A LOT has been said about the psychological effects of Covid on the public. Worryingly, the management of an unpredictably mutating virus which is always one step ahead is fraying the composure of our leaders too.
In the last couple of weeks, Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron have lashed out at fellow citizens who defy government orders to be vaccinated because they doubt ‘the science’ is truly settled in favour of a jab which has not been subjected to the full range of tests for side-effects later in life.
Exasperated by resistance to their Covid dictates, the American and French leaders appear to be losing their minds and their manners in the battle between the risks of vaccination and the risk of becoming serious ill with the virus.
Biden, alarmed by the refusal of one third of Americans to be vaccinated while Omicron is on the loose – though it causes mainly flu-like symptoms – warned them at Christmas that they faced a ‘winter of death’. Not one person in the US is yet known to have died from the latest Covid variant.
‘We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated, for themselves and their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm,’ quoth the ancient prophet of doom at a White House briefing whose message was that the unjabbed are not just selfish, they endanger the lives of everyone else.
Biden fingered them officially as ‘bad persons’, an unwelcome term in America where being a good person is vital to many. Not unnaturally, his presentation was badly received, reinforcing as it did the political polarisation between Democrats and Republicans, whom the former accuse of being the main vaccination hold-outs.
People, including essential workers, are being fired across America for defying Biden’s vaccination mandates.
Macron went further this week in a newspaper interview, threatening to ‘emmerder les non-vaccinés jusqu’au bout’. A polite translation of this is that he intends to go after them hard until they give in.
Emmerder – literally, to smear with sh*t – is a commonly used expression and is offensive or not according to context. Macron deliberately used it at its rudest and got the reaction he hoped for.
A session of parliament to discuss the government’s introduction of an updated vaccination passport restricting the freedom of movement of the unvaccinated was suspended in uproar when members heard the explosion of Macron’s little bomb.
He changed the focus of the argument from the virus to his brutal language. It’s likely to be a talking point for his opponents during his campaign for re-election this spring.
The fashion for politicians insulting the people they rely on to elect them was set by President Obama referring to ‘bitter clingers’ and Hillary Clinton describing some Midwestern voters as ‘deplorables’. (Those bad persons again.)
Biden and Macron forgot that these remarks were never forgiven by their targets and in Clinton’s case helped her to lose the race for the presidency.
Boris Johnson has at least grasped that, after two years of unprecedented exposure to the arbitrary powers of government, it is politically counter-productive to strain people’s patience with constant loosening and re-tightening of a Covid regime unknown in free countries outside wartime.
What is shocking about Biden, Macron, Obama and Clinton is the openness of their contempt for the people they govern as if being in public office conferred on them a wisdom that separated them from the common voters rather than the duty to lead with their consent.
There is nothing in our democratic system, adversarial as it is, that entitles politicians to treat us angrily. How many people, hearing the Biden and Macron anathemas, rushed out with arms bared to the needle?
I was vaccinated promptly myself because the odds pushed me that way. But I understand the motives of those who see obligatory vaccination – along with a sustained media campaign to vilify them – as a step too far by an overbearing state.
The certitudes of government’s own scientific advisers are offset by the determination of so many health professionals – including my own GP – to refuse the vaccines. What right do political leaders, themselves scientifically uneducated, have to threaten doctors and nurses who have daily experience of how medical treatments work and which can be trusted?
‘My body my choice’, the battle cry that worked so well for supporters of abortion, is suddenly off the table when the principle doesn’t suit politicians.
Biden and Macron weren’t showing leadership. What they expressed was frustration that, with all their power, they cannot force obedience on free-thinking citizens and anger that they will be blamed for the consequences. Macron especially forgot that the way we speak to each other in public matters. If you abuse people, they remember.
The Government on Wednesday published the evidence informing its recent controversial decision to recommend all secondary school pupils wear face masks in classrooms.
The new document from the Department for Education (DfE) explains that the decision “has been taken on the recommendation of UKHSA and is based on a range of evidence”. It says the Government has “balanced education and public health considerations, including the benefits in managing infection and transmission, against any educational and wider health and wellbeing impacts from the recommended use of face coverings”.
