Tuesday, February 23, 2021
UK Covid vaccination programme ‘cutting risk of hospital admissions by up to 94%’
The Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines were shown to reduce the risk by up to 85% and 94% respectively
Experts hailed the “brilliant” first findings of the effect of a single dose of either the Pfizer or Oxford jabs, from a study of more than 1.1 million people in Scotland.
Today’s results are the first to show how the vaccines are working in the “real world” by preventing serious illness across an entire UK nation – raising hopes about the lockdown lifting.
The effectiveness of vaccines in reducing hospitalisations and deaths is one of Boris Johnson’s four key measures for easing restrictions.
Dr Josie Murray, Public Health Scotland lead for the EAVE-II project, said: “The brilliant news is that the vaccine delivery programme in its current format… is working. The other fantastic news is that we are potentially protecting our NHS hospitals.”
The results, which have yet to be peer-reviewed, found that four weeks after receiving the first dose the Pfizer/BNionTech jab reduced the risk of ending up in hospital with Covid by up to 85 per cent.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, which was given to more people over 65, reduced the risk by 94 per cent.
The results were based on the 1.14m first doses given in Scotland between December 8 and February 15, covering 21 per cent of the country’s population. The Pfizer vaccine was received by 650,000 people and the Oxford jab by 490,000.
Lead researcher Professor Aziz Sheikh, of Edinburgh university, said: “These results are very encouraging and have given us great reasons to be optimistic for the future. “Roll-out of the first vaccine dose now needs to be accelerated globally to help overcome this terrible disease.”
Professor Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England, said: “This research provides encouraging early data on the impact of vaccination on reducing hospitalisations.”
Across the UK, more than 17.5m have received a first jab. In London, 1,727,781 first doses have been given, including a further 40,000 on Saturday. The capital has given the second lowest number of jabs of all seven NHS regions in England.
Today one of the capital’s most senior council leaders warned that black and Asian Londoners were up to three times more likely to refuse or be hesitant about having a Covid jab.
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Israel is giving the world a glimpse into a post-vaccine future. But not everyone is happy
As Israel's vaccine campaign inches closer to completion, the world is watching closely for a glimpse into what life could be like after the coronavirus pandemic.
So far the data from the world's fastest vaccination program is promising, but questions remain, chief among them: What will a post-vaccine society look like?
Israel has now eased restrictions across the country, but additional perks are being made available to those who have been vaccinated and can prove it using a government app known as "green badge".
The result is Israel is becoming a sort of global experiment, one in which the rules of post-vaccine society and the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine under real-world conditions are being put to the test.
"We are now finally in the moment where we need to think how we return to the new normal," Nadav Davidovitch, a public health physician from Ben Gurion University, said.
It is estimated about half of Israelis have received the first dose of Pfizer's two-shot regime. A third of people have received both shots.
Those who have been given the two doses are allowed back into gyms, movie theatres and swimming pools, while their non-vaccinated counterparts will have to wait.
On the streets of Jerusalem, Israel's biggest city, the mood was palpable as restrictions were eased.
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'Cancel Trump' Culture Is Toxic, Juvenile, and Dangerous
I wrote a post yesterday about Bill de Blasio gleefully shutting down ice rinks in New York a month early simply because the Trump Organization runs them and Hizzoner wants to score some political points while employing the familiar Democratic tactic of using kids as pawns. Never forget that Democrats hate your kids. They probably hate their own kids, too.
The pettiness shown by de Blasio and the way he handled it were beyond embarrassing:
At a time when Americans have been cooped up for a year and in desperate need of any kind of outdoor activity with fresh air, Bill de Blasio and his administration have decided that it’s more important to fill their diapers, stomp their feet, and have a loud ORANGE MAN BAD fit.
Worse yet, they announced it like a drunk college kid trying to dunk on someone on social media. A de Blasio spokesman said, “Trump has been impeached from operating the ice rink,” and he no doubt felt like the most clever boy in kindergarten after that.
The kids who are getting to spend time outdoors to keep from going crazy while not being in school are completely screwed now but, hey, Mayor Bill got to cheat Trump out of a few bucks for a month.
When President Biden signed his executive order for a review and update to ICE enforcement procedures, he also put Operation Talon on hold. Operation Talon is a nationwide ICE operation that arrests and removes convicted sex offenders illegally in the United States. The effects of this order have been immediate, with the cancellation of a joint operation to arrest at-large sex offenders:
All this is being done to appease the woke open borders lobby that’s been working in tandem with Big Green to control Grandpa Gropes’ brain during his first four weeks in office. “ICE” is a trigger word for the already unstable Left and the mere mention of the agency plunges them further into madness. Sometimes the madness makes them do stupid things. As Stacey notes, this time it’s making them do dangerous things:
As Biden has essentially thrown open the border to migrant caravans and the cartels that traffic human beings over the border, reducing the enforcement in this area is appalling. His executive order halted most immigration enforcement, with “aggravated felons” being the notable exceptions—but only if their aggravated felony occurred in the last ten years
The Democrats are in control of the federal government right now and they have no clear vision for the United States of America other than hating Donald Trump. That would be myopic and stupid in the best of times. With the pandemic still upon us and the economy in dire need of a comeback, it’s a recipe for long-term disaster.
And they don’t care. The tantrum is the priority and it shows no signs of letting up.
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IN BRIEF
Supreme Court declines to shield President Trump's tax returns from Manhattan DA's witch hunt (The Hill)
Senator Joe Manchin rightly announces he will oppose provocateur Neera Tanden, likely defeating her Office of Management and Budget nomination (Disrn)
"It doesn't always have to be a yes or no answer": Press Secretary Jen Psaki dodges questions about Governor Cuomo's nursing home failures (Post Millennial)
Friendly fire: AOC calls for "full investigation" into nursing home scandal (Daily Caller)
Biden admin urges passage of "Equality Act" to conflate gender identity with sexual orientation (Post Millennial)
Democrats planning revival of congressional earmarks following GOP's 10-year ban (Just the News)
Prominent Democrat fundraiser sentenced to 12 years in prison for foreign money campaign schemes (Disrn)
Donald Trump will speak at CPAC in first post-White House appearance (Fox News)
Support for Biden's handling of the pandemic falls by 5% (Blaze Media)
Making "a bad situation worse": Study finds Andrew Cuomo's reckless nursing home directive may have led to 1,000 more COVID deaths (Washington Times)
Lockdown upshot: Flu activity is "unusually low" this year (Disrn)
An epidemic of loneliness is overspreading America — and lockdowns sure haven't helped (FEE)
Six more Oath Keepers associates charged in Capitol riots conspiracy case (USA Today)
Iran refuses to change "terms" of nuclear deal as U.S. says "the ball is in their court" (Examiner)
President Biden approves Texas disaster declaration (Whitehouse.gov)
Texas storm may cost insurers record first-quarter losses (Reuters)
Some Texans now face huge variable-rate electricity bills to the tune of thousands of dollars (NPR)
Biden administration announces reforms to PPP to assist small businesses (Fox Business)
Bronx teacher fired for refusing to make "Black Panther" salute (Examiner)
Amazon drops Ryan T. Anderson's When Harry Became Sally book without explanation (Disrn)
Coca-Cola holds "anti-racist" training that instructs employees to "be less white" (Not the Bee)
Planned Parenthood committed 354,871 abortions in the past year and was given $618 million in taxpayer money (Not the Bee)
Racism at Smith College: Whistleblower reveals institution's psychological abuse of white employees (Disrn)
"We want to acknowledge its harmful impact": Disney slaps ridiculous "offensive content" label on "The Muppet Show" (Daily Wire)
The celebs who say you're killing the planet with minivans are using private jets at record pace (Not the Bee)
A gas leak led this Tennessee family to discover a family of bears living under their house (Not the Bee)
Apollo 16 lunar rover footage upscaled to a mesmerizing 4k 60fps (Not the Bee)
Policy: The Biden-made border crisis (Daily Signal)
Policy: How Congress can prevent Big Tech from becoming the speech police (The Hill)
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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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Monday, February 22, 2021
COVID Cases Drop by 77 Percent. Politicians and Public Health Bureaucrats Hardest Hit
Over the last six weeks, new cases of infection of the coronavirus have dropped an astonishing 77 percent. Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and observes: “If a medication slashed cases by 77%, we’d call it a miracle pill.”
Has the number of infections really dropped by 77 percent in 6 weeks?
