Tuesday, October 11, 2022


Independent task-force releases new report into origins of COVID-19

A new report by a team of independent global scientists has found it “highly likely” the origins of Covid-19 was bats who passed the virus to animal hosts and then to people working in the wildlife trade at a seafood market in China.

The report, published Tuesday by the Independent Task Force on Covid-19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) concluded that based on the available evidence it was highly unlikely the virus was created in or released from a laboratory.

The team of 12 internationally renowned experts from a diverse range of disciplines included Dr Danielle Anderson from Victoria.

The team found the evidence strongly indicated that Covid-19 originated via a pathway similar to SARS-CoV, involving a spillover from bats to animals to people leading to the first known cluster of Covid-19 at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in China in December 2019.

Dr Anderson, from the Royal Melbourne Hospital and a research scientist at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) at the Doherty Institute, said the team looked at hundreds of research papers and preprints – papers yet to be peer-reviewed and published – and interviewed those who had an opinion on the pandemic.

Dr Anderson, an expert on bat-borne viruses who also worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the outbreak, said based on the evidence the team reviewed, there were no big surprises.

“We did this to understand some of the information people were referencing,” she said.

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Are COVID Jabs Causing Leukemia? A Preliminary Analysis of Adverse Event Cases

On November 23, 2021, former South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan died at the age of 90. According to South Korea’s JTBC TV, a former Cheong Wa Dae (South Korean presidential palace) secretary revealed that Chun had not eaten properly for 10 consecutive days since he received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. His health deteriorated rapidly and he lost 20 pounds. And he was diagnosed with leukemia and was hospitalized for 12 days. One of his former aides suspected that his leukemia was related to the side effects of the vaccine.

Moreover, an open letter from a group of Mainland Chinese leukemia patients was circulating on Chinese social media platforms in early May 2022, but it was quickly taken down. In the letter, the patients, aged 3 to 70 years old and from more than 30 provinces and central government directly controlled municipalities across China, stated that they had developed leukemia after receiving COVID-19 vaccines and suspected that their disease was a severe vaccination adverse event. And they hoped that the government would investigate the matter.

So, is it possible that vaccination can cause leukemia? What are the possible causes of the disease, and how can we prevent it?

Principles of Pharmacovigilance

Dr. Yuhong Dong, virologist and infectious disease doctor, has also worked in pharmacovigilance department for cancer drugs at a major international pharmaceutical company.

According to the International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) Good Clinical Practice (GCP) Guideline E2A (Page 4): “An adverse event (AE) is any untoward medical occurrence in a patient or clinical investigation subject administered a pharmaceutical product and which does not necessarily have a causal relationship with this treatment.” (pdf)

In the pharmacovigilance industry, there is a generally accepted principle: “It is better to make 3,000 misjudgments rather than to miss one case.”

Regardless of the source of the adverse event report and whether the report was made by a professional or not, every piece of information regarding a potential adverse experience of a new drug or vaccine must be properly taken as an AE. And it has to be included in the vaccine adverse event report database for medical analysis. The purpose is to collect as much information as possible to find patterns in these cases and monitor any potential serious adverse events proactively.

According to international good practice principles in the pharmaceutical industry in monitoring vaccine adverse events, an adverse drug or vaccine event is considered eligible to be reported if the piece of information meets the following four conditions:

There is an identifiable patient;

There is an identifiable reporter;

There is exposure to a drug or vaccine;

There is an adverse experience (symptoms or signs or lab test, etc), regardless of whether a causality relationship with the drug or vaccine has been established or not

The key rationale is that after the new vaccine or drug is applied in a large population, the top priority would be safety rather than efficacy. There are many examples of pharmaceuticals or vaccines that have been recalled or even withdrawn from the market due to safety issues. So if there is a safety concern, it must be addressed immediately and proper actions shall be taken in order to protect humanity’s safety.

Case Study: Almost 1,000 People Suspected of Developing Leukemia after Vaccination

A veteran journalist has provided Dr. Dong with two large excel sheets of adverse leukemia events made collectively by mainland Chinese-manufactured vaccine recipients. These data sheets contain adverse events reported by nearly 1,000 patients as of June 4, 2022, at 10 p.m. EST. The adverse events are mentioned in great detail, and the reports’ contents are alarming.

Due to time constraints, we have so far conducted a preliminary analysis of 235 valid cases, accounting for approximately 20 percent of the total.

What we presented here in this paper is the preliminary data analysis, but a more complete analysis will be performed during the coming weeks.

In terms of gender, the victims in 56 percent of these 235 cases were male; 2 percent were female; and 42 percent of the cases didn’t specify gender information. There is currently a lot of missing information, and the gender ratio is predicted to be around 1:1 in the complete data, with the number of men possibly slightly larger.

Their age range was 3 to 79 years old, with an average age of 30 years old.

Vaccines are mainly from Sinovac Life Sciences Co., Ltd, but some are produced by Beijing Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd., Wuhan Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd., and several others.

Among the vaccine related adverse events concerning leukemia, the most common is acute myeloid leukemia (49 percent of the cases). It is followed by acute lymphoblastic leukemia (34 percent), aplastic anemia (9 percent), and several other hematological malignancies such as lymphoma.

In 44 percent of the cases, symptoms or diagnoses of these adverse events were reported to occur on average 84 days after the second dose.

In 16 percent of the cases, these leukemia-like events were reported to occur on average 52 days after the third dose. This is a reasonable time frame, as leukemia involves genetic mutations, and there would be a pathological process, which is a chronic adverse reaction. It does not occur in a short period of one or two weeks like the acute side effects of myocarditis or blood clots.

In 16 percent of the patients, the symptoms appeared on average 40 days after the first dose of the vaccine. During this time period, many people might have already received a second dose. So it is likely that they are still classified as having received a second dose, as the patients’ reporting habits vary.

Most of these patients are currently undergoing treatment, with some requiring organ transplantation and/or chemotherapy, and there hasn’t been any case of recovery so far.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/leukemia-preliminary_4530742.html ?

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‘Not having a big impact’: COVID drug fails to beat placebo in major trial

A COVID-19 medication that was thought to strongly reduce the risk of the illness becoming life-threatening and was bought in bulk by the federal government works no better than a placebo, preliminary findings from a major new study suggest.

Molnupiravir, sold in Australia under the brand name Lagevrio, disrupts the coronavirus’ ability to copy itself and was the first COVID-19 antiviral to win government subsidy here.

The medication is intended for people at high risk of serious illness – those aged over 50 who have risk factors, and the immunocompromised – after they test positive to COVID-19 but before they are sick enough to need a hospital. Australia was one of the most aggressive movers in securing access to molnupiravir, buying 300,000 courses in late 2021, before it was approved by medical regulator the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

But some scientists have long been suspicious of strange results in the drug’s early trials. Data from the new trial has hardened their scepticism.

The University of Oxford’s PANORAMIC trial enrolled 25,783 people with COVID-19, half of whom got molnupiravir. After 28 days, 103 people given molnupiravir had died, compared with 96 in the second group.

“Clearly, it isn’t having a big impact,” said Professor Peter Wark, an expert on antivirals at the University of Newcastle. “I think we’d have to look very critically as to the cost-effectiveness of continuing in this sort of way.”

Governments keen to end COVID restrictions had leant on antivirals as a way out of the pandemic, Wark said. “A slower relaxation of restrictions probably would have had a bigger impact than relying heavily on these antivirals.”

Dr Kyle Sheldrick – a University of NSW researcher who co-authored a paper earlier this year on molnupiravir’s problems – is critical of the TGA’s approach. “I did not think it should have been approved before PANORAMIC,” he said “I certainly don’t think it should be now.”

The Health Department did not answer questions on how much it had spent on the drug, but the US paid about $US700 ($1099) a dose at the same time.

Australia’s National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce said it was reviewing the study and would probably soon update its recommendations, which endorse molnupiravir.

A spokesman for the drug’s sponsor Merck said PANORAMIC had focused on a low-risk group, and pointed to other studies showing the treatment was effective.

In April Merck predicted it would make $US5 billion to $US5.5 billion selling the drug this financial year.

In an effort to get more people using the drug, the Australian government widened eligibility in July and Merck launched an advertising campaign.

Due to uncertainties about the clinical trial evidence, molnupiravir remains unapproved by the European Union; France cancelled its order in December.