While conceding that the “direct COVID-19 health risks to children and young people are very low” – and rejecting SAGE’s advice to recommend masks in primary school classrooms (yes, really) – it claims that “the balance of risks for secondary classrooms has changed at this point in time, in accordance with the evolving evidence and the phase of the pandemic”.
The document summarises its evidence as follows:
Face coverings can be effective in contributing to reducing transmission of COVID-19 in public and community settings. This is informed by a range of research, including randomised control trials, contact tracing studies, and observational studies – assessed most recently by UKHSA, described in a review conducted in November 2021. The review’s conclusions were broadly in line with those of a previous Public Health England review; however, the addition of randomised control trials and substantially more individual-level observational studies increases the strength of the conclusions and strengthens the evidence for the effectiveness of face coverings in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in the community, through source control, wearer protection, and universal masking.
In fact, though, the UKHSA review from November 2021 found no high quality studies (except, it claims, the ONS study, which really isn’t high quality). Of the two randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that have been done and which were cited by the UKHSA, the one from Denmark found no statistically significant reduction in COVID-19 incidence from surgical masks (the study didn’t look at cloth masks) while the Bangladesh mask study found no benefit from cloth masks and the reported benefit from surgical masks was just 11%, with a 95% confidence interval that included zero. The UKHSA review also considered 23 observational studies, which it said had “mixed” results and many of which were of low quality and small.
This does not seem a strong basis to claim a large effect for mask wearing. A recent more comprehensive review (which included earlier evidence for other flu-like viruses) by Ian Liu, Vinay Prasad and Jonathan Darrow for the Cato Institute, entitled “Evidence for Community Cloth Face Masking to Limit the Spread of SARS‐CoV‑2: A Critical Review“, concluded that: “More than a century after the 1918 influenza pandemic, examination of the efficacy of masks has produced a large volume of mostly low- to moderate-quality evidence that has largely failed to demonstrate their value in most settings.”
That is a better summary of the evidence than the DfE managed.
Needless to say, the DfE gives the propaganda value of masking a nod: “It can be a visible outward signal of safety behaviour and a reminder of COVID-19 risks.”
Notably, there is no mention in this document of the potential harms of wearing a mask for an extended period, such as the impact on breathing, the heart, or the skin. Contamination gets a brief mention, though it’s quickly dismissed:
Face masks and coverings will become highly contaminated with upper respiratory tract and skin micro-organisms. Disposal of single-use face coverings could theoretically pose a risk of transmission for inappropriately discarded face coverings, but it is very likely that the reduction in transmission risk due to reduced droplet and aerosol emissions from wearing a face covering significantly outweighs any potential for enhanced risk of transmission through inadvertent contact with a contaminated face covering. This is likely to hold regardless of duration that the face covering is used.
The reference provided for these claims is a SAGE document from September 2020, “Duration of Wearing of Face Coverings.” This is an interesting document, but it can scarcely be said to support the claims the DfE is making. On harms from masks, for example, it says:
Neither surgical masks nor face coverings are designed for use for extended periods. Wearing a face covering for an extended period can maintain a higher moisture level around the face which can be uncomfortable for some people and may increase the likelihood of skin complaints. Masks will become highly contaminated with upper respiratory tract and skin micro-organisms. A review of the downsides of face masks and face coverings (by Bakhit et al) found 20 studies reporting irritation and discomfort from using masks. Participants in studies with surgical or cloth masks reported difficulty breathing (12%-34%), facial irritation and discomfort (11-35%). More serious symptoms of headache, acne, rashes were associated with use of N95 and goggles. A study among healthcare workers (by Han et al) associates acne with extended duration of wearing. …
In a clinical study of extended wearing (by Chughtai et al), 124/148 participants reported at least one problem associated with mask use including pressure on face, breathing difficulty, discomfort, trouble communicating with the patient and headache. …
Measurements of heart rate during activity (by Li et al) showed significantly lower rates with a surgical mask compared to N95. In a study (by Fikenzer et al) of healthy young male volunteers surgical masks and FFP2/N95 respirators, both had a significantly marked negative impact on pulmonary capacity (FEV, PEV and PEF) while wearing the mask (with a spirometry mask) during exercise.
