A Professor of Surgery at John Hopkins, Dr. Marty Makary, said that a research letter he helped author was censored by LinkedIn for violating the platform’s “Professional Community Policies.” The post was reinstated later “after a friend complained to the CEO.”
The censored post contained a link to a research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The letter is a study Makary conducted about the “prevalence and Durability of SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies Among Unvaccinated US Adults.”
According to the screenshots Makary shared on Twitter, LinkedIn removed the letter “because it goes against Professional Community Policies.”
The policies prohibit users from sharing “false or misleading content.”
They also forbid users, including researchers and scientists, from posting “content that directly contradicts guidance from leading global health organizations and public health authorities.”
It is not clear how the study Makary posted violated any of LinkedIn policies.
February 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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On December 17, 2021, Pfizer announced that the clinical trial of its mRNA shot in kids under age 5 had failed. Rather than withdraw this product, Pfizer “amended” its clinical trial to add a third dose. So Pfizer kept the original trial going and subjected these little kids to yet another shot of genetically modified mRNA.
The drug dealers at the FDA said, ‘sounds great, let’s proceed with authorization even in the absence of data.’ That created a huge public backlash as parents rightly protested that the FDA should not approve a drug for kids that failed in a clinical trial.
Yesterday (Feb. 11, 2022), the FDA was forced to admit defeat and Pfizer pulled its Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) application to inject kids under age 5.
Pfizer and the FDA claimed that they were “waiting for more data” that would be available in early April. We now know that this was a lie.
Buried deep in an article on page A13 of the NY Times this morning we learned the real reason why Pfizer withdrew its EUA — the clinical trial had failed, again.
Remember, Pfizer kept the clinical trial going after December 17. So between then and yesterday’s announcement, there was now roughly 55 more days worth of data. And it was truly terrible.
From the NY Times :
Then, late on Thursday [Feb. 10], Pfizer alerted the F.D.A. that it had more recent data, from mid-January on, showing a more discouraging picture as the Omicron variant bore down. The new data revealed that two doses were not sufficiently effective in preventing symptomatic infection.
Read that again. They have the data. And the data show that this shot does not work.
But even here, I think there is reason to believe that they are still lying. We already knew that “two doses were not sufficiently effective” — Pfizer announced that in December. The “more recent data, from mid-January on” is not the two dose regimen anymore, that phase of the trial is finished.
I think there is every reason to believe that this is now the three dose trial that they are describing. If the three dose trial was on track and showing promising results, they would have proceeded with authorization. So now we likely have the first evidence that the three dose trial has failed as well.
(Here’s my math: Pfizer likely injected the third dose into these kids between Dec. 17 and mid-January. So “from mid-January on” (to Feb. 10) is looking at the data in the 25 days after the third injection. In the comments, please let me know if you interpret this differently.)
So it is definitely NOT the case that this is just an incomplete trial that they are waiting to finish up in early April. All of the existing data is bad. Pfizer is now scrambling to find ways to save this product even though the clinical trial has now failed twice. And what’s Pfizer’s plan going forward — to just hope that the data in the next 60 days (from now through early April) magically turns the corner!? Talk about wishful thinking!
Just when I think the cartel and its enablers in the mainstream media could not possibly get any more cynical they sink to new lows.
Janet Woodcock and Peter Marks at the FDA must be fired and prosecuted for reckless endangerment of children. Pfizer must stop this grotesque clinical trial immediately and permanently suspend any plans to inject genetically modified mRNA into children under 5. Anything less is savagery and barbarism.
February 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, FDA, Janet Woodcock, Peter Marks, Pfizer, United States |
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This is what happens when you demand speedy production in an era of politicized regulation
All these tragedies have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes. Most occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987. With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most using a shortened path for FDA review. Recalls and market removals of approved products are much more common than they used to be. We can only expect more of these disasters in the future, especially if the products are mandated for everyone.
- 1955: (Improperly inactivated) live polio vaccine caused polio in 40,000 children
The Cutter (now part of Bayer) Incident of 1955: This early US Salk polio vaccine contained live polio virus, which had not been inactivated. It caused 40,000 cases of polio; 200 of these recipients became paralyzed; and ten died. Other companies also had problems with viral inactivation. The NIH director lost his job in the aftermath, since NIH scientist Bernice Eddy had earlier warned this lot of vaccine paralyzed monkeys, but her findings were suppressed in the rush to vaccinate.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0199726590
- 1950s-1960s: SV-40 (Simian Virus 40, a potentially cancer-causing virus) contaminated polio vaccines given to millions of Americans.
SV-40 can cause cancer in animals and has been found in human cancers, though its relationship to human cancers remains uncertain.
http://www.sv40foundation.org/cpv-link.html
- 1970s-1985: Factor 8 Concentrate a pooled blood product used to prevent bleeding in hemophiliacs, was contaminated with HIV and Hepatitis C, but was sold worldwide even after manufacturers became aware of the contamination
Its manufacturers knew it was contaminated with HIV (and Hepatitis C), which spread through the injectable blood products used by hemophiliacs. About 8,000 US hemophiliacs at the time developed HIV infections this way, and an estimated 150,000 developed Hepatitis C, which frequently results in chronic liver disease, cirrhosis or death. The practice of distributing contaminated blood was widespread internationally, with many companies involved, and continued even after the problem was identified. It led to suits against pharmaceutical companies in a number of countries. It led to thousands of deaths. Doctors went to jail.
Cutter/ Bayer knowingly sold HIV-contaminated products in the US and overseas, seemingly having learned nothing from its polio-contaminated vaccine disaster 25 years earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood_products
http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanhiv/PIIS2352-3018%2815%2900007-7.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/22/business/2-paths-of-bayer-drug-in-80-s-riskier-one-steered-overseas.html?pagewanted=print
- 1976-1977: Swine flu vaccine given to 45 million Americans for a non-existent disease, causing hundreds of cases of paralysis
A new flu virus was discovered in a soldier who died at Fort Dix, NJ. Concern that the virus might cause a 1918-like influenza pandemic led to a huge federally-instigated program to develop a vaccine and vaccinate every American against the virus. But the epidemic never occurred. And the affected soldier, despite having an acute infection, had been on a rigorous march before he died. No one knew if the flu had killed him. US vaccine manufacturers agreed to produce vaccine on a short timeline, but only if they received a waiver of liability for possible vaccine injuries. The decision to use the vaccine was strongly influenced by political considerations, according to a National Academy of Sciences investigation of the program, commissioned by HEW Secretary Joe Califano. The report gives a bird’s eye view of how personal and political agendas came together to supercede considerations of the public health.
