Tuesday, May 28, 2024
COVID-19 Vaccine Litigation Against Mayo Clinic Revived by Federal Court
A lawsuit against the Mayo Clinic must move forward, a federal court has ruled, reviving the suit after it was thrown out in 2023.
The five fired workers who sued the Minnesota-based health nonprofit have all plausibly pleaded that their religious beliefs conflict with the clinic’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled on May 24.
The workers in multiple suits, which have since been consolidated, argued that the Mayo Clinic illegally failed to accommodate their religious beliefs, violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Three of the workers applied for religious exemptions to the nonprofit’s mandate and were denied; the two others saw their applications accepted but protested against the requirement that they had to test for COVID-19 weekly.
U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in 2023 tossed the suit, finding that some of the plaintiffs did not prove that they hold religious beliefs in opposition to the mandate or show how the testing requirement conflicts with their beliefs.
The Eighth Circuit’s new ruling is that the judge’s findings were erroneous.
Federal employment law makes it illegal for employers to fire or otherwise take action against employees over their religion. The three workers whose religious exemption requests were denied, Shelly Kiel, Kenneth Ringhofer, and Anita Miller, all said that their Christian beliefs prevented them from accepting COVID-19 vaccination, in part because they oppose abortion and aborted fetus cells were used in the production or testing of the COVID-19 vaccines.
“The district court erred in finding that the plaintiffs failed to adequately connect their refusal of the vaccine with their religious beliefs,” U.S. Circuit Judge Duane Benton said. “At this early stage, when the complaints are read as a whole and the nonmoving party receives the benefit of reasonable inferences, Kiel, Miller, and Ringhofer adequately identify religious views they believe to conflict with taking the COVID-19 vaccine.”
The two other plaintiffs received religious exemptions but refused to undergo weekly testing. One said it “violates her conscience to take the vaccine or to engage in weekly testing or sign a release of information that gives out her medical information.” Both also plausibly pleaded religious beliefs that conflicted with the testing, the panel found.
Judge Tunheim said at one point in his ruling that because many Christians who oppose abortion still receive vaccines, opposition to vaccination based on pro-life beliefs is not linked to religion. However, that view is not correct, Judge Benton said, pointing to a previous U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found that constitutional protection of religious beliefs is “not limited to beliefs which are shared by all of the members of a religious sect.”
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had urged the circuit court to rule in favor of the plaintiffs, in part because of that Supreme Court ruling.
The circuit court reversed Judge Tunheim’s ruling and remanded the case back to him.
Judge Tunheim is an appointee of President Bill Clinton. Judge Benton, appointed by President George W. Bush, was joined in the unanimous ruling by U.S. Circuit Judges Ralph Erickson and Jonathan Kobes, both of whom were appointed by President Donald Trump.
The circuit court also ruled for the plaintiffs concerning the Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA), which bars employers from discriminating against workers because of factors such as religion. Judge Tunheim said the law only provides a cause of action for workers who allege disability discrimination, not religious discrimination. That’s not correct, according to the appeals court.
“Due to Minnesota’s precedent of (1) construing liberally the MHRA, and (2) providing its citizens with commensurate, or greater, protections than under federal law, the Minnesota Supreme Court would decide that the MHRA provides protection against failures to accommodate religious beliefs,” Judge Benton wrote. “The district court erred by finding that the MHRA does not provide a cause of action for failure to accommodate religious beliefs.”
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NY High Court Justice Slams Hospital--for trying to Avoid Wrongful Death Liability In Ivermectin Cases
Mary Beth Pfeiffer recently shared on X:
“Big WIN in the wrongful death lawsuit of Deborah Bucko, who was cut off of ivermectin after a court ordered it 3X. The judge denied the hospital’s pathetic excuse that it had NO liability under the PREP Act. “Stunning,” the judge wrote.”
Yes, a big win for patients and even the vaccine injured who are filing lawsuits for damages or various forms of support, with the PREP Act undoubtedly the law all of the defendants will point to as assuring their escape from any liability. But would that be the case?
Brief Primer
The deceased, Deborah Bucko, as Ms. Pfeiffer educated us, was one of a number of patients whose families resorted to courts to obtain treatment with a safe, FDA-approved drug, ivermectin, that hospitals refuse to administer, and public health agencies endorse. At the time of the article, there were five ongoing cases with five judges ordering the ivermectin treatment in those cases; three near-death patients, aged 68, 80 and 81, later went home. A fourth, 68 and in a Chicago area hospital, is slowly improving after her treatment began on May 3.
Although not the result of a randomized controlled trial, if an already FDA-approved drug with a good safety profile was helping, why on earth wouldn’t a clinic or hospital be open to trying? We can explain why they could not below.
But denial after denial ensued after this brief period of success for ivermectin, and the Bucko cases portended a new reality during the pandemic—hospital systems would take an increasingly hostile directive against patients and their families requesting ivermectin when all else was failing. And as we explain above, it’s likely that pandemic-era covenants with Pfizer and Moderna played a role. It went something like this: “You want access to our vaccines in development, sign on the dotted line and don’t bother to read the fine print.”
The denials continued despite plenty of evidence at the time suggesting the low-cost, safe drug could have helped. Yes, the drug is only recommended for research by the National Institutes of Health. But that’s a recommendation, and millions of doses of the drug with Nobel-honored distinction have been consumed by patients participating in the Mectizan program alone.
Hundreds of doctors embraced ivermectin in the United States and in fact, TrialSite covered some obscure research demonstrating that at one point during the pandemic, the number of prescriptions per week approached 90,000--this as compared to about 3,000 per week pre-pandemic.
It was at that point that we saw the federal government via the FDA and industry intensify an information war. At the time, the federal government was allocating money to pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines and antivirals. The feds gave Merck $356 for R&D to develop an antiviral, and another $1.2 billion in purchases, and the whole affair turned out to be a debacle with molnupiravir. Most recently, the drug was associated with SARS-CoV-2 mutations. But the market had to be cleared of alternatives, for the federally sanctioned COVID-19 countermeasures.
And then there was the claim that acknowledging ivermectin would have interrupted COVID-19 vaccine emergency use authorization, although at TrialSite we don't believe that was the case.
And in this case, there was nothing to lose other than Bucko’s life. She was in ever-worsening condition, and the ivermectin prescription continued. All countermeasures the hospital tried failed. Nonetheless, the hospital and its professional handlers did everything within their power to essentially end the patient’s life. That’s the net result. Read the story for a refresher.
The Decision
As cited above, the question about PREP Act liability and the wrongful death litigation was decided in the Supreme Court of the State of New York County of Nassau, by Hon Randy Sue Marber ruled in favor of the plaintiff with Scott D. Mantel, administrator for the estate of Deborah Bucko (plaintiff) versus South Nassau Communities Hospital d/b/a Mount Sinai South Nassau (defendant).
The legal issue litigated here was not a surprise; that the PREP Act would protect the hospital from any and all liability of caring for a COVID-19 patient.
But Judge Marber emphasized in this particular case PREP grants “immunity only from ‘any claim for loss that has a causal relationship with the administration to or use by an individual of a covered countermeasure’” Here, Marber cites “(Hudak v Elmcroft of Sagamore Hills, 58 F4th 845, 849 [6th Cir 2023] quoting 42 USC § 247d-6d [a][2][B]) and not with respect to “such a measure’s non[1]administration or non-use” (Hampton v California, 83 F4th 754, 763 [9th Cir 2023]), the latter of which is the central predicate upon which the Plaintiff’s complaint is based.”
Because of this unfolding case law, the New York State Supreme Court justice declared that the “factual claims alleged in the complaint, which must be accepted as true and afforded the benefit of every favorable intendment (Nonnon v City of New York, supra at 827), are unequivocally based upon South Nassau’s “non-administration” of Ivermectin and accordingly the immunity afforded under PREP is inapplicable (Hampton v California, supra at 763).”
So, if the matter involves an action or an issue that the PREP Act authors didn’t intend to address then the PREP Act does not apply. The wrongful death case ensues, and for attorney Ralph Lorigo profiled by TrialSite far earlier in the pandemic, this decision could open up a serious pathway for more victories. See our piece on April 2021 on Lorigo “An American Hero: Ralph C Lorigo Fights for Clients Rights including Access to Ivermectin for COVID-19 Patients at Risk.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Sunday, May 26, 2024
Overreporting COVID-19 as an Underlying Cause of Death Inflated Mortality Numbers During Pandemic
A new analysis suggests COVID-19 was reported more frequently than it should have been as an underlying cause of death, inflating COVID-19 mortality numbers and attributing deaths from other causes to the virus.
In a preprint paper published in Research Gate, researchers aimed to identify who truly died “from” COVID-19 versus who died “with” COVID-19 but were included in U.S. COVID-19 mortality numbers.
To determine if COVID-19 was overreported as an underlying cause of death, researchers calculated the overreporting adjustment factor and compared the ratio of reporting COVID-19 as a multiple—or contributing—cause of death versus an underlying cause of death on death certificates from 2020 to 2022. They also examined how “pneumonia and influenza” were reported on death certificates from 2010 to 2022.
