Scientists on alert as new Covid strain tears through ’multiple countries’

A new Covid variant is ripping through “multiple countries”, with experts fearing it could be even more transmissible than the BA. 5 Omicron strain.

Named BF. 7 – short for BA. 5.2.1.7 – the new variant is spreading faster than most other variants of interest that scientists are currently tracking in the US.

While it accounted for 1.7 per cent of sequenced infections in America last week, it now represents 25 per cent of cases in Belgium, while Denmark, Germany and France have each recorded 10 per cent of the world’s identified cases, Fortune reports.

Dr Stuart Ray, vice chair of medicine for data integrity and analytics at Johns Hopkins’ Department of Medicine, told the publication the US Centres of Disease Control (CDC) recently named it as a separate strain after cases hit one per cent, with that figure expected to grow.

“The same growth advantage in multiple countries makes it reasonable to think that BF. 7 is gaining a foothold,” Dr Ray said, adding that it could prove to be more transmissible than parent strain BA.5.

The rise of the new variant is of particular concern as it’s growing steadily compared to other Omicron subvariants, and because the northern hemisphere is heading towards winter, when Covid is most worrying.

And Dr Ray said there was also a chance an entirely new variant could soon emerge. “It’s been a while since we went from Alpha to Beta to Gamma to Delta, then to Omicron,” he said. “We may be complacent. This may be feeding into the notion that this is behind us.”

The news is all the more concerning given US President Joe Biden this week stated that the “pandemic is over” – despite a daily death toll in the hundreds in America. He told CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday US time that while Covid was still a concern, the worst had passed.

“We still have a problem with Covid. We’re still doing a lotta work on it. But the pandemic is over,” he said. “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing.”

Mr Biden’s surprising comments came after the World Health Organisation declared the end of the pandemic was “in sight” last week, after announcing weekly deaths had dropped to the lowest level since March 2020.

“We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters. “We are not there yet, but the end is in sight.”

But the world needed to step up to “seize this opportunity”, he added. “If we don’t take this opportunity now, we run the risk of more variants, more deaths, more disruption, and more uncertainty.”

However, that message did not go down well in China, where an aggressive Zero Covid category is still being pursued via mass testing and brutal lockdowns months after the rest of the world moved on.

The WHO announcement was originally reported by some local news outlets and shared on social media, but was then quickly censored, given Covid Zero is inextricably bound to President Xi Jinping’s Covid strategy.

Xi is widely expected to secure a historic third term in power in October, with some speculating the country’s Covid rules might potentially be relaxed after that point.

According to WHO’s latest epidemiological report on Covid-19, the number of reported cases fell 28 per cent to 3.1 million during the week ending September 11, following a 12 per cent drop a week earlier.

https://www.news.com.au/world/scientists-on-alert-as-new-covid-strain-tears-through-multiple-countries/news-story/d7975efbc4350976900a6ea0c834d9be

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Drug Companies Test New Booster on Eight Mice and Zero Humans, FDA Approves It Anyway. With no efficacy or safety data, the agency is enthusiastically promoting a fifth COVID shot

On Aug. 31, 2022, the Food and Drug Administration authorized bivalent boosters reformulated to target the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants. At the authorization meeting, FDA officials announced the approval of these new boosters for emergency use based on data from eight mice in a Pfizer study. At the same time, the FDA revoked authorization for the original monovalent boosters—meaning anyone subject to a booster or “up-to-date” mandate will have to take the bivalent booster, which has no proven safety or efficacy data in human beings.

While the flu vaccine is also approved on a yearly basis without full trials, the mRNA COVID vaccines do not share the flu shot’s decadeslong track record of observed safety. The population most likely to be mandated to take a bivalent booster consists largely of college students. The young men in this population are the exact demographic that face heightened safety concerns, specifically around myocarditis, as documented in multiple peer-reviewed studies. In fact, during a meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend the bivalent boosters, the agency presented updated myocarditis data that confirmed the rates of myocarditis in young men were about 2-to-3.5 times higher (slide 35) than the agency had claimed last year (slide 13). Nevertheless, the FDA and CDC moved to recommend the bivalent boosters for anyone over the age of 12 without human clinical trials.

This is just the latest episode in the FDA’s less-than-thorough approach to new COVID vaccine approvals. For example, in May 2022, the FDA authorized monovalent Pfizer boosters for children ages 5-11 based on laboratory data that showed heightened antibody response levels in just 67 children.

During the opioid crisis, the FDA famously failed to demand adequate research, disregarded safety concerns, and allowed Purdue Pharma to promote oxycodone for uses that were never borne out by testing. Later, it was revealed that the agency had been plagued by ethical issues: When the FDA convened advisers to address mounting oxycodone safety concerns, for instance, five out of 10 of these advisers had received payments from Purdue, and another three had received payments from other opioid manufacturers.

The continuation of unchecked conflicts of interest, and several recent authorizations for uses of new medical products that are in many ways unproven, demonstrate that the FDA is essentially unresponsive to public outrage, culminating in the bizarre spectacle of the agency promoting bivalent boosters on social media through unsubstantiated claims of efficacy, acting not as a neutral regulator but actively advertising on behalf of pharmaceutical companies with government purchase contracts. The FDA’s disregard for its congressional mandate is not unique to this moment—it is a symptom of its decadeslong transformation into an agency captured by the corporations it is tasked with regulating.

When Kelley Krohnert, a mother and career IT expert from Georgia, watched the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting held on June 17, 2022, she noted a slide that listed COVID as the fourth-leading cause of death for children under 1 and the fifth-leading cause for children aged 1-4 in the United States. This same slide was originally used at the FDA’s June 15 Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) meeting, when FDA advisers voted to authorize vaccines for children under 5. Krohnert immediately recognized that the slide was citing a preprint by researchers in the United Kingdom. This preprint not only used death statistics that included deaths where COVID was not an underlying cause—it also compared a 26-month cumulative total for COVID deaths to a 12-month total for other deaths. In Krohnert’s analysis, COVID fell to ninth place for children under 1 and into a four-way tie for eighth place for children aged 1-4. When the researchers corrected their preprint to adjust for some of the errors Krohnert found, COVID fell below influenza and pneumonia as a cause of death for children under 5.

“I didn’t have to do a complex statistical analysis to find these errors,” Krohnert told me. “If this is the standard for what goes into these presentations, what kind of vetting is going into that data?”

This lack of vetting is a central issue in the FDA’s approval process. The key question for any drug authorization is, “Do the benefits outweigh the risks?” When a disease’s risks are exaggerated, one side of this equation is skewed, and the equation is also affected by exaggerating the benefits of a treatment or ignoring the potential risks of that treatment. The data presented in recent FDA meetings has been consistently nonobjective and skewed to favor drug approval.

For the authorization of vaccines for children under 5, boosters for children 5-11, and the new bivalent boosters, the FDA has relied heavily on measures of antibody levels as the main “benefit” side of the equation. This is despite the fact that Pfizer has admitted that there is “no established correlate of protection” between antibody levels and immunity. Both the CDC and the FDA already advise against the use of antibody testing to determine levels of immunity. Essentially, this metric has been deemed inadequate by the very regulatory agency that is now consistently accepting it as a substitute for clinical trials.

This lack of real efficacy data has been accompanied by a disregard for potential safety issues. European Union regulators have already warned that frequent boosters can weaken the immune system; the FDA is apparently unconcerned. The FDA also disregarded the fact that for pediatric vaccines, Pfizer observed a higher rate of severe COVID in its vaccine group (table 5). Furthermore, the FDA allowed the company to ignore 365 symptomatic cases in its trial, and to use only the last 10 symptomatic cases after the third dose to claim 80% efficacy (tables 19 and 20). This is significant because Pfizer saw negative efficacy between doses 1 and 2. In a vaccine meant to prevent illness for an age group that is already at extremely low risk, this data should have been a red flag for the FDA. Why, then, has the body charged with protecting Americans from inadequately tested products been so eager not just to authorize these products for emergency use, but to enthusiastically recommend them?

Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, was one of only two advisers who voted against VRBPAC’s recommendation for reformulated boosters in June. I asked him about his vote as an FDA vaccine adviser and longtime advocate for vaccination. He told me he believed the thinking behind the bivalent boosters was sound. “The problem for me,” he said, “was I just didn’t think the data that were presented on June 28th to our committee made that case compellingly.”

I asked Offit if he felt there was political pressure to vote a certain way. “I never feel pressure when I cast my vote,” he answered. “I voted no.” However, he said, “I think the way that they were presented, I think it was clear that the FDA and the World Health Organization wanted to go in this direction.” It was notable that the day after the FDA’s vote, the White House announced its purchase of 171 million bivalent booster doses from Pfizer and Moderna for $4.9 billion. “You felt that the train sort of had left the station,” Offit said.

In 2020, the Trump administration was widely criticized for rushing vaccines and pressuring the FDA. Although the Biden administration has exerted similar, if not more pressure, it has enjoyed a conspicuous absence of criticism. Before the FDA’s expert panel could even meet to discuss vaccines for children under 5, for example, the White House’s COVID czar, Ashish Jha, publicly announced a precise date for when they would become available. In other words, Jha appeared to know the FDA’s decision before it had allegedly made one.