45 million Americans received the new vaccine, of whom 400 people developed autoimmune paralysis (Guillain-Barre syndrome) at a rate 6-8 times expected during the six weeks post-inoculation, and about 30 died.
http://iom.edu/~/media/Files/About%20the%20IOM/SwineFluAffair.pdf
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=394635 (unfortunately now behind a paywall)
- 1999: Rhesus rotavirus vaccine (Rotashield) caused intestinal damage
This oral Rotashield vaccine was designed to prevent a mild form of gastroenteritis. However, it caused 1-2 cases per 10,000 recipients of intussusception of the bowel, and many affected babies required surgery to repair “telescoping” of the gut. Several died. Months after being licensed, the vaccine was taken off the market.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4843a5.htm
- 1998-2001: Lymerix vaccine likely caused autoimmune symptoms, taken off market
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/pdf/S0950268806007096a.pdf
- 2009-10 Pandemrixswine flu vaccine caused over 1300 cases of narcolepsy in Europe
Children aged 5-19 were about 15 times more likely to develop narcolepsy if they received the GSK Pandemrix brand of swine flu vaccine, which was not sold in the US. Other age groups were also at an increased risk of narcolepsy, but to a lesser degree. Narcolepsy is caused by autoimmune destruction of cells in the brain’s Locus Ceruleus, and is newly recognized as a vaccine adverse reaction. The narcolepsy cases were severe, often preventing children from attending school.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/07/why-pandemic-flu-shot-caused-narcolepsy
http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications/publications/vaesco%20report%20final%20with%20cover.pdf
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/h1n1_narcolepsy_pandemrix.html
** The adverse effect profile of drugs and vaccines is generally not well known until millions of people have received the drug or vaccine. New federal legislation (21st Century Cures Act of 2016 etc.) that speeds up licensing of vaccines, and removes liability from the manufacturers for all vaccines placed on the childhood schedule, all vaccines recommended by CDC for pregnant women, and new, potentially unlicensed products used during declared emergency situations — increases the potential risk of vaccines. http://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm125127.htm#categories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Readiness_and_Emergency_Preparedness_Act
February 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | United States |
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A FRIEND of my ex-wife is so angry about lockdown lunacy and its associated abuses that she lets rip on busloads of cowed, mask-wearing passengers, letting them know they have been horribly duped.
I thought of her yesterday when I saw a large caravan parked in the centre of Worthing, the seaside town where I currently live, encouraging passers-by to drop in for a Covid jab.
Despite waiting lists now said to be likely to hit nine million, the NHS still finds the money to try to terrorise people into submitting to this experimental procedure. I am happy to say there were no customers as I passed.
Just how experimental the rollout remains is brought home by a new international study looking at what happens in our bodies when injected with the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, and comparing that with natural infection. A 73-page report, with 43 authors, has been posted online as a preprint by the scientific journal Cell.
A key finding is that for up to two months following the jab, our bodies continue to produce a protein that has been associated with risks to the heart and blood vessels. It may be longer – 60 days was as far as the researchers went.
Most readers are by now familiar with the infamous spike protein, the ‘gain-of-function’ feature through which American and Chinese scientists made a bat virus a danger to humans, causing the Covid-19 pandemic.
The vaccines inject copies of a genetic code that causes production of this protein, alerting the immune system to the danger it presents so as to limit damage from actual virus infection. The Cell study confirms that in the short-term, the immune system response to the vaccine is broader than that seen in severely ill, naturally-infected patients.
But the researchers found mRNA from the vaccine still present on days seven, 16 and 37 post-jab, ‘with lower but still appreciable specific signal at day 60.’ Production of actual spike protein was ‘abundant’ 16 days after the second dose, and still present as late as 60 days.
Ninety-six per cent of vaccinees had the protein circulating in their blood in the first day or two after the jab, and 63 per cent at day seven, although the level fell dramatically during that first week.
What does this mean? According to Dr Robert Malone, an American virologist and immunologist whose work paved the way for mRNA vaccines, it means we are in the midst of a ‘health public policy nightmare’.
That is because the protein is now recognised as a danger in itself, regardless of the virus. The fact that it continues to be produced for weeks or months after the jab helps to explain the record numbers of reports of post-vaccination deaths and injuries.
Once in the bloodstream, the genetic instructions are carried throughout the body, and cells that line our blood vessels are particularly prone to taking it in. When they produce the ‘spike’, lymphocytes of the immune system recognise it as foreign and start attacking the cells, provoking the formation of blood clots of varying sizes.
Studies in patients who have died post-injection have shown how the lymphocytes infiltrate heart muscle in particular, causing inflammation. Lungs, liver, kidney, uterus, thyroid and skin appear vulnerable to a similar reaction.
Cardiac surgeon Dr Steven Gundry has reported that in the wake of the jab, most patients show changes in biochemical markers signalling damage to the heart and circulatory system.
‘These changes persist for at least two and a half months post second dose of vaccine,’ he said in a November 2021 alert to the American Heart Association.
‘We conclude that the mRNA vaccines dramatically increase inflammation of the endothelium and T-cell infiltration of cardiac muscle and may account for the observations of increased thrombosis, cardiomyopathy, and other vascular events following vaccination.’
His alert prompted a big reaction from some fellow professionals and a watered-down version appeared soon afterwards.
But a similar warning was issued as far back as last June by Canadian vaccine expert Dr Byram Bridle, who used freedom of information laws to obtain a previously confidential ‘biodistribution’ study in animals, conducted for Pfizer by Japanese researchers. It showed that the spike protein does not just act at the site of the jab, but is carried through the circulation to many sites in the body.
‘I’m very much pro-vaccine, but always making sure that the science is done properly and that we follow the science carefully before going into public rollout of the vaccines,’ Bridle said. With Covid, the rollout was a big mistake, he added. ‘We didn’t realise that by vaccinating people we are inadvertently inoculating them with a toxin.’
He said it was now known that ‘the spike protein, on its own, is almost entirely responsible for the damage to the cardiovascular system, if it gets into circulation. Indeed, if you inject the purified spike protein into the blood of research animals, they get all kinds of damage to the cardiovascular system, and it can cross the blood-brain barrier and cause damage to the brain.’
At first glance that might not seem too disconcerting, he said, because the jab was injected into the shoulder muscle. ‘The assumption, up until now, has been that these vaccines behave like all our traditional vaccines: They don’t go anywhere other than the injection site, so they stay in our shoulder. Some of the protein will go to the local draining lymph node in order to activate the immune system.’
But for the first time, the biodistribution study had allowed scientists to see where the mRNA goes after the jab. ‘In other words, is it a safe assumption that it stays in the shoulder muscle? The short answer is, absolutely not.’
Malone says the Cell findings may mean that a genetic device inserted in the Moderna and Pfizer products, aimed at avoiding immediate destruction of the mRNA by the immune system, ‘is working so well that the mRNA is completely evading the normal clearance/degradation pathways.’ Consequently, spike protein levels are even higher after the jab than seen in a person with severe Covid-19 disease.
‘That this has not been published or investigated more demonstrates the gross regulatory dereliction of duty by Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, NIAID VRC (the Vaccine Research Centre of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) and that whole crew … I do not know how to write this more strongly.’
February 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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The Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) has announced that it will not be handing over $1.4 million in donations to the Freedom Convoy, and is planning to surrender the money to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice instead.
Speaking to Canada’s CTV News on Friday, a representative for the top 10 North American financial institution revealed that “TD has asked the court to accept the funds, which were raised through crowdfunding and deposited into personal accounts at TD.” Approximately $1 million is the money raised for the Canadian truckers and not refunded by GoFundMe, and the other $0.4 million is made up of direct donations. The bank said it was applying to entrust the funds with the authorities in the hope that “they may be managed and distributed in accordance with the intentions of the donors, and/or to be returned to the donors who have requested refunds but whose entitlement to a refund cannot be determined by TD.”
Freedom Convoy lawyer Keith Wilson is vowing to put up a legal fight to “have the restrictions on the donated funds lifted as soon as possible.”
This is not the first time the Freedom Convoy has had its donations frozen, with GoFundMe announcing earlier this month that it would not hand over $9 million out of the $10 million raised for the movement. As justification for the move, the crowdfunding platform cited Canadian police reports of “violence and other unlawful activity” by the protesters. GoFundMe was initially planning to send the money to charities instead, but then decided to refund the donations.
The truckers switched to Christian fundraising platform GiveSendGo shortly afterwards. However, the Ontario Superior Court announced on Thursday that it would be freezing funds coming from GiveSendGo accounts. The court sided with Ontario’s attorney general, who claimed the money would be used to further a criminal act.
GiveSendGo responded by saying the Canadian court’s order does not apply to it, with money still being raised for the protesters.
