Johnson & Johnson's one-shot COVID-19 vaccine is highly effective against the Indian 'Delta' variant even after eight months

The American drug giant said there was only a small drop in potency against the highly transmissible variant compared to earlier versions of the virus.

The findings - in line with how other vaccines have fared against the mutant strain - will reassure the more than 12.4 million Americans who have been jabbed with J&J's shot.

There had been concerns that the rapid rise of the Delta variant in the US - where it makes up 26.1 percent of cases - could derail the country's hugely successful vaccine rollout.

But the fact that the UK has managed to keep deaths and hospital rates low, despite the variant accounting for 99 percent of cases in the country, has given confidence that the crisis can be kept under control in America.

It also means that the majority of the world's approved coronavirus vaccines have now been shown to be highly effective at preventing serious illness from the strain. 

The findings were detailed in a press release published by the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based firm on Thursday night. 

Experts took blood samples from eight volunteers who participated in early-stage trials of the vaccine.  

The samples were then exposed to the Delta variant and tested for antibody levels.

They found that levels of neutralizing antibodies only fell by 1.6-fold when tested against the Delta variant compared to the original strain.

'Today's newly announced studies reinforce the ability of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine to help protect the health of people globally,' said J&J Chief Scientific Officer Dr Paul Stoffels in a statement. 

'We believe that our vaccine offers durable protection against COVID-19 and elicits neutralizing activity against the Delta variant.'

'This adds to the robust body of clinical data supporting our single-shot vaccine's ability to protect against multiple variants of concern.'

In fact, the study found that neutralizing antibodies level fell more steeply against other variants, including 3.6-fold against the Beta variant, which originated in South Africa, and 3.4-fold against the Gamma variant, which originated in Brazil.

The levels were still high enough to be effective, but encouraging because these variants are far less widespread in the U.S. 

What's more, a sub-study conducted by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center looked at 20 volunteers and found that immune responses were still strong after eight months.

This included T-cells generated by the vaccine such as CD8+ T-cells, which seek out and destroy virus-infected cells. 

People had more of these antibodies eight months after being jabbed than they did 28 days after having the vaccine, it found.   

'Current data for the eight months studied so far show that the single-shot Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine generates a strong neutralizing antibody response that does not wane' said Dr Mathai Mammen, global head of research and development at J&J's Janssen vaccine arm, in a statement.  

'Rather, we observe an improvement over time. In addition, we observe a persistent and particularly robust, durable cellular immune response.'

Covid is now more like a 'bad cold' thanks to the effect of vaccines, a top epidemiologist has claimed after data showed symptoms of the disease are becoming milder across the board despite rising cases.

King's College London's Covid symptom study estimated there were 25,210 new cases every day in the UK last week, up by almost a third (31 per cent) from the previous seven-day spell.

It said there was a 50 per cent increase in the number of partially or fully vaccinated people catching the virus — but in most cases their symptoms were mild. More than 80 per cent of infections were among the unvaccinated. 

Professor Tim Spector, who leads Britain's biggest Covid surveillance study, said people catching the virus after being vaccinated suffered a milder form of the disease similar to a cold, with sneezing emerging as a new symptom.

'While rates of Covid infection are high, it's reassuring to see vaccinations protecting the vulnerable and deaths remain very low,' he said. 

ZOE Covid study data shows symptoms are more mild and are similar to those of a bad cold, with a runny nose, headache and a sore throat among the top symptoms for all groups. Sneezing has also emerged as a symptom among partially and fully vaccinated people.'

An earlier trial by J&J found that a single dose of its vaccine was 85 percent effective at preventing severe disease from Covid. It also reduces the risk of being hospitalized or dying from the virus among all age groups.       

However, J&J stressed that its vaccine provides protection against all if the so-called 'variants of concern'.

In the U.S., 200 million shots have been ordered, but only around 21.4 million have been delivered to states and 12.4 million have been administered.

The company has been plagued by several setback, including contamination problems at a Baltimore factory that helps manufacture the shot and pause after links to rare blood clots.

In April. the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was paused for 10 days after six women under the age of 50 developed CVST,.

This figure was later updated to include 28 people, including one 45-year-old woman who died.  

J&J doses are expected to arrive in the UK sometime this autumn after getting approval from the medicines regulator in late May.

The vaccine can be given to people aged 18 and over and is likely to be used as a booster jab for care home residents ahead of winter because it can be easily stored and transported at fridge temperatures.

The UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) will issue advice on exactly who should receive the Belgian-made jab before its officially deployed. 

There is a chance it could be restricted in younger age groups because of its link to extremely rare blood clots.

Like AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine, which is not being used in under-40s in Britain for the same reason, the J&J shot uses adenovirus technology to stimulate the immune system. 

This appears to trigger a devastating immune overreaction in a tiny number of people, mostly young and healthy. 

Trials have shown the vaccine - which US regulators approved in February - to be 67 per cent effective at blocking Covid symptoms from earlier forms of Covid. Other studies have shown it is even better at preventing patients falling severely ill.   

No10's Vaccine Taskforce originally secured 30million doses of the vaccine last year, based on predicted demand at the time.

But because of the huge success of UK's vaccination program, ministers reduced their order to 20m. 

In April, the European Medicines Agency ruled that the jab should come with a clear warning about a serious blood clotting disorder. It made the same recommendation for AstraZeneca's jab. 

In April, the firm itself asked Europe to pause the roll-out of the jab to allow experts to probe the clot cases thoroughly. It later concluded the risk was rare and urged all countries to keep using it. 

Officials insist the disorder - the same as the one seen in AstraZeneca's vaccine - is extremely rare but seems to be happening slightly more often in young people who have been vaccinated. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9748533/Johnson-Johnson-vaccine-effective-against-against-Indian-Delta-variant.html

Pfizer and Moderna COVID Vaccines May Provide ‘Persistent’ Protection: Study

The COVID-19 vaccines developed by Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech alliance both may provide lasting protection against the virus, researchers have said in a new study.

The peer-reviewed study, published on June 28 in Nature, found that the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines made by Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech team induced a “persistent” response within secondary lymphoid tissues, “enabling the generation of robust humoral immunity.”

The effect was most pronounced in people who had been previously infected with the CCP virus, with the vaccines also found to produce high levels of neutralizing antibodies against three emerging variants of the virus.

The implication of the findings is that people who received the mRNA vaccines may be protected over the long term—for years or, potentially, for the rest of their lives.

The study didn’t look into other COVID-19 vaccine technologies, such as Johnson & Johnson’s, which, instead of mRNA, uses a modified adenovirus to deliver genetic information from the CCP virus to human cells to produce an immune response.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told The New York Times that he doesn’t think the immune response would be as strong with non-mRNA-based vaccines.

It follows a separate study suggesting that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines—as well as the one produced by AstraZeneca—are broadly effective against the highly contagious Delta and Kappa strains of the virus.

While the Oxford University study, of which a peer-reviewed pre-proof has been published in Cell (pdf), found that both the convalescent and vaccine blood sera had a reduced ability to neutralize the Delta and Kappa variants as compared to “ancestral Wuhan related strains,” there was “no evidence of widespread antibody escape” as seen with the Beta (B.1.351, formerly “South Africa”) variant, “suggesting that the current generation of vaccines will provide protection against the B.1.617 lineage.”

However, the researchers noted that the reduced ability of the vaccine and convalescent sera to neutralize the Gamma and Kappa variants “may lead to some breakthrough infections.”

The World Health Organization’s chief scientist said recently that the Delta strain is becoming the globally dominant version of the disease.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently added a warning about the risk of developing heart inflammation to information about the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines. Health officials have said that the vaccine’s benefits outweigh the risks of developing heart inflammation.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/pfizer-and-moderna-covid-vaccines-may-provide-persistent-protection-study_3877571.html

Leftists motivated by 'malicious envy'

Chien-An Lin, Timothy Bates

   

Abstract

While theory predicts fairness motivates support for redistribution, tests have yielded near-zero effects. Here we propose the relevant evolved fairness motive operates within the community sharing relation, experienced as a unity motive to treat “all as one and none as more than one”. Study 1 (N = 403) supported this model, with a moderate (𝛽 = .15 CI[.06, .23]) significant effect of a communal fairness measure on support for redistribution, incremental to effects of compassion, envy, and self-interest. Study 2 (N=402) replicated with larger effect (𝛽 = .25 CI[.17, .33]). As distribution involves means as well as ends, we tested support for redistribution by coercive means. In both study 1 and 2, support for coercion was predicted by “ends justify the means” intuitions (instrumental harm: 𝛽 = .21 CI[.12, .31)] and .16 CI[.08, .25]). Communal fairness also predicted willingness to coerce (𝛽 = .15 CI[.05 .24] and .32 CI[.23 .41]). These five psychological motives accounted for 45% of support for redistribution, suggesting considerable value for political, economic, evolutionary, and ethical theory.

https://psyarxiv.com/3jq4c/

Woke Ideology Mimics Precursors to Totalitarian Slaughter, Experts Say

Some of the core tenets of the “woke” ideology spreading around the country mimic ideas used to justify many of the most horrendous atrocities of the past century, according to several experts.

A recently released documentary exploring the topic, called “Better Left Unsaid,” concludes that the self-identified “radical left” endorses four fundamental “truths” that they “hold to be self-evident,” noting that these tenets have also been used to justify and incite many of the worst massacres of the 20th century.