An overreporting adjustment factor for mortality is a statistical correction applied to mortality data to account for the propensity of certain death counts reported more frequently or inaccurately than others. It typically involves comparing reported death counts to a more accurate independent benchmark, which helps ensure data reflect the true incidence of deaths in a population. Here, the researchers chose pneumonia and influenza because the conditions are similar in nature to COVID-19, and they could compare patterns using mortality data before and after the pandemic began in 2020.
According to the preprint, data show COVID-19 was systematically overreported as an underlying cause of death during the pandemic by an average of about three times for all ages compared to influenza and pneumonia during the same period—and was highest in those aged 15 to 54. Additionally, only about one-third of influenza and pneumonia-related deaths were reported as underlying causes, whereas almost all COVID-19-related deaths were reported as “deaths from COVID-19.”
When comparing underlying cause death rates for different age groups for COVID-19 with death rates from influenza and pneumonia, researchers observed that underlying cause COVID-19 death rates were higher than those for influenza and pneumonia in the 15 to 24 and older age groups. After adjusting to obtain the overreporting factor, they found COVID-19 death rates were still higher than they were for influenza and pneumonia for ages 25 to 34 and older and equal for those aged 15 to 24.
About 30 percent of influenza and pneumonia-related deaths were registered as an underlying cause of death on death certificates, whereas 90 percent of COVID-19 deaths were recorded as the underlying cause of death in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, 76 percent of COVID-19 deaths were registered as the underlying cause.
“There was a systematic overreporting of deaths from COVID when we analyze versus the flu and pneumonia, as almost all COVID deaths were reported as the underlying cause,” Edward Dowd, founder of Phinance Technologies, told The Epoch Times. “Basically, when one wants to understand the pandemic, only about 30 percent of the reported COVID-19 deaths were ‘from COVID-19’ as the underlying cause,” Mr. Dowd said.
How the US Counts COVID-19 Deaths
Each country has its own criteria for determining what constitutes a COVID-19-related death. The United States uses the World Health Organization’s (WHO) classification system to categorize and code mortality data from death certificates.
The WHO defines the underlying cause of death as “the disease or injury which initiated the chain of events leading directly to death, or the circumstances of the accident or violence which produced the fatal injury.” The underlying cause of death is chosen from the conditions listed by the physician on the death certificate. When the physician records multiple causes or conditions, the underlying cause is determined by the sequence of conditions that led to the death on the certificate, ICD provisions, and selection rules.
“The WHO methodology for identifying COVID-19-related deaths cast a wide net for potential classification of COVID-19 as either the underlying cause of death or a contributory cause of death, which could lead to over-reporting relative to other diseases. This led to criticisms of suspected over-counting of COVID-19-related deaths during the pandemic. As an example, a CDC mortality report indicated that COVID-19 was the sole cause of only about 5% of listed COVID-19 deaths,” the authors of the analysis wrote.
Each death certificate contains a single underlying cause of death and up to 20 additional multiple or contributing causes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), properly classifying the death on a death certificate is important for mortality trends that inform public health risks and policy decisions.
Causes of Overreporting COVID-19 Deaths
According to the analysis, incentives for recording positive COVID-19 tests may have contributed to an overreporting bias in deaths attributed to COVID-19 compared to other diseases. Since the beginning of the pandemic, COVID-19 deaths have included those who died with COVID-19 and from COVID-19, and more recently, those who died of conditions attributed to long COVID, even if they had not tested positive for the virus in recent months or years.
The White House acknowledged early on that health officials were taking a very liberal approach to mortality regarding COVID-19.
“There are other countries that if you had a preexisting condition, and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem, some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death,” former White House coronavirus response coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx told reporters during an April 2020 press briefing.
“Right now, we’re still recording it, and the great thing about having forms that come in and a form that has the ability to mark it as ‘COVID-19 infection’ the intent is right now that if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death,” Dr. Birx said.
State health departments use the CDC’s standardized surveillance case definition and uniform criteria to define a disease for public health surveillance. They also report COVID-19 cases through the agency’s National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. At the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC’s definition of COVID-19 was “very simplistic,” and health departments recorded anyone with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis at the time of death a COVID-19 death, even if a clear alternative cause of death existed.
Likewise, medical examiners and coroners follow CDC guidelines when completing death certificates, and the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics provides standardized forms and procedures for certifying deaths, including how to determine underlying causes of death and report related causes.
CDC guidance states that in cases where a “definite diagnosis of COVID-19 cannot be made, but is suspected or likely,” it is “acceptable” to report COVID-19 on the death certificate as “probable” or “presumed” and certifiers can use their best clinical judgment in determining whether an individual likely had COVID-19. It’s this same discretion that allows long COVID to be counted as a COVID-19 death long after an individual tested positive for infection.
The CDC broadly defines long COVID as “signs, symptoms, and conditions that continue to develop after acute COVID-19 infection” that can last for “weeks, months, or years.” The term is also used to refer to post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), long-haul COVID, and post-acute COVID-19.
The CDC guidance gives a physician or medical examiner discretion to classify long COVID as a COVID-19 fatality, and the CDC death certificate guidance allows for PASC to be listed as an underlying cause of death, which may affect COVID-19 mortality numbers.
A December 2022 Vital Statistics Rapid Release Report published by the CDC identified 3,544 deaths in the National Vital Statistics System that mentioned long COVID key terms and were coded as COVID-19 deaths in the United States from Jan. 1, 2020, through June 30, 2022.
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RFK Jr. Takes Aim at Trump, Biden Over Pandemic Policies in Libertarian Convention Address
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chastised former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden for not respecting the Constitution during the COVID-19 pandemic during his speech May 24 at the Libertarian National Convention.
“There’s always a reason why, right now, the rights are an inconvenience that we can’t afford. It was the Red Scare in the 1920s. It was Joe McCarthy in the 1950s. It was civil rights protests and the Vietnam War protests in the 1960s. It was the war on drugs in the 1970s. It was the war on terror after 2001. And most recently, it was the COVID pandemic,” Mr. Kennedy said.
“Maybe a brain worm ate that part of my memory, but I don’t recall any part of the United States Constitution where there’s an exemption for pandemics,” he added.
President Trump was reluctant to impose lockdowns early in the COVID pandemic, but he relented, and “many of our most fundamental rights disappeared practically overnight,” Mr. Kennedy noted.
Mr. Kennedy continued by criticizing the former president for “allowing his health regulators to mandate social distancing, which undermined our First Amendment right to freedom of assembly.”
“With no due process, no public hearings, and no notice,” America was locked down during the pandemic by President Trump, Mr. Kennedy added.
A total of 3.3 million small businesses were closed while Wal-Marts and liquor stores remained open, he remarked.
“President Trump said he was going to run America like a business, and he came in and gave the keys of all of our businesses to a 50-year bureaucrat (Dr. Anthony Fauci) who'd never been elected to anything and had no accountability.
Since entering the 2024 presidential race as a Democrat in April 2023 and then opting to run as an independent last October, Mr. Kennedy has been outspoken about President Trump’s role in moving forward with Operation Warp Speed, a program that rushed the COVID-19 vaccine to market.
When President Biden took office, “the assault on the Constitution intensified,” Mr. Kennedy continued, citing multiple censorship cases.
During his address, Mr. Kennedy also hailed journalist Julian Assange as a hero and reiterated that he would pardon him and Edward Snowden on his first day in office.
“We shouldn’t be putting [Julian Assange] in prison; we should have a monument to him here in Washington D.C.,” Mr. Kennedy said.
President Trump is scheduled to address Libertarian National Convention attendees on May 25.
The former president has escalated verbal attacks on Mr. Kennedy in recent weeks as multiple national polls have shown the independent candidate has support from conservatives and independents. National Republicans have expressed concern that will cut into President Trump’s support on Election Day.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Thursday, May 23, 2024
HHS Proposes Formal Debarment Of EcoHealth Alliance
Written by John Leake
To my pleasant surprise, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) actually accepted the House Select Subcommittee’s recommendation to formally debar EcoHealth Alliance, Inc
As stated in the official press release:
“HHS will immediately commence official debarment proceedings and implement a government-wide suspension of U.S. taxpayer funds to EcoHealth — including a hold on all active grants.”
It seems to me that this marks a major shift in U.S. federal agency policy with respect to EcoHealth Alliance.
The decision also opens up a fraught can of worms for the HHS and the NIH (a division of HHS).
Brad Wenstrup and his Congressional Committee have acknowledged and articulated the evidence that EcoHealth and its collaborators in the US and China are responsible for creating the Covid virus.
HHS’s acknowledgement that this evidence is sufficient to warrant debarring EcoHealth Alliance implies that the U.S. government is now formally recognizing the true, manmade cause of the COVID-19 Pandemic instead of trying to sweep it under the rug.
https://principia-scientific.com/hhs-proposes-formal-debarment-of-ecohealth-alliance/
**********************************************Australia: More Than 3,600 Children ‘Targeted’ With COVID-19 Fines in NSW
Legal advocacy groups are calling for reform of the New South Wales (NSW) fines system after 3,628 children received COVID-19 fines during the pandemic in the Australian state.
