Southwest Airlines pilots and staff are flying in the face of corporate and government vaccine mandates
By R. M. Huffman | RT | October 12, 2021
Southwest Airlines’ top brass can deny the massive delays they’ve been experiencing have anything to do with their insistence staff take Covid shots or lose their job till they are blue in the face… but no one is buying it.
Southwest is experiencing turbulence. Over the weekend, the Texas-based airline canceled over 1,800 flights. Monday was no better: almost 400 more flights were canceled. A corporate spokesman, Alan Kasher, blamed the catastrophic interruption in business on bad weather in Florida and “issues” with air traffic control.
His claim was met with immediate disbelief, as the Federal Aviation Administration countered that no ATC staffing shortages were reported over the weekend, and competitor airlines flying in the same regions only canceled a tiny fraction of their own flights. The real reason for the cancellations is an open secret, despite Kasher’s reticence in acknowledging it. Southwest’s pilots and crews have been given a vaccine mandate, and they’re simply not having it.
Just today, on Good Morning America, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly spun the bad news like a turbine, citing “no evidence” that his company’s disastrous past few days had any connection with the vaccine ultimatum he’d handed down to his workforce. It does, of course, and Kelly knows it.
Here’s what’s actually happening. On September 9, Joe Biden announced his intention to force every company that employs more than 100 people to give their employees a vaccine mandate. Southwest Airlines subsequently relayed a missive to its employees, pilots, and crew members: “Southwest Airlines will be required to comply with the federal government’s directive for Employees of federal contractors to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.” The deadline was set for December 8: get the vaccine, hope for an exemption, or be fired.
Many of these employees had already contracted and beaten the disease, enjoying an effective natural immunity. Others remained concerned about reports of adverse effects, including thrombosis (for which the Johnson & Johnson jab was pulled from market) and myocarditis (for which the Moderna shot was pulled as well). Many were also aware that vaccinations, while decreasing hospitalizations and deaths, don’t completely stop breakthrough infections and have demonstrated a diminishing efficacy.
Whatever the individual reasons, a mandate mutiny began brewing. It’s manifested now, asserting itself over these last few days in a way that can’t be ignored. Pilots save up paid sick days, often accumulating months’ worth, even years. As their concerns have gone unheard by executives and, faced with the ignominy of sacrificing bodily autonomy for corporate compliance, or being fired and losing their careers – including all those saved hours they’ve earned – pilots are simply calling in sick and cashing in their paid leave.
The union for Southwest’s 9,000 pilots denies an organized protest, sick-out, or shutdown, and that’s true. These individuals acting out of conscience are a loose confederation of colleagues at best. They’ve been told by Southwest suits that “the federal directive gives little latitude for input or choice.”They rejected that assertion, are rejecting it, and will continue to reject it.
Perhaps the most baffling aspect of the entire scenario is the fact that there isn’t even a rule with which Southwest Airlines is complying. When President Biden delivered his ultimatum in September, lawmakers and legal scholars were dubious. Many wondered how Biden intended to give teeth to his speech, as he’s not a part of any legislative body. His answer: use the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to define vaccination as a workplace safety concern and issue a rule accordingly.
Regardless of the small agency’s legal standing to accomplish such a legislative workaround, or its ability to subsequently enforce it, a more foundational problem remains for Southwest and other employers: OSHA has not yet made such a rule, much less navigated the legal challenges already being made.
Unsuccessful with his carrots, Biden has picked up a stick; legally, this stick would be fragile in the best case, but at the moment it remains a complete mirage. It’s hard to believe that Southwest is so willing to infuriate both stranded customers and disgruntled pilots to avoid being beaten with it.
It is natural that airline executives would want to stay in the government’s good graces. After all, they’ve multiple times gone begging to Congress, cap in hand, lamenting the looming layoffs of their “valued employees” and asking for taxpayer bailout dollars. They’ve received them, to the tune of billions, as well as millions in compensation for themselves. Government contracts, at risk if the company doesn’t impose a vaccine mandate, make up a mere 3% of Southwest’s business, yet a hard line has been drawn over all objections of pilots and crews. How could Southwest’s employees not question where their CEO’s loyalty really lies?
