Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Should the world be more open to Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine?
Russia has granted emergency approval for two locally-made vaccines, EpiVacCorona and CoviVac. However, Russia’s 'Sputnik V' is by far the most promising.
The vaccine was widely criticised during its development for a rushed rollout and "questionable" early data. However, Sputnik V is proving to be a success.
Now, as European nations scramble to secure enough vaccines, some of Russia's staunchest critics are considering using Sputnik V as well.
The name Sputnik V invokes memories of the space race during which Russia was pitted against the West. Sputnik was the name of a Russian satellite — the first launched by any nation into orbit.
The pace with which Russia approached the COVID-19 vaccination race triggered alarms bell around the world.
When Mr Putin announced the vaccine had been approved in August, before stage three human trials had been completed, he was accused of recklessness by many scientists. The news that the president's daughter had been given a jab did little to alleviate their concerns.
Ian Jones, a professor of virology at the University of Reading, said the scientific community's early scepticism was understandable. "The early suspicions about the development of the vaccine were that they were too fast and that there wasn't enough data," Professor Jones told the ABC.
By November, Russia had started vaccinating thousands of troops before the results of large-scale trials had been published. "It suggested that there was some sort of dodging going on," Professor Jones said.
However, he said the results of stage three trials tell a different story. "This is clearly not the case," he said.
"Whatever they chose to do beforehand is now swept away by the actual data from the phase three trial."
Sputnik V boasts 92 per cent efficacy
The results of stage three human trials published in the Lancet, demonstrate efficacy of 92 per cent percent.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine boats 95 per cent and the Oxford-AstraZeneca team reported 70 per cent efficacy based on pooled data.
A US trial of the AstraZeneca vaccine, published this week, suggested efficacy of 79 per cent and total protection against severe disease. However, US health officials later suggested outdated information may have been used.
Professor Jones said that while he'd already received an AstraZeneca jab, he would have no reservations about getting the Sputnik V vaccine. "I would certainly take it," he said.
The Sputnik V vaccine works in a similar way to the AstraZeneca product. It uses a modified version of a common cold-like virus as a "vector" to harmlessly introduce part of the coronavirus's genetic code to the body.
This allows the immune system to recognise and fight the coronavirus, even without a previous infection.
However, Sputnik V uses different versions of these vectors in the first and second doses, which are given 21 days apart.
Professor Jones said it might give the vaccine a slight advantage. "What this is supposed to rule out, is the fact that the first shot can raise immunity that might stop the second shot," he said.
"It's a theoretical concern more than a real concern, but it's the only vaccine that does that." "The others use the same thing again and again."
However, it requires two different versions to be produced which may complicate the rollout, he said.
The Russian government says more than 6 million people have received at least one dose of a vaccine, but a recent poll suggested 60 per cent of Russians don't want the Sputnik V.
According to figures compiled by Our World in Data, Russia has administered six doses for every 100 people.
Germany has administered 13 doses per 100 people, the UK 45 per 100 and Australia just 1.4 per 100.
European nations turn to Russia
The Sputnik V is already being used in dozens of countries across the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America.
However, its growing acceptance in the European Union is exposing divisions and threatening the bloc's coordinated approach to vaccine procurement, which has struggled to secure enough doses for member states.
Slovakia and Hungary have already taken deliveries of Sputnik V, bypassing the European Medicines Agency which has placed the vaccine under a "rolling review". Austria and the Czech Republic have also expressed an interest in using it.
And there are plans to start producing the vaccine in Italy later this year.
"Despite the deliberate discrediting of our vaccine, more and more countries are showing interest in it," Mr Putin said this week.
Relations between the EU and Russia are at low point due to disputes over aggression in Ukraine, cyberattacks on European institutions and the poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny.
Earlier this month, EU Council President Charles Michel publicly questioned Russia's motives, accusing it of running "highly limited by widely publicised" foreign vaccination campaigns which he said amounted to "propaganda".
But the Kremlin said on Monday that Mr Michel and Mr Putin spoke about the possibility of using Russian vaccines in Europe.
Even Germany – an outspoken critic of Russia – says it would be prepared to purchase the Sputnik V. "I am actually very much in favour of us doing it nationally if the European Union does not do something," German health minister Jens Spahn said last week.
However, the EU's Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton dismissed suggestions Europe needed Russia's assistance. "We have absolutely no need for Sputnik V," he told French television station TF1.
"It's a strange statement," Vladimir Putin replied. "We're not imposing anything on anyone."
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Gunman in latest mass shooting is Muslim immigrant who family says is mentally ill
Every time a Jihadi strikes the authorities say he was mentally ill. Is Islam a mental illness?
The gunman who killed 10 people in a Colorado supermarket has been revealed as an anti-Donald Trump Syrian immigrant whose family believed he was mentally ill.
Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa was named as US authorities were grappling with a new surge in mass shootings that coincided with the country reopening from COVID restrictions.
President Joe Biden called on the Senate to pass two gun control measures, including an assault weapons ban and expanded background checks, as he expressed his sympathy for the victims.
Meanwhile, Boulder police said the 21-year-old shooter would soon be transferred from hospital to jail after he was shot in the leg during his rampage on Monday afternoon, local time.
He will face 10 murder charges after opening fire with an AR 15 into a crowd that included people lining up for COVID vaccinations.
His brother described him as a loner who was mentally disturbed, telling The Daily Beast he was paranoid.
He also had a criminal record that included an assault at his former high school, according to the Denver Post.
There was no clear motive for the shooting.
The site reported that Alissa’s now deleted Facebook page said he was born in Syria and “came to the USA in 2002”.
He also appeared to be concerned someone had targeted his phone because they were anti-Muslim.
“Yeah if these racist islamophobic people would stop hacking my phone and let me have a normal life I probably could,” he posted in July 2019.
Following the 2019 Christchurch massacre he also shared a Facebook post from another user that read, “The Muslims at the #christchurch mosque were not the victims of a single shooter. They were the victims of the entire Islamophobia industry that vilified them.”
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IN BRIEF
Foolish DHS chief faces call to resign over border situation (Washington Times)
AOC staged photo-ops outside migrant facilities under Trump, but not anymore (Fox News)
FBI releases videos showing "most egregious" attacks on Capitol Police officers (Daily Wire)
Indiana AG warns Amazon about banning Ryan T. Anderson book on "transgenderism" (PJ Media)
Wheaton College to reword plaque honoring missionary martyrs James Elliot and Ed McCully because the word "savage" is used (Disrn)
Exactly what the world needs right now: Marvel unveils first LGBT Captain America (Disrn)
Child court judge, ex-head of LGBT group that promoted Drag Queen Story Hour, arrested on child porn charges (Daily Wire)
World Health Organization reportedly granted its puppeteer, China, authority to veto scientists on Wuhan mission (Daily Caller)
California trade group asks theme parks to mitigate screaming on rides to curb COVID spread (Disrn)
What could possible go wrong? Facebook planning to create version of Instagram for children under 13 (The Hill)
Communist China, which runs concentration camps and commits genocide, "furious and sad" about violence against Asian Americans in U.S. (The Hill)
Policy: Recover the moral imperative of law and order (City Journal)
Policy: The destructive power of Keynesian spending plans (Mises Institute)
Democrats' House immigration bills will hit snag in the Senate (Examiner)
Climate pseudo-scientist Michael Mann's lawsuit against National Review finally dismissed after nearly nine years (Power Line)
Heartland GOP governors rally in response to ant-meat attack by Colorado Governor Jared Polis (Free Beacon)
Double standards: CNN and MSNBC erupted over Trump's ramp walk — but virtually ignore Biden's embarrassing staircase stumble (Fox News)
"It's going to completely redefine the game": Trump to return to social media with new platform (Post Millennial)
Almost half of all healthcare workers in U.S. haven't had COVID vaccine (CBS News)
California caves on AR-15 registration fight, will reopen bungled registration system and pause prosecutions (Free Beacon)
"Principled," or just a charlatan? South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem neuters bill protecting women's sports (PJ Media)
Europeans protest in the streets over unscientific lockdowns (Disrn)
Swimming upstream: International spectators will be barred from Olympics in Japan (Reuters)
China is restricting use of Tesla cars by its military and government workers (Business Insider)
Policy: The Equality Act is a push for ideological submission, not civil rights (National Review)
Policy: Colleges need a reality check on cancel culture (Minding the Campus)
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Tuesday, March 23, 2021
AstraZeneca Vaccine 100% Effective In Preventing Severe Disease And Hospitalizations, U.S. Trials Show
No blood clots
The AstraZeneca-Oxford Covid-19 vaccine was 79% effective against symptomatic Covid disease and 100% effective in preventing severe disease and hospitalizations in its U.S. Phase III trial, the drug maker said in a press release on Monday, highlighting the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine amid suspension of its use in some countries over safety concerns.
