13% of US hospitals critically understaffed, 22% anticipate shortages: Numbers by state
By Marissa Plescia and Kelly Gooch | Becker’s Hospital Review | January 24, 2022
Almost 13 percent — or 772 of 6,004 — of hospitals reporting staffing levels in the U.S. are experiencing critical staffing shortages, according to HHS data posted Jan. 23.
This is about 2 percentage points less than figures released Jan. 20.
A critical staffing shortage is based on a facility’s needs and internal policies for staffing ratios, according to HHS. Hospitals using temporary staff to meet staffing ratios are not counted among those experiencing a shortage.
Meanwhile, almost 22 percent — or 1,305 of 6,004 — of hospitals reporting staffing levels in the U.S. are anticipating shortages in the next week.
About 30 percent of hospitals did not report if they’re currently experiencing shortages, and about 21 percent did not report if they anticipate shortages.
Below are two lists showing current staffing shortages and anticipated shortages.
Percent of hospitals in each state and the District of Columbia experiencing critical staffing shortages, ranked in descending order:
1. Vermont: 58.82 percent
2. West Virginia: 47.62 percent
3. New Mexico: 47.27 percent
4. Wisconsin: 33.33 percent
5. North Dakota: 32.65 percent
6. Arizona: 29.52 percent
7. Michigan: 29.38 percent
8. Kentucky: 29.06 percent
9. South Carolina: 28.05 percent
10. Louisiana: 25.33 percent
11. Georgia: 24.71 percent
12. Indiana: 23.95 percent
13. Nebraska: 22.22 percent
14. Tennessee: 22.14 percent
15. Delaware: 20 percent
16. Pennsylvania: 19.03 percent
17. Minnesota: 17.14 percent
18. Montana: 16.92 percent
19. Washington: 16.5 percent
20. Virginia: 15.24 percent
21. Oklahoma: 13.1 percent
22. New Jersey: 12.5 percent
23. Hawaii: 12 percent
24. Missouri: 10.95 percent (tie)
24. Kansas: 10.95 percent (tie)
26. Wyoming: 9.68 percent
27. Oregon: 9.38 percent
28. Maryland: 9.09 percent
29. California: 8.71 percent
30. Colorado: 8.6 percent
31. North Carolina: 7.69 percent
32. Mississippi: 7.41 percent
33. New Hampshire: 6.67 percent (tie)
33. Rhode Island: 6.67 percent (tie)
35. Nevada: 6.56 percent
36. Arkansas: 5.61 percent
37. Maine: 5.41 percent
38. Alaska: 4.17 percent
39. Illinois: 3.96 percent
40. Idaho: 3.77 percent
41. Florida: 3.56 percent
42. Iowa: 3.17 percent
43. New York: 2.48 percent
44. Texas: 2.36 percent
45. Ohio: 0.86 percent
46. Alabama: 0 percent (tie)
46. District of Columbia: 0 percent (tie)
46. South Dakota: 0 percent (tie)
46. Utah: 0 percent (tie)
46. Connecticut: 0 percent (tie)
46. Massachusetts: 0 percent (tie)
Percent of hospitals in each state and the District of Columbia anticipating critical staffing shortages within the next week, ranked in descending order:
1. Vermont: 70.59 percent
2. Rhode Island: 53.33 percent
3. West Virginia: 52.38 percent
4. New Mexico: 47.27 percent
5. Kentucky: 41.03 percent
6. California: 40.3 percent
7. Alabama: 35.9 percent
8. Tennessee: 35.71 percent
9. Wyoming: 35.48 percent
10. Wisconsin: 35.33 percent
11. Michigan: 33.75 percent
12. Delaware: 33.33 percent
13. Missouri: 32.85 percent
14. North Dakota: 32.65 percent
15. Massachusetts: 32.35 percent
16. Nebraska: 32.32 percent
17. Arizona: 30.48 percent
18. Kansas: 29.93 percent
19. South Carolina: 29.27 percent
20. Oklahoma: 28.97 percent
21. Georgia: 28.82 percent
22. Indiana: 27.54 percent
23. Louisiana: 24.44 percent
24. Mississippi: 23.15 percent
25. Arkansas: 22.43 percent
26. Virginia: 21.9 percent
27. Pennsylvania: 21.68 percent
28. Washington: 20.39 percent
29. New Hampshire: 20 percent
30. Montana: 18.46 percent
31. Maryland: 18.18 percent
32. Minnesota: 17.14 percent
33. New Jersey: 16.67 percent (tie)
33. Alaska: 16.67 percent (tie)
35. Florida: 16.6 percent
36. Colorado: 13.98 percent
37. Idaho: 13.21 percent
38. Illinois: 12.87 percent
39. Hawaii: 12 percent
40. Oregon: 10.94 percent
41. North Carolina: 10.77 percent
42. South Dakota: 9.38 percent
43. Maine: 8.11 percent
44. Utah: 7.14 percent
45. Nevada: 6.56 percent
46. New York: 6.44 percent
47. Iowa: 4.76 percent
48. Texas: 3.54 percent
49. Connecticut: 2.56 percent
50. Ohio: 0.86 percent
51. District of Columbia: 0 percent
100s of Published Reports of Post-Vaccine Medical Distress (Part 1)
By Donna Laframboise | No Fracking Consensus | January 17, 2022
COVID-19 vaccines are harming people. This fact is now extensively documented in the peer-reviewed medical literature.
We’re told these events are rare. So what’s the magic number? How many reports of alarming medical outcomes are necessary before we admit the ‘cure’ might be worse than the disease?
Most people who contract COVID don’t develop serious medical issues. But the small percentage who do can overwhelm the health care system.
Most people who receive a COVID vaccine don’t develop serious medical issues. But the small percentage who do can also overwhelm the health care system. Everyone wants to talk about the first problem. No one wants to talk about the second.
Last week, an extensive list of articles from the peer-reviewed medical literature was posted on Reddit by someone known only as xxyiorgos. More than 400 articles are on that list (backup link here).
Here are the first 100. I’ve numbered, and verified them. In some cases, I’ve updated the hyperlink. This research is emerging from numerous countries including Belgium, Canada, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Qatar, South Korea, Spain, the UK, and the US.
Comments in brackets added by me.