A 2024 report looking into children and COVID-19 fines in NSW found that the “penalty notice regime” implemented in NSW was “unsuitable” for achieving public health outcomes for children.
However, NSW Police have defended their response amid the rapidly evolving public health orders at the time, which required compliance and enforcement to limit movement regardless of people’s age.
The report, authored by academics at the University of NSW, University of Wollongong, and University of Technology Sydney, noted more than half of the fines issued to children were fixed at $1,000 (US$665).
The Redfern Legal Centre, Public Interest Advocacy Centre, and Aboriginal Legal Service commissioned the research, which considered statistical data and interview responses from lawyers and youth workers.
Meanwhile, some of the fines were as high as $5,000, despite the authors noting the maximum fine a child can get when found guilty of an offence in the NSW Children’s Court is $1,100.
“Children were liable to the same penalty notice fine as adults for almost all PHO offences, with the exception of two general age-based offences that concerned the failure to wear a face covering,” the report said.
The report noted the public health orders were changed and repealed frantically during the pandemic, with 266 public health orders put out between March 15, 2020, and Jan. 31, 2022.
In addition, a new public health order was brought in or modified every one and a half days during the Delta wave of COVID-19.
“The frequent changes made it especially hard for children to understand the rules, and contributed to errors in police decisions that a person had breached a PHO,” the report said.
One interviewee who spoke to the report authors said there were kids working off COVID fines who “probably shouldn’t have been issued with one in the first place.”
Analysis by the authors found that children in socioeconomically disadvantaged suburbs were “over policed” during the pandemic.
Authors said more than half of the top 30 suburbs where children received the largest number of penalty notices between March 2020 and June 2022 were in the bottom 25 percent of the social economic index.
Discussing the findings, Redfern Legal Centre chief executive officer Camilla Pandolfini said children cannot pay heavy fines and the deterrent effect is low.
“Fines are oppressive, discriminatory, and ineffective when used against children. We call for changes to policy, practice, and procedure to ensure that fines do not compound existing disadvantage and criminalise children,” she said.
Police Note Serious Nature of COVID-19 Led to Rapid Orders
A spokesperson for NSW Police explained public health order compliance was required for the safety of the community. Police could respond to breaches of the orders no matter what the age.
“The virulent nature and serious illness from the Delta variant of COVID-19 resulted in rapidly evolving Public Health Orders, including Local Government Areas of Concern being nominated by NSW Health,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
“A compliance and enforcement response was required to limit movement and ensure compliance with Public Health Orders in these areas to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 and protect the community.
“Outside of these identified areas of concern, police still had the ability to respond to breaches of relevant Public Health Orders by issuing infringement notices—regardless of the age of the person involved.”
Meanwhile, report author Julia Quilter called for police to “stop issuing fines to kids” and engage in diversionary and creative problem-solving policing.
“Policing kids by issuing heavy fines during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted, in extreme form, the problems with our fines system more generally. Kids have no or little capacity to pay fines and saddling them with crippling debts only sets them up for future failure,” she said.
“This is especially troubling given that fines are disproportionately issued by police to vulnerable kids already experiencing socio-economic and other forms of disadvantage.”
The CEO of Aboriginal Legal Service Karly Warner called for a reform of the “archaic” and “unjust” fines system.
“Aboriginal communities set the gold standard for caring for one another during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet our children paid a higher price because of the government’s punitive approach to enforcing public health orders,” she stated.
Public Interest Advocacy Centre CEO Jonathon Hunyor added, “Creating massive debts for children and families simply amplifies disadvantage and builds distrust in the system.”
Police Faced Challenges During the COVID-19 Response: Inquiry
Meanwhile, the Police Federation of Australia (PFA), which represents 65,000 police officers, including more than 17,000 in NSW, have raised a number of issues in response to the federal government’s COVID-19 Response Inquiry.
In its submission (pdf), PFA noted access to appropriate personal protective equipment for a police “became an issue of concern” during COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns.
“Whilst it is accepted that in normal circumstances it would be the responsibility of the employer, in our case, the respective police forces, to provide such equipment, no provision appears to have been made for a national response to such a crisis,” the association noted.
In addition, the submission noted the pandemic impacted police resources and community attitudes towards police in a range of high profile incidents.
Meanwhile, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) noted extra law enforcement duties during COVID-19 took its toll on frontline police (pdf).
“The burden of the extra workload over the COVID-19 period was felt by the AFP, in particular the frontline officers, who were required to enforce mandated COVID-19 restrictions,” the AFP said.
“On an individual level, policing during the pandemic increased the risk of members contracting the COVID-19 virus through interactions with the public, as well as spreading the virus to family and friends.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Pfizer’s Paxlovid Reduces Risk of Post-Acute Death and Sequelae Among Hospitalised COVID-19 patients
This is a pretty good result. Anecdotally, I have heard good reports of Paxlovid
The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)’s Faculty of Medicine (CU Medicine) conducted a retrospective investigation using real-world data to examine the association of Paxlovid (also known as nirmatrelvir-ritonavir) with post-acute sequelae in hospitalised COVID-19 patients, as well as mortality.
The results showed that the risk of post-acute inpatient death (i.e. death occurring 21 days after a positive test result) in COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized and prescribed oral Paxlovid within five days after symptom onset was significantly reduced by 38% compared to those who were hospitalised and didn’t use the drug during the acute phase.
Similar effects were observed on the post-acute sequelae of cardiovascular and respiratory complications. Study results have been published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Importantly, while some compelling data is generated, this study was not a randomized controlled study and several limitations in the study suggest results should be interpreted with caution.
According to the CUHK team, a review of the literature suggested that the prevalence of post-COVID-19 conditions among individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 may range from 10% to 30%. Despite authorized use of Paxlovid for treating COVID-19 in late 2021, few investigations have evaluated the association of the drug with post-acute sequelae and mortality, especially in hospitalized patients.
The Study
The current study used the real-world COVID-19 surveillance data obtained from Hong Kong Hospital Authority and Department of Health. The research team analyzed more than 50,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients records aged 18 and over in Hong Kong between March 2022, and October 2023. Of this large group, approximately 15,000 were prescribed Paxlovid within five days of symptom onset, while those who did not take the oral drug during the acute phase were grouped as the control.
Findings
The outcomes point to the conclusion that the risk of post-acute death of hospitalized COVID-19 patients who were prescribed oral Paxlovid was 6.9%, considerably lower than the 13.5% risk of those hospitalised who did not use the drug.
This represents a 38% rate after adjusting for their demographics, clinical background, and vaccination status. Similar effects were observed on the post-acute sequelae of cardiovascular and respiratory complications.
Professor Marc Chong Ka-chun, a corresponding author of the research paper and Assistant Professor at The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care of CU Medicine, said, “Public health agencies should adequately prepare effective antivirals to manage both acute and post-acute conditions of COVID-19, particularly considering the ongoing emergence of new variants of concern of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
Professor Yeoh Eng-kiong, also a corresponding author of the research paper and Director at the Centre for Health Systems and Policy Research at CU Medicine’s The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, stated, “To our knowledge, our study is the first to highlight the extended benefits of Paxlovid in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19. This study showcases the long-term benefits of the antiviral serving as a valuable complement to COVID-19 vaccines in mitigating the global clinical burden of COVID-19 in the years ahead.”
The research team member included Ms Wang Hu-wen, a doctoral student from The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care at CU Medicine. Ms Wang was one of the awardees of the Research Grants Council’s Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme 2021/22 and is the first author of the published paper.
Limitations
Numerous limitations are cited by the authors, which means that these results should be understood with caution. TrialSite summarizes key limitations which raise concern about generalization to broader populations:
The grouping of cohorts (nirmatrelvir–ritonavir group vscontrol group) relied on prescription records, which might not guarantee actual usage and could potentially lead to misgrouping.
The Hong Kong-based investigators focused on a predefined set of 13 sequelae previously identified to have an elevated risk among hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in Hong Kong. The study focused on sequelae that are typically recorded in a standardized manner using ICD codes within the electronic health system.
Here the authors focused specifically on nirmatrelvir–ritonavir rather than assessing multiple targeted antivirals for COVID-19, particularly another widely used antiviral drug, molnupiravir.
In the study, the post-acute period as starting at 21 days after the positive PCR date, following a previous local study. The authors acknowledge that other studies might use different durations, such as 28 days for post-acute or 3 months for post-COVID-19 condition, which might affect direct comparability of results.
The participants included in this study were primarily infected with omicron sublineages BA.2 and BA.5. Although the dominant sublineages in Hong Kong became XBB after April 20, 2023, case-based surveillance of COVID-19 was discontinued from Jan 30, 2023, onwards. As a result, the proportion of patients infected with XBB was relatively small compared with BA.2 and BA.5. The authors suggest caution is advised when generalizing the current findings to other variants and sublineages.
With insufficient number of events, especially in subgroup analyses, this could introduce sparse data bias.
