Long Covid ‘Symptoms’ in Teens are No Less Common in Those Who Haven’t Had the Virus – Study
By Will Jones • Lockdown Sceptics • May 17, 2021
The risk of long Covid – the persistence of Covid symptoms like fatigue and headaches for three months or more – has been used to justify health interventions including with younger people who are not at elevated risk from acute infection. For instance, Health Secretary Matt Hancock suggested in April that young people should get vaccinated to avoid long Covid, saying Covid was a “horrible disease” and long Covid affected people in their 20s “just as much” as any other age group, sometimes with “debilitating side effects that essentially ruin your life”.
New research, however, casts doubt on whether symptoms attributed to long Covid are really associated with COVID-19 at all, at least in adolescents.
The study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, is the first (as far as the authors are aware) to compare the incidence of long Covid symptoms in those who have and have not had the virus, defined in terms of having detectable antibodies. It involved 1,560 secondary school pupils aged 13 to 18 in Eastern Saxony (median age 15) enrolled in the SchoolCovid19 study since May 2020. All have been tested for antibodies throughout the study and in March and April 2021 completed a 12 question long-Covid survey regarding “the occurrence and frequency of difficulties concentrating, memory loss, listlessness, headache, abdominal pain, myalgia/arthralgia, fatigue, insomnia and mood (sadness, anger, happiness and tenseness)”.
The findings are remarkable. Of 1,560 pupils, 1,365 (88%) were seronegative (no IgG antibodies detected) and 188 (12%) were seropositive. Each of the long Covid symptoms was present in at least 35% of the pupils within the seven days before the survey. Crucially, however, there was no statistically significant difference in reported symptoms between seropositive and seronegative pupils (see chart above).
These findings suggest that, in adolescents at least, the prevalence of long Covid is considerably exaggerated, and that the presumed symptoms of long Covid are common to those who have and have not had the virus. One possibility is that this is a background rate for teenagers. However, the authors are struck by the high incidence of the symptoms and suggest they may be linked to the lockdown conditions, saying they confirm “the negative effects of lockdown measures on mental health and well-being of children and adolescents”.
Because the study was only among adolescents it did not include any who had suffered severe illness or been hospitalised, which is where some earlier research on long Covid has focused.
For adolescents it suggests that the threat from long Covid has been greatly overdone, and that the apparent symptoms of the condition are much more likely to be caused by lockdowns than by a viral infection.
We Won! Trader Joe’s was the First Crack in the Armor
By Allan Stevo | Lew Rockwell | May 17, 2021
For more than a year, Trader Joe’s has been a particularly troubling store for some readers of these pages.
Trader Joe’s has some excellent quality products at a consumer friendly price with a quirky corporate style. What’s not to like about such a place?
When corona communism was implemented after the Ides of March 2020, we saw exactly what was not to like about such a place.
Trader Joe’s became one of many private companies that enforced the terrible one-sized-fits-all health mandates, including the CDC’s April 3, 2020, face mask order, the single most powerful tool of 2020.
The very concept of private property is further perverted when such behavior takes place as private companies enforce illegitimate government edict.
It didn’t stop there. Through participation in trade organizations, the executives of Trader Joe’s and other companies, called for even more stringent across-the-board policies from government. They didn’t just enable, they didn’t just enforce, they didn’t just encourage, they demanded even more tyranny!
To the credit of Trader Joe’s, their corporate policy always left room for individual exemptions among customers. However, in practice, this was very difficult to invoke. The Trader Joe’s horror stories are legion, and some of the worst of the past year.
In some locations, a customer practically had to have a law degree to get their face mask exemption policy honored.
The easy breezy decentralized corporate style of Trader Joe’s quickly devolved to utter tyrrany as managers were more likely to follow the directives of the CNN chyron than the actual corporate policy.
That once friendly “crew member” who always gave you an extra big smile at checkout was suddenly a mask Nazi of the tallest order.
I mean it when I say “Nazi.” A defining characteristic of nazism was the fusion of state and corporate power. Nazis needed corporate cooperation for their efforts to take hold, just as the corona communists of the Ides of March 2020 did.
Executives at Trader Joe’s overwhelmingly looked the other way as stores enacted the most preposterous policies.
Example: an employee polling other customers on whether a medically exempt customer looked like someone who should be medically exempt from a mask and then inciting customers to corner and angrily confront the unmasked shopper about that.
This kind of sick behavior was happening to grandmothers! Who could possibly justify an employee cornering a shopper in the spices section and gathering together an angry mob of customers?
Regional Vice Presidents encouraged the tyranny further, giving full support to such behavior and being so full of hubris as to actually put such support in writing. That level of hubris speaks volumes about an organization in a way little else can. There was utter disconnect from reality and total contempt for anyone who disagreed. As is so often true, pride precedes a fall.