Merck’s spokesman argued the patients in PANORAMIC were relatively healthy, whereas in Australia, the drug is reserved for people with major risk factors. “Other recent real-world studies, including the Clalit study from Israel, have indicated that [molnupiravir] was associated with a significant reduction in hospitalisations and mortality due to COVID-19 in patients 65 years and above,” he said.

Initial uncertainties about molnupiravir stemmed from strange results in the original Merck trial that got the drug approved.

Merck’s trial recruited about 1500 patients and gave half the drug. Early results from the first half of patients tested were so positive – a halving of the chance of death – that the trial was stopped early so everyone could get the apparently life-saving treatment.

But when data from the remaining half of patients in the trial was published a month later, it told a different story. The second group had done far worse than the first. In fact, the data suggested molnupiravir did not improve their outcomes. Combined, the full trial suggested molnupiravir may not cut the risk of death.

“We think this is unprecedented. None of us had ever seen anything like this before,” said Sheldrick.

The strange results may have been caused by a new coronavirus variant emerging mid-trial, he said. Merck disputes that, and claims the early results were the key ones.

Wark said it was possible the drug was of less use in a highly vaccinated population faced with a milder variant such as Omicron.

Sheldrick said the PANORAMIC results suggested governments need to think differently about rushing to approve drugs with limited evidence – even in the middle of a pandemic.

A spokeswoman for the TGA said the drug remained provisionally approved for use. “It is noted that while, in the PANORAMIC trial, hospitalisation and death was not reduced by molnupiravir for adults under 65 years, the time to first self-reported recovery was six days shorter.”

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Monday, October 10, 2022


Mother, 32, fears condition that almost killed her during pregnancy was sparked by COVID - after studies linked the virus with stillbirths and other dangerous complications

A Brooklyn mother has issued an alarming warning about the risk catching the coronavirus can have on giving birth. Lauren Phillips told how she suffered from preeclampsia after having her baby and linked it to going down with the virus earlier in her pregnancy.

The 32-year-old attorney said she was rushed back into hospital with dangerously high blood pressure just days after having her son.

She urged would-be parents to avoid coronavirus during pregnancy and seek immediate medical advice because she says it saved her life.

It comes as experts fear catching Covid could cause deadly complications with childbirth and even lead to stillbirths.

A swathe of studies during the pandemic found women had a 60 percent greater risk of having preeclampsia if they had suffered from the virus.

Phillips sailed through an easy pregnancy aside from becoming infected with COVID in her second trimester, which she described in her blog as a 'mild cold.'

But a few days after her baby son Arthur was born in April, the Brooklyn-based attorney was rushed to the emergency room as her blood pressure hit 160/116.

Phillips, who was up to date with her vaccinations and was careful with masking, found she had preeclampsia doctors believe was linked to a February Omicron infection.

She wrote: 'In the last hours of labor before the c section my blood pressure started to rise, but after delivery it came down enough that I was discharged on day 3 post delivery.

'On day 5, I experienced a severe dizzy spell. I was sitting down at the time. It felt like a sudden pulse or pressure wave, making the room spin. I'd never experienced anything like it, it felt bizarre, and it frightened me. 'I called my doctor and she told me to call back if it happened again. A few hours later, it did.

'My husband ran out to Rite Aid and bought a blood pressure cuff, which indicated my pressure was up to 140/90.

'I also noticed that my ankles were starting to swell and had become much more swollen than they had even been during pregnancy. I called the doctor and she had me come to the emergency room.

'I was brought back to the labor and delivery ward for observation, where over the course of a few hours my pressure spiked to 160/116. 'Once it hit that level, the medical team started me on a magnesium drip and admitted me for severe preeclampsia. 'I stayed in the hospital for two days before the doctors had me stable on blood pressure-reducing medication (nifidipene).

'Happily, my hospital allowed my spouse and son to stay in the hospital with me for those two days, so I could give him a steady supply of milk and hold or breastfeed him when I was stable enough to do so.'

She added: 'After discharge with instructions to take my pressure 4 times per day at home, my pressure spiked again less than 24 hours later, necessitating a return to the hospital. 'There they gave me a high dose of blood pressure medication (labetelol) intravenously.

'I was able to return home the same day on two drugs which kept my pressure out of the danger zone.

'About 5 weeks later, after steady drops in my pressure week by week, I was able to come off both drugs. 'Now 3 months postpartum, my blood pressure has returned to the healthy levels I had pre-labor.'

Preeclampsia is a complication of pregnancy that results in 70,000 maternal and 500,000 fetal deaths worldwide each year, the Seattle Times reported, and the number of cases jumped during the pandemic.

The illness is just one part of a slew of information scientists are studying to learn more about how Covid affects pregnancy.

Experts say women who contracted Covid-19 during their pregnancy also face an elevated risk of stillbirths.

But they believe vaccination can help prevent these cases, with statistics showing unvaccinated women at higher risk of complications.

Earlier on in the pandemic, many thought the coronavirus didn't affect unborn fetuses because few babies were born with the infection.

But in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology study published in September, it was revealed that the infection damages the placenta's immune response to further infections.

'What we're seeing now is that the placenta is vulnerable to COVID-19, and the infection changes the way the placenta works, and that in turn is likely to impact the development of the fetus,' Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf said.

Scientists also believed Covid to be a virus that mainly affected the respiratory system - but it has now been proven to wreak havoc with the circulatory system too.

Doctors also fear a Covid infection may 'unmask' health conditions that a pregnant woman's immune system would otherwise be able to shield her from.

The placenta, an organ that attaches to the womb during pregnancy, connects with the umbilical cord and provides oxygen and nourishment from the mother's bloodstream to the baby.

In the fall and winter of 2021, Amy Heerema McKenney, a Cleveland Clinic pathologist whose job involves figuring out why some babies die, began receiving eerily similar reports of stillbirths, The Times reported. She recalled feeling 'pretty panicked' as she began to look into the cases, which happened in quick succession.

While a normal placenta is spongy and dark reddish hue, which shows the nourishing blood flowing through it, the ones she was studying from mothers who lost their babies were like nothing she'd ever seen.

They were firm, discolored, scarred, and more of a tan color. 'The degree of devastation was unique,' she said.

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Florida warns young men on Covid boosters

Florida, the third most populous US state, has warned young men they face a greater risk of dying after receiving Covid-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna, as the US government forks out billions of dollars on a new (third) round of Covid-19 boosters.

The Florida health department on Friday (Saturday AEDT) specifically warned 18 to 39 year old men against seeking Covid-19 vaccinations that use mRNA technology, citing new research that found this group had an 84 per cent higher chance of cardiac-related death within 28 days of vaccination.

“With a high level of global immunity to COVID-19, the benefit of vaccination is likely outweighed by this abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death among men in this age group,” the state’s health department said in a statement.

However the baseline chance of a heart attack among young adults was miniscule according to a 2020 Norwegian study of around 33,000 people: 2.1 per 100,000 people for those aged 20-29 and 16.9 for those aged between 30 and 39.

The warning comes amid growing debate in the US over the wisdom of mandating Covid-19 vaccines — which critics say failed to prevent transmission, illness or death — and waning interest among parents in vaccinating their children.

“Studying the safety and efficacy of any medications, including vaccines, is an important component of public health,” said Florida’s Surgeon General Dr Joseph Ladapo.

“Far less attention has been paid to safety and the concerns of many individuals have been dismissed – these are important findings that should be communicated to Floridians.”

Separate figures from the US Centre for Disease Control, released a day earlier, indicated 11.5m Americans had received one of the new ‘bivalent’ boosters so far, or around 5.3 per cent of the 212 million Americans who were eligible to receive the shots.

The US government in July contracted to pay Pfizer and Moderna around US$4.9bn for 171 million bivalent booster shots.

Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University, said complaints that the new shots, which are meant to protect against all the Sars-Cov2 variants including Omicron, weren’t working were misleading.

“We‘ll likely see more of these. It doesn’t mean vaccines failed. The primary goal of vaccination – to reduce severity of illness – has not changed,” she said on social media on Friday.

Florida’s move to restrict Covid-19 vaccine coverage came after similar moves by jurisdictions in Europe, where Covid-19 boosters are no longer offered to healthy individuals under 65 and 50 in Norway and Denmark, respectively.

In the US, the CDC recommends a primary series of Covid-19 vaccination for everyone aged six months and up, boosters for those aged 12 and over.

Before the bivalent booster rollout began on 4th September, after the two shots received “emergency use authorisation” from the Food and Drug Administration, fewer than half of eligible Americans had received their first booster.