The DfE document omits to mention any of these issues. It does, however, include some recognition of the negative impact on education. It mentions a survey conducted by the Department in March 2021 that found “80% of pupils reported that wearing a face covering made it difficult to communicate, and more than half felt wearing one made learning more difficult (55%)”. It also mentions a DfE survey from April 2021 that found “almost all secondary leaders and teachers (94%) thought that wearing face coverings has made communication between teachers and students more difficult, with 59% saying it has made it a lot more difficult”. It adds:
Research into the effect of mask wearing on communication has found that concealing a speaker’s lips led to lower performance, lower confidence scores, and increased perceived effort on the part of the listener. Moreover, meta-cognitive monitoring was worse when listening in these conditions compared with listening to an unmasked talker. A survey of impacts on communication with mask wearing in adults reported that face coverings negatively impact hearing, understanding, engagement, and feelings of connection with the speaker. People with hearing loss were impacted more than those without hearing loss. The inability to see facial expressions and to read lips have a major impact on speech understanding for those with hearing impairments. The worse the hearing, the greater the impact of the mask.
What about the evidence for the claims the document does make – that it is “very likely” that the transmission reduction from wearing a mask “significantly outweighs any potential for enhanced risk of transmission through inadvertent contact with a contaminated face covering” and that “this is likely to hold regardless of duration that the face covering is used”. This is what the cited SAGE document says:
There is a lack of good evidence relating to the wearing of face coverings, with very little data relating to duration of wearing. In particular we suggest that the following aspects would benefit from further research:
• Effectiveness of face coverings as a source control after longer duration wearing, including analysis of the influence of moisture on the performance of different types of face coverings.
• Analysis of the potential risk of transmission due to contaminated face coverings (during and after removal).
• Assessment of the prevalence of skin complaints associated with face coverings, including an understanding of the factors that contribute and potential mitigation.
• Analysis of user acceptability of face coverings for long duration use in different settings.
In other words, there was no good evidence on the things the DfE is claiming are “likely” or “very likely”, or on much else really.
The DfE also carried out its own analysis of the impact of masks in schools.
DfE has also undertaken initial observational analysis based on data reported by 123 secondary schools that implemented face coverings during a 2-3-week period in the autumn term 2021, compared to a sample of similar schools that did not. The preliminary findings demonstrate a potential positive effect in reducing pupil absence due to COVID-19.
What did it find? It found that COVID-19 absences fell by 0.6% more (absolute reduction) in secondary schools that used face masks compared to similar schools that did not over a 2-3-week period, which amounts to an 11% relative reduction.
In a weighted sample of secondary schools that did not use face masks, the average COVID-19 absence rate fell by 1.7 percentage points from 5.3% on October 1st 2021 to 3.6% in the third week of October. This is equivalent to a 32% decrease.
In secondary schools that did use face coverings (either face coverings only or a combination of face masks and additional communications e.g. providing more communications to parents but not introducing any further measures such as increased testing), the average COVID-19 absence rate fell by 2.3 percentage points from 5.3% on October 1st 2021 to 3.0% in the third week of October. This is equivalent to a 43% decrease.
At surface level, this suggests that COVID-19 absence fell by 0.6 percentage points more (an 11% relative difference) in secondary schools that used face masks compared to similar schools that did not over a 2-3-week period.
However, the study had numerous limitations, which made the finding a “non-statistical and unknown clinical significant” reduction, i.e., it may just be chance.
There is a level of statistical uncertainty around the result. The analysis is non-peer reviewed and with the current sample size, shows a non-statistical and unknown clinical significant reduction in infection in a short follow up period, including that a ‘false positive’ (i.e. finding that face coverings saw reduced absence when the finding is actually by chance) would emerge around 15% of the time; a 5% threshold is widely used to declare statistical significance in academic literature.