With donations to the movement being seized on multiple occasions, the truckers are now turning to cryptocurrencies. According to a video posted by the truckers on Facebook, by Friday, they had already raised $913,000 in Bitcoin. The Ottawa police are apparently aware of the new fundraising strategy, mentioning it in documents filed in an Ontario court. The Canadian authorities are, however, yet to outline any steps to counter the move.
Freedom Convoy activists have been protesting in downtown Ottawa since January 29, as well as blocking a number of border crossings to the US. Their main complaint regards Covid vaccine mandates for truckers who cross the border – though their demands have expanded to include calls to ditch all Covid restrictions and for Justin Trudeau’s government to resign.
On Friday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency in the province, urging the protesters to “end these occupations and go home.”
February 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine |
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A US Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine has been detected and chased away in Russian territorial waters off the Kuril Islands, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday.
The vessel was found submerged off the small uninhabited island of Urup while Russia’s Pacific Fleet was holding exercises in the area. Russian vessels contacted the submarine, warning it was in the country’s territorial waters and ordering it to surface immediately, the military said.
The submarine, however, did not respond to the messages, and destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov was deployed to chase it off. The Russian vessel used “appropriate means” against the US sub, the military noted without providing any further details.
Following the run-in with the destroyer, the Virginia-class submarine used an active radar decoy, sailing away from Russian waters at full speed.
The Pacific Fleet’s drills continued as scheduled after the incident, the military added.
Shortly after the incident, the Russian Defense Ministry said it has summoned a US military attaché to explain the incursion. Moscow added that the actions of the submarine constitute a major violation of international law, and create a threat to Russia’s national security. The military said it reserves the right to take any security measures in its own territorial waters.
It was not immediately clear what exact vessel was involved in the incident, with no official statement produced by the Pentagon on the incursion so far. The US has 19 active duty Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines. The vessels are armed with cruise and anti-ship missiles, as well as massive Mark 48 torpedoes.
February 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Russia, United States |
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The two takeaways out of the French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Moscow and his six-hour long talks with President Vladimir Putin have been the assurance held out by the latter that Russian forces would not ramp up the crisis near Ukraine’s borders — “there would be no deterioration or escalation” — and second, an agreement that Russia would pull troops out of Belarus at the end of exercises taking place currently near Ukraine’s northern borders.
The very fact of the French side putting such sensitive details in the public domain suggests that Moscow sees nothing wrong in it. Moscow has simply clarified that the redeployment of troops out of Belarus is not to be construed as any “deal” with France.
The paradox is, instead of working on these crucial assurances from Moscow, Washington has since chosen to travel in the opposite direction with the White House orchestrating a war hysteria through last week. President Biden and his advisor Jake Sullivan have conjured up an apocalyptic scenario.
The White House claims it has intelligence but dodges details. All we have are some satellite imagery from Max (which works for US intelligence). The patchy details have led to Biden speculating about a world war!
Meanwhile, the Biden Administration is creating diplomatic synergy out of the war hysteria. On Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an audacious bid to hustle the US’ QUAD partners to endorse Washington’s allegations of Russia’s “aggression” — although the group has nothing to do with European security issues.
Again on Friday, Biden with a stroke of his pen effectively commandeered the foreign reserves of Afghanistan to the tune of 7 billion-plus dollars. According to the New York Times, “It is highly unusual for the United States government to commandeer a foreign country’s assets on domestic soil.”
But Biden is getting away with such high-handed behaviour that might be deemed illegal or immoral or cynical when the Beltway is caught up in a frenzy over an incoming war with Russia! To be sure, all through Friday, the White House strove to keep the headlines on “Russian aggression.” Biden held a videoconference with the European allies while Sullivan networked with the EU bureaucrats in Brussels to coordinate on “preparations to impose massive consequences and severe economic costs on Russia should it choose military escalation.”
Sullivan also gave a press briefing at the White House to highlight that “we are in the window when an invasion [by Russia] could begin at any time should Vladimir Putin decide to order it. I will not comment on the details of our intelligence information. But I do want to be clear: It could begin during the Olympics.”
So, that’s it. Sullivan’s latest version is that Russia may invade Ukraine before Feb. 20. The timeline has been tweaked, as the prognosis a week ago was that such an invasion was “imminent” — and still earlier, that it would happen no sooner than deep frost set in so that tank manoeuvring on Ukrainian terrain would become feasible!
Yet, isn’t it amazing that at such a tumultuous time in modern history when Biden visualises a potential world war, he sent away his state secretary on a 6-day tour of Asia-Pacific? In fact, at the moment, Blinken is shuttling somewhere in the tropics — between Suva (Fiji) and Honolulu (Hawaii)!
What do we make out of this charade of war hysteria? Three things can be said. First, the US feels a constant need to rally European allies who are sceptical about the Russia bogey, and the war hysteria helps. Second, Washington is overtly keen to sever Russia’s relations with European countries where energy cooperation is a template — especially, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
Three, most important, the war hysteria provides the alibi to step up US deployments in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. The size of the NATO deployment on Russia’s western borders already stands at 175,000 troops! Advanced weapons have been deployed too. (Eight nuclear-capable heavy B-52 members are deployed to a forward base in the UK.) Over and above, US has established an air bridge to ferry weapons to Ukraine. As of Friday, more than 15 military flights landed in Ukraine with 1200 tonnes of materials.
Quite obviously, this war hysteria cannot be sustained indefinitely. Something has to give way. Now, the big question is: What if Russia doesn’t invade Ukraine, as Putin reportedly assured Macron as recently as Monday?
Evidently, the US predicament is two-fold: While war hysteria helps to rally the European allies, Washington also cannot afford to let the Europeans dominate the dialogue track with Moscow lest it create a dynamics of its own. Washington has a trust deficit with Macron who is a passionate advocate of European initiatives on European security issues.
Macron is on record that Europe’s security cannot be assured without Russia’s security! Equally, there is panic in the Beltway that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is also heading for Moscow on Tuesday. And, Macron is expected to have a call with Putin today! Curiously, Biden decided that he too should have a call with Putin later today!
Above all, the UK too has entered the diplomatic fray. All indications are that Defence Secretary Ben Wallace’s talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on Friday were substantive. (Interestingly, the UK Chief of Staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin who accompanied Wallace separately met with his Russian counterpart General Valery Gerasimov.)
Wallace described his talks as “frank and constructive.” The MOD readout in London was couched in a restrained tone as if UK is impervious to Biden and Sullivan’s war hysteria. Importantly, it highlighted Shoigu’s assurance to Wallace that Russia will not invade Ukraine.
Notably, the Russian readout too sought to put the accent on “urgent measures to ensure security guarantees” to Russia. It said, “Army General S. K. Shoigu pointed out that the military and political situation in Europe had worsened considerably due to tension whipped up around Ukraine and NATO’s military presence near the Russian borders.”
How far this pantomime on the diplomatic stage continues is unclear. There is the lurking danger that extreme nationalist forces who call the shots in Kiev, egged on by Washington, may feel emboldened to create new facts on the ground in Donbass. This was precisely how the Georgian war had erupted in 2008.
Indeed, a new level of criticality has appeared lately in Donbass with large scale mobilisation by Ukrainian forces and reports of western mercenaries in the guise of military advisors. The US intentions remain unclear.
A conflict in Donbass will put the Kremlin in dilemma. If Russia intervenes in Donbass to keep at bay the rampaging radical Ukrainian nationalist forces, Washington will certainly use it as alibi to impose harsh sanctions to isolate Russia and severely damage Moscow’s ties with European countries.
On the contrary, Russia will have no option but to intervene, as hundreds of thousands of Russian passport holders live in Donbass. (Some put the figure around 700,000.) The radical neo-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists are known to be notoriously anti-Russian and all sorts of atrocities — even genocide — may take place.
