanings. As we wrote last month, “Equality and equity aren’t the same things. Not even close. The root of the former word is one of the self-evident truths embedded in our Declaration of Independence. It refers to the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities. The latter word, however, refers to systems and institutions that are ‘fair’ and ‘just.’”

Consider, for example, the hard-left and wholly disreputable money-grubbers at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which recently decided to give certain racists a pass based on the color of their skin. “In the name of equity,” writes Daniel Greenfield at FrontPageMag, “the SPLC announced that it’s shutting down its black nationalist hate groups category like the Nation of Islam. After ‘doing the internal work of anti-racism,’ the SPLC will no longer list black racist hate groups because ‘the hate is not equal.’”

When is “hate” not really hate? When it comes from the Left.

Or consider the Bellingham insurrection. What’s that? You haven’t heard about the Bellingham, Washington insurrection two weeks ago — the one in which antifa tangled with police, stormed city hall, and forced the city’s mayor to be evacuated? Imagine that. “It is impossible to describe how evil these Antifa terrorists are,” writes Power Line’s John Hinderaker. “You really have to watch videos of them in action — this is just one of thousands — to get the picture. Which is why, I suppose, such videos are absent from the nightly news: Democrats want to protect their shock troops.”

Indeed, it’s almost as if Big Media only denounced certain kinds of political violence and insurrection. As for the January 6 riot at the Capitol, “That was an act of insurrection,” writes Buchanan of leftist opinion, “a treasonous attempt to overturn a democratic election and overthrow a democratic government. Of all the riots in 2020 and 2021, that was the unforgivable one. The proper response to that riot is not to heed its angry voices but to impeach the president on whose behalf they acted, to strip him of any right to serve again in public office, and to write new laws to deal with the horrific ‘domestic terrorism’ we witnessed at the Capitol.”

If it weren’t for double standards, the Left wouldn’t have any at all.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/77647-the-lefts-insurrection-hypocrisy-2021-02-10

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The oligarchy’s chosen method of “reopening” after the pandemic shows that it intends to attempt to validate the harm it did over the previous year. Will it work?

Riding fear of COVID-19, our oligarchs persuaded millions of Americans to join in masked pantomime, to deliver themselves to something like house arrest, and to blame Donald Trump for their troubles. But as much as the oligarchs enjoyed COVID powers and dreamt of segueing them into a “new normal,” they knew that America could not be locked down forever.

They especially knew, were they to unseat Trump and become responsible for the country, their charges that he had failed to stop the pandemic would come back to haunt them. “Why can’t you stop it?” would be the natural question they would have to face as the virus did what airborne viruses do: spread. Hence, after January 20, dismounting the COVID tiger, albeit gingerly, became the order of the day.

And so it happened, on January 22, Joe Biden spoke the truth: nothing that anyone could do can alter the trajectory of the virus’ spread.

A few grumbles notwithstanding, there was silence from very same media and “experts” who had accused Trump of responsibility for hundreds of thousands of deaths because he had not implemented a nationwide test-trace-and-quarantine system. The futility of such measures in preventing an infectious disease from running its course once it has entered a population was as obvious in 2020 as in 2021. But then, denying it served the oligarchy’s prosecution. Affirming it now serves its defense.

Already on January 16, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that his state could not wait to reopen until herd immunity had been reached naturally or through a vaccine, because “If we wait, there will be nothing left to open.”

Across the country, some of the Democratic mayors and governors who had most vigorously imposed COVID-19 restrictions hastened to remove them, even though the number of “cases” is higher than it was in April. By the third week of January, California Governor Gavin Newsom revoked his December stay-at-home order along with a 10 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew he had imposed in the face of rising case numbers. One reason for Newsom’s move may be the fact that just over 1 million Californians have signed a petition to force a recall election.

But there is a larger reason why the ruling class seems intent on distancing itself from responsibility for the COVID restrictions. The oligarchs and their press agents had argued the COVID troubles were 100 percent Trump’s fault, and defeating him would alleviate them. Preserving the lockdowns is unsustainable politically. But lifting the restrictions in the apparent face of rising cases risks uncovering the fact that COVID was less a plague than a political ploy. To repeat President Biden’s true statement of how little government can do with regard to COVID is an indictment of the entire oligarchy’s conduct since March. It exposes that conduct as political predation with deadly consequences for millions. Hence, dismounting the COVID tiger in a way that preserves the powers it gained for the oligarchy requires some prestidigitation.

Fortunately for the oligarchy, there is a way of making sure that each lightening of restrictions dovetails nicely with a drop in the number of “cases.” How is that? Because vaccines notwithstanding, the “softness,” the very plasticity of the number by which the oligarchy scared the hell out of America in 2020, makes it possible, presto magico, gradually to ease the fear.

In April, I explained in these pages how changing definitions of the term “case” made it possible to substitute the oligarchy’s agenda for COVID’s reality in the minds of Americans. The same dishonest process can be used in reverse.

The reality is that we do not know how many people have been infected with COVID-19, and the standard PRC test only muddies the waters. On Inauguration Day, the World Health Organization, after consultation with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, issued a two-part directive intended to reduce the number of what it calls “false positive” COVID cases that clarifies only the corrupt political nature of everything surrounding the pandemic.

Throughout 2020, doctors and hospitals had been encouraged—if not pressured—to label as COVID any set of symptoms that looked remotely like it (explaining why cases of influenza almost disappeared from the United States last year). Now the WHO asked them to make sure that in order for a case to be labeled COVID, symptoms must also match positive results of the standard PCR test.

Simultaneously, the WHO strongly suggested that those who administer the PCR test reduce the number of cycles through which samples are processed. Through 2020, most jurisdictions in America had run samples through 40 cycles. Running that many cycles radically increases the chances of a positive result. This not only inflated the number of “cases,” but it also attributed hospitalizations to COVID-19 rather than to other causes. It led to patients being treated as if they had COVID rather than for what really ailed them, and attributing deaths to COVID that in fact were not.

The new guidance guarantees that, in the coming months, the number of “cases” will drop. The oligarchy will credit the reduction to its wise management. Loosening its grip gradually, it will claim benevolence and prudence. By thus dismounting the COVID tiger, it will try to validate the harm it did over the previous year.

There being nothing especially artful about this stratagem, and most Americans not being utterly stupid, its success depends exclusively on the media’s near-unanimous complicity in it. That unanimity, however, may be getting harder to maintain. Not only is the binding objective—getting rid of Trump—no longer there, documents are surfacing that show the material complicity between Anthony Fauci, the oligarchy’s fountain of authority in all matters COVID-19, and the development of the virus itself. Covering for that level of professional incompetence and corruption may be a bridge too far, even for today’s media.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13406&omhide=true

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IN BRIEF

Biden has now signed 52 executive orders and actions in first 20 days (Daily Wire)

U.S. sees a steady and significant drop in coronavirus cases, but media drumbeat continues (NBC)

Cuomo asks court to overturn his own COVID restrictions on houses of worship (National Review)

CVS, Walgreens to begin delivering COVID-19 vaccines Friday (USA Today)

Americans are saving more during the pandemic (NBC)

U.S. consumer prices up 0.3% in January, led by energy spike ... caused by Biden's bad executive orders (AP)

TikTok sale to Oracle, Walmart shelved as Biden reviews security (Fox Business)

Woke NFL's Super Bowl LV attracts 96.4M viewers, fewest since 2007 (Disrn)

Woke NBA's Dallas Mavericks won't play national anthem at home games (The Hill)

Woke syrup: The brand formerly known as Aunt Jemima to be called Pearl Milling Company (NBC)

Policy: Biden's weak case for returning to the UN Human Rights Council (National Review)

Policy: Africans plead with Joe Biden to stop paying their countries to kill children (The Federalist)

U.S. to reengage with the farcical UN Human Rights Council (State.gov)

Senator Richard Shelby is fourth Republican to not seek reelection in 2022 (Senate.gov)

Minimum wage increase would kill 1.4 million jobs, CBO finds (Daily Caller)

Biden press secretary says illegal immigrants convicted of crimes will not be prioritized for deportation (Post Millennial)

Biden administration considers COVID tests for domestic flights (Roll Call)

Hacker attempted to poison water supply in Florida city near Super Bowl in Tampa (Examiner)

Tom Brady called "racist" on social media for winning Super Bowl during Black History Month (PJ Media)

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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AstraZeneca vaccine: why Australia is forging ahead as South Africa tackles Covid variant

Medical experts say the jab is effective against severe infection, as researchers work to adapt vaccines against variants and experiment with mixing inoculations

Australian health authorities have moved to calm concerns about
the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine, after a small-scale study suggested its efficacy against mild to moderate infections from the the South African variant of the virus could be as low as 10%.

AstraZeneca is going through the Therapeutic Goods Administration approval process now and is slated to be rolled out from April. This is what experts are saying.

You should still get the AstraZeneca vaccine

That’s the advice of Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly. He has urged people not to put too much stock in the results of the South African study, which he stressed was both limited in scope and had not yet been peer-reviewed.

Kelly told reporters on Tuesday that people should be wary of “taking small amounts of information quickly, without looking at it carefully, and making conclusions”.

“At the moment, I can absolutely say – and this may change in future, and we will be nimble in the way we look at that information and putting that into our planning – but at the moment, there’s no evidence anywhere in the world that AstraZeneca effectiveness against severe infection is affected by any of these variants of concern. And that is the fact.”