Customers stranded at airports and dealing with canceled flights can’t be blamed for being frustrated, but their ire ought not be aimed at Southwest pilots, any more than the many tea enthusiasts among the American colonials should have been angry at the men who tossed the tea shipments into Boston Harbor. Economic disruption can be powerful, both as a symbol and as a practical protest method (although sometimes it’s mostly property destruction and looting, to which this current action bears no resemblance).
Perhaps even more so than the nurses and doctors once held up as heroes and now fired for refusing the jab, these pilots and crew members are showing concerned Americans, Europeans, Australians, and all free citizens, a potential way forward through this miserable morass of mandates. In Western democracies, government is designed to represent the people, not rule them. At some point, our elected officials decided that they would prefer to be masters rather than servants, entangling themselves with corporate leadership in a moldering rat king of stifling bureaucratic fiat and decree.
Just tell them no.
American corporations exist at the whim of their customers and through the willingness of their employees.
The United States government serves only with the consent of the governed.
Neither is the king of anybody. It’s high time they stop behaving as if they are.
Southwest Airlines’ goodwill is gone. Its executives now have a choice: hold firm to a specious vaccine mandate and watch its customers and employees fly away or, find a spine, and tell the federal government that it won’t play the willing stooge to Biden’s bullying tactics.
It’s time for corporate vaccine mandates to crash and burn.
R. M. Huffman is a physician, author, and observer of culture.
Google, Amazon staff protest ties to Israel spy network
MEMO | October 13, 2021
Employees of the tech giants, Google and Amazon, have condemned the companies for their contract with the Israeli military to develop cloud-based cybersecurity services, and have called on their employers to cut their ties with the occupation forces.
As part of the major $1.2 billion contracts signed with the Israeli military in May, following a bid in which it beat other giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon are to provide cloud services technology to Tel Aviv and its armed forces.
In an article published yesterday in the Guardian newspaper, however, hundreds of anonymous employees of the companies, who described themselves as “employees of conscience from diverse backgrounds”, condemned the program named ‘Project Nimbus.’
Referencing their belief “that the technology we build should work to serve and uplift people everywhere,” the employees stated that “we are morally obligated to speak out against violations of these core values.”
They wrote that “we are compelled to call on the leaders of Amazon and Google to pull out of Project Nimbus and cut all ties with the Israeli military,” revealing that the signatories of the letter-number over 90 at Google and over 300 at Amazon.
The employees, who confirmed that they “are anonymous because we fear retaliation,” acknowledged that “We cannot look the other way, as the products we build are used to deny Palestinians their basic rights, force Palestinians out of their homes, and attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
If Google and Amazon continue with the project which would “sell dangerous technology to the Israeli military and government”, then it would only enable the “further surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians, and facilitate the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land.”
Aside from urging the companies to abandon the project and their ties with Israel’s occupation forces, the employees also “call on global technology workers and the international community to join with us in building a world where technology promotes safety and dignity for all.”
Soaring gas prices in Western Europe due to mistaken reliance on wind farms, Russia on track for record exports in 2021 – Putin
RT | October 13, 2021
A surge in the cost of gas which has seen bills shoot up for households and industry is down to a shortfall in electricity generation, and not because Russia is somehow squeezing supplies, President Vladimir Putin has argued.
Speaking as part of a keynote address at Russian Energy Week on Wednesday, Putin said that a fall in output from wind farms had meant electricity prices shot up, having a knock-on effect on demand for gas. Wind power makes up an increasingly large share of Europe’s energy generation, particularly in the west of the continent, he went on.
“The rise in gas prices in Europe was the result of a shortage of electricity, and not vice versa,” the president insisted.
Putin went on to accuse Western leaders of “trying to cover up their own mistakes,” following a series of claims that the situation is because Russia is withholding supplies. He added that “proper analysis of the situation is often replaced by empty political slogans.”
According to the Russian president, an exceptionally long winter drained the continent’s energy reserves and disrupted pricing. Now, “the invisible hand of the market” is at play, Putin said.
Contrary to Russia seeking to worsen the crisis, Putin insisted that the country could well see record levels of exports in 2021 as Moscow works to meet the growing demand. That said, though, he claimed that the Kremlin doesn’t relish the prospect of shortages and that “the high price environment can have negative consequences for everyone, including producers.”