The Supreme Court in January overturned a Biden administration directive to compel all workers to receive the Covid-19 vaccines, reflecting efforts throughout the world to link Covid-19 vaccination to employment, education, in-person commerce, and freedom of movement.

Elite US universities, including Harvard and Stanford, and some healthcare settings have kept booster mandates for students, including the latest bivalent booster, a source of ongoing legal action and debate.

“Hey university presidents and trustees — how many cardiac deaths are acceptable as collateral damage?”, asked Todd Zywicki, as law professor at George Mason university, on social media soon after the Florida research was released.

Florida, which has a population around 21.5 million, stood out among US states in its response to Covid-19, ending lockdowns and mandates in early 2020, and last year banning ‘vaccine passports’, which were widely used across the US, throughout the state, to protect the unvaccinated against discrimination.

A federal appeals court upheld the state’s vaccine passport ban on Friday after a challenge by Norwegian cruise lines, based in Miami, which had sought to enforce vaccination among passengers.

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Sunday, October 09, 2022



The Right Response to Covid Mandates, Propaganda and Censorship

JOSEPH MERCOLA interviews Dr. Meryl Nass who shares astonishing figures on the blatant PCR testing and case count frauds that occurred during the pandemic.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

Dr. Meryl Nass shares astonishing figures on the blatant PCR testing and case count frauds that occurred during the pandemic

The FDA has given emergency use authorization to 281 tests for COVID-19 but not one has received approval; this means their manufacturers have zero liability if the tests don’t work

The number of people who actually had and/or died from COVID in the beginning of the pandemic is unknown, because everybody who died “with COVID” was labeled a “COVID-caused” death

Hospitals were financially incentivized to increase the number of COVID cases because they got paid more if their patients had a COVID-19 diagnosis

Nass has created a pledge to provide a way to speak out against the injustice of vaccine mandates, propaganda and censorship that’s run rampant since March 2020

The manipulation of data and testing during the COVID-19 pandemic was done intentionally to create fear in the population, driving them to accept the experimental COVID-19 jabs that we’re now learning are both dangerous and ineffective at stopping transmission.

The platforms behind COVID-19 shots were already in the works well before the pandemic. They were just waiting for the opportunity to go mainstream. COVID provided that, Nass said:2

“The powers that be, and I can’t identify who they are, but powers in Washington — this is probably some combination of federal, regulatory and research agencies like Tony Fauci and Francis Collins and officials at the FDA and CDC — they have been looking for new, what they call, platforms of vaccines.

They don’t want to make vaccines with eggs; it takes a long time, it’s expensive, they want something faster, and messenger RNA or DNA vaccines is another platform …

For some reason the mRNA platform was extremely delicious for our regulators and for industry. So there were many startups, Moderna being one of them. Moderna’s whole reason for being is to develop messenger RNA gene therapy products either for cancer or for genetic diseases or, later, when those didn’t work out for them, they turned to vaccines.

And these companies — BioNTech is another one — have gotten huge grants from governments as well as entities like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So the Gates Foundation in 2019, the year before the pandemic, invested $50 million in BioNTech. And Tony Fauci has been working with the Moderna company on messenger RNA vaccines for quite a while. So these were platforms waiting for an excuse to make a product.”

Moderna, together with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), sent mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on December 12, 2019, before the pandemic — raising significant red flags.3

December 18, 2020 — about one year after the material transfer agreement was signed — the FDA issued emergency use authorization for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for use in individuals 18 years of age and older.4

The PCR Testing Fiasco

Problems with testing began almost immediately after the pandemic began. In the beginning, only tests from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were allowed, and the tests were virtually meaningless, as asymptomatic people were plagued by false positives. Host Dr. Paul Thomas described it as an epidemic of positive test results that got translated into an epidemic of the infection.5 According to Nass:6

“For the first two months of the pandemic, the CDC only offered its own test, and it knew very early on that its test didn’t work … so the SARS-CoV-2 infection spread throughout the U.S. during January, February and early March of 2020, when CDC only allowed a few hundred people, maybe 1,000 people during that period of time, to be tested with their tests. And they all had to have a clinical picture that almost proved they had COVID.

After the whole country was really frustrated with this, FDA did two remarkable things … in the beginning of March, Stephen Hahn, the [now former] FDA commissioner, said OK, we’re going to now allow other entities — universities, labs, anybody who has developed or can develop a test for COVID — to do so, and send us the paperwork and we’ll work really fast to get it done and allow your tests to get out there.”

The paperwork, however, was so complicated that it took companies a week to complete it. By then it was the middle of March 2020 and there were still only a few tests available in the entire U.S.

“So then Stephen Hahn did something else. He said, OK, anyone who has a test for COVID, you start using it, you put it out there. You can start testing people, you’re allowed … you send us the paperwork in a few weeks.”7 At this point, testing basically turned into a free for all, with tests from China, Germany and other countries overseas coming in.

Nearly 300 EUA PCR Tests — Not One Approved
As of Nass’ latest count, the FDA has given emergency use authorization to 281 different PCR tests for COVID-19. Not a single one has been approved or licensed.

“This means, under emergency use authorization, you can’t sue the manufacturer if your test is no good,” Nass said. “And that means FDA doesn’t have to stand by any of those authorizations … no one’s responsible. So that’s a disaster. They’ve also authorized about 50 antibody tests and other rapid tests. So we have a testing mess, and we’ve always had a testing mess.”8

The CDC also created an “odd” set of case definitions for COVID-19, basically turning “a positive test into a positive diagnosis even if you didn’t have symptoms.” The case definitions, Nass said, were so complicated they required reading through several pages of information and included whether or not the person was in an area were COVID-19 was present, whether the person had had an exposure to a known COVID case and a list of symptoms that helped formulate the definition.

She continued, “Despite all that, a positive PCR test was labeled a probable case. That’s all you really needed. And then the CDC relabeled probable cases as cases. So as everybody else has noticed, that meant we had a case-endemic. We didn’t exactly have an epidemic.”9

Hospitals Paid to Diagnose COVID Cases
The number of people who actually had and/or died from COVID in the beginning of the pandemic is unknown, because everybody who died “with COVID” was labeled a “COVID-caused” death. Health officials could count deaths from unrelated causes — even gunshots10 and motorcycle accidents11 — as COVID-19 deaths if the person had the virus within the last 30 days. According to Nass:12

“At the beginning, the number of cases, the number of people who died with COVID … everybody who died with COVID was called a COVID-caused death, and that was again due to the CDC playing with their definitions and hand coding all of their COVID deaths and requiring doctors, even if you went into the hospital with a heart attack and then they tested you in the hospital, you wound up being labeled a COVID death.”

Hospitals had every reason to go along with the questionable labels, as they earned more money if they diagnosed COVID-19 more often. They didn’t even need a positive test to do so. The end result is that the actual number of COVID-19 cases was heavily skewed and it may be impossible to sort out the real figures at this point:13

“Hospitals were financially incentivized to up the number of COVID cases because they got paid more if their patients had a COVID diagnosis. And they were told by the CDC that they didn’t even need a positive test. If it looked like a COVID case, you could call it a COVID case and then up your reimbursement. So we were all stuck with that kind of shenanigans, and it’s hard to know now who were the COVID cases and who were the COVID deaths.”

This means all the numbers of COVID deaths you hear being bandied about by mainstream are major misinformation. They are nothing more than cleverly inflated statistics based on the major incentive to identify virtually every death they could as due to SARS-CoV-2. Best estimates are the number of deaths authentically due to COVID are at least half what they say they are.

US Life Expectancy Drops

The CDC released its provisional life expectancy estimates for 2021,14 which reveals life expectancy dropped from 77 years in 2020 to 76.1 years in 2021. “It was the first time life expectancy dropped two years in a row in 100 years,” NPR noted.15 The media is, of course, blaming the drop in life expectancy primarily on COVID-19,16 largely ignoring the increasingly clear dangers of the COVID-19 shots that were forced on many in the U.S. and throughout the world.

As mentioned in the last section, the number of COVID deaths are likely half of what the inflated numbers the mainstream claims, which makes their contribution to the decrease in life expectancy essentially irrelevant. What mainstream fails to say in their misinformation coverage is that the average age of those dying of COVID were above the average life expectancy!