His comments were echoed by Prof Mary-Louise McLaws, an Australian epidemiologist and advisor to the World Health Organisation on Covid-19.

“I commend your readers to get any vaccine that is offered to them, because it will reduce severity,” McLaws told Guardian Australia. “Any vaccine is better than no vaccine. If you do get the virus it will improve your outcomes, your response, and you may not get severe Covid.”

There is also evidence from another unpublished study in Israel on the Pfizer vaccine, which suggested that people who are not protected by the vaccine nevertheless had a reduced viral load. So even if a vaccine had a reduced efficacy, there is evidence to suggest it will reduce the extent to which a person spreads the disease, McLaws said.

AstraZeneca, unsurprisingly, also played down the study on the South African variant, saying it was a small phase one or two trial, which showed limited efficacy against mild disease from the variant.

“While we have not been able to properly ascertain its effect against severe disease and hospitalisation given that subjects were predominantly young, healthy adults, we do believe our vaccine will still protect against severe disease for the B1351 variant, particularly when the dosing interval is optimised to 8-12 weeks,” AstraZeneca said.

What the South African study actually showed

The study was a small-scale trial of 2,000 people aged 31 which showed the AstraZeneca vaccine had as little as 10% efficacy in preventing mild to moderate infection against the South African variant of Covid-19, B1351. However the researchers expressed hope the vaccine would still offer significant protection against more serious infection, which is the goal of the global vaccine program.

The study is yet to be peer-reviewed or published. The South African government has paused its planned rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine in response.

It is not the only vaccine to show reduced efficacy against the South African variant. Trials of the Novavax vaccine also showed 60% efficacy against the South African variant, compared with an 89% efficacy overall – 95.6% against the original coronavirus and 85.6% against the UK variant.

Kelly said Australian authorities will be looking very closely at all information which comes out about the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but said there was to date no information to suggest it did not protect against severe infections from the South African variant.

He said Australian authorities will be talking closely with the UK, where AstraZeneca has already been widely distributed.

“This is a very good vaccine, very safe, and once it goes through those processes, of safety, quality and efficacy, we will be able to look to roll out that vaccine as well – as always, subject to the TGA advice,” he said.

Yes, but it will take time. AstraZeneca said it has already started adapting its vaccine against the South African variant, “and will advance rapidly through clinical development so that it is ready should it be needed”.

Novavax responded to the lower results in South Africa by saying it would immediately start developing a new vaccine aimed specifically at the South African variant.

AstraZeneca is a viral vector vaccine, which relies on the use of an RNA molecule – the same part of the virus as used in the mRNA Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Novavax is a more traditional protein-based vaccine, and they take longer to modify.

Kelly said mRNA and viral vector vaccines can be adapted more quickly than protein vaccines, but even if they are able to be adapted,” it is another issue to make nine billion of them”.

“If we’re going to vaccinate the whole world, it’s going to take time,” he said.

Why don’t we just all take the Pfizer vaccine?

That would be a great option, says McLaws. Except we don’t have enough, and there is significant pressure on the global supply. Australia recently secured an additional 10m doses of the Pfizer vaccine, taking the total contracted amount to 20m doses by the end of the year.

That’s enough to administer the required two doses to 10 million people, or just under 40% of Australia’s population. The first 80,000 doses of the Pfizer are still on track to arrive in Australia by the end of February, Kelly says, and authorities are hoping for weekly deliveries thereafter. People in the highest-risk cohort – frontline medical staff, hotel quarantine workers, aged and disability care home residents and staff – will get that vaccine.

The balance of the population is likely to receive either AstraZeneca, which is manufacturing 50m doses in Melbourne that are expected to be administered from March, pending TGA approval, or the Novavax vaccine, which is several months away.

What are the other options?

Well, we could mix vaccines. That concept is being trialled in the UK – they called for volunteers just last week – and will involve giving 820 unvaccinated people over the age of 50 a first dose of either the AstraZeneca or the Pfizer vaccine. Half the group will have their vaccine switched for the second dose, and the other half will get the same again.

It is an option worth considering, McLaws said. Without it, the risk is that people vaccinated with AstraZeneca – largely the 20- to 39-year-old cohort – may not be fully protected against Covid-19. That’s a problem because that age group, while not at highest risk of serious disease or death, made up half of all people who contracted Covid-19 in Australia last year. They are highly mobile and more likely to be underemployed and working multiple part-time jobs, which increases their risk of exposure.

Even without considering new variants, AstraZeneca has a lower reported efficacy than Pfizer and Novavax, the other options in Australia’s stable. It sought regulatory approval in the UK on the basis that it has about 70% efficacy.

“The risk is that if our 20- to 39-year-olds are vaccinated with AstraZeneca, we have at least a 30% risk of them not eliciting an immune response without the additional problem of a variant,” McLaws said. “This is an opportunity to look at how we protect the unknown 30-odd percent. And that may be to mix up the second dose with something that doesn’t have such low efficacy for the South African strain and the Brazilian strain.”

What does this mean for borders and other restrictions?

To date there have been no reported cases of the South African variant in the Australian community.

But the risk remains. Since Friday there have been 87 samples of B117, the UK variant, detected in hotel quarantine in Australia and 18 of B1351, the South African variant.

But the vaccine results solidify what epidemiologists have warned for some time: that life will not instantly go back to normal once the majority of the population has been vaccinated

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/09/astrazeneca-vaccine-why-australia-is-forging-ahead-as-south-africa-tackles-covid-variant

Big business is not your friend

Sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement, cities across the United States went up in flames last year, beset with looters, agitators, and killers. As leaves, and ashes, fell softly last autumn, homicide rates began to soar nationwide as $1 billion-plus in claims registered on the insurance industry’s books, making these riots the most destructive in American history. 

Even so, last week, Norwegian Member of Parliament Petter Eide nominated Black Lives Matter for the Nobel peace prize. 

The most peculiar thing about the mayhem last summer was not the media coverage, the bipartisan kowtowing to the demands of agitators, or even the magnitude of the destruction. Instead, it was the universal embrace of the movement behind the madness by the managers of industry. 

A week after a gunman shot and killed federal officer Patrick Underwood while a Black Lives Matter protest roared on nearby, as riots were gaining momentum across the country, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey encouraged his followers to “Download Signal,” an encrypted messaging app. Signal served as an organizing tool for BLM activists to conspire away from prying eyes. 

Three days after Dorsey tweeted that thoughtful tip, looters killed a retired African American police captain named David Dorn as he tried to protect a friend’s pawn shop in St. Louis, Missouri.

A Not-So-Free Market

Dorsey is not alone. The number of corporations that backed the cause—and continue to support it—is dizzying. IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Target, Walmart, Home Depot, T-Mobile, Uber, Facebook, Apple, Intel, the list goes on and on. PayPal announced it would earmark $530 million to “provide immediate financial relief, sustained support and long-term investment to expand economic opportunity for Black and underrepresented minority businesses and communities.” Citigroup published a study that put the “cost of black inequality” in the United States at $16 trillion.

Many of these same corporations have aligned themselves against right-wing populism specifically and Middle Americans in general. A single, solitary riot on January 6 by Trump supporters provoked their purge from the internet, the financial strangulation of allied lawmakers, the denial of services to both, the shuttering of bank accounts, and more. All, ironically, under the pretense of combating extremism—a justification the industry managers most recently used to quell an online populist revolt. 

Retail traders using the Robinhood broker-dealer app managed to kneecap Wall Street hedge funds that attempted to short sell GameStop, a brick-and-mortar video game retailer. So far, populist short squeezers have cost Wall Street short-sellers $20 billion. Corporations and their allies in the media reacted by reminding Americans that the free market isn’t free at all. 

Discord and Facebook moved to restrict groups used by retail traders to communicate and organize, both under the pretense of terms of service violations unrelated to trading. Robinhood itself has alternated between imposing bans and restrictions on trading, enraging users who accused the company of caving to pressure from Wall Street. 

Laura Unger, the former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission, compared retail traders’ actions to the riot Trump supporters staged on January 6 at the Capitol. While the events at the Capitol caused “personal, bodily harm,” retail traders did “financial harm,” she told CNBC. The media has drawn connections between these traders and Trump voters, which is true insofar as both revolted against the elites—but the implicit and more critical point she wishes to make is that these people are unwashed, backward, and probably racist. 

The Best Activism Corporate Money Can Buy

While the scale of all this is unprecedented, the fundamentals are not new. Corporations support and court social upheavals because that is a far more effective way than force to neutralize them. Agitators and their movements, as Canadian philosopher George Grant wrote in a critique of the Left, “are taken into the system and trivialized. They are made to serve the interest of the system they are supposed to be attacking, by showing that free speech is allowed.” 

If so many leftists did not hate everyday Americans more than they hated that system, they would not be so often and easily appeased. Black Lives Matter ultimately strengthened the hand of the system tenfold, allowing it to rehabilitate its image while increasing its power and reach. 

Virtually every issue that reduces American life to scrapping over spoils follows this pattern. 

The “dirty secret of affirmative action politics,” Richard Kahlenberg noted in 1996, “is that corporate America actually supports affirmative action,” whether it is based on race or sex or nationality. A culture of affirmative action, in reality, has little to do with merit and equality or justice, and more with an ever-expanding base of consumers and producers who keep wages down and demand high. Many conservatives who spend their days decrying the march of the Left have internalized this scheme. 