Some countries have seen gas prices rise by as much as 250% in recent days, with a knock-on effect being felt in the industry. Homeowners also face higher heating bills with winter fast approaching. Several energy companies in the UK, which has seen some of the sharpest increases, have entered into talks with the government to prevent them from potentially going bust.
Last month, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that the state energy firm, Gazprom, is already fulfilling all of its contracts and no customers have been denied deliveries. According to him, “nobody has any grounds to claim otherwise,” and the company is making preparations to strike new deals and increase the volumes flowing westwards.
Flu DID Circulate Last Winter – They Just Renamed It Covid
By Richie Allen | October 13, 2021
Flu is back. It took a gap year in 2020, but it’s back now, well rested and twice as dangerous. The “flu disappeared last Winter” claim is proof if ever you needed it, that people will believe anything if their television tells them it’s true.
Throughout 2021, the government and its medical advisers told us that there wasn’t a single recorded case of flu last Winter. They said that social distancing, mask wearing and working from home, eradicated it. No-one thought to ask them why those same measures hadn’t eradicated covid, but hey-ho.
The same boffins are telling us that as a result of opening up the economy and emerging from our covid bunkers, flu will return with a vengeance and that this spells trouble seeing as we’ve kind of lost our resistance to it. That is monumental bollox.
Flu never went anywhere last Winter. Neither did the common cold. They were re-branded as covid-19. You can take that to the bank. That’s not my opinion, that is fact. I’m not saying that covid doesn’t exist mind, just that everyone who sneezed last year was given a PCR test. Everything came back as covid.
It’s not just flu that has been re-branded as covid either. Tinnitus, dizziness, rashes, hearing voices, dead leg… everything has been linked to covid. It’s not funny. People believe this shit.
1 in 3 UK doctors believe that the re-emergence of flu and ever mutating covid-19 virus, spells doom for the NHS this Winter. One third of doctors when asked, say that they fear that the NHS isn’t ready for the perennial Winter NHS crisis. They’re right.
Of course, it doesn’t matter whether it’s covid, the flu or both. The NHS will collapse this Winter and it’ll be unlike anything we’ve ever seen previously. Hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers will walk away from their jobs before accepting Health Secretary Sajid Javid’s vaccine mandate. It’s going to be chaos.
Thirty years ago, there were twice as many hospital beds in the UK as there are today. The health service has been systematically destroyed over decades. The flu is back narrative is horse-shit. The total collapse of the NHS has been carefully planned.
They’re getting their excuses in early. Do you think they don’t know what the result will be, when they reduce the number of doctors, nurses and healthcare workers by forcing unsafe vaccines on them?
Do you think that they don’t know what the result will be, when they reduce bed capacity and treat nothing but covid, while leaving millions of people waiting for non-covid related illnesses?
Of course they know. It’s unimaginably evil isn’t it?
UK government criticized for GPS “women-tracking” proposals
UK’s answer to every problem: “increase surveillance”
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | October 13, 2021
The proposed 888 tracking service for women in the UK has been blasted by rights groups as “flawed” and “deeply misguided.” The human rights advocates have warned that the tracking service violates both privacy and freedoms.
The tracking service was proposed by telecoms company BT and supported by home secretary Priti Patel. It is an app and reporting system that would enable women to enter their home, office, and other regularly visited addresses. In case a user travels, they would be required to enter the details of their trip, and would be tracked and monitored through GPS.
In case a user misses the automated checks, an alert would be sent to their emergency contacts or law enforcement.
The 888 service appears to be the government’s response to the increased violence on the streets. Over the past few months, the government and law enforcement agencies have been blamed for their inadequacy in tackling violence, following the sexual assault and murder of Sarah Everard by a police officer employed by the London Met.
Officer Wayne Couzens used coronavirus restrictions to falsely arrest Everard, who was a marketing executive. He then kidnapped, raped, and strangled her. He was sentenced to life in prison.
“Tracking women’s movements is not a solution for male violence,” said the director of Big Brother Watch Slikie Carlo, speaking to The Independent. “This is a terribly misguided, invasive and offensive policy that misdiagnoses the problem and will do nothing to make women safer.”
The senior legal officer at Rights for Women Leigh Morgan said the 888 tracking service was “deeply flawed in its approach and expectation on women to adapt our lives to try and ensure safety from male violence.”
“This approach encourages a culture of victim responsibility and victim-blaming, and doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the issue,” she added.
