Baylor Professor Calls for Prosecution of Criticism of Fauci and Other Scientists as Hate Crime
By Jonathan Turley | August 4, 2021
Physicist Richard P. Feynman once said “Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.” statement captures how science depends upon constant questioning and challenging of assumptions. Yet, what is healthy debate to some is criminal dissent to others. Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine is calling for federal hate-crime protections to be extended to cover criticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci and other scientists. The frequent MSNBC and CNN guest wants Congress to expand hate crimes to “scientists currently targeted by far-right extremism in the United States.”
In a July 28 paper in Plos Biology titled “Mounting Antiscience Aggression in the United States,” Hotez encourages Congress to focus on the “band of ultraconservative members of the US Congress and other public officials with far-right leanings are waging organized and seemingly well-coordinated attacks against prominent US biological scientists.”
Hotez insists that it is not enough to support such science but to criminalize attacks on their research. This suggestion is just one of a number of ideas briefly put forward to support scientists but it is the most chilling. Referring Nazi and fascist movements in history, Hotez argues that good science requires cracking down on the right. He concludes:
“As Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once pointed out, neutrality or silence favors the oppressor. We must take steps to protect our scientists and take swift and positive action to counter the growing wave of far-right antiscience aggression. Not taking action is a tacit endorsement, and a guarantee that the integrity and productivity of science in the United States will be eroded or lose ground.”
The federal hate crime laws focus on basis of a person’s characteristics of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. We have seen calls for adding professions like police officers, which I also opposed. As with police officers, the inclusion of such professions would have a direct and inimical impact on free speech in our society. Indeed, it would create a slippery slope as other professions demand inclusion from reporters to ministers to physicians. Hate crimes would quickly apply to a wide array of people due to their occupations.
What is most striking about the Hotez article is its lack of analytical balance. He rages against the right without even acknowledging how social media companies have already enforced a massive censorship program that bars even reporting the results of public clinical trials or repeating CDC positions on vaccinations. For a year, Big Tech has been censoring those who wanted to discuss the origins of pandemic and those who suggested the lab theory were attacked as right-wing conspiracy theorists. It was not until Biden admitted that the virus may have originated in the Wuhan lab that social media suddenly changed its position. Facebook only recently announced that people on its platform will be able to discuss the origins of Covid-19 after censoring any such discussion.
Many of us have criticized the hateful rhetoric on both sides of our politics. However, there remain important debates over not just the underlying science relating to Covid-19 but the implications of such science for public policies. Criminalizing aspects of that debate would ratchet up the threats against those with dissenting views, including some scientists. That would harm not just free speech but science in the long run.
Double jabbed? That’s no protection from the Covid Cops
By Bridget Jones | TCW Defending Freedom | August 5, 2021
LAST week I had a house call by a Covid officer to check compliance with post-holiday quarantine following my return from the Balearics. After a lovely holiday in a destination on the green list which later turned amber, my punishment consisted of ten days’ forced isolation in three rooms (including lavatory) covering 500 square feet and no outside space.
As an unvaccinated Untouchable, I looked on in envy at my double-poked friends who returned to London being able to move about freely and my travel companion who’d be showing off her tan. I wistfully imagined the glamorous parties they’d be attending whilst I’d be limited to surfing murder mystery reruns on ITV with a slightly acidic bottle of rose.
But be careful what you envy, ladies . . .
Two such double-jabbed friends, both travelling back to the UK from amber list countries, Spain and Denmark, on different budget airlines, were pinged and ordered to self-isolate on their return. It turned out someone on both of their flights had tested positive for the virus.
Now, neither of them is dumb enough to have the NHS track and trace app but their details were taken from the forms they were required to complete to board the planes bound for home.
So it turns out that getting the poke is no guarantee of regaining your freedom at all, and definitely not any kind of insurance policy for risk-free travel abroad. This was in spite of the fact that both of them, having taken tests within 48 hours of boarding and on day 2 after landing in UK arrivals, tested negative for the virus. The one returning from Denmark was fortuitously pinged after day 2, which she interpreted to mean that her isolation could be shortened to 7 days. Both friends were also required to take a test on day 8 of isolation (so in her case after it was over), and unlike myself, their Untouchable counterpart, could not do a day 5 test to get out early for good behaviour.
Everyone keeps telling me that as of August 16 the double-vaccinated will be able to move around freely regardless of whether they have been pinged. But as in this context ‘pinged’ refers to the app presumably the new freedom pass will not apply to the situation both of my friends found themselves in. Such is the absurdity that will prevail in the approaching mid-month holiday peak that there will be no way to ascertain whether it is worth travelling to a green-list rock in the Atlantic or going the whole hog and risking a turn from amber to red, with consequent pay-to-play prison sentence on return.