“Despite the third-wave feminist tendency to conflate the ephemeral patriarchy with capitalism, the two couldn’t be more incompatible,” writes conservative journalist Tiana Lowe in “Capitalism Crushed the Patriarchy.” Free markets, she concludes, “have revolutionized the quality of human life for everyone, but perhaps for none more than women.” In other words, she unwittingly agrees with Karl Marx that capitalism, not socialism, dissolved the bonds of tradition, of the family, and encouraged women to abandon the crib for the cubicle—it’s just that she insists this is a reason to celebrate. 

“Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class,” Marx wrote in 1848 on the corrosive consequences of capitalism. “All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.” Contemporary conservatives make the same observations just as approvingly as Marx, they just aren’t honest or smart enough to realize that fact.

More to the point, corporations support affirmative action for the same reason they support the politics of mass immigration and are willing to pay off agitators: profit and power and an expanded consumer base that is essentially a morally unmoored, deracinated proletariat enslaved to debt. In other words, people who cannot govern themselves will do, and buy, what they are told.

More Easily Managed People

This system praises diversity, but its end is homogeneity. Just a handful of billionaires own America’s newspapers, for example, while six corporations control virtually all media outlets. When ordinary conservatives decry socialism, what they are really railing against is centralized planning in the hands of a few—but this is already a fact of American life. The American economy is defined by consolidated corporate power that effectively does just that. 

“Crony capitalism” is, therefore, a misnomer because it suggests what we are witnessing is an exception to an otherwise good rule when it is the rule itself—managerialism—that fuses industry and government. The active heads of government bureaus, wrote James Burnham, “are the managers-in-government, the same, or nearly the same, in training functions, skills, habits of thought as the managers-in-industry.” 

None of this can be said aloud, so a cosmopolitan myth of universalism is woven, with liberty, equality, and opportunity as its tenets. All the claims of particularism, such as family, sex, religion, human nature, and nation-state become artificial at best; oppressive if white, heterosexual, male, Christian, and Western. 

The traditions, symbols, and heroes of historic America naturally come under attack because they are representations of differentiation; thus, barriers to creating a homogenized mass society fit for mass consumption and production. Indeed, corporations have spearheaded the deconstruction of American civilization and the creation of a new, more easily “managed” one.

Thus, the myth of democratic capitalism, in reality, is an expression of the personal and group interests of an oligarchy that casts itself and its actions as serving the public interest. But the mask slips every time not-so-thinly veiled force or fraud is employed to protect and consolidate its power, interests, and ideology—whether openly engaging in market manipulation to protect Wall Street or removing entire social media networks from the web to silence dissent.

The truth is that the political economy of the United States is no longer capitalism but managerialism, which slit capitalism’s throat sometime in the 20th century following the Great Depression and two world wars, replacing the bourgeois elite of yesteryear with managers presiding over a system that separates ownership and control.

Whatever its theoretical merits, to defend what people are pleased to call “American capitalism” today is to garland the ideological chains of a ruling class that is hostile to private property, genuine small business, and traditional institutions because all these are impediments to the growth and control of the managerial class.

The movement that emerges from the ashes of the present must disabuse itself of a myth that serves no purpose other than to deceive Americans into docility for fear of disturbing the not-so-invisible hand around their throats deluding them into believing that the apogee of human experience is the other side of materialism. There is nothing to lose but the chains.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/02/american-capitalism-is-the-enemy/

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Also see my other blogs.  Main ones below:

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

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

 

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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AstraZeneca is working on Covid vaccine booster 'that will be ready by autumn' to beat South African strain after research showed its current version had 'minimal' effect on stopping it

Yesterday South Africa said it was suspending use of the AstraZeneca vaccine while scientists advise on the best way to proceed.

Professor Sarah Gilbert, lead researcher in the Oxford team, said current vaccines 'have a reduction in efficacy against some of the variant viruses'.

But she added: 'What that is looking like is that we may not be reducing the total number of cases but there's still protection in that case against deaths, hospitalisations and severe disease.

'That's really important for healthcare systems, even if we are having mild and asymptomatic infections, to prevent people going into hospital with Covid would have a major effect.'

However, vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi says the vaccines being used in Britain 'work well against the Covid-19 variants currently dominant in the UK'.

Writing in the Telegraph, he said 'we can take confidence from the current roll out and the protection it will provide all of us against this terrible disease'.

He added: 'We need to be aware that even where a vaccine has reduced efficacy in preventing infection there may still be good efficacy against severe disease, hospitalisation, and death. This is vitally important for protecting the healthcare system.'

Professor Gilbert earlier told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that her team currently has 'a version with the South African spike sequence in the works' with hopes it will be ready to administer by the autumn.

'It's not quite ready to vaccinate people with yet, but, as all of the developers are using platform technologies, these are ways of making a vaccine that are very quick to adapt,' she added.

The study that found the Oxford jab had a 'minimal effect' in protecting against mild disease caused by the variant involved 2,000 volunteers, most of whom were young and healthy with an average age of 31.

The study also appeared to show that the South African mutations will allow for ongoing transmission of the virus in vaccinated populations.

Out of 865 people vaccinated with two doses of the Oxford vaccine, 19 contracted the new variant, and out of 884 in the group given a placebo, 23 contracted the disease. Two thirds of the cases were of mild illness, and one third moderate. There were no severe cases.

The researchers also found that previous infection with 'original' coronavirus did not protect against contracting the South African variant.

Oxford University said the study did not assess levels of protection against moderate to severe disease, hospital admission or death because the target population was at such low risk.

A spokesman for AstraZeneca said: 'We do believe our vaccine will still protect against severe disease, as neutralising antibody activity is equivalent to other Covid-19 vaccines that have demonstrated activity against more severe disease, particularly when the dosing interval is optimised to eight to 12 weeks.'

The spokesman added that other immune responses, such as T-cell responses, may have a role in protecting against disease, and initial data suggests these may stay the same with the variant.

Professor Robin Shattock, who is leading Covid-19 vaccine research at Imperial College London, urged caution about the study's findings.

'It's a very small study with just over 2,000 people,' he told BBC Breakfast. 'But it is concerning to some extent that we're seeing that it's not effective against mild or moderate disease.'

Professor Andrew Pollard, chief investigator on the Oxford trial, said: 'This study confirms that the coronavirus will find ways to continue to spread in vaccinated populations, as expected.

'But, taken with the promising results from other studies in South Africa, vaccines may continue to ease the toll on healthcare systems by preventing severe disease.'

On Saturday, AstraZeneca said its vaccine provided good protection against the variant first discovered in Kent, which is now dominant in the UK. Early results suggest the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine protects against the new variants.

Early results from Moderna suggest its vaccine is still effective against the South Africa variant.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9234545/Second-vaccine-dose-help-tackle-South-African-variant-available-year.html

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Another war-mongering Democrat

President Joe Biden is deploying four Air Force B-1 bombers to Norway to express to Russia's Vladimir Putin that the U.S. will defend allies if Russia shows aggression in the Arctic.

CNN reported the move Monday, saying that bombers and approximately 200 Americans stationed at Dyess Air Force base in Texas will be deployed to Orland Air Base in Norway.

Within three weeks, missions will begin in the Arctic Circle and in international airspace off of Russia's northwest coast, the network said.

Previously, American military missions over the Arctic originated from the United Kingdom. The move to Norway signals the U.S. is more prepared to tackle Russian aggression in the area.

Bomber missions take weeks to plan, CNN reported, so the Norway deployment has been in the works for awhile.

Biden has made it clear he plans to take a much harder stand against Russia than his predecessor, President Donald Trump.

He spoke with Putin six days into his presidency. And while he agreed to extend the START treaty between the U.S. and Russia for five years, Biden said in a speech Thursday at the State Department that he wasn't so agreeable with Putin in other areas.

'At the same time, I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia's aggressive actions interfering with our elections, cyber attacks, poisoning its citizens, are over,' Biden said.

The new president said he would not hesitate to 'raise the cost on Russia' if need be.

CNN reported that the Defense Department has been concerned about Russia's moves in the Arctic, as the country could try to shut off access to maritime passageways and natural resources, with 25 per cent of Russia's gross domestic product tied to hydrocarbons found north of the Arctic Circle.

Almost entitrely on Russian territory!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9238697/Biden-deploys-four-B-1-bombers-Norway-message-Putin.html

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The Great Reset — to Global Totalitarianism

Global elites, including the Biden administration, are exploiting coronavirus for massive upheaval.

As of this writing, more than 104 million people have contracted coronavirus worldwide, and nearly 2.5 million have died. In the United States, more than 450,000 deaths have been attributed to the Wuhan Flu. In a better world, the Chinese communist thugs who lied about both the origins and the severity of the pandemic would be treated as the international pariahs they have proven themselves to be. In this one, an equally contemptible bunch of multinational corporatist thugs with oligarchic ambitions will not only continue doing business as usual with China but will rely on Beijing as an ally in their pursuit of what they call The Great Reset. In short, never let a crisis — or a worldwide, society-altering catastrophe — go to waste.

“To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions,” insists World Economic Forum (WEF) CEO Klaus Schwab, a German octogenarian orchestrating this elitist power grab. “Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

Capitalism? A WEF-created video posted on Facebook reveals Schwab is a bald-faced liar. Of the eight “predictions” the globalists wish to impose on the world by 2030, the very first one gives the entire game away. It shows the smiling face of a young man with the following caption underneath:

“You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.”