Why the Mainstream Media Remains Silent on the JFK Records Deadline
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | October 13, 2021
With the October 26 deadline only two weeks from now on releasing the 60-year secret records of the CIA relating to the Kennedy assassination, the silence from the mainstream press is deafening. The great mainstream defenders of transparency and openness in government, at least when it comes foreign dictatorships, cannot bring themselves to openly advocate for the release of thousands of records relating to the JFK assassination that the CIA still insists on keeping secret.
Why the silence? I will explain the reason, but first please permit me to restate the prediction I have made regarding this matter.
I predict that within the next weeks, President Biden will grant a request by the CIA for continued secrecy of its assassination-related records. I predict that Biden will order the release of some of the records for appearance’s sake, but he will cite “national security” to justify continuing the secrecy of the vast majority of the records.
Why do I make this prediction? Because the reason that the CIA needed to keep these records secret 60 years ago still exists. That same reason was why it it needed to keep them secret during the 1990s, when the Assassination Records Review Board was enforcing the JFK Records Act of 1992, which mandated the release of all federal records relating to the assassination.
Further, that same reason obviously caused the CIA, despite the law’s mandate, to continue keeping its records secret for another 25 years after the JFK Records Act was enacted. When that deadline came due in 2017, that same reason obviously motivated the CIA to petition President Trump for another extension of time for secrecy, which Trump dutifully granted. That deadline comes due on October 26, 2021 — two weeks from now — and mark my words: The same reason will cause the CIA to request that Biden grant another extension of time for secrecy, which Biden, like Trump, will dutifully grant.
What is the reason that has caused the CIA to want to keep these thousands of records secret from the American people. The reason, I am more convinced than ever, is that the CIA knows that those remaining records constitute more pieces to the overall puzzle of criminal culpability on the part of the CIA in the regime-change operation that took place on November 22,1963.
After all, let’s face it: No matter what definition is put on that nebulous and meaningless term “national security,” there is no possibility that anything bad will happen to the United States if those 60-year-old secret records are released to the American people. The United States will not fall into the ocean. The supposed international communist conspiracy to take over the United States that was supposedly based in Moscow, Russia (yes, that Russia!) during the Cold War won’t be reinvigorated. Communist Cuba will not invade the United States. The dominoes near North Vietnam will not fall to the communists. North Korea will not come and get us.
President Biden just ordered the release of President Trump’s secret records relating to the January 6 Capitol protests. Why not the same decision with respect to those 60-year-old secret records of the CIA relating to the Kennedy assassination?
Why won’t the mainstream press call on Biden to enforce the JFK Records Act of 1992? They’re scared to do so. In a remarkably candid and direct statement made to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in 2017, New York Senator Charles Schumer explained why they are scared: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer said to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
Schumer was referring to President Trump, but actually the admonition applies to everyone. The CIA, the Pentagon, the NSA, and the FBI — i.e., the entire intelligence community — has “six ways from Sunday at getting back” at anyone who takes it on, including newspaper owners, publishers, and editors.
Most people know about Operation Mockingbird, the top-secret operation of the CIA to acquire assets within the mainstream press to advance the CIA’s propaganda. Does anyone really think that the CIA would stop there in the quest to expand its power and influence?
Not a chance! For example, the entire national-security establishment would concentrate on acquiring, installing, and grooming assets in Congress, which sets the budgets. Does anyone think it’s just a coincidence that Congress gives the national-security establishment whatever it wants plus sometimes even more than what it wants? There is good reason why President Eisenhower planned to use the term “military-industrial-congressional” complex in his Farewell Address. No one can reasonably deny that Congress is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the national-security establishment.
But they obviously would not stop there. They would also be acquiring assets within the IRS, one of the most powerful and tyrannical agencies within the federal government. There isn’t anyone, including newspaper owners, publishers, and editors, who isn’t afraid of receiving an audit notice from the IRS.
And if it happens, no one would ever be able to prove that it originated with the CIA or the rest of the national-security establishment. It would just look like it was occurring at random. If any victim of an IRS audit accused the CIA or the rest of the national-security establishment of being behind the audit, they would be ready to hurl the infamous “conspiracy theorist” label at him.