According to Nass, “mRNA COVID vaccines in the U.S., after you get a shot, for about two or three weeks, your immune system is not as strong as it was, and viruses that are in your body can come out, like the chicken pox virus … you’re also more susceptible to COVID for the first couple of weeks after a shot.”17

After about six months, most of the protection you may have gained from the shot wanes, and then, as time goes on, you get “negative immunity, which means you’re more susceptible to COVID,” she continued. “Unfortunately, now we’re seeing data … that you’re more susceptible to dying from any cause. Mortality goes up in the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated.”18

When it comes to products issued under emergency use authorization, like COVID-19 shots, there’s no liability for the manufacturers or the government officials who recommended them. “There hasn’t been a single claim that has been adjudicated regarding injuries from the COVID vaccines,” Nass said.19 This is all part of the scam they have created to protect themselves.

In the U.S., vaccine makers already enjoy full indemnity against injuries occurring from this or any other pandemic vaccine under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act. If you’re injured, you’d have to file a compensation claim with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP),20 which is funded by U.S. taxpayers via Congressional appropriation to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

While similar to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP), which applies to nonpandemic vaccines, the CICP is even less generous when it comes to compensation. The maximum payout you can receive — even in cases of permanent disability or death — is $250,000 per person.

However, you’d have to exhaust your private insurance policy before the CICP gives you a dime.21 The CICP also has a one-year statute of limitations, so you have to act quickly, which is also difficult since it’s unknown if long-term effects could occur more than a year later.

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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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Friday, October 07, 2022



More Studies Confirm the COVID Jab Does More Harm Than Good

A peer-reviewed scientific review in the Journal of Insulin Resistance, written by cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra, calls for the immediate suspension of all COVID shots as real-world data show they cause more harm than good

The COVID jabs are an absolute disaster, with injuries and deaths piling up by the day. Yet so-called health authorities, doctors, media, drug makers and many of the jabbed themselves claim there’s nothing to see here. Ever since their release, brave medical professionals have spoken out against them, calling for a more cautious approach.

Now, a peer-reviewed scientific review,1 2 3 published in two parts4 5 in the Journal of Insulin Resistance calls for the immediate suspension of all COVID shots as real-world data show they cause more harm than good.

According to this paper, “Curing the Pandemic of Misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Through Real Evidence-Based Medicine,” authored by cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra:

“In the non-elderly population the ‘number needed to treat’ to prevent a single death runs into the thousands. Re-analysis of randomized controlled trials using the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology suggests a greater risk of serious adverse events from the vaccines than being hospitalized from COVID-19.

Pharmacovigilance systems and real-world safety data, coupled with plausible mechanisms of harm, are deeply concerning, especially in relation to cardiovascular safety.

Mirroring a potential signal from the Pfizer Phase 3 trial, a significant rise in cardiac arrest calls to ambulances in England was seen in 2021, with similar data emerging from Israel in the 16–39-year-old age group.

Conclusion: It cannot be said that the consent to receive these agents was fully informed, as is required ethically and legally. A pause and reappraisal of global vaccination policies for COVID-19 is long overdue.”

COVID Jab Boomerang

In recent months, disability, excess mortality and live birth statistics all point in the same direction. Something horrific started happening around April 2021, and continues to get worse. Something is killing an extraordinary number of people in the prime of their life, who should have decades left to live. Something is causing people to file for permanent disability in numbers we’ve not seen before.

What changed in the world, in 2021? That is the question. The answer is ridiculously simple to answer, yet many choose to drive their heads deeper into the sand than face plain facts. The COVID shots, using mRNA technology to trigger antibody production in a way that had never been used before, were rolled out in 2021 under emergency use authorization. That’s what changed.

At the time of their rollout, human trials were far from finished, and much of their value had already been destroyed by unblinding the trials and offering the real injection to everyone in the placebo groups.6

This year, we’ve also come to realize that Pfizer, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have all repeatedly lied about the safety and effectiveness of the shots, as Pfizer’s own trial data show they’re about as dangerous as they come.

The only reason we now know this is because the FDA was sued and forced by a judge to release the trial data they initially wanted to keep hidden for 75 years. Pfizer data is now being released at a pace of 55,000 pages per month,7 and these batches have proven to be a treasure trove of bad and worse news.

Pfizer hid serious injuries, falsely categorizing almost all of them as unrelated to the shot without investigation, and misrepresented data showing massive risks as being of no concern. Participants who suffered serious injuries were often simply withdrawn from the trial, and their data excluded from the results.8

Real-world data now conclusively show these risks are extremely real. For example, Pfizer’s Phase 3 clinical trial showed an increased risk for cardiac problems, and during 2021, U.K. ambulance services recorded an extra 27,800 cardiac arrest calls above the national average in previous years, or about 500 per day9 10 — and disproportionally among the young.11 Importantly, COVID-19 cannot account for this rise, as the relevant increase began in the spring of 2021.

A Change of Heart

In his paper, Malhotra details his personal journey from staunch COVID jab proponent to concerned questioner. He got Pfizer’s two-dose regimen at the end of January 2021.

A few months later, his father, who also got the shot, suffered cardiac arrest six months after his second dose. The post-mortem findings were “shocking and inexplicable,” Malhotra writes, and got him to take another look at the data.

“After six months of critically appraising the data myself, speaking to eminent scientists involved in COVID-19 research, vaccine safety and development, and two investigative medical journalists, I have slowly and reluctantly concluded that contrary to my own initial dogmatic beliefs, Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine is far from being as safe and effective as we first thought,” Malhotra writes.12

He goes on to review how post-mortem examination revealed his father, who was extremely active and fit, had severe blockages in two of the three major arteries. His left anterior descending artery was 90% blocked and his right coronary was 75% blocked. The last scan, “a few years earlier,” according to Malhotra, had revealed perfect blood flow and no obstructions. He continues:13

“I couldn’t explain his post-mortem findings, especially as there was no evidence of an actual heart attack … This was precisely my own special area of research. That is, how to delay progression of heart disease and even potentially reverse it … Then, in November 2021, I was made aware of a peer-reviewed abstract published in Circulation, with concerning findings.

In over 500 middle-aged patients under regular follow up, using a predictive score model based on inflammatory markers that are strongly correlated with risk of heart attack, the mRNA vaccine was associated with significantly increasing the risk of a coronary event within five years from 11% pre-mRNA vaccine to 25% 2–10 weeks post mRNA vaccine.

An early and relevant criticism of the validity of the findings was that there was no control group, but nevertheless, even if partially correct, that would mean that there would be a large acceleration in progression of coronary artery disease, and more importantly heart attack risk, within months of taking the jab.

I wondered whether my father’s Pfizer vaccination, which he received six months earlier, could have contributed to his unexplained premature death and so I began to critically appraise the data.”

Data Points to Consider

Malhotra reviews a number of data points in the paper, including:14

Pfizer data showing there were four cardiac arrests in the injection group and only one in the placebo group.

The misleading use of relative risk reduction (95%) when speaking of effectiveness, rather than absolute risk reduction, which was only 0.84%.

119 people would have to be injected to prevent one positive test, which may or may not be indicative of infection.

Pfizer’s trial found no statistically significant reduction in serious illness or COVID mortality from the injection over the course of six months (the length of the trial). Moreover, the risk of serious COVID-19 infection in the placebo group was only 0.04%, showing just how low the risk of serious illness was in the first place, and this despite the fact that the regions chosen for the trial were chosen for their perceived high prevalence of infection.

While there were two deaths from COVID in the placebo group and only one COVID death in the injection group, all-cause mortality over a longer period revealed 19 deaths in the injection group and 17 deaths in the placebo group.

The pediatric trial used a surrogate measure of antibody levels rather than reduction in symptomatic infection, even though there was no known correlation between antibody levels and protection from infection. The FDA even warns that: “[R]esults from currently authorized SARS-COV-2 antibody tests should not be used to evaluate a person’s level of immunity or protection from COVID-19 at any time, and especially after the person received a COVID-19 vaccination.”

Extrapolating Data to Determine Protection Against Death
Malhotra goes on to describe how he extrapolated data to determine the level of protection these mRNA shots provide against COVID-related death:15

“Now that we know what the published trial did and did not show in terms of the vaccine efficacy, we can attempt to extrapolate what the effect of the vaccine would be in reducing mortality or any other adverse outcome from the virus.

If there is a 1 in 119 chance the vaccine protects you from getting symptomatic infection from ancestral variants, then to find the protection against death, this figure (n = 119) must be multiplied by the number of infections that lead to a single death for each age group.