1. Cerebral venous thrombosis after COVID-19 vaccination in the UK: a multicentre cohort study [stroke, Lancet, Aug. 2021]
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01608-1/
2. Vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia with disseminated intravascular coagulation and death after ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination: [fatal blood clots, Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases, Sept. 2021]
https://www.strokejournal.org/article/S1052-3057(21)00341-4/fulltext
3. Fatal cerebral hemorrhage after COVID-19 vaccine: [fatal brain bleed, Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association, Apr. 2021]
https://tidsskriftet.no/2021/04/kort-kasuistikk/fatal-hjerneblodning-etter-covid-19-vaksine
4. “Myocarditis after mRNA vaccination against SARS-CoV-2, a case series:” [heart inflammation, American Heart Journal Plus: Cardiology Research & Practice, Aug. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666602221000409
5. Three cases of acute venous thromboembolism in women after vaccination against COVID-19: [blood clots, Journal of Vascular Surgery: Venous and Lymphatic Disorders, Jan. 2022]
https://www.jvsvenous.org/article/S2213-333X(21)00392-9/fulltext
6. Acute coronary tree thrombosis after vaccination against COVID-19: [blood clots, Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Interventions, May 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1936879821003988
7. US case reports of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis with thrombocytopenia after Ad26.COV2.S vaccination, March 2 to April 21, 2020: [stroke, Journal of the American Medical Association, June 2021]
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2779731
8. Portal vein thrombosis associated with ChAdOx1 nCov-19 vaccine: [blood clots, Lancet, June 2021]
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1253(21)00197-7/
9. Management of cerebral and splanchnic vein thrombosis associated with thrombocytopenia in subjects previously vaccinated with Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca): position statement of the Italian Society for the Study of Hemostasis and Thrombosis (SISET): [blood clots, Blood Transfusion, July-Aug. 201]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8297668/
10. Vaccine-induced immune immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis after vaccination with COVID-19; a systematic review: [blood clots, Journal of the Neurological Sciences, Sept. 2021]
https://www.jns-journal.com/article/S0022-510X(21)00301-4/fulltext
11. Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome associated with COVID-19 vaccines: [blood clots, American Journal of Emergency Medicine, Nov. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735675721004381
12. Covid-19 vaccine-induced thrombosis and thrombocytopenia: a commentary on an important and practical clinical dilemma: [blood clots, Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, July-Aug. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0033062021000505
13. Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome associated with COVID-19 viral vector vaccines: [blood clots, European Journal of Internal Medicine, July 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0953620521001904
14. COVID-19 vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia: an emerging cause of splanchnic vein thrombosis: [blood clots, Annals of Hepatology, July-Aug. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1665268121000557
15. The roles of platelets in COVID-19-associated coagulopathy and vaccine-induced immune thrombotic immune thrombocytopenia (covid): [blood clots, Trends in Cardiovascular Medicine, Jan. 2022]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1050173821000967
16. Roots of autoimmunity of thrombotic events after COVID-19 vaccination: [blood clots, Autoimmunity Reviews, Nov. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1568997221002160
17. Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis after vaccination: the United Kingdom experience: [brain blood clots, [stroke, Lancet, Sept. 2021]
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01788-8/fulltext
18. Thrombotic immune thrombocytopenia induced by SARS-CoV-2 vaccine: [blood clots, New England Journal of Medicine, Apr. 2021]
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejme2106315
19. Myocarditis after immunization with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in members of the US military: [heart inflammation, Journal of the American Medical Association, June 2021]
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2781601
20. Thrombosis and thrombocytopenia after vaccination with ChAdOx1 nCoV-19: [blood clots, New England Journal of Medicine, Apr. 2021]
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2104882
21. Association of myocarditis with the BNT162b2 messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccine in a case series of children: [heart inflammation, Journal of the American Medical Association Cardiology, Aug. 2021]
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2783052
22. Thrombotic thrombocytopenia after vaccination with ChAdOx1 nCov-19: [blood clots, New England Journal of Medicine, June 2021]
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2104840
23. Post-mortem findings in vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia (covid-19): [fatal blood clots, Haematologica, Aug. 2021]
https://haematologica.org/article/view/haematol.2021.279075
24. Thrombocytopenia, including immune thrombocytopenia after receiving COVID-19 mRNA vaccines reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS): [blood clots, Vaccine, June 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X21005247
25. Acute symptomatic myocarditis in seven adolescents after Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination: [heart inflammation, Pediatrics, Sept. 2021]
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/148/3/e2021052478/179728/Symptomatic-Acute-Myocarditis-in-7-Adolescents
26. Aphasia seven days after the second dose of an mRNA-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. [brain bleed, Brain Hemorrhages, Dec. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589238X21000292
27. Comparison of vaccine-induced thrombotic episodes between ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and Ad26.COV.2.S vaccines: [blood clots, Journal of Autoimmunity, Aug. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0896841121000895
28. Hypothesis behind the very rare cases of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination: [blood clots, Thrombosis Research, July 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049384821003315
29. Blood clots and bleeding episodes after BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination: analysis of European data: [blood clots, Journal of Autoimmunity, Aug. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896841121000937
30. Cerebral venous thrombosis after BNT162b2 mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccine: [stroke, Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases, Aug. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1052305721003098
31. Primary adrenal insufficiency associated with thrombotic immune thrombocytopenia induced by the Oxford-AstraZeneca ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (VITT): [blood clots, European Journal of Internal Medicine, Sept. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0953620521002363
32. Myocarditis and pericarditis after vaccination with COVID-19 mRNA: practical considerations for care providers: [heart inflammation, Canadian Journal of Cardiology, Oct. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0828282X21006243
33. “Portal vein thrombosis occurring after the first dose of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine in a patient with antiphospholipid syndrome”: [blood clots, Thrombosis Update, Dec. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666572721000389
34. Early results of bivalirudin treatment for thrombotic thrombocytopenia and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis after vaccination with Ad26.COV2.S: [blood clots, Annals of Emergency Medicine, Oct. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196064421003425
35. Myocarditis, pericarditis and cardiomyopathy after COVID-19 vaccination: [heart inflammation, Heart, Lung and Circulation, Oct. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1443950621011562
36. Mechanisms of immunothrombosis in vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT) compared to natural SARS-CoV-2 infection: [blood clots, Journal of Autoimmunity, July 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0896841121000706
37. Prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia after COVID-19 vaccination: [blood clots, Blood, July 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006497121009411
38. Vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia: the dark chapter of a success story: [blood clots, Metabolism Open, Sept. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589936821000256
39. Anti-PF4 antibody negative cerebral venous sinus thrombosis without thrombocytopenia following immunization with COVID-19 vaccine in an elderly non-comorbid Indian male, managed with conventional heparin-warfarin based anticoagulation: [stroke, Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews, July-Aug. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871402121002046
40. Thrombosis after COVID-19 vaccination: possible link to ACE pathways: [blood clots, Thrombosis Research, Oct. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049384821004369
41. Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis in the U.S. population after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination with adenovirus and after COVID-19: [stroke, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, July 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109721051949
42. Middle-age Asian male with cerebral venous thrombosis after COVID-19 AstraZeneca vaccination: [stroke, American Journal of Emergency Medicine, Jan. 2022]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735675721005714
43. Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and thrombocytopenia after COVID-19 vaccination: report of two cases in the United Kingdom: [stroke, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, July 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S088915912100163X
44. Immune thrombocytopenic purpura after vaccination with COVID-19 vaccine (ChAdOx1 nCov-19): [blood clots, Blood, Sept. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006497121013963
45. Antiphospholipid antibodies and risk of thrombophilia after COVID-19 vaccination: the straw that breaks the camel’s back?: [blood clots, Cytokine & Growth Factor Reviews, Aug. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359610121000423
46. Vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia, a rare but severe case of friendly fire in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic: What pathogenesis? [blood clots, European Journal of Internal Medicine, Sept. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0953620521002314
47. Diagnostic-therapeutic recommendations of the ad-hoc FACME expert working group on the management of cerebral venous thrombosis related to COVID-19 vaccination: [stroke, Neurología, Spanish Neurology Society, July-Aug. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2173580821000754
48. Thrombocytopenia and intracranial venous sinus thrombosis after exposure to the “AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine Astrazeneca” exposure: [stroke, Journal of Clinical Medicine, Apr. 2021]
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/10/8/1599/htm
49. Thrombocytopenia following Pfizer and Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccination: [blood clots, American Journal of Hematology, Feb. 2021]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajh.26132
50. Severe and refractory immune thrombocytopenia occurring after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination: [blood clots, Journal of Blood Medicine, Feb. 2021]
https://www.dovepress.com/severe-refractory-immune-thrombocytopenia-occurring-after-sars-cov-2-v-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-JBM
51. Purpuric rash and thrombocytopenia after mRNA-1273 (Modern) COVID-19 vaccine: [blood clots, Cureus, Mar. 2021]
https://www.cureus.com/articles/54984-purpuric-rash-and-thrombocytopenia-after-the-mrna-1273-moderna-covid-19-vaccine
52. COVID-19 vaccination: information on the occurrence of arterial and venous thrombosis using data from VigiBase: [stroke, European Respiratory Journal, July 2021]
https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/58/1/2100956
53. Cerebral venous thrombosis associated with the covid-19 vaccine in Germany: [stroke, Annals of Neurology, July 2021]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.26172
54. Cerebral venous thrombosis following BNT162b2 mRNA vaccination of BNT162b2 against SARS-CoV-2: a black swan event: [stroke, American Journal of Hematology, June 2021]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajh.26272