Therefore, further work should be done to extend the analysis in terms of scope: for example, looking at different statistical methodologies, capturing different and longer treatment time periods and controlling for a wider number of school and local area variables to ensure this is a consistent finding.
The statistical uncertainty around the result was such that the 95% confidence interval for the effect size included zero (note in the below the upper CI is positive).
What’s more, the control group of 1,192 schools that didn’t use masks were very different to the 123 treatment schools which did, so that the above findings only emerged after significant weighting was added to the control group schools using a process the document calls “entropy balancing”.
Exploration of the data showed that the control and treatment group had differing characteristics, so weights for the control group schools were calculated using entropy balancing.
Prior to this weighting, the non-mask schools actually had lower average absence rates throughout the study period – though the treatment schools reduced more from their higher starting point.
Prior to weighting, the mean absence rate of the control group increases across the treatment period, whereas the mean absence rate of the treatment group decreases. However, the absence rates in the control group remain lower overall than those in the treatment group.
All-in-all, not exactly robust, compelling evidence of the benefits of masking, particularly given all the well-documented harms, which the document itself either sets out or cites other documents which do.
The document at one point hints at what I suspect is the real reason masks were brought back into classrooms: “In a Unison survey of support staff, 71% said face coverings in secondary school classrooms are an important safety measure.” Conservative MP Jonathan Gullis wrote in the Times this week that: “Face masks have been a central demand of teaching unions.” Sounds vey much like politics rather than science to me. (See this recent Daily Sceptic article by Ben Irvine on the role the teaching unions played in forcing the Government to lockdown in March 2020.)
When are we going to stop harming our young people with pointless interventions to deal with a virus that poses no threat to them and let them live normal lives again?
Stop Press: Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine Carl Heneghan tells Julia Hartley-Brewer he is unimpressed by the Government’s “evidence” for masking in classrooms.
Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi has published the "evidence" for pupils wearing face masks in schools.
Professor of Evidence Based Medicine Carl Heneghan says the study is "not fit for purpose" and actually shows evidence for NOT wearing masks.@JuliaHB1 | @carlheneghanpic.twitter.com/OhqK0a9nUJ
For many pilots who have chosen to remain unvaccinated for COVID-19, daily life has become a navigation of Catch-22s not seen since bombardiers were still stationed on Pianosa.
Jason Kunisch, a commercial airline pilot with 20 years experience and co-founder of the US Freedom Flyers, ponders whether OSHA can require him to take a newly approved vaccine, despite his long-held understanding that, “Traditionally pilots are not governed by OSHA… [but] by the FAA,” which prohibits pilots from taking newly approved drugs.
Sherry Walker, a United pilot with more than 24 years experience, and co-founder of Airline Employees for Health Freedom, copes with the reality that, according to her account, despite having received an exemption from United’s vaccine requirement in order to keep her job while unvaccinated, she can longer do her job or receive a paycheck, presumably until she is vaccinated.
Kate O’Brien, the Media Relations Director for the US Freedom Flyers, voices the frustration of her group’s members, as she describes how executive orders supposedly issued to keep Americans employed and maintain the integrity of the supply chain, have arguably led to increases in unemployment and the supply chain’s collapse.
Medical Freedom Organizations Takeoff in the Aviation Industry
Growing up in San Diego, Jason Kunisch learned to fly while still in high school. After earning his private pilot’s license, he attended a four year aeronautical university, graduating with degrees in aeronautical science and business, then went on and earned his instructor ratings before working dispatch for a charter corporation out of California and Texas. From there he went and flew regional jets prior to making his way over to one of the major airlines a little more than eight years ago.
However, over the course of the past year, life took an unexpected turn for Kunisch. Although still working for a major airline when interviewed for this article in late November, Kunisch was now spending a considerable portion of his time immersed in the day to day operations of the US Freedom Flyers, a medical freedom organization he co-founded with fellow pilots Jessica Sarkisian, Joshua Yoder, and Veronica Harris.