The likelihood of conflict erupting in Donbass remains high. Biden may get a splendid opportunity to salvage his reputation after the debacle in Afghanistan. He has an eye, for sure, on the mid-term elections in November and the bipartisan consensus supportive of a tough line on “Putin’s Russia” also helps.
Fundamentally, the US has no intentions of giving Russia the security guarantee it needs. For, NATO’s eastward expansion and encirclement of Russia happens to be Washington’s core agenda. And, since 2014, that agenda has been so far advanced that there is no turning point now. It must be carried forward to its logical conclusion.
The Washington elites realise that the US lacks the capability to take on China and Russia simultaneously. A paradigm shift is needed. In the US calculus, forcing Putin to abdicate after a humiliating retreat over Ukraine and a severe weakening of Russian military power only can bring about the strategic rollback of Russia’s resurgence and its alliance with China.
It is, therefore, an imperative first step on the pathway to an eventual epochal confrontation with China, which poses a formidable challenge to America’s global hegemony in the 21st century.
February 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | NATO, Ukraine, United States |
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ADDING vaccines to countries’ immunisation schedules is meant to be the function of expert advisory groups. It can also be influenced by lobbying, sponsored by industry, to create the perception of a public demand for increased access to certain vaccines.
Indeed, many of governments’ senior medical and scientific advisers have close links with, or interests in, pharmaceutical companies and the crossovers are multiple.
Take a closer look for instance at the Supporting Active Aging Through Immunisation (SAATI) partnership. It was founded in 2011, as the so-called Decade of the Vaccine began, at the instigation of the Confederation of Meningitis Organisations (CoMo).
In 2013, SAATI entered into a collaboration agreement via a memorandum of understanding with Vaccines Europe. This organisation was previously known as European Vaccine Manufacturers, the vaccines specialist group within the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Association.
A 2014 SAATI report calling for more adult immunisation was prepared by Hill and Knowlton, the international PR agency and funded by Pfizer.
Professor Dr Javier Garau, chair of SAATI, said: ‘As we get older, the immune system weakens, increasing our risk of contracting infectious diseases. Furthermore, acquired immunity to certain infections (tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria) declines with age; due to this, vaccination and revaccination are a particularly relevant prevention strategy for adults.
‘We are determined to engage with all relevant stakeholders to make life-course immunisation the norm as part of healthy ageing, public health or prevention strategies.’
The acquired immunity Garau speaks of comes from vaccines and the decline in protection over time is called secondary vaccine failure. Vaccines do not confer lifelong immunity. As the protection conferred fades, more vaccination is required.
CoMo was created in 1994 and receives funding by Pfizer, Sanofi and GSK. One American charity affiliated to it, the Emily’s Dash Foundation, successfully lobbied the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to lower the age at which children could be given a meningitis vaccine.
CoMo receives additional financial support from the Coalition for Life-Course Immunisation (CLCI)whose individual sponsors include MSD, Sanofi-Pasteur and Vaccines-Europe and whose members are Moderna, Sanofi-Pasteur, MSD, Novavax, Pfizer, Seqirus, Takeda and VBI Vaccines.
Seqirus is under contract with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a US government agency, to develop next-generation self-amplifying mRNA vaccines for influenza. It is also developing new Covid-19 vaccines using technology that purports to have fewer side-effects than first generation mRNA gene therapy vaccines.
The World Bank has now ‘financialised’ epidemics and pandemics through bond issues, making them a vehicle for profit that entrenches their permanency. Vaccine bonds were introduced in 2011 to finance GAVI. In 2017, before we’d even heard of Covid-19, a pandemic bond and a finance facility had been introduced. In May 2021, 750million dollars in Covid-19 vaccine bonds underwritten by the Rockefeller-linked JP Morgan Bank were released.
‘No one in the world is safe from the threat of Covid-19 until everyone is safe,’ said Seth Berkley, chief executive of the GAVI Alliance. ‘And this transaction will help us supply lower-income countries with the vaccine doses they need to roll back the pandemic in its most acute phase.
‘Proceeds from the bonds will also strengthen GAVI’s continuing support for its core vaccine programmes to ensure that routine immunisation does not fall behind and hard-earned gains against vaccine-preventable disease are not lost.’
All but the very poorest countries are expected to take on additional debt burden to purchase and distribute the vaccines. By June 2021, reluctant to do so, developing countries had only availed themselves of 3.9billion dollars of the 100billion dollars the World Bank had set aside to finance Covid vaccines.
It is hard to see Covid-19 vaccines as anything other than a cash cow for the industry. In February 2021, two months after the UK’s watchdog Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issued a temporary use authorisation for Pfizer’s vaccine, the firm’s chief financial officer, Frank D’Amelio, told investors the profit margin for the vaccine was in the upper 20 per cents.
That was based on what he called ‘pandemic pricing’ – charging 19.50 dollars per dose compared with a normal price of up to 175 dollars. He added that the percentage could go higher depending on economies of scale.
Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla said ‘a durable Covid-19 vaccine revenue stream like is happening in flu’ was likely for the firm, because booster shots would be needed and emerging variant strains would have to be countered.
The Covid vaccines, smashing conventional wisdom, were cleared for use in what were meant to be exceptional circumstances. Bourla said: ‘I believe the Covid thing has created a new normal.’
Even at discounted ‘pandemic pricing’ levels, the financial bonanza for the firm was astronomical. In November 2021, Pfizer executives told institutional investors the 39billion dollars in revenues from its Covid-19 vaccine accounted for 44 per cent of its record 88billion dollars total revenue for the year.
In the euphoria following the granting of emergency use authorisations for the Covid vaccines and the huge profits, many new vaccines are being planned and industry expectations have been raised.
As I mentioned in Part 1 of this investigation, the international health policy expert William Muraskin warned in 2017 that ‘an all-out war on microbes is being planned right now by eradication proponents who intend to prevail regardless of developing-country governments’ or their peoples’ choices.’
Like the ‘war or terror’, it was an open-ended concept, ambiguous and useful to justify a range of actions.
Muraskin argues that vaccination has been prioritised at the expense of, and to the detriment of, the already limited resources of the health systems of developing countries.
Covid-19 has now hijacked the resources of the industrialised world’s health systems and undermined their economies in an unprecedented way. Israel has just authorised its fourth booster in a year, even as the toll of adverse events and deaths mounts in their wake. It is now evident that the revenue stream is for the time being more ‘durable’ than any protection derived from the vaccines.
The public health agenda was long ago seized by private interests. The campaign to eradicate Covid-19 and other diseases through vaccination reflects the biases of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance partners, and more especially those of its founders.
The rationale may be questionable, but the approach is certainly lucrative. Eradication appears a fools’ game, but one in which we will all be forced to participate if vaccination passports become a permanent mechanism for accessing our everyday lives.
As of 2013, a pipeline of 120 new vaccines was in development and only half were directed at tropical diseases afflicting developing countries. There are more now.
How many of these are destined to be added to national immunisation schedules and indiscriminately used? How many might become mandatory? Society needs a wider debate on the merits of the war on microbes before it sweeps us all away.
February 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, GAVI |
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released new data showing a total of 1,103,893 reports of adverse events following COVID vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Feb. 4, 2022, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.
The data included a total of 23,615 reports of deaths — an increase of 466 over the previous week — and 188,135 reports of serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 4,824 compared with the previous week.
Excluding “foreign reports” to VAERS, 753,482 adverse events, including 10,747 deaths and 70,746 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and Feb. 4, 2022.