With data availability limitations, some unmeasured confounders, such as clinical characteristics recorded during hospitalization (e.g., dyspnoea and fever), were not included in the analysis.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Bombshell messages reveal Anthony Fauci's top advisor bragging about making emails 'disappear'
A top advisor to Anthony Fauci bragged about 'how to make emails disappear' and deleting 'smoking guns' to avoid scrutiny, lawmakers investigating the origins of COVID-19 revealed Thursday.
The shocking comments were from government health official Dr. David Morens, a senior advisor to Fauci from 1998 until 2022.
Some of Morens' emails have been obtained by congressional subpoena and were read out by House Oversight Chairman James Comer in a hearing Thursday, part of lawmakers' probe into the theory that covid came from a leak in a Chinese lab.
Morens, who works at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), wrote about deleting his communications to avoid turning them over to the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
He was writing to Peter Daszak, whose organization EcoHealth Alliance had its federal funding suspended this week for its role in contracting controversial coronavirus research to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
'I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA'd but before the search starts,' Morens wrote to Daszak. 'So I think we are all safe. Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to Gmail.'
'We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns,' Morens wrote in a later message. 'And if we did we wouldn't put them in emails. And if we found them we would delete them.'
Fauci and his advisors at NIAID came into the spotlight after it emerged the agency funded EcoHealth Alliance to conduct research including experiments that altered coronaviruses to make them more dangerous.
EcoHealth subcontracted the work to the Chinese lab in Wuhan and, according to the Department of Health and Human Services which pulled their funding on Wednesday, failed to adequately oversee it – potentially leading to an accident causing a global pandemic in 2020.
Congressman Brad Wenstrup, chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, is now concerned that Morens and Daszak may have tried to cover their tracks following the scandal by deleting federal records.
His committee released emails last year showing Morens discussed using his personal rather than government email and deleting communications to avoid scrutiny.
The top official for NIAID, a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), wrote in an email to Daszak in 2021 that he communicates on Gmail 'because my NIH email is FOIA'd constantly.'
'Just send to any of my addresses and I will delete anything I don't want to see in the New York Times,' Morens wrote, according to lawmakers.
Wenstrup has now issued two subpoenas to Morens: one for all his gmail correspondence about the origins of COVID-19, and another forcing him to testify to the committee on May 22.
DailyMail.com understands that Morens turned over about 30,000 emails to the committee on April 30.
Congressman Brad Wenstrup has now issued two subpoenas to Morens: one for all his gmail correspondence about the origins of COVID-19, and another forcing him to testify to the committee on May 22
Two shocking emails were revealed in a Thursday committee hearing where former NIH acting director Lawrence Tabak was testifying.
After reading out Morens' messages about deleting communications, Comer asked Tabak: 'Is that consistent with NIH document retention policies?'
'It is not,' he replied.
Nonprofit health research group US Right to Know has been fighting NIH in court to release officials' emails about the origins of COVID-19.
'During the last 31 years of public interest work, I have never seen a federal agency stonewall public records requests as much as NIH,' Right to Know executive director Gary Ruskin told DailyMail.com.
He said NIH is a key culprit in the US government of trying to 'hide or bury key information about COVID origins'.
'NIH's conduct has been abysmal and reprehensible. And now the Select Subcommittee is just starting to get to the bottom of how this stonewalling really happened,' he added.
'[Morens] was forced to turn over thousands of emails to the Select Subcommittee. He will soon testify about his deleting of emails and his use of a Gmail account to do official business.
'Once that testimony is complete, Congress and the public will have a better sense of what consequences are appropriate for his offenses against our democracy.'
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Increased Reports of Rare Autoimmune Disease, COVID-19 and Its Vaccine Contributed: Study
Cases of a rare autoimmune disease surged between 2020 and 2022 in Yorkshire, England, peaking in 2021. COVID-19 infection and its vaccines possibly contributed to the rise, a recent study in The Lancet’s eBioMedicine found.
The disease—melanoma differentiation-associated protein-5 (anti-MDA5) positive dermatomyositis, or anti-MDA5 dermatomyositis—is an inflammatory disease characterized by muscle weakness, skin rashes, and rapidly progressive lung disease.
Anti-MDA5 dermatomyositis is very rare.
In 2019, Yorkshire, which has a population of 3.6 million, reported two people testing positive for the disease. In 2020, there were eight. Cases peaked in 2021 with 35 new cases. The number then dropped to 16 new cases in 2022.
The new autoimmune cases may have arisen from the COVID-19 virus and vaccine RNA interactions, the study’s senior author, Dr. Dennis McGonagle, clinical professor of medicine at the University of Leeds, told The Epoch Times.
Besides the Lancet study, several case studies have documented new anti-MDA5 cases following COVID-19 infection or vaccination.
Dermatomyositis tends to affect the skin, muscles, and lungs. Anti-MDA5 dermatomyositis involves rapidly progressive lung disease, which lends the condition a poor prognosis.
MDA5 is a protein present outside of muscles and tissues, especially prominent in the lungs. Therefore, when the body forms anti-MDA5 antibodies to attack MDA5, it can deteriorate related organs and tissues.
MDA5 can detect and bind to foreign RNA, including COVID-19 RNA. Upon detection, it signals other immune cells to fight the foreign invader or vaccination.
“We think that ... [this happens] because MDA5 is the receptor or docking site for viral RNA, and that this in some way triggers the antibody against it,” Dr. McGonagle said.
In a COVID-19 infection, MDA5’s binding to RNA can result in too much MDA5 activity as a response, Dr. Pradipta Ghosh, director of the Institute for Network Medicine at the University of California–San Diego and another corresponding author of the study, told The Epoch Times.
COVID-19 patients were shown to have high MDA5 gene activity in their lung fluids, further suggesting that the virus might have triggered new MDA5 cases.
Apart from anti-MDA5, 15 other autoantibodies can contribute to similar dermatomyositis diseases. The role of MDA5 in COVID-19 infection and vaccination may explain why, during the pandemic, only anti-MDA5 dermatomyositis cases increased while other autoantibodies involved in dermatomyositis did not.
Between 2020 and 2022, all 60 new anti-MDA5 dermatomyositis patients in Yorkshire were evaluated. All developed symptoms.
Over 40 percent developed interstitial lung disease and had a worse prognosis. Half died by the time the study was published.
The authors noted that anti-MDA5 cases during the pandemic presented slightly differently than pre-pandemic cases.
Compared to pre-pandemic, anti-MDA5 cases reported during the pandemic had a lower rate of lung disease and a lower death rate, said Dr. Ghosh. The disease also affected white people as opposed to Asians, who were the more predominant demographic previously.
Pandemic-era patients tend to report skin-related conditions such as rashes, decreased blood flow to fingers, muscle aches, and so on.
Coincidental Rise
The peak of anti-MDA5 cases between April and July 2021 coincided closely with Yorkshire’s uptake of COVID-19 vaccines and occurred during a time of “higher community SARS-CoV-2 positivity during 2021,” the authors reported. Vaccinations started in Yorkshire in January 2021 and dropped off in October.
Around 90 percent of the Yorkshire population was vaccinated, and 49 of the 60 cases had documented COVID-19 vaccination.
Contrastingly, only 15 out of 60 had had a confirmed COVID-19 infection.
While many people tested positive for COVID-19 at the time, the authors noted that anti-MDA5 cases did not rise immediately after a rise in COVID-19 cases.
Other Reports
In addition to the reports in Yorkshire, other studies have shown a link between anti-MDA5 dermatomyositis and COVID-19 and its vaccine.
An Italian case study published in Frontiers in Immunology reported the case of an older, unvaccinated woman who developed anti-MDA5 dermatomyositis a month after her COVID-19 infection. She had joint pain and developed rashes and lesions on her chest, face, and hands.
The authors argued that MDA5, which is involved in the activation of various cytokines, may precipitate inflammatory reactions when exposed to SARS-CoV-2.
Another paper published in SN Comprehensive Clinical Medicine reported an anti-MDA5 dermatomyositis case that occurred a week after COVID-19 vaccination. The researchers hypothesized that antibodies to spike proteins on the SARS-CoV-2 virus may cross-react with human proteins like MDA5.
However, Dr. Ghosh said that while spike protein has been implicated in other autoimmune diseases, anti-MDA5 disease is caused by antibodies against MDA5, not spike.
“I believe that we have a lot of work to do before we can begin to understand why or how our body responds to this virus, its particles, its RNA/protein—even the RNA encoding its key components we use as vaccine in the plethora of ways that it does,” she explaine
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Wow! Google are getting very sharp in censoring my blog posts
They normally wait a week or more before deleting my posts but they have now deleted what I posted yesterday. The post was one I downloaded from Trialsite -- a VERY academic site. It was one that explored very fully the issues involved in prosecuting doctors over their prescribing Ivermectin.
Ivermectin must be a red-hot topic at the moment. I can guess why. The source for the deleted post is as under:
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Sunday, May 19, 2024
AstraZeneca Covid vaccine victim: Athletic marathon-running father, 50, left disabled, unable to work and struggling to breathe after suffering ultra-rare complication from the jab
He must have had some underlying condition. I had two shots of Astra-Zeneca and they might as well have injected me with saline for all the reaction I had
A taxi driver has been left unable to drive or even walk more than 20 metres after getting the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine.