On April 29, 2021, I sent a strongly worded letter on this topic of their rampant abuse of costumers to Trader Joe’s CEO Daniel Bane.
Just to make sure the letter was not ignored, my team and I followed up that letter with a press release further pointing to Trader Joe’s illegal and unethical discrimination.
It is the job of corporate communications departments to take note of the chatter about their company in the media and online. In such an environment, press releases can be a helpful exclamation point on a sentence that needs to be spoken with emphasis: Don’t tread on us.
If done right, both the CEOs office and the communications team end up going frantically through the company figuring out how to address those concerns.
This particular press release was picked up and reprinted by at least 109 media sources that day. The Trader Joe’s communications team probably noticed.
Beginning the very next day, the toughest Trader Joe’s stores in the country stopped their ridiculous level of radical enforcement. More than a year’s worth of the most unceasing awful behavior toward customers literally stopped overnight.
It was so rampant that I used to receive several complaints about Trader Joe’s some weeks. As of April 30, more than two weeks ago, I have not received a single new complaint. This was not only what I was observing through correspondences, but my team and I also have folks patrolling the world as health freedom inspectors keeping an eye on tyrannical corporate enforcement of illegitimate government policy. These health freedom inspectors reported similar results. Additionally, I myself am constantly out testing techniques and probing for cracks in the system. I firsthand observed an absolute night and day shift on April 30, repeatedly confirmed in the days thereafter.
I think we had their attention.
In the days ahead, I encouraged people to reach out to the Trader Joe’s CEO at his personal email address as follow up to the letter.
Hundreds of readers of these pages did that. This activity peaked with some 300 emails being sent to the CEO on a single day, Thursday, May 13, 2021.
I was CC’d or BCC’d on about a hundred of them that day.
This wasn’t sent to info@traderjoes.com. This was sent to the CEO. 300 emails to a single inbox can be hard to ignore.
The CDC adjusted their guidance on Thursday as well. Trader Joe’s didn’t leap to the lead on that, sticking their necks out because of the CDC guidance. Based on anecdotal accounts, they had a lot of pressure from employees and customers alike. The lawsuits, the complaints, the pushback, the pressure means a lot. I’ve never worked at a company where a single email that was written right and directed to the right inbox at the right time could not move an entire company to immediate action.
Just one email can do that. Anyone who wants to deny that, has never seen that happen or has some agenda by which they seek to discourage you. One, well targeted email can make a difference. Ten can as well. A hundred can. A thousand can. I don’t pretend to know what happened behind the scenes, but I know that our emails had the ability to shape policy at several dozen companies this Friday and my guess is that they did. They may have even helped to shape policy at the CDC, a much harder entity to motivate than a private business. Having seen letters like that cross desks, both governmental and private, I know how very impactful they can be.
What I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall.
The next morning, on Friday, May 14, 2021, Trader Joe’s publicly altered their policy.
They dropped all face mask mandates for customers.
To save face, they cited a CDC guidance from the previous day about vaccines and face masks. They claimed that they would only allow entrance to unmasked customers who had been vaccinated, a detail that they publicly have stated they will not be checking for.
They crumbled.
I knew they were weak, these tyrants, I knew these orders were getting ready to crumble, but I didn’t realize exactly how weak they were. They are very weak and the proper response to weakness from an enemy of freedom is to fight all the harder, until they look back at 2020 and say “I’m never gonna try that again.”
Despite the corporate spin and gobbledygook, the truth of the matter is this:
On May 14, 2021, you and I, who have long been fighting this in ways both big and small, won a decisive victory, as we took down the Trader Joe’s face mask order. We left Trader Joe’s with no other alternative. We made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.
Dozens of companies immediately followed.
This is a huge victory, and it cannot stop here.
Trader Joe’s plans to leave their employees masked. They also plan to keep their “only the vaccinated can be unmasked policy” in place on paper. If allowed to remain in place, it will be only a matter of time before it returns with a vengeance. The next time it is enforced, we shouldn’t expect it to be as generous and easy to defeat as it was this time.
Therefore, we must stop the forced masking of Trader Joe’s employees and we must remove all mention of any government-advised health mandate as a condition of entering a business.
It is not the place of government to place health mandates on us, and it is certainly not the right of corporations to enforce such illegitimate abuses of government power on us. It is illegitimate abuse of government power no matter who enforces it: your neighbor, your grocer, your child’s school, your mailman, or your own mother.
We must truly redouble our efforts.
Time is of the essence. We have a very short window of opportunity to defeat these one-size-fits-all health mandates.
The annual flu season will begin in late-September. Respiratory virus related illnesses and deaths will increase and the fear campaign will intensify. Standard deaths that take place every year from respiratory viruses will be blamed on something scary. “Vaccine” deaths will be blamed on something scary and will certainly not be blamed on vaccines. We will have quite a fight on our hands.