I wonder whether the government (which I no longer spell with a capital ‘G’ as I do not recognise its legitimacy) justifies all of this on the premise that people who dare to go on holiday must be treated as putrid receptacles of contagion and thereby do penance for their hubris.
Just like me, my vaccinated friends are sitting at home this week, watching the tan fade and bingeing on Thai food delivered in a box whilst staring at some dystopian feminist melodrama on Channel 4 for human company. My Danish friend lives in a 350 square foot studio flat in Notting Hill but at least she has a balcony on which to smoke and sunbathe; otherwise I don’t know what she would do as in such a small space confinement is unbearable.
Not for her dressing up to visit Tesco Express or setting a playlist to walk in the park; no stolen glances at the hot barista on the morning coffee run. The Covid gods have spoken, and her sentence is to wake up every day in the fiery furnace of quarantine to be purified until such time as she may be released by her gracious overlords.
Lots of articles have been written recently about the pingdemic and I daresay most employees who can’t work from home are delighted to get a ping. These serfs will doubtless not be looking forward to August 16 (another ‘freedom day’), and were I one of them I would consider coming up with a strategy to deal with the impending fall-out. An efficient tactic could be the collection of bulk quantities of LF tests to multiply potentially positive results and, via photographic replication, establish a vault of templates for passing around when needed.
I digress. Back to being stalked by the Covid marshal. He knocked at the door twice, politely, and when I opened it he met me with sheepish eyes over a medical mask to request proof of ID. You can never be too careful in verifying the identity of someone who answers their own door during a spell of quarantine.
Neither of my vaccinated friends who were told to self-isolate received a visit from the NHS. I have now started quite feeling special that someone actually cared enough to check up on me.
Come to think of it, I should have invited the Covid marshal in for a drink . . .
Toxic Horror Show Geelong Grid Backup Battery Fire Finally Extinguished
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | August 3, 2021
Imagine if people were crazy enough to install these difficult to extinguish battery incendiary devices in their homes or automobiles, or near populated areas. Imagine what such foolishness could do to insurance premiums, once companies catch on to the risk of batteries acting as potent initiators and accelerants in house fires, or realise they might have to unexpectedly cover the cleanup cost of adjacent homes and gardens contaminated with poisonous residues from the battery smoke.
Blaze at Tesla Big Battery extinguished after three days
By Lucy Battersby and Cassandra Morgan
Updated August 2, 2021Fire crews have extinguished a blaze at Victoria’s new Tesla Big Battery, the largest lithium-ion battery in the country, after taking more than three days to bring it under control.
One of the Tesla megapack batteries at the site in Moorabool, near Geelong, caught fire during testing shortly after 10am on Friday.
The Victorian Big Battery, with a capacity of 300 megawatts and 450 megawatt-hours, is three times bigger than the initial size of billionaire Elon Musk’s Tesla big battery built in South Australia in 2017.
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The authority said that, because of the nature of the fire – a 13-tonne battery – firefighters couldn’t put water on it or employ ordinary suppression methods. Instead, they had to let it “burn out” and wait for the container to cool down enough to open its doors.
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Authorities had warned of toxic smoke billowing from the site on Friday. Victoria’s Environment Protection Authority has been monitoring air quality at the site over the weekend, and determined it was “good” by Monday afternoon.
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At the very least in my opinion these batteries should be sited well away from densely populated areas, and the practice of storing large batteries near or inside homes should cease. As political vanity causes grid scale battery packs to grow in size, the potential for long term harm to anyone unlucky enough to breath the smoke or eat produce grown in battery smoke fallout contaminated soil will also rise.
Net-Zero Will Cripple British Households As Costs Get Slipped Into Energy Bills
BY DR. BENNY PEISER | CLIMATE CHANGE DISPATCH | JULY 29, 2021
In recent weeks, ministers and officials have announced that UK households and businesses will have to fund many of the government’s Net-Zero plans via their energy bills and cost of living.
Currently, UK consumers are funding renewable energy investors to the tune of £12 billion per year, taken from consumer bills as stealth taxes.
These subsidies are projected to grow over the coming years, reaching a total of about £13 billion a year in the mid-2020s.
But on top of this huge and rising cost, the government now plans to add a whole catalog of additional Net-Zero subsidies, as the recent news reports below reveal.
- The government plans to force consumers to subsidize the installation of charging stations for electric vehicles (EV) by raising electricity bills.
- Ministers are in the process of drawing up legislation that will force households to fund the construction of new nuclear power plants through the use of a surcharge on energy bills.