The first of the four claims is that “the world is best viewed through a group oppression narrative lens.”

The “woke” ideology is based on a set of quasi-Marxist theories that divide society into “oppressors” and the “oppressed” based on characteristics such as race, sex, class, or sexual proclivities. “Woke” is sometimes used interchangeably with Critical Race Theory (CRT), which is one of the more prominent ideologies that operate within this framework.

The second claim is that “evidence of oppression is the inequality between groups,” the documentary says. If the designated “oppressed” group does on average worse in some regard than the designated “oppressor” group, that is taken as virtually unassailable proof of “oppression.”

The third claim is that “peaceful dialog and understanding between the groups is impossible since the dominant group’s strategy is to retain its power.”

Woke theorists have posited that the “oppressed” have a uniquely valuable perspective on reality unavailable to the “oppressors.” Meanwhile, they say, “whiteness” or “white heteropatriarchy” can’t help but to try to maintain its “hegemony.” Even if it does things that benefit members of other groups, such as by abolishing slavery or giving women and blacks the right to vote, it’s still done out of self-interest and in order to further entrench its institutions and norms and thus ensure the “privilege” of its members.

Proponents of the ideology engage in dialogue between themselves, but with everybody else the communication is supposed to generally flow in one direction—that of acceptance of their views. Any challenge to the ideology is labeled as self-serving or even as an assault on the “oppressed.”

Finally, the ideology at least implicitly acknowledges that “because of the above, violence is justified to eradicate the inequities,” the documentary says.

“From my experience, they (to the degree they can be grouped together enough to call them ‘they’) tend to advocate for violence against those oppressing and equate it to laudatory behavior; hence, ‘punch a Nazi,’” author of the documentary, Curt Jaimungal, told The Epoch Times via email.

“I have catalogs of tweets, written statements, and videos of people ranging from students to [professors] explicitly calling for violence and downplaying the violence of those on the left when compared to the right,” he added, not because of intensity or frequency of such violence, but because of the so-called “nobleness of the extreme left’s position.”

These four tenets, Jaimungal demonstrated in the documentary, are common to many of the most brutal massacres and regimes of the 20th century, from the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to communist China and the Rwandan genocide.

In each case, an entire class of society is painted as unfairly privileged and as such inherently oppressive, with little regard to specific actions of the individual members of the group. Meanwhile, disagreement with or mere disinterest in this classification is taken as support for the perceived oppression. With reconciliation through dialog taken off the table, the only remaining recourse is conflict—a “revolutionary” action where violence is seen as inevitable and, ultimately, preferable.

“Too few people know about the ceaseless carnage that took place under the masthead of the isomers of equity,” Jaimungal narrates in the documentary.

He said he avoided using examples of atrocities committed as a consequence of the totalitarian nature of the various regimes.

“I am careful to only list or only talk about the deaths associated with the philosophical doctrine of group guilt and class guilt,” he said.

Proponents of socialism commonly argue that the movements that led to these tragedies were commandeered or hijacked by people that didn’t really believe in the ideology. But they have tended to level the argument retrospectively, after they or their like-minded predecessors initially endorsed the movements and nascent regimes, the documentary points out. Also, proponents usually stop short of detailing how the next attempt will prevent any supposed nonbelievers from taking over.

The comparison between the preludes to past massacres and the current manifestations of the woke ideology is a fair one, as long as it’s not taken as an absolute, according to Erec Smith, associate professor of Rhetoric and Composition at York College of Pennsylvania.

“We’re not saying [a massacre] is definitely going to happen, but we need to be cognizant and remember our history and be careful about what’s going on here,” he told The Epoch Times.

Jaimungal’s conclusions were also recently endorsed by several scholars of totalitarianism, all of whom are critical of woke ideology. They were invited to comment on the film by Pat Kambhampati, chemistry professor and head of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship at McGill University in Canada.

“The same ideas that gave rise to Curt’s movie and the discussion of communism, we see a lot of parallels and isomorphisms taking place in the West and within academia,” he said during a May 31 panel discussion on topics raised by the documentary.

Janice Fiamengo, retired English professor at the University of Ottawa and self-declared anti-feminist, backed Jaimungal’s argument during the panel discussion. She was also featured in the film.

“As soon as one establishes these oppressor groups and oppressed groups, then when you are speaking supposedly on behalf of the oppressed, you can do nearly anything,” she said.

Gad Saad, evolutionary psychology professor at Concordia University, put forth the point during the panel that people professing utopian goals have a tendency toward eliminating those who oppose them.

“Utopians believe that the world could be a perfect place except for this one group that is stopping the world from becoming a perfect place,” he said.

Another panelist, retired New York University professor of liberal studies Michael Rectenwald, linked the woke ideology’s potential to unleash totalitarian force to its postmodern roots.

Postmodernism introduced the idea of fundamental relativism, professing that there is no objective truth, but instead the powers that be establish as true whatever is in their interest.

While the documentary notes that this notion is itself a “truth claim” and thus undermines its own validity, Rectenwald pointed out that adoption of the notion has serious real-life implications.

“The problem with this is not simply that we have no criteria for truth claims with this kind of notion, but rather it leaves open the possibility that when it has the requisite power behind it then anything can be asserted and can be asserted with force,” he said.

He gave the example of the ideology behind the transgender movement sweeping through government institutions.

“The force of the state is behind it and they can say that if you don’t accept that your child is a boy or a girl when they are the other then you could go to jail for this … or you could lose custody of your child,” he said.

“So when my truth becomes as good or better than any objective truth then we get to this point where the requisite power is applied and therefore we get the kind of authoritarianism and totalitarianism that we saw in the Soviet Union where people were forced to maintain things they knew to be false.”

Jaimungal defended in his film not only physical truths, but argued that just as there are “preserved genes” in human DNA that stand virtually unchanged through time and would be catastrophic to meddle with, there are also “preserved memes”—ideas that stand true throughout history and are similarly crucial to maintain, timeless lessons one can find in many religious scriptures and ancient stories.

These ideas are ingrained in humans, but have also been “externalized,” meaning imprinted on the external world in the form of the written word, art, rituals, and so on, he says in the film.

“Our survival depends on these ‘externalized memes.’”

Clinical psychologist and professor Jordan Peterson touched upon this topic during the panel discussion, noting the damage to the Western mythos inflicted by certain scientific theories, particularly Darwinism, and the subsequent substitution of the religious underpinnings of Western culture by an ideological ersatz.

“I could say to the atheists among the group, you know, ‘You’re not too fond of religion. How are you feeling about its replacement?'” he said.

In an “intact culture” a person is “inculturated” by the age of about 18 into “a religious belief that saturates the entire culture,” he said.

“It’s granted to you, it gives you an identity, and that’s what your identity is.”

Western culture has become in this sense fragmented, he argued, as it now lacks such a comprehensive unifying ethos.

Students still come to universities with a “messianic” urge, craving an initiation of this sort, but what they’re offered instead is an ideology, which he described as “a parasite on an underlying religious structure.”

“A proper religious structure gives you a balanced view of the world, there’s characters for that negative part of nature, there’s characters for the positive part of nature, for the negative part of culture, for the positive part of culture. [It] gives you a view that enables you to look at the world and it’s existential permanences, I guess, in a manner that allows you to live a balanced life.”

Ideology, he said, doesn’t serve this purpose.

“You get indoctrinated into an ideology and you find where Satan is, you know, it’s not in you, it’s out there in the patriarchal oppressor, let’s say. And the thing about that is that it rings true mythologically and it is also true because every culture is oppressive to some degree and we’re all crushed as individuals by the dictates of arbitrary society. And kids get into the university and they’re taught this one-sided, lopsided doctrine with a utopian end and it matches their developmental needs perfectly,” he said.

If an ideology is accepted as an intimate part of one’s identity, it becomes difficult to let go of as it provides the person’s life meaning, Fiamengo noted.

“They would actually rather die than admit that they’re wrong,” she said.

Part of the solution, the panelists agreed, would be to restore universities to their original purpose of pursuing objective truth.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/woke-ideology-mimics-precursors-to-totalitarian-slaughter-experts-say_3865035.html

Israel faces fresh Covid surge and calls for teens to be jabbed as even the fully-vaccinated catch Delta variant of the virus

Israel is facing a fresh surge of coronavirus cases leading to calls for teenagers to be given jabs as even the fully vaccinated are catching the Delta variant of the virus.

Israel recorded 125 new cases on Monday - the most per day since April, in a country where more than half the population has been fully vaccinated.

The country's latest outbreaks were identified in several schools during random testing and came after Israel rolled back nearly all of its coronavirus restrictions.

According to local newspaper Haaretz nine fully-vaccinated teachers in two schools were among those who contracted the virus, as were three fully-vaccinated members of the military, the Israeli Defence Forces announced.

At the peak of the country's outbreak in January, Israel was recording some 10,000 daily cases but has since been able to get it under control thanks to its world-leading vaccination programme.

On Tuesday, newly-elected Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned of a 'new outbreak' of coronavirus in Israel after the rise in infections, that he said was likely due to returning travellers carrying the Delta variant.

'Our goal is to end it, to take a bucket of water and pour it on the fire when the fire is still small,' Bennett said at Ben Gurion airport, where the government announced an expanded testing facility would be set up.