When asked to recount what led him to this role, Kunisch detailed the ever-shifting vaccination policies of the major airlines that went from tolerable to utterly unacceptable in his mind, as well as those of his compatriots in just under a year.
“Most of the airlines prior to September 9 [2021] were very reasonable in their approach,” Kunisch explained. “They said, ‘If you want to go and get vaccinated, that’s your personal choice. In fact we’re going to incentivize you to go do that. We’re going to give you days off. We’re going to give you cash. We’re going to give you extra vacation days next year.”
As for those who did not want to get vaccinated, Kunisch said, the companies and the unions took the approach of “‘Hey, we encourage you to do it but at the end of the day it’s a choice between you and your medical practitioner or you and your family doctor or you and your family. Really it’s a personal decision.’”
Yet, at the same time, Kunisch and others had their concerns about how long such a reasonable approach might last.
“We kind of saw the writing on the wall,” Kunisch recalled. The forced masking of individuals, social distancing, and the rules about what one could and could not do with regard to COVID were all disconcerting to him and many of his colleagues.
“So we’re like all right,” Kunisch said. “Really, the next logical thing is the vaccines and vaccine mandates.”
Then, before long, the mandates arrived. “So United Airlines comes out over the summer and says, ‘We’re going to impose our own vaccine mandate and those who don’t want to do it can submit for a religious or medical exemption,’” Kunisch explained.
Sherry Walker, co-founder of Airline Employees for Health Freedom, an organization similar to the US Freedom Flyers, was one such individual from United.
According to Walker, who spoke in an interview as a representative of Airline Employees for Health Freedom, the process of applying for an accommodation was so onerous that many at United who had reservations about taking a COVID vaccine simply acquiesced out of exasperation from the process or fear they might fail to navigate it properly in the time allowed.
Yet, for those that endured, Walker stated, “[United] put every one of us on unpaid indefinite leave.”
Jessica Sarkisian, a 24 year captain and US Freedom Flyers co-founder, had been concerned about something like this happening at her company for quite some time, having circulated a petition on the matter amongst her co-workers as early as January 2021.
In an interview, Sarkisian described the moment her grassroots activism transitioned from an intracompany endeavor to one with a more national scope. “When United announced their mandate, my company said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to mandate it also, but for the 20% who do not want to get the vaccine, [they’ll] get testing options’ and so immediately people started contacting me at my airline because… people already knew how I felt.”
From there the US Freedom Flyers began to take off. “I started collaborating with a few go getters,” Sarkisian explained. “Then I saw Josh Yoder, another co-founder, on the Stew Peters show and I reached out to him and we communicated and I also reached out to the gals at United and communicated with them and just started reaching out to people at other airlines.”
Likewise, Walker’s Airline Employees for Health Freedom saw their numbers grow during this period as well.
Yet, despite this grassroots success for Kunisch, Walker, Sarkisian, and the members of their nascent organizations, it was not long before they would have more to contend with than simply employer mandates.
Pilots Enter Dogfight with the Biden Administration
“So September 9 rolls around and President Biden says he’s going to have a number of mandates and executive orders,” Kunisch said. “[One] is covering employers of more than 100 employees and that is going to be handled through OSHA… That’s the OSHA case. Then there’s the federal contractor case. That’s another one… Initially our response was to raise funds and awareness and to sue the federal government on the grounds of the OSHA issue because that’s what we all thought was going to get us first.”
This though was despite the fact that there was initially some confusion amongst Kunisch and others in their organization regarding whether the OSHA mandate affected pilots specifically, given that they long understood that they were governed by the FAA, not OSHA.
But, before long, whether pilots were affected by a mandate enforced by an agency, that, according to Kunisch, traditionally did not have authority over them, Kunisch and the US Freedom Flyers realized that the OSHA mandate was not actually their most imminent threat.