If these one-size-fits-all approaches are still with us and normalized in September 2021, there will be no stopping them. They will be with us a very long time and we really will have entered the new normal. We must return society to normal by the end of this summer, or we risk losing society as we once knew it.
We must roll society back far before 2019, to regain freedoms we were once certain were gone forever, and we must let no vestige of 2020 remain.
That is the work that is ahead of us. That is the work we need accomplished immediately and by September 2021 at the latest, for if we do not, we will go into a far more pernicious battle for our civilization and will be doing so with the forces of freedom so grossly unprepared. That is something we cannot let happen.
I need you to do one thing right now to help me accomplish that, I need you to sign up at RealStevo.com, and I will enlist you in helping me take down these orders. In signing up, you will be joining an army of activists. The army of activists who read my work, who were so responsive, and who hit Trader Joe’s hard and repeatedly made such a difference in shifting this policy. We have much more work ahead of us.
Then I need you to share this article.
With literally 20 minutes of work a day from a dedicated minority, taking targeted action, we can take down these orders.
If you need pointers on how not to wear a mask ever again read my bestselling “Face Masks in One Lesson.” If you would like similar writing free of charge, check out my LewRockwell.com writing on the topic, but really what it comes down to is insisting in your own life that you will live life by a higher standard: that is what saying “No!” to the mask amounts to.
We can do this.
We are winning.
They are desperate.
Victory is at hand.
And now we must close on our victory.
If you’re a closer I need you.
Who is with me?
Czech politics in crisis over 2014 ammo depot explosions as President refuses to accept intelligence reports blaming Russia
By Jonny Tickle | RT | May 17, 2021
The Czech Republic’s internal spat over the 2014 ammunition depot explosions shows no signs of calming down, with President Milos Zeman refusing to accept Prague’s security service’s conclusions that Russia is to blame.
The dispute has now become so intense that both the country’s Prime Minister Andrej Babis and Minister of Justice Marie Benesova have gone on the attack against Zeman.
In October and December 2014, explosions took place at arms depots in Vrbetice, killing two people. Last month, Czech First Deputy Prime Minister Jan Hamacek revealed that the country’s authorities believe they know the identities of two men supposedly responsible for the explosions, and both allegedly work for Russian military intelligence.
Following the revelations, Prague expelled 18 of Russia’s diplomats, before later announcing that the Russian Embassy in the capital would be reduced to match the size of the Czech delegation in Moscow.
However, despite the conclusions of his country’s intelligence services, the Czech president is not convinced. Speaking on Sunday, Zeman told radio station Frekvence 1 that he is not convinced that there is only one explanation for the explosions, noting that he trusted the country’s police, but did not trust the security and information service. In particular, he suggested that the incidents were staged to cover up a shortage.
In response, Babis explained that there is only one theory for what happened.
“I explained to the president that the police are investigating only one version [of the story],” Babis said, according to Russian news agency RIA Novosti. “It is possible that there were more versions [in the past]. But I can’t explain why the president insists that there is more than one version [today].”
Justice head Benesova also backed up the prime minister, noting that the country only has one theory, blaming Russian military intelligence.
Moscow has denied any involvement, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling the allegations “inflammatory and unfriendly.”
Sunday’s attack on Gaza City claims 42 civilian lives
Mourners pray over the bodies of Palestinians killed in overnight Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City on 16 May. (Atia Darwish APA images)
Palestine Information Center – May 17, 2021
GAZA – The health ministry in the Gaza Strip said that a total of 42 civilians were killed and 50 others suffered injuries, some seriously, in the horrific massacre that was committed by Israeli warplanes at dawn Sunday in al-Wehda neighborhood in Gaza City.
Deputy health minister Yousef Abul-Rish told a news conference on Sunday evening that the weapons that were used in the bombing of the neighborhood tore the children’s bodies apart and made them unrecognizable.
Abul-Rish said that two doctors, Mu’ein al-Aloul and Ayman Abul-Auf, were killed in the aerial attack on al-Wehda neighborhood.
He accused Israel of deliberately bombing and destroying vital facilities and sectors that are needed to provide water, electricity and health services as well as roads that lead to hospitals.
The health official also accused Israel of obstructing the work of medical crews through targeting ambulances and paramedics and preventing them from reaching bombed areas to evacuate casualties.
According to the latest statistics from the health ministry in Gaza, the number of Palestinians killed, since the Israeli military aggression against the Gaza Strip started on May 10, has now risen to 197 martyrs, including 58 children and 34 women.
More than 1,235 others have also been wounded so far amid the ongoing brutal Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Report: COVID vaccine adverse effects, huge numbers
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | May 17, 2021
A long-standing private organization, the National Vaccine Information Center, has analyzed the US government’s database, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
As of May 7, 2021, VAERS lists 192,954 adverse-event reports associated with COVID vaccines. [1]
These events cover the spectrum from mild transient effects to death.