Bennett noted that a recent spike in infections appeared to be due to the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus that likely came from overseas.

An outbreak in the town of Binyamina, north of Tel Aviv, saw more than 1,000 people quarantined and appeared to be due to travellers returning from Cyprus, he said. 'Whoever doesn't have to fly abroad, please don't,' Bennett added.

Israel remains largely closed to non-citizens.

Last month, the country expanded its vaccine eligibility to include teenagers, but left the decision up to parents.

Defence minister Benny Gantz has ordered the military and the civil defence to renew its efforts to test the population and to keep the contract department open that was shut down.

On Tuesday, the health ministry announced that 49,044 tests had been conducted over the past day, with a positivity rate of 0.3 percent.

Bennett, who ousted former premier Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month, said he was reconvening a 'corona cabinet' to handle the challenge.

'We reached an initial decision to treat this as a new outbreak,' Bennett said.

Israel launched a sweeping vaccination campaign after obtaining millions of doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

More than 55 percent of Israel's population - some 5.2 million people - have received both doses of the vaccine.

Nearly a third of the new cases recorded in the past week have been found in vaccinated people, with many of the new infections being the delta variant.

Hezi Levi, the health ministry director-general, speaking to Israel's Channel 12 on Monday said that most of the cases among vaccinated individuals are mild, but called on parents to have their children vaccinated.

Bennett urged parents to get their children vaccinated too, calling for children aged 12 and older to get jabs 'as quickly as possible'.

Health ministry figures show that young people aged 10-19 were the most affected by the virus last month.

On June 15, Israel lifted its requirement to wear face masks in enclosed public places - one of the last measures in force to fight the country's outbreak.

IN total, the country has recorded over 840,000 novel coronavirus cases, including 6,428 deaths.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9713987/Israel-faces-fresh-Covid-surge-calls-teens-jabbed-fully-vaccinated-catch-Delta.html

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New Study Links Ivermectin to ‘Large Reductions’ in COVID-19 Deaths

The use of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin could lead to “large reductions” in COVID-19 deaths and may have a “significant impact” on the pandemic globally, according to a recent pre-print review based on peer-reviewed studies.

For the study (pdf), published June 17 in the American Journal of Therapeutics, a group of scientists reviewed the clinical trial use of ivermectin, which has antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, in 24 randomized controlled trials involving just more than 3,400 participants. The researchers sought to assess the efficacy of ivermectin in reducing infection or mortality in people with COVID-19 or at high risk of getting it.

Using multiple methods of sequential analysis, the researchers concluded with a moderate level of confidence that the drug reduced the risk of death in COVID-19 patients by an average of 62 percent, at a 95 percent confidence interval of 0.19–0.79, in a sample of 2,438 patients.

Among hospitalized COVID-19 patients, the risk of death was found to be 2.3 percent among those treated with the drug, compared to 7.8 percent for those who weren’t, according to the review.

“Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease,” the authors wrote.

Since the start of the pandemic, both observational and randomized studies have evaluated ivermectin as a treatment for, and as prevention against, COVID-19 infection.

“A review by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance summarized findings from 27 studies on the effects of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infection, concluding that ivermectin ‘demonstrates a strong signal of therapeutic efficacy’ against COVID-19,” the researchers wrote, referring to one recent review, which was based on data from both peer-reviewed studies and pre-print manuscripts.

They cited another recent review that concluded that ivermectin reduced deaths by as much as 75 percent, while noting that neither the National Institutes of Health in the United States nor the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended the use of ivermectin outside clinical trials for use against COVID-19.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in a note on “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19,” warns that it has received “multiple reports of patients who have required medical support and been hospitalized after self-medicating with ivermectin intended for horses.”

“Using any treatment for COVID-19 that’s not approved or authorized by the FDA, unless part of a clinical trial, can cause serious harm,” the FDA said in the note, adding that it hasn’t reviewed data to support the use of ivermectin in COVID-19 patients.

The WHO said in March that “the current evidence on the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients is inconclusive” and that, until more data becomes available, the agency recommends that “the drug only be used within clinical trials.”

The authors of the efficacy study argued, however, that the drug has an “established safety profile through decades of use” and “could play a critical role in suppressing or even ending the SARS-CoV2 pandemic.”

“The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally,” they wrote in the study abstract.

The authors noted in their publication that all the studies on which they based their conclusions have been peer-reviewed.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/new-study-links-ivermectin-to-large-reductions-in-covid-19-deaths_3867278.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

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

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

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UK: Asthma inhalers can speed up Covid recovery by three days - boosting hopes of an end to lockdown

Using an asthma inhaler can cut the amount of time it takes to recover from Covid, MPs have been told.

Ministers say doctors have prescribed the respiratory aids in some circumstances which has shown in some cases to reduce recovery by three days.

As a result Sir Graham Brady, from the Covid Recovery Group of Tory MPs, suggested the Government should make more use of them, according to the Telegraph.

He said in the newspaper: 'If the average length of stay in a hospital is now eight days, and you can reduce that by three days typically by using inhalers, why the hell haven't they done that?'

Health minister Jo Churchill replied guidance has been given to clinicians to consider prescribing inhaled budesonide, a drug most commonly taken through an inhaler to treat asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, on a case-by-case basis.

She said: 'The department will continue to monitor the results as more detailed data and analysis from the trial becomes available and stand ready to adjust guidance should this be appropriate.

'Clinical guidance has been issued for on a case-by-case basis, but inhaled budesonide is not currently recommended as the standard of care in the UK.'

The news has boosted hopes of an end of lockdown for good on July 19.

Earlier this year it was reported Coronavirus-infected Britons can now be prescribed inhalers on the NHS after experts found a commonly used asthma drug can help patients recover faster.

Budesonide will be the first treatment specifically for Covid patients to take at home – all other medical breakthroughs so far have been for hospital use.

Oxford University academics said recovery time was three days shorter, on average.

Professor Richard Hobbs, one of the experts running the study, called the discovery a 'significant milestone for this pandemic'.

Professor Gail Hayward, who worked on the trial and also works as a GP, said in April: 'This is the first time a treatment has been shown to be beneficial for patients in the community – and the majority of patients with Covid are in the community...

'For the first time in this pandemic I now have evidence for a treatment to offer my patients at home.

'If I was trying to think of a treatment for the community it needs to be relatively cheap, easy to use and have few side effects – budesonide has all of these.'

Professor Bafadhel told a briefing: 'What we know with inhaled budesonide is that it works at the site where SARS-CoV-2 is likely to be causing its biggest effect.

'Corticosteroids are widely known to reduce inflammation and that's known from studies of other viruses...

'In the lab they've reduced the viral replication of SARS-CoV-2 specifically and we also know inhaled corticosteroids reduce expression of the ACE-2 receptor, and that's an important receptor for SARS-CoV-2.

'The findings are something we should be excited about.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9705673/Asthma-inhalers-speed-Covid-recovery-three-days-boosting-hopes-end-lockdown.html

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Trump's top ten 'we were right' list: big tech is awful at identifying 'fake news'

Trump just released a video listing TEN examples of either true stories Big Tech deemed “fake news” and censored – or fake stories Big Tech allowed to stand and be spread.

Please read this list. And as you do, think of the millions of lives lost and harmed as a result of these lies and this censorship. The trillions of dollars of wealth destroyed. The election outcomes lyingly warped.

The list:

Hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment of – and prophylactic against – the China Virus.

The Virus came from a Chinese lab – not a bat in a wet market.

Hunter Biden’s laptop was real – not a Russian hoax.

Trump did not clear Lafayette Square Park for a photo-op.

The Russian bounty story in Afghanistan was a lie.

Trump said the Virus vaccines would be ready in less than a year. Big Tech and everyone else deemed that “fake news” – and that it would take 3-5 years. Multiple vaccines were ready in less than nine months.

Blue States entered into extreme virus lockdowns. Red States did not. Big Tech et al preemptively declared the lockdowns the only way to go – the more virulent and all-encompassing the better. That Red States were putting millions of lives at risk.

Now the data is in – and none of Big Tech’s declarations were even remotely true. The Red States were right.

Trump and Republicans have all along said schools should be open. Because the science right away showed almost no children got sick – and none transmitted the virus. Big Tech declared this heresy and “fake news.”

Trump’s southern border policies were declared to be ineffective and anti-human. Even though illegal border crossings diminished dramatically – leading prospective crossers to decide not to come.

Biden reversed Trump’s regime. And we now have a massive border crisis. Illegal border crossings are up 1,400%. Tens of thousands of children are living in squalor in makeshift housing – with tens of thousands of more surely coming.

Because Biden’s policies are tacit approval of their doing so. And entering along with the people – are massive amounts of narcotics.

We are FINALLY beginning to actually audit the actual voting in the 2020 election – beginning in Arizona. After months of Big Tech et al censoring any concern about illegal voting because it was “fake news” – does anyone who’s paid any attention at all totally dismiss the possibility that vote tally reversals will follow?

These are ten HUGE examples of Big Tech warping the news. And American life. All in the last four years – most in just the last year.

And it doesn’t include the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. The far-and-away greatest political scandal in US history.

Big Tech did all of this lying and censoring – in the name of their allegedly addressing “fake news.”

Big Tech should get out of the “fake news’ business. Because they are AWFUL at it.