Citing independent safety monitoring of the trials, AstraZeneca said it found no increased risk of blood clots among the 21,583 participants who received at least one dose of the vaccine and no instances of cerebral blood clots were recorded in the trial.
The drug maker noted that the vaccine’s effectiveness was consistent across age groups and showed 80% efficacy in participants aged 65-years and older.
The large-scale Phase-III U.S. trials featured 32,449 participants, mostly from America but also included some participants from Chile and Peru.
Participants who received the vaccine were given two doses at a four week interval, however, AstraZeneca noted an extended interval of 12 weeks between shots has demonstrated even greater efficacy in previous trials.
Around 20% of the participants were older than 65 and 60% had comorbidities—such as diabetes, severe obesity or cardiac disease—which increase the risk of severe disease.
AstraZeneca will prepare for the primary analysis of the trial to be submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use Authorization in the coming weeks.
BIG NUMBER
4 million. That’s the total number of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine the Biden administration plans to send to neighbors Mexico and Canada, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last week. Although the U.S. has not yet approved the vaccine for emergency use, AstraZeneca plans to have 30 million shots ready in the country at the beginning of April.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
It remains to be seen if the U.S. will approve the AstraZeneca shot after raising concerns about the botched global trials in November. A manufacturing error had led to the use of two separate dosing regimens of the vaccine in the global trials last year. However, the new trial data presents more robust evidence of efficacy and safety with standardized doses and this may allow the vaccine to be finally approved for use in the U.S.
CRUCIAL QUOTE
Oxford Professor Sarah Gilbert, who co-designed the vaccine, told BBC News: “In many different countries and across age groups, the vaccine is providing a high level of protection against Covid-19 and we hope this will lead to even more widespread use of the vaccine in the global attempts to bring the pandemic to an end.”
KEY BACKGROUND
The AstraZeneca vaccine has been at the center of controversy over the past two weeks as several European countries temporarily suspended the use of the shot over concerns that it was causing cerebral blood clots. On Thursday, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) ruled out a broad link to blood clotting but said it was unable to definitively rule out an association with extremely rare clotting events. After the EMA’s review several countries like Germany, Italy and France restarted the use of the shot while others like Norway and Denmark have continued to pause the rollout. The flip-flop over the vaccine has eroded confidence about the shot among people in Europe, many of whom are now avoiding the vaccine and waiting for a substitute. The AstraZeneca vaccine is viewed as being critical for global immunization due to it being cheaper, easier to manufacture and easier to handle than the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
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Trump trade policies have become the new wisdom
Washington: For decades, the principle of “free trade” inspired a kind of religious reverence among most American politicians. Lawmakers, diplomats and presidents justified their policies through the pursuit of freer trade, which, like the spread of democracy and market capitalism, was presumed to be a universal and worthy goal.
But as the Biden administration establishes itself in Washington, that longstanding gospel is no longer the prevailing view.
Political parties on both the right and left have shifted away from the conventional view that the primary goal of trade policy should be speeding flows of goods and services to lift economic growth. Instead, more politicians have zeroed in on the downsides of past trade deals, which greatly benefited some American workers but stripped others of their jobs.
President Donald Trump embraced this rethinking on trade by threatening to scrap old deals that he said had sent jobs overseas and renegotiate new ones. His signature pacts, including with Canada, Mexico and China, ended up raising some barriers to trade rather than lowering them, including leaving hefty tariffs in place on Chinese products and more restrictions on auto imports into North America.
The Biden administration appears poised to adopt a similar approach, with top officials like Katherine Tai, the nominee to run the Office of the US Trade Representative, promising to focus more on ensuring that trade deals protect the rights and interests of American workers, rather than exporters or consumers.
Tai, who speaks fluent Chinese, has received broad support from former colleagues in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans and on Wednesday she was confirmed by the Senate with a vote of 98-0.
President Joe Biden and his advisers have promised to review the impact that past trade policies have had on economic and racial inequality, and put negotiating new trade deals on the back burner while they focus on improving the domestic economy.
And they have not yet made any moves to scale back Trump’s hefty tariffs on foreign products, saying that they are reviewing them, but that tariffs are a legitimate trade policy tool.
In her hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on February 25, Tai emphasised that she would help usher in a break with past policies that would “pit one of our segments of our workers and our economy against another.”
While Tai reassured senators that she would work with them to promote exports from their districts, she called for a policy that would focus more on how trade affects Americans as workers and wage earners.
When asked by Senator Patrick Toomey, a Republican, a noted free trader, whether the goal of a trade agreement between two modern, developed economies should be the elimination of tariffs and trade barriers, Tai declined to agree, saying she would want to consider such agreements on a case-by-case basis.
“Maybe if you’d asked me this question five or 10 years ago, I would have been inclined to say yes,” Tai responded. But after the events of the past few years — including the pandemic, the Trump administration’s trade wars and a failed effort by the Obama administration to negotiate a Pacific trade deal —“I think that our trade policies need to be nuanced, and need to take into account all the lessons that we have learned, many of them very painful, from our most recent history,” she said.
In his first major foreign policy speech on March 3, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken also said that the calculus on free trade had changed.
“Some of us previously argued for free trade agreements because we believed Americans would broadly share in the economic gains,” he said. “But we didn’t do enough to understand who would be negatively affected and what would be needed to adequately offset their pain.”
“Our approach now will be different,” Blinken said.
Clyde Prestowitz, a US negotiator in the Reagan administration, called the administration’s statements on trade “a revolution.” While Robert E. Lighthizer, Trump’s trade representative, also parted with the conventional wisdom on trade, he was seen as an exception, a former steel industry lawyer steeped in protectionism, Prestowitz said.
“Now here is Ms Tai, with a mostly government official career behind her, talking without making any of the formerly necessary gestures toward the sanctity and multitudinous bounties of free trade,” Prestowitz said. “The conventional wisdom on trade no longer has an iron grip on policymakers and thinkers.”
Like Tai and Lighthizer, many past presidents and trade officials emphasised fair trade and the idea of holding foreign countries accountable for breaking trade rules. But many also paid homage to the conventional wisdom that free trade itself was a worthy goal because it could help lift the economic fortunes of all countries and enhance global stability by linking economies.
That idea reached the height of its popularity under the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, where the United States negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, led the talks that gave the World Trade Organisation its modern format, granted China permanent normal trading relations, and sealed a series of trade agreements with countries in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.
President Barack Obama initially put less emphasis on free trade deals, instead focusing on the financial crisis and the Affordable Care Act. But in his second term, his administration pushed to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which came under criticism from progressive Democrats for exposing American workers to foreign competition. The deal never won sufficient support in Congress.
For Democrats, the downfall of that deal was a turning point, propelling them toward their new consensus on trade. Some, like Dani Rodrik, a professor of political economy at Harvard, argue that recent trade deals have largely not been about cutting tariffs or trade barriers at all, and instead were focused on locking in advantages for pharmaceutical companies and international banks.
David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that economic theory had never claimed that trade makes everybody better off — it had said that trade would raise overall economic output, but lead to gains and losses for different groups.
But economists and politicians alike underestimated how jarring some of those losses could be. Autor’s influential research shows that expanded trade with China led to the loss of 2.4 million American jobs between 1999 and 2011. China’s growing dominance of a variety of global industries, often accomplished through hefty government subsidies, also weakened the argument that the United States could succeed through free markets alone.
Today, “people are much more sensitive to the idea that trade can have very, very disruptive effects,” Autor said. “There’s no amount of everyday low prices at Walmart that is going to make up for unemployment.”
But Autor said that while the old consensus was “simplistic and harmful,” turning away from the ideal of free trade held dangers too. “Once you open this terrain, lots of terrible policies and expensive subsidies can all march in under the banner of the protection of the American worker,” he said.
Some have argued that the approach could forgo important economic gains.
William Reinsch, the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that Americans had come to understand that the argument that “a rising tide would lift all boats” is not always correct.