- Households face paying an extra £200 per year to fund greenhouse gas removal technology.
- The wind energy lobby has warned that consumers will have to subsidize offshore wind farms indefinitely, refuting the oft-repeated claim that renewables are close to becoming “subsidy-free”, and confirming analysis showing that wind power costs have not fallen.
- Energy bills face an additional rise in cost as the power grid operator is increasingly forced to pay wind farms to switch off turbines. ‘System balancing’ costs alone were £2 billion last year and could hit £2.5 billion per year over the next decade as renewable capacity continues to grow.
Industrial and commercial consumers with the option of relocating to countries with cheaper energy will obviously do so.
Households, on the other hand, will simply have to cut down on food and other expenditures in order to pay their energy bills and cut their standard of living.
The GWPF’s director Benny Peiser said:
“It is fairly certain that most households would be unable to keep their heads above water as this torrent of additional Net-Zero costs overwhelms their domestic budgets.”
“Neither Boris Johnson nor his government would survive this unwise and unjust imposition on the British people.”
Israel’s Pegasus spyware and its global consequences
By Sari Orabi | Palestinian Information Centre | August 4, 2021
Israel’s export of technology used by repressive regimes to establish their authority, not only over their political opponents, but also against large parts of civil society, is nothing new. News of this has been spreading since 2017 at least and the inauguration of the Arab-Israeli alliance under the auspices of the Trump administration.
There is no doubt that the relationships hidden before the alliance was made public included the use of Israeli technology. This is what mostly unites the repressive Arab regimes with Israel. In 2019, WhatsApp informed 1,400 of its users that they had been under surveillance since 2016. We can guess how much further spyware has been developed over the past five years.
The scandal is the recent revelation about Israel’s Pegasus spyware and the number of those targeted by such technology, as well as the number of the Israeli company’s clients. Even some of Israel’s allies have been spied upon, such as French President Emmanuel Macron.
Israel benefits from this in three ways. There is a direct security aspect, as the database that is created by its customers and their espionage activities will eventually flow into Israeli servers. This turns its customers into security agents for the occupation state. Ironically, they pay for this dubious privilege. Israel not only sells the technology but also gleans the information generated by customers’ espionage. It’s a very profitable deal for Tel Aviv.
This is just part of the economic aspect which benefits Israel enormously. It is worth pointing out that the technology being sold by Israel — whether this sort of spyware or advanced weapons systems — are all “field tested” on the Palestinians. This makes it very attractive to repressive regimes.
This is also ironic because Israeli technological and intelligence development stems, in part, from the state spying on Arab countries, some of which buy the same technology for their own use. Moreover, Israel has become the headquarters and partner of many Western technology companies, especially from America. Since this type of technology is only sold with government approval, it is more than likely that the US itself is involved at the highest level, not just Israel. There are many political indications that this is the case, including the alliance launched by the Trump administration.
There is also a huge political aspect to these developments. Israel has made itself and its technology indispensable to many governments around the world, including regimes in Arab states. It is a complex situation which encourages conflicts to be prolonged — or at least not brought to a peaceful conclusion — so that Israel has a market for its products, and buyers know where to go for what they need to defeat their opponents. Ensuring that conflicts remain ongoing not only guarantees Israel an important industrial sector, security and hegemony, but also guarantees Arab subordination at very little cost to the colonial-occupation state.
The Arab regimes are thus paying large sums to spy on friends and foes alike and, in doing so, are serving Israeli interests. US support for the high-tech sector in Israel is part of the project to help the state protect itself. This is done within a regional environment that is not conducive to Israel’s presence due to its lack of any historical, social or political legitimacy.
The Arab masses do not accept Israel’s presence in their midst. Benjamin Netanyahu said in 2017 that Israel’s problem lies with the Arab people, not the Arab governments. The Zionist state’s policies will, therefore, focus on maintaining the repressive Arab regimes and their alliance with Israel, as well as ensuring their subordination.
In the meantime, of course, Israel’s existence continues to depend on a fabricated historical narrative, the ethnic cleansing and oppression of the people of Palestine and unquestioning Western support. The state has no qualms about doing all it can — legitimate and illegal; good and bad — to promote depravity in human relations around the world because, in short, it needs conflict in order to survive.
The Pegasus spyware scandal illustrates clearly that “Israel the ally” is, simultaneously, “Israel the belligerent”, a state that recognises and respects alliances only as long as they benefit its own interests. Looked at objectively, the whole world is a potential victim of the evil that is Israel and its pernicious ideology, Zionism. The sale and use of Pegasus spyware has global consequences.