This would give (for up to two months after the inoculation) the absolute risk reduction (for death) from the vaccine. For example, if my risk at age 44 from dying from Delta (should I get infected with it) is 1 in 3,000, then the absolute risk reduction from the vaccine protecting me from death is 1 over 3,000 multiplied by 119, that is, 1 per 357,000 …

From observational data it is possible to calculate the number who would need to be vaccinated to prevent a COVID-19 death. For example, comparing the population death rates during the Delta wave gives 230 for people over 80s needing to be vaccinated to prevent a single death in that period with that number rising to 520 for people in their 70s and 10,000 for people in their 40s …

Depending on your age, several hundreds or thousands of people like you would need to be injected in order to prevent one person from dying from the Delta variant of COVID-19 over a period of around three months.

For the over 80s, this figure is at least 230, but it rises the younger you are, reaching at least 2,600 for people in their 50s, 10,000 for those in their 40s, and 93,000 for those between 18 and 29 years. For omicron, which has been shown to be 30% – 50% less lethal, meaning significantly more people would need to be vaccinated to prevent one death.”

What Are the Harms?

Next, Malhotra reviews the harms, noting that one of the most common side effects reported is myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, especially among young men. He rejects health authorities’ claim that myocarditis is far more prevalent in those who suffer serious COVID infection, stating:16

“Incidence of myocarditis rocketed from spring 2021 when vaccines were rolled out to the younger cohorts having remained within normal levels for the full year prior, despite COVID-19.

With the most up-to-date evidence, a paper from Israel found that the infection itself, prior to roll- out of the vaccine, conferred no increase in the risks of either myocarditis or pericarditis from COVID-19, strongly suggesting that the increases observed in earlier studies were because of the mRNA vaccines, with or without COVID-19 infections as an additional risk in the vaccinated …

Although vaccine-induced myocarditis is not often fatal in young adults, MRI scans reveal that, of the ones admitted to hospital, approximately 80% have some degree of myocardial damage. It is like suffering a small heart attack and sustaining some — likely permanent — heart muscle injury.”

Data from Israel shows myocarditis post-jab is occurring at a rate of 1 in 6,000. Hong Kong data from male children and teens found a rate of 1 in 2,700. Data from the British Yellow Card system shows 1 in 120 people who have received at least one mRNA injection suffer an adverse event “that is beyond mild.”

In Norway, Malhotra notes, the rate of serious adverse events post-jab is 1 in 1,000 after two doses of Pfizer. These are injuries that are life changing for the worse.

In all, nearly 500,000 adverse events had been reported to the Yellow Card system when Malhotra wrote this paper, which he points out is “unprecedented in the modern medical era and equals the total number of reports received in the first 40 years of the Yellow Card reporting system (for all medicines — not just vaccines) up to 2020.”

What VAERS Data Tell Us

The same trend is seen in the U.S., where the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has received more adverse event reports for the COVID jabs than all other vaccines over the last 30 years combined. Malhotra writes:

“As with the UK’s system, the level of reports — including serious ones — associated with COVID-19 vaccines is completely unprecedented. For example, over 24,000 deaths have now been recorded in VAERS as of March 2, 2022; 29% of these occurred within 48 h of injection, and half within two weeks.

The average reporting rate prior to 2020 was less than 300 deaths per annum. One explanation often given for this is that the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out is unprecedented in scope; however, this is not valid, since (for the last decade at any rate) the United States has administered 150 million – 200 million vaccinations annually.”

Another criticism of VAERS is that ‘anyone can make an entry,’ yet, in fact, an analysis of a sample of 250 early deaths suggested that the vast majority are hospital or physician entries, and knowingly filing a false VAERS report is a violation of Federal law punishable by fine and imprisonment.

Given that VAERS was set up to generate early signals of potential harm for new vaccines, and was instrumental in doing so for several products, it seems perverse to only now criticize it as unreliable when there seem to have been no changes in the way it operates.”

It has been estimated that serious adverse effects that are officially reported are actually a gross underestimate, and this should be borne in mind … For example, a paper by David Kessler (a former FDA Commissioner) cites data suggesting that as few as 1% of serious adverse events are reported to the FDA. Similarly, in relation to the Yellow Card scheme in the United Kingdom, it has been estimated that only 10% of serious adverse effects are reported.”

1 in 800 Absolute Risk of Serious Side Effect

Malhotra also cites a recent study17 “coauthored by some of the most trusted medical scientists in the world in relation to data transparency,” which looked at data from the FDA, Health Canada and the Pfizer and Moderna trials.

Researchers looking at data from the FDA, Health Canada and the Pfizer and Moderna trials concluded the absolute risk of a serious adverse event from the mRNA shots was 1 in 800, which massively exceeds the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization found in randomized controlled trials.

They concluded the absolute risk of a serious adverse event from the mRNA shots was 1 in 800, which massively exceeds the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization found in randomized controlled trials.

“Given these observations, and reappraisal of the randomized controlled trial data of mRNA products, it seems difficult to argue that the vaccine roll-out has been net beneficial in all age groups … and when the possible short-, medium- and unknown longer-term harms are considered (especially for multiple injections, robust safety data for which simply does not exist), the roll-out into the entire population seems, at best, a reckless gamble,” Malhotra writes.18

“It’s important to acknowledge that the risks of adverse events from the vaccine remain constant, whereas the benefits reduce over time, as new variants are (1) less virulent and (2) not targeted by an outdated product.

Having appraised the data, it remains a real possibility that my father’s sudden cardiac death was related to the vaccine. A pause and reappraisal of vaccination Policies for COVID-19 is long overdue.”

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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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Australian Vaccinologist Opens Up mRNA Vaccine Safety Record in Systematic Literature & Date Review

What’s the real track record of the mRNA-based vaccines developed at a historic rate during the Operation Warp Speed initiative set up by previous President Donald Trump during the first year of the pandemic?

Significant claims were made with a near-selling-like fervor emanating from key federal government agencies in the United States and most other developed nations. The mainstream media overwhelmingly touts only the positive attributes of these products, which are countermeasures to a national declared emergency, America.

As challenges were introduced, from vaccine durability issues to the ongoing mutations---predicted by plenty of scientists who understand RNA viruses such as influenza or HIV/AIDS--the media seemingly presented ready-made talking points that positioned the products overwhelmingly positive. Afterall, billions of taxpayer funds were allocated into not only the early research, clinical development, and manufacturing of the vaccines, but also the heretofore not seen federally sponsored vaccination campaign which served as a marketing support for the primary companies of both Pfizer and Moderna.

Certainly, the products have helped soften the deadly, sharp edge of the COVID-19 pandemic, but what were the cost externalities as measured in human safety, loss productivity, and other costs to society with centralized government overreach of medical activity? Was the safety record claimed what manifested in reality? While the whole world now knows the mRNA vaccines, just like the flu vaccines, couldn’t control the pathogen’s spread in totality (however, there are cases where the vaccine has served to help control the pandemic), how effective are the vaccine products in the real world at controlling the pandemic?

How about staving off more serious disease and death in high-risk populations—the groups that most benefit from such products? An Australian scientist that leads a national and international reference laboratory for respiratory bacterial pathogens involving the identification, serotyping, genotyping, sequencing, and antimicrobial sensitivity testing for both veterinary and pharmaceutical clients, along with a colleague released a sharp critique of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Dr. Conny Turni and colleague Astrid Lefringhausen explore the above topics in “COVID-19 Vaccines—An Australian Review” published in the Journal of Clinical & Experimental Immunology.

No Lightweight Prose

With expertise in vaccines and topics such as antibiotic sensitivity for determining optimal sample sites for collecting pathogens as well as understanding the connections of different pathogens with disease, the development of animal infection models, and classification of bacteria and epidemiology of pathogens, Dr. Turni is no lightweight.

Profound Questions

Why have hundreds of millions worldwide needed to be vaccinated as many as four times within a twelve-month period? What are the effects of this ongoing countermeasure-driven medical endeavor on the human body? The clinical trial basis of the authorization was based only on a primary series of mRNA-based vaccines (two doses). Taking an Australian perspective, which TrialSite has followed, this demonstrates that double the number of persons died Down Under in the first three months of 2022 than all of 2020 and 2021 despite an already very high vaccination rate by the start of the year.

What were the promises and predictions from Australian authorities versus the actual facts on the ground? How about the safety and efficacy? Is there a substantial delta between what was promoted versus actuals? Just how safe, or unsafe are the countermeasures? What are the long-term side effects and how do these impact risk-benefit analyses?