“A rising tide does not lift all boats; it only lifts some boats, and for a long time, workers’ boats have been stuck in the muck while the owners’ yachts flow free,” he wrote. However, Reinsch added, “no tide lifts no boats. In economic terms, if we forgo the expansion of trade, we do not get the benefits trade provides, and there is nothing to distribute.”
It remains to be seen how much the Biden administration will adhere to the Trump administration’s more protectionist policies — like keeping the tariffs on foreign metals and products from China.
While the Biden administration has tried to distance its trade policy from that of the previous administration, many former Trump administration officials say the direction appears remarkably similar.
In an interview in January, Lighthizer said that the Trump administration had reoriented trade policy away from the interests of multinational businesses and the Chamber of Commerce and toward working-class people and manufacturing, goals that Democrats also support. He said the Biden administration would try to make trade policy look like their own, but ultimately “stay pretty close.”
“The goal is creating communities and families of working people, rather than promoting corporate profits,” Lighthizer said.
“I think the outlines of what we’ve done will stay. They will try to Biden-ise it, make it their own, which they should do, but I’d be surprised if they back away from the great outline of what we’ve done and how we’ve changed the policy.”
Tai has acknowledged some similarities between the Biden and Trump administration’s goals, but emphasised the difference in their tactics.
In her confirmation hearing, she said that she shared the Trump administration’s goal of bringing supply chains back to America, but that the prior administration’s policies had created “a lot of disruption and consternation.”
“I’d want to accomplish similar goals in a more effective, process-driven manner,” she said
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Monday, March 22, 2021
Reality catches up with Biden
The article below is a mass media report so the media have now given up on hiding Biden's border mess. They can only play it down
Joe Biden's Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sent a clear message to migrants on Sunday: The U.S. border is closed. 'Our message has been straightforward and simple, and it's true – The border is closed. We are expelling families. We are expelling single adults,' Mayorkas told NBC's 'Meet the Press' on Sunday morning.
'I think we are executing on our plans and, quite frankly, when we are finished doing so, the American public will look back on this and say we secured our border and we upheld our values and our principles as a nation,' he added.
The DHS chief deflected blame from the current administration, claiming President Joe Biden 'inherited' a broken system from former President Donald Trump.
Longtime Trump aide Stephen Miller told Fox News' 'Sunday Morning Futures' host Maria Bartiromo: 'I was stunned by the dishonesty of Mayorkas' presentation. He looked at the camera and he lied. He blatantly lied. And there's just no polite way to put that.'
Miller added: 'And so, when Mayorkas says, as he did today, that the border is closed, he is lying.'
He then detailed unaccompanied minors arriving at the border are resettled in the U.S. and that family units or adults are either released totally or released into 'alternative to detention' (ATD).
'That is not a closed border,' he said, adding that ATD is 'a fancy way of saying: 'You're going free'.' 'So, we have an open border right now in this country,' Miller asserted.
Mayorkas also said during his interviews – while appearing on several networks Sunday – that the administration is committed to not turning away unaccompanied minors who arrive at the U.S. border.
'We've made a decision that we will not expel young, vulnerable children,' Mayorkas told NBC host Chuck Todd.
His comments come as the number of unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody has surpassed 15,000 as of Saturday.
'Are you concerned that the word will go out, and you'll get unaccompanied minors from all over the world trying to come to our southern border?' Todd asked the DHS head.
'We are safely processing the children who do come to our border,' Mayorkas said, warning: 'We strongly urge, and the message is clear, not to do so now. I cannot overstate the perils of the journey that they take.'
'Regrettably, I am all too aware of the tragedies that have occurred and continued to occur along that journey,' he said of children who arrive – or attempt to arrive – at the border alone.
Mayorkas did the rounds Sunday morning, appearing on five different shows to do damage control on the growing southern border crisis – even as the administration refuses to call the situation a 'crisis.'
Biden promised during his candidacy that all those seeking asylum in the U.S. would be granted, which led to a surge of caravans heading from Central American to the U.S.-Mexico border.
But Mayorkas continued to deflect blame for the immigration crisis on former President Donald Trump. 'Please remember something – that President Trump dismantled the orderly, humane and efficient way of allowing children to make their claims under United States law in their home countries,' he said.
Miller continued to push back on these claims Sunday. 'First of all, he inherited from the Trump administration the most secure border we have had in this country,' he said of the Biden administration.
'You never had a better system for humanely returning illegal immigrants back to their home country,' Miller said to Fox News. 'We have a crisis, a spiraling, massive, growing, surging crisis, for one very simple reason. The Biden administration terminated all of that, to adopt a policy of catch and release.'
Customs and Border Protection is now considering a plan to release migrants who crossed the border illegally without first giving them a court date to reappear.
A senior CBP source told Fox News that Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector are considering releasing migrants into the United States without an official Notice to Appear, a process that normally takes hours for each individual or family.
The move means migrants who crossed the border illegally would be released from custody into the United States - and it would place the responsibility of returning for an asylum hearing on the migrants themselves, through Immigration and Customs Enforcement or legal assistance, Fox News reported.
As this information came to light and the press continued to be blocked from gaining access to detention facilities, reports emerged that Border Patrol agents were issued a gag order on what they can share with the media.
Mayorkas claims these reports are not rooted in reality.
'Right now, we have no access to or photos of the conditions in the facilities. There have been no ride-alongs with agents. All inquiries are routed through Washington. There have been strict controls on sharing data. Local Border Patrol folks feel like they can't even talk to our folks down there. Is there a gag order?' Todd pressed on Sunday.
He insisted: 'There is not.'
'That is unequivocally false,' Mayorkas added. 'And let's be clear here – We are in the midst of a pandemic. We are, because of the extraordinary leadership of the president, climbing out of it more rapidly than ever before. But we are still in the midst of the pandemic. There is CDC controls in place. And Border Patrol agents are focused on operations, on securing the border, on addressing the needs of vulnerable children. We are not focused on ride-alongs right now.'
Previously, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said there would be organized trips for press to gain access to detention facilities. Later, she walked back on those comments, but promised photos to show conditions.
Then on Thursday, Psaki said the White House would not be releasing to the media photos that advisors shared with President Joe Biden to brief him on conditions on facilities housing childhood migrants on the border.
Psaki had kept open the idea of sharing them at a press briefing a day earlier after she revealed that advisors to Biden who had been to the border spoke to him 'with photos' about the facilities where unaccompanied children were being housed.
The possible change in immigration procedure, detailed by a CBP agent to Fox, comes as asylum seekers are flooding to the southern border: CBP apprehended nearly 100,000 migrants at the border in February, compared to just 16,182 in April 2020 when migration slowed drastically in the wake of the coronavirus, according to Pew data.
'[It has] become so dire that [Border Patrol] has no choice but to release people nearly immediately after apprehension because there is no space to hold people even to do necessary NTA paperwork,' the source told Fox News.
This process of skipping the scheduling paperwork would not apply to unaccompanied migrant children if it goes into effect, according to the outlet.
Migrants that are released from Border Patrol custody in the Rio Grande Valley Sector are normally transition to a housing facility, the Catholic Humanitarian Respite Center.
The center's Sister Norma Pimentel told Fox News that she is 'coordinating her response' to news that the migrants might face a quicker release from Border Patrol custody.
The Biden administration is also considering flying migrants to states near the Canadian border for processing, The Washington Post reported on Friday.
President Joe Biden is now disappointed in his officials for not being able to adequately shelter and process the massive increase of migrants at the southern border, CNN reported.
A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Biden thinks his officials are not moving fast enough in setting up better conditions for migrants stuck in jail-like facilities for longer than the 72 hours allowed by law.
'He was disappointed that we hadn't gotten answers from other agencies faster or that [the facilities] wouldn't be ready for children faster,' the official said.
'He made it pretty clear that there were times when he didn't think we were moving fast enough.'
Biden officials claim Trump officials did not fully cooperate with his transition team, hindering their ability get a realistic view of potential migration, and that Trump deconstructed the immigration and asylum system - which they then inherited.
One official told CNN that Trump prevented Biden's team from getting 'under the hood in the time frame that other administrations would have been able to.'
'Were we prepared? Yes,' the official said.
'Everyone wants to be like 'crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis' - but it's like, you know what, actually, things are going really well. Yes, we brought in FEMA, but you know what? That was the responsible thing to do.'
Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the director of the White House's office of intergovernmental affairs, told CNN that the Biden administration knew it was inheriting 'an absolute mess.'