55. The importance of recognizing cerebral venous thrombosis following anti-COVID-19 vaccination: [stroke, European Journal of Internal Medicine, May 2021]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34001390/
56. Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia after messenger RNA vaccine -1273: [blood clots, Annals of Internal Medicine, Oct. 2021]
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/L21-0244
57. Blood clots and bleeding after BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination: an analysis of European data: [blood clots, Journal of Autoimmunity, Aug. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896841121000937
58. First dose of ChAdOx1 and BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccines and thrombocytopenic, thromboembolic, and hemorrhagic events in Scotland: [blood clots, Nature Medicine, June 2021]
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01408-4
59. Exacerbation of immune thrombocytopenia after COVID-19 vaccination: [blood clots, British Journal of Haematology, June 2021]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjh.17645
60. First report of a de novo iTTP episode associated with a COVID-19 mRNA-based anti-COVID-19 vaccine: [blood clots, Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, June 2021]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jth.15418
61. PF4 immunoassays in vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia: [blood clots, New England Journal of Medicine, July 2021]
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2106383
62. Antibody epitopes in vaccine-induced immune immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia: [blood clots, Nature, July 2021]
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03744-4
63. Myocarditis with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines: [heart inflammation, Circulation, July 2021]
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.056135
64. Myocarditis and pericarditis after COVID-19 vaccination: [heart inflammation, Journal of the American Medical Association, Aug. 2021]
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2782900
65. Myocarditis temporally associated with COVID-19 vaccination: [heart inflammation, Circulation, June 2021]
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.055891
66. COVID-19 Vaccination Associated with Myocarditis in Adolescents: [heart inflammation, Pediatrics, Nov. 2021]
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/148/5/e2021053427/181357/COVID-19-Vaccination-Associated-Myocarditis-in
67. Acute myocarditis after administration of BNT162b2 vaccine against COVID-19: [heart inflammation, Revista Española de Cardiología, Spanish Society of Cardiology, Sept. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S188558572100133X
68. Temporal association between COVID-19 vaccine Ad26.COV2.S and acute myocarditis: case report and review of the literature: [heart inflammation, Cardiovascular Revascularization Medicine, Aug. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1553838921005789
69. COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis: a case report with review of the literature: [heart inflammation, Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews, Sept.-Oct. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871402121002253
70. Potential association between COVID-19 vaccine and myocarditis: clinical and CMR findings: [heart inflammation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging, Sept. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1936878X2100485X
71. Recurrence of acute myocarditis temporally associated with receipt of coronavirus mRNA disease vaccine 2019 (COVID-19) in a male adolescent: [heart inflammation, Journal of Pediatrics, Nov. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002234762100617X
72. Fulminant myocarditis and systemic hyper inflammation temporally associated with BNT162b2 COVID-19 mRNA vaccination in two patients: [heart inflammation, International Journal of Cardiology, Oct. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167527321012286
73. Acute myocarditis after administration of BNT162b2 vaccine: [heart inflammation, Infectious Disease Cases, 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214250921001530
74. Lymphohistocytic myocarditis after vaccination with COVID-19 Ad26.COV2.S viral vector: [heart inflammation, International Journal of Cardiology: Heart & Vasculature, Oct. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352906721001573
75. Myocarditis following vaccination with BNT162b2 in a healthy male: [heart inflammation, American Journal of Emergency Medicine, Dec. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735675721005362
76. Acute myocarditis after Comirnaty (Pfizer) vaccination in a healthy male with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection: [heart inflammation, Radiology Case Reports, Nov. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1930043321005549
77. Myopericarditis after Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in adolescents: [heart inflammation, Journal of Pediatrics, Nov. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002234762100665X
78. Pericarditis after administration of BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 mRNA vaccine: [heart inflammation, Revista Española de Cardiología, Spanish Society of Cardiology, Dec. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1885585721002218
79. Acute myocarditis after vaccination with SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-1273 mRNA: [heart inflammation, Canadian Journal of Cardiology: Open, Nov. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589790X21001931
80. Temporal relationship between the second dose of BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccine and cardiac involvement in a patient with previous SARS-COV-2 infection: [heart problems, International Journal of Cardiology: Heart & Vasculature, June 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352906721000622
81. Myopericarditis after vaccination with COVID-19 mRNA in adolescents 12 to 18 years of age: [heart inflammation, Journal of Pediatrics, Nov. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022347621007368
82. Acute myocarditis after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in a 24-year-old man: [heart inflammation, Portuguese Journal of Cardiology, July 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0870255121003243
83. Important information on myopericarditis after vaccination with Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA in adolescents: [heart inflammation, Journal of Pediatrics, Nov. 2021]
https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(21)00749-6/fulltext
84. A series of patients with myocarditis after vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 with mRNA-1279 and BNT162b2: [heart inflammation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging, Sept. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1936878X21004861
85. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy after vaccination with mRNA COVID-19: [heart problems, Heart, Lung and Circulation, Dec. 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1443950621011331
86. COVID-19 mRNA vaccination and myocarditis: [heart inflammation, European Journal of Case Reports in Internal Medicine, June 2021]
https://www.ejcrim.com/index.php/EJCRIM/article/view/2681/2723
87. COVID-19 vaccine and myocarditis: [heart inflammation, American Journal of Cardiology, July 2021]
https://www.ajconline.org/article/S0002-9149(21)00639-1/fulltext
88. Allergic reactions after COVID-19 vaccination: putting the risk in perspective: [allergic reactions, JAMA Network Open, Aug. 2021]
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2783633
89. Anaphylactic reactions to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines: a call for further studies: [allergic reactions, Vaccine, May 2021]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X21003777
90. Risk of severe allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccines among patients with allergic skin disease: practical recommendations. An ETFAD position statement with external experts: [allergic reactions, Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, June 2021]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jdv.17237
91. COVID-19 vaccine and death: causality algorithm according to the WHO eligibility diagnosis: [fatal blood clots, Diagnostics, May 2021]
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4418/11/6/955
92. Fatal brain hemorrhage after COVID-19 vaccine: [fatal brain bleed, Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association, April 2021]
https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2021/04/kort-kasuistikk/fatal-cerebral-haemorrhage-after-covid-19-vaccine
93. A case series of skin reactions to COVID-19 vaccine in the Department of Dermatology at Loma Linda University: [skin problems, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology: Case Reports, Aug. 2021]
https://www.jaadcasereports.org/article/S2352-5126(21)00540-3/fulltext
94. Skin reactions reported after Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccination: a study based on a registry of 414 cases: [skin problems, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Apr. 2021]
https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(21)00658-7/fulltext
95. Clinical and pathologic correlates of skin reactions to COVID-19 vaccine, including V-REPP: a registry-based study: [skin problems, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Sept. 2021]
https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(21)02442-7/fulltext
96. Skin reactions after vaccination against SARS-COV-2: a nationwide Spanish cross-sectional study of 405 cases: [skin problems, British Journal of Dermatology, July 2021]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjd.20639
97. Varicella zoster virus and herpes simplex virus reactivation after vaccination with COVID-19: review of 40 cases in an international dermatologic registry: [herpes, Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, Sept. 2021]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jdv.17646
98. Immune thrombosis and thrombocytopenia (VITT) associated with the COVID-19 vaccine: diagnostic and therapeutic recommendations for a new syndrome: [blood clots, European Journal of Haematology, May 2021]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ejh.13665
99. Laboratory testing for suspicion of COVID-19 vaccine-induced thrombotic (immune) thrombocytopenia: [blood clots, International Journal of Laboratory Hematology, June 2021]
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijlh.13629
100. Intracerebral hemorrhage due to thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome after COVID-19 vaccination: the first fatal case in Korea: [brain bleed, Journal of Korean Medical Science, Aug. 2021]
https://jkms.org/DOIx.php?id=10.3346/jkms.2021.36.e223
Uninvited foreign troops must leave, African nation says
RT | January 24, 2022
Denmark must “immediately withdraw” some 90 troops it deployed to Mali last week “without [the government’s] consent and in violation of the protocols” allowing European nations to intervene in that African country, the government in Bamako said on Monday.
Some 91 Danes from the Jaeger Corps special forces arrived in Mali on January 18, as part of Task Force Takuba, a French-led counter-terrorism mission in the West African country. According to the Danish defense ministry, their job will be to reinforce the border with Niger and Burkina Faso, train Malian Armed Forces, and provide medical services to the peacekeepers.
While the government of Mali is grateful to “all its partners involved in the fight against terrorism,” it stressed “the need to obtain the prior agreement of the Malian authorities” before sending any troops to the country, says the communique signed by Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, spokesman for the Ministry of Administration and Decentralization.
Announcing the deployment of the force last week, the government in Copenhagen said it had been scheduled in April 2021, as France sought to withdraw some of its troops from Mali.
Their objective was “to stabilize Mali and parts of the border triangle between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, and to ensure that civilians are protected from terrorist groups,” the Danish military said.
The Jaegers are also experienced in “training and educating” local militaries, a job they have previously performed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They were sent shortly after Sweden withdrew its contingent from Mali. The French-led operation also involves forces from Belgium, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden.
Task Force Takuba has operated in Mali since March 2020, when Paris decided to wrap up the previous Operation Barkhane. France has maintained a military presence in its former West African colony since 2013, to help the government in Bamako deal with a Tuareg rebellion in the northwest of the country and subsequent terrorist insurgency loyal to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).