Conducting a systematic literature and government data review, the authors establish the situation that merits investigation—the intensive push by the government for nearly everyone (including children as young as five and pregnant women) to get vaccinated. Yet, clinical research in all reality was ongoing. With a fourth booster dose administered in the elderly and other at-risk persons in just over a year from the first primary series, the long-term externalities as measured in human health cannot be known.

Crisis-driven Innovation

Vaccines often take many years to develop due to the difficulty associated with the development of this class of medical intervention—typically, a biological preparation that offers the human host active acquired immunity to a particular infectious pathogen. The vaccine usually contains an agent (like a weakened virus) that stimulates the human body’s immune system to not only recognize but also destroy the specific threat.

Vaccines are powerful medicinal interventions, and along with public health infrastructure breakthroughs over a century ago, helped transform developed economies. Some vaccines all but prevent the disease; they have served to control what were once horrific diseases such as polio. Others are used more as a therapeutic agent prophylactically to reduce the probability of the health threat such as with the influenza vaccine. While during the development and the authorization the COVID-19 vaccines were promoted like the former, in reality they perform like the latter scenario.

mRNA, developed over the last couple decades, introduced a new genetic way of inducing the human immune system’s ability to fight and overtake viruses. The onset of COVID-19 was the event fully exploited by the pharmaceutical industry and government research agencies to leverage public resources and assets to rapidly advance this promising technology. With COVID-19 came the intervention needed to achieve a faster, more economical, and adept way to produce vaccines. Done under national and global emergency, the countermeasures had to be safe and effective.

A Tenuous Foundation

First, in the “Initial Information” section of this literature review, Dr. Turni and Ms. Lefringhausen point out that the producers of the vaccines, government health agencies, and medical societies all declared that the “mRNA vaccines were supposed to remain at the injection site and be taken up by the lymphatic system.” This, and other basic premises represented a vital covenant with the public.

Yet according to the authors, “this assumption proved to be wrong.” They point to an autopsy of a person that unfortunately died as a result of the mRNA vaccination: “It was found that the vaccine disperses rapidly from the injection site and can be found in nearly all parts of the body.”

TrialSite has tracked numerous studies, mostly case series based on one death that evidence temporary wide distribution of the spike protein throughout the body for some short period of time.

The Australian literature review authors point out that although positioned to the contrary, the vaccine payload could cross both the blood-brain barrier and the blood-placenta barrier which is referenced in a European Medicines Agency assessment report targeting Moderna’s vaccine. They note, “mRNA could be detected in the brain following intramuscular administration at about 2% of the level found in plasma.” See the report on page 47: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/ assessment-report/spikevax-previously-covid-19-vaccine [1]moderna-epar-public-assessment-report_en.pdf (the EMA has taken the report down).

The authors also point to 2021, when Japanese researchers found “a disproportionately high mortality due to cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and intracranial hemorrhaging,” but this causal link couldn’t be proven. Yet authorities didn’t bother to do autopsies. Again, TrialSite has reported on many dozens of examples of post-vaccine injury studies mostly in the form of summaries of case series.

What about the claim “that the mRNA will degrade quickly?” While mRNA is supposed to break down within a few minutes to hours, writes the authors, the COVID-19 vaccines is “nucleoside-modified to reduce potential innate immune recognition, and it has been shown that production of the spike protein in some vaccines is kept up for an extraordinary long time.”

The Australians point to studies such as Röltgen et al, for examples showing that the mRNA vaccine may persist in the human body for up to 60 days. In fact, the 60 days was the endpoint so the duration could be longer. The authors declare, “It is thus unknown and impossible to define how much of the spike protein is actually produced in the vaccinated.” How about how much antigen is associated with each dose injection? Dr. Turni and Ms. Lefringhausen point out that:

“For a ‘so-called’ vaccine that is using the human body as the production facility, there is no possible quantification of antigen. This is highly variable and dependent on the amount and stability of nanoparticles in the injection, age, and fitness of the vaccinee, their immune status, and the injection technique—if a blood vessel is directly injected, the nanoparticles will travel in minutes to all major organs including the brain. It is therefore impossible to assess how much spike protein any individual vaccinee produces following an inoculation.”

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COVID Mandates Are Being Lifted but Still Continue—End the "National Emergency"

In the last two years, many states in America experienced highly coercive and authoritarian enforcement of the COVID “vaccine,” “shot” or “jab,” particularly among the federal, military, corporate, medical and academic sectors.

It would be an understatement to suggest that many Americans thought their community had transformed into a police state. But there was pushback by those who championed personal liberty—to assert one’s right as a sovereign human being, as a member of “we, the people,” and not as a property of the state.

And here is an fascinating statistic: while 60 to 70 percent of people in Canada and many European nations have received an additional COVID shot following the two-dose protocol, only 33 percent of the U.S. population have received a booster dose as of September 20.

Now, a number of large corporations have dropped their mandate.

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. has reportedly lifted all COVID-related requirements. The global financial institution will no longer require its employees to be jabbed or tested and wear face masks to enter most offices. However, unjabbed workers in New York City (NYC) will still need an approved religious or medical exemption to enter office spaces.

Moreover, JPMorgan Chase & Co. also changed its policy in March, stating they will hire unjabbed individuals again.

According to an announcement on Cisco Systems, Inc.’s website in June, the worldwide leader in IT and networking has ceased to require inoculated employees for “office entry, travel, event attendance, or visiting customers, partners, and other third parties.”

The reasons behind these decisions are arguably multifactorial, perhaps in response to an updated “guidance” from federal health officials or a potential staff shortage.

Jeff Levin-Scherz, a population health leader & Assistant Professor at Harvard Chan School of Public Health, reasons these companies “decided that the rationale for [mandates] had become weak enough that they don’t want to continue.”

Erin Grau is the co-founder & COO of Charter, a media company focused on transforming every workplace to “catalyze a new era of dynamic organizations where all workers thrive.” According to Axios, she states there is an effort by executives to reduce any barriers to entry for new hires. Furthermore, the COVID-related requirements are reportedly expensive and time-consuming for employers. Frankly, it’s one big unnecessary hassle.

And to this end, here’s a shoutout to the folks in the Big Apple. In late September, it was reported that private businesses in NYC could stop demanding that their employees be jabbed, starting in early November. Instead, the private sector companies will be permitted to establish their own “vaccine” policies. However, this new rule doesn’t apply to city workers, who will still need to show evidence of inoculation to contribute to the economy.

Some clinics and airlines have (sort of) followed suit
As early as mid-December 2021, some of the largest U.S. hospital systems dropped employee COVID requirements. According to The Wall Street Journal, Tenet Healthcare and Cleveland Clinic were among the companies dropping the mandates.

Such a policy change occurred as several hospitals dealt with ongoing labor shortages and increased labor costs. For example, a Mercer Healthcare industry leader told CBS12 News, “Even a loss of a few people in healthcare today is much more problematic than it’s ever been. The industry is having a heck of a time dealing with turnover.” Indeed, for some, the COVID shots mandate could be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

It’s a numbers game. The more people refuse to comply with such invasive rules, the less likely it’s possible for any federal-based or private-based company to enforce these coercive policies. Such institutions can keep terminating employment or push workers aside with unpaid leave—but practically speaking, for how many and for how long?

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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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Wednesday, October 05, 2022



The Costs of Long COVID

More than 6 million people have died from COVID-19 worldwide, including nearly 1 million in the US.1 But mortality is not the only adverse consequence of COVID-19. Many survivors suffer long-term impairment, officially termed postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection and commonly called long COVID.

Long COVID—typically defined as symptoms lasting more than 30 days after acute COVID infection—has received some public attention, but it is not nearly as intense as it is for acute COVID-19 infection. Support groups are devoted to the condition, and Congress has allocated more than $1 billion to the National Institutes of Health to study it. But the relatively meager attention that has been paid to long COVID is unfortunate because its health and economic consequences are likely to be every bit as substantial as those due to acute illness.

People who have more severe COVID-19 are more likely to experience long COVID, but severe acute disease is not a prerequisite. Long COVID has been found in people with only mild initial illness. The most common symptom of long COVID is fatigue.2 More severe cases involve damage to a variety of organ systems (the lungs, heart, nervous system, kidneys, and liver have all been implicated), along with mental health impairment. Researchers have hypothesized that physiological pathways may involve direct consequences of the viral infection along with inflammatory or autoimmune responses.