Notably, President Joe Biden’s election campaign reversed a long-standing trend of Republican candidates receiving far more campaign donations from the pharmaceutical industry: In 2020, Biden outraised Trump from Big Pharma by a margin of 2 to 1. Several political appointees in the Biden administration, moreover, have ties to vaccine manufacturers, including the president’s chief campaign strategist, Anita Dunn, who worked for Pfizer before joining his team. Biden also ran his election campaign on the promise to “shut down the virus”; it turned out that there were more U.S. COVID deaths in 2021, when vaccines were widely available, than in 2020, when they were not. Rather than reckon with this fact and readjust its strategy, the administration has doubled down by putting increased political pressure on an already compromised FDA.

If your primary job occupation is to work for the firm across the table, how can you be an effective regulator?

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/pfizer-moderna-test-covid-booster-eight-mice-zero-humans-fda-approves-anyway

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

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Why even mild Covid is now being linked to long-term heart trouble

Two weeks after falling ill with Covid TV doctor Xand van Tulleken thought he was on the mend, when he suddenly took a turn for the worse.

‘I woke at 3am with my heart rate rushing at 170 beats per minute [it should have been about 60] and in a chaotic rhythm. I felt bad: faint, sweaty, breathless, panicky,’ he says.

This was March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, when little was known about the typical course of the infection.

But Xand’s training as a public health doctor left him in little doubt that he had developed atrial fibrillation, a dangerous heart rhythm disorder where abnormal electrical impulses cause an irregular and often racing heartbeat. It can lead to stroke and, in extreme cases, heart failure.

‘I believed that my heart-rhythm problem arose most likely as a result of the virus inflaming my heart,’ he says. Realising the seriousness of the situation he raced by taxi to University College Hospital in London.

‘The emergency doctors shocked my heart to stop it temporarily, allowing it to restart in a normal rhythm, a process called cardioversion,’ he adds.

With his heart beating more normally, Xand was prescribed bisoprolol, a type of beta-blocker — medication that alters the heart’s response to nerve impulses, slowing its rate to reduce the risk of further heart-rhythm problems. But it didn’t.

‘My heart went into atrial fibrillation several times after that, meaning I had to go through the cardioversion process repeatedly,’ he says.

A year after his original infection, in 2021 Xand had to return to hospital for an ablation, a procedure that uses freezing liquid nitrogen to ‘burn’ heart tissue, creating scarring that disrupts the electrical signals that cause irregular heartbeats.

‘Surgery took about 90 minutes and I was awake throughout,’ he recalls. ‘It wasn’t painful but it definitely wasn’t enjoyable. When it got to the bit where they froze the heart tissue with liquid nitrogen in a balloon threaded through my artery, I was gripped by a sense of impending doom.’

Xand now feels recovered, mercifully. But millions of fellow Britons have been left facing similarly dangerous and debilitating heart problems in the wake of Covid.

Some 23 million Covid infections have been recorded in the UK, although it’s estimated that many more cases have gone unrecorded because those affected weren’t tested.

Two million people in the UK are living with long Covid, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed in June. It classified long Covid as experiencing symptoms more than four weeks after a coronavirus infection.

Fatigue is the most common, followed by shortness of breath, loss of sense of smell and difficulty concentrating, according to the ONS, but more worryingly there are also significant reports of long-term heart-related problems.

In March, the potential scale of such problems was revealed by a paper in the BMJ. The study of more than 47,000 people who’d been hospitalised with Covid-19 showed that they were about three times more likely than uninfected people to face major cardiovascular problems within eight months of being taken to hospital.

It’s not only people who were hospitalised who have been affected. A study in March of 150,000 Americans found serious heart complications can occur in people who seem to have recovered from a mild infection. The report in the journal Nature Medicine, led by Dr Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University, St Louis, in the U.S., found that people who’d had Covid faced substantially increased risks for 20 conditions, including heart attacks and strokes, in the following 12 months.

In patients who’d been admitted to intensive care the risk of conditions, such as myocarditis (inflammation of the heart that reduces its pumping ability) and blood clots in the lungs, was at least 20 times higher than in uninfected people. But even those who had not been hospitalised had increased risks of many conditions, ranging from an 8 per cent increase in heart attacks to a 247 per cent increase in myocarditis.

Scientists have long known that respiratory infections such as flu can trigger heart disease. This is because they cause inflammation, which plays a major role in cardiovascular illnesses.

However, a Covid infection seems to cause a much higher incidence of problems, and following much milder levels of initial illness.

‘It is not only surprising but also profoundly consequential that the risk is evident even in those [who had mild infections],’ says Dr Al-Aly. ‘That’s what makes this likely a serious public health problem.’

But why? One possibility is that the virus’s spike protein — which it uses to invade human cells — can cause an outbreak of localised inflammation in heart tissue that is so intense that it damages the muscle. Dr Zhiqiang Lin, an assistant professor of cardiology at the Masonic Medical Research Institute in New York, exposed human heart tissue in the lab to spike proteins from Covid-19 and HCoV-NL63, a coronavirus that infects the respiratory system without harming hearts.

He found Covid-19 sparks an immune response in heart cells whereas the other coronavirus did not. He believes that causes excessive inflammation which damages heart cells and causes myocarditis.

But Covid may also harm cardiovascular health in another way, according to a study by Houston Methodist Academic Medical Centre, Texas, published in August. This found that patients with long Covid heart symptoms may have double the normal risk of having unhealthy endothelial cells, which line the inside of the heart and blood vessels.

Endothelial cells play a key role in dilating the arteries and helping to get blood to the heart when we do physically strenuous activities. Patients with unhealthy endothelial cells, a condition known as microvascular dysfunction, are at higher risk of heart failure and death.

Dr Mouaz Al-Mallah, a cardiologist who co-authored the paper, explains in the journal JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging: ‘When a patient exercises they need more blood delivered to the heart to be able to provide blood to the entire body ... But in some patients with Covid, we noted it’s not increasing to the degree it should be.’

Dr Al-Mallah’s team scanned the hearts of nearly 400 patients with long Covid. The scans showed they were twice as likely to have unhealthy endothelial cells inside the heart and blood vessels. ‘This may potentially explain why some patients are having chest pain and shortness of breath because their heart is not getting that extra blood,’ Dr Al-Mallah wrote.

Not everyone is convinced that the dangers are widespread, however. In a small study of 52 people, Professor Gerry McCann, a cardiac-imaging specialist at the University of Leicester, found that people who had recovered after being hospitalised with Covid-19 had no greater rate of heart disease than people who had similar underlying cardiovascular conditions such as high blood pressure, but who had remained uninfected by the virus.

He is working on a larger study with around 1,200 participants. ‘The more data we’re acquiring, the less impressed we are with the degree of myocardial injury,’ he told Good Health.

‘There is no doubt Covid is associated with heart problems in hospitalised patients, although it is relatively uncommon. Those who are hospitalised tend to have other risk factors such as older age, obesity and pre-existing cardiovascular disease.’

He adds: ‘There are mixed reports on the extent of heart problems from researchers using imaging techniques. Some of the abnormal findings are of uncertain clinical significance and we are not sure how much of the changes are related to pre-existing conditions.’

Other British researchers disagree that the extent of cardiovascular dangers are exaggerated.

Colin Berry, a professor of cardiology and imaging at the University of Glasgow, said: ‘Professor McCann’s study has serious limitations because it only studied 52 patients. I would concentrate on much larger studies that have greater statistical power such as the American ones, which do show widescale problems.’

Professor’s Berry’s own study, published in Nature Medicine in May, covered 1,306 former Covid patients. It found that one in eight people who had been hospitalised with the virus between May 2020 and March 2021 were later diagnosed with myocarditis.

‘Prior to Covid they had been fit and healthy,’ he says. ‘I think that the damage is more than just to these patients’ hearts but to their wider cardiovascular systems.

‘It may also involve their blood vessels, which helps to explain why such long Covid patients are showing physical problems and loss of quality of life.’

Dr David Strain, a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter who specialises in viral infections, also believes Professor McCann’s results may not represent the whole picture.

‘The patients he studied are generally being followed up after they have left hospital, when the main danger period has passed,’ he says. ‘Beyond three months there seems to be a negligible risk of bad cardiovascular things happening.’

Dr Strain argues instead that the majority of heart problems emerge in a period that lasts from six to eight weeks after Covid infection. ‘This is the period when we see rates of heart attacks, strokes and blood clots going up,’ he says. ‘During this post-infection danger period, Covid picks on your weakest parts, such as your heart and arteries.’ Over the longer term Dr Strain says worrying evidence is mounting to suggest that the virus can hide dormant in our bodies for months or even years.

‘If the virus can hide in the body then anything that weakens a person’s immune defences — such as physical stress, infection or reinfection with another strain of Covid — may allow the virus to re-emerge,’ he says. ‘There is evidence to suggest long Covid can be caused by the virus persisting, and having surges subsequently may cause cardiovascular disease.’

This, Dr Strain says, is why it is crucial people getting over Covid take things very easy when recuperating from the virus. ‘From what we see, people who return to work early are more likely to get post-Covid problems,’ he warns.

Professor Berry agrees. ‘I advise long Covid patients to keep active, but to stay within their own limit,’ he explains. ‘Go for short leisurely walks and if you can do that well, try brisk walks — but don’t overdo it.’

Xand van Tulleken wishes he had taken things more slowly two years ago in the wake of his Covid infection. ‘I did not try to take it easy,’ he says. ‘Even on the day I suffered the first bout of atrial fibrillation, I went straight into work.’