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/trumps-top-ten-we-were-right-list-big-tech-is-awful-at-identifying-fake-news?vgo_ee=8hjBct8wxos7yZwE%2FDdWXL35hO7C%2FF3J%2FgQB9Uu3XAY%3D

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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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Antiviral drug shown to save lives of covid-19 patients in hospital

People who get seriously ill from covid-19 could be offered a new lifeline with the first antiviral drug shown to save lives in patients admitted to hospital, researchers have said.

The drug, a combination of two antibodies developed by Regeneron, reduced the risk of death when given to people with severe covid-19 who hadn’t mounted a natural antibody response of their own.

The chances of these patients needing to be put on a ventilator were also reduced, as was the duration of their hospital stay.

In the Recovery trial between 18 September 2020 and 22 May 2021, 9785 patients admitted to hospital with covid-19 in the UK were randomly allocated to receive the usual care plus the antibody combination treatment, or usual care alone.

Of these, about one-third were seronegative, meaning they had no natural antibody response of their own, and half were seropositive, meaning they had already developed natural antibodies against the virus. For one-sixth of those involved in the study, their antibody status was unknown.

Among patients who received usual care alone, mortality within 28 days of being admitted to the trial was 30 per cent in those without an antibody response, compared with 15 per cent in those who were seropositive at the start of the study.

For patients who had no antibody response, the treatment reduced the chance of them dying within 28 days by a fifth, compared with usual care alone.

For every 100 such patients treated with the antibody combination, there would be six fewer deaths, researchers say.

“This is in some ways a first,” said Martin Landray at the University of Oxford, joint chief investigator of the study. “This is an antiviral treatment that is used later on – because these patients are severe, they’ve gone into hospital – and has a demonstrated clear impact on survival, and on those other outcomes.

“So in its own right, it’s an important result because these patients are among the sickest patients, and here we now have a treatment we did not have before.”

For the seronegative patients given the treatment, the duration of hospital stay was four days shorter than the usual care group, and the proportion of patients discharged by day 28 was greater.

The treatment made no difference in patients who had mounted their own antibody response by the time the study started.

“These results are very exciting,” said Peter Horby, the other joint chief investigator, also from the University of Oxford. “The hope was that, by giving a combination of antibodies targeting the Sars-CoV-2 virus, we would be able to reduce the worst manifestations of covid-19. There was, however, great uncertainty about the value of antiviral therapies in late-stage covid-19 disease.

“It is wonderful to learn that even in advanced covid-19 disease, targeting the virus can reduce mortality in patients who have failed to mount an antibody response of their own.”

The researchers say they aren’t sure when the treatment will be approved for use in the UK. It is unlikely to be rolled out quickly as the drug isn’t particularly easy to get hold of and patients would need antibody testing on their admission to hospital – which isn’t currently in place.

The study has been published as a pre-print on medRxiv and hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed.

The treatment uses a combination of two monoclonal antibodies (casirivimab and imdevimab, known as REGEN-COV in the US) that bind specifically to two different sites on the coronavirus spike protein, neutralising the ability of the virus to infect cells.

Previous studies in people in the community showed that the treatment reduced viral load, shortened the time to resolution of symptoms and significantly reduced the risk of being admitted to hospital or death.

Stephen Powis, national medical director for NHS England, said: “These encouraging results from this trial carried out in and by the NHS suggest a new treatment option to help save the lives of some patients hospitalised with covid and are the latest example of research and innovation for patients, which the NHS has played a role in during the pandemic.

“Studies have also suggested the same treatments might help similar patients in the community avoid going to hospital in the first place, which is why yesterday the health service chief executive, Sir Simon Stevens, asked the NHS to rapidly establish a new monoclonal antibody service so we are ready to offer these drugs if backed by regulators.”

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2281016-antiviral-drug-shown-to-save-lives-of-covid-19-patients-in-hospital/?utm_source=nsnew&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NSNEW_170621

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YouTube Suspends Sen. Ron Johnson From Uploading Videos Over COVID-19, Hydroxychloroquine Claims

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) was suspended by YouTube and cannot upload videos for seven days, with the Google-owned video-sharing platform accusing him of spreading misinformation about COVID-19 treatments.

“YouTube’s arrogant Covid censorship continues,” he wrote in confirming the development. “How many lives will be lost as a result? How many lives could have been saved with a free exchange of medical ideas? This suppression of speech should concern every American.”

A spokesperson for YouTube told Fox News that one of Johnson’s videos was taken down because it violated its policies and claimed that he was spreading “medical misinformation.”

“We removed the video in accordance with our COVID-19 medical misinformation policies, which don’t allow content that encourages people to use Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus,” the spokesperson said. The Epoch Times has contacted the company for comment.

But by doing so, Johnson said that YouTube’s move to censor him suggests they have “accumulated too much unaccountable power.”

“Big Tech and mainstream media believe they are smarter than medical doctors who have devoted their lives to science and use their skills to save lives,” Johnson said in a statement to news outlets on Friday. “They have decided there is only one medical viewpoint allowed, and it is the viewpoint dictated by government agencies. How many lives will be lost as a result? How many lives could have been saved with a free exchange of medical ideas?”

In the video that was taken down, according to The Federalist, Johnson criticized federal bureaucrats for trying to dissuade the public from taking, or preventing them from knowing about, hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19.

“It always baffled me that there was such a concerted effort to deny the American public the type of robust exploration research into early treatment early in this pandemic,” Johnson said, saying that he wanted more focus on the topic and said studies have suggested that “both hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin” are “incredibly safe” drugs.

Hydroxychloroquine, notably, was touted by President Donald Trump during COVID-19 task force briefings at the White House.

A recent study from medRxiv found that a combination of hydroxychloroquine, which is prescribed for malaria, and zinc may increase the COVID-19 survival rate by around 200 percent in some cases where a patient has a severe case and requires ventilation.

“We found that when the cumulative doses of two drugs, HCQ and AZM, were above a certain level, patients had a survival rate 2.9 times the other patients,” the study’s conclusion said.

But last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning against using hydroxychloroquine, citing potential side-effects such as “serious heart rhythm problems and other safety issues, including blood and lymph system disorders, kidney injuries, and liver problems and failure.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/youtube-suspends-sen-ron-johnson-from-uploading-videos-over-covid-19-hydroxychloroquine-claims_3854887.html

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Russian oil imports have set a new record in the United States despite the strained relationship between Washington and Moscow

Industry experts believe the Biden administration’s climate policies will make the country more dependent on foreign oil producers.

The United States imported record levels of crude oil from Russia in March and is expected to continue importing at high levels in coming months, according to the Western Energy Alliance, a trade association that represents 200 independent natural gas and oil producers in the United States.

Imports of crude oil and petroleum products from Russia reached 22.9 million barrels in March, the highest level since August of 2010, according to International Energy Agency (IEA). Of the total amount, crude oil imports from Russia stood at 6.1 million barrels. Russia has become the third-largest oil exporter to the United States.

High levels of oil shipment from Russia have continued since March, according to ClipperData, a commodity intelligence company that monitors cargo shipments worldwide.

“Last month we saw a record 5.75 million barrels of Russian crude discharged in the US, and we’re projecting a further record this month of 7.5mn bbls,” ClipperData analysts wrote on Twitter on June 7.

Critics argue that Biden’s climate agenda is hard on the U.S. oil industry but soft on foreign producers.

“It’s disturbing to our industry that the Biden administration goes out of its way to disadvantage the American producer while buttressing the Iranian and Russian industries,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, told The Epoch Times.

The recent spike in Russian oil imports has followed the “misguided climate policies” of the administration, including ending the Keystone XL pipeline and pausing new oil and natural gas permitting on public lands and waters, according to Sgamma.

President Joe Biden has “tipped us into oil dependence on Russia just a year after complete independence,” Sgamma said, calling it “a geopolitical gift” to the Kremlin.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude surpassed the $70 mark last week, reaching the highest level in over two years. Top commodity traders now believe oil prices could see $100 per barrel due to supply constraints. Oil hasn’t traded above $100 per barrel since 2014.

“There’s been kind of a dearth of investment in fossil fuels, which is going to leave us undersupplied as we go forward,” Phil Flynn, senior energy analyst at the Price Future Group, told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.

He noted that the Biden administration’s climate policies, which will reduce the supply of oil and gas, have been a major factor in driving the prices.

“U.S. oil production has fallen by 1.715 million barrels [per day] from a year ago, so a large part of that void is being filled by Russia,” Flynn wrote in a recent op-ed on Fox Business.

“During Trump’s term, America was competing with Russia and Saudi Arabia to be the world’s dominant oil and gas producer, yet under Biden, we are retreating from that race in the name of climate change,” he wrote.

An increase in oil and gas prices will help boost Russia’s energy and political dominance, he argued, criticizing Biden’s recent move that will allow Russia to supply natural gas to Germany.

The Biden administration last month waived Trump-era sanctions against the company building the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline that links Russia and Germany.

The pipeline is expected to increase the dependence of the region on Russia for natural gas. Construction on the 764-mile pipeline that began in 2018 was a source of friction between Washington and its European allies.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/us-reliance-on-russian-oil-surges-to-record-highs-amid-tensions_3863635.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

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

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

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A Group Of Parents Sent Their Kids' Face Masks to A Lab for Analysis. Here's What They Found

We've been told for well over a year that widespread forced public masking should be implemented because, even if only moderately to slightly to negligibly effective at curbing the spread of COVID-19, there are ZERO drawbacks. 