According to the CDC COVID Data Tracker, there were 283,640 new cases on January 2, 2021. As of February 17, there were 69,165 cases. That represents a drop of 75.05 percent in six weeks — for all you fact-checkers out there.
But Makary points out that the vaccine hasn’t been totally responsible for the drop. He makes a strong case that “natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing.”
Testing has been capturing only from 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55% of Americans have natural immunity.
Now add people getting vaccinated. As of this week, 15% of Americans have received the vaccine, and the figure is rising fast. Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates 250 million doses will have been delivered to some 150 million people by the end of March.
Makary is predicting “herd immunity” by April. He realizes that herd immunity is a loaded political phrase, but he’s got the evidence to back it up.
Many experts, along with politicians and journalists, are afraid to talk about herd immunity. The term has political overtones because some suggested the U.S. simply let Covid rip to achieve herd immunity. That was a reckless idea. But herd immunity is the inevitable result of viral spread and vaccination. When the chain of virus transmission has been broken in multiple places, it’s harder for it to spread—and that includes the new strains.
Herd immunity has been well-documented in the Brazilian city of Manaus, where researchers in the Lancet reported the prevalence of prior Covid-19 infection to be 76%, resulting in a significant slowing of the infection. Doctors are watching a new strain that threatens to evade prior immunity. But countries where new variants have emerged, such as the U.K., South Africa and Brazil, are also seeing significant declines in daily new cases.
Herd immunity was an impractical idea, both morally and politically. But when lockdowns proved not to be the answer to controlling the pandemic, they should have been abandoned for some other, less damaging solution. With 20 million Americans still unemployed and the fallout from the lockdowns yet to work its way through the economy, certainly, there could have been less catastrophic solutions.
More good news on the vaccine front as it appears that the Pfizer vaccine is 93 percent effective after only one dose. Not only that, but both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines can be stored in ordinary refrigerators with no loss in potency.
NRO:
"Meanwhile, studies of both the Pfizer and Moderna jabs are saying the vaccines are working significantly better than expected, so much so that they’re suggesting ditching the two-dose regimen in order to get more people vaccinated faster. Pfizer, for instance, says the vaccine is 93 percent effective in one dose but only 94 percent effective if taken twice. If this holds up, it’s a massive game-changer that effectively doubles vaccine availability. Also, the J&J vaccine is expected to be approved shortly after a February 26 FDA meeting to discuss the data it has generated."
All this good news and politicians are still acting as if this is a crisis that demands immediate action and compliance with all restrictions. Is Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill still necessary? Should schools still be closed? Should restaurants and bars be allowed to open without limits?
Politicians and bureaucrats love crises because people get scared enough to hand them the keys to the kingdom. And if we leave it to them to determine when the crisis is over, they will find some excuse to keep the hammer down.
It’s time we start demanding an end to lockdowns, restrictions, and the thousands of rules and regulations issued for our “guidance” during the crisis. It seems a little peaceful civil disobedience is in order.
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Biden's Made in America order – here's what part of America he's talking about
It's another way to hit conservative business owners
On those rare occasions in 2020 when candidate Joe Biden emerged from his basement to stumble through a campaign stump speech, a common theme was that his administration would do more to use the vast spending powers of the federal government to help American businesses.
The political advantages of Biden’s "Made in America" commitments were obvious. No president in modern U.S. history has done more than Donald Trump to make "America First" the standard upon which all policies should be judged.
By emphasizing "Made in America," Biden attempted to out-MAGA the man who captured the White House in 2016 by focusing on the forgotten blue-collar men and women of economically depressed parts of America’s Heartland.
In an effort to expand support among that key demographic, Biden recently issued a "Made in America" executive order that will require federal agencies to spend a greater proportion of their budgets on goods and services offered by U.S. companies.
At first glance, the order seems relatively uncontroversial to many on the ideological left and right. According to the White House, the federal government spends more than $600 billion on federal contracts alone. It is more than reasonable to expect that those taxpayer dollars be paid to American businesses rather than sent overseas, whenever possible.
A closer look at Biden’s executive order, however, reveals there is much more to the White House’s Made in America policy than meets the eye.
Biden’s plan requires the creation of a Made in America Office, the apparent acronym of which is, quite incredibly, "MAO." MAO, which will be housed in the Office of Management and Budget, will work as the Biden administration’s Made in America hall monitor, ensuring that the behemoth federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., spends its vast resources on American products and services and issuing exemptions to the policy, when appropriate.
But MAO will not merely require other federal agencies to buy from American businesses. The Biden administration has signaled it will also mandate that the federal government buy from U.S. businesses that pursue certain left-wing goals.
According to an official statement of the White House, Biden’s Made in America executive order "is deeply intertwined with the President’s commitment to invest in American manufacturing, including clean energy and critical supply chains, grow good-paying, union jobs, and advance racial equity."
And there is no telling what other criteria might be fabricated in the months and years ahead by the Biden administration to help push left-wing goals.
Additionally, the wording of the executive order is so vague, MAO could interpret its directive as a justification to exclude just about any business it wants from gaining a federal contract, presumably even if that business is offering the government the best service at the lowest cost.
The order’s "policy" section states, "The United States Government should, whenever possible, procure goods, products, materials, and services from sources that will help American businesses compete in strategic industries and help America’s workers thrive."
Thanks to the White House’s statement, we now know that at the very least, the "strategic industries" mentioned in the executive order include costly, inefficient "green" companies linked to wind and solar energy, and it seems apparent the mandate to "help America’s workers thrive" includes union jobs and promoting "racial equity."
When applied to the everyday workings of the gargantuan federal government, these policies could have a large effect on how countless businesses and industries in the United States operate.
Under Biden’s Made in America order, it appears, for example, a paper company seeking a federal contract to supply its products to a government agency might have its offer rejected because the business employs "too few" workers of one or more racial groups. And, of course, the formula for making such a determination would almost certainly be placed in the hands of MAO, or some other federal office.
Similarly, a business with poorer-quality products or services but a greater proportion of union workers or a greater reliance on electric cars might have an edge over a more efficient business that has not been unionized or that utilizes gasoline-powered vehicles.
And there is no telling what other criteria might be fabricated in the months and years ahead by the Biden administration to help push left-wing goals. After all, nearly any social justice cause could fit into Biden’s "help workers thrive" box.
Requiring the federal government to "buy American" is arguably a noble cause, but forcing businesses to adopt leftist principles and still-unclear social justice mandates is, at best, an extremely worrisome expansion of the federal government’s power over the marketplace.
And the problem is only likely to get worse as the national government spends increasingly more money in the years ahead – a promise the Biden administration seems intent on keeping.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-made-america-order-social-justice-justin-haskiins
*************************************IN BRIEF
Unity! Democrats introduce "No Glory for Hate Act" to deprive Trump of post-death memorials (PJ Media)
Democrats debut sweeping immigration reform bill featuring eight-year path to citizenship (Examiner). Color us skeptical that it represents an "earned roadmap," as it's being advertised.
Incredibly, the Wuhan Institute of Virology is still eligible to receive U.S. taxpayer funding through 2024, NIH confirms (Daily Caller)
U.S. will erroneously pay $200 million in overdue and current dues to WHO (Roll Call)
White House says Biden supports study of slavery reparations (Reuters)
For the record, every Patriot Post staff member now identifies as black. And you can too!
Entertainment as indoctrination: TV shows push gun control myths (RCP)
FDA: Thankfully, no evidence COVID spreads through food or food packaging (UPI)
White House announces $4 billion in funding for global vaccine effort (Washington Post)
CDC classroom guidance would wrongly keep 90% of schools at least partially closed (CNBC)
NASA Mars rover survives "seven minutes of terror," successfully lands on Red Planet (U.S. News)
Biden marginalizes ICE: New rules limit who agents target for arrest (NPR)
Capitol Police suspends six officers with pay, investigating 29 others over January 6 riot (Fox News)
Biden ready to restore disastrous Iran nuclear deal (Examiner)
Regression: In 2021, U.S. will import more oil than it exports under Biden (CNSNews.com)
Weekly jobless claims rise to 861,000 as layoffs stay high (AP)
Red states trounce blue states economically (Power Line)
Total amount of global debt reached $281 trillion by the end of 2020 (Newsweek)
Chicago to review 41 statues for potential demolition, including ones of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant (Disrn)
South Carolina governor signs "heartbeat" abortion ban into law as legal challenge looms (The State)
Massachusetts high school football coach fired for privately questioning BLM curricula (Daily Wire)
Cartoon Network pushes "anti-racism," lecturing kids to "see color" in new PSA (Disrn)
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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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Sunday, February 21, 2021
The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot
What took place at the Capitol on January 6 was undoubtedly a politically motivated riot. As such, it should not be controversial to regard it as a dangerous episode. Any time force or violence is introduced into what ought to be the peaceful resolution of political conflicts, it should be lamented and condemned.