VAERS has always has multiple problems.
One: Doctors aren’t required by law to report adverse effects. Many of them wouldn’t risk blowback by doing so.
Two: There is no comprehensive effort to determine whether an adverse effect is actually caused by a vaccine.
Three: Patients can make adverse-effect reports—but are often hesitant to do so.
Four: By far the biggest problem is: most Americans aren’t even aware that VAERS exists.
Therefore, on balance, UNDER-REPORTING adverse effects is the primary defect of VAERS.
Many efforts have been made to estimate the degree of under-reporting. These estimates state the VAERS numbers should be multiplied by 10, all the way to 100, to obtain an accurate picture of adverse effects.
Ten times the current number of COVID vaccine adverse effects would equal 1,929,540. A hundred times the current number=19,295,400. Either way, the number is staggering.
The death reports are escalating by the day. As of May 7—4,057.
Here are other very troubling categories of VAERS adverse effects, as of May 7. Permanent Disability=2,475. Doctor’s Office Visit=32,801. Emergency Doctor/Room=25,566. Hospitalized=11,538. Birth Defect=112. Life-Threatening=3,548.
Yet, public officials and news outlets continue to repeat the mantra, “safe and effective,” and urge everyone to take the shot.
Every person who receives the vaccine is supposed to be informed of the risks beforehand. I assure you NO ONE is being given these adverse effect numbers, plus the advice to multiply the numbers by 10 or 100.
Lack of informed consent runs contrary to every medical code.
I can also assure you the FDA, which is considering whether to give full approval to the current COVID vaccines, isn’t multiplying the adverse-effect numbers by 10 or 100.
Here is something else to consider. Even multiplying the VAERS numbers by 100 may not be sufficient, because the RNA COVID shots are employing a new technology which a) has never been used on the public before and b) isn’t a vaccine at all; it’s a genetic treatment.
As I’ve shown in recent articles, the entire field of genetic research is riddled with lies, pretense, and unpredictable ripple-effect consequences. The notion of inserting a single genetic change into a person and limiting its effects to an announced goal is a fiction. Unexpected changes occur. And their negative disruptive effects, long-term, are unknown.
Those effects will never be listed in any database.
SOURCE:
[1] https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?TABLE=ON&GROUP1=CAT&EVENTS=ON&VAX=COVID19
Coronavirus: Bioterror And The US Military Laboratory In Kazakhstan – Investigation
By Yan Ostroumov | Rusvesna | March 17, 2021
China for the first time officially announced suspicions of US involvement in the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19 in the republic. Beijing referred to information about the appearance of the first infected in the United States long before the official date and, possibly, earlier detection of infection in Hubei.
The reports of the “American trail” in a pandemic seem insane, but this version begins to show solid evidence.
“Recently, a Kazakhstani resource Yvision reported that “a source among the staff of the Central Reference Laboratory (CRL) in Almaty confirmed that the deadly coronavirus was developed in this institution.”
This laboratory was created with the financial support of the US Army and is still controlled by representatives of Washington.
Preparation for biological warfare in the CIS
After the end of the Cold War, the US Department of Defense in the post-Soviet countries created several biological reference laboratories, of a high (third) degree of protection, designed to work with especially dangerous viruses and bacteria. These facilities operate in Kharkov, Tbilisi and Almaty.
“Their official goal is the fight against the spread of dangerous infections, the real one is to prepare for a possible biological war in the territory of the former USSR.”
Scientific research at the facilities is funded and supervised by the US Department of Defense, and is often carried out with the participation of researchers from the Institute of Military Medicine. Walter Reed US Armed Forces (Maryland) coming to the region.
For example, a detachment of military biologists worked under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Blow, who studied African swine fever, for a long time in the TsRL in Tbilisi. Shortly after the start of the work of this team, in 2013, an outbreak of this disease was recorded in the southern regions of Russia.
However, due to legal restrictions, CRLs are not objects of increased secrecy. Staff publishes articles and defends dissertations, which allows you to track some of their work on open sources.
Publications testify
The Viruses magazine (Viruses, 2019, 11, 356, doi: 10.3390 / v11040356) published in April 2019 the work of a group of American and Kazakh scientists about a new strain of coronavirus, the reservoirs of which are local bats. The work was carried out in the framework of the KZ-33 project of the US Department of Defense Threat Reduction Agency on the Almaty Central Defense League (Tropical Medicine and Infection Disease, 2019, 4, 136, doi: 10.3390 / tropicalmed4040136).
The project was led by Professor Gavin James Smith of Duke University (USA), closely associated with the National Institute of Health and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the US Department of Health.