People who own nothing can be many things. A capitalist in control of one’s own destiny isn’t any of them. And in case the message still isn’t clear, the second “prediction” is equally telling:

“Whatever you want you’ll rent. And it will be delivered by drone.”

Rent? From whom, if nobody owns anything? The answer is simple. While millions of people have been locked down, and while their jobs and futures have been eviscerated, America’s billionaire class increased its own wealth by a staggering $434 billion since the stock market began its recovery in March. While ordinary Americans stood in food banks and waited desperately for stimulus checks, the stock market soared. And when, for the briefest of moments, the bounties of that stock market accrued to the interests of smaller traders at the expense of those billionaires, the rules of the game were altered by those for whom the Rule of Law no longer applies.

Lawlessness — of the in-your-face variety — is the essence of The Great Reset. And capitalism has nothing to do with any of it. “When Americans went to buy cars, or even light bulbs and shower nozzles, they found their choices limited by deals between government, industry, and insurance companies,” explains columnist Angelo Codevilla. “These entities regarded each other as ‘stakeholders’ in an oligarchic system. But they had ever less need to take account of mere citizens in what was becoming a republic in name only. As the 20th century was drawing to a close, wherever citizens looked, they saw a government and government-empowered entities over which they had ever less say, which ruled ever more unaccountably, and whose attitude toward them was ever less friendly.”

The 21st century has seen an exponential increase in that dynamic. For all intents and purposes, there is no separation between the Ruling Class elites in both political parties and their allies in Big Tech, academia, Hollywood, and virtue-signaling corporations, all of whom have made it clear that any dissent from their agenda will inevitably lead to one being “un-personed,” in all its Orwellian permutations. Continued resistance may earn one a designation as a “domestic terrorist,” even as the elites’ corporate mouthpiece, more familiarly known as the mainstream media, has tirelessly endeavored to tie the entire bloc of 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump to the handful of people who rioted at the Capitol.

The elites’ targets include sitting Republican senators who dared to question the integrity of the 2020 election. Senators who will now be judged by what amounts to a Star Chamber of secret deliberations, conducted by the Senate Ethics Committee.

In the meantime, the same Democrats who called President Trump a “dictator” when he issued a handful of executive orders and actions are completely sanguine with a President Joe Biden issuing 40 of them in his first 10 days in office. When and if they actually legislate, Democrats will attempt to use the power of the purse to effectively — and unconstitutionally — nationalize elections to ensure the permanence of their power.

And while coronavirus has kept Americans distracted, the real transition to global governance with be engendered by climate change. “It might be a good idea for President Biden to call a climate emergency,” contends Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who apparently has no problem making the legislative branch of government increasingly irrelevant in pursuit of unassailable power. He is joined by Climate Czar John Kerry who, despite his own predilection for private jets, insists, “[The Great Reset] will happen with greater speed and with greater intensity than a lot of people might imagine. In effect, the citizens of the United States have just done a Great Reset. We’ve done a Great Reset. And it was a record level of voting.”

One suspects a duplicitous hack like John Kerry knows full well Americans didn’t vote for serfdom. But if he and his party’s ambitions are realized, voting will become a largely symbolic exercise whose chief purpose will be to maintain the illusion that people have choices — and that the nation-state he and his fellow globalists so clearly despise still exists.

And despite Schwab’s assertions, those who attended the WEF virtual Davos Agenda summit made it clear that the primary impediment to their agenda is capitalism. “We will get out of this pandemic only with an economy that thinks more about fighting inequalities,” asserted French President Emmanuel Macron. German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted the coronavirus shows “how much we are interlinked, how globally interdependent” the world is, and that “trying to isolate yourself fails.”

The dead giveaway behind the utter hollowness of such “high-minded” assertions? Despite the worldwide havoc engendered by his regime, the honor of being the summit’s keynote speaker was bestowed upon Chinese President Xi Jinping, who urged the G-20 nations and the European Union to serve as the “main forum for global economic governance.”

In China, that economic governance includes the use of forced labor by Uyghurs, who produce goods for many of the same multinational corporations that promote their “wokeness” with regard to human rights.

It’s hardly different in America. “As the elite has grown ever richer and less and less attached to the idea of the United States as an independent nation-state its goals and ambitions have become less and less attached to the welfare of the average man or woman,” warns columnist Charles Faddis. “Increasingly, what the elite wants is in direct opposition to what the average American wants.”

Kerry characterizes that increasingly orchestrated disconnect as “the the dawn of an extremely exciting time.” Totalitarianism — on steroids — is more like it.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/77490-the-great-reset-to-global-totalitarianism-2021-02-04

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Experimental cancer drug could help hospitalised coronavirus patients recover within five days, Israeli trial claims

Israeli academics today claimed 29 of 30 patients with moderate to severe case of Covid treated with EXO-CD24 made a full recovery within five days.

Further human trials are now needed to prove that the inhaled drug - designed as a medication to fight ovarian cancer - actually works.

The study did not compare the drug to a placebo, meaning scientists cannot say for certain that the medicine was behind the patients' speedy recovery.

However, data shows the average coronavirus patient needing hospital treatment spends up to three weeks in a bed.

Scientists gave 30 patients with serious or moderate Covid infections a dose of the drug.

It is not clear how old the patients were but data shows younger patients are much less likely to die from coronavirus and recover quicker.

Twenty-nine showed significant improvement within three to five days. It is not clear whether the patients were also receiving other drugs or treatment.

EXO-CD24 is an experimental cancer drug initially developed to treat ovarian cancer. It is breathed in as a gas and performs locally on the lungs.

The drug uses tiny carrier sacs called exosomes that shuttle materials between cells to deliver a protein called CD24. This protein helps regulate the body's immune response, reducing the number of cytokines released.

Cytokines are produced by the body to fight off infection, but too many can result in deadly hyperinflammation, which occurs in the worst cases of coronavirus.

Professor Nadir Arber of Ichilov's Integrated Cancer Prevention Center told the Times of Israel: 'The preparation is inhaled once a day for a few minutes, for five days.

'The preparation is directed straight to the heart of the storm — the lungs — so unlike other formulas… which selectively restrain a certain cytokine, or operate widely but cause many serious side effects, EXO-CD24 is administered locally, works broadly and without side effects.'

The thirtieth patient's symptoms also got better but outside of the five-day window, Israeli media claimed.

The trial's sample size was also too low to draw any note-worthy conclusions about the drug's efficacy. The data was not published in a journal.

Professor Nadir Arber, of Ichilov's Integrated Cancer Prevention Center, spent years developing the drug for ovarian cancer before trialling it on coronavirus patients.

EXO-CD24 is taken once every five days and is relatively inexpensive, according to Professor Arber, but he did not reveal exactly how much it costs.

It works by reducing the immune system's overreaction to the virus.

Coronavirus can trigger a brutal immune response that shuts down the body's main organs known as a cytokine storm.

Researcher Shiran Shapira told the Times of Israel: 'This protein is located on the surface of cells and has a well known and important role in regulating the immune system.'

Professor Arber told Israeli news site Arutz Sheva: 'Even if the vaccines do their job, and even if there aren't any new mutations, one way or another, the coronavirus will be staying with us.

'That's why we developed this special medication: EXO-CD24. This is unprecedented. 'It's been about half a year from the time the idea was hatched and the technologies created, to the first human trials conducted and phase one of testing completed.'

The researchers are planning to carry out studies of the drug on hundreds of patients and compare the results to a placebo.

Israel announced today it will ease lockdown measures but keep its international airport and land borders closed following a slight fall in the spread of coronavirus cases.

'The government has accepted a proposal from the prime minister and the health minister to ease lockdown measures from 7am on Sunday,' their offices said in a joint statement.

Despite what has been termed the world's fastest vaccination campaign per capita, Israel has still been registering a daily average of 6,500 new Covid-19 cases, down from around 7,000 last week, official figures show.

A strict nationwide lockdown in force since December 27 has been extended four times to combat the infection rate, but January was the deadliest month with more than 1,000 Covid fatalities.

According to latest figures from the health ministry, Israel has registered a total of more than 675,000 cases of Covid-19, including 5,019 deaths.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9228317/Experimental-cancer-drug-hailed-coronavirus-cure-Israeli-hospital.html

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American Elites Seek to Rig the Game

In the aftermath of the disgraceful Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, the American ruling class has flexed its muscles like never before.

Big Tech oligarchs moved in unison to kneecap upstart Parler, a would-be Twitter competitor, and ban former President Donald Trump and scores of other conservatives. Simon & Schuster, one of the nation's most reputable book publishers, canceled a book deal that it had commissioned with the conservative Sen. Josh Hawley. President Joe Biden, in direct defiance of his campaign-season vows to unify the country, oversaw a deeply divisive and ideological first week in office. And just this week, popular retail brokerage Robinhood took severe measures to restrict trading of GameStop's stock after a populist Reddit-induced stock-buying frenzy dramatically spiked the firm's share price and wreaked havoc for short-selling hedge funds.

One harkens back to that most paradigmatic of progressive mantras, once uttered by former Obama White House Chief of Staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

Emanuel's rank opportunism is highly revealing. But the American ruling class seeks more than mere political opportunism. Instead, the ruling class seeks uniform control over defining the contours of permissible opinion and tolerable belief, and it is willing to wield all available levers at its disposal in order to do so.