Self-employed Adrian Walker, from Grantham, Lincolnshire, had the jab in February 2021 to 'protect others', including vulnerable children he helped take to school.
But just two weeks later the previously healthy marathon runner was fighting for his life, admitted to hospital with multiple blood clots in his lungs and bowel.
The ordeal left him struggling with short-term memory, breathlessness and fatigue.
Mr Walker was diagnosed with vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT) in late March 2021, with medics confirming it was a result of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Three years on from getting the jab, he told MailOnline how VITT had laid him low despite his good health.
'I was an extremely healthy and fit 47-year-old, a non-smoker who rarely drank, a sub four-hour marathon runner and a former semi-professional football referee,' he said.
Mr Walker claimed his life 'has flipped on its head' and he is no longer able to drive or run.
Like many others who signed up for the historic Covid jab rollout, Mr Walker, a grandfather, said he was motived to do so for altruistic reasons.
He explained that during the pandemic he often ferried vulnerable children back and forth to school, some of whom were disabled and at a high risk of the virus if they were to be infected.
'I was never worried about catching Covid myself as I was fit and healthy. It was more to protect others,' he said.
Soon after getting jabbed, Mr Walker began to feel unwell. However, he brushed it off, assuming they were the flu-like symptoms he had been warned of as a potential vaccine side effect.
Even when he started to feel worse, he wasn't that concerned, theorising that because it was February he might have caught a cold, or a feeling of lightheaded-ness was due to not having had his dinner.
But 10 days after getting the vaccine, he recalled 'feeling really rough' and even called in sick to work, something Mr Walker had rarely done.
He even decided to get a Covid test, but it came back negative.
However, the seriousness of his condition became apparent when he started experiencing chest pains and was told to go to hospital. He packed an overnight bag and was given steroids and blood tests.
Mr Walker's blood tests came back with worrying results. His platelet levels were just seven, vastly below the normal range for person of between 150,000 to 350,000 per microliter of blood.
Platelets typically help the blood to clot. Other blood tests conducted on Mr Walker were also extremely worrying.
His D-dimer levels, a test doctors use to check for blood clots, was 56,000 — drastically above the 500 score considered normal.
Mr Walker was then taken via an ambulance to another hospital. He would remain there for over a month.
Scans revealed he had multiple clots in his lungs and in the portal vein from his bowel.
So dire was his condition that a week after Mr Walker's was admitted to hospital his wife CJ, 47, was called in and told to prepare for his death.
Mr Walker said that, at the time, he had no idea how serious his condition was.
'I knew I was really ill, but with how fit and healthy I normally am, I wasn't concerned as such,' he said.
'To be honest to a degree I probably never really knew what was going on. Although I was always conscious I probably wasn't coherent all the time.
'My wife would tell me that I would ring her up and tell her something and call her again five minutes later and I could not recall having a conversation with them five minutes previously.'
VITT is thought to be linked to at least 81 deaths in the UK, according to figures collated by UK drug watchdog, the MHRA.
The complication – now listed as a potential side-effect of the jab – causes blood clots along with a low platelet count.
It is exceedingly rare, given the millions of doses dished out during the roll-out. The risk is thought to be in the region of one in 50,000, with the risk dying from it lower.
But at the time Mr Walker's was jabbed no one had yet linked the AstraZeneca vaccine to VITT, also called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS).
The connection would only be made after a series of cases in Europe in March, around the time Mr Walker was hospitalised.
UK regulators would only start restricting the use of the jab in April that year.
Mr Walker recalls mentioning feeling unwell after the AstraZeneca jab to the medics treating him, but at the time he didn't think much of it.
'I remember saying to the consultant that I hadn't been well since I had the vaccine. I wasn't saying it was that, but I thought it was strange,' Mr Walker said.
Mr Walker said VITT had affected both his everyday life and his ability to work since 2021.
'I struggle to walk 20 metres, I am constantly short of breath, I suffer with really bad short term memory loss and I am not allowed to drive because of the fatigue,' he said.
He added another impact had been on his personal life and ability to spend time with his loved ones.
'I've not been able to work, I can't be the father, the husband or the grandfather I wanted to be,' he said.
'I can't play football with my grandson, he loves to go to junior park run, I can't go running with him.
'It just feels like life has just literally flipped on its head and you know. I depended on my wife, I could not live independently.
'I dream of just being able to walk to a pup, go in the pub, have a pint, stand at the bar and walk home just something that everybody takes for granted.'
While medics were suspicious his illness was caused by the vaccine, it wasn't until researchers linked the AstraZeneca vaccine and rare cases of blood clotting with a low platelet count.
Four weeks after he was admitted to hospital he got the diagnosis in writing, in late March 2021.
'I left hospital on April 4, so I'd been in there for 34 days, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I got wheeled out of those doors and my wife met me at the door of a car. I was still very ill then,' Mr Walker recalled.
But even though he had been injured as a result of the vaccine, he was still unaware of the Government's little-known vaccine damage payment scheme.
He only learnt about it until 'by chance' when another person who was injured from the vaccine told him about the scheme on social media.
But even then, he had to wait almost two years to receive the £120,000 pay-out, which he now calls 'not fit for purpose'.
'I applied to the government's vaccine damage scheme and was eventually paid in April 2023, some 21 months after I applied,' Mr Walker said.
The Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, originally set up in the 70s, offers those who have been injured, or their families in cases of death, a £120,000 tax-free sum.
This policy covers an array of vaccines recommended by the Government, such as the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, and was extended to include Covid jabs during the pandemic.
In principle, the scheme is meant to reassure people that, in the unlikely event something goes wrong due to a vaccine they get, the state will provide them support and encourage people to get vaccinated in interests of public health.
But Mr Walker said he doesn't think the scheme is 'fit for purpose', given it took two years for him to receive any money.
During that time, he was forced to live off savings, a fact he said compounded the stress he was under during his recovery.
'The stress of it all on top of when you are ill, when you are struggling to live day to day as it is, to then have that heaped on top was horrible,' he said.
He added: 'I've got a friend who, who suffered a broken hip and leg in a in a car accident and in much less time his case and compensation was settled and now he's fully recovered.'
Freedom of information (FOI) requests to NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA), the body managing the UK's Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, show £3.7m was paid out to 31 Brits injured or bereaved from AstraZeneca's Covid jab between November 2021 and April 2023.
When Mr Walker received his money in April 2023, 4,178 similar claims had been made to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme but only 63 claimants had been notified they were entitled to any money.
Now, one year on another FOI shows the scheme has received more than 11,000 Covid vaccine claims as of April 2.
Of these, 168 claims for state-funded financial support have now been approved.
Fewer than five were for fellow Covid jab makers Pfizer and Moderna, the remaining claims are all for AstraZeneca.
Successful claims to the scheme not only cover those affected by VITT but also other jab-related side effects such as the nerve condition Guillain-Barre syndrome, anaphylaxis or other blood clot reactions.
Time to resolution isn't the only criticism of the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme.
Those injured by a vaccine have either be killed or be at least 60 per cent disabled by their injury, as assessed by a medic, to get any money.
Data shows more than 4,800 claims have been rejected by the scheme, including 324 because they failed to meet this 60 per cent threshold.
'Although the claims met the criteria for causation, the independent medical assessor recommended that the vaccine has not caused severe disablement,' the NHSBSA said.
In practice the scheme's rule means people who are assessed as only 59 per cent disabled by a jab don't get a penny, a policy described as cruel by its critics.
Mr Walker argues it shows the scheme is vastly out of date and needs an overhaul.
To make it fairer, he believes there should be a tiered system to help the people who are cut off from getting any compensation.
Another criticism of the current scheme the maximum £120,000 cap.
This means, for example, someone who is completely paralysed by a vaccine would receive the same £120,000 as someone who had lost a leg.
Many alleged victims of the AstraZeneca jab, facing financial ruin from ongoing care costs and being unable to work, have turned to other means for compensation.
Fifty-one families, including Mr Walker, are currently pursuing legal action against AstraZeneca arguing its 'defective' jab was to blame for their injuries and deaths of loved ones.
Some of these people have already received a payment from Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme.
Others are in the process of applying for a payment. Some have been told they are ineligible.
Should the action prove successful, compensation could reach seven-figure sums.
AstraZeneca, however, will not foot the bill.
Under a legal indemnity that the Government gave the company early in the pandemic — given the need to roll out the vaccine fast — the UK taxpayer will have to pay any compensation awarded.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Thursday, May 16, 2024
National University Singapore Scientists Develop mRNA-based Mucosal Nasal Vaccine
Scientist, academic researcher and entrepreneur Ayça Altay Benetti, Ph.D., of National University of Singapore (NUS) along with Kevin P. White and Giorgia Pastorin—both professors also at NUS and colleagues present design and characterization attributes of a novel formulation for delivery of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine targeting the nasal mucosal pathway. They are exploring alternative substances to use as a vehicle to not only efficiently deliver mRNA payloads to the nasal mucosa, but also with the ability to promote uptake by target cells such as epithelial and immune cells.