'As we were coming into the administration, we knew we were inheriting an absolute mess from the previous administration,' she said.
'There were aspects of our legal immigration system that had been gutted and a department that lacked the personnel to administer our laws.'
Another administration official said: 'When we came into office, like, it was a disaster. I mean, really. The staffing wasn't in place, the structures weren't in place.'
Republicans have argued that the border crisis is Biden's own doing after the president issued sweeping executive actions in his first week in office that undid Trump's immigration policies.
The Democrat controlled Congress has also worked to pass legislation to address immigration.
'The gulf between what the Trump administration did in enforced cruelty and where the Biden administration wanted to be was so great that I don't really think there was a clearer example that needed to be made in how the government and the administration was going to change,' one senior administration official said.
The official added: 'The previous administration had so radically changed what we did on migration that, I think, the President felt very strongly that we had to act really quickly and really decisively to demonstrate that it wasn't going to be the same.'
Last month, Trump's immigration architect Stephen Miller blasted an immigration plan from Biden as the 'most radical' bill ever written.
Miller, a former White House adviser, spoke for nearly five minutes lambasting the bill while appearing in an interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham.
'It is the most radical immigration bill ever written, ever drafted, ever submitted in the history of this country. It is breathtaking,' Miller said.
Miller said that 'the most insane thing' in the bill is that it would order Secretary of State Antony Blinken to develop an application process to allow illegal aliens deported by the Trump administration to reapply for citizenship.
'In the bill, it says anyone who has lived in the country for at least three years and was deported by Donald Trump can reapply,' he said.
'And, it orders the Secretary of State to develop a process to mail those applications out to the 200 countries in the world to where illegal aliens are deported.'
Miller called the bill a 'full-scale attack on the very idea of nationhood.'
'If you were trying to write a bill to eliminate the concept of having a nation, this is the bill you would write,' he said.
On Saturday, the U.S. government was housing roughly 15,500 unaccompanied migrant minors, CBS News reported.
That number includes 5,000 teenagers and children being housed in Border Patrol facilities not designed for long-term custody beyond the 72 hours they are legally allowed to be held.
Under existing law, the government already cannot keep migrant children in holding facilities for more than 72 hours, the outlet reported. Migrant children must be transferred to a shelter or released.
The 1997 Flores v. Reno court agreement set nationwide policy that requires the government to release children from immigration detention without unnecessary delay to their adult relatives and while receiving a certain quality of life, CNN reported.
The government also cannot detain kids in any facility for more than 20 days, under the Flores agreement.
Government records reviewed by CBS News show that unaccompanied children are spending an average of 136 hours in CBP custody.
More than 5,000 unaccompanied minors were being held in a CBP tent as of Saturday morning, according to the outlet.
The Department of Health and Human Services was also housing nearly 10,500 unaccompanied children in emergency housing facilities and shelters, department spokesperson Mark Weber told CBS News on Saturday.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Sunday, March 21, 2021
When it comes to vaccines, suddenly “from vs with” matters again
The media’s attitude to possible vaccine-related injuries highlights how INSANE the “Covid deaths” count always was
Kit Knightly
In the last few weeks the media has demonstrated one of the clearest, most concise displays of true-life doublethink I’ve ever seen. It truly is the perfect exemplar.
The dichotomy is in “covid deaths” vs “vaccine related injuries”.
As we all know by now, countries all around the world define “Covid deaths” as “people who die, of any cause, within 30 days of a positive test result” (the number of days changes by country, it’s usually between 28 and 60). This trend was started in Italy last spring, and spread all around the world.
Globally, with a few notable exceptions, a “covid death” is a death “from any cause” following a positive test.
And when they say “any cause”, they mean it. Up to, and including, shooting yourself in the head.
In one blackly hilarious case, a man “died of coronavirus” after being shot by the police, with his 7 gunshot wounds being listed as “complications”.
That’s how loosely defined “covid death” has become, it is more or less meaningless. However, Covid “vaccines”, and possible related injuries or deaths, are a very different matter.
The establishment is going out of its way to make sure everyone understands that anybody who gets ill, or dies, after being vaccinated, is absolutely NOT a “vaccine death”.
What’s hilarious is those same journalists and “experts” preaching against “Covid denial”, are now literally employing our own arguments against us in the name of defending the vaccines.
Check out this article from ABC a few weeks ago, quoting one doctor:
We have to be very careful about causality. There are going to be spurious relationships, especially as the vaccine is targeting elderly or those with chronic conditions. Just because these events happen in proximity to the vaccine does not mean the vaccine caused these events. Nursing home centers and hospices are of particular concern, because they are homes to incredibly frail populations, and you have to look at the background rate of these events within those populations.”
You see, it’s important not take deaths out of context. After all, many of the people who die after being vaccinated are old and frail and already seriously ill. We need to be “careful about causation”, just because event B happened after event A, does not mean A caused B to happen.
In other words: There is a difference between with and from.
Hmmm. Does that argument sound familiar to anyone else?
The article continues:
In fact, an average of 8,000 people die each day in the United States. Some of them may have just received a coronavirus vaccine.
Fascinating. Apparently 8000 people die each and every day in the United States – translating to roughly 3 million people per year – and falsely attributing natural human mortality to a potentially totally unconnected event might cause panic.
I really feel like I might have read a similar sentiment somewhere else, too. Don’t you?
The Reuters “fact check” on vaccine injury says exactly the same thing:
Reports of death following vaccination do not necessarily mean the vaccine caused the death,”
The sheer desperation of the PR in the press is apparent in all the headlines. Such as:
Pfizer Covid vaccine probably didn’t kill woman, 78, who died shortly after having it
Or:
Woman dies from brain haemorrhage in Japan days after vaccine, but link uncertain
Or:
Macomb County man, 90, dies after COVID-19 vaccine — but doctors say shots are safe
Essentially, if you die within two months of testing positive for Sars-Cov-2, you’re a “Covid death”, and if you die within two minutes of getting the vaccine, you’re a coincidence.
Now, that’s not to say the vaccine definitely did kill those unfortunate people, I don’t know the details of the cases. The point is the equivocation. The soft use of language which is totally at odds with the apocalyptic prose discussing “Covid deaths”.
No where is this contradiction more apparent than in the UK right now, following the AstraZeneca situation.
A quick recap, for those who haven’t heard: Recently, the Norwegian government suspended use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, following it being linked to increased risk of blood clots. Several other countries soon followed suit.
This has prompted a UK-wide defence of the AstraZeneca jab. Including this piece from David Spiegelhalter, in the Guardian just today, in which he uses the same exact argument as the ABC article, almost word for word:
It’s human nature to spot patterns in data. But we should be careful about finding causal links where none may exist
After 12 months of ignoring the conversation on “with” vs “from”, suddenly all the vaccine pushers have rediscovered the difference. None of them seem in any way aware of their self-contradiction.
But this ludicrous double standard doesn’t just apply to death, but also the concept of acceptable risk.
Appearing on Good Morning Britain today, UK Dr Nighat Arif encouraged the continued use of the AstraZeneca shot, by explaining that technically there’s always small chance you’ll get a blood clot, but you can’t let that stop you doing what needs to be done:
As a GP I see clots a lot, unfortunately our background risk of getting a clot is about 1/1000 people. If you’re on a flight, your risk of clot increases. If women are on the contraceptive pill, their risk of clot increases. People going to hospital for surgery. However, we don’t stop doing any of those things.
The doctor is actually arguing that refusing to live your life based on a 0.1% risk of death is foolish, and that nobody should be expected to do that.
It is, literally, word for word a “Covid sceptic” argument, reproduced in the mainstream, without even the tiniest hint of irony or self-awareness. The very attitude they are taking towards “vaccine injury” is the same one they have condemned in “covid deniers” for over a year. By their hypocrisy they prove their own mendacity.
If they want to define a “Covid death” as dying within 60 days of a positive test, fine. But then anyone who dies within two months of getting vaccinated is a “vaccine death”. And they should have those two big red numbers counting up, right next to each other, on the front page of every news website in the world.
And if they don’t do that – which they obviously won’t – then you have a deliberately employed double standard, and that is a tacit admission of intentional deception.
It really is just that simple.
https://off-guardian.org/2021/03/15/when-it-comes-to-vaccines-suddenly-from-vs-with-matters-again/
******************************************China Declares a Vaccine War on the World
China will allow foreigners to enter the country, but it has directed embassies around the world to only issue a visa if the traveler has gotten a COVID-19 vaccine that was made in China.