As a result, ‘I went into a downward spiral. Being post-Covid and with heart worries, I felt depressive, miserable,’ he says.

‘Lots of people have gone through this stuff. Fortunately I had the support of my parents, who encouraged me to exercise gently and cooked for me. My twin brother Chris has been hugely helpful with recovering my health by getting me to eat well, not eating junk food and ultraprocessed foods to aid my general health.’

He adds: ‘Professor Toby Hillman was my doctor at the clinic for people with Covid complications. He said his best advice for anyone with long Covid is to rest.’

Thanks to a combination of Xand taking this on board, and having the successful cardioversion op, he says: ‘I now feel amazing. ‘I can go for a run every morning and feel healthy.

‘Convalescence is what we all need after Covid. It sounds such an old-fashioned word, but as a nation we have lost the concept of convalescence. We need to get it back.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11228101/Why-mild-Covid-linked-long-term-heart-trouble.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

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Scurrilous journalism award in Australia

At least it cost the lying media a bundle. Dr Laming has an account here telling how grievously the media lie hurt him. He shares there what it's like be the centre of a media stitch-up. Australia's defamation laws have their problems, but in Laming's case they ensured that some justice has been done him.

Had the journalists concerned just checked with Laming before rushing into print the story would never have been published -- as it was an easily refuted story.

But the opportunity of sliming a prominent conservativre was just too juicy to miss. Leftists hate those dreadful conservatives who keep puncturing their balloons so horror stories about conservatives seem obviously correct to them

The contentious entry criteria for the Walkley Awards could be overhauled as part of the independent review into a reporting prize given to a since-discredited story about former federal MP Andrew Laming.

Last Wednesday, Dr Laming won a defamation case against Nine in relation to one key element of its award-winning report, after the network accepted that it was untrue.

On Friday evening, the foundation directors announced a review into the Walkley Award won earlier this year by Nine journalists Peter Fegan and Rebeka Powell for their March 2021 reports about Dr Laming, one of which falsely claimed the then politician had committed the criminal act of “upskirting” – taking a sexually intrusive photograph of someone without their permission.

In one of three reports about Dr Laming’s alleged misconduct in March last year, Nine quoted a witness who said he’d seen the MP take an inappropriate “upskirting” photo of a female staff member while she was stacking a bar fridge at her Brisbane workplace.

The woman was wearing shorts, not a skirt, at the time. The photo was deleted before anyone from Nine could view it. Dr Laming was questioned by police about the alleged incident, but was never charged.

Dr Laming has always strenuously denied any wrongdoing in relation to the matter.

Fegan and Powell won the 2021 Walkley Award in the television/video news reporting category for their report on Dr Laming’s alleged misconduct; the pair also won a Clarion (at the Queensland media awards) for their investigation into the MP.

In its statement on Friday, the Walkley Foundation said it would commission an independent review of the “particular award” given to Fegan and Powell, but it is widely expected that the review will also scrutinise the wider issue of whether journalism that is the subject of ongoing legal proceedings should have caveats attached as part of its conditions of entry.

Currently, entries for major journalism awards in Australia, such as the Walkleys, require a disclosure if the reporting is the subject of ongoing legal action.

But there are no rules governing the overturning of awards if subsequent legal action finds the story to be untrue, as was the case with the Laming “upskirting” claim.

Dr Laming has claimed that Walkley organisers had known for “nearly a year” of his complaint that a story submitted for the awards had made “baseless” upskirting claims against him.

Dr Laming told The Australian on Sunday that he wants to play a key role in the review. “Through my lawyers I have notified the Walkley Foundation that I wish to submit materials to it for their consideration,” he said.

Dr Laming is unhappy that the Walkleys – which he describes as “Australian journalism’s highest honour” – lent weight to the Nine story by publicising comments that lauded the story when it won the prize.

“The comments made by the judges at that time lauding the network and journalists for their work in the face of ‘legal pushback’ is hard to reconcile with the complete abandonment of Nine’s defences and its subsequent unconditional public retraction and apology to me,” he said.

“Despite being on notice at the time of a legal dispute and the waves of retractions, apologies by others over republications of Nine’s story, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (which oversees both the Walkleys and the Clarion Awards) persisted with both a state and a federal award – and as of right now, even despite announcing a review, they continue to refuse to rescind what is now an award for effectively a story that been withdrawn, deleted and has been accepted by all as a work of fiction.”

Dr Laming said that he initially made allegations to the MEAA in October last year.

“We first notified the MEAA of baseless allegations in the Nine TV news story in October 2021, so they have been made aware of our complaint for nearly a year,” he said. “The MEAA would know that Nine publicly abandoned its unmeritorious truth and honest opinion defences last month, and in my view, from that moment the awards … became completely untenable.”

Dr Laming says he has so far received no response to a letter he addressed to Walkley Foundation chief executive Shona Martyn last week. He asserted in the letter that the Walkleys needed to do more than simply leave it in the hands of award recipients to return them.

“There is already sufficient evidence at hand to rescind the award, and leaving it in the hands of recipients to return awards is weak,” he wrote. “By continuing to promote these awards, the Walkley Committee further harms my reputation through imputation that the stories were true. Nine now admits they were not, and these court documents are public.”

He concluded his letter to the Walkleys: “I reserve my rights in this regard.”

Dr Laming’s former LNP colleague James McGrath has also written to the Walkley Foundation, calling for Nine’s award to be withdrawn.

“The broadcaster has admitted the allegations against Dr Laming were untrue,” Senator McGrath wrote.

“Why haven’t you withdrawn the Walkley Award from Ch9? In light of the above admission from Ch9 I ask you to withdraw the associated Walkley Award.

“If you are not prepared to withdraw I would ask you justify your reasoning.”

Despite repeated requests from The Australian for further clarification around the parameters of the independent review, the Walkley Foundation declined to comment.

Nine also declined to comment.

The terms of Dr Laming’s settlement with Nine, which included an apology, were confidential but the network is understood to be liable for more than $1m in damages and legal costs.

In its apology, which was read to the court, Nine said: “9News unreservedly withdraws those allegations about Dr Laming and apologises to him and his family for the hurt and harm caused by the report.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/walkleys-walking-a-legal-tightrope-over-andrew-laming-award/news-story/59e00125062a6ab6c181283503d48708

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Pervasive media censorship of Covid skepticism

Facebook groups that criticise any aspect of the official response to the pandemic have their own history of sudden death. On 26 April 2021, for example, Facebook deleted a group with 120,000 members who posted accounts of adverse vaccine reactions.

In May, Republican attorneys general Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeffrey Landry of Louisiana brought a suit against the Biden administration for alleged violations of the First Amendment. They accuse top officials of using social media giants Meta (publisher of Facebook and Instagram), Twitter, YouTube (owned by Google) and LinkedIn, of using the tech titans to censor critics of government policy. Instead of Russian collusion, the lie Democrats threw at Trump for most of his term, Schmitt and Landry accuse Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and former Disinformation Governance Board executive Nina Jankowicz amongst others, of Big Tech collusion.

In July, US District Judge Terry Doughty ordered various federal agencies to produce records requested by the plaintiffs which resulted in a trove of damning documents exposing an army of at least 50 administration officials and 12 agencies engaged in either censorship as Landry and Schmitt put it or ensuring that the American people have access to ‘factual, accurate, science-based information’ as the Administration claims. The government says it supports freedom of speech but claims it is important to ‘combat misinformation and disinformation that can cost lives’. Fauci and Jean-Pierre refused to provide their communications with the social media companies claiming they were protected by executive privilege, but Judge Doughty was not persuaded and has given them 21 days to hand over the records by 27 September.

Examples of the cosy relationship between the administration and the social media giants are evident in the documents provided so far. CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg gave Fauci his personal phone number, and a parody Fauci account was pulled down within minutes of Facebook receiving a request from Clarke Humphrey, the White House digital director of the Covid response team.

A Facebook official emailed White House officials on 23 July 2021 reporting that Facebook had removed 39 profiles, pages, groups, and Instagram accounts tied to the ‘Disinformation Dozen’ – a group that was targeted by the government which includes Robert F Kennedy junior, founder of Children’s Health Defence, and son of former US attorney general Senator Bobby Kennedy. Kennedy junior said he was ‘astonished that any elected Democrat would be so estranged from our nation’s history and values as to consider it acceptable for a president to pressure publishers to censor his critics’.

The picture of Democrat-friendly censorship fits with other recent revelations. On 25 August Zuckerberg revealed to podcaster Joe Rogan that his employees had been told by the FBI to be wary of Russian disinformation, so they suppressed the New York Post’s scoop on Hunter Biden’s laptop which showed how Hunter leveraged his father’s position as vice president to make lucrative business deals. Republicans will use subpoena powers to further investigate what happened if they win a majority in the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections in November. Others who have joined the lawsuit include epidemiologists Martin Kulldorff, Professor of Medicine at Harvard University and Jay Bhattacharya, Professor at Stanford Medical School, two of the three original authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which they launched on 4 October 2020 opposing lockdowns and calling for a standard scientific response to the pandemic, protecting the vulnerable while allowing the rest of society to function as normal.