Translation by MEMO
Why People Don’t Trust the Mainstream Media
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | August 4, 2021
An article in the Washington Post about the January 6 protests at the Capitol goes a long way toward explaining why people do not trust the mainstream media. The article, written by a Post reporter named Mike DeBonis, focuses on allegations that the FBI infiltrated the ranks of the protestors and actually helped to incite them to illegally enter the Capitol and engage in mayhem after doing so.
The overall tone that DeBonis sets forth is one that is oftentimes found in the mainstream media when it comes to alleged wrongdoing by the federal government. The article has a mocking tone to it, suggesting that the people who are making this allegation are conspiracy theorists for actually believing that federal officials would do such a horrible thing.
There is a critical sentence in DeBonis’s article: “The FBI declined to comment.”
Why is that line important? Because there are two ways that a reporter can go when he is writing a story about this type of allegation.
On the one hand, he can mock and ridicule those who are making the allegation, pointing out that they haven’t produced any evidence to support their “unfounded claim.”
On the other hand, he can aggressively go after FBI officials and demand a definitive yes-or-no answer instead of simply settling for a “no comment” by the FBI and also engage in an aggressive investigative effort to determine whether there is evidence to support the allegation.
DeBonis chose the first route. But why? After all, a “no comment” answer by the FBI is about as incriminating as an answer can be, short of an outright admission of wrongdoing. That’s because if the FBI were not guilty of the wrongdoing, it would undoubtedly simply say, “The allegation is false.” The FBI clearly did not do that with its “no comment” answer. It’s “no comment” answer leaves open the possibility — perhaps even the likelihood — that the FBI was involved in wrongdoing,
DeBonis makes a big issue of out of the fact that the people who are making this allegation have not provided any evidence to support their allegation. But what people have pointed out is a similar course of conduct by the FBI in other cases, which would be enough to cause any reasonable person to assume that it might have engaged in the same course of conduct with respect to the January 6 protests.
For example, consider the case that involves the alleged kidnapping of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. DeBonis is aware of that case because he links to an article from BuzzFeedNews.com about the case. That article alleges that the FBI played a major role in inducing the defendants in the case to commit the kidnapping. Even if what the FBI allegedly did wasn’t enough to support a defense of entrapment, its alleged actions are nonetheless enough to cause any reasonable citizen, including investigative journalists, concern.
But that’s not all. As journalist Glenn Greenwald has documented, the FBI has a long history of inciting people to commit acts of domestic terrorism. The idea is to incite people to commit crimes so that the FBI can then be praised and glorified for busting them up. See Greenwald’s July 24 article “FBI Using the Same Fear Tactic From the First War on Terror: Orchestrating its Own Terrorism Plots.” Also, see the July 31 article “Will More Media Bias Save Democracy?” by James Bovard.
Given the history of the FBI engaging in this type of misconduct, you would think that any journalist worth his salt would say, “I need to get to the bottom of this latest assertion. I need to know whether the FBI did the same thing here. Rather than mocking and ridiculing these people by pointing out that they have furnished no evidence to support their allegation, I need to do my job and go after the FBI to see if there is any evidence to support the allegation.”
Rather than do that, DeBonis goes off on the other track by implicitly assuming that the FBI would never do such a thing and implicitly assuming that those who are making the allegation are nothing more than “conspiracy theorists.”
That’s why so many people don’t trust the mainstream media.
This is not a recent phenomenon.
We can go all the way back to Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s secret program in the 1960s and 1970s whose aim was to acquire CIA assets from within the mainstream press, whose secret job would be to come to the defense of the national-security establishment whenever necessary, including but calling people “conspiracy theorists” whenever they allege wrongdoing on the part of CIA officials.
According to the Wikipedia entry on “Operation Mockingbird,”
In a 1977 Rolling Stone magazine article, “The CIA and the Media,” reporter Carl Bernstein expanded upon the Church Committee’s report and said that around 400 press members were considered intelligence assets by the CIA, including New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, columnist and political analyst Stewart Alsop and Time magazine. Berstein documented the way in which overseas branches of major US news agencies had for many years served as the “eyes and ears” of Operation Mockingbird, which functioned to disseminate CIA propaganda through domestic US media.[6]
The best example, of course, of the deference to the authority of the national-security establishment relates to the Kennedy assassination. Today, there are two separate worlds when it comes to that assassination: the world of the mainstream media and the world of Internet. They are two completely different worlds — actually, parallel universes.
On the Internet, it’s possible to find people analyzing, questioning, and challenging the official lone-nut theory of the case, pointing to the mountain of evidence, for example, that establishes that the national-security establishment conducted a fraudulent autopsy on President Kennedy’s body. (See my books The Kennedy Autopsy and The Kennedy Autopsy 2 as well as the recorded presentations at The Future of Freedom Foundation’s recent conference “The National Security State and the Kennedy Assassination.”