The source of the Kazakh publication reported that the biosamples containing coronavirus delivered to the CRL in the winter of 2020
“at the molecular level, they completely coincide with the strain, the study of which was started in the laboratory about two years ago and which, according to his observations, should not all this time was to leave the TsRL.
It was a joint development led by scientists from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of the final stage of training a large group of Kazakh epidemiologists. ”
According to the publication (Viruses, 2019, p.2), the mentioned American studies of coronavirus were carried out in April – May 2017, that is, strictly on time, called the source. Moreover, both the species studied in 2017 and COVID-19 belong to coronaviruses transmitted by bats.
Thus, the “anonymous stuffing” is increasingly beginning to resemble the message of a person who well knows the nature of working with coronavirus in recent years.
The coincidences are sufficient for a serious verification of the kinship of these diseases by biologists, and we will move further – in the wake of those who conducted this study.
Following the bat
A careful study of the materials of the American CRL in Kazakhstan raises many questions. The KZ-33 project is entitled “Middle East Respiratory Coronavirus Syndrome”, and it is completely unclear why it should be studied on bats in Central Asia.
Even stranger is the ability of the aforementioned Professor Gavin Smith to find bats carrying the coronavirus literally anywhere. In 2017, he published a study (Transboundary Emerg Dis, Dec; 64 (6): 1790–1800. Doi: 10.1111 / tbed.12568) on coronavirus bats in Singapore. Having arrived in Kazakhstan, he also found the same object of study, although the republic was not famous for such a disease before. You might think that his personal mouse flock with his own coronavirus flies behind him.
It is curious that the study involved the resources of the Research Institute for Biological Safety is located in the Kordai district of the Zhambyl region of Kazakhstan. In the same area lives a large community of Chinese-speaking Dungans, who are traditionally engaged in shuttle trade with the PRC, including smuggling.
“There is a suspicion that in Kazakhstan, bats were artificially infected with coronavirus, strains of which were obtained in the Middle East, in the natural distribution area of the disease.”
A genetically modified sample, later called COVID-19, could cross the border by accident or as a result of intentional manipulations.
The recent mass pogrom in the Dungan villages of the Kordai region can also be considered as an attempt to “clean up” witnesses of the work of American military biologists in the region in 2017-2019, their negligence or intentional actions to import COVID-19 to China.
Nobody seems to have cleaned up Professor Smith, but the Duke Institute, of which he is still an employee, seemed to have forgotten about its existence.
The coronavirus pandemic on the site of the scientific center is commented on by many researchers, but not by Gavin Smith, who has studied the spread of a very similar disease in East and Central Asia for at least four years.
Why such secrecy? Perhaps, in order not to remind once again about explorations in Almaty.
Basis for suspicion
Bioterrorism is a serious charge. But the facts gathered suggest a high probability of the involvement of a group of American and Kazakh biologists in the outbreak of coronavirus in China.
“We urge the Kazakh authorities to create a commission with the participation of representatives of WHO, as well as microbiologists from the PRC and CIS countries, with the aim of investigating the work of American specialists in the medical center and the Zhambyl region.”
We also urge international organizations, including UN agencies, to request information from the US Department of Defense about the nature of biological research in Kazakhstan funded by this agency.
Covid scaremongering – the government’s £1bn blitz
By Frederick Edward | Conservative Woman | May 17, 2021
WHOEVER controls the flow of information controls the narrative. I recently looked at the government’s reliance on polling through partners such as YouGov. Today I return to the role of the wider media.
A few months ago I wrote about the government’s Covid-related advertising expenditure. In late spring 2020, all Covid-19 media campaigns were centralised into the Cabinet Office, Michael Gove’s sprawling 8,000-plus strong department. By the end of the year, HM Government had become the country’s largest spender for media advertising. My estimate was a total government outlay on advertising for Covid-related purposes in 2020 of approximately £240million.
For media outlets facing a collapse in advertising revenue because of the closure of the economy, the government spending was a lifeline. Whether the Fourth Estate could objectively report on the government’s handling of the virus whilst simultaneously receiving copious funding from that same government was highly debatable.
Since my article in February, more data has come to light. The Cabinet Office has continued spending heavily on Covid media campaigns, mainly through its media buying partner Manning Gottlieb, laying out just over £87million in the first three months of 2021. This brings its Covid advertising spend to more than £280million between April 2020 and March 2021.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus scare, the Cabinet Office’s outlay on Covid media campaigns has increased steadily, with Q1 21’s figure (£87million) being more than double the amount spent in Q2 20 (£42.6million), and up significantly on both Q3 20 (£71.3million) and Q4 20 (£79.7million). (As noted, it was in Q2 20 that the Cabinet Office began centralising Covid-related media programmes.)
Approximately 88 per cent of the Cabinet Office’s advertising spend is done through Manning Gottlieb, with whom the government has had a close working relationship since awarding the company a £800million media buying services contract in October 2018.