But none of that justifies lying about what happened that day, especially by the news media. Condemning that riot does not allow, let alone require, echoing false claims in order to render the event more menacing and serious than it actually was. There is no circumstance or motive that justifies the dissemination of false claims by journalists. The more consequential the event, the less justified, and more harmful, serial journalistic falsehoods are.
Yet this is exactly what has happened, and continues to happen, since that riot almost seven weeks ago. And anyone who tries to correct these falsehoods is instantly attacked with the cynical accusation that if you want only truthful reporting about what happened, then you’re trying to “minimize” what happened and are likely an apologist for if not a full-fledged supporter of the protesters themselves.
One of the most significant of these falsehoods was the tale — endorsed over and over without any caveats by the media for more than a month — that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was murdered by the pro-Trump mob when they beat him to death with a fire extinguisher. That claim was first published by The New York Times on January 8 in an article headlined “Capitol Police Officer Dies From Injuries in Pro-Trump Rampage.” It cited “two [anonymous] law enforcement officials” to claim that Sicknick died “with the mob rampaging through the halls of Congress” and after he “was struck with a fire extinguisher.”
A second New York Times article from later that day — bearing the more dramatic headline: “He Dreamed of Being a Police Officer, Then Was Killed by a Pro-Trump Mob” — elaborated on that story
The problem with this story is that it is false in all respects. From the start, there was almost no evidence to substantiate it. The only basis were the two original New York Times articles asserting that this happened based on the claim of anonymous law enforcement officials.
Despite this alleged brutal murder taking place in one of the most surveilled buildings on the planet, filled that day with hundreds of cellphones taping the events, nobody saw video of it. No photographs depicted it. To this day, no autopsy report has been released. No details from any official source have been provided.
Not only was there no reason to believe this happened from the start, the little that was known should have caused doubt. On the same day the Times published its two articles with the “fire extinguisher” story, ProPublica published one that should have raised serious doubts about it.
The outlet interviewed Sicknick’s brother, who said that “Sicknick had texted [the family] Wednesday night to say that while he had been pepper-sprayed, he was in good spirits.” That obviously conflicted with the Times’ story that the mob “overpowered Sicknick” and “struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher,” after which, “with a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support.”
But no matter. The fire extinguisher story was now a matter of lore. Nobody could question it. And nobody did: until after a February 2 CNN article that asked why nobody has been arrested for what clearly was the most serious crime committed that day: the brutal murder of Officer Sicknick with a fire extinguisher. Though the headline gave no hint of this, the middle of the article provided evidence which essentially declared the original New York Times story false:
In Sicknick's case, it's still not known publicly what caused him to collapse the night of the insurrection. Findings from a medical examiner's review have not yet been released and authorities have not made any announcements about that ongoing process.
According to one law enforcement official, medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true.
The CNN story speculates that perhaps Sicknick inhaled “bear spray,” but like the ProPublica interview with his brother who said he inhaled pepper spray, does not say whether it came from the police or protesters. It is also just a theory. CNN noted that investigators are “vexed by a lack of evidence that could prove someone caused his death as he defended the Capitol during last month's insurrection.” Beyond that, “to date, little information has been shared publicly about the circumstances of the death of the 13-year veteran of the police force, including any findings from an autopsy that was conducted by DC's medical examiner.”
Few noticed this remarkable admission buried in this article. None of this was seriously questioned until a relatively new outlet called Revolver News on February 9 compiled and analyzed all the contradictions and lack of evidence in the prevailing story, after which Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, citing that article, devoted the first eight minutes of his February 10 program to examining these massive evidentiary holes.
That caused right-wing media outlets to begin questioning what happened, but mainstream liberal outlets — those who spread the story aggressively in the first place — largely and predictably ignored it all.
This week, the paper that first published the false story — in lieu of a retraction or an explanation of how and why it got the story wrong — simply went back to the first two articles, more than five weeks later, and quietly posted what it called an “update” at the top of both five-week-old articles:
They did not expressly retract or even “correct” the story. Worse, there is at least one article of theirs, the January 11 one that purports to describe how the five people died that day, which continues to include the false “fire extinguisher” story with no correction or update.
The fire extinguisher tale was far from the only false or dubious claim that the media caused to circulate about the events that day. In some cases, they continue to circulate them.
In the days after the protest, numerous viral tweets pointed to a photograph of Eric Munchel with zip-ties. The photo was used continually to suggest that he took those zip-ties into the Capitol because of a premeditated plot to detain lawmakers and hold them hostage. Politico described Munchel as “the man who allegedly entered the Senate chamber during the Capitol riot while carrying a taser and zip-tie handcuffs.”
The Washington Post used the images to refer to “chatters in far-right forums explicitly discussing how to storm the building, handcuff lawmakers with zip ties.” That the zip-tie photo of Munchel made the Capitol riot far more than a mere riot carried out by a band of disorganized misfits, but rather a nefarious and well-coordinated plot to kidnap members of Congress, became almost as widespread as the fire extinguisher story. Yet again, it was The New York Times that led the way in consecrating maximalist claims. “FBI Arrests Man Who Carried Zip Ties Into Capitol,” blared the paper’s headline on January 10, featuring the now-iconic photo of Munchel at the top.
But on January 21, the “zip-tie man’s” own prosecutors admitted none of that was true. He did not take zip-ties with him from home or carry them into the Capitol. Instead, he found them on a table, and took them to prevent their use by the police:
Eric Munchel, a pro-Trump rioter who stormed the Capitol building while holding plastic handcuffs, took the restraints from a table inside the Capitol building, prosecutors said in a court filing Wednesday.
Munchel, who broke into the building with his mom, was labeled "zip-tie guy" after he was photographed barreling down the Senate chamber holding the restraints. His appearance raised questions about whether the insurrectionists who sought to stop Congress from counting Electoral College votes on January 6 also intended to take lawmakers hostage.
But according to the new filing, Munchel and his mother took the handcuffs from within the Capitol building - apparently to ensure the Capitol Police couldn't use them on the insurrectionists - rather than bring them in when they initially breached the building.
(A second man whose photo with zip-ties later surfaced similarly told Ronan Farrow that he found them on the floor, and the FBI has acknowledged it has no evidence to the contrary).
Why does this matter? For the same reason media outlets so excitedly seized on this claim. If Munchel had brought zip-ties with him, that would be suggestive of a premeditated plot to detain people: quite terrorizing, as it suggests malicious and well-planned intent. But he instead just found them on a table by happenstance and, according to his own prosecutors, grabbed them with benign intent.
Then, perhaps most importantly, is the ongoing insistence on calling the Capitol riot an armed insurrection. Under the law, an insurrection is one of the most serious crises that can arise. It allows virtually unlimited presidential powers — which is why there was so much angst when Tom Cotton proposed it in his New York Times op-ed over the summer, publication of which resulted in the departure of two editors. Insurrection even allows for the suspension by the president of habeas corpus: the right to be heard in court if you are detained.
So it matters a great deal legally, but also politically, if the U.S. really did suffer an armed insurrection and continues to face one. Though there is no controlling, clear definition, that term usually connotes not a three-hour riot but an ongoing, serious plot by a faction of the citizenry to overthrow or otherwise subvert the government.
Just today, PolitiFact purported to “fact-check” a statement from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) made on Monday. Sen. Johnson told a local radio station:
"The fact of the matter is this didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me. I mean armed, when you hear armed, don’t you think of firearms? Here’s the questions I would have liked to ask. How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired? I’m only aware of one, and I’ll defend that law enforcement officer for taking that shot.
The fact-checking site assigned the Senator its “Pants on Fire” designation for that statement, calling it “ridiculous revisionist history.” But the “fact-checkers” cannot refute a single claim he made. At least from what is known publicly, there is no evidence of a single protester wielding let alone using a firearm inside the Capitol on that day. As indicated, the only person to have been shot was a pro-Trump protester killed by a Capitol police officer, and the only person said to have been killed by the protesters, Officer Sicknick, died under circumstances that are still completely unclear.