Not so in the mainstream press. It is considered verboten in the mainstream press for any reporter or commentator to challenge or question any aspect of the official lone-nut theory of the assassination. Woe to the reporter or commentator who does so. He will be looking for a new job post haste — somewhere on the Internet.
In the December 6, 1963, issue of Life magazine, a well-known Life magazine reporter named Paul Mandel wrote an article about the assassination in which he claimed that the famous Zapruder film showed that the president had turned around to face the Texas School Book Depository. The president’s action, Mandel said, explained how it was that the president was shot in the throat.
No one could verify Mandel’s statement because Life magazine had purchased the film from Abraham Zapruder for $150,000, which in today’s dollars amounted to around $1.2 million. Life locked the film away, saying that it wanted to protect the American people from ever having to see such violence.
In 1969, Jim Garrison, the district attorney in New Orleans, brought a criminal prosecution against a man named Clay Shaw in which Garrison alleged that the Kennedy assassination was actually a sophisticated regime-change operation on the part of the U.S. national-security establishment. Garrison subpoenaed the Zapruder film from Life magazine and showed it in court. The film showed that the president had never turned around and faced the school book depository. By this time, of course, the official story revolved around the magic bullet theory, which posited that the president had actually been shot in the rear of the neck (i.e., not through the throat), with the bullet supposedly having come out the front (and then supposedly striking Gov. John Connally in multiple places, with the bullet magically ending up in a pristine condition.)
In other words, Mandel had lied, either intentionally or because someone at Life magazine had falsely told him that that’s what the film showed. There is no other conclusion that can be reached. There is no way that Mandel’s allegation could be construed to be an innocent mistake, because Life magazine had the film.
There is another interesting aspect to the saga. According to Wikipedia:
General Charles Douglas (C. D.) Jackson (March 16, 1902 – September 18, 1964) was a United States government propagandist and senior executive of Time Inc. As an expert on psychological warfare he served in the Office of Strategic Services in World War II and later as Special Assistant to the President in the Eisenhower administration…. After Abraham Zapruder took the famous film in Dallas on November 22, 1963, Jackson purchased it on behalf of Time/Life to “protect the integrity of the film.” Upon viewing it on Sunday morning, he ordered it locked in a vault at the Time/Life building in Manhattan.
In 1972 — three years after the Zapruder film was shown in the Shaw trial — Life magazine, which had been one of the most popular weekly magazines in history, cease publication as a weekly. Some people said that it was because of the rising popularity of television. Another possibility is that people no longer trusted Life magazine.
For the past 25 years, the mainstream media has been losing readership and money. Some people blame it on the rising popularity of the Internet. Another possibility is that people no longer trust the mainstream media.
French firefighters’ & hospital unions declare strikes against ‘unconstitutional’ vaccine mandate
RT | August 4, 2021
Two French unions have called for strikes against the compulsory vaccination of firefighters, healthcare workers, and caregivers. They say the measure violates fundamental rights.
One of the leading French firefighters’ unions, FA/SPP-PATS, which boasts 7,000 members, said it will go on strike starting Monday unless changes are made to the recent law on compulsory vaccination of certain employees.
“The obligatory vaccination of firefighters under [the threat] of penalty violates the constitution,” the union said in a statement.
“Our union does not oppose vaccination,” the organization’s spokesperson, Andre Goretti, told BFM TV. “But the conditions, under which it is being imposed on the professional level, with [the threat of] financial and other sanctions – that’s where we disagree.”
The hospital and caregivers’ union, SUD Sante Sociaux, also called for a strike and protests against the measure which it labelled “a new attack on labor law.”
According to the legislation, which was approved by parliament late last month, firefighters, medical workers, caregivers, and certain soldiers have until September 15 to get vaccinated or face sanctions. The controversial provision containing the vaccination mandate will be examined by the country’s Constitutional Council on Thursday.
The government has been pushing the population to get vaccinated in greater numbers amid the spread of the more contagious Delta variant of the virus.
Starting from August 9, people will be barred from restaurants, cafes, and long-distance transportation unless they have a health pass. The pass is already required for museums, cinemas, and other cultural venues with a capacity of more than 50 people.
These restrictions, along with the vaccination mandate, sparked protests across the country. More than 200,000 people participated in demonstrations across France on Saturday.
A group of uniformed firefighters was seen marching in a protest column in the southern city of Nice on Saturday, where around 6,500 people rallied against the government’s restrictive Covid-19 response.