But in order to achieve this goal, the ruling class -- which, in the United States in the year 2021, is effectively coterminous with elected political left and left-adjacent, quasi-"private" appendages such as "woke capital" corporatists -- needs some extra assistance. The ruling class needs more tools in its arsenal than simple gatekeeping based on requisite diplomas and proper partisan affiliation.

The ruling class's tool of choice is to rig the game. Across all of American society, the left increasingly plays the game by one set of rules, and the "deplorable" right plays by a different set of rules. While such discriminatory tactics were, for a while, devised in subtler fashion, promulgated behind closed doors and concealed beneath euphemistic public-facing language, this concerted effort increasingly plays out before our eyes in broad daylight.

Consider how, in every presidential election since 2000 won by a Republican, Democratic congressmen and/or senators objected to at least some portion of the Electoral College result. Yet in 2020, when some Republicans in both the House and Senate did much the same, following a midpandemic election that saw the unprecedented proliferation of inherently destabilizing mail-in balloting and myriad mid-election season changes to states' election laws, those involved are tarred as "insurrectionists" and "seditionists" because of the unrelated lawless actions of an impassioned mob. And those same Republicans lose donors, book deals and even event-space availability for fundraisers, to boot.

Consider also how, for four years during the Trump presidency, Democrats endlessly bleated and promoted the wholly implausible "Russiagate" narrative, wherein Vladimir Putin and vague "Russian bots" somehow colluded to steal the presidency for Trump. Hillary Clinton has still, to this day, never fully reconciled herself to her defeat -- nor, for that matter, has Stacey Abrams ever formally conceded the 2018 gubernatorial race. But for continuing to raise questions about an election decided by a smaller margin of voters than the previous one -- roughly 43,000 votes spread out across three states in 2020, compared with roughly 79,000 votes spread out across three states in 2016 -- Silicon Valley oligarchs banned from social media everyone from the leader of the free world, Trump himself, to the founder and CEO of MyPillow.

Finally, consider how stock exchanges and trading brokerages this week halted trading -- and, as appears to be the case, sometimes induced forcible stock selling against retail investors' will -- of GameStop's stock in a barely concealed attempt to protect favored short-selling hedge funds and undercut mom-and-pop investors spurred on by the "WallStreetBets" subreddit. As everyone from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Sen. Ted Cruz pointed out, such actions reek of cronyism and illicit market manipulation. It is difficult to recall the last time the stock market has been so clearly revealed as a pawn of the ruling class, under which high-frequency traders and individual 401(k) savers so clearly play by different sets of rules.

The great irony of our current politics is that the very populism so decried by the ruling class is only buttressed by that very ruling class's censoriousness and attempts to rig the game in its own favor. It is not yet too late for elites to look in the mirror, take some deep breaths and stop before it is too late.

https://townhall.com/columnists/joshhammer/2021/01/29/american-elites-seek-to-rig-the-game-n2583892

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Equality vs Equity: Unraveling the allure of socialism

Placing equity over equality when it comes to our economy will not ensure that everyone ends up a millionaire, only that nobody will get the opportunity to rise through the ranks and achieve that success in the future.

By Brett Kimball

Equality and equity are two concepts which are often mistaken for one another; however they could not be more different. Equality of opportunity is essential in order for any free society to thrive; it ensures that everyone has the same opportunity to succeed. Radical left socialist democrats have posited the theory that all inequalities of outcome in society can be attributed to a rigged system which discriminates based on secondary characteristics such as race, sex, gender, etc. Therefore, we must strive to create a more “equitable” system in order to ensure that those inequalities of outcome which can be observed are eliminated. This idea is patently un-American and unfair to its core.

A system based on the principles of equality is one which provides each individual with the same level of opportunity to attain success. A system built on the principles of equity is one which attempts to ensure an equal outcome for each individual. The former being an inherently moral system and the latter being an inherently immoral system.

This distinction often becomes lost in the fray of debate however, becoming overshadowed by the alluring concept of “free stuff,” whether it’s college, healthcare, etc. It’s important to remember that we all as Americans share the same privilege of having been born in the freest society in the world, one which does provide endless potential for upward mobility. To sacrifice this freedom in the pursuit of a more rigid economic structure meant to ensure some socialistic utopian concept of equality of outcome over opportunity would be reckless and dangerous.

Why do so many young people fall victim to the unrealistic and damaging proposals put forth by the radical left? The simplest answer is this, these promises sound good on paper. Upon even the slightest bit of further review however, they start to fall apart.

For example, a fifteen dollar minimum wage sounds great, but those who advocate for this are missing a few key factors. For starters, a minimum wage that high would force businesses, especially smaller and family-owned establishments, into mass layoffs of thousands of entry-level employees. This would be a problem under normal circumstances but would certainly be exacerbated by the toll the Covid lockdowns have already taken on struggling businesses. Businesses simply cannot afford to pay entry-level employees that type of money, when their jobs could just as easily be cut or replaced by technology. McDonald’s implementation of touchscreen kiosks for in-store ordering is one clear example of where we are headed if a higher minimum wage becomes mainstream.

A recent study by the Congressional Budget Office found that while the plan for a fifteen-dollar minimum wage would predictably increase wages for around 17 million workers who would otherwise be earning less, such benefits would be offset by the nearly 1.3 million jobs which would be lost due to the increased cost of labor. This fluctuation would be more than enough to put many under the poverty line.

The increased wages of those able to keep their jobs would also inevitably lead to an increase in the cost of goods provided by those businesses to account for the higher wages businesses would be forced to pay their remaining employees.

Another socialist pipe-dream worth dissecting is the idea of “free college for all.” This one has gained momentum and popularity over the last few years, and could perhaps be the most damaging of all. The word “free” as it’s used by democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Ilhan Omar has lost all meaning. What they really mean when they say “free college tuition” is “government funded” and thereby “taxpayer funded.” All it means is that you won’t be footing the bill for your degree, everyone else will.

Considering the rampant fiscal irresponsibility on display regularly by our elected officials in the House and Senate, the only way to accomplish such a feat would be to raise taxes on all Americans, but with a “progressive” tax plan which would bleed the 1% dry. Many young people who get drawn in by the idea of socialism and the concept of an oppressive billionaire ruling class tend to forget how free-market capitalism actually works. The category known as the 1% is not a static, fixed group of people hoarding the county’s wealth for themselves. In actuality it’s fluid and ever changing, with people drifting in and out of the top tax bracket constantly. The 1%, in most cases, employs the “99%” as well. They create and run the businesses and corporations which employ millions of people all over the country. Hitting them with ridiculous tax rates out of a false sense of fairness or equity, would hurt workers across the economic spectrum and severely stunt any ability for growth in an economic system originally designed to provide such opportunities.

When people like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren suggest that “billionaires should not exist,” they may think they are advocating for the downfall of today’s billionaires who they deem greedy and oppressive. What they don’t realize is that they are also advocating for the downfall of the billionaires of tomorrow; those who will rise up through the system with ingenuity and entrepreneurship to usher in the new era of innovation on the horizon in our country.

Placing equity over equality when it comes to our economy will not ensure that everyone ends up a millionaire, only that nobody will get the opportunity to rise through the ranks and achieve that success in the future.

Preserving our ability to thrive and protecting our core values as a country are of paramount importance for the next generation of great entrepreneurs. Equity is a perversion of justice which will only greatly undermine the next generation’s ability to succeed.

https://dailytorch.com/2021/02/equality-vs-equity-unraveling-the-allure-of-socialism/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Oxford Covid vaccine is less effective against South African mutant strain, claim scientists: Small study of just 2,000 patients found some patients got mild or moderate symptoms - but NONE died or were hospitalised

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is less effective against the South African variant, early data showed last night in a blow to global inoculation efforts.

A small trial of just 2,026 people found the jab had 'limited efficacy' in protecting against mild and moderate disease caused by the mutant strain.

The pharmaceutical giant said scientists will now start adapting the vaccine to kill the new variant, with hopes it will be ready by autumn.

Nobody died or was hopitalised during the study by South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand and Oxford University, which has not yet been published but has been seen by the Financial Times.

An AstraZeneca spokesman said: 'In this small phase I/II trial, early data has shown limited efficacy against mild disease primarily due to the B.1.351 South African variant.

'However, we have not been able to properly ascertain its effect against severe disease and hospitalisation given that subjects were predominantly young healthy adults.'

The average age of the trial's participants was 31, an age at which one is very unlikely to fall seriously ill with Covid-19.

Coronavirus has mutated thousands of times during the course of the pandemic which is normal behaviour for a virus.

But scientists are concerned in particular about three variants which evidence suggests are highly transmissible; the ones first detected in Kent, South Africa and Brazil.

The South African variant, which has been detected across the world including in the UK, appears to be proving the most immune to vaccines.

American pharmaceutical firms Johnson and Johnson and Novavax have both reported their shots are less effective against the strain.

Similarly, Moderna is manufacturing a booster shot to its vaccine regimen to tackle the variant, while the Pfizer-BioNTech jab was also reportedly less effective.

Britain has bought 100million doses of the home-grown Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and is currently rolling it out to millions.

At the same time a testing blitz is underway in parts of the country after 11 cases of the variant were identified in people who had no links to travel - suggesting it may be spreading in communities.