"What's the harm?" they ask.

"It's only a minor inconvenience," they bleat.

"If it saves ONE LIFE, it's worth it!" they implore.

Meanwhile, we on Team Reality have not only continued to point to real-world data that shows masking to be entirely ineffective, we've also maintained that forced public masking, especially long-term, has negative societal and even health ramifications that the powers-that-be are all-too-happy to ignore in subservience to their newfound face mask god. 

It only stands to reason that one of those health ramifications would be the fact that millions of people, particularly children, have been forced to wear and carry around pieces of cloth they've continually breathed through for hours on end. What lurking pathogens might be found on these disgusting contraptions being incessantly handled, stuck in pockets, and mindlessly tossed on books, tables, and desks? Well, one group of Florida parents sent a batch of masks worn by their children to a lab to find out. And yeah, you'll probably need to make sure you aren't eating dinner anytime soon before you digest THESE results. 

Via press release:

Gainesville, FL (June 16, 2021) – A group of parents in Gainesville, FL, concerned about potential harms from masks, submitted six face masks to a lab for analysis. The resulting report found that five masks were contaminated with bacteria, parasites, and fungi, including three with dangerous pathogenic and pneumonia-causing bacteria. No viruses were detected on the masks, although the test is capable of detecting viruses.

The analysis detected the following 11 alarmingly dangerous pathogens on the masks:

* Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumonia) 

* Mycobacterium tuberculosis (tuberculosis) 

* Neisseria meningitidis (meningitis, sepsis) 

* Acanthamoeba polyphaga (keratitis and granulomatous amebic encephalitis) 

* Acinetobacter baumanni (pneumonia, blood stream infections, meningitis, UTIs— resistant to antibiotics) 

* Escherichia coli (food poisoning)

* Borrelia burgdorferi (causes Lyme disease)

* Corynebacterium diphtheriae (diphtheria)

* Legionella pneumophila (Legionnaires' disease) 

* Staphylococcus pyogenes serotype M3 (severe infections—high morbidity rates) 

* Staphylococcus aureus (meningitis, sepsis)

Half of the masks were contaminated with one or more strains of pneumonia-causing bacteria. One-third were contaminated with one or more strains of meningitis-causing bacteria. One-third were contaminated with dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens. In addition, less dangerous pathogens were identified, including pathogens that can cause fever, ulcers, acne, yeast infections, strep throat, periodontal disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and more.

The face masks studied were new or freshly-laundered before wearing and had been worn for 5 to 8 hours, most during in-person schooling by children aged 6 through 11. One was worn by an adult. A t-shirt worn by one of the children at school and unworn masks were tested as controls. No pathogens were found on the controls. Proteins found on the t-shirt, for example, are not pathogenic to humans and are commonly found in hair, skin, and soil.

A parent who participated in the study, Ms. Amanda Donoho, commented that this small sample points to a need for more research: “We need to know what we are putting on the faces of our children each day. Masks provide a warm, moist environment for bacteria to grow.”

These local parents contracted with the lab because they were concerned about the potential of contaminants on masks that their children were forced to wear all day at school, taking them on and off, setting them on various surfaces, wearing them in the bathroom, etc. This prompted them to send the masks to the University of Florida’s Mass Spectrometry Research and Education Center for analysis.

Appetizing, eh? Of course, nothing above, or anything else, will deter the extremists in the masking cult, some of whom now want to see masking in schools forever. 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scottmorefield/2021/06/15/a-group-of-parents-sent-their-kids-face-masks-to-a-lab-for-analysis-heres-what-they-found-n2591047

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Florida Appeals Court Just Dealt A Devastating Blow To Forced Masking

A Florida appellate court delivered a devastating blow to government-induced forced public masking in the state on Friday with a narrow 2-1 decision that finally took into account citizen privacy rights that have often been ignored throughout the pandemic.

In overturning and sending back for reconsideration the decision of a circuit judge in favor of Alachua County's mask requirement, the 1st District Court of Appeal panel cited the state Supreme Court's interpretation of privacy rights "so broad as to include the complete freedom of a person to control his own body," Fox13 reported.

A panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal, in a 2-1 decision, said Alachua County Circuit Judge Donna Keim did not properly consider the privacy rights of plaintiff Justin Green before she rejected a request for a temporary injunction against the mask requirement.

"The trial court simply looked at the right asserted by Green too narrowly, relying on the wrong privacy jurisprudence," said the 13-page majority opinion, written by Judge Adam Tanenbaum and joined by Judge Robert Long. "The right to be let alone by government does exist in Florida, as part of a right of privacy that our (Florida) Supreme Court has declared to be fundamental. 

… (The Supreme Court) has construed this fundamental right to be so broad as to include the complete freedom of a person to control his own body. Under this construction, a person reasonably can expect not to be forced by the government to put something on his own face against his will. Florida’s constitutional right to privacy, then, necessarily is implicated by the nature of the county’s mask mandate."

The majority stopped short of declaring the Alachua County requirement unconstitutional but sent the case back to the lower court for reconsideration.

Judge Joseph Lewis' 15-page dissent predictably appealed to forced masking as a "temporary and de minimus interference with a person’s public interactions in response to a global pandemic," but Tanenbaum and Long - both appointed to the bench by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis - carried the day.

While Lewis also tried to argue that the case was moot because DeSantis' executive order in May preventing local governments from requiring masks, the majority pointed out that counties could always reissue orders at a future time.

"Because of the nature of the various emergency orders that we have seen and the county’s continued commitment to public mask wearing, we are not convinced that this is the last that we will see of this issue," Tanenbaum wrote in a footnote.

Later in the opinion, however, the majority appeared to acknowledge that the circuit judge might not have a case to reconsider.

"We remand for a new proceeding that presumes the unconstitutionality of the mask mandate, in the event there still is some mask mandate that remains to be litigated," the opinion said.

... Green, who operates a nursery business, took the lawsuit to the Tallahassee-based appeals court after Keim refused to grant a temporary injunction in May 2020.

Interestingly, Fox13 reported that the decision from Tanenbaum and Long "relied heavily on a 2017 Florida Supreme Court decision blocking a law that sought to require women to wait 24 hours before having abortions."

Hey, my body my choice, right? Except, in this case, nobody is actually getting killed because masks have never done squat to stop or even slightly curb the spread of COVID-19 or any other respiratory virus.

Florida state representative Anthony Sabatini called the decision a "huge legal win" for liberty.

This is how it's done, folks. The people trying to force you to cover your face with a disgusting bacteria collector in the name of 'public health' - with absolutely zero science or data on their side to support their claims - have always been the aggressors here, and using the courts everywhere possible to push back is definitely the right move.

It's hard to predict what will eventually happen with this case, but the decision does underscore just how important judicial appointments are, even at the state level. DeSantis appointed both of these judges, and he also has appointed three of the seven judges on Florida's Supreme Court.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scottmorefield/2021/06/12/huge-legal-win-florida-appeals-court-just-dealt-a-devastating-blow-to-forced-masking-n2590893

What the Rich Don’t Admit About the Poor

The above heading occurs above a recent NYT article by Ezra Klein.

Klein is a smart young Jewish writer who writes persuasively in favour of Leftist causes. Like just about all leftist writers, Klein's persuasiveness depends on him leaving out half of the argument concerning his topic. The article concerned is a case in point The conservative side of his argument is glided over.

What he says (rightly) is that America still depends heavily on manual labour and that such labour is normally poorly paid. He regards that as outrageous.

So what is his solution? You will never guess: more government spending financed by big tax rises.How unoriginal can you get? Concern over income disparities goes back a very long way. The Soviets never solved it and a very wise Jewish teacher once told us: The poor ye always have with you

How does Klein deal with such facts? He doesn't. Klein just conveys outrage, not any kind of fully reasoned argument.

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Inflation Is a Middle Class Tax Hike

Rapidly rising prices for all manner of goods and services are hitting us all hard.

It seems like just last month that we were expressing concern over rising inflation. Oh, right — it was. The Consumer Price Index (CP) jumped 4.2% in April. May said, “Hold my beer,” and saw a spike of 5% year over year.

CNBC crunches the numbers and right up top emphasizes the bad news:

fastest pace since August 2008

higher than Wall Street expectations

The 3.8% rise in the core inflation rate, which excludes food and energy prices, was the sharpest increase in nearly three decades.

There’s not much sugar coating here — the economic news is not good. Supply chains are broken. Companies can’t find enough workers, and the ones they can find are commanding higher wages. Inflated prices are largely a symptom of these underlying ailments.

Heather Boushey, a member of the White House Counsel of Economic Advisors, shrugged off the report as good news: “Today’s data on inflation is the latest indicator that things are both moving in the right direction and that we have supply-chain hiccups.”

“Hiccups”? We realize that having to wait a few months for a recliner or a bicycle is truly a First World Problem. But this is also not the America Joe Biden promised us, and it’s a far cry from the roaring American economy Donald Trump was fueling before the pandemic.

The Federal Reserve’s response? Apathy. “Though the inflation readings are well above anything seen since the 2008-09 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve has been largely dismissive of the numbers,” says CNBC. “Central bank officials believe the current rise is due to temporary factors that will abate as the year goes on and look higher because of comparisons to the year-ago period, when much of the economic activity remained restricted due to pandemic precautions.”