Relations between Bamako and Paris have grown chilly since the latest military takeover in Mali in 2021, and France has since closed three of its military bases there, in Kidal, Tessalit, and Timbuktu.
Activists complain bipartisan antitrust law proposal could make online censorship more difficult
The challenge comes from “free press” groups
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | January 24, 2022
The American Innovation and Choice Online Act that is currently making its way through Senate committees before being put up for the final vote, is attracting attention both from those who support it and Big Tech’s lobbyists, who earlier reports said had already launched a broad campaign against it.
The bill that has so far received bipartisan support, aims to significantly limit the way Apple, Amazon, and Google use their monopolistic business practices to undermine competition and antitrust laws.
Either by design or coincidence, it isn’t just openly lobbying firms who are attacking the bill from various angles; they are joined by organizations like Free Press, which claims it is nonpartisan and fighting “for your right to connect and communicate.”
However, in the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, Free Press sees a “flaw” that would, essentially, make connecting and communicating easier – and doesn’t like it. Namely, the bill, if passed, they argue, could prevent censorship, specifically of what’s labeled as “hate speech or misinformation.”
After the narrative has been built for months if not years of “misinformation” being the most serious evil on the internet (despite it only being subjectively defined, unlike the clear and clearly damaging Big Tech antitrust behaviors), it makes sense that in order to discredit anything, reaching for the “misinformation” label is now a good idea.
Free Press writes in a blog post that the bill would provide an avenue to businesses hurt by Google and others purposefully downranking them in search results to launch legal battles against such decisions.
The bill is meant to prevent Big Tech from manipulating the all-important search results and listings as these giants promote their own products and services over those of competitors – but could also provide a way to those hit by censorship and obscured from view by the same technology to have a chance of fighting back. And that, Free Press believes, should not be allowed.
The same argument is being made by another group, this one openly close to the tech industry, TechFreedom. “If a majority of FTC Commissioners were bent on a partisan agenda — e.g., forcing mainstream platforms to carry Parler — it would be significantly easier for them to use the administrative litigation process to do so,” this group said. Coordinated or not, Parler was also mentioned in the blog post published by Free Press.
Maori Science Beats Woke Myths
By Jennifer Marohasay | January 21, 2022
Every community has those who are designated wise — sometimes able to anticipate imminent catastrophe. For example, back in the 1500s, some in rural England and France would suspend dead birds — specifically kingfishers — from silken threads that purportedly acted as natural weathercocks. It was thought that the dead kingfisher was able to anticipate approaching storms and turn its breast into the wind. This is an unfortunate example, though, because Thomas Browne showed it to be nonsense. He suspended two dead kingfishers, side by side, and they pointed in different directions, thus demolishing the myth. I can’t imagine that all the wise ones took their dead birds down immediately, but Browne’s book Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646 championed a new kind of evidence-based science that relied on simple experiment.
For a period of some few hundred years, science came to replace superstition and key zoological texts including, for example, Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, were penned by the curious who tried hard to sort fact from fiction through observation. Browne and Darwin’s works followed Nicolaus Copernicus’ book On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, published in 1543, that explained humankind was not at the centre of the universe.
Before evidence-based science, natural historians and even astronomers, relied on the work of Aristotle who thought mankind was at the centre of the universe. In the twelfth century, Aristotle was a major source of information for the medieval encyclopaedias of animals, known as Bestiaries, with moral biblical lessons added.
We have somehow returned to this practice where natural history is once again interwoven with moralising. Worse, many of those designated as wise are full of hubris and carry on as though humankind can affect the weather and climate. This extends to projects at universities, where, even in zoology departments the ‘research’ must lament the trace gas carbon dioxide and its perceived impact on the distribution and abundance of species.
Even in The Spectator Australia, James Allan in ‘Decline and Fall of New Zealand’ (11 December) remonstrates about how woke our universities have become but then lauds the superiority of Western science relative to Maori mythology. But is woke science superior to Maori myths? Arguably the most significant climate event since satellites began measuring global temperatures in 1979, was the very strong El Niño of 2015/16. It caused global temperatures to spike in February 2016, corals to bleach, and so on. This hottest period – according to the UAH satellite record – was forecast some years earlier by long range weather forecaster Ken Ring relying on Maori mythology. It was not forecast by Western meteorological bureaus that run simulation models on super computers.
In 1974, Ring, then a high school mathematics teacher ‘dropped out’ to home school his children. He moved his family to the remote East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand and over a period of six years befriended local Maori fishermen. He returned to ‘civilization’ six years later with what he has described as ‘the rudiments of a weather prediction system’ based on traditional Maori knowledge. Sometime later he began publishing weather almanacs for Australia, New Zealand and Ireland with rain, frost and snow maps including fishing calendars and gardening guides.
I’ve no doubt that the forecasts in those almanacs could be vastly improved, including through the mining of historical weather data using artificial neural networks, a form of machine learning that uses artificial intelligence. John Abbot and I showed its application to monthly rainfall forecasting in a series of research papers published from 2012 to 2017, including in the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Advances in Atmospheric Sciences (Abbot J. & Marohasy J., 2012. Vol. 29, No. 4, Pgs. 717-730).
What has made Ken Ring’s long-range forecasts often more accurate than those from our bureaus of meteorology is their reliance on lunar cycles, uncorrupted by simulation modelling that misguidedly insists atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are relevant to weather and climate forecasting.
It is possible to forecast El Niño and other key weather events years in advance because the passage of the Moon overhead is regular and cyclical. A 2019 technical paper by Jialin Lin and Taotao Qian entitled ‘Switch Between El Niño and La Niña is Caused by Subsurface Ocean Waves Likely Driven by Lunar Tidal Forcing’ explains the underlying physical mechanisms in terms of Newtonian physics.
In fact, observations of the Moon’s changing trajectory were a main test of the theories detailed in Isaac Newton’s The Principia, published in 1687 and recognised as a highlight of the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century.
If we open our eyes to the evidence – as Thomas Browne implored a few hundred years ago – we would notice that the very hot year globally of 2016 immediately followed a year of minimum lunar declination, as did the super El Niño exactly 18 years earlier, in 1998, that also caused mass coral bleaching. It is now well understood, beyond Maori mythology, that there is an 18.6-year lunar declination cycle. But this is wilfully ignored by mainstream meteorologists lest such extra-terrestrial influences on weather and climate detract from the moralising about humankind’s influence.
More than ever, Westerners who claim to respect science —could benefit from a return to simple observation as practiced by Maori fishermen who see the weather patterns created by the passage of the Moon and its changing declination. Browne’s contemporary, John Ray wrote, ‘Let us not suffice to be book-learned, to read what others have written and to take on trust more falsehood than truth, but let us ourselves examine things as we have the opportunity, and converse with Nature as well as with books …’
In meteorological bureaus, simulation modelling has replaced observation and Heads of state are urged to sign international treaties absurdly pledging to stop climate change. The true nature of this woke western climate forecasting would be better appreciated if it was evaluated against other methods. Forecasts from different systems could be placed next to each other, in much the same way that Thomas Browne strung up dead kingfishers – side by side.
This article was first published in The Spectator Australia magazine.
Since the article was published, I’ve received a note from Ken Ring with the following comment:
I’ve since learned that the Tuhoe fishermen of the East Coast were descended from Celtic peoples. They weren’t Maori at all, but originally pale skinned and red hair. There’s a whole political argument going on re-Treaty funds. Money seems to guide and hide our true prehistory …
Truth is, the Maori Fishing Calendar (which I published each year in the 2000s) was exactly the same as the Canadian Rockies Hunting Calendar, and Hindu writings, and harkened back to a time when the lunar laws were universal knowledge …
There are remnants of stone circles in New Zealand, but they are almost certainly pre- Maori.
I agree with the school of thought that says Aborigines were in New Zealand 40,000 years ago, based on rock drawings, and were only one of 100 or so cultures living peacefully side by side. At our closest point, we are only 900 nautical miles from Australia, and it is daft to think that for 60,000 years we were unknown to them. The ancient Chinese, too, settled on the east coast of Australia, and established a greenstone industry in New Zealand, but all this is completely shunned by historians. It means that indeed there may have been towns of 1000 people in Australia, but they were probably Asian, not Aboriginal.