Foreign reports are reports foreign subsidiaries send to U.S. vaccine manufacturers. Under U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, if a manufacturer is notified of a foreign case report that describes an event that is both serious and does not appear on the product’s labeling, the manufacturer is required to submit the report to VAERS.
Of the 10,747 U.S. deaths reported as of Feb. 4, 18% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 23% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 60% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.
In the U.S., 541.5 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of Feb. 4, including 318 million doses of Pfizer, 205 million doses of Moderna and 18 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).
Every Friday, VAERS publishes vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Feb. 4, 2022, for 5- to 11-year-olds show:
The most recent death involves a 7-year-old girl (VAERS I.D. 1975356) from Minnesota who died 11 days after receiving her first dose of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine when she was found unresponsive by her mother. An autopsy is pending.
- 16 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation).
- 29 reports of blood clotting disorders.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Feb. 4, 2022, for 12- to 17-year-olds show:
The most recent deaths involve a 13-year-old male (VAERS I.D. 2042005) from an unidentified state who died from a sudden heart attack seven months after receiving his second dose of Moderna, and a 17-year-old female from an unidentified state (VAERS I.D. 2039111) who died after receiving her first dose of Moderna. Medical information was limited and it is unknown if an autopsy was performed in either case.
- 68 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death — with 96% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
- 629 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis with 617 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
- 155 reports of blood clotting disorders, with all cases attributed to Pfizer.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Feb. 4, 2022, for all age groups combined, show:
- 19% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
- 54% of those who died were male, 41% were female and the remaining death reports did not include the gender of the deceased.
- The average age of death was 72.6.
- As of Feb. 4, 5,038 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 1,615 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.
- Of the 3,531 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported, 51% were attributed to Pfizer vaccinations, 40% to Moderna and 8% to J&J.
- 858 reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), with 40% of cases attributed to Pfizer, 30% to Moderna and 28% to J&J.
- 2,316 reports of anaphylaxis where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death.
- 1,576 reports of myocardial infarction.
- 12,981 reports of blood clotting disorders in the U.S. Of those, 5,780 reports were attributed to Pfizer, 4,627 reports to Moderna and 2,527 reports to J&J.
- 3,950 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis with 2,427 cases attributed to Pfizer, 1,343 cases to Moderna and 169 cases to J&J’s COVID vaccine.
Pfizer and BioNTech delay request to authorize vaccine for children under 5
Pfizer and BioNTech announced today they are delaying their request to the FDA to authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine for children under five years old, citing not enough data on the efficacy of a third dose.
The FDA said its advisory panel meeting scheduled for next week will be postponed. Pfizer was originally expected to publish an analysis of its data today.
Pfizer said it will wait for its data on a three-dose series of the vaccine — expected in April — because it believes three doses “may provide a higher level of protection in this age group.”
Pfizer said in December 2021 that two doses of its Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine failed to generate a strong immune response during its clinical trial of children ages 2 to 4.
For children aged 6 months to 5, Pfizer’s vaccine has a dosage of 3 micrograms. For children ages 5 to 11, the dosage is 10 micrograms.
Despite the results of its trial, the company asked the FDA this month to authorize these first two doses, with a plan to submit additional data in the coming weeks on a third dose, NBC reported.
As The Defender reported Wednesday, some experts speculate the push to expand the authorization to the younger age group would lay the groundwork for subsequently folding COVID shots into the childhood vaccine schedule — thereby ensuring “liability protection forever.”
6-year-old gets myocarditis, can’t walk, after receiving COVID vaccine
Milo Edberg, 6, has been intubated and hospitalized since receiving his COVID vaccine on Dec. 10, Alpha News reported.
Edberg’s mother, Carrie, said her son was at M Health Fairview’s Masonic Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota for a minor procedure when a doctor recommended he receive the COVID vaccine.
Carrie said she followed the advice of her doctor, who told her the vaccine was “safe and harmless.”
“I went against my gut and said OK, do it,” she said.
Carrie said the evening after receiving the shot, her son was gasping for air. She dialed 911. Edberg was transported back to the hospital, was intubated and diagnosed with myocarditis.
He was “perfectly fine and then he wasn’t,” Carrie said. He was “eating on his own [but] now he can’t even swallow his saliva.”
Doctors have no answers and cannot explain her son’s affliction, Carrie said. They haven’t even been able to provide a timeline for when her son might return home or whether he will regain any quality of life — and they “won’t bring up the vaccine” when discussing Edberg’s situation.
Carrie filed a VAERS report in January and said her son received a 10-15 minute visit from an infectious disease specialist who said they would file a report with the CDC and and Pfizer early in his hospital stay. She has heard nothing since.
The CDC maintains most cases of myocarditis after COVID vaccines are “mild” and patients recover quickly.
Not all doctors agree. As Dr. Steven Pelech of the University of British Columbia explained last August:
“Contrary to what a number of people have said, there is no such thing as ‘mild myocarditis.’ It’s the destruction of the myocytes, the heart cells that contract. When those cells die, they are not replaced in your body and are instead replaced by scar-tissue, which is from fibroblasts — skin cells which don’t have contractile activity …Every time you get an inflammatory response, you lose more of that contractility and have a greater chance of heart attack and other problems later in life.”
A New Zealand writer observed that “mild” clinical manifestations in the present are meaningless for interpreting longer-term risks.
Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans with gadolinium contrast — capable of showing “damaged heart areas undetectable by any other means” — studies of children and adolescents who developed myocarditis following COVID vaccination revealed, in the vast majority, a “potentially poor prognosis despite the heart seeming to have returned to normal.”
Kansas woman died from allergic reaction to Moderna’s COVID vaccine
Jeanie Evans, 68, of Effingham, Kansas, died of “anaphylaxis due to COVID-19 vaccination,” according to her autopsy report acquired by the Topeka Capital-Journal.
Evans died March 24, 2021, one day after her first dose of Moderna’s vaccine.
According to the autopsy report, Evans said her airway felt blocked about 15 to 20 minutes after she received her first dose on March 23, 2021. She was taken by ground ambulance at 5:21 p.m. to Stormont-Vail hospital, where she died at 11:55 a.m. the next day.
Evans had a medical history of hypertension, environmental allergies, allergic disorders and reactive airway disease. She previously experienced an anaphylactic reaction to the drug Albuterol, the report said.
Colt Umphenour, one of Evans’ sons, said the family plans to file a lawsuit.
Denmark officials see no reason to continue COVID vaccine program
Health authorities in Denmark announced Friday they are considering “winding down the entire general vaccination program later in the spring.”
According to the Associated Press, officials see no reason to administer a booster dose to children or a fourth shot to residents at risk of severe COVID.
The Danish Health Authority said in a statement the third wave of COVID was waning “due to the large population immunity,” and the country can cope with increasing infection without getting serious illness.
The agency said it would continue to follow the epidemic closely should there be a fourth spring wave or new worrying variants.
Denmark ended most of its pandemic restrictions earlier this month after officials said they no longer considered COVID “a socially critical disease.”
Children’s Health Defense asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.
Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
February 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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[Note: This essay is abstracted from my eBook Myths: Widely Held But False Beliefs In The Climate Change Crisis, available on Amazon]
In their Fifth Assessment Report the IPCC, the ‘internationally accepted scientific authority on climate change’, gave their opinion of how much of the recent global warming was caused by human activity: ‘It is extremely likely [95-100 percent confidence] more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic [i.e. man-made] increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together’. Reflecting that opinion Wikipedia states that the ‘Scientific consensus on climate change’ is that ‘the Earth is warming and… this warming is mainly caused by human activities’. It claims that 97-100% of actively publishing climate scientists endorse this opinion. Similarly, NASA claim that, ‘A consensus on climate change and its human cause exists… human activities are the primary cause of the observed climate-warming trend over the past century.’ And in an October 2020 interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes climatologist Dr Michael Mann said, ‘There’s about as much scientific consensus about human-caused climate change as there is about gravity.’ So is it actually true that 97-100% of climate scientists explicitly or implicitly endorse this key IPCC opinion?