There is some truth to that, but it’s far from the full picture. As it turns out, you cannot shut down much of the economy and then have the government flood the economy with $6 trillion in “magic money” and not have prices increase because of the havoc that wreaks on supply and demand.

The same experts who totally underestimated the inflation rate are telling us this is no big deal and prices will recede before long. That’s no doubt true of some things like lumber and houses, but it’s certainly not guaranteed, and it’s perhaps even unlikely for most goods and services. Higher prices will be the new floor.

“Chipotle executives announced this week the fast-casual chain will be raising prices by about 4 percent to offset some of the costs of the tighter labor market. Procter & Gamble warned customers earlier this year to expect mid- to high-single-digit percentage point price increases on staples like diapers and tampons,” reports The Dispatch. In fact, “The May 2021 NFIB Small Business Economic Trends survey found 48 percent of small businesses reported raising their prices, compared with just 5 percent that reported lowering them.”

Given that generous unemployment benefits have raised expectations for wages — just about at Democrats’ preferred $15 an hour, as it so happens — companies are going to be paying more for labor over the long term. And the supply disruptions show no sign of abating, which only exacerbates price problems.

That’s a middle class tax hike if we ever saw one.

But there’s also the national picture, which political analyst Kevin Williamson elucidates:

The worrisome, if not quite worst-case, scenario is this: We start to suffer genuinely problematic inflation, the Fed jacks up interest rates to stabilize prices, the cost of borrowing for the U.S. government goes up substantially, the cost of financing the debt rises from 8 percent of the budget to 12 percent of the budget and then appears set to keep on marching up from there, the economy goes into recession, and Washington has a choice — it can cut back spending during a recession, thereby almost certainly deepening that recession, or it can go even more deeply into debt at a time when the cost of debt service already is climbing, thereby making both the total debt and the cost of financing it that much worse.

“This,” he concludes, “is where fiscal crises and sovereign-debt crises come from.”

https://patriotpost.us/articles/80533-inflation-is-a-middle-class-tax-hike-2021-06-11

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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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Donald Trump has reeled off the times he was blasted for spreading lies and conspiracy theories - only to later be proven right.

Speaking via satellite link from his Bedminster, New Jersey golf course at the Frank Speech Rally in New Richmond, Wisconsin the former president recalled how he'd been blasted for saying hydroxychloroquine was a treatment for COVID, that the virus leaked from a Wuhan virus lab, and that Hunter Biden's laptop was real. 

He said: 'We were right! Listen to this: Hydroxychloroquine works. The virus came from a Chinese lab - it just came out. Hunter Biden’s laptop was real. They tried to say it was made by Russia. Russia. Russia. Russia,' he started.

‘Lafayette Square was not cleared for a photo op. That just came out and I want to thank the Inspector General for having the courage to come out with the truth. The ‘Russian Bounties’ story was fake. Remember that? We produce vaccines before the end of 2020 in record time.'

Trump touted hydroxy - previously used as an anti-malaria drug, throughout last spring, and even took it as a precaution. He was condemned for doing so, with medics saying there was no evidence the treatment helped COVID.

But preliminary research released earlier this week showed hydroxychloroquine can increase survival rates in seriously-ill COVID patients by 200 per cent.

Trump has long claimed COVID may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He was dismissed as a quack over that theory throughout much of 2020. It is now being taken far more seriously, although no definitive proof of where COVID came from has been established. 

He has repeatedly attacked liberal-leaning media outlets for failing to cover the damaging contents of Hunter Biden's laptop, and was cleared earlier this week of claims he'd cleared protesters from outside the White House to stage a photo opportunity amid George Floyd protests last year.

Trump also reminded the crowd of how he'd been shot down when claiming COVID vaccines would be ready by the end of 2020 - only to later be proven spectacularly right. The first approved vaccines were administered in the United States on December 15 2020. 

He said: 'The vaccines are saving the country and frankly the world. This would have been another 1917 situation where you lost a 100 million people like in the Spanish flu. Everybody said it would take 3,4,5 years. Don’t even do it because it’s going to take so long. I got it done in less than nine months. All of the people that have been able to get their shots. Nobody would have been able to get it yet. But remember, it’s also about freedom, so it’s your choice.'

The former president also discussed the fraudulent 2020 election which he continues to claim he won, before rallying the gathered crowd with his MAGA  message and the ongoing movement. 

Trump made his remarks during a rally organized by conspiracy theorist MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a staunch supporter of the former president. 

Trump together with Lindell promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election with Trump saying that it was 'rigged' by President Joe Biden and the Democrats, while bemoaning the fact he was no longer allowed on social media. 

The former president has yet to share any definitive proof that last year's election was rigged, despite employing a large team of lawyers to do so.  

'We do press releases now because we were banned from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They want to silence us because of the election. Cancel culture, call it what you will, but the reason is because of the election,' Trump said. 'They know the results. They know what really happened. That’s why if you go to any place, and you will see the Democrats don’t want recounts. They don’t want audits.    

During his Saturday remarks, Trump insisted the 2020 election was 'totally rigged.' 

'The election was rigged like never before. We got 'em by surprise four years ago and then we got 12 million more votes. Think about it, we got 63 million votes and we won, and then we got 75 million votes and they say we lost. But we didn't lose. If you win Miami, if you win Florida, and Ohio and add Iowa. Nobody won those states and lost. We were supposed to lose 25 seats and we gained 16 in the House of Representatives.

'If it wasn't for me, right now the Senate would be 60-40 against,' Trump argued during the event.

He claimed that Democrats would have 10 more seats than they currently have in the evenly split legislative chamber of Congress. 'Because I made teleconference calls—they call them town hall calls—speaking to tens of thousands of people, for congressional candidates and senators,' the former president said.

'And we would be at 60-40 against instead of 50-50,' Trump added, before attacking the GOP Senate minority leader. 'And unfortunately Mitch McConnell, with what he was doing, hurt us very, very badly in Georgia. We lost those two seats. We should have never lost those two seats.'

Trump has repeatedly criticized and attacked McConnell, after the Kentucky Republican condemned his actions leading up to the January 6 riots targeting the U.S. Capitol. 

Although McConnell did not join seven GOP senators in voting to convict Trump for inciting the violence, he refused to defend Trump and blamed him directly for the assault. 

Dozens of election challenge lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies have all been dismissed in both state and federal courts. Even judges appointed by Trump and others have rejected the allegations. 

Election audits and recounts in key battleground states, including in places where the election was overseen by Republicans, have all reaffirmed Biden's win.

In the video message live-streamed during Lindell's MAGA Frank Free Speech rally at the River's Edge Apple River concert venue in New Richmond Trump proceeded to reel off a list of things insisting that he was ‘right about everything’. 

'Blue state lockdowns didn’t work. They were a disaster. You look at California, you look at New York, you look at Illinois run by governors of a certain party called the Democrat party, they didn’t work, they were a disaster, and then you look at Texas and Florida they’ve done such a fine job.

'The schools have to be reopened. We’ve been saying that for a year. Open up the schools. And our border security program were vitally important and unprecedentedly successful. All Biden had to do was to leave it alone. So we went from the most safest border in the history of our country to the worst and most dangerous. Drugs are flowing in at a level we’ve never seen before. There is human trafficking. Nobody has ever seen numbers like this,' Trump stated.

‘I just saw a report where Sweden is doing very bad on crime. Germany is doing very bad on crime. These used to be the safest countries in Europe and now they’re becoming very unsafe. You know why? They’re letting in people into their country that are causing disruption. Well, we are letting people into our country at a level Sweden couldn’t even imagine. So people are just flowing across our borders. We built almost 500 miles of border wall and it would have been finished in just four weeks, and then Biden decided to stop it. 

On coronavirus Trump again demanded China pay reparations to the United States, but said his earlier figure of $10 trillion wouldn't be enough.

It comes as China continues to face increasing international scrutiny over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, with U.S. intelligence services investigating whether the novel coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, where the outbreak first emerged at the end of 2019.

'China and the China virus—they have to pay reparations. We've been hurt so badly in terms of death, human life,' Trump said.

'And in terms of monetarily, to a level that they have to pay us. And frankly, if they paid us $10 trillion that wouldn't cover it. But they really have to pay the world because this started in the world—the entire world has been, not only disrupted, but it's almost been destroyed and we're doing well because we created such a great economic foundation.'   

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9680715/Trump-reels-list-times-ridiculed-proven-right-hydroxy-Wuhan.html

How the Government Makes Corporations Woke

When corporations promote left-wingery, free-market conservatives are met with a taunt: “You want companies to have freedom of speech, and you want the free market to decide, so what are you complaining about? This is what you wanted.”

Of course, private, free-market de­cisions are never immune to private criticism. But “woke capitalism” is also not purely the result of private, free-market decisions. Behind the invisible hand of the market is the mailed fist of the government, pushing companies to the left in ways direct and indirect, in areas ranging from climate policy to workplace and hiring rules.

There are four major capacities in which government pressures companies to go woke: government as corporate shareholder, government as customer, government as capital-market regulator, and government as workplace regulator.