You may be interested in this documentary, Skeletons in the Cupboard part 1 and Skeletons in our Cupboard part 2
I would like to thank Barry Goldman for the link to the article by Ben Finney et al. entitled ‘Wait for the West Wind’ that explains something of the complexity of navigating the South Pacific and the importance of understanding wind direction and its seasonality. It concludes with comment that:
Without the ability to sail over long distances, to find islands strewn over many thousands of miles of open sea, and to carry enough people, tools, plants and animals to found viable colonies on the islands discovered, there would have been no Polynesian culture, no vast triangular section of ocean occupied by closely related neolithic peoples. That the large, stable, and seaworthy double-canoe was the critical artefact of this cultural development and expansion is generally accepted, just as the ability to make one’s way across the ocean and find distant islands by reading the stars, the winds, the swells, the flight of birds, and other clues provided by nature is often cited as the skill most crucial to this process. To the double-canoes, and ways of navigating them without instruments, we would add a third main element of this oceanic adaptation that made the colonisation of so many far-flung islands possible: knowledge of the winds of the sea and the skill to exploit spells of westerly winds to sail far to the east.
While the more intermittent character of the westerlies in the tropical south-eastern Pacific may have slowed the momentum of eastward expansion across the Pacific, the ethnographic and experimental evidence suggests that early Polynesian voyagers were able to adapt to this wind regime and to use periodic episodes of westerly winds to find and settle all the oceanic islands to the east of their mid-Pacific homeland. The evidence further suggests that they would have been able to make the multiple landfalls throughout central East Polynesia, and that, once settled on the various islands and archipelagos, they and their descendants would have been capable of exploiting the alternating rhythm of monsoonal and subtropical westerlies with easterly trade winds to maintain some communication ties within the central East Polynesia region, and also to some extent between East and West Polynesia. The actual history of East Polynesia colonisation may, therefore, turn out to be much more complex than suggested by broad arrows commonly drawn on maps to indicate migration paths.
Instead of searching for a single island or archipelago as the sole site of first settlement in East Polynesia, and of assuming one-way population dispersal from there to all the other eastern archipelagos, perhaps we should think of early East Polynesian colonisation in terms of a large multi-archipelago, intercommunicating region with some two-way links back and forth between there and West Polynesia. Although the camp-sites and settlements made by the first people to reach the islands of East Polynesia may be sparse and difficult to find, and evidence of interisland communication even harder to discern, the archaeologists should keep looking for evidence of early colonies and their interrelations throughout the islands and archipelagos lying to the east of the Polynesian homeland.
The feature image was taken at dawn at Lake Wanaka under the Milky Way and a rising Full Moon.
Russian, Syrian pilots conduct joint air patrol mission along Golan Heights
TASS | January 24, 2022
MOSCOW – Russian and Syrian military pilots have conducted a joint air patrol mission along the Golan Heights and the Euphrates River, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
“The mission’s route ran along the Golan Heights, the southern border, the Euphrates River and over northern Syria,” the statement reads. “Russian pilots took off from the Hmeymim Air Base, while Syrians took off from the Seikal and Dumayr airfields outside Damascus,” the ministry added.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the mission involved Russia’s Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft and the A-50 early warning and control aircraft, as well as Syria’s MiG-23 and MiG-29 planes. “During the patrol mission, Syrian pilots controlled airspace and provided fighter cover, while Russian crews practiced attacks on ground targets,” the statement specified. The ministry said that pilots had practiced strikes on air targets and ground targets at a training range in central Syria.
“The two countries’ pilots developed skills for cooperation in various situations. This kind of joint missions will now take place on a regular basis,” the Russian Defense Ministry stressed.
Russia will intervene in Ukraine
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JANUARY 23, 2022
The US-Russia talks in Geneva in the last two successive weeks could not produce a breakthrough. Fundamentally, there is a contradiction that cannot be resolved easily. Russia sees in existential terms the NATO’s advance into its immediate western neighbourhood. But for Washington, it’s geopolitics, stupid!
Russia cannot tolerate any longer such NATO presence on its western border. Ukraine’s induction into the Western alliance system would mean that the US missiles could hit Moscow in 5 minutes, rendering Russian air defence systems ineffectual and obsolete.
NATO deployments in the Baltic and the Black regions further deprive Russia of buffer in the west. Considering that all major decisions and most minor decisions in the NATO are taken in Washington, Moscow perceives all this as an American strategy to encircle it, erode its strategic autonomy and independent foreign policies.
The US, on the contrary, refuses to countenance any NATO rollback. It insists that Russia has no say in the alliance’s decisions. At best, Washington would discuss certain confidence-building measures, while NATO enlargement since 1997 — contrary to assurances given to Mikhail Gorbachev by western leaders in 1990 during the reunification of Germany — is a fait accompli that Russia should live with.
Basically, the US has gained the high ground through sustained efforts through the past three decades since the Bill Clinton administration put into effect a concerted strategy in anticipation of a resurgent Russia in a matter of time. Now that the US has gained the upper hand, it is loathe to give it up.
From Washington’s viewpoint, this is a key template of the geopolitical struggle unfolding over the new world order after China’s rise and the shift in power dynamic from the West to the East. Cutting down Russia to size and to be able to intimidate it is a pre-requisite of the situation before the US tackles China comprehensively. Suffice to say, Ukraine has become a battleground where a titanic test of will is playing out.
Ukraine is in all practical sense a US surrogate and its transformation as an anti-Russian state that began following the regime change in Kiev in 2014 is already at an advanced stage. Although Ukraine is not yet a NATO member, the alliance has established a significant presence in the country militarily and politically.
In the information war, the US portrays Russia as aggressor against a weak neighbour. In reality, though, it is a situation of ‘Heads I win tails you lose’. If Russia doesn’t do anything, it might as well resign to the inevitability of Ukraine being inducted into NATO and Russia having to live with the enemy at the gates. Of course, that would shift the global strategic balance for the first time in history in favour of the US.
On the other hand, if Russia acts militarily to prevent the NATO’s march in Ukraine, Washington will play rough. Washington is all set to pillory President Vladimir Putin personally and to impose “sanctions from hell” on Russia, with a vicious game plan to wound that country’s economy lethally and stifle its capacity to be a global player.
In the US estimation, Putin personally will have to bear a heavy political cost if living conditions deteriorate within Russia between now and 2024 when the next Russian presidential election is due, and he may be compelled to relinquish power. From the American perspective, there’s nothing like it if a Boris Yeltsin II were to succeed Putin.
Make no mistake, part of what is going on today is a demonisation Putin’s political personality to erode his towering popularity (65%), which forecloses the rise of a pro-western politician in Russia for a foreseeable future. All attempts by the US intelligence to create a “liberal” platform in Russian politics have failed so far. The fact of the mater is that the majority of Russian people dread the return of the “liberal” order of the 1990s.
The Washington Post, which is linked to the US security establishment, featured a scurrilous report last Wednesday under the byline of a noted knave titled House Republicans aim sanctions at Putin, his family and his mistress. It says, “The Biden administration’s carefully crafted mix of diplomacy and threats of additional sanctions doesn’t seem to be deterring Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine and starting a war. Now, a large group of House Republicans is pushing President Biden to ramp up the pressure on Putin directly by going after him and his entourage for their long and well-established corruption.” Evidently, Washington will go to any extent to create dissensions among Russia’s elite and undermine the country’s political stability.
What lies ahead?
Without doubt, Russia is acutely conscious of its limitations. Moscow too made some serious miscalculations. It was betting that Ukraine was not going to join the NATO and in due course, better sense would prevail in Kiev under a realistic and pragmatic leader who would give up on the “Ukrainisation” agenda, repair ties with Russia (especially in the economic field) and importantly, accommodate the aspirations of the ethnic Russian eastern regions. But as it turned out, “Ukrainisation” is only being galvanised with tacit American support. Moscow has sensed that time is no longer on its side.
Moscow expects something concrete from the American side, as its vital security interests are in jeopardy. The Kremlin leadership, including Putin, has starkly outlined Russia’s “red lines.” Washington, on the other hand, is simply kicking the can down the road. It estimates that time is on its side anyway. From the Russian viewpoint, this is not acceptable, since a point of no return is arriving as regards Ukraine’s Nato membership.