What newspaper owner, publisher, or editor wants to take that chance? They all know that the national-security establishment frowns very seriously on any mainstream media outlet that even remotely suggests that the Kennedy assassination was a regime-change operation, no different in principle from those in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Congo, and Chile both before and after the Kennedy assassination. But they also do not want to take the chance of upsetting the CIA by simply calling on it to release its 60-year-old still-secret records relating to the assassination.
After all, everyone knows that if an entity is powerful enough to regime-change presidents and prime ministers, both foreign and domestic, with impunity, it can easily destroy any mainstream media executive who dares to buck the CIA on the assassination.
It’s just the way life works in a national-security state. It’s why the mainstream media is maintaining strict silence on the upcoming October 26 deadline on the release of those 60-year-old still-secret records of the CIA relating to the Kennedy assassination.
Southwest CEO: The President Forced Vaccine Mandates on Them
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | October 13, 2021
In an interview with CNBC, Southwest Airlines’ CEO Gary Kelly didn’t pull any punches when pinning the blame on his company’s hard-handed vaccine mandates — and laid it squarely on the head of President Joe Biden.
“I’ve never been in favor of corporations imposing that kind of a mandate,” Kelly said. “But the executive order from President Biden mandates that all federal employees and then all federal contractors, which covers all the major airlines, have to have a [vaccine] mandate … so we’re working through that.”
United and Hawaiian Airlines already had a COVID vaccine requirement in place before Biden’s announcement; American, Alaska and JetBlue followed through with theirs before Southwest instituted theirs. Like other carriers, Southwest started out by offering incentives to voluntarily get the shots.
Delta’s “incentive” came in the form of a $200 health insurance surcharge for unvaccinated workers. While Kelly claimed that the delays and cancellations of thousands of Southwest flights were due to bad weather and air traffic control issues in Florida, speculation continues to swirl that the real reason for the disruptions were mass “sick-outs” by employees protesting the mandate.
Still, Kelly insisted the whole thing was the president’s fault when he sent out a company message to Southwest employees: “I do not believe it is up to me … to mandate to people that they get vaccinated,” he said.
We need a Covid champion to defy Big Pharma like the thalidomide heroine
By Mary McGreechin | TCW Defending Freedom | October 13, 2021
IN 1960, Frances Oldham Kelsey prevented thousands of American babies from facing a life of severe disability.
A medical officer with the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), Kelsey refused to buckle under relentless pressure from the pharmaceutical company Merrell to approve the drug thalidomide for use as a sedative and, off-label, as a treatment for morning sickness.
From 1957, the drug had been used in Europe to ease extreme nausea in the early stages of pregnancy. But by 1961, mounting reports from concerned doctors revealed devastating birth defects in the babies of women who had taken thalidomide.
Determined to break into the lucrative American drug market, Merrell had claimed stringent testing showed the drug to be safe as well as efficacious.
Kelsey, however, was suspicious of incomplete data and the omission of tests on the drug’s prolonged use and refused to give her approval. Despite harassment and intimidation by the company – ‘most of the things they called me you wouldn’t print’ – Kelsey had remained resolute.
Today, as the Covid agenda aims to vaccinate every man, woman and child, minimising, or ignoring, often fatal side-effects, we need a Frances Kelsey to say: ‘No.’ Or even: ‘Not yet.’ Despite some courageous voices within the medical community speaking out at great personal cost, no influential figure has voiced the level of dissent needed to halt this programme.
Medical advances have, undeniably, delivered life-enhancing and life-saving treatments. Yet countless lawsuits against the pharmaceutical industry demonstrate that medicine can have an iatrogenic (illness-causing), as well as a therapeutic, effect. In the US alone, billions of dollars are paid annually in damages by pharmaceutical companies.
The industry has sought to temper such negative perceptions by cultivating a philanthropic image, portraying itself as a benevolent entity driven by altruism rather than a competitive industry whose investors salivate at ever-increasing share prices.
Despite these endeavours, it is astonishing that a large proportion of the public have failed to be concerned that drug companies which have been fined astronomical sums in multiple lawsuits have been granted liability immunity on Covid vaccines. With pharmaceutical firms typically afforded limited liability protection, this indemnity has been described as ‘very rare.’
Should we be surprised at the lack of public suspicion? The NHS has been elevated to such a degree that any condemnation of this behemoth is considered blasphemy. A 2020 Ipsos MORI poll revealed that more than 90 per cent of Britons trusted doctors and nurses ‘to tell the truth.’