Government as shareholder: Who owns corporations? The shareholders. In theory, corporations work equally for the financial benefit of all the shareholders. But not all shareholders have an equal voice. Those with large holdings and organizations get more attention. In today’s America, many of the largest and most active investors are state and local public-pension funds that manage enormous pots of money, such as the colossal California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS). These are, in theory, merely investment fiduciaries, seeking the best returns to support the retirement benefits paid out to each state’s retired government employees. In practice, many of the pension funds are shot through with left-wing activists who see a government-controlled stake in public companies as a lever with which to move the world.

For example, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) is the second-largest pension fund in the U.S., with approximately $275 billion in assets. It owns $300 million of Exxon­­Mobil stock. It could reap the profits of owning ExxonMobil for the benefit of California teachers, or it could sell the stock if it felt morally obligated to divest. Instead, it is the largest share­holder involved in a “Reenergize Exxon” campaign that recently in­stalled three dissident directors on the board with the aim of moving America’s largest oil company away from carbon-based fuels.

In a March 2021 blog post on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, the head of sustainable investment and stewardship strategies at CalSTRS, along with a member of her staff and an Oxford professor, wrote that “CalSTRS is working on develop­ing its model so that it can be sub­stantially scaled in order to address the many environmental (e.g., global warm­ing, loss of biodiversity, and plastics in the oceans) and social (e.g., racial, gender, and income inequality)” issues it wishes to address through its share­holdings. She described the anti-ExxonMobil campaign as a “pilot” for strategies to storm the “Corporate Castle” of companies that decline to follow the activists’ directives. That model includes an “army of investors (could be few but mighty) who will support attacking the castle walls,” “NGOs and other stakeholder repre­sentatives who can be marshalled to apply pressure,” “executive search firm(s) for identifying the slate of new executives and directors” to be installed, and “appropriate media outlets who can amplify the message.”

This pressure campaign goes beyond environmental issues, which are just one of the three corners of the “ESG” formula of environmental, social, and governance topics on which government shareholders are active. CalPERS has been investing in private as well as public companies and then using its stake to pressure the companies to meet racial and other “diversity” quotas. In 2018, CalSTRS announced that it would use its financial heft to pressure retailers anywhere in the country to stop selling guns that are banned in California — overriding the laws of other states. It signed on to a collective effort of state pension funds declaring “Principles for a Responsible Civilian Firearms Industry,” with a roster that also included CalPERS and the pension funds of Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Oregon, and San Francisco. These are all arms of government, seeking to own the means of production in order to dictate what may be produced and sold.

As discussed by Patrick Pizzella elsewhere in this issue, the Trump administration promulgated a rule re­focusing shareholder fiduciaries on pursuing the economic interests of their beneficiaries over their own political causes. The Biden administration blocked the rule from going into effect.

Public-shareholder activism is not limited to American government entities. Pension funds and sovereign-wealth funds of foreign states have their own lists of demands and priorities. Norway’s trillion-dollar sovereign-wealth fund, whose revenue comes from taxes and fees on the country’s oil industry, is the largest single owner in the world’s stock markets. Taking its marching orders from the Norwegian parliament, it sets “clear expectations” that “the companies in our portfolio should address global challenges in their corporate govern­ance” that “largely coincide with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.”

Government as customer: Government doesn’t just invest, it also buys and spends. Collectively, government con­tracts can provide a large share of a business’s income. In some industries, such as military contractors or health providers, it is effectively impossible to survive solely by selling to private customers. Federal, state, and local governments are especially aggressive about requiring contractors to sign on to their environmental and racial agendas. This phenomenon, too, is global in scope. A 2016 OECD paper observes that “public procurement expenditures amount to 13% of OECD countries’ gross domestic products” and urged that this large governmental footprint be used as leverage to promote “ambitious low-carbon innovation strategies.”

Contracts do not involve just the government spending its own money; governments also control access to public facilities. Chick-fil-A, for example, was banned from operating in airports in multiple cities — San Antonio, Buffalo, San Jose — by government officials angered at the company for the political views of one of its executives on same-sex marriage.

Government as capital-market regu­la­tor: It’s not possible to access American capital markets without getting past the gatekeepers. These include the Securities and Exchange Commission, which sets disclosure rules, the markets (the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ), the ratings agencies, and the accounting firms. The SEC is the government; the markets exercise directly delegated governmental authority, which in some circumstances can even preempt state law; the others live in that vague space where compliance is effectively compelled by the need to keep government happy. Then there are the central banks, which have been quite insistent in imposing their own woke visions on lenders, with the aim of raising the cost of capital for disfavored businesses and industries.

SEC disclosure requirements, and rules for what proposals can be raised by dissident shareholders, have been a hotly contested field for political activism. Joe Biden’s presidential campaign called for “requiring public companies to disclose climate risks and the greenhouse gas emissions in their operations and supply chains.”

Government pressure can be indirect, too. Climate envoy John Kerry spent this spring pressuring Wall Street banks to commit to “climate-friendly finance” that aims to redirect lending and investment towards “zero emissions” targets — with the understanding that collective refusals to do business made at the prodding of government may be less vulnerable to challenge under the antitrust laws.

Government as workplace regulator: Finally, the government’s rules shape the workplace. Civil-rights laws were originally written to guarantee equal opportunity under the law, even in private workplaces. But, in practice, many diversity-related corporate initia­tives have gone far beyond equality. They have instead created sinecures in human-resources depart­ments for left-wing activists who use the implicit threat of lawsuits to persuade corporate management to give them a free hand in leftist indoctrination. Maybe the most naïve joke among conservatives in recent years is to ask what kind of job you could get with, say, a gender-studies major. The answer is that you can get a job in a big corporation that puts you in a position to decide who gets all the other jobs. That power structure would not exist without substantial coercive govern­ment pressure.

If we want corporations to get back to the business of business, and out of politics, the first step is to get government out of their business.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/07/01/how-the-government-makes-corporations-woke/

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TX Gov. Abbott says Texas will build its own Mexican border barrier

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Thursday that he has immediate plans to build border barriers along the state’s border with Mexico in an effort to assist law enforcement apprehensions of immigrants attempting to cross into the United States illegally.

“President Biden’s open-border policies have led to a humanitarian crisis at our southern border as record levels of illegal immigrants, drugs, and contraband pour into Texas,” Abbott said. “While securing the border is the federal government’s responsibility, Texas will not sit idly by as this crisis grows.”

Abbott said the state will immediately begin construction on barriers in easily accessible and unsecured areas like Del Rio.

“The influx across the border is out of control, and the Biden Administration has shown that is not going to step up and do its job,” Abbott told Breitbart exclusively prior to a border summit on Thursday. “And amidst reports of even more people coming in across the border, we know we have to step up and do more.”

Customs and Border Patrol statistics revealed that the Del Rio Sector saw 27,890 illegal immigrant apprehensions in May this year, a 1,118 percent increase from the same period last year.

“The reason why we are here (Del Rio) is because of the massive increase,” Abbott stated, noting that unlawful border crossings were once “concentrated in the Rio Grande Valley. “Now, you know we’re upstream from the Rio Grande Valley in the Del Rio Sector and the Del Rio sector is suffering from some of the largest increases.”

Abbott said local residents are reporting “a lot of very bad dangerous people” coming into Texas illegally.

“They’re seeing a lot of very bad dangerous people come across the border,” Abbott said. “People that they are afraid of encountering, people who are causing damage to their fences, their livestock, their crops, their neighborhoods, and their homes.”

“Bad things are happening around here, and so they need help from the state to help them address this exploding crisis,” he continued.

Abbott said the Biden administration seems to be “welcoming these people into the United States,” but that Texas won’t send the same message. He said Texas will use it authority under a State of Emergency to ramp up enforcement of laws along the border.

“If you come to Texas, you’re subject to being arrested. You’re not going to have a pathway to roam the country,” Abbott said. “You’re going to have a pathway directly into a jail cell.”

“We want to be very aggressive in working with local officials and begin making mass arrests,” he continued. “In working in collaboration with a large number of counties — that means we’re going to be arresting a lot more people.”

Abbott acknowledged the increase in apprehensions will necessitate additional jail space, and he has partnered with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to seek assistance from governors nationwide with the crisis.

“With your help, we can apprehend more of these perpetrators of state and federal crimes before they can cause problems in your state,” the governors said. “Texas and Arizona have stepped up to secure the border in the federal government’s absence, and now, the Emergency Management Assistance Compact gives your State a chance to stand strong with us.”

Abbott said he predicts a “high level of participation,” adding, “The immigration issue and the border issue is not just the number one issue of Texas, it’s the number one issue in America. And so all of these other governors, they hear the same concerns that we hear about in Texas.”

Abbott said Texas is going to do whatever it can to secure the border, but “in the end, only the federal government and Congress can fix this.”

“…but as it stands right now, the state of Texas is going to step up and we’re going to start making arrests — sending a message to anybody thinking about coming here, you’re not going to get a free pass to the U.S. They’re getting a straight pass to a jail cell,” he concluded.

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/06/tx-gov-abbott-says-texas-will-build-its-own-mexican-border-barrier

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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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Evidence Mounts — Chauvin Did Not Murder Floyd

The strange evolution of the prosecution’s asphyxiation charge.

In his motion for a new trial, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, through his attorney Eric Nelson, made an obvious point. Quoting case law, Nelson reminded the court of “the prosecutor’s inherently unique role in the criminal justice system, which mandates that the prosecutor not act as a zealous advocate for criminal punishment, but as the representative of the people in an effort to seek justice.”