At that time Alex Aiken, Executive Director for Government Communications, stated that the government’s communications team sees such media endeavours as an important way to counter ‘disinformation’ and ‘fake news’. As anyone with a decent grasp of history will know, it is of course governments who are the regular purveyors of truth and honesty: the Soviet Union’s Pravda (translating as ‘truth’) being a helpful example of such services rendered to the public by the benevolent state.
However, this is only part of the story. After this large contract, Manning Gottlieb were awarded a further three contracts specifically with the Cabinet Office.
The first of these was in November 2018 at a value of £183million: the primary focus of this appears to have been for media campaigns during the transition period following Britain’s exit from the European Union. Nevertheless, with an end date of 31 May 2022, a proportion of these resources were funnelled into Covid-19 media campaigns.
Subsequently, a £119million contract was signed (effective March 2020) purely for the provision of media buying services for Covid-19 related campaigns. This contract was later extended – until either March or August 2021 (the government’s website is unclear) – by a further £229million, bringing this contract to a total value of £348million.
A third contract, effective 1 April 2021, was signed for the same purpose, Covid-19 media campaigns. This contract is extendable until 21 May 2022 and has a maximum value of £320million. Whether it will be expanded in a similar fashion to the previous contract signed with Manning Gottlieb remains to be seen.
Taken together, the three contracts have a value of £851million. As noted, some of this figure was spent before the pandemic on information campaigns surrounding Brexit. Nevertheless, over the last two quarters Covid advertising spending has outweighed Brexit by a factor of about 4:1. To this sum should be added spending from bodies such as Public Health England before the Cabinet Office’s centralisation efforts, which appears to be in the region of £15million, a figure smaller than I previously estimated.
That said, if the most recent contract with Manning Gottlieb was extended in the same way as the previous one (by an additional £229million), there is no reason why the Cabinet Office’s Covid advertising spend could not hit a total of £1billion over the next year to year-and-a-half.
To put such a sum in perspective, £1billion would buy two years’ supply of vitamin D tablets for the entire UK population. To use a more hackneyed analogy, it would pay the starting salary for more than 40,000 nurses in Our NHS.
One element that remains unknown, however, is how much Manning Gottlieb are paid for these services, since their fees are redacted on the Crown Commercial Service’s website. [p.97]
With a pandemic that appears all but finished – oh, but for an entirely unpredictable ‘Indian variant’ – one wonders what the government will do with hundreds of millions of pounds of advertising through to late May next year. One can only presume that it will be used to browbeat the public into accepting a vaccine for which the majority have no need, or for the increasingly probable reimposition of further lockdowns.
The first of these prompts the question: if you are spending hundreds of millions to persuade people to get a vaccine, perhaps it is not all that necessary in the first place. Were the vaccine of an ordinary type and of indisputable value, I dare say no media campaign at all would be necessary: there is little more than their own health that people care about.
That contracts are projected to last at least another year is indeed worrying. Along with councils advertising positions for ‘Covid marshals’ until 2023, one wonders if the government already has plans for further infringements on our liberties, the timeframe for which has been built into contracts such as those as agreed with Manning Gottlieb. Given the backtracking, twisting and turning that has been displayed to date, it would not appear unlikely.
With a remit to purchase advertising across all media types, companies such as Manning Gottlieb are central to the dissemination of information in the public sphere. It remains an open question whether, while receiving central funds important to their survival, the media will be able or willing to scrutinise government policy, both in the realms of further lockdowns and of the constant bombardment of vaccine propaganda.
The track record so far shows that the vast majority of the media is both unable and unwilling to ask difficult questions surrounding the government’s handling of the pandemic. With hundreds of millions of pounds sloshing around over the next few years, don’t expect that to change any time soon.
NED ‘regime change’ specialists claim credit for Belarus protests, boast of funding Russian opposition during prank call
RT | May 17, 2021
A pair of notorious Russian pranksters posing as leading Belarusian opposition figures have duped the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) into revealing the extent of US involvement in Eastern European political movements.
In a video call posted on the online channel of pranksters Vovan and Lexus, senior representatives of the American agency disclosed that they have actively financed and supported anti-government campaigns in the region. The officials from the NED, which is funded by Congress and describes its role as “supporting freedom around the world,” also revealed that they are coordinating efforts with prominent political activists in a range of countries, including Russia.
The officials believed they were talking to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the figurehead of Belarus’ opposition movement, and one of her advisors.
During the call, Nina Ognianova, who oversees the NED’s work with local groups in Belarus, outlined the wide-ranging programs the agency bankrolls in the country, insisting that “a lot of the people who have been trained by these hubs, who have been in touch with them and being educated, being involved in their work, have now taken the flag and started to lead in community organizing.”