Because many prevalence estimates are based on convenience samples of members of COVID-19 support groups or people who had severe acute disease, the population prevalence of long COVID is not entirely known.3 British population data suggest that 22% to 38% of people with the infection will have at least 1 COVID-19 symptom 12 weeks after initial symptom onset, and 12% to 17% will have 3 or more symptoms.2

Rates this high translate to an enormous number of people with long COVID. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that as of May 5, 2022, the US has had roughly 81 million cases of COVID-19 and 994 187 COVID deaths. Even the lower-end estimate of 12% of people with 3 or more symptoms of long COVID implies that 9.6 million people in the US may have developed long COVID—roughly 10 times the number of COVID-19 deaths. It is not known how long people with long COVID will be symptomatic, but recovery in the first year of long COVID for affected individuals may be very slow.4

Reduced health is not the only consequence of long COVID. People with the condition work and earn less than they would have otherwise. One survey found that 44% of people with long COVID were out of the labor force and 51% worked fewer hours.5 In the economy as a whole, more than 1 million people may be out of the workforce at any given time because of long COVID.6

This reduction in labor supply is a direct earning loss. If 1 million people are out of the labor force because of long COVID, the lost income would be more than $50 billion annually. People out of the workforce because of long COVID disproportionately worked in service jobs, including health care, social care, and retail.7 The widely noted shortage of workers in these sectors is driving up both wages and prices. Part of the recent surge in inflation in the US may thus be related to long COVID.

People who are no longer able to work may also apply for Social Security Disability Insurance. To date, there has been no sustained increase in disability insurance applications since the onset of COVID-19. This is good news, though it bears watching as disability centers continue reopening from their COVID-19 shutdowns.

Increased medical spending is another consequence of long COVID. The medical costs for treating long COVID have not been estimated, but costs have been estimated for similar conditions. If treatment of long COVID is similar to treatment of myalgic encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome), these estimated costs could be about $9000 per person annually.8

In an October 2020 analysis, we estimated9 the then-nascent COVID-19 pandemic might result in $2.6 trillion of cost as a result of long COVID. Unfortunately, our estimate seems very much on target.

The massive cost of long COVID has several policy implications. Investing in treatments for long COVID is obviously a high priority. According to a recent report from the Rockefeller Foundation, progress to date has been “achingly slow” and that needs to change.10 Experimenting with ways to make employment easier for people with long-term complications is also a high priority. People with chronic fatigue may be better able to work at home or with frequent breaks than they can with a time-delimited office day and a long commute. By speeding up the transition to telework, enhanced employment opportunities for those with long COVID may be possible.

In addition, the economic cost of long COVID reinforces the value of comprehensive actions to prevent and treat new infections. Mask mandates are unpopular in many areas and a substantial share of the public resists being vaccinated—though each action should still be encouraged. But additional progress might also be made through expanding rapid COVID-19 test capability, global surveillance to detect new SARS-CoV-2 variants, and immediate action should any such variants be detected. Such measures have associated costs, but no matter how large these costs are, they pale compared with the potential benefits.

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Newly Obtained Emails Shed More Light on CDC’s False Vaccine Safety Monitoring Statements

Newly obtained emails show the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made a false statement on COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring in 2021, months before agency officials gave false statements on the matter to The Epoch Times.

The emails also show top officials in the agency discussing performing safety monitoring on a key database for myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation that has been linked to the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.

The CDC promised in 2021 in a set of operating procedures to perform a type of analysis called Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) on reports of adverse reactions following COVID-19 vaccination. The reports are submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which officials have described as “the nation’s early warning system” for post-vaccination adverse events. The CDC also said in an updated set of operating procedures in 2022 that it would perform the analysis.

But the CDC has made false statements three times this year on PRRs, initially saying such analysis was outside the agency’s purview, then saying the analysis was performed starting in 2021, then saying the analysis did not begin until 2022. The newly obtained emails show that an official falsely said the CDC does not perform PRR analysis to an editor in 2021.

John Gregory, a health editor at NewsGuard, wrote to the CDC on Oct. 19, 2021, asking for a comment regarding a claim that the CDC’s PRR analysis cannot accurately identify when a vaccine causes adverse events, one of the emails shows. Martha Sharan, a CDC spokeswoman, sent the query to Dr. John Su, who leads the CDC’s VAERS team, and Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, who also works on vaccine safety.

Their responses were redacted apart from a comment on NewsGuard. Sharan then wrote that she’d spoken to Gregory.

“I spoke to the reporter and explained that CDC does not do PPR analysis. The reporter is not going to pursue this any further!” she wrote, adding later that she meant PRR.

That contradicts the operating procedures, which state that the CDC “will perform Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) analysis” on VAERS reports.

“We let our published content speak for itself,” Gregory told The Epoch Times in an email when notified that the CDC does actually perform PRRs.

‘That’s a New One to Me’

In June 2022, the CDC falsely told Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit, that PRR analysis is “outside of th[e] agency’s purview.” An Associated Press reporter, Angelo Fichera, flagged a Children’s Health Defense article on the statement to the CDC, asking whether the CDC had ever performed the analysis, according to the newly obtained emails.

Kristen Nordlund, another CDC spokeswoman, forwarded the query to Sharan. “Martha—thoughts on this one?” she asked.

“That’s a new one on me—proportional reporting ratios’—I need to send this one to John,” Sharan responded.

Sharan later sent a statement about PRRs to The Associated Press and the Washington Examiner.

The Associated Press and NewsGuard never published stories on the topic. After The Epoch Times reported on contradictory statements from the CDC, the Examiner published an article about the developments.

Fichera, Sharan, and Su did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

The emails were obtained by The Epoch Times and an independent researcher through FOIA requests.

“The CDC claims to be vigilantly and transparently monitoring the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, but when it comes to Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) analysis, the CDC’s broken promises, inconsistent statements, stonewalling, and double standards tell a different story,” Mary Holland, president and general counsel of Children’s Health Defense, told The Epoch Times via email.

“When asked about PRR analysis in connection with COVID vaccines—through FOIA, media, and congressional requests—CDC has made conflicting statements, some of them false. When confronted about the statements, the CDC claimed, essentially, that PRR analysis is not worth doing. And for the few months of PRR the CDC now says it has completed, the CDC has failed to make the results public, despite requests from multiple sources.”

“Children’s Health Defense calls on the CDC to do the right thing: do the analysis, and make the results available,” she added.

Timeline of CDC emails and statements. Some are being reported for the first time in this story

“I spoke to the reporter and explained that CDC does not do PPR analysis. The reporter is not going to pursue this any further!” – Martha Sharan to CDC colleagues, Oct. 19, 2021. (source: FOIA response to independent researcher)
“Correction – that should say PRR.” – Martha Sharan to CDC colleagues, Oct. 19, 2021. (FOIA response to independent researcher)

“[P]rogram staff within the Immunization and Safety Office inform me that no PRRs were conducted by CDC. Furthermore, data mining is outside of th[e] agency’s purview.” – Roger Andoh, June 16, 2022. (letter to Children’s Health Defense)

“That’s a new one on me – proportional reporting ratios’ – I need to send this one to John.” – Martha Sharan to CDC colleagues, June 22, 2022 (FOIA response to The Epoch Times)

“[P]rogram staff within the Immunization and Safety Office inform me that no PRRs were conducted by CDC. Furthermore, data mining is outside of the agency’s purview.” – Bruno Viana to Roger Andoh, June 30, 2022 (FOIA response to The Epoch Times)

“CDC has been performing PRRs since Feb 2021, and continues to do so to date.” – Dr. John Su, July 18, 2022 (statement to The Epoch Times)

“CDC has revisited several FOIA requests and as a result of its review CDC is issuing corrections. … In reference to Proportional Reporting Ratios (PRRs) – CDC performed PRRs from March 25, 2022 through July 31, 2022.” – Martha Sharan, Aug. 8, 2022. (statement to The Epoch Times)

“CDC performed PRR analysis between March 25, 2022, through July 31, 2022. 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.” – Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Sept. 12, 2022 (letter to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.))

A member of the U.S. military receives the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at Camp Foster in Ginowan, Japan, on April 28, 2021. (Carl Court/Getty Images)

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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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Tuesday, October 04, 2022



Prominent Physicians’ Bombshell: Does it Make Sense to Vaccinate Healthy Young People Against COVID-19 Anymore?

A Chief Scientific Officer with a biotech, a prominent physician-scientist from Case Western Reserve University, and a top Pulmonary physician at University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences, Toledo recently bucked the universal COVID-19 vaccination narrative based on the results of an extensive literature review investigation, evaluating the pros and cons of COVID-19 vaccination of young adults.