Yet medics may be untruthful, or unaware of the full facts behind the medicine they prescribe. UK doctors believed thalidomide could be given ‘with complete safety to pregnant women and nursing mothers without adverse effect on mother or child’, yet it was later acknowledged that no tests were done involving pregnant women.
The effect of Covid vaccines on fertility and the unborn child are unknown. However, more than 30,000 women have, at present, reported changes in their menstrual cycle post-vaccination.
The vice-president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists stated: ‘We support calls for more research to understand why women may be experiencing changes to their menstrual cycle after having the vaccine.’ Stable door, horse and bolted come to mind.
And whilst pregnant women were excluded from the Covid vaccine trials, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) had these reassuring words to ‘pregnant people’: ‘Reproductive toxicity studies with the Moderna vaccine in rats haven’t uncovered any worrisome signals.’
Are we to place our trust in pharmaceutical companies whose employees’ emails reveal such statements as:
‘I am not 100 per cent comfortable with this data being made publicly available.’
‘Thus far we have buried trials 15, 31, 56 … how do we face the outside world when they begin to criticise us for suppressing data?’
‘Lisa has done a great “smoke and mirrors” job.’
All this correspondence was made public when litigation against AstraZeneca’s anti-psychotic drug Seroquel began. The company, now most famously known for the development and production of Covid vaccines, faced a major lawsuit in 2009 brought by thousands of Seroquel users who claimed they had developed diabetes whilst taking the drug.
The damning emails proved the pharmaceutical giant had been aware of the risk a decade earlier. Moreover, AstraZeneca had suppressed research which showed its earlier anti-psychotic treatment, Haloperidol, was more effective, and much cheaper, than Seroquel.
Employee John Tumas messaged concerns to colleagues that ‘our own analysis supports the “view out there” that we are less effective than Haloperidol.’
Promoting expensive treatments over cheaper alternatives has also caused debate regarding Covid-19. Those advocating for the use of Ivermectin, more commonly used as an anti-parasitic in animals, to treat the virus, have been relentlessly mocked. But studies have shown the drug can provide ‘an increase in clinical recovery … and a decrease in mortality rates even when used in patients with severe Covid-19.’
Yet a trial conducted on those with mild symptoms concluded it had little effect. Doctor Eduardo Lopez-Medina published his findings in JAMA, maintaining that Ivermectin had delivered negligible benefits.
However, a ‘conflict of interest disclosure’ revealed Dr Lopez-Medina was in receipt of grants and ‘personal fees’ from pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen and Sanofi Pasteur – all involved in the production of Covid-19 vaccines.
Countless stories have emerged in the past 18 months which should raise serious questions over transparency and truthfulness within the medical field – from doctors wrongly claiming intensive care units are full of unvaccinated 20 and 30-year-olds on ventilators, to hospital matrons inventing stories of children’s wards full of Covid patients.
And yet we are expected to have faith that such medics, and the pharmaceutical industry, have our best interests at heart in their pursuit of global vaccination against Covid-19.
Like Frances Oldham Kelsey, we should remain steadfast against coercion and duress. We should ask more questions and seek more answers. If we do not like the answers we find, then we must hold the line. For our own sake and that of our children.
Preventing Covid Infections Among Healthy Children Is Pointless
By Noah Carl • The Daily Sceptic • October 12, 2021
Thanks to school closures, children missed out on in-person teaching, as well as regular face-to-face interaction with their friends, for the best part of a year.
The main rationale for closing schools was to help ‘flatten the curve’ of total infections, and thereby prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed. (We’ve known since early on in the pandemic that children’s risk of death from Covid is vanishingly small – lower even than their chance of dying from seasonal flu.)
However, evidence suggests that neither lockdowns in general, nor school closures in particular, were necessary to prevent healthcare systems from being overwhelmed; and the harms from school closures were substantial.
Once the Government conceded it was time for schools to reopen, there came a new justification to keep them closed: protecting teachers. Yet studies have repeatedly shown that teachers are not at elevated risk of death from Covid.
Even after schools finally did open up, pupils faced a rigamarole of mask mandates, regular testing and stints of mandatory self-isolation. Since the vast majority of vulnerable people (and most teachers) had been vaccinated by this point, it’s unclear exactly why things couldn’t just return to normal.