That protesters were found before and after the riot with weapons does not mean they intended to use them as part of the protest. For better or worse, the U.S. is a country where firearm possession is common and legal. And what we know for certain is that there is no evidence of anyone brandishing a gun in that building. That fact makes a pretty large dent in the attempt to characterize this as an “armed insurrection” rather than a riot.
Indeed, the most dramatic claims spread by the media to raise fear levels as high as possible and depict this as a violent insurrection have turned out to be unfounded or were affirmatively disproven.
On January 15, Reuters published an article about the arrest of the “Q-Shaman,” Jacob Chansley, headlined “U.S. says Capitol rioters meant to 'capture and assassinate' officials.” It claimed that “federal prosecutors offered an ominous new assessment of last week’s siege of the U.S. Capitol by President Donald Trump’s supporters on Thursday, saying in a court filing that rioters intended ‘to capture and assassinate elected officials.’” Predictably, that caused viral social media postings from mainstream reporters and prominent pundits, such as Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe, manifesting in the most ominous tones possible:
Some of the individuals who breached the Capitol intended to "capture and assassinate elected officials," federal prosecutors wrote in this new court filing
Shortly thereafter, however, a DOJ “official walked back a federal claim that Capitol rioters ‘intended capture and assassinate elected officials.’" Specifically, “Washington's acting U.S. Attorney, Michael Sherwin, said in a telephone briefing, ‘There is no direct evidence at this point of kill-capture teams and assassination.’"
Over and over, no evidence has emerged for the most melodramatic media claims — torn out Panic Buttons and plots to kill Vice President Mike Pence or Mitt Romney. What we know for certain, as The Washington Post noted this week, is that “Despite warnings of violent plots around Inauguration Day, only a smattering of right-wing protesters appeared at the nation’s statehouses.” That does not sound like an ongoing insurrection, to put it mildly.
One can — and should — condemn the January 6 riot without inflating the threat it posed. And one can — and should — insist on both factual accuracy and sober restraint without standing accused of sympathy for the rioters.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-false-and-exaggerated-claims
************************************IN BRIEF
Double standards: WaPo and CNN "fact-checkers" silent as Kamala Harris falsely claims Biden is "starting from scratch" on vaccine rollout (Fox News)
Parler finally resumes social media app after being jettisoned by Big Tech (Just the News)
Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic cases with Pfizer vaccine (Reuters)
WHO approves AstraZeneca's vaccine for emergency use (AP)
Thirty-two million government-provided rapid tests have gone unused, with some close to expiration (Examiner)
Antifa cowards piled snow in front of a Seattle police precinct to keep them from responding to emergency calls (Not the Bee)
Healing! Trump impeachment lawyer's home vandalized (ABC News)
Max Lucado shamefully kowtows, apologizes for hurting LGBT community amid outrage following sermon at National Cathedral (Daily Wire)
"Family-friendly" Hallmark Channel promises more LGBT bunk (Disrn)
Bluefield College suspends entire team for kneeling during anthem, forcing them to forfeit (Disrn)
Policy: The WHO's probe into Wuhan needs a dose of common sense (AEI)
Policy: Biden is set to revive Obama's devastating Middle East foreign policy (The Federalist)
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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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Saturday, February 20, 2021
A Doctor’s View About the New mRNA Vaccines
By Thomas Siler
I’ve practiced for 35 years. I am always honest with my patients, even if conversations are difficult or confrontational. I will also be honest about saying “I don’t know.” This happens when a diagnosis is not readily apparent or when there are limits to the help I can give. With the passage of time, I’ve learned that what we don’t know about medicine outweighs what we do know.
I’ve always been a proponent of older, more established vaccines. However, they are imperfect and, like all medical treatments, can have side effects. Unfortunately, in the conversation about the new COVID-19 vaccines, the tenets of honesty and a willingness to admit ignorance are being compromised.
Operation Warp Speed was remarkable, but it leaves an uncomfortable question: Is it a good thing to rush a vaccine (or medicine) to the public without the usual safeguards? Operation Warp Speed might be a great business objective or military goal, but is it great for a medical treatment?
The pharmaceutical industry, government health authorities, and the media insist the new vaccines are safe and effective. While the initial results are promising, this is not the whole truth. Both honesty and acknowledging ignorance require answering a few questions.
What do we know about the new TYPE of vaccine being given?
Pfizer and Moderna were the first COVID-19 vaccines to be approved. Both use a new technology called mRNA vaccine, which has never been broadly given to a human population to prevent any disease.
Let that sink in for a moment.
All previous vaccines take a weakened virus or a piece of the virus and inject it into humans to induce an immune response sufficient to prevent a disease. Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines inject mRNA, which is a protein code that instructs the body to make a part of COVID-19’s spike protein that will then induce an immune response.
Our bodies daily use our own mRNA to carry instructions from DNA to make various proteins the body uses. While this new vaccine science sounds intriguing, it has never been tried in humans in this scope. It may be a breathtaking scientific advancement heralding a new path for all vaccines. It may also be less effective or have currently unknown side effects.
Is the mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 safe?
So far, the limited study of the vaccines approved for emergency use (one major study for each vaccine approved) has shown some short-term side effects. The vaccine is a two-shot series and side effects were prominent after the second shot. Side effects were more common if the recipient was younger than 65 years old.
Pain at the injection site has usually gone away in 4-5 days. The other side effects resolve, on average, in 2-3 days.
Early reports after giving the vaccine have also included allergic reactions ranging from mild to a few cases of anaphylaxis (serious allergic reaction). Allergy may be to mRNA itself or the lipid nanoparticles/PEG vehicle it is housed in. The long-term side effects are not currently known, as the main study length and follow up have only been four months.
Is the mRNA vaccine effective?
In the main study from Pfizer’s vaccine, 8/17,000 patients got symptomatic COVID-19 in the treatment group during the short follow up. In the placebo group, 162/17,000 patients got symptomatic COVID-19 during the study time. There was also a trend towards those getting the vaccine having a less severe disease and needing less hospitalization.
The Moderna study had 30,000 patients split into treatment and placebo arms. In the vaccine group, 11/15,000 patients came down with COVID-19. In the placebo group, 185/15,000 patients came down with COVID-19.
It was hard to ascertain death avoidance in these small studies. However, the two initial studies are favorable and show a 95% efficacy. Now that more information about the studies is known, Peter Doshi, associate editor of the British Medical Journal, wrote an editorial that the true efficacy may be much lower because the study excluded people with COVID-19 symptoms but a negative test and other factors.
How long does immunity last?
This is unknown. Injected mRNA goes away in days, but it is thought that the immune response will be long lasting. Whether patients will need boosters at some point is not known.
What about mutations in the COVID-19 virus? Will the vaccine still work?
Viruses always mutate and scientists following COVID-19 estimate it mutates, on average, twice a month. Most of these mutations are minor and will likely not change the vaccine effectiveness. These mutations also usually do not make the virus more deadly.
What is antibody dependent enhancement?
COVID-19 is in the family of Coronavirus that causes the common cold. The pharmaceutical industry has been trying without success for the last two decades to make a vaccine against the common cold. A safe vaccine against the common cold would make some company a lot of money!
One problem in the animal studies on coronavirus family vaccines was “antibody dependent enhancement.” When animals were inoculated, they developed a robust immune response, which is a good result.
However, when the animals were later exposed to the coronavirus against which they were vaccinated, their immune system went into overdrive, and they developed an overwhelming, fatal immune response called a “cytokine storm.” Fatal cytokine storms also happened to some COVID-19 patients when their infection was severe.
Human responses do not always correlate to animal responses. So far, there have been no signs that humans have a cytokine storm when exposed to COVID-19 after receiving the vaccine. Obviously, this would be catastrophic for any vaccine.
Should we be concerned about other long term side effects from mRNA vaccines?
A concern that deserves mention is the possibility that a cross-reaction and immunity to other parts of the spike protein could cause auto-immune disease or other problems.
A former Pfizer VP, Dr. Michael Yeadon, who has over 30 years of experience in immunology and drug research, filed a Stay of Action petition with the European Medicine Agency (like our FDA) to halt the trials of mRNA vaccines over concerns it might affect sterility in women.
Yeadon is worried that the mRNA vaccine was coded for a region of the spike protein that was similar to Syncytin-1, which is a protein that is essential for the development of the placenta. If a woman’s body makes antibodies to this protein, she could become sterile when vaccinated for COVID-19. This is a theory, not a proven fact, and no one has studied it. Yeadon’s insistence on more studies to make sure this will not happen seems reasonable.
What to make of all these concerns?