Their findings go counter to the major narrative and need to be heard more loudly. Given the risk-benefit analyses, does mass vaccination of such young person’s make sense? Published in the journal European Society of Medicine, the authors acknowledge that while targeted vaccination of at-risk populations saved lives as the pandemic unfolded, they argue the ongoing mutation of the RNA-based virus continues to generate variants more capable of vaccine-induced antibody evasion. Given what amounts to a durability challenge with the vaccines in an ecosystem of mutation—which this media suggests started during the Delta surge during 2021—the research suggests the following

1) vaccination offers ever limiting protection even after booster from infection and spreading of SARS-CoV-2;

2) the vast majority of young healthy adults develop only mild to no symptoms associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection—especially with the latest mutation Omicron--

3) sequential vaccination and booster dose associates with incidence of autoimmune complications (they note complications not associated with natural infections) and

4) the trend toward immunity imprinted via natural infection as well as durable protection against COVID-19 arise from what the authors deem numerous assessments leading to the choice to natural infection for at least some cohorts.

The authors conclude that at least for the cohort including “young healthy adults, some of the risks and disadvantages afforded by vaccination prevail over the medical benefit” in what can only be labeled bombshell study output when reviewing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for example.

Importantly, the authors represented by Dr. John Nemunaitis and colleagues are by no means anti- vaxxers. In fact, they are very adamant about vaccination of at-risk cohorts from the immunocompromised to the elderly to individuals with comorbidities.

Nemunaitis brings an impressive physician-scientists’ background to the literature search-based study--a Chief Scientific Officer with the biotech Gradalis, he has specialized in oncology and hematology and is board certified in internal medicine. With over three decades of experience, Dr. Nemunaitis who previously worked at University of Toledo Eleanor N. Dana Cancer Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the University of Washington School of Medicine, reports along with his colleagues that with the advent of the Omicron variant, the vast majority of COVID-19 cases observed include mild upper respiratory tract infection, appearing in the healthy young “as an ideal ‘natural vaccine’ to induce herd immunity.” Dr. Nemunaitis and colleagues suggest these infections are diminishing new variant development and may serve to “reduce duration of future pandemics in combination with vaccination of elderly and immunocompromised.”

In this study, the team first reviews the justifications for administering the supplemental booster vaccine during the pandemic. Thereafter, the authors drill into cardiac toxicity reports associated with the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines linking both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to spikes in adverse events such as myocarditis and pericarditis, often urgent problems with long term health implications. The authors go even more granular, investigating the literature associated with spike-protein-related cardio toxicity while then turning their intellectual attention to the long-term risks associated with the spike protein booster vaccination. They then delve into the limiting factors associated with the COVID-19 vaccines involving both durability challenges and the ongoing mutations from the RNA-based SARS-CoV-2. They review natural immunity as well as inconsistent antibody response, while also reviewing literature measuring T cell memory response.

Conclusion

The authors share a conclusion that this media has suggested may get underreported, declaring:

Numerous toxic activities occasionally leading to hospitalization and prolonged debilitation or even death from multiple COVID-19 vaccination and boost-induced causes increased risk of breakthrough infection and shedding of virus to other vaccinated or unvaccinated subjects, but also raise doubts of what they deem the risk-benefit calculus at least for the young healthy cohort “where health risk from natural SARS-CoV-2 infection is minimal.”

Of course, this finding deviates markedly from CDC and other medical society guidelines which recommend a one-size-fits-all mass vaccination to eradicate the pathogen point of view. That mindset may have made sense assuming the pathogen’s risk to more in society was higher coupled with its ability to better control transmission, but this hasn’t been the case since the onset of Delta, accelerating with Omicron.

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COVID Vaccine Does Mess With Women’s Health

Women of all ages, but particularly of childbearing years, are now being told that the COVID-19 vaccines have side effects that range from menstrual abnormalities to fetal health and development complications including miscarriage. Study after study is confirming these adverse side effects.

Yet people who had been reporting these adverse events were censored on social media and their stories were deemed “misinformation.” People lost their jobs for following their gut or their religious convictions and refusing to take the vaccines. Predictably, the truth is slowly trickling out about the COVID vaccines, and it isn’t all good.

In women, the most commonly reported side effect was the disruption of the menstrual cycle. Women were told that there was no link between the vaccine and their reproduction system. So-called “experts” laughed at them and told them that this was a rumor, a conspiracy theory. This past Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health confirmed that this symptom was not all in women’s heads, and no lesser a source than The Washington Post published a story on this. No apology, no acknowledgement that it had dismissed women’s experiences; the best the Post could offer was the changes in periods were “temporary” for “most people.”

This is the least of the revelations that have been disclosed about the effect of the COVID vaccines on women’s health.

Another study by researchers at New York University has found that trace amounts of the Moderna and Pfizer COVID vaccinations were detected in 45% of nursing mothers. This is disturbing considering the number of study participants was 11. Five participants received Moderna and the other six received Pfizer.

This study did not make any assertions about what the consequences would be for those mothers who followed the “best guidance” and gave their babies tainted milk. It also notes that “caution is warranted about breastfeeding children younger than 6 months in the first 48 hours after maternal vaccination until more safety studies are conducted.” Why six months? Why does it suggest a breastfeeding mother not nurse her child for 48 hours? These are the types of questions concerned mothers are asking.

One study that isn’t peer-reviewed but had tens of thousands of participants worldwide compiled several other concerning trends associated with the COVID vaccine. The study’s conclusion is as follows: “Governments and public health agencies worldwide are stepping back from COVID-19 vaccine mandates and are beginning to recommend against or even prohibiting COVID-19 mandates and vaccinations for vulnerable groups such as children, pregnant women, and lactating women. Yet, the US continues promoting COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters in all groups, including pregnant women. This study supports the recommendations of the UK’s Medicines & Healthcare and The World Council of Health against COVID-19 vaccination and boosters for pregnant and lactating women.”

As a mother who was both pregnant and then nursing during the vaccine push, I can testify that the pressure to get a vaccine for the health of the baby was immense. It was peddled on the pregnancy apps. It was voiced by doctors and nurses at the hospital. Though it was never said out loud, the subtext was clear: If you don’t get the vaccine, you’re already a bad mother. For those mothers who did get the vaccine to make sure that they were doing the best for their young children, this is not on them. We can only hope and pray that this manipulation by all the institutions around us didn’t set up our very young children for health problems down the road such as myocarditis.

Though guidances by the CDC are being loosened, President Joe Biden and his team are still pushing the mRNA COVID vaccines. Perhaps doubling down isn’t in the best interest of the American people. It’s certainly proving to have side effects for women.

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Hundreds of thousands of Americans sought medical care after getting a COVID-19 vaccine, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data released on Oct. 3.

Some 782,900 people reported seeking medical attention, emergency room care, and/or hospitalization following COVID-19 vaccination. Another 2.5 million people reported needing to miss school, work, or other normal activities as a result of a health event after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

The reports were made to the CDC’s V-safe program, a new vaccine safety monitoring system to which users can report issues through smartphones.

The CDC released the data to the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) after being sued over not producing the data when asked by the nonprofit. ICAN posted a dashboard summarizing the data.

“It took numerous legal demands, appeals, and two lawsuits, and over a year, but the CDC finally capitulated and agreed to a court order requiring them to do what they should have done from day one, release the V-safe data to the public,” Aaron Siri, a lawyer representing ICAN in the case, told The Epoch Times in an email.

About 10 million people utilized V-safe during the period of time the data covers: Dec. 14, 2020, to July 31, 2022. About 231 million Americans received at least one vaccine doses during that time.

The V-safe users reported about 71 million symptoms.

The most commonly reported symptoms were chills (3.5 million), swelling (3.6 million), joint pain (4 million), muscle or body aches (7.8 million), headache (9.7 million), fatigue (12.7 million), and general pain (19.5 million).

About 4.2 million of the symptoms were of severe severity.

Users of V-safe filled in data for about 13,000 infants younger than two, reporting over 33,000 symptoms, including pain, loss of appetite, and irritability.

The data produced so far by the CDC does not include free-text responses, according to ICAN. The data covered fields where users checked boxes.

ICAN, founded by film producer Del Bigtree, said that the newly revealed data “reveals shocking information that should have caused the CDC to immediately shut down its COVID-19 vaccine program,” citing the percentage of people who reported needing to get care or missing school, work, or other normal activities, as well as the reported adverse events.

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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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