As far as one can discern, the specific rationale seems to be: ‘something to do with case numbers and/or long Covid’. Why we should care about case numbers in an age-group that faces a higher risk of death from season flu has not been explained.
As to long Covid, the latest data suggest that only a tiny number of children (less than 2%) continue to report symptoms 12 weeks after infection. One study found that symptoms were no more common among children who’d had the virus than among those who’d never been infected.
Despite all this, demands for more restrictions in schools can still be heard. On 3rd September, scientists associated with Independent SAGE, as well as various other individuals and organisations, co-signed a letter in The BMJ Opinion calling for the Government “to protect children, our wider communities, and the NHS”.
Their “nine point plan” includes such measures as: reinstating face coverings; offering vaccines to all 12–15 year-olds; and reinstating contact tracing “with a strict policy on mandatory isolation”.
But according to Chris Whitty, “roughly half” of children have already have Covid, and it’s reasonable to assume that “the great majority” are “going to get it at some point” because “this is incredibly infectious”.
Now that almost all vulnerable people have been vaccinated, why are we trying to stop children getting the virus if “the great majority” of them are going to get it at some point anyway? Offering the vaccine to those with an underlying health condition makes sense, but apart from that, why do anything at all?
In fact, shouldn’t we actively encourage young people to get the virus, so as to build up more population immunity before the winter?
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Book Excerpt
World War Two Was Not a Just War
By David Swanson | September 20, 2016
Excerpted from the just released book War Is Never Just.
World War II is often called “the good war,” and has been since the U.S. war on Vietnam to which it was then contrasted. World War II so dominates U.S. and therefore Western entertainment and education, that “good” often comes to mean something more than “just.” The winner of the “Miss Italy” beauty pageant earlier this year got herself into a bit of a scandal by declaring that she would have liked to live through World War II. While she was mocked, she was clearly not alone. Many would like to be part of something widely depicted as noble, heroic, and exciting. Should they actually find a time machine, I recommend they read the statements of some actual WWII veterans and survivors before they head back to join the fun.[i] For purposes of this book, however, I am going to look only at the claim that WWII was morally just. … continue
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- Second Friday of Ramadan at Qalandia Checkpoint
- Deceptively “quiet” first week of Ramadan in Jerusalem: a result of restrictions at Qalandia checkpoint
- Masafer Yatta: Israeli Settlers Burn a Family Car in Um Dhorit
- Violent arrest of Palestinian women in Susiya, Masafer Yatta
- Richie Allen
- The Richie Allen Show Returns Tomorrow Wednesday April 24th
- Call Richie Today Monday March 11th From 4.30pm
- Connect To The Richie Allen Show WhatsApp Today
- NHS Asks Patients To Choose From 12 Genders, 10 sexual Preferences & 159 Religions
- The Richie Allen Show Moves To A New Time Slot From Monday Nov 20th
- Starmer Will Sack Shadow Ministers Who Vote For Gaza Ceasefire
- AI Tool Can Predict Heart Attacks Years In Advance
- Nepal Bans TikTok To Preserve Social Harmony
- Bloke Appointed Boss Of Womb Health Charity
- WHO – “Gaza’s Biggest Hospital Becoming A Cemetery”
- No Tricks Zone
- New Paper: Global Warming Leading To HIMALAYAN COOLING, Preventing Glacial Melt!
- DNA Evidence Reveals Domestic Cats, Dogs, African Wildcats, Frogs Lived In The Arctic 9000 Years Ago
- -80°C: Antarctic Vostok Station Records “Extreme Winter Cold”…Not Even Winter Yet!
- The German E-Vehicle Nightmare, 2024 Q1 Sales Plummet 14%… “Graveyard” For Unsold Cars
- Newly Discovered 90,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Reveal How Much Higher Sea Levels Used To Be
- Germany’s Economic Bloodbath Worsens As Green Revolution Causes Economy To Bleed To Death
- Water Vapor Absorbs 84 Times More Radiation Than CO2 … Clouds Drove 89% Of 1982-2018 Warming
- The 97% Consensus Claim Is In Fact 97% Bogus
- Post-1980s Increases In Shortwave Radiation Explains Europe’s Warming Trends Far Better Than CO2
- “A Thing Where Every Part Of Your Life Just Confirms What It Is That You Want To Believe”
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