Medicine is always about a risk/benefit analysis, subject to the first maxim of “do no harm.” Usually, new medicines or new vaccines are used only after multiple studies show over long periods of time (for vaccines, at least five years) prove they’re safe and better than the older treatments.
While the new mRNA vaccines have good initial results and may be a breakthrough, they should be viewed as experimental and would best be used in high-risk patients (older patients or those with health conditions raising COVID-19 mortality) until we know more. Patients should receive extensive informed consent to understand the risks and benefits. Patients also need to know that if they have a serious complication, Congress already protected the pharmaceutical companies from litigation around emergency vaccines.
The mantra of “safe and effective” is not only incomplete, but it also ignores other pathways out of the pandemic. For healthy people, early outpatient treatments are being developed to treat COVID-19. These would be a safer option than taking an experimental vaccine. Young people (<60 years old) who have very low mortality from COVID-19 should approach getting the new vaccine as if they were consenting to be in an experimental trial of a new vaccine.
Our history shows there are good reasons why new medicines and vaccines are not rushed into widespread use until we have multiple studies and time to assess the safety and efficacy of the new treatments. If the death rate from COVID-19 were much higher, it might make the risks acceptable to try an experimental vaccine. Given that the COVID-19 death rate is a little higher than a bad flu, my opinion is that younger and healthier people need a more rigorous risk/benefit analysis before taking the mRNA vaccines.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/a_doctors_view_about_the_new_mrna_vaccines.html
********************************************Furious Leftist hatred of Trump still burning
These are seriously disturbed people
Democrat lawmakers in the House of Representatives introduced a new bill on Thursday that would ban only former President Donald Trump from being buried in Arlington National Cemetery or having federal funds going to buildings bearing his names.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), applies all its prohibitions to “any former President that has been twice impeached by the House of Representatives on or before the date of enactment of this Act.” The bill would specifically target Trump, who is the only U.S. president to have been impeached twice by the House of Representatives.
The bill states its ban on property named after a twice impeached president includes “any highway, park, subway, Federal building, military installation, street, or other Federal property.”
In a statement announcing the bill, Sanchez said the bill, barring federal funds to any other building bearing Trump’s name, could also prevent public schools from being named after him.
“I can’t imagine sending students in Southern California — or anywhere in America — to a school named in honor of a traitorous president,” she said.
Sanchez said federal funding would not go to a single thing bearing Trump’s name, “Not a building, statue, or even a park bench.”
By targetting only presidents impeached twice before the bill’s enactment, the bill would allow Democratic President Bill Clinton to retain typical burial and honors given to U.S. presidents despite having also been impeached. Clinton was impeached in 1998 on one charge of perjury and one charge of obstruction of justice.
The bill could also affect the management of a Trump presidential library. According to the National Archives, while presidential libraries are constructed with non-federal funds, the libraries are typically transferred to the National Archives, which then staffs and operates them. The National Archives is a federal agency.
Additionally, the bill would also aim to strip Trump of other benefits of his presidency.
The Former President’s Act of 1958 describes a number of lifetime benefits for former presidents who have not been removed from office. The act provides retirement, clerical assistants and free mailing privileges to former presidents. Referring to the 1958 act, Sanchez’ bill states, “Notwithstanding any provision of the Act . . . any former President that has been twice impeached by the House of Representatives on or before the date of enactment of this Act or has been convicted of a State or Federal crime relating to actions taken in an official capacity as President of the United States is not entitled to receive any benefit, other than Secret Service protection, under such Act.”
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German phyicist says he is '99.9 per cent sure' that coronavirus leaked from Wuhan lab
Dr Roland Wiesendanger, a physicist from the University of Hamburg, has published a 100-page paper laying out what he claims is evidence pointing to a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in the city where the pandemic began.
The professor says the fact that no animal host has been found, safety concerns about the lab, and the fact that researchers were involved in controversial 'gain-of-function' research to make viruses more infectious to humans all confirm his view.
But others have slammed his 'research' - saying it is unscientific, relies on newspaper reports and YouTube videos as sources, and point out that he is not a virus expert.
His paper was published just 10 days after WHO scientists probing the origins of Covid in Wuhan urged scientists to dismiss lab leak theories, saying the possibility is 'extremely unlikely'.
Dr Wiesendanger openly admitted to German media that he has no 'scientific basis' for believing the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab. But he insisted that there is plenty of 'circumstantial evidence' that suggests a lab leak is the most likely explanation.
'I am 99.9 percent certain that the coronavirus came from the laboratory,' he told German newspaper ZDF.
Among the evidence that Dr Wiesendanger puts forward is the fact that, despite China's insistence that thorough searches have been carried out, no natural host for the virus has yet been found.
The closest relative of Covid to be found in nature is a coronavirus found in bats living in a mine in Mojiang in 2012 - labelled RaTG13 by researchers.
Dr Wiesendanger points out that these bats live some 1,200 miles from Wuhan, meaning it is unlikely they carried the virus to the city.
WHO scientists also pointed out in their own report that contact between citizens of Wuhan and bats is uncommon.
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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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Friday, February 19, 2021
World watches as Israel’s fast-tracked vaccination program delivers promising results
It paid a sky-high price to access one of the best coronavirus vaccines in the world and also agreed to share data on the accelerated rollout – but Israel’s expensive gamble seems to have paid off.
The small country in the Middle East was late joining the line for the Pfizer vaccine behind the US, Canada and Japan, according to The Times of Israel, but it still managed to gain fast-tracked access to millions of doses.
This was partly due to Israel paying a lot more for the vaccine – as much as double what the United States and United Kingdom signed up for per dose – but also because it agreed to share data on the results of the rollout with Pfizer.
“We didn’t quibble about the price,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters in January.
Mr Netanyahu also acknowledged that one of the selling points for Pfizer was that Israel “could serve as a world laboratory for herd immunity or something approaching herd immunity very quickly”.
Israel “can serve as a global test case” on the coronavirus vaccine and on reopening the economy, he said.
Two months since the vaccine began to be rolled out, experts are now watching closely to understand its effectiveness in the real world.
The program has been so successful that on Monday Mr Netanyahu’s government announced the reopening of some businesses.
“We’ll be the first in the world to get out [of COVID],” Mr Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel 12.
He encouraged 570,000 people aged over 50 who had not yet been vaccinated to get the jab, saying they would decide whether the current lockdown will be Israel’s last.
Israel has already provided the first of two jabs to more than four million people in just two months.
This has provided coverage to more than 40 per cent of its population of nine million. Of these, more than 2.6 million have also received their second jab.
Although the number of vaccinations is not as high as other countries, Israel’s smaller population makes it easier to assess the impact of widespread vaccination because a higher proportion of the population is potentially protected.
So what is the data saying?
So far there isn’t a clear answer on whether vaccinated people can still infect others but there is promising data suggesting vaccinations reduce viral load and this means people are less likely to infect others.
Analysis from DNA scientist Yaniv Erlich, who is MyHeritage’s chief science officer, and his colleague Ella Petter, found vaccinated people who still got sick with coronavirus had a viral load 1.5 times to 20 times lower than those who weren’t vaccinated.
This means they are less likely to pass on the virus to others even if they do get infected and provides some hope that herd immunity can be achieved.
“Whoever gets vaccinated not only protects himself but also his family, his neighbours, and his community. Therefore, it is important to get vaccinated,” Dr Erlich wrote in a Facebook post on February 8.
Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to US President Joe Biden, also spruiked the vaccine’s ability to reduce people’s viral load, seen in studies from Israel and Spain.
“The vaccine is important not only for the health of the individual to protect them against infection and disease, including the variants … but it also has very important implications from a public health standpoint, for interfering and diminishing the dynamics of the outbreak,” he said on Wednesday.
With any new vaccine there’s a risk that results seen in the trials won’t be replicated in the real world. This can happen for many reasons including the fact that people who sign up for trials tend to be healthier, more educated and open to new technology.
But so far the Pfizer’s results appear to be mirroring those experienced in the trial and it is protecting people from getting sick.
Israel has now announced a “green badge” system to re-open certain venues to those who have received both of their jabs.
From Sunday, those who have the badge, which will also be given to those who have recovered from the virus, will be allowed into gyms, cultural events, houses of worship and hotels.
“We are moving ahead with the responsible reopening on the principle of ‘you’re vaccinated – you’re in’,” Defence Minister Benny Gantz said on Monday.
Other facilities, like malls and museums, will open to all citizens, with or without a green badge, under a so-called “purple code”, with crowd size limits and other restrictions that have applied through much of the pandemic.