“What really came to really bite us all was this federal contractor mandate,” Kunisch said. “Now because the airlines have contracts with the federal government to do troop lifts or evacuations and other flying we are considered federal contractors even though we don’t get any of the benefits of federal contractors like better benefits, better pay, etc., etc., holidays off, whatever… I guess we get none of the good, [although] we get all of the bad… Within the federal contractor mandate there’s no provision for testing. So it’s basically get vaccinated or get fired… So that’s a major concern and initially the companies were very strict in their wording. They more or less were saying ‘You get vaccinated because of the mandate or you are on the streets.’”
But the US Freedom Flyers and Airlines Employees for Health Freedom fought back. They continued to grow their numbers. They spread awareness. They became more vocal in the media and with their companies and their unions.
Because of this, Kunisch said, “The companies have started to kind of back off… Southwest was the first to come out and say, ‘We’re not going to fire anybody. We’re not going to let anybody go. We’re going to give medical and religious exemptions and you’re going to be able to continue to work.’ I think Jet Blue has done a similar thing… I think Alaska has done it. But the process is still rather arduous and there are still concerns, very specific grave concerns, with the process with these exemptions that everyone has to go through who chooses not to get vaccinated.”
To give greater context, Kunisch, explained that technically there’s a difference between an exemption and an accommodation. “An exemption is you are exempt from getting vaccinated. However, to comply or to be fully exempt, you need to participate in an accommodation. Now what is that accommodation? That’s the question?”
Depending on the specifics of the accommodation, Kunisch believes this could lead to some form of religious discrimination. If the accommodation is unvaccinated airline employees must wear a mask, while vaccinated ones do not, in essence, those who remain unvaccinated due to their religious beliefs would be getting forced by their employers to wear an outward sign of their religious affiliation.
Kunisch also pointed out how treating unvaccinated people differently from vaccinated people doesn’t even make sense scientifically given recent findings demonstrating that those who have been vaccinated against COVID can still contract and potentially spread COVID.
Possible Paths to Victory
Yet, whether groups like the US Freedom Flyers and Airline Employees for Health Freedom succeed likely will not come down to science, but, instead, a combination of legal technicalities and whether enough people will stand their ground and suffer the consequences while demonstrating their worth to their employers, and perhaps the rest of society, through their absence.
Given the key role the aviation industry plays in society and the narrow margins of personnel that facilitate its continued functioning, this should hypothetically be possible.
According to Sarkisian, it would not take a significant number of pilots or other personnel to cause a disruption for air travel by refusing to get vaccinated. “If you have an aircraft with… let’s call it a crew of seven: five flight attendants and two pilots. One of them calls out, or is not there anymore, that’s going to cause a delay or a cancellation. And then if that’s happening across the board like we’ve seen in the past, it’s going to be quite disruptive.”
Case in point, this is what we saw recently with Southwest and other airlines with alleged sickouts and across the commercial airline industry over Christmas when there were mass cancellations, seemingly on account of omicron.
Additionally, it is important to note that mandates impacting the aviation industry impact more than just commercial air travel.
A FedEx captain, who agreed to a phone interview on the condition of anonymity, described what the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates would mean for his company. “There is such a huge number [of pilots] that have not been vaccinated. And this is far bigger than the pilots. This is maintenance. This is the ground crews in Memphis.”
This FedEx captain went on to explain, “FedEx is centered in Memphis and [has] huge, huge ground crews in Memphis… and a huge percentage of our ground crew workforce is African American which, rightfully so, that group of people are very very distrusting of the government and the vaccine program because…[of] the Tuskegee experiments.”
“In comparison to the pilots,” the FedEx captain continued, “it’s a relatively low paying job where [FedEx is] having trouble having guys work anyway. There’s no possible way they’re going to stick around if a vaccine is mandated for them to work.”
O’Brien also emphasized the impact of vaccine mandates on the transportation of goods when discussing what she sees as the irrationality of the Biden administration’s rationale for their various mandates. “The administration itself has said, has outlined, you know, all the reasons why they feel the mandate is important, is imperative. Some of the reasons were to keep the supply chain intact. Well, we can see that the supply chain is currently in shambles. And why is that?”