Worcestershire become the latest area to start surge testing after the South African coronavirus variant was detected locally. Worcestershire County Council has set up surge testing in the WR3 postcode after cases of the variant with no links to international travel were identified.

A mobile testing unit has been set up at The White Hart pub in Fernhill Heath, near Worcester, for adults with no symptoms living within walking distance. A drive-through testing site is planned to open in the coming days, and door-to-door testing will also be made available.

Worcestershire County Council said: 'Working in partnership with NHS Test and Trace, every person over the age of 18, living in the WR3 postcode and some WR9 postcodes, is strongly encouraged to take a Covid-19 test this week, even if they are not showing symptoms.'

Dr Kathryn Cobain, director for public health in the county, said: 'I urge everyone offered a test to take it up to help us to monitor the virus in our communities and to help suppress and control the spread of this variant.'

Door-to-door and mobile testing began at the start of the month as part of urgent efforts to swab 80,000 people.

Testing of around 10,000 people in Maidstone, Kent, was completed on Thursday night.

In Surrey, testing in Woking was expected to finish on Friday with door-to-door deliveries in Egham and Thorpe due to begin on Saturday.

Sefton Council said efforts to identify the variant in the Norwood area of Southport in Merseyside would continue into the weekend.

Testing in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, is being rolled out for another week until February 12, the council said.

Around 10,300 people in Walsall have been tested so far and some 560 tests had been conducted in the affected areas in Birmingham, the West Midlands Combined Authority was told.

Mobile testing units and home testing kits were also deployed this week to Hanwell, west London and Mitcham, south London.

Testing will also continue into next week in Tottenham, north London

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9232411/Oxford-Covid-vaccine-effective-against-South-African-mutant-strain-claim-scientists.html

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The 'magic' has started: early data shows Israel's vaccination campaign is working

It took longer than expected but there is now 'real world' evidence to show the Pfizer jab is both saving lives and reducing infections

A new study published on Friday suggested for the first time Israel’s vaccination campaign was proving effective at preventing infection and serious illness in vaccinated individuals.

It adds to an analysis published earlier in the week which shows the Pfizer vaccine starting to change the dynamics of the outbreak in Israel where nearly 40 per cent of the population has now received at least one jab.

The latest study published by Professor Dvir Aran, a biologist at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, suggests the vaccine is between 66-85 per cent effective at preventing infection and 87-96 per cent effective for preventing severe disease.

The results are not quite as strong as Pfizer’s own phase three trial results but not far off.

“Our sensitivity analysis provides an estimate for the effectiveness of the vaccine in reducing positive and severe cases”, said the authors. “While this estimate is lower than the efficacy of the [Pfizer trial] it is still substantive and provides reassurance for the vaccine efficacy”.

The degree to which the Pfizer vaccine appears to block infection is the perhaps the strongest signal yet that it may block transmission of the virus - the key to eventually reaching herd immunity.

However, the results also suggest the first dose of the vaccine may not be “very effective” in reducing cases. This raises a possible concern over the UK strategy of leaving 12 weeks between shots, rather than the three weeks recommended by Pfizer.

“We see that immediately after the second dose the effectiveness jumps”, said Prof Aran on Twitter, adding that this could be explained by either the immediate impact of the second dose or the first dose coincidentally becoming effective on the three-week mark. “We will have to wait and see numbers from the UK”, he said.

A second Israeli study shows the vaccination campaign appears to have had a marked impact on case numbers, hospitalisations and serious illness among those over 60 - the first group to be vaccinated.

Among this group, there was a 35 per cent drop in cases, a 30 per cent drop in hospitalisations and a 20 per cent fall in those critically ill over the two weeks to February 1

Announcing the findings on Monday, the study’s lead author Professor Eran Segal, a computer scientist at the Weizmann Institute, said: “We say with caution, the magic has started”.

Prof Segal said that by comparing their results with other age groups and the trends seen in the first wave of the pandemic, they could be “reasonably certain” that the vaccine was working.

He added that Israel had initially expected to see the impact of the vaccine earlier but a number of possible factors may have caused it to be delayed.

“The [older] people who came forward to get vaccinated first are probably the ones that are more cautious, so vaccinating them is going to have less of an impact”, he said.

“The UK variant is also the dominant one here now and if the reports are correct, this does not only spread faster, but it also causes more severe disease. This may have been another factor that off-set the [early] impact of the vaccine”.

Prof Segal and his colleague, Uri Shalit, warned that while the vaccine rollout in Israel had started out at an unprecedented pace, take-up was now slowing and getting to the final 10-15 per cent of high-risk groups was proving difficult.

“The worry is that among the high-risk population, we still have certain sectors like the Israeli Arabs and the ultra orthodox, where much lower percentages of people who are eligible to get vaccinated actually went to get vaccinated”, said Prof Segal.

Professor Shalit added: “If we don’t get to these groups, the modelling shows it can have a huge impact on mortality and critically ill patients in hospital”.

The biggest and most powerful Israeli vaccine study is expected to come from the country’s largest health care provider Clalit Health in the next few weeks. Clalit covers some 4.7 million people - more than half the country’s population.

Professor Ran Balicer, founding director of the Clalit Research Institute, said he was optimistic the vaccine was having a positive impact but that detailed efficacy data would take time to emerge.

“But what we could say, I think with good confidence from the Ministry of Health data, is... we finally have been witnessing a difference in the rate of decline of the daily severe illness between the over 60 and the under 60 age groups”, he said.

“That could have two potential explanations. One is that somehow the over 60s have become much more careful about their daily conduct, and are very careful not to get infected, or that vaccines on the population level begin to show their effects”.

“I would strongly agree that these ecologic data are quite reassuring and are quite promising. I would have been exceedingly worried had we not seen on a population level already such a picture.”

The mood is lifting at a political level too. Israel’s cabinet voted on Thursday to begin gradually reopening parts of the economy next week. Starting on February 7, restrictions on movement will be lifted while certain businesses will be able to reopen.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/magic-has-started-early-data-show-israels-vaccination-campaign/

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IN BRIEF

Unity! Senate Dems pass budget resolution for partisan vote on COVID bill; Kamala Harris breaks tie (NPR)

Democrats to introduce a regressive and immoral resolution to "cancel" (read: burden taxpayers with) $50,000 in student loan debt (Disrn)

Trump will not testify in sham impeachment trial (Fox News)

Judge in Michael Flynn case takes senior status, giving Biden 11th judicial pick since inauguration (Examiner)

U.S. cuts off involvement in Yemen's Houthi-instigated and Iran-backed civil war (Forbes)

Biden signs order to ramp up refugee admissions to 125,000 (CBS News)

Eleven Iranians arrested in Arizona after jumping U.S.-Mexico border (Washington Times)

Perfect storm forcing Border Patrol to release apprehended migrant families directly into the U.S. (Examiner)

With 49,000 increase, payrolls barely grow to start 2021 even as the unemployment rate fell to 6.3% (CNBC)

Gun sales continue to soar as Democrats take control (Disrn)

Bank of America allegedly collected data off consumers who might have been at DC riot (Examiner)

Another "climate-friendly" high-speed rail project from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur bites the dust (Watts Up With That?)

Johnson & Johnson requests emergency authorization for COVID vaccine (CNBC)

Well ... bye: CNN President Jeff Zucker stepping down at year's end (Post Millennial)

Mike Pence to join Heritage Foundation, write column for Daily Signal (Daily Signal)

Canadian Olympic Committee warns athletes not to criticize China ahead of 2022 winter games in Beijing (Free Beacon)

Policy: The Romney child allowance proposal is a move in the wrong direction (AEI)

Policy: Biden's empty environmentalism: Shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline shows the new president's preference for symbolism over substance (City Journal)

Humor: Snopes rates AOC's account of capitol attack as "factually inaccurate but morally true" (Babylon Bee)

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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AstraZeneca expects latest results to show that shot DOES work against UK 'super-covid' AND reduces transmission

AstraZeneca expects results from the US clinical trial of its COVID-19 vaccine in the next four to six weeks, the firm's research chief Mene Pangalos said on Friday.

The US has a contract for 300 million doses of the Oxford University-designed shot, expected to be delivered this year.

Oxford and AstraZeneca's vaccine is already approved in the UK, but was delayed in the US amid regulators' criticisms that the trial data contained errors, such as an accidental dosing regimen.

But encouraging findings about the 70 percent effective shot continue to roll in. Oxford also announced Friday that preliminary tests suggest that its vaccine is about as effective against the UK's B117 variant as it is against earlier circulating forms.

And UK officials said Friday that additional data from AstraZeneca's trials suggest the shot is effective in people over 65, after the first data review suggested the shot's potency dropped off in the elderly.

But the US has been insistent upon basing its vaccine authorizations on trials conducted domestically, and thoroughly reviewed by its Food and Drug Administration (FDA). With final data at least a month away, it could be March or April by the time AstraZeneca's vaccine is added to the American arsenal.

Asked about when the U.S. trial results would be ready, given high transmission rates during the trial, Pangalos said that they had been high during 'the latter period of the trial.'

'I think we're getting very close to getting data. I would say in the next four to six weeks we should have the results for that study reading out,' he told reporters.

Some experts had expected the data sooner than that, given the high infection rates in the United States during the period of testing.

AstraZeneca's shot has already been rolled out in the UK, where the 70 percent more infectious B117 variant is now dominant and triggered a massive surge of infections and the strictest lockdowns the country has seen.