Arguably, President Biden doesn’t want to move in the direction of accommodating Russia’s legitimate interests, given the pulls and pushes from the domestic scene in America and the divergent opinions among European allies, but primarily because the encirclement of Russia with pro-Western states has been a strategic objective of Washington’s policies toward Russia under successive administrations since Bill Clinton, and today it happens be expedient too, being a “cause” that enjoys rare bipartisan support in the Beltway at a juncture when American opinion is deeply divided.
In the present situation, wittingly or unwittingly, Washington has also tied its hands by committing that it won’t negotiate over Ukraine’s head. All factors taken into consideration, therefore, the probability is very high that Russia will intervene in eastern Ukraine with a view to create new facts on the ground to secure its national security interests while aiming at a political settlement for the medium and long term.
What does it entail?
Clearly, Russia is not seeking annexation of Ukrainian territory. Its preference will be to restrict its intervention in eastern Ukraine largely to the Russian populated regions and to create a buffer zone. Some American analysts have estimated that, broadly, any Russian intervention will be restricted to the territory upto the Dnepr river flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. This seems plausible.
Of course, there are variables in any emergent military situation. Russia will firmly react to any form of Western intervention in Ukraine — although Washington has ruled it out. (In any case, the US’ capability to fight a massive continental war at such short notice is questionable.) The Russian military operations will be decisive with huge firepower and advanced weaponry on multiple fronts, with the intention to realise the political objective in the shortest time possible.
The US journalists have written about “resistance” but that is a load of rubbish. The Russian operation will be short and decisive. The Ukrainian moral fibre today is such that the demoralised forces and the disillusioned people will simply cave in. In all this, what needs to be remembered is that despite the heavy dollops of US indoctrination, Ukrainian people have profound civilisational affinities with Russians that lie submerged just below the surface.
Most important, the pervasive corruption in that country gives ample scope to buy off loyalties — in fact, there may not be much actual fighting at all in many sectors. It also needs to be factored in that the political situation in Kiev is highly unstable, as the latest sedition charges against former president Petro Poroshenko testify.
Zelensky won his mandate as president in 2019 on the basis of his promise to work for rapprochement with Russia. Today, he is a thoroughly discredited figure. People feel betrayed. A crushing military defeat will mean the end of the road for Zelensky.
The ensuing political turmoil within Ukraine is the “X” factor in the Russian intervention. American analysts deliberately sidestep this. Simply put, Russians have a deep understanding of the eddies of Ukrainian politics and the country’s power brokers due to the shared history, culture, politics and societal links.
The ultimate Russian objective will be a federated Ukraine through constitutional reform with the country’s sovereignty, national unity and territorial integrity intact while the regions enjoy autonomy. Europe may welcome this as the best way to stabilise the situation and remove the potential for future conflict.
Indeed, Russia’s expectation will be that such a Ukraine can never become a part of NATO once constitutional underpinnings are put in place to ensure that all major policies pursued in Kiev would be based on national consensus.
The bottom line is that as Russia sees it, the only way out of this crisis is that Ukraine regains its national sovereignty and stops looking to Washington for navigating its destiny. That requires that the American operatives in Kiev who take the decisions for Ukraine go home and Ukrainians are once again the masters of their house, which ceased to be the case once the US intelligence usurped power in February 2014 disregarding the pledge given by then (elected) president Viktor Yanukovich to hold fresh elections before deciding on Ukraine’s EU membership.
Clearly, all this is not going to be as easy as it sounds and the outcome may turn out to be no better than an attempt to unscramble the omelette. But the good part is that there are signs already that Europe is sceptical about blindly tagging along with the US any further on Ukraine.
The probability of discord in the transatlantic relationship is rising. NATO itself has never really been the robust united alliance that was made out to be. Polish President Andrzej Duda’s decision to attend the Winter Olympics in Beijing is a harbinger of things to come. (Incidentally, Putin will also be in Beijing at that time.) Germany opposes not only the removal of Russia from Swift but also the supply of weapons by NATO countries to Ukraine as well as Lithuania’s move (under US advice) to switch ties to Taiwan!
US made a strategic blunder to have encouraged a deeper NATO imprint in Ukraine. Making half-promises thereby to a non-NATO country is going to damage the US’ credibility in the downstream of a Russian intervention. But it is impossible for Washington to backtrack now, as the loss of credibility will be even more.
What remains to be seen, equally, is how the European Union survives this moment. The ardent Atlanticists in the European Commission in Brussels led by Ursula von der Leyen and the Russia-hater Josep Borrell are unilaterally setting the EU agenda currently, ignoring the glaring divergences of opinion among the member states. With Angela Merkel’s departure, a vacuum has appeared which these Eurocrats hope to fill in.
But this is clearly unsustainable. Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg last week, French President Emmanuel Macron has urged Europe to invest in its own collective security framework and called for a “frank” EU dialogue with Russia. By the way, neither the EU nor France was involved in the direct talks between the US and Russia in Geneva.
Much is being made out of the threat of sanctions against Russia. But such threats won’t deter Moscow. For a start, even draconian sanctions have proved to be a weak coercive tool. Indeed, US sanctions had a poor coercive track record in North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Vietnam, etc.
Russia is a big power. It has huge reserves, which currently stand at a record $638.2 billion — the fourth largest in the world. Russia’s credit position is good and it owns much of its debts. It has no critical need of US investors. Russia is in no desperate need to sell its currency.
Having gone through four traumatic shocks previously in its 30-year post-cold war history, Russia knows how to absorb shocks. Therefore, while Russia may take a big hit and there could be currency volatility causing outflow of capital initially following the sanctions, its reserves give it a big cushion.
At any rate, how far the Europeans will want to go on the sanctions path remains to be seen. Germany has voiced reservations about Washington’s famous “nuclear option”, namely, the expulsion of Russia from the Swift payment system. To be sure, any disruption in Russian energy supplies will hurt the European economies.
A little known fact is, Russia sells gas at very low prices to Europe, whereas, any LNG supplies from the US to make up for Russian supplies will mean exorbitant prices jacking up the cost of industrial production. Central European countries depend on Russia for 100 percent of their energy needs. Germany has a 40% dependency.
According to reports, a highlight of Putin’s forthcoming visit to Beijing will be the signing of the agreement of the mammoth Power of Siberia-2 gas pipeline project to construct an additional route to send gas to China gas from Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula, where Russia’s biggest gas reserves are, via Mongolia. The capacity of the pipeline is expected to be 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually (which exceeds the capacity of Nord Stream 2.)
Significantly, trade turnover between China and Russia has reached a record $146.88 billion in 2021, up 35.8% from the previous year. Most certainly, the standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine, which could bring new sanctions against Moscow, is likely to tighten the Kremlin’s bond with Beijing even more. The two countries have vowed to raise their trade turnover to $200 billion by 2024. Recent economic trends alone suggest the countries are likely to reach that goal.
The rising geopolitical tensions would add momentum to this effort by making stronger trade ties with China a necessity for the Kremlin. Moscow will need to increase sourcing capabilities elsewhere because of US sanctions, and China will be one major avenue. The big picture is that on its part, China too cannot afford to see Russia going down under US pressure.
Evidently, the US hasn’t thought through the escalatory ladder. The Kremlin has threatened Washington with a complete break in relations if push comes to shove. Trust Moscow to hit back. Russia conducted an anti-satellite test in May by taking out a satellite. Possibly, it was a signal that Russia has the capability to interfere with the GSP constellation in non-military fields, which can affect key sectors of the US economy.
Above all, any “sanctions from hell” will inevitably turn into a morality play on the world stage. There’ll be increasing blowback in the world economy as countries get concerned about Washington’s weaponisation of the dollar. Some may even feel prompted to harden their economy. This can impact the international financial market. Washington backtracked previously when such situations arose. (Washington chose not to impose sanctions against India under CAATSA for its purchase of the S-400 missile system from Russia.)
Paradoxically, thanks to wave after wave of Western sanctions since 2014, Russia has become much more autarchic. Today, it needs no inputs from the West for its defence industry to develop new weapon systems. Pentagon officials have admitted that Russia has taken the lead in cutting edge technology such as hypersonic missiles, and catching up may take three to five years — that is, assuming that the Russian defence industry is resting its oars.
The Political Economy of Autism
By Toby Rogers | September 14, 2021
Autism is an epidemic and a pandemic by any reasonable definition of those words. J.B. Handley in, How to End the Autism Epidemic, produced the best chart showing the growth in autism prevalence in the U.S. over the last 50 years:
Increase in Autism Prevalence in the U.S. 1970 to 2017
Source: Handley (2018).