Identifying chitosan, a natural polysaccharide derived from chitin for this purpose—given its biocompatibility, biodegradability and mucoadhesive characteristics, the Singapore-based team reports on formulations achieving a mRNA encapsulation efficiency of ~80.2% with chitosan-lipid nanoparticles, as measured by the RiboGreen assay.
Reporting on transfection levels in select human cells as part of the evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 Spike (S) receptor-binding domain (RBD) expression via ELISA for the group’s vaccine formulations, the most promising vaccine formulation was also responsive to lyophilization (freeze drying or cryodesiccation)with minimal degradation of loaded mRNA, demonstrating a pathway towards a more accessible and stable vaccine.
Studying the highly experimental vaccine in in vivo mice studies, the team evaluated the systemic and local immune responses. The authors report that a nasal bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) wash evidenced sufficient levels of antibody concentrations less any problematic systemic antibody response. The academic center scientists in Singapore suggest they have developed a potential candidate for clinical development and commercialization.
Why Researchers Look into Nasal Mucosal Vaccines against COVID-19?
Nasal mucosal vaccines targeting COVID-19 are desirable for several reasons.
First, they can potentially enhance immune response at the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen entry point. COVID-19 primarily enters the body via the respiratory tract. Nasal vaccines can induce strong mucosal immune response in nasal passages and upper respiratory tract, and this happens to be the initial site of the infection.
The premise here is that such localized immunity can potentially prevent the virus from establishing an infection, thereby providing an effective first line of defense. Furthermore, this class of vaccine can potentially reduce aid reduction in transmission, meaning that when nasal mucosal vaccines generate immunity directly in the respiratory mucosa, nasal vaccines possibly can reduce viral shedding and transmission. Put another way, if SARS-CoV-2 is neutralized in the nasal passages, it is less likely to be spread to others through respiratory droplets.
Also, this vaccine method could be administered without needles, meaning it’s easier to administer. This results in a more user-friendly form of vaccine, reducing any discomfort and anxiety associated with injections. But there is more. A nasal mucosal vaccine may stimulate broader immune response, including the production of IgA antibodies, which play a key role in mucosal immunity. This can complement the systemic immunity (IgG antibodies generated by traditional intramuscular vaccines, potentially offering more comprehensive protection.
Other potential benefits of a nasal type of vaccine targeting COVID-19 include the potential for rapid deployment, improved acceptance (given its non-invasive delivery) and cross-protection against variants. On this latter point, preliminary research suggests that mucosal immunity might offer better cross-protection against various variants of the virus. Why? Well, since the nasal passages are the primary entry point for respiratory viruses, a robust mucosal immune response could help in neutralizing diverse viral strains before they cause systemic infection.
The Singapore-based team points out in their paper published in MDPI’s Vaccines, that a chitosan-based formulation represents a good possibility for an mRNA nasal vaccine. With a mucoadhesive nature and ability to transiently open tight junctions between epithelial cells, chitosan facilitates the transport of macromolecules across the nasal mucosa. In their paper, the authors note, “One of the few natural polymers with a positive charge at a slightly acidic pH, chitosan is expected to prolong the local delivery of actives at the mucosa through electrostatic interactions with negatively charged mucin.”
Based on some evidence, the authors suggest this could enable the efficient delivery of mRNA to target cells within the nasal epithelium, ultimately offering opportunity to develop COVID-19 vaccines through the intranasal route.
The authors point to the promise of using the unique mucoadhesive properties of chitosan, potentially in combination with the delivery capabilities of LNPs or liposomal vehicles. This could lead to new avenues for the development of mRNA-based nasal therapeutics. And establish in the future ways to treat COVID-19 via local immunization, along with other benefits including improved bioavailability, reduced systemic degradation, and enhanced uptake by target cells within the nasal mucosa.
But can mucosal formulations overcome some of the current limitations or challenges associated with the current COVID-19 vaccines?
Threats to cargo (mRNA) stability mainly include RNAse enzymes, which easily degrade mRNA (which is hydrolyzed at pH > 6). Even through the existing COVID-19 vaccines use LNPs to encapsulate the nucleic acid therapeutic, regardless instability still occurs in the LNP system when cationic lipids lower the pKa of ribose 2′ hydroxyl group in mRNA, which can increase RNA hydrolysis.
Need for ultra cold chain
mRNA vaccines need to be stored at far lower temperatures. If compromised by external factors resulting from storage conditions, these dosage forms will cause the premature release and degradation of the mRNA by RNase
So, to improve mRNA formulation stability requires one of two directions: either modify the mRNA itself (the cargo) or improve the drug delivery system. The study team assumes that the current methodology is safe and effective, not concerned with a growing, yet not frequently cited literature expressing concern around stability and there are safety issues linked to the instructions to produce the spike protein, although the majority medical research establishment has yet to acknowledge or accept such concerns.
The Study Background
In this study, the team evaluated the stability and efficacy of liposomal formulations, in the presence or absence of chitosan or PEG lipids loaded with linear or circular mRNA. By comparing circular RNA (cRNA) to traditional linear poly-adenylated RNA, the team studied whether the cRNA could display greater stability due to its resistance to exonucleases.
Importantly, what they refer to as optimized formulations in the investigation depend on “self-assembling systems” involving lipids complexed with mRNA, an adjustable process allowing differing ratios of cationic lipid to cholesterol or the ratios of lipid to cholesterol to PEG lipid to chitosan.
Discussion
Achieving an mRNA encapsulation efficiency of ~80.2% using chitosan-lipid nanoparticles, the team employed use of RiboGreen assay for measuring results.
Using ELISA to evaluate the team’s vaccine formulations and corresponding spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) expression, the team reports transfection levels “in human embryonic kidney cells (HEK 293), lung carcinoma cells (A549), and dendritic cells (DC 2.4) equal to 9.9 ± 0.1 ng/mL (174.7 ± 1.1 fold change from untreated cells (UT)), 7.0 ± 0.2 ng/mL (128.1 ± 4.9 fold change from UT), and 0.9 ± 0.0 ng/mL (18.0 ± 0.1 fold change from UT), respectively.”
With their top investigational vaccine prospect amenable to lyophilization with minimal degradation of loaded mRNA, the Singapore-based team expresses enthusiasm for the prospect of a more accessible and stable vaccine.
Summarizing at least initial in vivo studies in mice with a nasal bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) wash highlighting an optimized formulation, which led to local antibody concentrations less any systemic antibody response.
They suggest, “If further improved and developed, it could potentially contribute to the management of COVID-19 through nasopharyngeal immunization strategies.”
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Ear nose and throat illness was slightly elevated among Covid vaccine users
Do COVID-19 vaccines lead to otolaryngology-based adverse events, and ultimately injuries? A medical specialty which is focused on the ears, nose, and throat as well as otolaryngology-head and neck surgeries, these specialists are trained in both medicine and surgery. An otolaryngologist is often called an ear, nose, and throat doctor, or an ENT for short, and recently, specialists from the Tri-State Area published a report on “Otolaryngologic side Effects After COVID-19 Vaccination.” Led by Christina Fang, M.D., Department of Otorhinolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, New York, the team designed a r1etrospective analysis of national registry the team investigated the frequency of otolaryngologic adverse events (AEs) after COVID-19 vaccination as compared to other vaccines in a national database.
Tapping into the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database from December 2020 to May 2021, for all COVID-19 vaccination AEs, the team represented by Dr. Fang and colleagues categorized complaints as otolaryngologic and sub stratified into different anatomic components. The study authors determine reporting odds ratios (ROR) and proportional reporting ratios (PRR) were determined for AEs of clinical significance.
While the investigators identified numerous otolaryngologic symptoms, few were found to be clinically significant. Fang and team report facial paralysis, Bell's palsy, and anaphylaxis did not meet signal thresholds to be determined significant. However, signal ratios were detected for a range of issues including dysgeusia, ageusia Tinnitus and Vertigo.
The recent outcomes were reported in the journal The Laryngoscope.
Findings
The authors reported 1,280,950 AEs from vaccination potentially linked to Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Janssen. 4.9% of the total or 62,660 fell in the otolaryngologic category.
32.6% of the incidents were associated with oropharynx/larynx, 18.3% with the nasal cavity/sinuses, 17.1% with the ears/vestibular system, 10.0% with the oral cavity, and 21.9% miscellaneous.
According to Fang and colleagues, “Signal ratios reached significance levels for dysgeusia (n = 2124, PRR: 17.33, ROR: 16.36), ageusia (n = 1376, PRR: 2.81, ROR: 2.81), anosmia (n = 983, PRR: 4.01, ROR: 4.01), rhinorrhea (n = 2203, PRR: 2.99, ROR: 3.00), throat tightness (n = 3666, PRR: 4.99, ROR: 5.00), throat irritation (n = 3313, PRR: 4.51, ROR: 4.52), dysphagia (n = 2538, PRR: 2.07, ROR: 2.07), tinnitus (n = 4377, PRR: 3.97, ROR: 3.98), and vertigo (n = 2887, PRR: 3.93, ROR: 3.93).”