That lockdown came as Britain started rolling out the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Over 10 million people have received a first dose of either AstraZeneca or Pfizer's shot. Moderna's is approved in the UK, but has not yet been rolled out because the country did not turn in its dose order soon enough.

Britain had said that it believed the vaccines were effective against variants that are circulating in the UK.

'Data from our trials of the ChAdOx1 vaccine in the United Kingdom indicate that the vaccine not only protects against the original pandemic virus, but also protects against the novel variant, B117, which caused the surge in disease from the end of 2020 across the UK,' said Andrew Pollard, Chief Investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial.

Oxford and AstaZeneca have continued to test trial participants for COVID-19 in ongoing UK trials.

Between October 2020 and January 14, the investigators sequenced the genomes found in samples taken from 323 covid-positive people who had received either Oxford's shot or a placebo, according to a pre-print study that has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Those who got the real vaccine had lower viral loads and remained positive for a shorter period of time - despite the fact that the level of neutralizing antibodies was about nine-fold lower.

However, the vaccine was about equally good at preventing people from developing symptomatic COVID-19 from B117 as it has been against older types of the virus.

Other recent data also suggests that Oxford's vaccine reduces transmission - an important function no other vaccine has proven to play (although they likely do have some effect on the ability of the virus to spread).

Still, Sarah Gilbert, co-developer of the vaccine, said that, although the vaccine had efficacy against the UK variant, it might need to be adapted for a future variant.

'We are working with AstraZeneca to optimize the pipeline required for a strain change should one become necessary,' Gilbert said.

The mounting positive findings about Oxford's jab has raised questions about the FDA's reluctance to at least begin reviewing international data from its trials, even if it is a little messy.

AstraZeneca CEO Pangalos said in a Wednesday press briefing that he doesn't think that completing the US trial will be necessary 'in terms of getting an approval.'

But there hasn't been any evident activity from the FDA so far, despite the agency's decision to expedite review of data from US-based Novavax's ongoing trials.

Waiting for 'cleaner data' from the completion of AstraZeneca's US trials would be 'a reasonable decision under normal circumstance,' Dr Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told The Hill.

But, 'there's a reasonable question to ask: are these normal circumstances?' he added.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9228513/AstraZeneca-expects-U-S-trial-results-4-6-weeks-research-chief-says.html

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Oxford/AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine IS effective for over 65s, say experts privy to new data

More evidence is emerging that the Oxford Covid vaccine works in older people, according to vaccine experts in the UK.

Sir Munir Pirmohamed, boss of the Commission on Human Medicines, today said regulators had received extra information from Oxford University and AstraZeneca scientists to prove their jab was safe and effective for over-65s.

The data, which is not yet publicly available, is coming now from same clinical trials in the UK and around the world that got it approved in the first place. They enrolled thousands more older people after the jab was green-lighted.

European leaders have ruffled the vaccine-maker's feathers in recent weeks by claiming the vaccine doesn't work on older people and refusing to use it.

In the same week that politicians were slinging mud at AstraZeneca for scaling back its deliveries, many European countries openly criticised the vaccine, with France's President Macron calling it 'quasi-ineffective'.

Oxford scientists hit back against the claims, with Professor Andrew Pollard saying he didn't understand what Mr Macron's comment meant. And the team behind the ground-breaking vaccine said the idea that it didn't work had 'no basis'.

Numerous countries including Spain, Germany, France, Hungary, Sweden and Norway have suggested they won't give the jab to anyone over 65.

Scientists admit there is a lack of data definitively proving the vaccine works for elderly people but the data they do have suggests it doesn't affect them any less than it does younger people, in whom it is proven to prevent Covid-19.

Oxford and AstraZeneca chiefs said this week that they expect data on effectiveness in over-65s - who were in the same study as other age groups but a couple of months behind - in the next few weeks.

It comes as another study published today by Oxford found that the vaccine works just as well against the fast-spreading Kent variant B.1.1.7 which is now dominant in the UK.

Sir Munir said in a briefing today: 'There was no evidence that those people over 65 were not getting evidence of efficacy.

'Since then we've seen more data coming through from AstraZeneca as more people are completing the trial, which highlights again that efficacy in the elderly is seen, and there's no evidence of lack of efficacy.'

The data Sir Munir refers to is not yet publicly available and has been sent directly to the MHRA, the UK's vaccines regulator.

He added that elderly people were generating strong immune responses and said the most important thing was that both AstraZeneca's vaccine and a jab developed by Pfizer and BioNTech were preventing serious disease and deaths.

Asked about the suggestion that Britain had compromised on safety and efficacy standards, MHRA chief executive, Dr June Raine, defended the regulator's standards.

'I think our position is very clear in terms of the rigorous science that MHRA pursues in the interests of public confidence, public safety, and the effectiveness of these important vaccines,' she said.

Professor Andrew Pollard, the Oxford professor who is running the clinical trials of the jab, added: 'It's really for each country to take their own scientific advice... but it is authorised everywhere [in the European Union].'

He said: 'The point about efficacy depends very much on how you cut the data. 'You can cut it in different ways and get different data. That would be true of all vaccines in development.

'But [these results] show it has a high efficacy in disease and we are not seeing a high accumulation of hospitalised cases in those who have been vaccinated.'

Boris Johnson previously said he was not concerned by the European countries' move, adding the UK's world-leading regulator had 'made it clear' the shot was 'very good and efficacious'.

The issue that European countries have taken with the study is that the vaccine was only trialled on 660 people over the age of 65 in results that have been published so far.

The data is the same that was used by the UK Government to approve the jab, and regulators in Britain admitted there was not enough data to give a percentage estimate of its efficacy – while the Germans attempted to do it anyway.

But they were satisfied by the fact that the vaccine was well-tolerated and safe in the older people who did receive it, and the fact that their immune response appeared in lab tests to be the same as those in younger people, who featured more heavily in the trial.

In short, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said they would not expect the vaccine to work any differently in older people than in other age groups.

They said: 'Efficacy and safety data are currently limited in individuals ≥65 years of age. No dosage adjustment is required.'

The study has enrolled more older people since it first reported results and continues to gather data on how the vaccine functions in that group.

The jab appears to be between 62 and 90 per cent effective in the adult population in general, according to Oxford University researchers.

A breakdown of the report showed that one out of 341 people who got the jab later tested positive for coronavirus. Meanwhile one in 319 people who got a fake jab, called a placebo, tested positive.

The whole point of a clinical trial is to compare the number of positive cases in the vaccine group to the number of positives in the non-vaccine group, to work out how well the jab works.

With the exact same number of cases in both groups and an almost identical number of participants, this is impossible to do.

A German analysis of the clinical trial of the vaccine, published on Twitter by a Berlin correspondent for The Times, showed that officials there estimated the efficacy of the vaccine to be just 6.3 per cent in over-65s.

To illustrate how unreliable the 6.3 per cent estimate is, experts in one German analysis of the study - which was shared on Twitter - included their confidence interval, which is a range of numbers they are almost certain the true number falls within.

The confidence interval suggests that scientists thought the true effectiveness of the vaccine in over-65s was somewhere between -1,405 per cent and 94.5 per cent. This means the estimate is wildly unreliable and a true figure cannot be calculated.

The jab appears to be between 62 and 90 per cent effective in the adult population in general, according to Oxford University researchers.

There are still concerns over the South African strain - with some studies showing jabs are less effective against it - and the Brazilian strain.

The Oxford group say they are currently testing their jab in South Africa on the variant, and are reviewing data to see whether they have any cases of the Brazilian variant from trials carried out in the country.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9228539/Oxford-AstraZenecas-Covid-vaccine-effective-65s.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Vaccines alone not enough

Comment from Prof. Robert Clancy in Australia

Let me state clearly from the outset: vaccines are critical; they will save lives; we should all get behind them.

Vaccines, however, do have limitations. They need to be paired with effective, safe drug treatment. I believe two candidates are safe, cheap, available and effective. They are ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Australian health authorities, however, say there is not enough evidence to support their use in the treatment of COVID-19. I disagree with them.

Since my name was aired in this matter, I’ve received calls from people offering truly crackpot opinions, some telling me I am right – without knowing what I think – while others have suggested I should leave it to the “experts”.

Concerned by the controversy, the University of Newcastle, where I am an emeritus professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, has issued a statement stressing that I am not speaking on its behalf and saying it does not consider me a COVID-19 expert.

These opinions are indeed my own. I am not speaking for the university (although over the years it has often wanted me to). As an immunologist, I am, however, an expert and I believe my opinions need some clear air.

COVID-19, like influenza, infects the airways mucosal compartment. There are useful lessons from influenza, for which vaccines give partial immunity, of short duration, and with a poor response in the elderly. Early evidence suggests similar outcomes are probable with COVID-19 vaccines.

Herd immunity is unlikely. If it occurs it will likely be of short duration, requiring annual vaccination for continued immunity. Vaccines will be at the core of community management, but they are not enough on their own.

Ivermectin (IVM) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) have been used as antimicrobials for half a century with impeccable safety records. They prevent virus assemblage within infected cells and inhibit the inflammatory response. COVID-19 is a two phase disease, with the initial “viral phase” followed by severe life-threatening inflammatory disease requiring hospitalisation. Antivirals only work on the early viral phase (as with shingles, influenza and herpes infections).