Hagai Levine, a public health professor and researcher at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, stressed Israel’s vaccination-dependent reopening plan required a “delicate balance” between public health needs and individual freedoms.
There is also “a right not to be vaccinated,” he told AFP.
“I think people should do it, but you cannot force them,” he added, noting that those who opt out inevitably risk being denied certain services.
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UK: No, patriotism doesn’t alienate ethnic minorities
The battle for the Labour Party’s soul is now in full flow. This once great party has been on the opposition benches for over a decade, and is now on the verge of being plunged into an internal culture war over matters of patriotism and tradition.
According to progressive activists, taking pride in the Union flag, respecting those who have served in the armed forces and being smartly dressed is pandering to extreme right-wing nativism.
But what is an especially questionable charge, made by the likes of Aditya Chakrabortty in the Guardian, is that embracing expressions of British patriotism would alienate ethnic minorities. According to this view, the imagined ‘BAME community’ has little to no sense of national pride or appreciation of British life. This assumption is both misguided and divisive.
The 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study, which remains the only full-scale survey on British ethnic-minority attitudes to date, showed that non-white people are far more likely to express satisfaction with the British democratic system than white Brits. This should come as no surprise. A notable section of Britain’s non-white population moved directly to the UK from unstable parts of the world with dysfunctional political systems and substandard public infrastructure.
Part of the reason my Bangladeshi-origin parents decided to set up their stall in Britain was because of the stable nature of British democratic society and the great educational opportunities on offer for their children. This feeds into a naturally positive orientation towards Britain – a country that provided them with an opportunity to start afresh and prosper.
The progressive-activist brigade, which lectures Labour on how to engage with Britain’s ethnic-minority people, fails to understand that patriotic sentiments and culturally traditional values run deep in many British non-white communities. Arguing that Labour should steer clear of expressions of patriotism and national civic pride, on the baseless grounds that it would alienate swathes of ‘BAME’ people, is nonsense-on-stilts.
It also amounts to the crass exploitation of non-white people, who are being used to stop Labour embracing patriotism and tradition. This is an attempt to ensure the party continues to indulge racial identity politics, and continues to support the kind of cultural liberalism that runs counter to traditional family-oriented values – values which often characterise South Asian and black communities across the home nations.
Britain’s progressive activists – who span various spheres of British life, from politics to academia to the media and entertainment – are far from ideologically in-sync with mainstream ethnic-minority public opinion.
While these progressive activists squirm at the mildest expressions of patriotism, a comfortable majority of non-white people attach importance to their British national identity. Following the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union and the Conservative Party’s handsome victory in the 2019 UK General Election, some Labourites have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the outcomes produced by the UK’s recent democratic exercises. But many of Britain’s non-white people – who can trace their ancestral origins back to countries with autocratic regimes and rampant political oppression – simply do not share in this domestic progressive-liberal discontent. And while progressive activists look to ‘protect’ an imaginary BAME community from the forces of oppression, they fail to acknowledge that non-white people tend to be more satisfied with their life in the UK.
Progressive activists are either unaware of the culturally conservative attitudes in non-white communities or, worse still, they are fully aware of them but would still rather exploit ethnic minorities to promote their identitarian agenda. This tribe of left-wingers – instinctively hostile to expressions of patriotism, dissatisfied with the democratic system, and always keen to interpret a range of social issues through the prism of race – threatens to lock Labour in a position of neverending electoral misery.
If such people continue to wield considerable influence on the British left, Labour will only be left with offering a miserable form of grievance politics, which is likely to prove very costly at the ballot box. The lessons of the 2019 UK General Election are clearly still not being learned.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/02/03/no-patriotism-doesnt-alienate-ethnic-minorities/
*******************************IN BRIEF
Joe Biden takes a sledgehammer to Trump immigration agenda by pulling 65 pending EOs (Free Beacon)
Soon-to-be President Kamala Harris is now taking Biden's head of state calls (Disrn)
Christian actor Kevin Sorbo gets deleted by Facebook (Disrn)
William Shakespeare ditched by more and more woke teachers over "misogyny" and "racism" (Fox News)
New York school encourages parents to become "white traitors," "white abolitionists" (Daily Wire)
Dumb and dumber: San Francisco school board delays talk of reopening classrooms — but keeps working on changing "racist" school names (Daily Mail)
National Guard mission in DC to finally conclude by mid-March, Pentagon claims (Examiner)
Iraq rocket attack kills contractor, wounds U.S. service member; it was the most deadly attack to hit U.S.-led forces for almost a year in Iraq, where tensions have escalated (NBC News)
Wharton School analysts concludes that Biden's proposed spending binge would actually lead to a smaller economy in 2022 (FEE)
We're shocked — shocked! Venezuela turns to privatization after being bankrupted by socialism (FEE)
It didn't start on January 6: A brief history of terrorist violence at the Capitol (Heritage Foundation)
Endangered bears being released into the wild start charging their rescuers because that's what bears do (Not the Bee)
Chick-fil-A worker wins car in company raffle, gives it to coworker who was biking to work (Not the Bee)
Policy: Biden should keep U.S. troops in Europe (Heritage Foundation)
Joe Biden rightly disappoints hard leftists on minimum wage hike and student loan forgiveness (Examiner)
Hypocritical Twitter allows grotesque hashtags to trend following Limbaugh's death (Daily Wire)
The U.S. is now administering average of 1.7 million vaccine doses per day (Disrn)
U.S. life expectancy drops a year in pandemic — the most since WWII (Fox News)
Government seizes over 10 million phony N95 masks in COVID probe (AP)
Three North Korean military hackers indicted in wide-ranging scheme (Justive.gov)
U.S. retail sales rebounded sharply in January — up a seasonally adjusted 5.3% (Reuters)
Google and News Corp strike a deal: Google will start paying for the use of News Corp's journalism in the U.S., UK, and Australia (NBC News)
Baltimore activist suggests paying killers not to kill (Fox News)
Security camera catches LA County health inspector breaking into dance like a psycho moments after ordering bar to shut down (Not the Bee)
Karma: At least 30 Taliban terrorists blow themselves up during bomb-making class (Disrn)
Porch pirate attempts to steal a package and is met with a loaded rifle (Not the Bee)
Policy: Technology alone won't end poverty. We need savings first. (Mises Institute)
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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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Thursday, February 18, 2021
Why did COVID fail to take off in India and has now collapsed? Mystery plunge in coronavirus
Scientists are trying to work out why coronavirus cases in India are falling when at one point it looked like the country might overtake the US as the worst-hit nation.
In September the country was reporting some 100,00 new cases per day, but that went into decline in October and is now sitting at around 10,000 per day - leaving experts struggling to explain why.
While the Indian government has been keen to put the apparent success down to its mask-wearing and social distancing laws, few believe these measures alone are responsible for the dip.
Instead, experts believe it may be down to the fact that India's largest cities have reached herd immunity, meaning the virus has moved to rural areas where it spreads slower and where cases and deaths are far less likely to be tested and logged.
A recent survey found 56 per cent of people in Delhi - the country's most-populous city - have Covid antibodies, which is likely to be an under-estimate with 70 per cent required for herd immunity.
Only around 20 per cent of deaths in India are medically certified - meaning 80 per cent do not have an official cause of death - with analysts warning the country may be under-counting its Covid fatalities by two or three times.
India also tests far less than developed nations, with medical experts warnings some states are relying on rapid lateral flow tests that give false-negative results.
The country also has a far younger population than many western nations - with an average age under 30 - and has far lower rates of obesity, which are both major factors in serious Covid infections and deaths.
Antibody surveys carried out in Mumbai, India's second-largest city, and Pune also showed antibodies in around 50 per cent of the population, The Times reported.
'The most densely-populated areas are already saturated and reaching the threshold of herd immunity, Giridhar Babu, an epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India, told the paper.
'The virus has now spread to rural areas, but they are not so dense.'
Having a less-dense population means the virus spreads slower, which will naturally bring down daily case figures.
But with access to healthcare in rural India often lacking, it may also mean that many cases and deaths are going undetected.
Testing data for India shows that just 0.5 people per 1000 are swabbed each day - one of the lowest rates among countries that report such data.
More data released in September last year showed that people in rural areas are less-likely to be swabbed than those in cities - meaning that as the disease moves away from urban centres, the number of positive tests appears to decline.
The average number of tests carried out per day has also been falling across the whole of India since mid-December, which could also help to explain why positive test results have fallen.