However, no significant signal ratios were identified for facial paralysis, Bell's palsy, anaphylaxis, sinusitis, hearing disability, and ear pain.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Thousands of Children Prescribed Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine for COVID: Study
Doctors prescribed ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine more than 4,400 times to children with COVID-19 during periods of time when the drugs were not recommended against the illness by authorities, according to a new study.
Doctors issued 813 prescriptions of hydroxychloroquine to minors with COVID-19 after the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society on Sept. 12, 2020, advised against using hydroxychloroquine outside of a clinical trial, researchers found. The recommendation came after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoked emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19.
Another 3,602 prescriptions of ivermectin for children with COVID-19 were issued after Feb. 5, 2021, when the Infectious Diseases Society of America released guidelines advising not to use ivermectin outside of a trial. The FDA later in 2021 urged people not to take ivermectin against COVID-19, although it has since been forced to rescind those warnings.
Dr. Julianne Burns, a clinical assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, and other researchers examined records from Komodo Healthcare Map, a health care claims database that Komodo Health says covers 330 million patients. They looked for children who had acute COVID-19 from March 7, 2020, to Dec. 31, 2022.
After excluding some children, including those who did not have continuous insurance coverage for at least one year prior to diagnosis, the researchers found approximately 4,480 prescriptions of “nonrecommended medications.”
All but a few dozen of the prescriptions were for ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
Both drugs are approved by the FDA, but not against COVID-19. Some agencies, groups, and doctors say the drugs should not be used against the illness, pointing in part to clinical trials that have found little or no evidence that they’re effective. Other organizations and doctors, though, say the drugs work against COVID-19, citing their own experience and other trials that found the drugs were beneficial. Off-label prescriptions are common in the United States.
Dr. Burns and the other researchers who conducted the new study, which was published by the American Academy of Pediatrics’ journal, said their findings showed “children were prescribed ineffective and potentially harmful medications for acute COVID-19 despite national clinical guidelines.”
The only data on effectiveness or lack thereof they cited was the FDA’s authorization revocation for hydroxychloroquine and the guidance from the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and Infectious Diseases Society of America. As for their safety description, they pointed to a federal advisory that found a 24-fold increase in ivermectin prescriptions and a five-fold increase during the same time of ivermectin-related calls to poison control centers.
Dr. Robert Apter, who was not involved in the study, highlighted how the study referred to potential issues but cited no evidence of actual issues from usage of the drugs against COVID-19.
“The fact that there was a report of increased calls to poison control centers about ivermectin doesn’t mean a thing. When something gets in the news and people are curious about it, they may call the poison control center,” Dr. Apter told The Epoch Times.
He said that the drugs “have a long history of safe use in children.”
Dr. Apter has prescribed treatments for thousands of COVID-19 patients and was one of the doctors who sued the FDA over its anti-ivermectin statements. He said he’s prescribed ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for several teenagers who became so sick that their families became concerned. Those children improved quickly and there were no side effects, according to the doctor.
Dr. Burns did not respond to a request for comment.
The researchers said limitations to their study stemmed from their reliance on health care records, which can’t account for COVID-19 infections that were not reported to a health care provider and might contain mislabeled codes. Funding came from the Stanford Maternal and Child Health Research Institute. No conflicts of interest were listed.
A previous study, examining claims data from Dec. 1, 2020, through March 31, 2021, identified 128 prescriptions of ivermectin for children for non-parasitic infections, with researchers assuming the prescriptions were for COVID-19. That paper drew from IQVIA’s health claims database. The researchers also examined data from patients with Medicare Advantage insurance and found some ivermectin prescriptions, though none for children.
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UPenn Led Researchers Find Political Bias in Who Reports COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events
True, the COVID-19 pandemic became ultra-politicized but was this something that manifested in the reporting of injuries linked to the COVID-19 vaccines? Researchers affiliated with University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis sought to investigate.
Designing a cross-sectional study involving 620,456 adverse event reports, David A. Asch, M.D., MBA, Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, and the John Morgan Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine and at The Wharton School, and colleagues at UPenn uncovered aw10% increase in state Republican voting was associated with a 5% increase in the odds that a COVID-19 vaccine adverse events would be reported, a 25% increase in the odds that a severe adverse event would be reported, and a 21% increase in the odds that any reported adverse event would be severe.
Interesting Data Points
With 620,456 adverse events (435,797 from women [70.2%]; mean [SD] age, 51.8 [17.7] years) linked to COVID-19 vaccination, the UPenn-based team found a 10% increase in state-level Republican voting associated with increased odds of adverse event reports (odds ratio [OR], 1.05; 95% CI, 1.05-1.05; P < .001). Looking at severe adverse event reports (OR, 1.25; 95% CI, 1.24-1.26; P < .001), plus the proportion of such adverse events reported as severe (OR, 1.21; 95% CI, 1.20-1.22; P < .001) such positive associations between political inclination and reports of COVID-19 vaccination adverse events are revealed in the table above against no associations between political inclination and reports of influenza AEs.
The authors also report the same pattern across all age strata in stratified analyses and in analyses less the District of Columbia, all sustained in the previously cited sensitivity analysis.
Summary
Does the association between observation and belief run both ways? Does the saying “seeing is believing” recognize that humanity’s individual experiences inform our sense of truth? Does “believing is seeing” recognize that human preconceptions control what we experience in the first place? Asch and his colleagues write, “In finding that Republican-inclined states show higher COVID-19 adverse event reporting than Democrat-inclined states, this study suggests that Republicans are more likely to perceive or report those adverse events and that Democrats are less likely to.”
Limitations
While vaccine reporting and political voting happen at an individual level, they are measured at the level of states, and the authors ponder the likelihood of their assumptions as not high.
Yet what’s interesting is that clearly, highly intelligent authors don’t educate the reader on the true limitations of a study such as this one. For example, such cross-sectional studies are unable to establish causality. While this class of study can certainly provide a snapshot of a population as a specific point in time, establishing cause-and-effect relationships between variables is very difficult.
Moreover, such studies are generally fixed in time, meaning they cannot capture changes in variables over time—in this latter case, longitudinal data is superior. What about any bias in sample selection? And then there is the reality that such studies can provide prevalence data but lack the ability to determine incidence. And there is the potential for confounding variables, and other limitations.
Despite these limitations, cross-sectional studies can help generate hypotheses, estimating prevalence, identifying associations between variables, and providing a snapshot of a population's characteristics at a specific point in time.
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Australia: Three years on from Covid lockdown protests Judge Liz Gaynor of the County Court slams police for responding with 'unjustified violence'
In a shock decision, a judge has ruled that Victoria Police used 'unlawful' and 'unjustified violence' on anti-lockdown protesters during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Judge Liz Gaynor of the County Court ruled the police were the 'aggressors' at a protest in Melbourne on May 29, 2021 which left a man with a dislocated arm.
Victoria had some of the world's strictest lockdown conditions at the time, including that people could only move within a 5kilometre area of their home for shopping or exercise, and the banning of public and private gatherings.
The May 29 gathering at Flagstaff Gardens saw police officers vastly outnumbering the 150 protesters who turned up, more than a dozen of whom were arrested for offences such as assault and breaching the chief health officer's directions.
Jason Reeves, Nicholas Patterson and Adam Roob were each thrown to the ground and arrested at the protest after being asked to leave, the Herald Sun reported.
Judge Gaynor said the men's arrests were unlawful and that they had done nothing to warrant the violent response captured on the police's body-worn cameras.
Mr Reeves was punched in the face by police and thrown to the ground, which the judge said was an 'immediate and violent' response.
Mr Patterson and Mr Roob said they tried to defend Mr Reeves and in doing so were pepper sprayed and thrown to the ground, with Mr Paterson's arm dislocated in the scuffle.
Mr Roob and Mr Patterson were in court for charges such as common law assault and assaulting an emergency worker on duty.
But the judge ruled that the police evidence was inadmissible because 'by their unlawful violence police instigated the response by the accused which underlies the charges they now face'.
Judge Gaynor said the police had several options to deal with the pair, such as issuing infringement notices or telling them they breaching restrictions and were to be placed under arrest.
'However, the police chose not to respond that way. I am satisfied that in arresting Mr Reeves, police used unnecessary and unwarranted force and violence.'
She said video of the group in the 30 minutes before the arrest did not indicate they would be violent and that she was 'satisfied that (police) were the aggressors in the situation and that they employed unjustified violence on Mr Reeves'.
The judge said the police did not speak to him and tell him he was under arrest or why he was arrested, but instead 'confronted, pushed, and attacked him before bringing him to the ground'.
She also found that Mr Paterson and Mr Roob 'were met with physical intervention'.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Technofascist Acts Against Health Freedom
I am not quite sure what to make of the article below by Maryam Henein. She seems to be an "alternative" person rather than a person with a science background but there is no doubt that censorship of Covid matters has been extreme. I am the most mainstream scientist you would meet. I even talk about such things as "an experiment-wise error-rate approach to significance testing". Yet Google have censored even me on occasions. So the advocacy of free speech by Maryam Henein is welcome.