Although science is not remotely democratic (it only needs one scientist to prove that the ‘consensus view’ is wrong and it is wrong) the fact remains that if this 97-100% consensus assertion is true then it is indeed very powerful. If the ‘internationally accepted scientific authority on climate change’ says something is almost certainly true and almost all climate scientists in the world agree then it almost certainly must be true – mustn’t it? Whilst there is undoubtedly almost total scientific consensus amongst the scientific authorities (literally dozens of scientific academies from around the world explicitly or implicitly endorse the IPCC’s opinions) that does not necessarily reflect the consensus view amongst climate scientists themselves. So what exactly is it that climate scientists agree on?
The consensus argument is epitomized by Barack Obama’s 2013 tweet that, ‘Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made and dangerous’. He tweeted this immediately after the publication of the most famous climate change consensus survey, Quantifying the consensus on man-made global warming in the scientific literature (John Cook et al, 2013) conducted by Skeptical Science, a small group of climate change activists, who, despite their name, are precisely the opposite of climate change skeptics (their strapline is ‘Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism’). This study examined the Abstracts from 11,944 climate science papers published over the twenty-year period from 1991 to 2011. It concluded that 97.1% of the Abstracts (that actually expressed an opinion on the causes of global warming) endorsed the view that man-made greenhouse gas emissions (or, at least, greenhouse gases) cause global warming. Although this was 97% of Abstracts, not 97% of climate scientists, it is not unreasonable to suppose that, based on this survey, about 97% of climate scientists endorse the view that man-made greenhouse gas emissions (or, at least, greenhouse gases) cause global warming. It said nothing whatsoever about how much warming those emissions were causing and whether or not such warming was ‘dangerous’. It is probably the case that at least 99.9% of people who might describe themselves as climate scientists (including those most skeptical about the climate change crisis idea) endorse the view that man-made greenhouse gas emissions (or, at least, greenhouse gases) cause global warming, i.e. some global warming. That is not in any serious dispute. The dispute is about how much global warming human activity is causing and whether or not it is ‘dangerous’. So the study revealed nothing that was not already well known and uncontroversial.
Skeptical Science summarized their findings with the statement, ‘97% of climate papers expressing a position on human-caused global warming agree: global warming is happening and we are the cause’ – where ‘we are the cause’ clearly implied ‘we are the sole cause’ instead of what it actually found, viz. that we are the cause of some of the global warming. If the study had been able to show convincingly that 97% of climate scientists endorsed the IPCC’s opinion that human activity was the predominant cause of global warming between 1951 and 2010 then that would certainly have strongly supported the view that there was almost total scientific consensus that the IPCC was right. But of all the Abstracts reviewed in this study only 0.3% explicitly endorsed that central IPCC opinion1. Even (ex-IPCC) Mike Hulme has noted that, ‘The Cook et al study is hopelessly confused… in one place the paper claims to be exploring “the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW [Global Warming]” and yet the headline conclusion is based on rating abstracts according to whether “humans are causing global warming”. These are two entirely different judgements.’ The recently published paper Greater than 99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature (Lynas et al, 2021) claims that the consensus is actually 2% higher – but once again only actually finds a 99% consensus that human activity contributes to climate change to some extent2; in fact about 99% of the papers reviewed in this study failed to explicitly quantify the extent. A survey3 of more than 1,800 climate scientists conducted in 2015 concluded that just 43% of them would endorse the IPCC opinion about our recent predominant role in global warming (and how many of them were agreeing based primarily on their faith in the IPCC and/or their self-interest in staying ‘on message’ to the climate change crisis narrative?)
Mike Hulme has stated that, ‘Claims such as “2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate” are disingenuous. That particular consensus judgement, as are many others in the IPCC reports, is reached by only a few dozen experts.’ Supporting that view, an independent study4 found that the views expressed by the IPCC were the consensus of a leadership cadre of just 53 (about 2%) of them, 44 of whom were very closely linked professionally, having co-authored papers with one another and so very likely to share the same opinions. The author of the study, John McLean (climate data analyst at the Australian Climate Science Coalition and an Expert Reviewer for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report), concluded that ‘Governments have naively and unwisely accepted the claims of a human influence on global temperatures made by a close-knit clique of a few dozen scientists, many of them climate modellers, as if they were representative of the opinion of the wider scientific community.’
One of the most comprehensive reviews5 ever performed of surveys of the scientific consensus on climate change concluded:
- The articles and surveys most commonly cited as showing support for a ‘scientific consensus’ in favor of the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis are without exception methodologically flawed and often deliberately misleading.
- There is no survey or study showing ‘consensus’ on the most important scientific issues in the climate change debate.
- Extensive survey data show deep disagreement among scientists on scientific issues that must be resolved before the man-made global warming hypothesis can be validated. Many prominent experts and probably most working scientists disagree with the claims made by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
So what is the real scientific consensus on climate change? There is almost total scientific consensus that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing, that that increase is predominantly due to human activity, that the climate system is warming, that climate change is happening and that human activity has contributed to some extent to the warming, changing climate. Note again that skeptical scientists, like Dr Roy Spencer and Dr Judith Curry and Dr Richard Lindzen, are part of this ‘scientific consensus on climate change’; the idea that they constitute the 3% of scientists who do not support the scientific consensus on climate change is a false idea, misrepresenting what the ‘scientific consensus on climate change’ actually is6. This misrepresentation is designed to bolster the ‘climate change crisis’ narrative and to marginalize and neutralize the skeptical scientists by making their views appear to fall far outside the overwhelming consensus view, even though they actually share that consensus view. Basically, the ‘consensus’ breaks down over the issue of whether or not human activity has been predominantly responsible for recent warming – and whether or not that warming is ‘dangerous’. The power of the false ‘97% scientific consensus that human activity has been predominantly responsible for climate change’ meme, perpetuated by Wikipedia, NASA, Facebook (and many others) is that it can be used very effectively to strangle at birth any debate about the science. As Dr Richard Lindzen has put it, ‘The claim is meant to satisfy the non-expert that he or she has no need to understand the science. Mere agreement with the 97 percent will indicate that one is a supporter of science and superior to anyone denying disaster. This actually satisfies a psychological need for many people.’
So if we return to Dr Michael Mann’s statement that, ‘There’s about as much scientific consensus about human-caused climate change as there is about gravity’ this is very disingenuous. Whilst there is almost total scientific consensus that climate change is ‘real’ and happening and that there has been some human-caused influence, there is no such scientific consensus over the extent of the human-caused influence and whether or not it could reasonably be described as ‘dangerous’, let alone a ‘crisis’.
References
1 Legates et al. (2015), Science & Education and ‘Consensus? What Consensus?’, GWPF Note 5, thegwpf.org, September 2013 and ‘Richard Tol’s Excellent Summary of the Flaws in Cook et al. (2013) and ‘The Infamous 97% Consensus Paper’, wattsupwiththat.com, 26 March 2015 and ‘The Cook ‘97% consensus’ paper, exposed by new book for the fraud that it really is’, wattsupwiththat.com, 12 March 2016
2 ‘Cooked Up Consensus: Lynas et al “Should Rather Be Classified As Propaganda, Bad Science”’, wattsupwiththat.com, 26 October 2021
3 Bart Strengers, Bart Verheggen and Kees Vringer (2015), Climate Science Survey, Questions and Responses, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, pp 1 – 39
4 ‘Prejudiced authors, prejudiced findings’, John McLean, (Science and Public Policy Institute), July 2008
5 Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming (2015) – Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, S. Fred Singer
6 ‘Study: 3% Contrarians Derailing the 97% Climate Consensus’, wattsupwiththat.com, 18 December 2021
February 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Facebook, IPCC, NASA, Obama, Wikipedia |
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It shouldn’t be needed, but it is. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has introduced a patient protection bill, so that ‘if you’re in a hospital or long-term care facility, you have a right to have your loved ones there present with you.’ Every other state and country will hopefully follow. Some places have even prevented the dying from dying in the company and warmth of loved ones.