“It’s very much at the sharp end of vaccine diplomacy,” Nicholas Thomas, an associate professor in health security at the City University of Hong Kong, told CNN. “(It’s) essentially saying if you want to visit us, you need to take our vaccine.”
There has been no Chinese-made vaccine approved for human use in America, nor is there likely to be one anytime soon. China has created 5 different vaccines but none have been approved by the WHO. This is probably due to the fact that the Chinese government refuses to release the results of Stage 3 trials — a crucial requirement for vaccine approval in the U.S. and other western countries.
China’s main entry in the vaccine race — Sinovac — has an announced effectiveness of 78 percent against COVID. But Brazil actually conducted a Stage 3 trial and found it only 50.38 percent effective — far less effective than any other vaccine on the market.
Where does that leave the U.S., the UK, and other nations that have not approved a Chinese vaccine for use?
CNN:
That means China can’t claim its preference for homegrown vaccines is due to them being superior to other vaccines. Instead, Thomas sees China’s new visa rules as a “power move,” which will pressure people to take one of China’s vaccines.
Sarah Chan, a reader in bioethics at the University of Edinburgh’s College of Medicine, says if someone’s livelihood depends on traveling to China for work, that could push them to take the vaccines, despite their lack of data. Scott Rosenstein, director of the global health programme at Eurasia Group, said it could also pressure countries to authorize the Chinese vaccines.
China has been extremely aggressive in its vaccine diplomacy, selling millions of doses of its vaccines to third-world countries. But last week, the Quad — a partnership between the U.S., India, Japan and Australia — decided to manufacture a billion doses of U.S. vaccines by the end of 2022 and distribute them in Asia. The visa move from China is seen as a counter to that plan.
China denies practicing “vaccine nationalism,” despite the fact that it’s exactly what the country is doing.
Despite China’s new visa rules placing an incentive on travelers to take the Chinese vaccines, Zhao Lijian, spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rejected the idea of “vaccine nationalism.”
“Regardless of where a vaccine is made, it is a good vaccine so long as it is safe and effective,” he said in a press conference Monday. “China stands ready to advance mutual recognition of vaccination with other countries.”
That raises the question of “immunity passports” and whose vaccine can be used to claim immunity. One option is to leave it in the hands of the WHO, which approves vaccines for emergency use in many countries. So far, the WHO has approved 4 vaccines — none of them Chinese. One can imagine asking an agency in China’s hip pocket to be fair in approving vaccines.
The second idea is even more ludicrous: allowing the 194 member states in the WHO to vote on which vaccines should be included in an immunity passport. It would be a glorious opportunity for China to flex its global muscle using subtle threats like the visa gambit.
The best option would be for individual nations to make their own immunity rules — or not make any at all. Better that than international travel being held hostage by China.
China has declared a vaccine war on the world — whether its vaccines work or not. If people are allowed a choice, my guess would be they’d forgo taking the Chinese shot for almost anyone else’s.
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Jobs going back overseas under Biden
It's not like we didn’t warn you, folks. Our loyal Townhall readers knew a Biden presidency would mean higher taxes, fewer jobs, and less economic opportunity. The nixing of the Keystone Pipeline and the border wall hurled thousands into the unemployment line. These were also union jobs. He said he was going to do this; don’t act shocked. With a proposed massive hike in the corporate tax rate, are we shocked that American businesses have begun to shop their jobs overseas? No. But apparently, a lot of folks seemed puzzled that this Democratic administration is screwing over American workers at every turn. Forget passing a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that does next to nothing to help struggling families—we have President Depends creating a job creation climate that’s so bad—companies don’t even want to risk it here. This is the exact opposite of what happened under Trump.
Biden’s bad agenda is now impacting auto workers, who just discovered that Ford plans to shift car production back to plants in Mexico (via WSJ):
The United Auto Workers union is taking aim at Ford Motor Co. over plans for a factory in Ohio, criticizing the car company for moving vehicle production intended for the facility to Mexico.
UAW Vice President Gerald Kariem in a letter to members Friday said the company told the union it was relocating manufacturing of a next-generation vehicle to Mexico without a clear explanation. Mr. Kariem said in making this move, Ford is failing to live up to a commitment it made to the factory during the last round of contract talks. A copy of the letter was provided to The Wall Street Journal Wednesday.
During labor negotiations in 2019, Ford pledged to spend $900 million on the factory, in part to retool for a new model that it would start building in 2023.
“We expect the company to honor its contractual commitments to this membership and when it fails to do so we will take action,” Mr. Kariem wrote in the letter of Ford.
Trump’s agenda allowed for tax cuts, fewer regulations, job creation, repatriation of overseas cash, American companies reinvesting here, and bonuses galore for workers. Biden has done any of that. He’s too weak.
At the same time, you get what you vote for fellas. I don’t know what else to say.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Saturday, March 20, 2021
COVID: How the Loss of the Outer Circle Has Changed Community
What has happened to our extended network of workplace peers and what you can do about it
As we approach a year since the initial lockdowns, we are beginning to register and process the effects of pandemic-induced lifestyle changes. Most analyses of the digital workplace either cite the feeling of being “Zoomed out” or celebrate the benefits of working from home. These points are valid, but I fear we may be missing the forest for the trees.
A recent article in The Atlantic examined the way relationships have changed in the wake of the pandemic, particularly how different types of relationships have adapted to an online world. In the last 12 months we have worked hard to stay connected with our close, inner circle of friends and loved ones; but many of us have lost the outer circle, the peripheral relationships. The Atlantic article describes these relationships as “the guy who’s always at the gym at the same time as you, the barista who starts making your usual order while you’re still at the back of the line, the co-worker from another department with whom you make small talk on the elevator.”
Zooming in (pun intended) on the peripheral relationships in our workplaces encourages us to think about how engagement has changed in those workplaces. Early in the pandemic, the Davenport Institute hosted a webinar with Engaging Local Government Leaders on “work from home” best practices. We explored tips on intentionally maintaining a balance of social and professional interaction given the loss of break room conversations. Some of those engagement mechanisms included socially distanced walking meetings and virtual book clubs. While those are helpful, they are limited to the inner circle in the workplace i.e. the immediate team.
But what about everyone else?
A focus on the inner circle in every type of relationship has adversely affected not only engagement within the workplace but also community building outside the workplace. I am close to my supervisor and direct reports, but I can count on one hand the relationships I have fostered across departments which have grown into friendships.
Organic social interactions in the breakroom or hallway provide a respite in an otherwise busy work environment. Those interactions are often the time gaps that allow us to get to know our colleagues beyond their title and responsibilities. There is no digital equivalent, but there are ways in which we can seek to regain peripheral relationships while working from home.
To reestablish the outer circle, we must first recreate the environments which foster the peripheral relationships. For example, arriving to Zoom calls early is the digital equivalent of walking into a meeting room early and chatting about the weekend. If the meeting group is small enough, allowing team members to stay unmuted creates a digital openness to chime in with thoughts without the awkwardness of unmuting then waiting to be called upon. Zoom background themes for meetings could service as the jumping off point for casual conversation on favorite foods or dream vacations.
While it is impossible to fully recreate digitally what was lost during the shift to online, there is still hope for rebuilding some of the outer circle. The first step is to acknowledge that there was an outer circle and that it is now missing. Next, we must seek ways to recreate the environments which fostered those relationships and allow ourselves a social break from the litany of emails and Zoom meetings. Who knows, we may even make new work friends while working from home.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2021/03/09/how-the-loss-of-the-outer-circle-has-changed-community/
******************************************Russia, not China, tried to influence 2020 election, says US intel community
The Russian punching bag again
Russia’s government tried to seed the 2020 US presidential campaign with “misleading or unsubstantiated allegations” against then-candidate Joe Biden through allies of former President Trump and his administration, US intelligence officials said on Tuesday.
The assessment was made in a 15-page report into election interference published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It underscores allegations that Trump’s allies were playing into Moscow’s hands by amplifying claims made against Biden by Russian-linked Ukrainian figures in the run up to the November 3 election.
Biden defeated Trump and took office on January 20.
“We assess that Russian President Putin authorised, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidaccy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US,” the report stated.
US intelligence agencies found other attempts to sway voters, including a “multi-pronged covert influence campaign” by Iran intended to undercut Trump’s support. The report also punctures a counter-narrative pushed by Trump’s allies that China was interfering on Biden’s behalf, concluding that Beijing “did not deploy interference efforts.”