Emails obtained in January via a Freedom of Information request revealed that Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes for Health emailed Fauci in horror when he read the declaration, describing the authors as ‘fringe epidemiologists’ and fretting that their proposal was ‘getting a lot of attention’. ‘There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises,’ he schemed. When Bhattacharya read the emails he tweeted, ‘Now I know what it feels like to be the subject of a propaganda attack by my own government. Discussion and engagement would have been a better path.’

How the case launched by Schmitt and Landry is decided we will know in due course, what seems ominously prescient is the quote from George Washington with which they opened their complaint in which Washington warned, in 1783, if ‘the Freedom of Speech may be taken away’ then ‘dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter’.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/death-by-carrot/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

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The Ivermectin saga

Its big fault: It was too cheap. I pointed out some months ago that the big study which purported to discredit Ivermectin was not a true test of it

The story of Ivermectin is a story of the pandemic that might have been.

There are doctors around the world, including Australia, who believe that, far from Covid being an unusual disease for which expensive new therapies had to be found, there were existing medicines, which could markedly reduce the chance of ending up in hospital or dying from the infection.

They say one of these is Ivermectin and another is Hydroxychloroquine. These are tried-and-tested drugs that have been used to treat illnesses like scabies and rheumatoid arthritis, respectively, for decades. Their safety profiles are well known because millions, or even billions, of people worldwide, have taken them.

It’s important to note that we know a lot more about the safety profiles of these two drugs than we do about the new Covid antivirals, simply because these established drugs have been used in so many people for such a long time.

And what’s more, they are cheap! They have been ‘off patent’ for decades and so can be made by any reputable pharmaceutical company, with competition keeping prices low.

You would think the government would jump at such saviour drugs. But the TGA banned GPs from prescribing these medicines for Covid.

I’m a medical journalist trained in science with over a decade of experience trawling medical literature and writing up important studies for busy doctors and the public.

Ivermectin was first championed by Dr Pierre Kory, a US specialist critical care physician treating Covid patients.

In December 2020, Dr Kory testified to the US senate on behalf of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), advocating for Ivermectin to be made available for prevention and early treatment of Covid. He showed graphs demonstrating the effect of the use of the drug in eight states in Peru.

In January 2021, Dr Tess Lawrie, an independent medical research consultant in the UK, who counts the World Health Organisation (WHO) among her clients, independently reviewed the studies gathered by the FLCCC. She sent a video message to the then UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, telling him the good news that Ivermectin was effective in treating Covid.

Both Dr Kory and Dr Lawrie thought their message of a solution to the pandemic would be welcomed. They were wrong.

Instead, there were a lot of stories in the media last year, telling us that Ivermectin was something that should not be used for early treatment of Covid.

In February 2021, I edited a piece that drew on a Reuters news story which was in turn based on a press release from the pharmaceutical company, Merck, the original developer of Ivermectin.

Merck said it had concerns about the safety of the use of its drug, Ivermectin, for Covid, and that there was ‘no meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy’ in Covid patients.

As I edited the story, I remember saying to myself: ‘Good heavens, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a press release from a drug company rubbishing its own drug!’ I put it in the ‘surprised’ bucket and thought about it no more.

Merck made another press release in March 2021. Good news! They were re-purposing an antiviral they had been developing and it was doing well in phase 2 trials as an early treatment for Covid. The drug’s name – Molnupiravir.

Merck, and other companies, were hurrying to develop new, patented therapies for early treatment of Covid. They were aiming to get an Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) that would make their path to regulatory approval faster, easier and cheaper.

But a condition of the US Food and Drug Administration’s EUA is that ‘there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives’.

I was astounded when, on September 10, 2021, the TGA banned GPs from prescribing Ivermectin for Covid, though perhaps I shouldn’t have been, since similar restrictions on the use of Hydroxychloroquine had been put in place in March 2020.

The ban attacked something doctors and patients hold dear – the doctor-patient relationship.

It is a long-held tradition that a doctor can use their judgment to prescribe a medication for a condition other than the one it has been approved for, as long the doctor believes it to be in the best interests of the patient. This is called prescribing ‘off-label’.

By that stage, the media worldwide were disparaging Ivermectin as a Covid therapy, including in a tweet from the US Food and Drug Administration emphasising its use as a dewormer in horses and cows. Some Australian journalists were busy running an Ivermectin witch hunt, exposing GPs who were breaking the TGA’s ban.

Let’s examine the statement the TGA wrote when they banned our GPs from prescribing Ivermectin for Covid.

They gave three reasons.

First, they were worried that people might choose to use Ivermectin rather than be vaccinated. ‘Individuals who believe that they are protected from infection by taking Ivermectin may choose not to get tested or to seek medical care if they experience symptoms. Doing so has the potential to spread the risk of Covid infection throughout the community,’ they said.

How laughable this seems, especially in the light of what has happened: multiply-vaccinated people everywhere are catching and spreading Covid!

‘Secondly, the doses of Ivermectin that are being advocated for use in unreliable social media posts and other sources for Covid are significantly higher than those approved and found safe for scabies or parasite treatment.’ But remember, Ivermectin was going to be prescribed by qualified GPs, not Facebook!

Finally, they said that the increased use of Ivermectin for Covid might lead to shortages for its TGA-approved uses such as for scabies. ‘Such shortages can disproportionately impact vulnerable people, including those in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.’

What a lack of faith this shows in the free market, particularly considering that the drug is off-patent and can be made by many pharmaceutical companies! If demand were to increase, so would production.

Back in September 2021, how could the TGA, have responded rationally and scientifically to the reports of Ivermectin’s effectiveness for Covid? Let’s consider the evidence.

First, the drug had an exemplary safety record. Dr Kory says 3.7 billion doses have been distributed over its 35 years of use. The WHO has Ivermectin on its list of essential medicines and its discoverer, Japanese scientist Dr Satoshi Omura, received the Nobel prize in 2015 for the drug, which has dramatically reduced river blindness and other diseases caused by roundworms.

There was never a question about safety – providing a doctor prescribed the drug properly – there was only a question about whether it worked.

Furthermore, there was no body of evidence showing Ivermectin made Covid worse – instead there were numerous randomised controlled trials showing it made it better. Physicians like Dr Kory were saying it had turned patients around and there were reports that some states in Mexico, Peru, and India had found it to be very effective.

One has to ask – what was to be lost by trying it? And what was to be gained – if it really worked as Drs Kory and Lawrie suggested – was a markedly reduced number of people getting seriously ill and dying from Covid.

Here’s a possible alternative approach. Instead of banning Ivermectin, the TGA could have allowed GPs to prescribe Ivermectin for Covid but require them to report on the outcome. In other words, proactively collect data on its effectiveness.

One year on, we may reflect on what the outcome of such a decision might have been.

And if you are wondering what happened about Mulnupiravir, Merck got its EUA and reports sales of USD 4.4 billion for the first half of 2022. Molnupiravir (sold as Lagevrio) is now being used to treat early Covid in Australia. The other new antiviral being used in Australia, Paxlovid, which also got its EUA last year, has been forecast by its developer, Pfizer, to bring in USD 22 billion in sales in 2022.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/09/today-is-a-significant-anniversary/

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Adverse Effects of mRNA Vaccines Were Known Before COVID-19: Medical Doctor

Complications and adverse reactions occurring after administering mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been anticipated by doctors based on data and studies going back 15 years, said Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet.

When the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, it was already known that the toxicity of the spike protein and the toxicity of another component of the vaccine could cause complications such as inflammation, blood clots, and disruption of the immune system, Vliet said in a recent interview for EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program.

“Over the first six months after the rollout of COVID-19 shots, I had a whole gamut of patients with all kinds of problems they had not had before,” she said, adding that the only common denominator of these cases was that they all had the COVID-19 vaccines.

Vliet runs an independent medical practice.

“Most of these people are people that have been my patients for 20 or 25 years. I even have some that I’ve seen for 30 years. And I knew their medical history,” she said.

Among disorders that Vliet observed in her patients were cognitive issues, memory loss, brain fog, mini strokes, dizziness, vertigo, tinnitus, and falling episodes.

The doctor mentioned two of her patients, a couple in their 70s who were healthy and fit and exercised regularly, walking 7 miles a day. They got the COVID-19 shot so they could travel to see their children and grandchildren.

Since then, the woman’s heart arrhythmia has been out of control and the man began having falling episodes that resulted in a broken hip, Vliet said.

Vliet said that in her medical practice, she abides by a basic principle she learned in medical school: If what you’re doing is working, keep doing it. If what you’re doing isn’t working, stop doing it.

“And if the patient has new health problems, right after you’ve given them a treatment or a medicine or a shot, then consider that as the connecting link,” she said.

“Those principles are common sense. It’s basic medicine 101 … and it’s been true my whole career.”

Doctors generally stop administering a medicine when a patient shows side effects that they didn’t have before, to see if those reactions resolve, Vliet said. “The same is true with any vaccine.”

“I’ve seen patients over my career who’ve had adverse reactions to all the different vaccines,” Vliet said, adding that she herself has had vaccines in the past and has not experienced any adverse reactions.

“I’ve recommended them appropriately for patients over my career. But there are also times when vaccines simply aren’t needed. COVID was one of those.”

COVID-19 was not a lethal illness for those under 50 with no medical comorbidities, Vliet said. And for those over 50 or with medical comorbidities, Vliet used early treatment, and the disease “was very treatable,” she said.

Vliet said she used a combination of older, safer medicines recommended by Drs. Vladimir Zelenko and Peter McCullough beginning in March 2020.