Reacting to the Governors bill, Brownstone scholar Dr. Jay Bhattacharya tweeted:
“Perhaps the cruelest lockdown policy: preventing people from visiting their sick loved ones in hospitals or long-term care facilities”
Many people commented on that post. The stories came pouring in. Among the many, here are some:
“No perhaps about it… it was heartless, ineffective and cruel. I lost my mother during this; I am not sure I can ever forgive the hospital policy makers for this.” – Danny Peoples, USA (@Danny99634068)
“We were allowed to see my mom for 5 minutes the day of her death. 2 by 2, though. We couldn’t be with her all together as a family. The 9 weeks prior she suffered alone in ICU surrounded by people in space suits. No visitors. She never had Covid. She died with no dignity.” – ClownBasket (@ClownBasket)
“My grandma passed away in May 2020. The last time the family saw her was outside the window at her assisted living facility, unable to actually speak due to her difficulty hearing.” – Analytical Badger, Wisconsin (@BadgerStats)
“My mom got kicked out of the hospital by security (in FL, only 6 months ago) trying to visit my dad on Day 3 of his hospital stay. They assured her they were taking care of him. He passed from a heart attack 2 days later. The lack of allowing for patient advocacy is sickening.” – Psyche’s Dagger (@PsychesDagger)
“My grandma didn’t deserve her last ten months of isolation.” – Mark Changizi (@MarkChangizi)
“I’ll never be over my blind father having to advocate for himself alone in a hospital for 3 1/2 weeks. Never. I have his messages of pure fear.” – Jennifer Hotes, Seattle, WA (@JenniferLHotes)
“I was in hospital, heart attack in BC a year ago. Scariest moment in my life, [they] wouldn’t let my wife visit me.” – hear.the.truth.now, Penticton, BC, Canada (@MandelbrotG)
“How I wished Mass General Hospital would have done things differently. An old woman wanted her husband to accompany her upstairs for a doctor appointment, but MGH wouldn’t allow it. She was nervous and terrified. I will never forget what they did to people.” – Fibci, MA (@Fibci2)
“No fan of DeSantis but currently some hospitals in CA prohibit someone from seeing their depressed spouse, family members from coming in to help a mildly delirious loved one, kids from seeing their parents unless they’re gravely ill. Even if family’s vaxed x3… It’s not right.” – James Lim, MD, Southern California (@JLimHospMD)
“Agreed. My dad walked into a hospital last year and came out on hospice because my mom was not allowed to see him.” – Tia Ghose, San Fransisco, CA (@tiaghose)
“My wife’s abuelo was taken out of his Bogota apartment by men in hazmat suits, not allowed to say goodbye to his wife of 50 years, died alone in hospital, funeral in a parking lot. When abuela got covid they didn’t call the hospital. She stayed home. Everyone got to say goodbye.” – Team Sweden (@SwedenTeam)
“In New York, my 84-year-old mother had sepsis. We had to literally drop her off at the door. She was unable to advocate for herself and we were not able to speak with her for days. It was incredibly hard to reach her doctor or a nurse. It was an unmitigated disaster.” – thedatadon, Florida (@thedatadonald)
“Our good friend was only 44 and had no idea he had stage 4 colorectal, liver, lung, and lymphatic cancer. He fought as long as he could but none of us were ever able to see him in his final days in the hospital. Final months really. One visitor per day. Today is his birthday.” – Dave (@Dave31952257)
“My vaccinated Dad wasn’t able to go see his vaccinated Mom (my Grandma) last Mother’s Day because of a ban on “non-essential” travel between Quebec and Ontario. She died 2 days before the ban was lifted. Her brother was killed by Nazis. Lest we forget.” – Adam Millward Art, Montréal, Canada (@nexusvisions)
“My aunt died in an empty hospital in Amarillo from breast cancer in late 2020. She was so scared of the virus she didn’t go to the doctor until her breast literally started to atrophy and she collapsed. No visitors. I had to help her son sneak in to see her and we were kicked out.” – razumikhin (@cw_cnnr)
“I’m afraid to let my family members [be admitted] to the hospital. Not afraid of covid at all, we’ve all had it, but worried about having family isolated and no one to advocate for them.” – Donna H, Pleasant Grove, Utah (@Donna_H67)
“My dad was in assisted living, in good health except unsteady on his feet. When prolonged Covid restrictions prevented any of us, his family, from visiting, and kept him confined to his room even for meals, he told an aide ‘This is no way to live’. 10 days later he went to Heaven.” – Tray Shelley, (@tlsintexas)
“Yesterday my husband’s cousins were not allowed in the hospital where their mother was dying (non-covid related). It was unexpected and it is obscene that they were unable to say goodbye. They needed it and she needed it.” – Yada yada yada (@3girlsmommd)
“This brings me to tears because I worked in a nursing home through the pandemic, and it broke my heart that dying patients couldn’t have their families with them! We had to be their family, but it was tragic!” – Jean Walker (@JeanWal33859349)
“The people who will remember the (fear) pandemic response the most are not people who got sick and recovered, but rather people barred from seeing their loved ones who died while hospitalized.” – Dr. NotWoke Setty, Tampa, FL (@hsettymd)
“I had to fight the VA, hospital administrators and threaten to sue to bring my father home. He passed quietly with my Mom next to him, surrounded by family. It breaks my heart that our most precious population has been treated so cruelly.” – Sherry (@sherryande)
“My father had pancreatic cancer. We were forced to leave his bedside due to the lockdown he was alone his final days the hospital called in his final moments but when we got there he was gone. He died alone. Tomorrow is his birthday.” – foodforlife123456 (@foodforlife1231)
“In December 2020, my wife took a prayer blanket to the hospital that she had made for her mother in the hospital. No one in the hospital would come to take it to her room. She died the next day which was Christmas morning while our girls were opening presents.” – Postman, Texas (@postman2421)
“I couldn’t visit my Dad in the hospital for 2 weeks before he died. I was “allowed” to see him the day he died but it was too late.” – Gary (@gmangehl)
“I work with dementia residents. For a year and a half these residents couldn’t communicate with their families because they weren’t capable of phone calls or window visits. That is a long time for someone with dementia. They deteriorate further or pass in that time. So inhumane.” – paige (@pgs300)
“My mom passed away in April of 2020 at a retirement home. She was 102, in surprisingly good health, but declined immediately following the lockdown. The facility did break rules to allow family in to be with her over her last week or so. There was no opportunity for a funeral.” – Prickly Mystic (@MysticPrickly)
“My grandma has been dying in hospital for about a week with us waiting in the lot begging to visit for five minutes. No. I think she’s simply losing the will to live. Genuinely wonder how many excess deaths are deaths of despair and loneliness.” – goldnecklace (@goldnecklace2)
“In 2020 Melbourne my mother was in residential care. Our first lockdown took her mind. When I saw her after this, she didn’t know who I was. We were then locked down for a second time. This second lockdown took her life. Cruel and unnecessary.” – HegelOrHegel (@HegelorHegel)
“I have seen this firsthand in the nursing facilities I go to. So many of my patients died from sheer loneliness. It has been incredibly hard for me as a behavioral health provider to witness. Kudos to Gov Ron DeSantis for making sure this doesn’t happen in Florida.” – Dr Deepan Chatterjee, Maryland (@DrDeepChat007)
“I live in BC, Canada; my elderly aunt literally starved when her daughters weren’t allowed to see her and help her eat, went from 100 to 71 lbs. and admin kept telling my cousins she was ‘fine’. Finally concerned care aides contacted them to tell them she wasn’t fine.” – Marion Ambler, Vancouver, Canada (@MarionAmbler)