Darold Treffert at Winnebago State Hospital in Wisconsin was one of the first people to attempt to measure autism in the general population. His study, published in Archives of General Psychiatry in 1970, showed an autism rate of less than 1 in 10,000 children.
Then, sometime around 1987, the autism rate in the United States began to skyrocket. By 2017, the autism rate in the U.S. was 1 in 36 kids (Zablotsky et al., 2017). So the U.S. has experienced a 277-fold increase in autism prevalence in the last 50 years.
In some places and populations the rates are even higher: in Tom’s River, NJ, the state’s largest suburban school district, 1 in 14 eight-year-olds is on the autism spectrum; in Newark, NJ, 1 in 10 Black boys is on the spectrum (forthcoming).
The United States is in the midst of a genocide.
Genetic theories of autism never made much sense because “there is no such thing as a genetic epidemic” — the human genome just does not change that fast. An early twin study by Susan Folstein and Michael Rutter at the Institute of Psychiatry in London in 1977 suggested a strong genetic component to autism. More recent scholarship shows that this was likely overstated; the study only had 21 twin pairs and did not effectively control for environmental factors (twins usually grow up in the same family and are thus likely exposed to the same toxicants).
As the autism rate exploded throughout the U.S., the state of California hired eleven of the best geneticists in the country to examine the role of genes in autism. They concluded that genetics explains at most 38% of autism cases and in two places they explained that this was likely an overestimate (Hallmayer et al., 2011). Whatever is driving the surge in autism prevalence, it is not primarily genetics.
Well perhaps the increase in autism prevalence is just the result of better awareness (and what’s called “diagnostic expansion and substitution”)? That theory of the case does not check out either. The state of California funded two multimillion dollar studies to examine sharply rising prevalence in the state and whether it was the result of social factors. The first study was led by pediatric epidemiologist Robert S. Byrd at UC Davis who directed a team of investigators at UC Davis and UCLA. The investigators concluded that, “The observed increase in autism cases cannot be explained by a loosening in the criteria used to make the diagnosis” and “children served by the State’s Regional Centers are largely native born and there has been no major migration of children into California that would explain the increase in autism” (Byrd et al., 2002).
The state of California revisited this question in 2009 with a study led by the top environmental epidemiologist in the state — Irva Hertz-Picciotto at the UC Davis Mind Institute. This study concluded that changes in diagnostic criteria, the inclusion of milder cases, and earlier age at diagnosis explain about a quarter to a third of the total increase in autism (Hertz-Picciotto & Delwiche, 2009). In a subsequent interview with Scientific American, Hertz-Picciotto explained that these three factors “don’t get us close” to explaining the sharp rise in autism over that time period and she urged the scientific community to take a closer look at environmental factors (Cone, 2009).
There are now seven good ‘societal cost of autism’ studies (Jarbrink and Knapp, 2001; Ganz, 2007; Knapp et al., 2009; Buescher et al., 2014; Leigh & Du, 2015; Cakir et al., 2020; Blaxill, Rogers, & Nevison, 2021). They all show that the U.S. and much of the developed world is heading for economic and social collapse as a result of surging autism costs.
Autism increases poverty and inequality. Lifetime care costs for autism range from $1.4 to $2.4 million. Mothers of kids with autism earn 35% less than mothers of kids with other health limitations and 56% less than mothers of kids with no health limitations (Buescher et al., 2014).
In 2015, autism cost the U.S. an estimated $268 billion a year in direct costs & lost productivity; given current rates of increase, autism costs will reach $1 trillion a year (3.6% of GDP) by 2025 (Leigh & Du, 2015). As a point of comparison, the U.S. Defense Department budget is “just” 3.1% of GDP.
All of the more recent studies show autism costs surpassing $1 trillion a year in the near future. There is no plan by any level of government to raise revenue to meet these costs or prevent autism to mitigate these costs. Elected officials are frozen like a deer in the headlights.
In the last decade, three groups of top epidemiologists have published consensus statements declaring that neurodevelopmental disabilities including autism are caused by toxicants in the environment (The Collaborative on Health and the Environment, 2008; Mount Sinai Hospital, 2010; Project TENDR, 2016).
This is good news because it means that autism is likely preventable. The bad news is that the leading mainstream toxicologists do not want to lose their jobs so they generally avoid mentioning pharmaceutical products (even though these products appear to have an outsized impact). Parents groups have made up for the cowardice of mainstream toxicology by funding their own research.
We have fairly good data that five classes of toxicants increase autism risk:
- Mercury from coal fired power plants and diesel trucks;
- Plastics;
- Pesticides & herbicides;
- EMF/RFR; and
- Pharmaceuticals (Tylenol, SSRIs, & vaccines).
Taking each toxicant in turn…
For every 1,000 pounds of environmentally released mercury, there was a 61% increase in the rate of autism (Palmer, 2006). For every 10 miles closer a family lives to a coal fired power plant the autism risk increases by 1.4% (Palmer, 2009).
Plastics: Children with autism had significantly increased levels of 3 endocrine disruptors (two phthalates — MEHP & DEHP, & BPA) in blood samples as compared with healthy controls (Kardas, 2016).
Pesticides & herbicides: Increased use of RoundUp is strongly correlated (r = 0.989) with the rising prevalence of autism (Swanson, 2014). Organophosphates increase autism risk 60 – 100%; chlorpyrifos increase risk 78% – 163%; pyrethroids increase risk 78% (Shelton et al., 2014).
9 studies show an association between acetaminophen (Tylenol) use & adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes (Bauer et al., 2018). Avella-Garcia (2016) & Liew et al. (2016) found that males exposed to Tylenol in utero have significantly elevated risk of autism.
8 studies show a statistically significant association between selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) use in pregnant women and subsequent autism in their children (see meta-analysis in Kaplan et al., 2016). Doctors who prescribe SSRIs to pregnant women are committing malpractice.
Unfortunately, in the debate over toxicants that increase autism risk, all roads lead back to vaccines. At least 5 studies show a statistically significant association between vaccines & autism (Gallagher & Goodman, 2008 & 2010; Thomas & Margulis, 2016; Mawson et al., 2017a & 2017b).
Dr. Paul Thomas is the most successful doctor in the world at preventing autism. Data from his practice show:
If zero vaccines, autism rate = 1 in 715;
If alternative vaccine schedule, autism rate = 1 in 440;
If CDC vaccine schedule, autism rate = 1 in 36.
That study had large sample size (3,344 children), access to medical files, and good researchers working on it. But look closely. His alternative vaccine schedule reduces autism risk by more than 1200%. However even an alternative vaccine schedule increases autism risk by 160% versus no vaccines at all.
And all of those other toxicants that I described above that have been shown to increase autism risk? Those are the 1 in the 715 cases when the parent does not vaccinate at all. Autism appears mostly be a story of iatrogenic injury from vaccines.
This is not a surprise. Thousands of parents have been telling us for years that their children regressed into autism following vaccinations. Ethylmercury is a known neurotoxin and is still in 7 different vaccines (Thomas & Margulis, 2016, p. 14).
Aluminum is a known neurotoxin (Grandjean & Landrigan, 2014) and is used in a majority of vaccines. “The dose makes the poison” paradigm has collapsed in recent years and now we know that many toxicants have no safe dose.
In a sane world, all of this would be seen as good news. In a sane world the CDC, EPA, NIH and every major newspaper would rush out to Portland, Oregon to examine whether the data from Dr. Paul’s practice (and other studies) are correct. But we live in an insane world…
To date, the CDC, EPA, NIH, the federal government, and all state governments have ignored Dr. Paul’s work. None of the top 10 major newspapers in the U.S. have reviewed his book, The Vaccine Friendly, plan even though it is a bestseller on Amazon. In fact the Oregon Medical Board was so incensed by Dr. Paul’s success in preventing autism that they pulled his medical license briefly in 2021 (he has since been reinstated).
All of this information is public and available to anyone with an internet connection and a library card. By 1999 it was clear that vaccines that contained mercury were a problem (see Kirby, 2005). By the early 2000s it was clear that the problems with vaccines went well beyond mercury. Government had a choice to make: come clean or double down. And starting with senior scientist Thomas Verstraeten and then William Thompson the CDC decided to just flat out lie, manipulate findings, and destroy data.