“I didn’t have any of my patients go in the hospital. I didn’t have anyone die,” she said. She did have some older patients with diabetes, obesity, and other medical conditions who were pretty sick with COVID-19, but she kept them out of the hospital with an aggressive combination of drug therapies recommended by McCullough.

“So vaccines are not always the answer to every problem,” she said, adding that for COVID-19, the best answer was early treatment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/adverse-effects-of-mrna-vaccines-were-known-before-covid-19-medical-doctor_4729329.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

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Why shut-down advocates in the US are blaming the Republicans

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made the most incredible comment early this month during a press briefing, after a US government report found American primary school students’ test scores had dropped dramatically since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, wiping out, in effect, more than 20 years of steady improvement in reading and maths.

Jean-Pierre blamed Republicans for keeping schools closed too long – a policy followed around the world, including Australia, where schools remained shut for at least a year in some states.

Opening schools, she said, “was the work of Democrats, despite Republicans”, as if determined to win the prize for the greatest furphy in the history of the briefing room.

As a quick internet search shows, some Republicans, sane people, and Donald Trump in particular, who as president had no power over schools, were castigated by Democrats and so-called public health experts as akin to murderers for arguing as early as July 2020 that all schools should open immediately.

Jean-Pierre’s comment came a week after Democrat New York Governor Kathy Hochul conceded shutting schools, something her Democrat predecessor Andrew Cuomo did repeatedly throughout 2020 and last year, was a disaster.

“Wow, what a mistake that was … women couldn’t go to their jobs. They lost their jobs, or they thought they’re back at their jobs and one child in a classroom tests positive, the whole class goes home for a week and a half. It was chaos,” Hochul said.

If you’ve been wondering how the debate that erupted in March 2020 was panning out between proponents of China-style lockdowns and that small minority of people who argued in favour of following established pandemic plans, look no further than the US.

The proponents of shutting everything down, China-style, have gone very quiet, or tried to blame their opponents for the policies they championed with vehemence for almost two years.

Even Anthony Fauci, who perhaps had more influence in pushing authoritarian health policies than any other individual, is washing his hands of them. “I think we need to make sure that your listeners understand I didn’t shut down anything,” he told Fox News last month.

The internet can be a right pain, can’t it? “When it became clear that we had community spread in the country, with a few cases of community spread … I recommended to the president that we shut the country down,” Fauci said in October 2020.

The outcome of this debate matters because if the most destructive and far-reaching interventions in peacetime history had costs greater then benefits or, more shockingly, didn’t appear to work to slow the spread of Covid-19 at all, it’s best we don’t repeat them.

It should be clear lockdown proponents have been eviscerated on the question of schools. But schools are just the beginning.

In a few years, I predict, defenders of authoritarian health policies will be like supporters of Vichy France after World War II – close to non-existent.

Even renowned US public health expert Leana Wen, one of the doyens of authoritarian health restrictions in the US, who demanded the unvaccinated be forced to stay in their homes, has done an about-face.

“Masking has harmed our son’s language development,” she said a recent column in The Washington Post, foreshadowing the death of mask mandates even as Covid cases soar in the northern winter.

Excess deaths across the West have increased this year when they should have declined significantly, as elderly deaths from Covid-19 throughout 2020 and last year were brought forward in time.

Whatever the cause, you can bet it stems from the unprecedented Chinese Comnmunist Party-style interventions enacted in 2020 to “save lives”.

From January to May, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, deaths were about 17 per cent higher than usual but only about half of those were accounted for by Covid-19.

Moreover, health systems are struggling, severely in Europe, when shutting them down was supposed to ensure they were protected – the opposite of what was promised.

Mandatory vaccination will be the next policy to succumb to condemnation, as it becomes clear that forcing healthy young people, let alone children, to be vaccinated against a disease that obviously poses negligible threat to them was insane.

For instance, a new study by nine top scientists and doctors, including from Oxford, Harvard, the University of California and Johns Hopkins University, published this week, concludes forcing young people to obtain boosters to attend university was totally unethical, contrary to longstanding practice of Western medicine.

“We estimate that 22,000-30,000 previously uninfected adults aged 18-29 must be boosted with an mRNA vaccine to prevent one Covid-19 hospitalisation,” the study’s authors conclude.

“Per Covid-19 hospitalisation prevented in previously uninfected young adults, we anticipate 18 to 98 serious adverse events.”

It shouldn’t be a shock that forcing hundreds of millions of people to take a vaccine that, despite repeated promises from experts, obviously failed to prevent transmission, illness or confer lasting immunity resulted in complications for a tiny minority.

After the global financial crisis in 2008, it became obvious that greed and capture of the financial regulators led to shockingly bad outcomes for the economy.

Yet we are meant to believe today that pharmaceutical regulators, which are funded to a much greater extent by the entities they regulate than financial regulators are by the institutions they regulate, are beyond reproach.

Fauci, in remarks almost totally missed in the wake of the Queen’s death, told Canadian television there “wasn’t the time” to test the new Covid-19 booster, about to be foisted on millions of people, on humans, happy instead to rely on trials on eight mice (which apparently still developed mild Covid).

“Masking 2 year olds … and boosting 20 (year old) men with a new vax tested in 8 mice is openly crazy … policy,” one of the study doctors, Vinay Prasad, said this week on social media.

It might be crazy but boy is it lucrative, as big pharma in the US pencils in tens of billions of revenue guaranteed by the state – for now, at least.

One by one, the liturgy of absurd restrictions, either made up or copied from China, or motivated by greed, will fall into disrepute. It can’t come soon enough.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/why-shutdown-advocates-in-the-us-are-blaming-the-republicans/news-story/85496cc1300cfe0dcc41b7df9df1a8aa

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COVID stress eases in young people: survey

Young people are more positive about their lives and in less psychological distress as Australia comes out of the pandemic, a new study shows.

More than two in three young people aged 18 to 24 said their lives had improved in the past year, while there was a five per cent drop in psychological distress, ANU's Professor Nicholas Biddle found.

Prof Biddle said stress remained above pre-pandemic levels, with young people "the most dramatically impacted" by COVID-19. "Overall this is really encouraging news," he said. "It's heartening to see the majority of young Australians say they are feeling much better ... even though they still face ongoing pandemic pressures."

While young people recorded the biggest decline in psychological distress, Australians of all ages felt better than they did in October 2021.

More than half of those surveyed said they thought their life was worse in May 2020, months after tough restrictions including lockdowns were introduced. This dropped to about one in five - or 20 per cent - in August 2021.

"Wellbeing and mental health outcomes have improved over recent months as lockdown conditions have substantially eased and despite high case numbers," Prof Biddle said.

The report is based on 12 surveys of 3500 Australians over two years.

It comes as national cabinet decided pandemic leave would remain in effect as long as mandatory COVID-19 isolation periods are in place. The payments were due to expire at the end of the month.

National cabinet also agreed to limit the number of payments to three in six months unless people can argue extraordinary circumstances.

The ACTU welcomed the decision to extend the payments. It said it was critical workers were able to isolate while they were infectious.

The union's assistant secretary Liam O'Brien said financial incentives for people to stay home while sick should remain.

"Paid pandemic leave needs to stay in place as long as working people are being asked to isolate and take time away from work to control the spread of the virus," he said.

"The third of our working population who do not have access to paid sick leave cannot be expected to go without pay to keep the rest of the community safe."

https://thewest.com.au/politics/covid-stress-eases-in-young-people-survey-c-8242870

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

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2022 Excess Deaths All Around the World Raise an Alarm

The Scottish government has started an inquiry into the causes of excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland.

Excess deaths refer to the total number of deaths in a week in 2022 minus the average number of deaths in the same week over the period from 2016 to 2021, while excluding 2020 to not inflate the previous years’ average, as there was a large number of deaths in spring 2020 (Excess Deaths = Total Number of Deaths – Average Number of Deaths in Previous Years).

Excess deaths include deaths caused by the pandemic and those from other causes.

According to the official website of the Scottish Parliament, the weekly numbers of deaths in Scotland between April 2020 and April 2022 (the latest available date) are larger than the average numbers of deaths in the same weeks of previous years, for most of the weeks during this period.

For instance, for the week beginning Jan. 4, 2021, there were 1,720 deaths, while the previous years’ average for the weeks beginning Jan. 4 (from 2016 to 2019) was 1,276, so the number of excess deaths was 444 (34.80 percent).

However, what’s unclear is the extent to which the excess deaths are caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, or if they are due to other reasons.

In June 2022, in an article published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology, recommended gene testing athletes to prevent sudden cardiac death.

Sports cardiology is an advanced field of practice that evaluates athletes for genetically determined cardiac conditions which may lead to malignant arrhythmias, heart failure, and sudden cardiac death. Genetic testing is becoming more widely used in sports cardiology, and it is generally considered part of a comprehensive cardiac assessment in athletes.

According to the statistics, up to 80 percent of athletes who die suddenly had no symptoms or family history of heart disease. Moreover, other than the case of Rab Wardell, a universal pattern of increased excess mortality has been reported all over the world.

However, genetic factors are rather stable factors that won’t normally directly cause death unless there are significant external risk factors. As the saying goes, internal causes are like basic prerequisites, like a seed, while external factors are like sunlight or water. The seed will grow into a plant only with the suitable conditions of temperature, sunlight, and water.