How many of us in this Post-Truth world have been silenced? It hurts a bit more when your profession is to be a messenger, report, and alert.
I have been banned for life from PayPal, Amazon, Venmo, and Vimeo. I was scrubbed off Kiva and GoFundMe. My COVID-19 Vaccine Detox Guide to help injured people was removed from SmashWords and my entire profile.
Google buried my company, HoneyColony.com, and our Facebook ads were temporarily shut down while our data was wiped out. Chase debanked me. Media Matters and NBC Peacock smeared me in a horrendous series like Shadowland, where they assured me they’d feature my story but only discovered my person. You can watch my reaction to the series here.
In truth, I can write a whole series about technofascist acts in the health and wellness space.
In 2018, Care2, a site that “connects people with causes,” closed down its “Healthy Living and Causes” sections. They claimed this was to ‘sharpen its focus on advocacy work and nonprofit partners.” They could have archived the stories but deleted THOUSANDS of informative articles about alternative health instead. Poof. Gone. Vaporized.
While putting together my presentation for Anarchapulco Reborn X 2024, titled Health Censorship In An Age of Technofascism & How To Navigate for Truth, it occurred to me that they knew the Rona Regime was coming, and they scrubbed the articles because they did NOT want those locked down at home to educate themselves.
“I know it’s super frustrating to see content that you’ve written disappear,” one of their old editors wrote. Super frustrating? I’d never had my content deleted. Now five years later, i am a seasoned censored pro.
As Mercola wrote:
“It’s a frightening future. Big Tech has joined the movement, bringing in a global concentration of wealth to eliminate competition and critical voices—voices that bring awareness . . . .as our rights, freedoms, and competition erode into a fascist sunset, all disguised as a means to protect you from ‘misinformation.’”
Chet Bowers, who first used the word ‘technofascist’ asks:
“Will enough of the public recognize the dangers that lie ahead, and will they be able to articulate the importance of what is being lost, including how what is being lost undermines the diversity of common cultural experiences that are more ecologically sustainable?
The most critical question is whether there will be resistance to how everyday lives are being increasingly monitored, motivated to pursue the increasingly narrow economic agenda of the emerging techno-fascist culture and stripped of historical values and identity?”
In “1984,” the torture is too much. Winston, the main character, betrays his lover, Julia, in exchange for his own life. She does the same.
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing,” Orwell writes.
In 2019, I asked If we would stand up for rights for health, freedom, and sovereignty. Or sit back and play with our phones while we lose our rights and are forcefully stuck with needles?
Unfortunately, we know the answer by now. Maybe next time, it will be different???
“Anytime you are truly free, there is a cost to pay,” Dr. Cornel West told Joe Rogan.
I agree, but the alternative is ghastly. I don’t believe we have to be slaves to Big Brother. Speak out and share. Tend to your gut and your brain with micronutrients and access the cleanest food. De-Google your life and use other search engines like QWANT.
As Orwell says, “Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.”
https://principia-scientific.com/part-3-terrifying-technofascist-acts-against-health-freedom/
****************************************************The Tide Turns: Research on COVID Vaccine Harms, Once a Taboo Subject, Now Appearing in Some Medical Journals
By Joe Wang
When COVID-19 took the world by storm in early 2020, I mostly relied on reading Nature Medicine, The Lancet, and a few other medical journals to learn the latest on this new disease.
In March 2020, I read an article published in Nature Medicine titled “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” with great interest. Written by California-based Scripps Institute’s Kristian Andersen and four other well-known professors, it said SARS-CoV-2 binds to human cells much better than any computer programs predicted, and concluded that “SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation.”
Having been a scientist with the world’s largest vaccine company for more than 10 years, I took issue with this claim.
In a May 2022 commentary titled “Pandemic Lessons Learned: Scientific Debate Silenced, With Deadly Consequences” I wrote: “If SARS-CoV-2 infects people better than your computer predicts, then the only conclusion you can draw is that your computer sucks. How did these world-renowned scientists get the basic logic so wrong? And how did the prestigious publication Nature Medicine not catch that? Did anyone even read the paper before publishing it, not to mention peer review it?”
The Andersen article’s conclusion, as it turned out, was a complete flip-flop on Andersen’s Jan. 31, 2020, email to Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in which he wrote that “some of the features (potentially) look engineered,” referring to the coronavirus.
The Fauci emails were made public in June 2021 via Freedom of Information Act requests.
Nevertheless, the Nature Medicine paper became the authority on the origin of COVID. It essentially excluded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Dr. Fauci from any responsibility for the emergence of the virus. Any attempts to investigate or explore other possibilities were labelled conspiracy theories.
Andersen, and the article itself, were the subject of a U.S. Congressional Hearing by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in June 2023. The debate on how COVID originated is still ongoing today.
The Lancet and the Daszak Statement
Andersen and Nature Medicine weren’t the only ones trying to please the CCP and Fauci.
On Feb. 18, 2020, The Lancet, another top medical journal, published a political statement with no science in it. It was organized by Peter Daszak from EcoHealth Alliance, which was the middleman for channeling Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to a U.S. Congress report released on May 1 of this year.
The Daszak et al. statement dismissed as a conspiracy theory any suggestion that COVID was not of natural origin.
“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” they wrote. “Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardize our global collaboration in the fight against this virus.”
The Tune Is Set
The Daszak statement, along with the Andersen article, set the tune for the officially accepted narrative. The narrative then expanded from “a natural origin of the virus” to “a COVID vaccine will flatten the curve and save the world.” Scientists, doctors, and journal editors who dared to challenge the narrative were cancelled and/or labelled conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers.
It has been four years and six months since the world first encountered SARS-CoV-2. Despite the claims by famous scientists like Fauci and Andersen, and despite the countless efforts by top virologists and public health professionals, evidence that the virus originated naturally has not been found.
More and more people now believe that the virus was leaked or escaped from a laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, and published such research in Nature Medicine in 2015, with NIH funding acknowledged.
The lab origin is no longer a conspiracy theory. The U.S. Energy Department and the FBI both now believe that the virus was more likely leaked from a lab than having developed naturally.
Encouraging Developments
Since the pandemic, The Epoch Times and NTD have been publishing documentary films on COVID origin and vaccine injuries. The first such documentary, Joshua Philipp’s “Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus,” was viewed over 100 million times on different platforms combined. However, such reports are rarely seen in other legacy media.
It has also been a taboo subject for scientific research and publication, but that may be starting to change.
Recently, I wrote a commentary about a new paper by five Japanese scientists that was published on Cureus, a peer-reviewed medical journal owned by the Springer Nature Group, the same company that owns Nature and Nature Medicine.
The scientists analyzed data collected from the entire 123 million Japanese population and concluded that the majority of the 115,799 excess deaths in 2022 was not due to COVID infection but rather vaccination, in particular the third COVID shot.
I was pleasantly surprised that a once-taboo subject was now published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, especially a member journal of the Springer Nature Group.
In another positive development, this month the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules (IJBM) published a paper titled “Review: N1-methyl-pseudouridine: Friend or foe of cancer?” linking a key ingredient in the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine with cancer development.
IJBM is owned by the Dutch academic publishing company Elsevier, which also owns renowned publications like The Lancet, Cell, and ScienceDirect.
May the Force Be With the Editors-in-Chief
In the spring of 2022, when more scientists started to challenge the accepted narratives and seek the truth, I co-wrote the commentary “May the Force Be With Them: Scientists Fight Back.”
At that time, these brave scientists needed all the help they could get. For example, when a journal published a well-researched, well-written, and fact-based scientific paper on the safety concerns of the mRNA vaccines, the editor-in-chief of that journal was ousted.
The journal was Food and Chemical Toxicology, another Elsevier publication, and the editor-in-chief was Dr. José Luis Domingo.
Two years later, I’m optimistic that the IJBM editors-in-chief won’t face the same treatment as Dr. Domingo.
Why? I believe the tide has turned.
A recent New York Times article on COVID vaccine injuries is also an encouraging sign. It cites the Food and Drug Administration’s former acting commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock as saying the injuries are “serious” and “life-changing,” and “should be taken seriously.”
“I’m disappointed in myself,” she added. “I did a lot of things I feel very good about, but this is one of the few things I feel I just didn’t bring it home.”
Among the reported injured is the editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine, Dr. Gregory Poland. He has been suffering from tinnitus since his first shot. The Centers for Disease Control didn’t take his report on his personal experience seriously. He told the NY Times that he did not “get any sense of movement (from the CDC).”
“If they have done studies (on vaccine injury), those studies should be published,” Dr. Poland added.
The journal Vaccine is also an Elsevier publication, and as the editor-in-chief, Dr. Poland is well positioned to offer his encouragement on vaccine injury studies.
Yes, I believe the tide has turned.
However, as of today, the Daszak statement is still on The Lancet website and the Andersen paper is still on Nature Medicine.
I wonder when the Lancet and Nature Medicine will have the courage to retract them? And when will these two eminent journals start publishing research on COVID vaccine injuries?
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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