“China sought stability in its relationship with the United States and did not view either election outcome as being advantageous enough for China to risk blowback if caught,” the report said.
US officials said they also saw efforts by Cuba, Venezuela and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to influence the election, although “in general, we assess that they were smaller in scale than those conducted by Russia and Iran.”
US intelligence agencies and former Special Counsel Robert Mueller previously concluded that Russia also interfered in the 2016 US election to boost Trump’s candidacy with a campaign of propaganda aimed at harming his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
The Russian, Chinese and Cuban Embassies in Washington did not immediately return messages seeking comment. The Iranian mission to the United Nations and the Venezuelan Ministry of Information also did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Moscow, Beijing and Tehran routinely deny allegations of cyberespionage and subterfuge.
The new report said Putin knew of and “probably directed” the election interference efforts. As an example, Putin “had purview over the activities of Andriy Derkach,” a Ukrainian lawmaker who played a prominent role in the effort and has ties to Russian intelligence, the report said.
“We assess Russian leaders preferred that former President Trump win re-election despite perceiving some of his administration’s policies as anti-Russia. We have high confidence in this assessment,” the report stated.
A key role was also played by a second man with Russian intelligence ties, Konstantin Kilimnik, according to the report. Kilimnik and Derkach met with and gave materials to Trump-linked people to push for formal investigations, and Derkach released four audio recordings to try to implicated Biden in corruption, it said.
That refers to conversations that right-wing figures in the United States cited as evidence that Biden tried to protect his son Hunter from a probe in Ukraine.
Kilimnik was an associate of Paul Manafort, who served as Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman. Trump last year pardoned Manafort for a criminal conviction that stemmed from Mueller’s investigation.
Russian agents also tried to “phish” employees of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, “likely in an attempt to gather information related to President Biden’s family,” it said. Hunter Biden had served on Burisma’s board.
As in the 2016 election, the Russian so-called troll factory formerly known as the Internet Research Agency pushed disparaging stories on social media about Biden and Democrats and complained about censorship by the tech companies, the report said. It also sought to exacerbate US divisions on racial justice issues, the report said.
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IN BRIEF
ChiCom Virus begets new high in perceptions of China as U.S.'s greatest enemy — as it should (Gallup)
"China-backed Confucius Institute rebrands to avoid scrutiny." —Free Beacon
DHS says illegal crossings are on pace to hit 20-year high (Daily Caller), but President Joe "Open Border" Biden says he has no plans to travel to the southern border (Fox News)
These deaths are on Biden's hands: Eight illegals killed in another horrific car crash near Mexican border (Disrn)
FBI: Christmas bomber in Nashville was driven by paranoia and acted alone (Disrn)
Blue states move to tax PPP loans, collect millions from small businesses that were (and still are) unfairly hamstrung by shutdown-happy Democrats (Just the News)
Quid pro quo: Of the top 20 states getting "COVID" bailout money, 13 voted for Biden (FEE)
Retail sales suffer big chill in February amid stormy weather (NPR)
Eight killed in metro Atlanta spa shooting spree (AJC)
And oh, by the way, two New York black teens set mentally ill white man on fire (Daily Wire)
Grammy ratings hit lowest of low: Only 8.8 million tune in vs. 19 million last year (Daily Wire)
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam restores voting rights for 69,000 Democrat-leaning ex-felons (Axios)
"Hiking has a diversity problem. These BIPOC groups are working to fix it." —Los Angeles Times
Policy: America and Brexit Britain: Time for an economic alliance? (Heritage Foundation)
Policy: The U.S.-Chinese rivalry is a battle over values (Foreign Affairs)
President Unity blocks press access at the border, constructs false narratives (Washington Times)
Trump vindicated: Judge rules Michigan secretary of state violated election laws (PJ Media)
Addendum: "Months after Trump complaints, some courts are finding irregularities in 2020 elections." —Just the News
Georgia deputy secretary of state outed as source of fake Trump quotes in WaPo story (Bongino.com)
Twenty-one states sue Biden to overturn the ridiculous canceling of Keystone XL pipeline (Daily Wire)
RIP, Tea Party: House Republicans drop decade-long opposition to earmarks (Examiner)
It sure looks like Joe Biden lied about his tax plan (National Review)
Political theater: House passes bill to award Congressional Gold Medals to Capitol police (Roll Call)
CNN hemorrhaging viewers since Trump left office, down nearly 50% in key measurables (Fox News)
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signs law to expand abortion coverage "without limits" on taxpayer dime (Disrn)
Judges pacify Planned Parenthood, block Indiana's parental consent requirement for abortion (Disrn)
Preemption winning streak continues for gun advocates: Judge strikes down Boulder's AR-15 ban (Free Beacon)
Texas to forgive $29 million in electricity bills after historic winter storm (Disrn)
"Mistakes made": DHS chief admits release of untested illegal immigrants into communities (Washington Times)
Biden says May 1 deadline to pull troops from Afghanistan will be "tough" to meet (AMN)
Ford plans to move new vehicle construction from Ohio to Mexico (The Hill)
IRS announces extension of filing deadline to May 17 (The Hill)
Americans are spending their Joe "Buy a Shotgun" Biden stimulus on guns (Forbes)
Policy: What the U.S. must do to beat China (National Review)
Policy: Would Biden's tax hike really spare the middle class? Nope (AEI)
Unity! Lefty lawmaker acknowledges Democrats will exploit procedural tactic to pass massive infrastructure bill without Republicans (Daily Caller)
Radical leftist Deb Haaland confirmed 51-40 as interior secretary (ABC News)
Trump's exit from the world stage led to a network ratings bloodletting (Daily Caller)
"Incredible potential to taint the jury pool": Defense in Derek Chauvin trial asks judge to delay the trial following $27 million settlement (AP)
Columbia University joins 75-some schools hosting segregated graduation ceremonies (Daily Wire)
Policy: Border crisis: Incompetence or part of the president's plan? (Daily Signal)
Policy: How to end Biden's fake climate apocalypse (American Spectator)
****************************************
Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Misinformation about COVID-19 vaccinations
With more than 85 million people across the globe now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, suggestions that the jab may be causing death among some populations have quickly spread online, undermining inoculation efforts.
Claims that a number of elderly people died as a result of the jab in Norway, for instance, have been debunked by the country's health officials, who said the deaths were likely to be coincidental.
Vaccines not more dangerous to Israelis than COVID-19
With nearly half of its population fully vaccinated, Israel has fast become a world leader in the effort to inoculate its citizens against COVID-19.
But on social media and misinformation-spreading news websites, claims that the vaccine may be more dangerous than the disease itself have also gained traction.
One such "news" story, sent to Fact Check by a concerned reader, suggests that the Israeli health ministry had warned that the Pfizer vaccine had killed more people than the disease itself.
"New analysis from the Israeli Health Ministry concluded Pfizer's COVID vaccine killed 'about 40 times more (elderly) people than the disease itself would have killed' during a recent five-week vaccination period," reads an article published by Children's Health Defense, a site which has been accused of promoting "pseudo-science".
The story further claims that the Pfizer vaccine led to the death of "260 times more younger people than would have died from the virus".
An investigation by fact checkers at Health Feedback, however, found that data published by the Israeli health ministry "actually points to the vaccine reducing the likelihood of dying from COVID-19, in both the young and the old".
"The data showed that the majority of COVID-19 deaths in vaccinated people occurred in those who had received only one dose," Health Feedback reported.
"This isn't as unexpected as the post claimed, as these people hadn't fully developed immunity and were still as vulnerable to COVID-19 as unvaccinated people."
The findings may not be surprising to those familiar with Children's Health Defense, which was given a low trustworthy rating by Media Bias/Fact Check, a website dedicated to cataloguing media bias and deceptive news practices.
"Overall, we rate the Children's Health Defense a strong conspiracy and quackery level advocacy group that frequently promotes unsupported claims," the website concluded.
In the UK, reports that more than 400 people have died following a COVID-19 jab are missing some crucial context, fact checkers at Reuters and Full Fact have noted.
Under the UK Government's "Yellow Card" scheme, information on suspected side effects and adverse reactions to medicines is collected and monitored by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), including those related to COVID-19 vaccines.
According to the latest Yellow Card report, a total of 508 people have died following a COVID-19 vaccine in the UK. But that doesn't mean the vaccine caused their deaths.