Ognianova claimed that, through this work, the NED played a role in igniting the colossal street protests that rocked Belarus after long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko declared victory in the country’s presidential election last August. The opposition and many international observers say the vote was rigged in his favor, and tens of thousands took to the streets for demonstrations each weekend after the election.
“We believe that this long-term trust-building that we have had with partners in Belarus has indeed brought the events, or the build-up to the events, of last summer,” Ognianova stated.
“We don’t think that this movement that is so impressive and so inspiring came out of nowhere – that it just happened overnight,” she added, “but it has been developing and we have our modest but significant contribution in that by empowering the local actors to do the important work.”
Carl Gershman, the president of the US state-backed agency, told the pranksters that Washington-based funding and policy groups were already working with Tikhanovskaya and her team “very, very closely.” He then asked the opposition figure, who fled to neighboring Lithuania after the election, to set out her thinking on the situation “so we can understand what your strategy is… and how we can be helpful.”
The comments are likely to add fuel to Lukashenko’s previous controversial claims that the widespread domestic opposition to his government is being stoked from abroad.
The pranksters also pushed the NED’s top team to outline their current activity in Russia, asking what they were doing to support anti-Kremlin activists. Gershman replied that such initiatives are “obviously incredibly important and we’ve emphasized this, going back to the election in August when the demonstrations were taking place in the Russian Far East, and people were connecting with each other and saying we share the same ideals, so we’re very committed to helping on that, and we will – working with our networks and our institutes.”
One of the duo, claiming to be Tikhanovskaya’s assistant, questioned this, saying, “I know that NED is prohibited in Russia now,” referencing a 2015 government decision declaring it to be an “undesirable NGO.” A number of the group’s senior leadership team began to laugh, with Gershman insisting “that doesn’t matter. We don’t have offices, we’re not like Freedom House or NDI [the National Democratic Institute] and the IRI [International Republican Institute], we don’t have offices. So if we’re not there, they can’t kick us out.”
“But we support many, many groups and we have a very, very active program throughout the country, and many of the groups obviously have their partners in exile,” the fund’s president added. “So we are very active and we can be very helpful on this issue.” He added that they were “of course” in touch with Leonid Volkov, a Lithuanian-based activist frequently described as the chief of staff of jailed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny.
Barbara Haig, the deputy to the NED’s president for policy and strategy, also hinted at the potential scale of US funding for political groups, saying, “we have a very ample program in Russia” which “goes even down to the grassroots in provinces – oblasts – outside of Moscow. It is very deep and it is very broad.”
Both she and Gershman expressed concern about Russian military exercises billed to take place alongside Belarusian troops later this year, with Haig asking if the group should be “looking at the deployment of Russian military in the country and how that might be changing over time, and whether we should be raising this with some of our contacts.”
Somewhat ironically, Haig also insisted that opposition groups in Russia are concerned about purported efforts to infiltrate and monitor their activity, saying that “security is a huge issue.” How the NED’s most senior figures came to speak with the pranksters, who kept their cameras turned off and spoke in an unconvincing imitation of Tikhanovskaya’s voice, is unclear.
The pair, whose real names are Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, have previously blagged their way into calls with the likes of Prince Harry, Amnesty International and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However, they have been accused by some Western commentators of disproportionately targeting opponents of the Kremlin, with their comedy gotchas frequently seeking to generate political controversy.
The NED describes itself as a “private, non-profit, grant-making organization that receives an annual appropriation from the US Congress through the Department of State.” It acknowledges that its “continued funding is dependent on the continued support of the White House and Congress,” but states that its own “independent Board of Directors” is in charge of how the funds are spent. The agency insists that its “independence… also allows it to work with many groups abroad who would hesitate to take funds from the US Government.” Representatives of the NED have been approached for comment.
FDA’s last word on the safety of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine was issued last year/ FDA
By Meryl Nass, MD | May 16, 2021
FDA managed to find 385 adverse event reports for either HCQ or CQ in its FDA adverse event reporting system database, as justification for withdrawing its EUA for the chloroquine drugs.
But there wa something strange about these reports. Only 102 of the 385 reports, or 26%, came from the United States. Why would foreigners be submitting reports of adverse events associated with a chloroquine drug to the FDA, instead of to their own pharmacovigilance system?
According to FDA, “FAERS is a database that contains information on adverse event and medication error reports submitted to FDA.” It is not an international database.
Might FDA have requested that foreign entities submit reports? Might some of those foreign entities have been sites where the HCQ overdose trials were conducted? The big three multicenter overdose trials were Recovery, Solidarity and REMAP-Covid. Page 8 of the FDA report does indicate that some of those patients, for whom adverse event reports were filed, had received excessive HCQ doses. Of a total of 256 reports for which FDA had dosing data, depending where you place the excessive dose cut-off, between 23 and 95 had received high doses.