And even those who are swabbed may be returning false-negative results, with doctors warning in September last year that many states are over-reliant on rapid lateral flow tests, which are unreliable.
Rijo John, a public health policy analyst, also warned that some states are failing to report which kind of tests are being used, further muddying the picture.
'More and more states are moving towards rapid antigen detection tests, which are known to have a high percentage of false negatives and not utilising the gold standard RT-PCR tests to full capacity,' he said.
'It should be made mandatory for all states to report the break[down] of different test types as well as the positives from these.'
Data also shows 80 per cent of Indians die at home, with no national requirement for a cause of death to be given before a body can be cremated or buried.
That has led experts to warn of a 'substantial' under-counting of deaths, with Dr Babu warning the true toll could be two or three times higher than the official count.
But others point to easing pressure on the country's hospitals as evidence that something other than an under-counting of cases and deaths in going on.
Some point to India's young population and relatively low rates of obesity as possible explanations.
The country has an average age of less than 30 with just 15 per cent of adults being overweight and 5 per cent obese, according to 2015 data.
By comparison, the US - which has been hardest-hit by Covid - has an average age of 38 with 32 per cent of adults overweight and 36 per cent obese.
Age and obesity are known to be two of the biggest factors increasing the likelihood that someone will fall seriously ill or die from Covid.
Other theories include that India has been dealing with less-virulent strains of the virus than those found in Europe, the US and parts of Africa.
India suspended all commercial flights in March last year, and while it has been operating 'travel corridors' since July, it has been quick to cut off routes to countries where dangerous new variants have emerged such as the UK.
That could have stopped the country suffering from spikes in infections like that seen in Britain after the so-called Kent Variant emerged, epidemiologists suggest.
Others believe that Indians, many of whom live in unsanitary conditions and suffer repeated waves of infections, have naturally resilient immune systems.
Jacob John, a prominent virologist at Christian Medical College in Tamil Nadu state, said: '[India suffers] dengue, chikungunya, malaria, typhoid, cholera, dysenteries, influenza, so the "innate immune system" is trained to be on high alert.'
The success cannot be attributed to vaccinations since India only began administering jabs in January, with just seven million out of the country's 1.3billion population jabbed so far.
Experts have cautioned that even if herd immunity in some places is partially responsible for the decline, the population as a whole remains vulnerable - and must continue to take precautions.
This is especially true because new research suggests that people who got sick with one form of the virus may be able to get infected again with a new version.
A recent survey in Manaus, Brazil, that estimated that over 75% of people there had antibodies for the virus in October - before cases surged again in January.
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Did the CDC Really Say We Need to Wear 2 Masks? Here’s What You Need to Know About Double-Masking
Throughout the course of this pandemic, there has been widespread confusion, misunderstanding, and anxiety about COVID-19—how it is transmitted, how dangerous it is, and how to protect yourself from it.
Now, the latest topic of debate is whether or not the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend double-masking, and like other COVID-19 debates, misconceptions abound.
The use of masks as a simple infection control measure has become a controversial and polarizing issue. Now, a new push to wear not one, but two masks at once threatens to make it even worse. But does it even make sense?
Protective masks are a lightweight and easy tool for reducing the chances of spreading respiratory pathogens from one person to another. Illnesses (such as COVID-19) are caused by respiratory viruses and are transmitted by our breaths.
Thus, it makes sense that placing a filtering barrier in front of our respiratory orifices would reduce the spread of respiratory viruses.
Nearly every locality in the United States now mandates wearing masks in situations where you are exposed to other members of the public, and 96% of the population is willing to wear a mask when they leave the house or come into contact with other people, according to a survey taken in December 2020.
Despite this, the rate of known cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19 reached unprecedented levels this past fall. The rate of hospitalizations alone eclipsed the summer spike by a twofold factor.
The conclusion to draw from this is that masks may indeed help in certain situations, but on their own they simply were insufficient to stem the spread of the virus in the past few months.
We seem to be on the downward slope of the present spike, as cases and hospitalizations have been on a sustained decline since January, and deaths have begun trending downward more recently, but it likely has little to do with masks, since they have been so broadly accepted or already mandated in so many places since before the fall spike.
So if one mask isn’t working very well, why not wear two?
That is the conclusion many are drawing from the recent CDC study. To unpack this study correctly, we must first understand that the CDC was testing different ways of wearing masks to improve their performance—it was not simply testing the efficacy of double-masking exclusively.
Here’s what the CDC found. Unsurprisingly, when a mask is better fitted to a person’s face, fewer aerosols and particulates escape past it.
In a trial where a source (a person coughing or breathing) and a receiver (the person from which aerosols were measured) wore two masks (a cloth mask worn over a medical procedure mask) the receiver was exposed to 96.4% less aerosol.
On its own, this is an interesting finding, but is impossible to be generalized to a policy on how we ought to comport ourselves during the present pandemic.
One problem is that this study only tested one type of procedure mask and one type of cloth mask. Procedure masks are fairly standard (although there are different strap types), but the market for cloth masks includes an endless variety of fabrics and forms.
Outside of the ideal conditions of a laboratory, someone who opts to wear a cloth mask on top of a procedure mask would lose all the benefits of improved filtration if, for example, the cloth mask was poorly fitted to the face.
If, for instance, a cloth mask has poor fitment, it would do nothing to improve filtration, and the purpose of the double mask would be negated.
Another problem is that the aerosols in the experiment are not an exact representation of viral particles, but of a person’s respirations. How infectious a person’s respirations are would depend on his or her viral load.
Thus, a reduction in exposure, as measured in the study, does not necessarily mean the same reduction in infectiousness.
The study authors themselves recognize that these findings are not to be interpreted “as being representative of the effectiveness of these masks when worn in real-world settings.”
Indeed, to reduce the point of the study as to simply a trial of the effects of double-masking would be far too narrow an interpretation—in reality, the results only speak to the effectiveness of the particular masks used.
As every person has a unique face, masking, double-masking, or other modified mask-wearing could all work to varying degrees. The only true conclusion from this study is not that we should all wear two masks, but that better fitting masks filter our breaths better.
To that end, wearing a properly fitted N95 respirator would do just as well as double-masking, or rather, better.
The greatest potential utility of masks is when people who are possibly exposed find themselves in situations where physical distancing from strangers is impossible—for instance, while walking past others in a grocery store aisle.
But masks were only ever meant to be part of a broad mitigation strategy. They were never meant to seal us off from the dangers of the world.
If people want to wear two masks, they should certainly do so, but everyone must remember that masks only make up one part of a broader mitigation strategy, which includes assessing risks, social distancing, testing, and importantly now, vaccinating. Policymakers should remember this, rather than rely on masks and make them even more unappetizing to use.
And policymakers should explore additional options—like widespread rapid self-testing, which is an even more promising way to battle the pandemic.
It has been over a year now since SARS-CoV-2 first arrived on our shores, and Americans have been asked to avoid buying masks, to wear masks, and, now, to wear two masks.
We’ve learned many things over the course of 2020, but at no point did we learn that masks would be anything other than an adjunct to better, more effective measures.
Doubling up on masks, at this point, would be doubling down on one of the least effective measures we now have.
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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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Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Leftist Hypocrisy on Authoritarianism
Republicans are “radicalizing against democracy” because they rely on our constitutional process when governing. This is the essence of Chris Hayes’ recent Atlantic piece contending that the GOP is descending into authoritarianism.
The MSNBC host notes, without any suggestion of self-awareness, that “the Constitution puts a wind at the backs of Republicans and makes them more competitive than they would be otherwise.”
What does “otherwise” mean here, exactly? A return to the British Empire? Or does it mean functioning as the centralized direct democracy that progressives covet, but that’s never existed in this country? There is no “otherwise.”
The idea that the Constitution allows “minoritarian control” might be popular in certain quarters, but it remains a faulty way of looking at our system.
The American republic is democratic, yes; but it also protects the rights of the individual, the power of the states, and the dignity of the minority, and it does so openly and deliberately.
Federalism, far from representing a modern plot, has existed from the start as a means by which to diffuse power and prevent the subordination of smaller states—read: communities—by bigger ones.
There is nothing preventing California from passing whatever laws it wishes at the state level. There are provisions making it hard for California to pass whatever laws it wishes in West Virginia. That’s not a bug; it’s the point.
To bolster the claim of this minoritarian autocracy, Hayes is impelled to create the impression that the overriding national consensus is being thwarted. “Democrats have established a narrow but surprisingly durable electoral majority, holding control of the House, winning back the Senate, and taking the presidency by 7 million votes,” he argues.