We could not attribute a large number of excess death rates to genetic factors alone. There must be other external triggers to be found.

Excess Mortality in England and Wales

Beyond Scotland, other areas of the UK also experienced an unexplained rise in excess deaths. According to the latest data from the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), from June to late August 2022, around 1,000 excess deaths took place in England and Wales each week. However, most of them are unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For instance, in the week ending Aug. 26, there were 1,556 cases of excess mortality, but only approximately 453 cases of them were caused by the pandemic.

Before the end of March 2022, deaths in England and Wales were fewer than usual, although several hundreds of people were still dying from the pandemic every week. However, the situation changed subsequently, with the number of excess deaths rising or sometimes fluctuating, even though the numbers and percentages of COVID-19 deaths have been falling.

For example, during the following five weeks after the week ending July 29, the percentages of COVID-related deaths were 7.4 (810 cases out of a total of 11,013 deaths), 6.8 (723 cases out of 10,698), 5.7 (592 cases out of 10,355), 5.0 (551 cases out of 10,982), and 4.1 (453 cases out of 10,942), respectively, with declines on a weekly basis.

On the contrary, during the same time period, the weekly numbers of excess deaths were 1,678, 1,350, 950, 1,719, and 1,556, respectively, with declines in the first three weeks—but surprisingly an increase in the latter two weeks.

Currently, many baffled and worried health experts in the UK are calling for an urgent government investigation into these excess deaths. Among them, there is Dr. Charles Levinson, chief executive of the private general practice company DoctorCall. According to Levinson, the causes of these excess deaths are complicated and not fully understood by the medical professionals in the UK, thus there’s an urgent need for a comprehensive government inquiry.

If the current trajectory continues, the number of non-COVID-related excess deaths will soon outstrip the number of COVID-related deaths in 2022 in the UK.

Excess All-cause Mortality in the United States

According to a study on the medRxiv preprint server, the U.S. official COVID-19 death counts have underestimated the pandemic’s impact on mortality. An estimated 936,911 excess deaths occurred during 2020 and 2021. Among them, 171,168 cases(18.3 percent) were not assigned to COVID-19 on the death certificates as an underlying cause of death. The excess mortality in this case refers to the difference between the expected deaths before the pandemic and the actual deaths, which is a universal definition all over the world. (Excess Deaths = Actual Reported Deaths – Expected Deaths Prior to 2020. The expected number of deaths is derived from the numbers of deaths for the same time period in the previous years.)

Rising Excess Deaths All Over the World

The United States and the UK are not alone in this trend of unexplained rising excess deaths. Similar phenomena have been taking place in many countries, as attested by statistics from the scientific online publication Our World in Data. The site uses the same definition for excess mortality as defined above.

As different countries have vastly different populations, the number of excess deaths is not a useful measure for comparison purposes. To better enable comparisons across different countries, the P-score can be used.

P-score is calculated by dividing the difference between reported deaths and expected deaths by the expected deaths first and then times 100.

[P-score = (Reported Deaths – Expected Deaths)/ Expected Deaths x 100] OR [P-score = Excess Deaths / Expected Deaths x 100]

For instance, if a P-score is 50 percent in a given week, it implies that the actual number of deaths for that week is 50 percent higher than the expected (i.e. projected) number of deaths, had the COVID-19 pandemic never taken place.

Top 5 Countries With Cumulative Excess Deaths Since COVID Pandemic

Among these countries, the United States boasts of a population of over 338 million, Brazil has a population of over 215 million, and the other three countries all have a population of over 110 million.

As they are all countries with relatively large populations in the world, and given the fact that certain countries with larger populations such as China, India, and Pakistan might have grossly understated their numbers of COVID-related deaths, it’s not surprising that these five countries are shown with the largest numbers of excess deaths. This phenomenon in fact logically indicates that the excess death is proportionally related to population toll in each country.

This is a clear signal that the above mentioned high excess death rates is not a country or local or geographic specific reason. It must have been caused by a certain type of health risk factor that has the power to influence the whole human world during 2021-2022.

But what event could possibly have such significant power? Even the global infection rate of COVID-19 is around 3 percent, which does not justify COVID-19 itself to be categorized as a global health risk factor.

What, then, could be classified as a global health risk factor with the power to influence the majority of the global population?

Unexplained Excess Death Rates in 2022 During Omicron Period

During this time period, the COVID-19 Omicron variant was the most prevalent. Although highly transmissible, Omicron’s infection fatality ratio is 78.7 percent lower than that of the previous strains. According to a study on the medRxiv preprint server, Omicron’s death rate over the general population is 0.021 percent.

Accordingly, in theory, if the excess death rate had been directly caused by SARS-CoV-2, the absolute excess death number should be decreasing in 2022, after Omicron’s spread.

Let’s do a simplified calculation of the excess death rate that should have been caused by Omicron in the UK.

During the five-year period from 2015 to 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic started to wreak havoc in the UK, the crude death rate per 1,000 people was 9. Therefore, the mortality rate was 0.9 percent (= 9/1,000 x 100). In 2022, the UK has a population of 67.58 million. The expected number of deaths would be 608,220 (=0.9% x 67.58 million).

Assuming that all the excess deaths in the UK were caused by Omicron from January to July 2022, the number of excess deaths should be 14,192 (= 0.021% x 67.58 million), which was much lower than the expected number of 608,220.

On the other hand, if the Omicron-caused deaths explained the excess death rate in the UK, the excess death rate would be only 2.3 percent (=14,192/608,220 x 100), which was much lower than the excess death rate exhibited in the graph.

Therefore, the Omicron variant could not be the main cause of all the excess deaths in the UK. This should also be the case in Germany, Australia, Israel, and the United States.

Investigation Into Potential Causes of Excess Deaths

Regardless of the diseases that directly cause their deaths, many people die from old age every year. Due to weakened immunity, the elderly are especially prone to COVID-19 infection. Therefore, as of August 24, 2022, 74.7 percent of the total COVID-related deaths in the United States were among people aged 65 or older.

So, it can be inferred that many elderly people died of the more lethal viruses, such as alpha and delta, in 2021 from the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the number of excess deaths in 2022 should actually be below the number of expected deaths.

Apparently, the consistent pattern of unexpected high levels of excess deaths across the globe is abnormal. This issue warrants an investigation that may involve accessing the raw data on death certificates (i.e. causes of death), checking a random sample of medical records, analyzing autopsy reports, and transparently examining the deceased’s COVID-19 vaccination status.

Heart Diseases as a Major Concern of Academic Journals

According to the UK’s Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, from the week ending on June 24, 2000 to the week ending on June 24, 2022, the leading causes of excess deaths included ischemic heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, other circulatory diseases, heart failure, and cancer.

A study published in July 2022 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine indicates that the major causes of death in the United States from March 2020 to October 2021 were heart disease and cancer. Specifically, 20.1 percent of deaths were due to heart disease, and 17.5 percent were caused by cancer. Together, they accounted for 1.29 million deaths, while, at the same time, COVID-19 infection was the cause of 350,000 deaths.

Cardiovascular problems, including carditis, heart attack, and stroke can be caused by COVID-19 infection or mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.

According to an article published in the journal Nature, some studies have shown that the risk of heart problems remains high many months after a patient recovers from a COVID-19 infection.

Furthermore, on June 9, 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated that myocarditis and pericarditis have been reported after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer or Moderna), especially among adolescents and young adult males within several days after their second dose of vaccination.

According to Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, as of June 9, 226 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis after vaccination in people younger than age 30 had been confirmed.

Both Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are based on mRNA-containing lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). According to a study published in December 2021 in the journal iScience, there is evidence that the LNPs used in preclinical mRNA vaccine studies have been found to be highly inflammatory in mice. Injection of these LNPs into the mice caused rapid and robust inflammatory responses. Maybe this can explain the underlying cause of post-vaccine carditis, which is the inflammation of the heart, including myocarditis and pericarditis.

VAERS Data Suggest a Large Number of Post-Vaccination Deaths and Rising Adverse Events
Not coincidentally, there are an alarming number of adverse events reportedly associated with COVID-19 vaccine jabs, including deaths.

The latest numbers of COVID-19 vaccine adverse events in the American Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) as of August 26, 2022 were: 1,394,703 reports of vaccine adverse events, including 30,605 deaths, 175,020 hospitalizations, 134,530 cases of urgent care, and 204,343 doctor office visits. There were also 51,879 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis, 16,385 heart attacks, and 8,942 cases of thrombocytopenia/low platelets.

The provincial government of Manitoba in Canada reported in July 2022 that the vaccine booster shot administration rate in the province was 43.8 percent in May 2022. However, people who had received booster injections accounted for more than 70 percent of COVID-related deaths.

The fact that such a majority of people (over 70%) with 3 doses of COVID-19 vaccine contribute to the cause of death in two major countries with the world’s most advanced medical system, is convincingly suggesting that COVID-19 jabs are a potential health risk factor. The impact of COVID-19 jabs are also dose-dependent.

Research Findings Point to Possible Injuries Due to Spike Protein

Many studies have shown that the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s spike protein can potentially cause injuries to our cardiac pericytes, endothelial function, mitochondria, DNA self-repairing mechanisms, and immunity.

As COVID-19 vaccine injections also contain spike protein, the vaccines can cause injuries in our heart, nerves, brain, and vessels. All of these potential injuries can lead to cardiovascular problems or even sudden deaths.