FDA did a number of different things to suppress the use of hydroxychloroquine. This just happens to be one thing I had not previously reported on.
What else is interesting is that this report was compiled in May 2020. It is attached to a website dated July 2020, ten months ago.
In the intervening 10 months, well over 100 papers have been published on HCQ’s use in Covid. FDA claims, “The FDA’s job is to carefully evaluate the scientific data on a drug to be sure that it is both safe and effective for a particular use…” Yet FDA has ignored this massive amount of accumulating literature on hydroxychloroquine, during which 400,000 Americans died of/with Covid. Why? Willful misconduct?
Featured Video
John Mearsheimer: US Already lost Iran war – No off-ramp in sight
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Frlom the Archives
With apparently fabricated nuclear documents, Netanyahu pushed the US towards war with Iran
By Gareth Porter | The Grayzone | April 29, 2020
President Donald Trump scrapped the nuclear deal with Iran and continued to risk war with Iran based on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim to have proven definitively that Iran was determined to manufacture nuclear weapons. Netanyahu not only spun Trump but much of the corporate media as well, duping them with the public unveiling of what he claimed was the entire secret Iranian “nuclear archive.”
In early April 2018, Netanyahu briefed Trump privately on the supposed Iranian nuclear archive and secured his promise to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That April 30, Netanyahu took the briefing to the public in a characteristically dramatic live performance in which he claimed Israel’s Mossad intelligence services had stolen Iran’s entire nuclear archive from Tehran. “You may well know that Iran’s leaders repeatedly deny ever pursuing nuclear weapons…” Netanyahu declared. “Well, tonight, I’m here to tell you one thing: Iran lied. Big time.”
However, an investigation of the supposed Iranian nuclear documents by The Grayzone reveals them to be the product of an Israeli disinformation operation that helped trigger the most serious threat of war since the conflict with Iran began nearly four decades ago. This investigation found multiple indications that the story of Mossad’s heist of 50,000 pages of secret nuclear files from Tehran was very likely an elaborate fiction and that the documents were fabricated by the Mossad itself. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- ‘Heinous crime’: Iran denounces Israeli assassination of 4 Iranian diplomats in Lebanon
- John Mearsheimer: U.S. Already Lost Iran War – No Off-Ramp in Sight
- UK Parliament Plans ISP Blocking and Age Verification Powers
- World cannot remain silent as US and Israel attack ‘heritage of humankind’: Iran
- Emirati billionaire rebukes US senator over call for Gulf states to join war with Iran
- Op. True Promise 4: Iran’s missile blitzkrieg dismantles US war machine in West Asia
- Aramco CEO warns ‘catastrophe’ imminent if Strait of Hormuz remains shut
- What If Iran Says No?
- Trump Threatens to ‘Hit’ Iran ‘Twenty Times Harder’ Over Strait of Hormuz Oil Flows
- Spare the hypocrisy: Baghaei slams Ursula’s support for US
- If Americans Knew
- Israel Decided the War, But Trump’s America Fights and Pays the Bill
- Conscientious Objector Group: Phone ‘Ringing Off Hook’ As Huge Mobilization Underway
- U.S. support for Israel continues to plummet, despite media’s best efforts
- Threats and missiles fly, death tolls soar in Iran, Lebanon, Gaza – Not a ceasefire Day 151
- Lebanon: Israel’s White Phosphorous Use Risks Civilian Harm
- Corporate Media Go All Out To Support The US-Israeli War On Iran
- US-Israel war on Iran is creating a steady growing number of amputees
- Israel planned this war on Iran for 40 years. Everything else is a smoke screen
- The wrong question about the war in Iran
- ‘Your Tax Dollars Being Used to Raise Your Gas Prices’: US-Israel Bomb Major Iranian Oil Depots
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study Documents A 20-Year Pause In Arctic Sea Ice Decline – Driven By Internal Variability
- Wake-up Call: Survey Shows Majority Of Germans Now Favor Postponing Climate Targets!
- Televised! Leading German Political Candidate Tells Schoolchildren CO2 Makes Sun Hotter!
- New Study: A Century Warming Of 1.1°C Is ‘Commonplace’ And ‘Not Unusual’ During This Interglacial
- New Study: ‘Internal Noise’ And Volcanic Forcing Can Trigger 10-15°C Warming Within Decades
- Glaciers Worldwide Are Suddendly Surging, Experts Blame Warming!
- Surprising Discovery: Sahara Is Greening…Billions Of Trees Where Once Thought To Be Barren
- New Research Reaffirms Clouds, Aerosols, And Surface Solar Radiation Are ‘Driving The Climate System’
- Germany: Electric Car Catches Fire At Charging Station, Sets Off Local “Inferno”, Widespread Damage
- New Study: Canada’s New Brunswick Was 1°C Warmer Than Today During The Medieval Warm Period
Aletho News 