The pharmaceutical industry also had a choice to make: improve their products or utilize their extensive capture of media and government to protect their existing toxic products. As everyone now knows, they chose to protect their existing toxic products. But the pharmaceutical industry has an enormous problem on their hands. We know some vaccines (hepatitis B, HPV, flu, DTaP…) cause catastrophic harms. And pockets of unvaccinated people across the country — who are healthier than vaccinated children — are the control group that provides evidence of Pharma’s crimes.
So starting in 2015, with the introduction of SB277 in California, the pharmaceutical industry began a systematic effort to eliminate the unvaccinated control group in all 50 states. They start by removing religious or personal belief exemptions to vaccination. In subsequent years they introduce bills to eliminate all medical exemptions to vaccination (SB 277 in CA in 2019) to get to 100% vaccination rates (even though all scientists will tell you that there are some children who should not be vaccinated because of underlying health conditions). In the Pharma legislative blitzkrieg no one is spared so that there will be no evidence left of the harms from these products. If 100% of children are treated, then there is no background rate of illness and all vaccine injuries just appear “normal”.
These mandatory vaccine bills are racketeering and crimes against humanity. With the introduction of coronavirus vaccines in late 2020, the situation has gotten much worse. Pharma now aims to vaccinate 100% of adults as well as 100% of kids and the results thus far have been catastrophic.
So here’s where things stand. The vaccine paradigm has collapsed (and no, mRNA, DNA, and adenovirus vector vaccines are not going to save it). Pharma has piles of cash and extensive capture of the media, academia, and government. So they have the ability to do just about whatever they want. Fearing prosecution and seeking immense profits, Pharma has abandoned any pretense of science, consent, or health and pushed all in to set up a totalitarian state that will serve their interests.
But Pharma has harmed so many people — first with the childhood schedule and now with coronavirus vaccines — that there are now millions of people who have seen vaccine injury first-hand and are now fighting back with everything they’ve got. Variously referred to as the medical freedom movement, the health choice movement, and/or the personal sovereignty movement, these brave citizens are taking on the most powerful industry in the world and fighting to save our country from Pharma fascism. The fighting is so fierce because the stakes are enormous. We are fighting to preserve human life as we know it from the most predatory and corrupt industry in the world.
To learn more about the toxicants associated with autism, read The Political Economy of Autism. To learn more about the battle to save our country and the world from Pharma totalitarianism, please subscribe to my Substack.
Featured Video
Cardiologist on the Over-Prescribing of Statins for Heart Disease
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Is this a War?
Resetting the relationship between The State and The Citizen
LIES ARE UNBEKOMING | NOVEMBER 6, 2021
I’ve been wondering for quite some time about whether we are in a War and the resolution of my thoughts on the subject has recently improved.
Oddly enough, I have some standing on the subject.
I lived in Iraq between 1981 to 1991, a period that covered almost all of the Iraq/Iran War and all of the Gulf War, the original, not the sequels.
It was an old school type of war, with two parties fighting over territory and trying to redraw a border. A lot of people died over 8 years and the border stayed the same. But weapons were sold, and internal power was consolidated.
That’s really what war is about, territory. You have something that I want, and I will fight you for it.
So, if this is a war, who are the warring parties and what is the fight over?
The war is between “the state” and “the citizen”. The latter is YOU and ME… continue
Blog Roll
Recent Comments
jbthring on America Has a Political Assass… charles allan on BMJ: “We need RCT gold standar… Buddy on Cardiologist on the Over-Presc… charles allan on Phasing out petrol and diesel… Pip on Government report claims pande… charles allan on Is this a War? charles allan on The Vax-Gene Files: An Acciden… michael on Henry Kissinger, Statesman, Ce… Thomas L Simpson on Authorities Should Look Into B… jbthring on British special forces deploye… michael on The Biden regime’s plan… John Looez on The Biden regime’s plan…
Aletho News- Fake Scientific Studies by Nobel Prize Winner and Johns Hopkins Prof. Gregg Semenza
- BMJ: “We need RCT gold standard to study misinformation & vaccine hesitancy on social media”
- GOP Lawmakers Demand FBI Briefing on Jan. 6 Pipe Bomb Investigation Following Whistleblower Disclosures
- Government report claims pandemic as a precedent for ‘environmental’ policy
- Phasing out petrol and diesel cars is just pie in the sky
- Spiegel, after running multiple stories blaming the Nord Stream attack on “Russian ships”, reverses course
- Professors: The Entire Fossil Fuel Industry Must Be ‘Euthanized’ To Save Humanity From Warmth
- The USAF Chief Said That F-16s Won’t Be A Game-Changer For Kiev So Why’s The Kremlin So Upset?
- Iraq unveils $17bn infrastructure project linking West Asia to Europe
- Post-Bakhmut scenario in Ukraine war
- If Americans Knew
- New 3rd political party “No Labels” seeks middle ground – except on Israel
- Is the United States Moving Its Capital to Jerusalem?
- NYT downplays Palestinian civilian deaths, political motivation for Gaza attack
- What is behind the latest Israel-Gaza violence?
- What’s standing in the way of an Israel-Gaza ceasefire? Israel wants to keep breaking int’l law
- Israeli Missiles Kill Eight Palestinians, Including A Child, In Gaza
- Israel closes Gaza crossings; possible serious deterioration of humanitarian conditions
- Israel has killed 20 journalists with impunity since 2000
- Israel attacks Gaza, killing 15 Palestinians, including women and children
- Khader Adnan’s death & Israel’s decades of despotic military orders
- Brownstone Institute
- The Censors are Exposed: Major Update to Missouri v. Biden from Tracy Beanz
- Kids Need the Opportunity to Take Risks, Learn from Mistakes, and Succeed on Their Own
- The Vax-Gene Files: An Accidental Discovery
- How Lockdowns Bolstered an Industrial Cartel
- The Best Life Lesson for a Teen Is a Job
- Media Complicity in Policing the Opinion Corridor
- And Just Like That, Your Rights are Gone
- The Biology of the Administrative State
- The Dashed Dreams of Digital Learning
- The Cosplay of Elite Pride
- Richie Allen
- Talk To Richie On Today’s Show
- “Bollocks To Wokeism In Acting” Says Succession Star Brian Cox
- Scottish Police Chief Says Force Is Racist, Sexist & Misogynistic
- Net Migration Hits Highest Level On Record
- Calvin Klein Uses Bearded Trans Man In Sports Bra Ad
- Met Police Falsified Data On Child Searches
- US Retailer Target Removes LGBTQ Products Following Threats
- Scottish Covid Inquiry Asks Public To Share Pandemic Experiences
- Indefinite Ban For Teacher Who Misgendered Pupil
- AI Scanner Used In US Schools Fails To Spot Knives
- Not A Lot Of People Know That
- EVs Will Increase Tyre Toxin Pollution
- BBC Verify
- New Energy Price Cap
- Record World Cereal Outputs Forecast for 2023/24
- The inconvenient truth about heat pumps
- Tom Burke
- Europe can achieve Net Zero by demolishing historic buildings and starting again, Central Bank claims
- King Charles backed these care homes for 40 years – now Net Zero is forcing them to close
- Lord Frost warns: Hurtling towards net zero at any cost will be a mistake
- The Telegraph & Infectious Diseases.
- No Tricks Zone
- Cold Grips Globally: Alaska’s 4th Cold Winter… Record Cold Down Under…UK’s Delayed Spring…
- Aarhus University Researchers Find Arctic Warmer, Ice-Free In Summertime 10,000 Years Ago!
- Professors: The Entire Fossil Fuel Industry Must Be ‘Euthanized’ To Save Humanity From Warmth
- German Green Parliamentarian Shocks The Nation…Couldn’t Even Name First German Empire Chancellor!
- Another New Study Shows The Siberian Arctic Is Warmer When CO2 Is Low And Colder As CO2 Rises
- German Greens In Crisis, Plummet 40% In Opinion Polls As Anger Mounts Over Bans, Scandals
- Germany’s Growing List Of Bans: Next Up: Wood Stoves And Heating With Wood!
- New Study: The Lowest Tibetan Plateau Glacial Temps Were Still 3°C Warmer Than Today
- Germany’s Federal Network Agency Plans To Ration Electricity As Electric Power Crisis Heightens
- California’s Mean Annual Temps Were Up To 3.8°C Warmer Than Today During The Last Glacial
Aletho News 