According to the MHRA, the reported adverse events following a COVID-19 vaccine are not always a proven side effect of the jab, and some events "may have happened anyway, regardless of vaccination".
"A high proportion of people vaccinated in the vaccination campaign so far are very elderly, many of whom will also have pre-existing medical conditions," the agency notes in its report.
"Older age and chronic underlying illnesses make it more likely that coincidental adverse events will occur, especially given the millions of people vaccinated."
Full Fact also noted that the MHRA has asked for any suspicions about adverse effects to be reported, "even if the person reporting it is not sure that it was caused by the vaccine".
"This means that many suspected [adverse reactions] reported 'do not have any relation to the vaccine or medicine and it is often coincidental that they both occurred around the same time'," Full Fact said.
In a similar misunderstanding of correlation and causation, a claim that a Japanese woman died of a brain haemorrhage in the days after receiving a Pfizer vaccine has been debunked by AFP Fact Check.
According to the fact checkers, posts spread online showed a portion of a news report on the woman's death, but failed to include the section of the report in which experts clarified that no link had been established between the woman's death and the vaccine.
As pointed out by AFP Fact Check, the missing section of the news report reads: "[A Japanese health official] clarified that the vaccine was not linked to the brain haemorrhage of the senior citizen who died, because this is a common cause of death for people within the 40 to 60 age group."
An official Japanese Government report also "does not implicate Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine in the death", the fact checkers added.
World famous boxer not vaccine victim
When boxing great Marvelous Marvin Hagler died this week, aged 66, rumours swirled that a COVID-19 vaccine had caused his death.
But that wasn't the case, according to Hagler's widow, Kay G Hagler. "I was the only person close to him until the last minute, and I am the only person that know [sic] how things went not even his family know all the details," Ms Hagler wrote on Facebook. "For sure [it] wasn't the vaccine that caused his death".
Did 80% of the crew of Australian warship fall ill after COVID jabs?
A Facebook post claiming 80 per cent of the crew of the HMAS Sydney suffered "severe illness" following COVID-19 vaccinations has been rubbished by the Department of Defence.
The post, published by a Facebook group serving the Australian veteran community, also suggested that eight crew members had been admitted to intensive care after receiving the jab.
In a statement published in response to questions put forward by Fact Check, the Department of Defence confirmed that the crew had voluntarily received the vaccine, and were encouraged to report to medical personnel if they subsequently felt unwell.
"Several members of HMAS Sydney's crew did present to hospital after hours with mild side effects," the department said. "They were assessed in the emergency department before being released — they were not admitted to hospital. A number of other members also reported mild side effect symptoms that did not require medical care. All symptoms experienced were within the broad range of routine side effects associated with receiving any vaccination."
According to the department, the ship had departed for the US on March 11 with a full crew. "No members of the Ship's company failed to deploy as a result of taking the COVID-19 vaccine.
From Washington, D.C.
Soon after signing the latest COVID-19 relief legislation last week, US President Joe Biden made his first prime time TV address to the nation, while fact checkers watched on closely.
Speaking about COVID-19 vaccines, Mr Biden claimed that two months prior, the country "didn't have nearly enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all, or even near all, of the American public" but soon would.
FactCheck.org found this claim to be missing some crucial context.
"While the Biden administration has increased vaccine orders from the companies with authorised vaccines, the Trump administration had contracts in place for plenty of vaccines for all Americans — provided other vaccines gained authorisations," the fact checkers said.
"And Biden's predecessor also had options to increase orders from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, the first two vaccines to get Food and Drug Administration authorisation."
FactCheck.org also noted that Mr Biden's claim to be on track to deliver on his promise to administer 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days in office was helped along by the former administration.
"The US — even before Biden took office — was virtually already on pace to administer that many additional vaccine doses in his first 100 days."
CNN Facts First, meanwhile, found that while Mr Biden's claim that the US had administered more COVID-19 vaccines than any other country was correct, other nations had inoculated a greater proportion of their populations.
"Fourteen countries including Chile, Israel and the United Kingdom have vaccinated more people per capita," the fact checkers noted.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-19/coronacheck-vaccine-misinformation-debunked/13258256
*******************************************Mask Mandates Do Not Save Lives
Although some studies have concluded that masks help stop the spread of COVID-19, usually they have failed to replicate real-world situations. A common approach is to evaluate the effectiveness of mask material at stopping the expulsion or intake of the aerosols presumed to be the airborne carriers of the virus. Useful information, perhaps, but at this stage, what we need to know is whether the widespread use of masks is measurably reducing the risk of death from the disease. To continue requiring the use of masks makes sense only if there is compelling data that death rates are lower for people who wear masks than it is for people who do not.
We have no way of measuring whether or how much and how appropriately individuals wear masks, but state mandates that people wear them are predicated on the notion that more people will do so if they are threatened with a fine or punishment. Thus, it makes sense to demand that states with mask mandates have lower COVID-19 death rates than states that don't. If states with mask mandates are not experiencing lower rates than states without them, the citizenry should insist that the burdensome policy of requiring masks be abandoned.
Logic or speculation alone cannot provide a reliable answer to the question of mask effectiveness. Neither can the judgments and proclamations of politicians or even public health experts. What we need is data.
The Data
The Centers for Disease Control maintains a website that reports the total number of people who have died from COVID-19. Updated daily, the table provides the figures for each state and for the country as a whole. The state figures for virus deaths were extracted from this source on or about February 16.
U.S. News and World Report published an article identifying which states have and have not mandated masks. For those states with a mask mandate, the article tells when the mandate was put into effect.
Those three sources provided the raw data for everything that follows. At the end of this article, I will link to a table containing all the data that were extracted from those sources to answer the question of mask effectiveness.
The Study
The question is, "Do states with mask mandates have lower COVID-19 death rates than states with no mandate?" If they do, the enforced wearing of masks may have been a reasonable approach to limiting deaths from COVID-19. Otherwise, the rationale for imposing mask mandates disintegrates. In a similar fashion, states that never imposed a mask mandate can readily justify their behavior only if their COVID-19 death rates do not exceed those of the mask-mandated states.
Only ten states have had no mask mandate of any sort; the other forty imposed mask mandates that required one to be worn at all indoor venues and in all outdoor situations that challenge the six-foot distancing expectation.
Using the data sources above, figures for the total population and the total number of COVID-19 deaths were extracted for each of the fifty states. A COVID-19 death rate was calculated for each state by dividing its number of COVID-19 deaths by its population and then multiplying the result by 10,000. The result was a COVID-19 death rate indicating the number of deaths per 10,000 people. By sorting these individual state rates into two groups — masks mandatory versus masks voluntary — I could calculate the average COVID-19 death rate for each group.
States with a mask mandate: 13.0 deaths per 10,000 population.
States with no mask mandate: 12.6 deaths per 10,000 population.
Since the average COVID-19 death rate is actually lower for the voluntary mask states than it is for the mandated mask states, it is incumbent on advocates for the mask mandate to either reveal the data upon which they arrived at their conclusion or else stop making the claim that masks help keep people safe.
A variant on the theme of mask-mandated safety is the notion that states that adopted a mask mandate early on have lower death rates than the states that did so late. Since the basis of this contention is that a greater length of time under the rule of mask has been an effective way of assuring low death rates, let us compare the performance of the ten earliest mask mandate states to the performance of the ten states that have never required a mask.
The US News & World Report article provided the information on the start dates for mask mandates.
Once again, the notion that masking up keeps us safe receives no support from the data. In fact, the "bottom ten" outperform the "top ten" by a small but noteworthy margin (12.6 deaths per 10,000 versus 13.3 deaths per 10,000). This hints at the possibility that masks actually elevate the death rate. Would anybody care to investigate?
The impotence of mask mandates is particularly sobering since they usually proceed in lockstep with the other mandated actions intended to control the virus: hand-washing, social distancing, and lockdowns. Since all four control tactics are chasing the same goal (stop the spread of the virus), these data revealing the ineffectiveness of masks may suggest that the other three control tactics are less effective than hoped.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/mask_mandates_do_not_save_lives.html
****************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Thursday, March 18, 2021
A Study Shows VERY FEW Capitol Hill Rioters Were QAnon Red-Staters With Ties to 'Right-Wing' Groups
A survey by the University of Chicago finds that most Capitol Hill rioters had no ties to any fringe right-wing groups and were merely engaged people outraged by what they believed was a rigged election.