Charles-Ange Ginesy, the head of the Alpes-Maritimes region and president of the regional firefighters’ board of directors, told BFM TV that he was “very disappointed” after seeing uniformed firefighters participating in a protest.
“The right to protest is a right that belongs to each of us. On the other hand, they wore their uniforms, which surprised me a lot,” the official said, expressing hope that “the controller-general will be able to make them understand that such attitude should not be repeated.”
The procedure is underway, during which we look at how these firefighters, who had probably acted out of clumsiness, will be able to return to reason.
Only a group of 20 to 30 marched with the protesters, compared to the 3,800 firefighters in the region, Ginesy said.
French civil servants are typically bound by the ‘duty of reserve’, meaning they must show restraint and moderation when expressing personal opinions.
The firefighters’ union spokesperson, Andre Goretti, meanwhile, defended his colleagues. “There are individual choices that are not put to question by our union,” he said. “It is an expression of a citizen. A firefighter – before being a professional firefighter – is a citizen.”
Authorities have made several concessions following the outrage, such as lowering the fines for businesses that do not check for health passes.
Editor-in-Chief of Germany’s Top Newspaper Apologizes For Fear-Driven COVID Coverage
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | August 3, 2021
The editor-in-chief of Germany’s top newspaper Bild has apologized for the news outlet’s fear-driven coverage of COVID, specifically to children who were told “that they were going to murder their grandma.”
In a speech delivered to camera, Julian Reichelt said sorry for Bild’s coverage which was “like poison” and “made you feel like you were a mortal danger to society.”
Reichelt directed his main sentiment towards children who have been terrorized by fearmongering media coverage which has caused child depression and suicides to soar across the world.
“To the millions of children in this country for whom our society is responsible, I want to express here what neither our government nor our Chancellor dares to tell you. We ask you to forgive us,” he said.
“Forgive us for this policy which, for a year and a half, has made you victims of violence, neglect, isolation, and loneliness.”
“We persuaded our children that they were going to murder their grandma if they dared to be what they are, children. Or if they met their friends. None of this has been scientifically proven.”
“When a state steals the rights of a child, it must prove that by doing so it protects him against concrete and imminent danger. This proof has never been provided. It has been replaced by propaganda presenting the child as a vector of the pandemic.”
Reichelt noted how moderate voices who attempted to offer calmer perspectives on the pandemic “were never invited to the expert table” and urged viewers “don’t believe this lie,” when encountering alarmist proclamations from the government.
The journalist called on authorities to open schools and sports halls instead of polling stations, warning that those who imposed brutal lockdown measures, “will have on their conscience and will leave in the history books, a multitude of innocent souls.”
Bild has a daily circulation of 1.24 million copies and is the best-selling newspaper in Europe, adding even more weight to this story.
As we highlighted yesterday, Germans protesting against plans to impose domestic vaccine passports were brutalized by police during demonstrations that took place in Berlin.
The ugly scenes prompted the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer to put in a request for eyewitnesses ahead of a potential investigation.
Germans were protesting against plans to ban unvaccinated people from a plethora of different venues, including restaurants, cinemas and stadiums.
As we previously highlighted, Germany’s domestic spy agency is monitoring anti-lockdown protesters, claiming they are potentially involved in a plot to subvert the country.
Covid-19 natural immunity compared to vaccine-induced immunity: The definitive summary
BY SHARYL ATTKISSON | AUGUST 3, 2021
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) became one of the latest high-profile figures to get sick with Covid-19, even though he’s fully vaccinated. In a statement Monday, Graham said it feels like he has “the flu,” but is “certain” he would be worse if he hadn’t been vaccinated.
While it’s impossible to know whether that’s the case, public health officials are grappling with the reality of an increasing number of fully-vaccinated Americans coming down with Covid-19 infections, getting hospitalized, and even dying of Covid. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) insists vaccination is still the best course for every eligible American. But many are asking if they have better immunity after they’re infected with the virus and recover, than if they’re vaccinated.
Increasingly, the answer within the data appears to be ”yes.”
Why does CDC seem to be “ignoring” natural immunity?
In fact, some medical experts have said they’re confounded by public health officials’ failure to factor natural and virus-acquired immunity into the Covid equation. Public and media narratives often press the necessity of “vaccination for all,” chiding states where vaccination rates are lowest. And they use vaccination rates and Covid case counts as inverse indicators of how safe it is in a particular state: high vaccination rate = high safety; high case counts = low safety (they claim).
However, vaccination rates alone tell little about a population’s true immune-status. And where high Covid case counts occur, it ultimately means a larger segment of that community ends up better-protected, vaccines aside. That’s according to virologists who point out that fighting off Covid, even without developing any symptoms, leaves people with what’s thought to be more robust and longer-lasting immunity than the vaccines confer.