Alternatively, on the legal front, both the US Freedom Flyers and Airline Employees for Health Freedom have cases working their way through the courts. There are also similar cases making their way to the Supreme Court. Yet, to be clear, these cases are not about some fundamental question of whether an individual has the right to make their own medical decisions in the absence of government or employer influence or coercion, but more narrow legal concerns such as which government agency has the right to mandate what medical interventions for whom.
Which path may ultimately be more fruitful, or if either will lead to a desirable outcome for the US Freedom Flyers and Airline Employees for Health Freedom, remains to be seen.
Looking Towards the Horizon
But according to the pilots fighting to preserve medical freedom, the simple fact that they are fighting the government on this is having an impact.
“The government put forward these mandates… not expecting the response,” Kunisch said. “I don’t know why they weren’t expecting that. We can come up with reasons. The fact that we are fighting this is the reason why they are kind of on their heels.”
According to Kunisch, this is why the government pushed back their initial deadlines for compliance with the OSHA and contractor mandates. “There’s a reason for [this] and that’s because we’re fighting back. We’re fighting back against these mandates. We’re saying no. We’re not going to do it. We’re not going to be coerced.”
As of November, Sarkisian said the US Freedom Flyers were working with employees from 26 airlines, Amtrak, and trucking companies, as well as the general public. Walker, when interviewed, estimated Airline Employees for Health Freedom had about 4000 members across the transportation industry.
“This isn’t just about crew members,” Sarkisian stated. “This is a fight for freedom for everyone because everybody is obviously affected.”
“The issue is not the vaccine,” Kunisch added. “The issue is medical freedom and anti-coercion.”
Walker, when speaking of the battle ahead, stated, “I have a 16 year old son,” before rhetorically asking, “If I do not fight this now, what world am I leaving him?”
Daniel Nuccio holds master’s degrees in both psychology and biology. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in biology at Northern Illinois University studying host-microbe relationships. He is also a regular contributor to The College Fix where he writes about COVID, mental health, and other topics.
In January 2021, tech giants such as Microsoft, Oracle, and MITRE Corporation announced their launch of the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI) in partnership with healthcare companies.
On their website, the VCI describes itself as an alliance of private and public organizations dedicated to the development of the ‘issuance of verifiable health credentials’ bound to an individual digital identity.
The VCI idea depends upon a common platform from which digital wallets can be created, and on the VCI website they call for “participating organizations to commit to implementing, testing, and refining the SMART Health Cards Framework within their sphere of influence.”
According to VCI, their ‘SMART Health Cards’ are meant to “work across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries.”
SMART health cards as of now include a person’s name, gender, birth date, phone number, and email address, as well as vaccination status. Developers hope, however, that these cards will eventually become all-encompassing universal digital identities that reside within a universal digital wallet.
Josh Mandel, one of the main developers behind VCI’s SMART health cards system, said once that a complete universal digital identity is ‘essential’ to the effort of creating digital vaccination passes.
On their website, the group uses the term ‘digital wallet’ often and notes that SMART Health Cards could soon be used as digital IDs for all activities, including travel and every purchase an individual makes during commercial activity.
According to the ‘about’ section on their website, the group’s members section includes corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and the MITRE Corporation.
Along with the MITRE Corporation, one of the groups listed in the governance section on the website is the Commons Project Foundation, which is the main backer of the VCI and also hosts the VCI website.
The Commons Project Foundation also describes itself as a ‘private and public alliance.’
Listed on the leadership board of the Commons Project Foundation is the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Global Head of Performance at BlackRock, the senior managing director at the Blackstone Group, and Julie Gerberding, the former director of the CDC. Gerberding once wrote an op-ed in Time Magazine calling for an ‘International Pandemic Surveillance Network.’
There are many other heads of multilateral development banks (MDBs), former Goldman Sachs partners, UN advisers, and other multinational corporations listed on their assembly.