We herein call for a transparent global investigation into this urgent issue of rising excess deaths as soon as possible. When it comes to people’s health and well-being, there’s no time to waste, and it’s unacceptable to wait.

Based on the aforementioned evidence, there is a strong possibility that the ascending global trend of excess deaths is at least partially contributed to by the COVID-19 vaccine jabs. Or, at least the that role COVID-19 vaccines might have played in this issue should be thoroughly investigated and the results should be publicly announced.

As the Chinese idiom goes, “After you lose a sheep, it’s not too late to fix the pen.” It’s never too late to take remedial action.

However, if we keep losing sheep without correcting the root causes, we would in one day lose all the sheep.

If no action is taken as these reg flags become increasingly obvious, we fear the heavy burden of responsibility will become greater than any single person could possibly bear.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/2022-excess-deaths-all-around-the-world-raise-an-alarm_4720697.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

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Two big admissions regarding Covid vaccines surfaced this week

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has acknowledged publicly for the first time that the agency gave false information about its COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s director, said in a letter made public on Sept. 12 that the CDC did not analyze certain types of adverse event reports at all in 2021, despite the agency previously saying it started in February 2021.

“CDC performed PRR analysis between March 25, 2022, through July 31, 2022,” Walensky said. “CDC also recently addressed a previous statement made to the Epoch Times to clarify PRR were not run between February 26, 2021, to September 30, 2021.”

Walensky’s agency had promised in several documents, starting in early 2021, to perform a type of analysis called Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) on reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which it helps manage.

But the agency said in June that it did not perform PRRs. It also said that performing them was “outside th[e] agency’s purview.”

Confronted with the contradiction, Dr. John Su, a CDC official, told The Epoch Times in July that the agency started performing PRRs in February 2021 and “continues to do so to date.”

But just weeks later, the CDC said Su was wrong.

“CDC performed PRRs from March 25, 2022 through July 31, 2022,” a spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in August.

Walensky’s new letter, dated Sept. 2 and sent on Sept. 6 to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), shows that Walensky is aware that her agency gave false information.

‘Lacked Any Justification’

Walensky’s letter included no explanation of why that happened.

The letter “lacked any justification for why CDC performed PRRS during certain periods and not others,” Johnson, the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations, told Walensky in a response.

“You also provided no explanation as to why Dr. Su’s assertion … completely contradicts the CDC’s [initial] response … as well as your September 6, 2022, response to me,” he added.

He demanded answers from the CDC on the situation, including why the CDC did not perform PRRs until March and why the agency misinformed the public when it said no PRRs were conducted.

The CDC and Walensky did not respond to requests for comment.

Of course, what can they say to justify lying, especially about the number one issue plaguing America for the past two years?!

But, wait! There’s MORE!

Not only did the CDC lie, but we now have the first undeniable proof linking the vaccine to the myocarditis.

We’ve long reported the many connections between the virus and various ailments, myocarditis among them. Too many stories of teenage athletes, professional athletes, and people in strikingly good health until they took the vaccine emerged almost immediately.

But did our government say “let’s pause, and check this out”? No, of course not. They said “these links to illnesses are lies. These people are fine.” Or, perhaps it was “they had underlying conditions.” I never once heard a leftist say “I’m not comfortable poking more people until we double check their safety.”. Honestly, it’s a damn shame. So many lives, especially young vibrant lives, were lost for no good reason other than to line some corporate pockets. And government pockets, too. Don’t let them pretend to be innocent bystanders here.

The Epoch Times found that a study published in August verified the link between 345 people in England who died of myocarditis in one year were all vaccinated with one of three COVID-19 vaccines.

According to ET:

The study, conducted from December 2020 to December 2021, looked at deaths after a hospital stay for myocarditis or with myocarditis listed as a cause of death on a death certificate among 42.8 million vaccinated people in England age 13 and up.

The publication of the study’s findings in the American Heart Association’s journal, Circulation, marked the first time in the medical literature that researchers have confirmed that myocarditis associated with one of the COVID-19 vaccines can result in death. The article was published online on Aug. 22 and appears in the journal’s September 5, 2022, issue.

“This is really big, to talk about deaths. CDC keeps saying, ‘generally mild, generally mild,” cardiologist Sanjay Verma, who was not involved in the research, told The Epoch Times. “There’s been a concerted campaign to emphasize that people have not died from myocarditis and that it’s generally mild.”

Myocarditis is defined as inflammation of the myocardium, the middle layer of the heart muscle. Although the CDC has acknowledged since the spring of 2021 that myocarditis is a possible side effect of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the agency has not publicly spoken about death as a possible outcome of myocarditis.

The authors of the study in Circulation looked at patient data pulled from the national health database for all those in England age 13 and up who received at least one dose of one of three vaccines available in that country: AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Moderna.

About 20 million people got the AstraZeneca vaccine, 20 million got the Pfizer vaccine, and just over 1 million got the Moderna vaccine.

The study tracked hospital admissions and deaths from myocarditis by age and gender and in relation to how many doses of each vaccine a person had received. It compared how many cases of myocarditis were associated with a recent SARS-CoV2 infection, and how many were associated with one of the vaccines.

Of the people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and were hospitalized for myocarditis or with myocarditis listed on their death certificates, 22 people (17 percent) died within 28 days of receiving the first dose, 14 people (12 percent) died after their second dose, and 13 people (15 percent) died after getting the Pfizer-BioNTech booster.

For the AstraZeneca vaccine, 40 people died of myocarditis after the first dose and 11 after the second dose, 28 percent and 12 percent respectively.

Among those who got the Moderna vaccine, there were no myocarditis deaths within 28 days of vaccination.

The study concluded that, in general, the risk of myocarditis from SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was greater than the risk of myocarditis from the vaccines. But there was no control group of unvaccinated people, the study was limited to the 28 days following vaccination, and the conclusion did not hold for all ages or all of the vaccines.

For males under 40, the risk of myocarditis after a second dose of the Moderna vaccine was almost four times higher than the risk of myocarditis after a SARS-CoV2 infection, the data showed.

The study is a follow-up to a prior study in which the authors reported an association between the first and second dose of the vaccines and myocarditis.

More Lies!

Neither the CDC nor the FDA has ever acknowledged that any American has died from myocarditis caused by one of the COVID-19 vaccines.

The most recent version of the CDC advisory on adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination said that as of Aug. 31, 2022, there were 1,022 “preliminary reports” of myocarditis and pericarditis for people under 18 in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), and that 672 of them had been verified and had met the CDC’s working definition of myocarditis or pericarditis.

But there is no mention of death as a possible outcome.

“Most patients with myocarditis or pericarditis after COVID-19 vaccination responded well to medicine and rest and felt better quickly,” the advisory said.

A CDC morbidity and mortality report from February 2022 referenced one reported death from myocarditis but offered no confirmation.

“One death was reported; investigation is ongoing, and other contributory factors for myocarditis are being evaluated,” it said.

A CDC advisory on adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines linked to a January 25, 2022, study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which found that the risk of myocarditis increased after both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines and was highest after the second dose in adolescents and young men.

The JAMA study alluded to deaths without confirming any, saying that among people under 30, there were “no confirmed cases of myocarditis in those who died after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination without another identifiable cause” and that two other deaths “with potential myocarditis” are under investigation.

But once again, did any one shout “Stop the Presses! Let’s get this thing investigated?” Nah, why bother. Leftists would rather just keep lying straight to our faces and hoping we’re too dumb to ever realize that 2 and 2 make 4. Sorry to disappoint you leftists, but we’ve been on to you from the beginning. We’ve always known it was a death poke. Clearly, that’s why I didn’t take one, I sure as heck didn’t let anyone jab my kids, and I tried my best to warn anyone that would listen. I pissed off plenty of people, but I knew they’d thank me later.

Hey guys- it’s later!

https://theblacksphere.net/2022/09/vaccine-naysayers-vindicated-once-and-for-all/

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First multi-strain COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in Australia after government backs Moderna shot

The federal government has approved a COVID-19 vaccine that specifically targets two coronavirus variants of concern, including the original Omicron strain.

Health Minister Mark Butler said the government had accepted a recommendation from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) on the use of a new Moderna vaccine as a booster shot for people aged 18 years and older.

The move marks the first time a multi-strain COVID vaccine — otherwise known as a bivalent vaccine — has been approved for use in Australia.

The new shot is already being used in other countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom.

Unlike other approved vaccines, which only target the original Wuhan strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the bivalent one also targets the original Omicron BA.1 strain.

"This is an important first step in showing how mRNA vaccines can be adapted to different dominant variants and subvariants," Mr Butler said in a statement.

The first doses of the bivalent vaccine have already arrived in the country and will now undergo batch testing by Australia's medical regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

They will be introduced into the rollout as existing stocks of Moderna's already-approved COVID-19 vaccine are exhausted.

How effective is it?

The vaccines already in use in Australia provide protection from severe disease against Omicron subvariant infections, but ATAGI found Moderna's bivalent shot provides a modest improvement in the body's immune response.

All jabs provide significant protection from severe disease against Omicron subvariant infections.

Infectious disease physician and microbiologist Paul Griffin, from the University of Queensland, said the approval of the bivalent vaccine did not "detract from how well our original vaccines have worked".

"The virus has continued to change and so we need to update our vaccines accordingly," he said.