This is wishful thinking. Voters are fickle and mercurial, and the fleeting vagaries of public sentiment are constantly changing.
Four years ago, Republicans controlled everything, too. What has changed? Not much, really.
Even in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic and subsequent economic downturn; even with Donald Trump’s boorishness and self-destructive behavior; even with a sloppy election that showered paper ballots on nearly everyone in the country—even then, Republicans came somewhere within 45,000 to 90,000 votes of controlling all of Washington’s institutions once again.
There is a good chance that the GOP will take back the House in 2022; the Senate is tied; and nobody has a clue what will happen in the presidential election of 2024. 1932 this was not.
Perhaps the most dangerous thing about anti-constitutionalists such as Hayes is their inability to comprehend their own authoritarianism. Hayes asserts that, in the future, the national fight will revolve around “whether the United States will live up to the promise of democracy.”
“On that crucial question,” he suggests, “we’ve rarely been so divided.” But he doesn’t really mean “democracy” so much as he means “things I personally like.”
Rest assured, Hayes wasn’t a fan of majoritarian “democracy” when the vast majority of Americans opposed gay marriage. He’s not really a fan of catchall “democracy” when it doesn’t serve his philosophical interests.
As for “authoritarianism”—well, that also seems to depend upon whose ox is being gored. One can only imagine the kind of raging screeds we’d be subjected to if Republicans were talking about a national domestic-terror act—a Patriot Act for Americans—that was explicitly designed to weed out the left-wing extremists that burned their way through last summer.
And how many Hayes-approved protesters do we think would hit the streets if the Biden administration had instructed the military to stand down so it could ferret out thought crimes?
Forget the hypotheticals: Where are Hayes’ passionate objections to President Joe Biden’s having signed a slew of acutely undemocratic executive orders—including international agreements—without the consent of the legislative branch?
How loud has he been in criticism of Sen. Chuck Schumer’s imploring the executive to strip Congress of its power?
Where was he when the Obama administration went after the conscience rights of nuns?
Clearly, for many left-wingers—and, no, it is no longer accurate to call them “liberals”—“democracy” and “authoritarianism” are wholly situational ideas. I won’t be lectured by them any longer.
To believe the “Biden era of American politics is shaping up as a contest between the growing ideological hegemony of liberalism and the intensifying opposition of a political minority that has proved willing to engage in violence in order to hold on to power,” one has to ignore reality—starting with the endless supply of leftist riots that broke out across the country last summer to unfailingly rave reviews—and, in concert, to pretend that the Capitol rioters were not only magically “different,” but represented the core of the conservative argument.
Well, I won’t do either. I’m for the rule of law—as it actually exists, not how others would like it to exist. I am for the Constitution. I am for both houses of Congress. I am for the states. I am for the Bill of Rights. I’m for all those things because I reject authoritarianism.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/02/12/leftist-hypocrisy-on-authoritarianism
*****************************************An Emerging and Tragic Side Effect of COVID Has Hit San Francisco
As lazy teachers and their unions continue to fight going back to school in an effort to extend their summer vacation, kids are dying. They’re committing suicide at alarming rates due to the lack of in-person learning, social interaction, after-school activities, and sports. It's causing kids to become depressed at exponential rates. They’re also not learning.
I think parents have known this for months, but now there’s solid data to reinforce this commonsense point. Little kids cannot sit still in front of a computer screen. Also, not everyone has Internet access. To liberal America and the elites, you know this undercuts your "stay at home, we’re all in this together" war cry, right?
I think this was already happening in the red states, but dead kids from Republican states don’t matter in their eyes. It only matters when it started to creep into the blue states, which has happened. In Clark County, Nevada, its school district is rushing to reopen schools as soon as humanly possible due to a spike in student suicides. And now, in San Francisco, they’re seeing the same tragedies, which prompted the city to yank its own school board into court in an effort to get kids back in the classroom. These schools have been closed for over a year (via NY Post):
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced last week he was taking the dramatic step of suing the city’s own school district, which has kept its classrooms closed nearly a year. In the motion filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, Herrera included alarming testimony from hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area, doctors and parents on the emotional and mental harms of extended distance learning.
One mother, Allison Arieff, said she had recently found her 15-year-old daughter “curled up in a fetal position, crying, next to her laptop at 11 am” Arieff said her daughter often cries in the middle of the day out of frustration and “is losing faith not just in SFUSD but in the world.”
Another mother, Lindsay Sink, has seen a “major regression” in her 7-year-old son who has “uncontrollable meltdowns that turn (the) whole house upside down.” Sink’s 10-year-old daughter is experiencing “depression and anger” and she fears her daughter’s “mental health will continue to suffer” until in-person learning resumes.
UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital has seen a 66 percent increase in the number of suicidal children in the emergency room and a 75 percent increase in youth who required hospitalization for mental health services, the lawsuit said, quoting pediatricians, child psychiatrists and emergency room doctors.
As long as teachers’ unions drag their feet and deny the science behind schools in the COVID era, which is that it's been safe to reopen them for quite some time, nothing will happen. The unions are too big an ally for the Democratic Party to anger. They will need their help in the 2022 midterms. Don’t expect much movement. I would be happy to see a seismic shift occur, but don’t bet the mortgage.
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Australian churches on collision course with the government over AstraZeneca vaccine
Major churches are at odds with authorities over the AstraZeneca vaccine, with religious leaders telling parishioners they are entitled to request a different jab but the federal government saying most people won’t have a choice.
Religious concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine arise from its use of decades-old aborted fetal cells in the development process, which is common scientific practice that some Christians find objectionable.
The stoush could frustrate or delay attempts to inoculate the country against further COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdowns as authorities prepare to start the vaccine rollout later this month.
While Australia will import 20 million Pfizer doses for high-risk populations, most Australians will be offered the AstraZeneca jab, with 50 million doses to be made locally and expected to begin in late March. A third vaccine, Novavax, should be available later in the year pending clinical trials and regulatory approval.
Catholic and Anglican archbishops told The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age that while it was ethical for people with concerns to take the AstraZeneca vaccine if necessary, they should be entitled to request a different jab.
On Friday a spokesman for Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher said he was a strong advocate of vaccinations but “like any medicine they must be safe and ethically obtained”. “Fortunately, the Novavax and Pfizer vaccines will be made available in Australia, they seem if anything to have higher success rates, and they are morally uncompromised,” he said.
“Anyone who is concerned about the ethics of the AstraZeneca vaccine should be confident in requesting an alternative, but also be confident that it is not unethical to use the AstraZeneca vaccine if there is no alternative reasonably available.”
A spokeswoman for the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli said the church would clarify its ethical position on the vaccines next week, but in the meantime referred to his remarks in a letter to the faithful last year.
“Where there is a choice, we encourage people to use a vaccine that has not been developed using human fetal cells deriving from abortion,” he wrote at the time. “The bishops accept that the use of an ethically compromised vaccine is acceptable if no other option is available.”
Sydney Anglican Archbishop Glenn Davies was among the religious leaders who signed a letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison last year complaining the AstraZeneca vaccine “makes use of a cell line cultured from an electively aborted human fetus”.
“I was one of the church leaders who urged the Prime Minister to give Australians a choice, in order to assure the highest vaccination rate possible,” Archbishop Davies said on Friday.
“I welcome the fact that the Pfizer vaccine has been approved for distribution in Australia since this vaccine is free from ethical concerns in its production. This is a matter of individual choice for each Australian but I want to encourage widespread vaccination in our population throughout 2021.”
Asked about the archbishops’ comments, the federal health department referred The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age to remarks by secretary and former chief medical officer Brendan Murphy on February 4 in which he said most people would not have a choice of vaccines. “In the main, there won’t be a choice, and I think both vaccines are extremely good, and I would be very happy to have either of them,” Professor Murphy said.
About 70 per cent of Australians report some kind of religious affiliation in the census, including about 50 per cent who identify as Christian, though not all would hold concerns about abortion or the use of an aborted fetus in vaccine production.
A spokesperson for Australian Christian Churches, which has more than 375,000 Pentecostal followers, said the ACC “does not hold an official ethical position on the use of vaccines and encourages individuals to make a decision based on personal conscience”.
Church newsletters have also contained commentary raising concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine. For example, in the December issue of the Sydney Anglican magazine Southern Cross, Bishop Chris Edwards warned of “problems” with the vaccine due to its use of the aborted cells. “The ethical issues around this are very complex,” he wrote.
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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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