“I brought my Dad who has dementia to see my stepmom in a rehab facility during the lockdowns. Luckily, she had a first-floor room with a window. We stood outside in the POURING rain talking to her. He was so confused and mad that she wouldn’t let him in.” – Kfaria (@Kfaria8)
“I wasn’t able to see my grandma before she died. My dad luckily was, but his brother was not. He stayed in town for weeks hoping they’d let him see her. They said if she went into a critical condition, they’d let us see her. They never did. She died alone.” – Marie (@mariecaun)
“A family member died of cancer during one of the many lockdowns in Canada. No one was allowed to see him. His funeral was only allowed to be 10 people. It’s like their lives didn’t matter. So so sad.” – Fern (@fern_forrest_)
“I worry constantly that my 87-year-old blind mother will need medical treatment and she will be alone. She says she will not go for fear of not coming out. The thought terrifies me, I have many sleepless nights.” – goodnightfromthelowerlevel (@mmmaybe)
“Of everything in my ICU career, what will stick with me most is being in patients’ rooms when they died, alone, while their distraught loved ones watched through an iPad because they weren’t allowed to be in the hospital.” – Trucker Enthusiast (@_Spolar_)
“In Canada I couldn’t visit my grandmother in the hospital, but they allowed skype calls via the hospital iPad. They never charged the iPads. She died and I never got to see her even remotely.” – Vovin, Toronto, Canada (@vovin5)
“My father-in-law died alone with no last rites. We watched on zoom. He was petrified. There were no services. The following week BLM rallies in Boston started and those were totally fine. I was called a racist for being angry.” – Mom Loves Wine, Boston, USA (@Momloveswine1)
“Yep. Was prevented from seeing my Grammy for all of 2020 until her death in 2021. 99 years young. She died alone.” – Concerned Citizen, Encinitas, California (@mercury941)
“Yup. And women giving birth alone. SHAMEFUL.” – Kelley (@kelley14419438)
“Also, not allowing husbands in for important ultrasound visits to be with their wife, where there may be something wrong with the baby.” – ec47c (@ec147c)
“My elderly father had procedure in Florida hospital 2 weeks ago. Frustrated at being alone and not understanding all that was going on, he complained so much they discharged him 48 hours later. At home, next morning, his bed sheets were soaked in blood. He healed. But we had a scare.” – Ewetopian (@Ewetopian)
“My mom is in the hospital (non-covid related) and she’s only allowed 1 named visitor her entire stay. She’s been in for weeks and sobbing and depressed all day. It’s torture and cruel and is protecting no one.” – Free and Loud (@ohiogirl81511)
“Because of these monsters, my grandmother spent almost a year in isolation in her tiny room. She met her two newest great grandchildren through a window and started talking to pictures on the wall. Fortunately, we eventually got her out. Never forgive, never forget.” – Danny Hudson, Nashville, Tennessee (@FinEssentials)
“To all the nurses that snuck people in – you are HEROES.” – Divinely Placed Texan, Hillsborough County, Florida (@Maskingchildbad)
“My friend in Alabama’s dad was in assisted living facility with Parkinson’s. Family barred from seeing him from March-Aug 2020, when they received call saying he was at end of life and that ‘he had declined significantly since his fall in April’ that they had never been told about!” – Here Is Publius, Virginia (@hereispublius)
“I have an elderly extended family member who died of non-Covid reasons – who was not permitted contact with any family member during the last 3 months of her life. Because of the insanity that took over epidemiology.” – Falskerbra (@UnitedAirPR)
“My husband is going in for open heart surgery this week. I’ve had Covid and recovered. I’m being told I won’t be able to see him in the hospital while he’s in recovery. (Illinois) it’s sick and disgusting!” – plain belly sneech (@skjohns1965)
“My grandfather in law was unable to see his daughter, my mother-in-law, before she passed away from cancer. My coworker was unable to visit her daughter in the hospital and didn’t find out she had died until three days after.” – Babs, Massachusetts (@MantiB)
“My mom passed away after a month in a rehab facility after surgery 8 months ago. Only my dad was allowed to see her, only 2 hours/week. Rest of us had to wave to her through the window. She died alone. All of us were fully vaxed.” – A Parent of CPS kids, Chicago, IL (@AcpsParent)
“The nursing home tried to keep me out, but my daughter had the two of us listed as “compassionate caregivers” and they were forced to let us in. Thanks to Gov. DeSantis my mother did not die alone, and I will always, always be grateful.” – Carolyn Tackett, South Shore, Florida, (@CarolsCloset)
“My friend’s dad in Florida had to go check himself into the hospital with internal bleeding. His liver transplant was postponed. His wife crying in the parking lot. Thank God he was released, and he passed in his sleep at home. 10 people at his funeral. June 2020. Never forget.” – OrangeChickenMH (@OrangeChickenMH)
“My grandmother did not have covid. And died after a month of isolation from her family and suspected neglect. Staff too stretched thin and emotionally worn. She died two days before she was set to come home. On their 70th anniversary. She would have been 93 today.” – SAEDogmom (@SaeDogmom)
“My adult son was recently hospitalized for appendicitis; I was not allowed to see him. Fortunately, all went well, but it was very upsetting just in that minor instance. I can’t imagine if you had elderly parents or God forbid a spouse you couldn’t see in a more dire situation.” – AverageAmerican (@Average00037367)
“I had an older friend who died of prostate cancer during the pandemic. I wrote this piece as a tribute to him and so I can always remember how we treated dying people during COVID.” – Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, California (@DrJBhattacharya)
“Haven’t seen my grandma in 2 years. She lost my papa just before all this started. Married for 68 years. She was put in a home for her safety. Now she is alone and grieving on her own Broken heart. She has rapidly declined because only one person has been allowed to see her” – Karl, Vancouver, Canada (@K59096598)
“My severely mentally and physically handicapped cousin. Went in for viral pneumonia. Tested positive in hospital, moved to covid ward. No visitors allowed. Died alone, afraid and confused. Unforgivable.” – Deb (@Deb08795065)
“My 94-year-old dad with red heart problems was in a board and care home. I could only stand on the front porch luckily his room faced the street, and he didn’t have his hearing aids, so I’d have to yell. The neighbors thought I was nuts. I got to see him four a few minutes the day before he died.” – FlowerPowerKatie, Silicon Valleey, California (@nileskt)
“You can think DeSantis is wrong on so many other fronts, and he’s still right about this. Loneliness is a cruel punishment for people whose only crime is being old.” – Shannon Brownlee, Washington DC (@ShannonBrownlee)
“My best friend’s mother got sick but put off going to the hospital because she was terrified of being there alone. It got bad enough she finally went- a week later she was dead. Alone. Family wasn’t permitted to be with her even in the final hours.” – Sam M (@iamsamh2)
“Imagine how many people died because they avoided hospitals for this exact reason.” – Meredith (@Opportunitweet)
“Last time I saw my grandmother she said, ‘live your life honey’, repeatedly. I was lucky she was in a private facility that allowed visitors. The day she left this world we were having the first dinner party since the beginning of all this. I lived my life that day.” – nooneinparticular (@SweateyYeti)
February 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights, United States |
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