The vaccine immunity problem
Hard data counters widespread public misinformation that claimed “virtually all” patients hospitalized and dying of Covid-19 are unvaccinated. Pfizer and Moderna had claimed their vaccines were “100% effective” at preventing serious illness. Many in the media even popularized a propaganda phrase designed to push more people to get vaccinated: “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
Not so, says CDC and other data.
Recent CDC data found that 74% of those who tested positive for Covid-19 in a Massachusetts analysis had been fully-vaccinated. Equally as troubling for those advocating vaccination-for-all: four out of five people hospitalized with Covid were fully-vaccinated. And CDC said “viral load” — indicating how able the human host is to spread Covid-19 — is about the same among the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Contrary to the infamous misinformation by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky last May, vaccinated people can— and are— spreading Covid. (CDC officials later corrected Walensky’s false claim.)
CDC’s newest findings on so-called “breakthrough” infections in vaccinated people are mirrored by other data releases.
Illinois health officials recently announced more than 160 fully-vaccinated people have died of Covid-19, and at least 644 been hospitalized; ten deaths and 51 hospitalizations counted in the prior week. Israel’s Health Ministry recently said effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has fallen to 40 percent. Last month, 100 vaccinated British sailors isolated on a ship at sea reportedly came down with Covid seven weeks into their deployment. In July, New Jersey reported 49 fully vaccinated residents had died of Covid; 27 in Louisiana; 80 in Massachusetts.
Nationally, as of July 12, CDC said it was aware of more than 4,400 people who got Covid-19 after being fully vaccinated and had to be hospitalized; and 1,063 fully vaccinated people who died of Covid. But health officials still argue that vaccinated people make up only a small fraction of the seriously ill. Critics counter that CDC’s recent Massachusetts data calls that into question.
The bright side of recovering from Covid-19
But there’s promising news to be found within natural and acquired immunity statistics, according to virologists. As of May 29, CDC estimated more than 120 million Americans— more than one in three— had already battled Covid. While an estimated six-tenths of one-percent died, the other 99.4% of those infected survived with a presumed immune status that appears to be superior to that which comes with vaccination.
If doctors could routinely test to confirm who has fought off and become immune to Covid-19, it would eliminate the practical need or rationale for those protected millions to get vaccinated. It would also allow them to avoid even the slight risk of serious vaccine side effects.
Unfortunately, virologists say no commonly-used test can detect with certainty whether a person is immune. A common misconception is that antibody tests can make that determination. But experts say immunity after infection or exposure often comes without a person producing or maintaining measurable antibodies.
Because of that reality, people who have had asymptomatic infections — infections where they suffered no symptoms — have no easy way to know that they’re immune. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that the millions who know they got Covid can be assured they’re unlikely to suffer reinfection, for at least as long of a time period that scientists have been able to measure. Possibly far beyond.
The immunity-after-Covid-infection studies
The following are some of the data and studies regarding immunity acquired after Covid infection.
This study followed 254 Covid-19 patients for up to 8 months and concluded they had “durable broad-based immune responses.” In fact, even very mild Covid-19 infection also protected the patients from an earlier version of “SARS” coronavirus that first emerged around 2003, and against Covid-19 variants. “Taken together, these results suggest that broad and effective immunity may persist long-term in recovered COVID-19 patients,” concludes the study scientists.
This study of airline passengers in Qatar found that both vaccination and prior infection were “imperfect” when it comes to preventing positive Covid-19 test results, but that the incidence of reinfection is similarly low in both groups.
Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals, June 1, 2021
This study followed 52,238 employees of the Cleveland Clinic Health System in Ohio.
For previously-infected people, the cumulative incidence of re-infection “remained almost zero.” According to the study, “Not one of the 1,359 previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated had a [Covid-19] infection over the duration of the study” and vaccination did not reduce the risk. “Individuals who have had [Covid-19] infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination,” concludes the study scientists.
SARS-CoV-2 specific memory B-cells from individuals with diverse disease severities recognize SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, May 29, 2021
This study found strong immune signs in people who had previously been infected with Covid-19, including “those [who] experienced asymptomatic or mild disease.” The study concludes there is “reason for optimism” regarding the capacity of prior infection “to limit disease severity and transmission of variants of concern as they continue to arise and circulate.”
A population-based analysis of the longevity of SARS-CoV-2 antibody seropositivity in the United States, May 24, 2021
This study of real world data extended the timeframe of available data indicating that patients have strong immune indicators for “almost a year post-natural infection of COVID-19.” The study concludes the immune response after natural infection “may persist for longer than previously thought, thereby providing evidence of sustainability that may influence post-pandemic planning.”
SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans, May 24, 2021
This study examined bone marrow of previously-infected patients and found that even mild infection with Covid-19 “induces robust antigen-specific, long-lived humoral immune memory in humans.” The study indicates “People who have had mild illness develop antibody-producing cells that can last lifetime.”
People who have had mild illness develop antibody-producing cells that can last lifetime.
World Health Organization (WHO) scientific brief, May 10, 2021
This scientific brief issued by WHO states that after natural infection with Covid-19, “available scientific data suggests that in most people immune responses remain robust and protective against reinfection for at least 6-8 months.”
Detection of SARS-CoV-2-Specific Humoral and Cellular Immunity in COVID-19 Convalescent Individuals, May 3, 2020
This study looked found humoral and cellular immunity in recovered Covid patients. “Production of S-RBD-specific antibodies were readily detected in recovered patients. Moreover, we observed virus-neutralization activities in these recovered patients,” wrote the study authors.
The adaptive immune system consists of three major lymphocyte types: B cells (antibody producing cells), CD4+ T cells (helper T cells), and CD8+ T cells (cytotoxic, or killer, T cells
Protection of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection is similar to that of BNT162b2 vaccine protection: A three-month nationwide experience from Israel, April 24, 2021
This study from Israel found a slight advantage to natural infection over vaccination when it comes to preventing a reinfection and severe illness from Covid-19.
The study authors concluded, “Our results question the need to vaccinate previously-infected individuals.”
A 1 to 1000 SARS-CoV-2 reinfection proportion in members of a large healthcare provider in Israel: a preliminary report, March 6, 2021
This study found a rare Covid-19 positive test “reinfection” rate of 1 per 1,000 recoveries.
Lasting immunity found after recovery from COVID-19, Jan. 26, 2021
Research funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in Science early in the Covid-19 vaccine effort found the “immune systems of more than 95% of people who recovered from COVID-19 had durable memories of the virus up to eight months after infection,” and hoped the vaccines would produce similar immunity. (However, experts say they do not appear to be doing so.)
SARS-CoV-2 reinfection in a cohort of 43,000 antibody-positive individuals followed for up to 35 weeks, Jan. 15, 2021
This study found Covid-19 natural infection “appears to elicit strong protection against reinfection” for at least seven months. “Reinfection is “rare,” concludes the scientists.
Immunological memory to SARS-CoV-2 assessed for up to eight months after infection, Nov. 1, 2020
This study confirmed and examined “immune memory” in previously-infected Covid-19 patients.
Negligible impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants on CD4+ and CD8+ T cell reactivity in COVID-19 exposed donors and vaccinees, Nov. 1, 2020
This study concluded “T cell” immune response in former Covid-19 patients likely continues to protect amid Covid-19 variants.
Orthogonal SARS-CoV-2 Serological Assays Enable Surveillance of Low-Prevalence Communities and Reveal Durable Humoral Immunity, Oct. 13, 2020
This study found that “neutralizing antibodies are stably produced for at least 5–7 months” after a patient is infected with Covid-19.
SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell immunity in cases of COVID-19 and SARS, and uninfected controls, July 25, 2020
This study found that all patients who recently recovered from Covid-19 produced immunity-strong T cells that recognize multiple parts of Covid-19.
They also looked at blood samples from 23 people who’d survived a 2003 outbreak of a coronavirus: SARS (Cov-1). These people still had lasting memory T cells 17 years after the outbreak. Those memory T cells, acquired in response to SARS-CoV-1, also recognized parts of Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2).
Much of the study on the immune response to SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, has focused on the production of antibodies. But, in fact, immune cells known as memory T cells also play an important role in the ability of our immune systems to protect us against many viral infections, including—it now appears—COVID-19.
“Immune T Cells May Offer Lasting Protection Against COVID-19”
Read: scientific commentary by Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff.
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Nine Covid Facts: A Pandemic of Fearmongering and Ignorance
By Jeff Harris | Ron Paul Institute | October 28, 2020
Ever since the alleged pandemic erupted this past March the mainstream media has spewed a non-stop stream of misinformation that appears to be laser focused on generating maximum fear among the citizenry. But the facts and the science simply don’t support the grave picture painted of a deadly virus sweeping the land.
Yes we do have a pandemic, but it’ a pandemic of ginned up pseudo-science masquerading as unbiased fact. Here are nine facts backed up with data, in many cases from the CDC itself that paints a very different picture from the fear and dread being relentlessly drummed into the brains of unsuspecting citizens. … continue
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