While colorful weirdos with names such as QAnon Shaman and Baked Alaska stole the headlines, people who were arrested by federal officials during and after the riot were a “broader core of people” with a healthy skepticism about the veracity of the November 2020 election, according to the study.
There was plenty of reason for the skepticism, considering the collusion between Big Tech, unions, lawfare, and Democrats’ combined efforts to sway the election. Those efforts were at the very least unethical.
As Time Magazine enthused in an article entitled, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election,” “there was a conspiracy unfolding behind the [election] scenes” of an “informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans” to “save” the election from Donald Trump.
The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President.
[…]Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears"
Rather than being ill-informed, it appears that the Capitol Building rioters may have been better informed than most on these moves to sway the election.
In a “working paper” that is considered to be a “novel approach” to “estimating community-level participation in mass protest events,” Asst. Prof. Austin Wright of the Harris School of Public Policy and David Van Dijcke of the University of Michigan found a surprising number of the people arrested at the Capitol Hill riot who were business owners and other professionals obviously upset over election fraud.
The paper found that those arrested were “more likely to have traveled to the Capitol from Trump-voting “islands,” where residents are surrounded by neighborhoods with higher numbers of Biden supporters.” More than half came from counties that Joe Biden carried.
Though the researchers include the fact that the overwhelming number of people live in Democrat areas, they also highlighted the fact “that proximity to Proud Boy chapters and local levels of engagement with misinformation posted on Parler, the exiled social media platform popular with the far right, are robustly linked to participation in the Capitol rally.”
However, researcher Austin Wright said living in those leftist areas “played a significant role.”
Social isolation and the perception of being threatened by neighboring areas that largely hold opposing political views also played a significant role in who was there.
The researchers also looked at cell phone data such as where in the country Capitol rioters called. Most were in the eastern, central, and southern parts of the country.
Could the cancel culture and being surrounded by people with Trump Derangement Syndrome and other anti-conservatives have helped trigger the attack?
They claimed some of the rioters were on the social media app Parler, though efforts to discover other social media apps used by the people arrested were not noted.
The survey found that approximately 10% percent of the Capitol rioters had a connection with Proud Boys, which they describe as a “hate group,” and Oath Keepers.
Nearly 90% had no ties or right-wing affiliations whatsoever.
And they found out that 85% of the people arrested were business owners or held down white-collar jobs.
WTTW TV reported that researchers hadn’t even needed a “business owner” category before when looking into protest groups. Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, oversaw the study and said the caliber of people at the riot was surprising.
“Normally, we don’t even have a category for ‘business owner’ when we study political violence, so this is a very big sign that we’re dealing with a new political movement with violence at its core that can’t be reduced to the usual suspects.”
President Trump also appealed to a wide variety of Americans from all socio-economic backgrounds. The fact that the rioters were not red-meat, right-wing fanatics threw researchers for a loop. It also forced some reflection by researchers about the people who believe there was election fraud, according to the study.
What we are dealing with here is not merely a mix of right-wing organizations, but a broader mass movement with violence at its core. We need to do more to understand who we are dealing with in the new movement. Targeting pre-2021 far right organizations alone will not solve the problem.
Perhaps they should consider that the 2020 election was seen by half the country as rigged. Election integrity efforts, not name-calling, lawfare, and canceling others who hold politically opposing views, will be key in winning back confidence in the elections process. If Democrats pass HR 1, all bets will be off.
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Joe Biden’s biggest headache seen on US-Mexico border
The mainstream media are beginning to recognize the immigration disaster under Biden. Below is a Reuters dispatch
Almost two months into his presidency, Joe Biden has plenty to feel pleased about. Coronavirus cases in the US have plummeted since the start of the year, the pace of vaccinations has increased dramatically and last week he signed a giant $2.5 trillion economic recovery package into law.
But one issue is fast becoming a major vulnerability for the US President, in terms of both policy and politics: immigration. A surge in migrants trying to cross from Mexico into the US at the southern border has given Republicans an opening to go on the attack against the new administration.
A Honduran man seeking asylum in the United States wears a shirt that reads, “Biden please let us in,” as he stands among tents that line an entrance to the border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico.
According to Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, US officials soon expect to encounter more more individuals at the south-west border than they have in the past 20 years.
US Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 100,000 migrants at the US-Mexico border in February, and that number is expected to balloon in March. An estimated 5000 people are now being apprehended at the border each day.
The number of apprehensions was already increasing steadily during the final months of the Trump presidency, but has accelerated since Biden’s inauguration. Such a surge was entirely predictable.
After all, Trump was famous for his hardline immigration policies, including his signature pledge to build a wall on the border and his controversial family separation policies. Biden came to power promising a more “fair, orderly and humane” approach, and quickly steps to soften Trump’s tougher policies.
On day one of his presidency, Biden suspended Trump’s so-called “remain in Mexico” rule which requires asylum-seekers trying to enter the US from the southern border to wait in Mexico for their American court hearings.
Crucially, Biden also tweaked emergency restrictions introduced by Trump at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Under Biden’s changes, unaccompanied minors can now enter the US and, after a short period in detention, live in the community while their immigration claims are processed.
Biden administration officials have insisted that the border is not open, and urged migrants not to try to enter the US right now. But that message isn’t cutting through.
Apprehensions of unaccompanied minors rose by 63 per cent from January to February while family arrivals soared by 168 per cent. Some of the unaccompanied minors apprehended at the border have been as young as six.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has made clear he is concerned about the surge and that he believes it has been driven by the change from Trump to Biden.
Children play as people who are seeking asylum in the United States are gathered outside the El Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico.
“They see him as the migrant president, and so many feel they’re going to reach the United States,” Lopez Obrador said earlier this month after a meeting with Biden.
“We need to work together to regulate the flow, because this business can’t be tackled from one day to the next.”
Some migrants have even shown up at the border wearing T-shirts, styled in the manner of Biden’s election campaign merchandise, reading: “Biden, please let us in!”
Big increases in the number unaccompanied children pose particular difficulties for immigration officials. Under US law, unaccompanied children are only supposed to remain in immigration detention for three days but that timeframe has proven impossible to stick to with the current influx.
The need to enforce social distancing rules has also made it hard for officials to cope with the surge in arrivals. In recent days, the administration has opened new detention facilities in Texas and enlisted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help shelter migrant children.
Democrats are happiest when the public is focussed on issues such as education and healthcare. As a rule, it’s good news for conservatives when immigration is in the headlines.
That’s why a slew of Republicans have hot-footed it to the border region in Texas to highlight the issue in recent days.
“It’s more than a crisis, this is a human heartbreak,” Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy said during a visit this week. “This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration. There’s no other way to claim it than a Biden border crisis.”
A YouGov poll released this week found that 52 per cent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of immigration - significantly below his approval ratings on the pandemic or the economy.
As well as distracting from his achievements, the surge in unauthorised arrivals at the border will limit Biden’s ability to overhaul America’s immigration laws.
Biden wants to provide a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the US. That would be difficult to achieve at any time, let alone when the migration system is widely perceived to be out of control.
It’s one thing to promise an immigration system that is “fair, orderly and humane”. It’s far more difficult to deliver all three at once, as Biden is quickly learning.
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Trump Vindicated as Judge Rules Michigan Secretary of State Violated Election Laws
A judge in Michigan has vindicated President Trump by ruling that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, broke state law when she unilaterally changed election rules concerning absentee balloting in the 2020 election. This ruling legitimizes a key claim made by the Trump legal team in its challenges to the 2020 election.
A major change imposed by Benson was loosening the signature verification requirement for absentee ballots. Michigan Court of Claims Chief Judge Christopher Murray ruled that this change violated Michigan Administrative Procedures Act.
The court made the following conclusion:
…nowhere in this state’s election law has the Legislature indicated that signatures are to be presumed valid, nor did the Legislature require that signatures are to be accepted so long as there are any redeeming qualities in the application or return envelope as compared with the signature on file. Policy determinations like the one at issue — which places the thumb on the scale in favor of a signature’s validity — should be made pursuant to properly promulgated rules under the APA or by the Legislature.
Over 3.1 million Michiganders voted by absentee ballot in November. Biden “won” the state by just over 154,000 votes, according to the state-certified results.
Michigan was not the only state where Democrat state officials unilaterally changed election laws, so this ruling certainly raises legitimate doubts whether Biden truly won the election without invalid votes.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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