Poorly constructed studies of the anti-viral HCQ on hospitalised COVID-19 patients mistakenly led to the drug being categorised as a “failed” therapy. That misunderstanding continues to dominate many official sites, despite there being at least 27 clinical studies in early disease – 10 of which were randomised clinical trials – showing a composite level of 63 per cent protection against admission to hospital and/or death. Similar data supported use in prevention of infection (as it did for malaria).

IVM came later, and avoided much of the political noise, but again was missed by many authorities. More than 30 studies have led to impressive meta-analyses, most recently by Therese Lawrie, an epidemiologist. Data from 17 studies showing a reduction of death by 83 per cent was so dramatic that she concluded it was now unethical to include untreated patients as controls.

Both drugs are used extensively in many countries, with dramatic reductions in COVID-19 deaths.

All studies have faults, but we are faced with an horrific pandemic, with few options for early treatment.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-m-the-virus-expert-cited-by-mp-craig-kelly-vaccines-are-critical-but-he-s-not-all-wrong-20210204-p56zfc.html

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Will a Hard-Left Turn Lead to Pushback?

BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

The corruption of the Renaissance Church prompted the Reformation, which in turn sparked a Counter-Reformation of reformist, and more zealous, Catholics.

The cultural excesses and economic recklessness of the Roaring ’20s were followed by the bleak, dour and impoverished years of the Great Depression.

The 1960s counterculture led to Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972, as “carefree hippies” turned into careerist “yuppies.”

So social, cultural, economic and political extremism prompts reactions — and sometimes counterreactions.

The Bush-Clinton-Obama continuum of 24 years cemented the bipartisan fusion administrative state. Trump and his “Make America Great Again” agenda were its pushback.

The counterreaction to the populism of the Trump reset — or Trump himself — is as of yet unsure.

Joe Biden’s tenure may mark a return to business as usual of the Bush-Clinton years. Or, more likely, it will accelerate the current hard-left trajectory.

Either way, it seems that Biden is intent on provoking just such a pushback by his record number of early and often radical executive orders — a tactic candidate Biden condemned.

On almost every issue — open borders, blanket amnesties, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, promoting the Green New Deal, and hard-left appointees — Biden is touting positions that likely do not earn 50 percent public support.

When Biden made a Faustian bargain with his party’s hard-left wing of Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to win the election, he took on the commitment to absorb some of their agenda and to appoint their ideologues.

But he also soon became either unwilling or unable to stand up to them.

Now they — and the country — are in a revolutionary frenzy. The San Francisco Board of Education has voted to rename more than 40 schools honoring the nation’s best — Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln — largely on racist grounds that they are dead, mostly white males.

Statues continue to fall. Names change.

The iconic dates, origins and nature of America itself continue to be attacked to meet leftist demands. And still, it is not enough for the new McCarthyites.

Social media are banning tens of thousands. Silicon Valley and Wall Street monopolies go after smaller upstart opponents.

A wrong word destroys a lifelong career. Formerly sane pundits now call for curtailing the First Amendment. Thousands of federal troops blanket a now-militarized Washington, D.C.

If Trump’s pushback tried to return to traditions ignored during the Obama years, Biden’s reset promises to become far more radical than Obama’s entire eight years.

Trump likely lost his second pushback term for two reasons — neither of which had anything to do with his reset agenda.

First, the sudden 2020 pandemic, quarantine, recession, summer-long demonstrations and riots, and radical changes in voting laws all ensured that 100 million ballots were not cast on Election Day, derailed a booming economy, and finally wore the people out.

Second, Trump underestimated the multitrillion-dollar power and furor of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the media, Hollywood and the progressive rich. Those forces all coalesced against him and swamped his outspent and outmanned campaign.

With 24/7 blanket ads, news coverage, endorsements and social media messaging, Trump sometimes was easily caricatured as a twittering disrupter. The inert and mute Biden in his basement was reinvented as the sober and judicious Washington “wise man” antidote to Trump’s unpredictability.

Had Biden continued his moderate campaign veneer, the current left-wing radicalism might not have prompted a counterreaction.

Instead, Biden is now unapologetically leading the most radical left-wing movement in the nation’s history.

Pundits thought Biden’s prior hints of a single four-year term would make him a weak lame duck. Instead, the idea of just one term has liberated the 78-year-old Biden. We forget that septuagenarians can be as reckless as 20-year-olds. Some old guys can feel their careers only have a few remaining years and might as well go out with a bang — and a legacy.

For now, Biden enjoys a congressional majority for the next 24 months. He has no plans to run for reelection. He sees both realities as a liberating blank check to accomplish what the much more heralded rock star Barack Obama never could.

Experts assured voters that Biden would work on a bipartisan consensus and bring back “normality.” He would “unite” the country.

That will not happen. How ironic that Biden will not just be pushed and pressured by the radicals whom he brought to power, but he may be leading them forward to cement an even harder-left legacy.

Will there be a reaction to this extremism?

The left is assured that radical changes in voting laws and demography, the fears of COVID-19, the antifa-Black Lives Matter uprising and anger at Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot have all permanently changed the electorate — and pushed it further leftward.

If they are wrong, they have instead alienated and insulted the American people, and will reap the whirlwind in 2022 of the wind they are now sowing.

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/2021/02/04/will-a-hard-left-turn-lead-to-pushback-n1423020

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IN BRIEF

Unity! Democrats pass budget resolutions needed to bypass GOP on big COVID spending package (Examiner)

Healing! Biden's Social Justice Department sends message that some racism is okay with dropped Yale lawsuit (PJ Media)

Obama center in Chicago, estimated at half a billion dollars ($174 million of which will be footed by taxpayers), to break ground this year despite complaints (Fox News)

"I've met constant resistance to my product vision": Parler board terminates CEO John Matze (Fox News)

Major gun-rights group Virginia Citizens Defense League banned from Facebook without explanation (Disrn)

New COVID infections have fallen 45% in the U.S., but vaccines are not the main driver (Daily Mail)

McKinsey reaches $573 million settlement with states for its role in marketing opioids (Forbes)

Russian cheating notwithstanding, U.S. signs five-year New START nuclear arms treaty renewal (UPI)

Europe troop withdrawal plans "on hold," top general says (Politico)

Biden administration to reopen immigrant "overflow facilities" once politically dubbed "kids in cages" (Disrn)

Defense secretary arbitrarily calls for 60-day assessment of extremism within military (Examiner)

Another 779,000 Americans filed for unemployment last week (Forbes)

Tragic shooting in Oklahoma kills one adult, five young children (Disrn)

Texas temporarily blocked from kicking abortion mill Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid (UPI)

Texas Department of Public Safety mistakenly sends Amber Alert featuring "Chucky" doll (Fox News)

Policy: A private fix for public health (City Journal)

Impeachment case absurdly argues Trump was "singularly responsible" for Capitol riot (NY Times)

"He holds no public office from which he can be removed": Lawyers offer Trump's constitutional answer to impeachment article (Daily Wire)

Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell strike deal on Senate power-sharing agreement (Fox News)

Unity! House starts work on coronavirus relief after press secretary warns Biden won't "slow down" for Republicans (Fox News)

Senate confirms Pete "Pothole Problem" Buttigieg as transportation secretary (The Hill)

Critical roadblock: Joe Manchin says he doesn't support raising minimum wage to $15 per hour (The Hill)

Can't live without Trump: CNN prime-time ratings crash 44% in first week of Biden era (Hot Air)

People with COVID antibodies may only need one vaccine dose (Daily Mail)

White House confirms Space Force will continue under Biden administration (Examiner)

Texas lawmakers introduce bills to protect the dignity of women's sports (Examiner)

Local Kroger stores close as Long Beach, California, "hero pay" ordinance backfires (FEE)

Double Standards: John Kerry took private jet to Iceland for environmental award, called it "only choice for somebody like me" (Fox News)

Leftists aim to restore net neutrality rules — and go much further (Examiner)

Policy: How to strike back against Big Tech censorship (Power Line)

Friendly fire: Some of Biden's top economic advisers are pushing back on his stimulus package (Daily Caller)

Totally trustworthy: Pennsylvania secretary of state at the center of Trump election concerns resigns for failing to comply with an unrelated state election law (NY Post)

Bail fund praised by Kamala Harris has twice freed the same rioter. He was just charged again. (Daily Wire)

Stacey Abrams (in addition to BLM) nominated for Nobel Peace Prize (The Hill)

Governor Andrew Cuomo loses nine top health officials after downplaying experts (Fox News)

Who'd a thunk it? Top epidemiologist says double-masking increases infection risk (Disrn)

CBO sees rapid growth recovery, labor force returning to pre-pandemic level by 2022 (CNBC)

Landlords are struggling to make ends meet as CDC extends eviction ban (FEE)

"They are playing with our lives": Locals lash out at Biden canceling Keystone XL (Daily Wire)

Dodge warns that regulations are killing the V8 engine (Auto Blog)

This woman disembowels the pervasive brainwashing of Critical Race Theory in under 60 seconds (Not the Bee)

Biden threatens sanctions against Burma following military coup (Daily Caller)

Seventy-four percent of American teens and young adults embrace moral relativism (Disrn)

SpaceX announces first space flight manned solely by civilians (Examiner)

Anti-vaxxers won't stop harassing a Chattanooga nurse they're convinced is dead (Daily Beast)

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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