Infectious diseases expert Robert Booy said lab data showed this bivalent vaccine was helpful in preventing infection from all Omicron variants, over and above what existing vaccines are expected to provide.

"However we don't know about efficacy because that requires doing a study of many thousands of people, so we have to rely on the immunogenicity, the antibody production," he said.

"And we know that neutralising antibodies with the vaccine are high and protective against the common Omicron strains BA.4 and BA.5."

"But we can see that the vaccine is effective [and] worth having."

Professor Booy also said the bivalent vaccine could be used as a fifth shot in the future. "So if you've had four … you would have had the most recent one within the last few months, and that would protect you until at least Christmas," he said. "So it might be something you do in March or April, at the same time you get your flu jab."

Dr Griffin said it could also help keep Australians safe for some time to come. "The thought there is that it'll get better, broader cross-protection, maybe even against new emerging variants when they do arise," he said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-12/moderna-multi-strain-covid-vaccine-approved/101430876

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

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Fauci and White Coat Censorship On Trial

More than 50 government officials across a dozen agencies, the Epoch Times reports, were involved in applying pressure to social media companies to censor users. Officials refusing to provide answers include Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984.

The case, Missouri et al v. Biden et al, is now in federal court under judge Terry Doughty. Jenin Younes of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, and an attorney for some of the plaintiffs, notes that Dr. Fauci had “demanded that specific individuals, including two of our clients, Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, be censored on social media.” Dr. Bhattacharya, of Stanford Medical School, and Dr. Kulldorff of Harvard, are co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which took issue with Dr. Fauci on the issue of lockdowns.

As we noted, National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins tasked Dr. Fauci to conduct “a quick and devastating public takedown” of the Great Barrington scientists, smeared as “fringe epidemiologists.”

In an Epoch Times commentary, Bhattacharya and Kulldorff wondered if Collins and Fauci ever read the GBD and why they opted for a “takedown” instead of “vigorous scientific discussion.” The GBD authors recall the harm caused by the lockdowns caused, particularly the school shutdowns that harmed children without affecting disease spread. That damage will take years to reverse, but the authors have thoughts on ways to avoid similar disasters.

The NIH director commands a budget of $42.9 billion and the NIAID $6.1 billion. “If we want scientists to speak freely in the future, we should avoid having the same people in charge of public health policy and medical research funding.”

Those taking issue with NIH and NIAID pronouncements have found themselves censored by social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter. As we noted in 2018, Sen. Cory Gardner asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg if the federal government had ever demanded that Facebook remove a page from the site. Zuckerberg said, “yes, I believe so,” but did not indicate the content of the page, which government official had demanded its removal, and when the removal had taken place.

Judge Doughty has also ruled that Dr. Fauci’s communications are relevant to claims of suppression of free speech over the COVID-19 lab-leak theory. Dr. Fauci, who funded dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, maintains that the COVID virus arose naturally in the wild.

Anthony Fauci earned a medical degree in 1966 but in 1968 took a job with the NIH. Dr. Fauci’s bio showed no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry, but in 1984 the NIH made Dr. Fauci director of NIAID. Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), maintained that Dr. Fauci was unqualified for the post. Dr. Fauci now claims, “I represent science,” and that his critics are only attacking science itself.

“It is time for Dr. Fauci to answer for his flagrant disregard for Americans’ constitutional rights and civil liberties,” proclaimed attorney Jenin Younes. Judge Doughty gave Dr. Fauci 21 days to comply.

https://blog.independent.org/2022/09/08/white-coat-censorship-trial/?omhide=true

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Israel has played a key role in the pandemic

What is astonishing – or perhaps convenient – is that for the first year of the vaccine rollout, Israel had no system to collect data on vaccine injuries and deaths; just an anonymous form that could be submitted but not be tracked. Shapira had a significant injury following his booster. He says no one checked up on it.

Finally, at the end of 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Health created a system and commissioned a six-month study led by Professor Mati Berkowitz, an expert in pharmacology and toxicology. He reported in June 2022 via a Zoom meeting that was recorded and leaked to Israeli journalist Yaffa Shir-Raz who analysed the findings with the help of Professor Retsef Levi, an expert in risk management and health systems at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of Israel’s Public Emergency Council.

Levi garnered international attention when, in mid-2021, he reported that data from Israeli emergency medical services showed a 25 per cent increase in heart problems for 16–39-year-olds years following the administration of the Covid vaccine compared with previous years. It gave the lie to the claim that any heart damage caused by the vaccine was not as bad as damage done by the virus.

The report by Shir-Raz and Levi on the Zoom call was equally damning. It showed that 90 per cent of reports of adverse events were not resolved in a few days, as claimed, but lasted up to three months, and 60 per cent lasted longer with some still ongoing. It proved causality in many instances because of dose-dependent reactions demonstrated when people were re-exposed to the jab. Finally, Berkowitz warned that the government could be exposed to medico legal claims for urging people to get vaccinated despite the known risks.

The response of the ministry was to sit on the report for two months while the decision was made to vaccinate children as young as six months. When they finally released it, they diluted the findings by calculating the frequency of adverse events not against doses administered to the 15 per cent of population surveyed during six months, but against the entire population of Israel for the entire campaign. They even included doses administered to males and females of all ages when calculating the frequency of menstrual problems.

As shocking as this was, it was matched by the utter indifference of the media which failed – with the honourable exception of Neil Oliver at GB News – to report the revelations. It has fallen to citizen journalists – doctors, statisticians, assorted others – many who have been banned on social media, to spread the word, mostly via Substack.com

Shapira was incensed that the Israeli Genesis Award was given to Bourla for ‘a mediocre, short-acting vaccine that yielded Pfizer a profit of billions’. ‘What grade would you give to a vaccine that people are vaccinated with three times and get sick twice (as of today)? Not to mention significant side effects’ he tweeted. ‘And don’t say that it prevents a serious illness,’ he added, ‘no one has proven it.’

The word ‘Israel’ means one who struggles with G-d, as Jacob wrestled with an angel. The Torah teaches that Jews are not expected to accept faith blindly but to engage intellectually with their doubts. How does a nation with such a tradition sink into censorship and self-censorship? Of course, it is not just Israel. It is Australia, the UK, the US, the West. Countries where we are bound – even the atheists – by our laws and traditions to the Ten Commandments, children of The Book.

In this sense Udi Qimron, professor of microbiology in the department of medicine at the University of Tel Aviv spoke for all of us when he tweeted: ‘Now, when everything is open and the wave is fading, and it is clear to everyone that the danger is increasing and that the measures were unnecessary, it is still not clear how: How did we neglect our children’s education? How did we burn our resources? How did we give up our freedom? How did we exclude, conceal and disintegrate the fabric of society? How was our mind so easily controlled? how?!?!’ There are no easy answers.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/wrestling-with-pandemons/ ?

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Navy quietly rolled back punishments for SEALs seeking religious exemptions to the COVID vaccine

The U.S. Navy quietly rolled back an order punishing SEALs who remain unvaccinated due to their religious beliefs, according to recent court documents.

The order, "Trident Order #12," disqualified SEALs seeking religious exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine from training, traveling for deployment and conducting other standard business. It was first issued on Sept. 24, 2021 by Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral William Lescher, and all special warfare forces were initially expected to come into compliance with the vaccine mandate by mid-October 2021.

The order specifically said that "Special Operations Designated Personnel (SEAL and SWCC) refusing to receive recommended vaccines based solely on personal or religious beliefs will still be medically disqualified," meaning that SEALs were designated as "non-deployable" if they submitted religious accommodation requests.

The order was put on hold due to a preliminary injunction issued by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in early 2022 as part of an ongoing lawsuit brought by First Liberty Institute and Hacker Stephens LLP on behalf of 35 active-duty SEALs and three reservists seeking a religious exemption to the mandate.

However, according to a new filing in the lawsuit, the Navy quietly rolled back Trident Order #12 on May 22, 2022, a few months after the injunction was issued.

A communication order was circulated by the Navy on May 23 with the subject: "NSWC CLOSEOUT TO TRIDENT ORDER #12 - MANDATORY VACCINATION FOR COVID-19." NSWC refers to the Naval Special Warfare Command.

"This order rescinds reference A," it states, referring to "Ref A" as "Trident Order #12 on COVID-19 Vaccinations."

The May 23 communication order also said Navy commands "will continue to follow guidance, as appropriate, regarding COVID-19 vaccination, accommodation requests, and mitigation measures."

It is not immediately clear whether the Navy replaced the order with any other document or the reasoning behind Trident Order #12's termination. The Navy spokesperson told Fox News Digital, "The Navy does not comment on ongoing litigation."

According to a filing from plaintiff attorney Heather Gebelin Hacker to a Fifth Circuit clerk, the legal team representing the SEALs only became aware of the recession of the order on Sept. 1, months after it was rolled back.

"To the best of counsel’s knowledge, Trident Order #12 was not replaced. As the Court will recall, Trident Order #12 stated that SEALs who are unvaccinated due to religious beliefs are medically disqualified, though SEALs who are unvaccinated due to medical reasons are not automatically disqualified. Trident Order #12 also implemented the COVID-19 vaccine mandate at the command level for Naval Special Warfare forces, setting a deadline of compliance for October 17, 2021," the SEALs' legal team wrote.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/navy-quietly-rolled-back-punishments-seals-seeking-religious-exemptions-covid-vaccine

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

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