Had the State prosecutors set out to honor this mandate and seek justice, they would not have presented the medical evidence they did. In fact, they would not have charged Derek Chauvin with second-degree murder or charged his colleagues as accomplices.

Prosecutors knew they had a problem. To make the murder charge stick in the Chauvin case, they had to secure an “asphyxia” diagnosis from a physician. 

If justice were the goal, prosecutors would have taken two critical steps to assure that the medical testimony supported the charge of murder. The first was to run a controlled experiment to see if Chauvin’s actions could possibly have resulted in the death of George Floyd. The second was to make the court and the defense aware of the potential compromise of its star medical witness, Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker.

Dr. John Dunn did run such an experiment, and he made a video of the same. Dr. Dunn comes well credentialed. He is a former member and chair of the medico-legal committee for the American College of Emergency Physicians, board certified in legal medicine, and co-author with a pathologist of a chapter on forensics for a text published by the American College of Legal Medicine. He has followed the case from the beginning, studied the videos, and reviewed Floyd’s autopsy report.

Not content to speculate, Dr. Dunn enlisted the help of two men to determine whether or not the prone restraint used by Chauvin on Floyd could have asphyxiated and killed him. He recruited a 230-pound man to play the role of Floyd and a 170-pound man to play Chauvin’s role. At the time of the incident, Floyd weighed 223 pounds, and Chauvin, with his gear, weighed about 170.

The Chauvin proxy applied the handcuffs and placed the “suspect” in the prone restraint position. For a 10-minute period, he put his left knee on the man’s neck and shoulder, matching the pressure Chauvin put on Floyd. Throughout the experiment, Dunn used a pulse oximeter to monitor the oxygen level and pulse of the man being held in this prone restraint.

As Dunn attests and the video shows, “The results were that there was no impact on the oxygen level or the pulse of the restrained man for the full 10 minutes, and no ill effects at the time or two days later when he was interviewed.” Arguably, Dunn’s experiment has more evidentiary value than any contrary proof offered by the State.

Dunn believes that Floyd died from cardiac arrhythmia — a lethal heart rhythm. He observes that Floyd was suffering from severe cardiac disease aggravated by the drugs in his system including methamphetamine and fentanyl. “Exertion and excitement from intoxication and the arrest situation along with the amphetamine stimulant drug effects increase the arrhythmia risk,” says Dunn.

As the State’s charging documents make clear, even the officers on the scene were aware that Floyd may have been suffering from the severe effects of intoxicants. While restraining Floyd, rookie officer Thomas Lane said to Chauvin, “I am worried about excited delirium or whatever.” Chauvin responded, “That’s why we have him on his stomach.” Chauvin was acting in the interest of Floyd’s safety in his positioning, not acting to kill him.

A week or so before Floyd’s death, I saw a Kansas City police officer use the same technique on a prone female suspect for at least 10 minutes. My thought on seeing this: ‘Thank God, she’s white.” Not wanting to make the officer nervous — the woman was large and violent — I chose not to shoot video. In retrospect I wish I had. The technique does not look good, but the officer in question was able to restrain the woman until backup arrived with no apparent ill effect to her or to him.

Prosecutors knew they had a problem. To make the murder charge stick in the Chauvin case, they had to secure an “asphyxia” diagnosis from a physician. Neither Dr. Baker nor another forensic pathologist who reviewed the case for prosecutors supported that diagnosis.

So prosecutors doctor-shopped until the congenial Dr. Martin Tobin, a pulmonologist, essentially recruited himself to the case. With no relevant experience in death investigation, Dr. Tobin charmed the jury and the New York Times into believing that Floyd’s drug use and heart problems had nothing to do with his death.

Key to Dr. Tobin’s testimony was his contention that Floyd’s hypopharynx was cut off by neck pressure. Under oath, Dr. Tobin testified to the existence of research that supports his contention implicating a closed-off hypopharynx in asphyxia deaths. But, tellingly, prosecutors failed to present any such research in support of Tobin’s claim.

Tobin’s testimony would not have sufficed without at least some support from Dr. Baker. In Chauvin’s request for a new trial, his attorney cited “evidence that, under pressure from prosecutors, Dr. Baker altered his findings and conclusions regarding the death of George Floyd.” This is not an idle accusation.

In the way of background, Baker prepared the autopsy on May 26, 2020, the day after Floyd died. He met with prosecutors that same day. On May 29, in a criminal complaint charging Chauvin with manslaughter and third-degree murder, the State attested as follows (emphasis added):

The autopsy revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxiation or strangulation. Mr. Floyd had underlying health conditions including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease. The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in the system likely contributed to his death.

In an amended complaint on June 3, the State upped the charge against Chauvin to “Second Degree Murder — Unintentional — While Committing a Felony.” The complaint noted the results of the toxicology test, namely “the presence of fentanyl and evidence of recent methamphetamine use.”

Now, however, Baker supplied the State with one new detail that would prove to be essential for conviction: “The ME listed the cause of death as “[c]ardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression” (italics added). Baker first announced the “neck compression” detail in a June 1 press release.

In a May 17 article in The American Spectator, George Parry details the nature of the pressure brought to bear on Baker. The conduit for that pressure was Dr. Roger Mitchell, a former Washington, D.C., medical examiner and deputy mayor of Washington. Parry’s source was a motion for sanctions against the prosecution filed by attorneys representing Chauvin’s partner and alleged accomplice, Tou Thao.

Although some questioned Parry’s (and my own) reliance on the Thao motion, three days after Parry’s article the State confirmed that Thao’s attorneys were over the target. Admitted the State in its response to Thao’s motion, “At some point before Dr. Baker issued his findings and autopsy report on June 1, 2020, Dr. Roger Mitchell, who was acquainted with Dr. Baker professionally as a colleague and fellow forensic pathologist, reached out to Dr. Baker, and they discussed this case” (italics added).

Prosecutors go on to say they learned of Mitchell’s conversations with Baker during a routine meeting to discuss the medical aspects of the case on November 5, 2020. “Ultimately,” they report, “the State opted not to utilize Dr. Mitchell as a testifying expert witness.” They should never have even considered him.

On July 2, 2020, Mitchell had given an interview to the Guardian, in which he said, “From what the world has seen, we know that George Floyd’s intoxication, or George Floyd’s heart condition, played absolutely no part in his death.”

“From what the world has seen?” In that one statement, Mitchell summarized the effect a misleading video snippet was having on the State’s case. The mob was now dictating Minnesota justice.

The increasingly radicalized Mitchell was speaking out wherever he could find a microphone. His diagnosis of society’s ills was as skewed as his diagnosis of Floyd’s. Mitchell said on a podcast around the same time as his meeting with the prosecutors, “my people are starving. My people are hungry. My people have foots on their necks…. White supremacy has placed itself at the center disenfranchisement of black and brown people in this country.”

Five prosecutors and a paralegal sat in on the November 2020 meeting with Mitchell. If anyone recorded the conversation, no one provided the defense with the audio. The four defendants — Chauvin, Lane, Thao, and Alexander Keung — have had to rely on the State’s own account of that meeting. Prosecutors surely presented Mitchell’s story in its best possible light, but even that light is troubling.

The accusations against Mitchell in Thao’s motion came from the meeting summary prepared by the State and shared with the defense in a belated document dump. The summary was sufficiently well buried that defense attorney Eric Nelson was unaware of the Mitchell meeting at the time of the trial.

Thao’s motion quotes from the prosecutors’ notes taken at the November 5 meeting with Mitchell. Here are some of the highlights:

“Baker said that he didn’t think the neck compression played a part.”

Dr. Mitchell called Dr. “Baker first to let him know that he was going to be critical of Baker’s findings.”

“In this conversation, Mitchell said, you don’t want to be the medical examiner who tells everyone they didn’t see what they saw. You don’t want to be the smartest person in the room and be wrong. Said there was a way to articulate the cause and manner of death that ensures you are telling the truth about what you are observing and via all of the investigation. Mitchell said neck compression has to be in the diagnosis.”

George Parry covered this well, but in brief, Baker told Mitchell neck compression played no role in Floyd’s death, and Mitchell threatened to write a disparaging op-ed about Baker in the Washington Post unless he said it did. Thao’s attorneys knew what they were saying when they demanded “sanctions for prosecutorial misconduct stemming from witness coercion.”

In an angry response that reads as though written by Keith Olbermann, the State answered Thao by saying, “These preposterous accusations are simply false, and Defendant Thao does not offer even a shred of evidence to support this baseless conspiracy theory.” There it is, the ultimate refuge from a losing argument — a charge of “conspiracy theory.”

As Thao’s motion noted, Mitchell was not at all coy about his second cited attempt at coercion, namely his efforts to destroy the career of of Dr. David Fowler, the one medical witness to testify in Chauvin’s defense. But that is a story for another day.

The story for today is Chauvin’s sentencing in two weeks and his request for a new trial. Time after time, prosecutors have failed to honor their “inherently unique role.” On the medical front alone, they either ignored the evidence that cast Chauvin’s guilt into doubt or buried it. If their goal truly is “to seek justice,” they should at the very least run an experiment comparable to the one performed by Dr. Dunn to put their theory of the case to the test. Even police officers deserve due process, not just the semblance of it.

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