With the help of the World Economic Forum and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Commons Project Foundation runs the Common Trust Network. Like the Vaccination Credential Initiative and the Commons Project Foundation, the Commons Trust Network describes itself as a ‘private and public alliance.’
The World Economic Forum’s website lists the CEO and CMO of the Commons Project Foundation as Paul Meyer and Bradley Perkins respectively. Following his career at the US Center for Disease Control, Perkins was on the advisory board for the RAND Corporation, and his Partner Paul Meyer wrote President Clinton’s speeches while attending Yale.
In partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Rockefeller Foundation — as well as an almost endless list of corporations and government agencies — the Commons Project Foundation created the CommonPass.
According to the World Economic Forum’s website, just like the VCI, the Commons Project Foundation seeks to “develop and launch a standard global model to enable people to securely document and present their COVID-19 status to facilitate international travel and border crossing.”
The site states that their ‘CommonPass‘ is powered by their “CommonTrust Network™ Registry and VCI™ Directory.” and will allow individuals to document their “COVID-19 status to satisfy country or state entry requirements,” and “access lab results and vaccination records when you need it.”
Shocking video emerged Sunday of police in Holland beating anti-lockdown protesters with batons and sending in dogs to maul the dissenters.
Massive amounts of people turned out to protest hard lockdown restrictions which were put back into place by the Dutch government before Christmas.
Everything except essential stores has been shut down in the country until at least Jan. 14.
The restrictions dictate that gatherings of more than two people are illegal, so the government sent in the riot police.
Watch:
Riot police in Amsterdam violently shut down an anti-lockdown protest today after leftist mayor Femke Halsema triggered an emergency order to stop the march. The Netherlands has been in Covid lockdown & gatherings of more than 2 are illegal. pic.twitter.com/AphZew85LI
Towards the end of last year, tech start-up Dsruptive Subdermals announced a microchip installed under the skin that can be scanned to reveal Covid vaccination status.
The technology was criticized, with many calling it “invasive.”
In an interview with Express, the company’s managing director doubled down on the technology and told critics the technology was here to stay.
The technology is a pre-programmed and scannable implant about the size of a grain of rice. It stores the vaccination information, displaying a person’s Covid-19 vaccine passport when scanned.
Speaking to Express, Hannes Sjobald, the company’s managing director, said: “This technology exists and is used whether we like it or not.
“I am happy that it is brought into the public conversation.
“New technologies must be broadly debated and understood.
“Smart implants are a powerful health technology.
“That is what we are building at Dsruptive and our goal is to transform healthcare on a global scale.”
Sjobald said the technology makes the vaccine passports more “accessible.”
“This means it is always accessible for me or for anyone else, really, who wants to read me.
“For example, if I go to the movies or go to a shopping center, then people will be able to check my status even if I don’t have my phone.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 7 will convene a special session to hear oral arguments in two cases related to the Biden administration’s COVID vaccine mandates.
The two cases pertain to the mandates imposed on private businesses with 100 or more employees, and healthcare facilities participating in the Medicare or Medicaid programs.
The Supreme Court announced Dec. 22, 2021, it would hold a special session to hear both cases, following a series of decisions in lower courts that successively implemented and lifted injunctions against the two mandates.
In both disputes, the formal legal question at hand pertains to whether the federal government can continue enforcing the mandates while legal challenges against them work their way through the judicial system.
In the first instance, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling Dec. 17, 2021, lifted an injunction against Biden’s vaccine mandate for private businesses previously issued by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The mandate is now set to come into force on Jan. 4, though the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced it will not begin enforcement of the rule until Jan. 10. The mandate, if and when it is enforced, will impact an estimated 84 million U.S. workers.
Two of these requests, one filed by a trade group and the other by a group of states led by Ohio, were formally accepted for oral argument.
These groups were joined by more than 170 Republican lawmakers who on Dec. 30, 2021, jointly filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court arguing OSHA has no legal authority to impose a vaccine mandate on private businesses.
The Supreme Court, via Justice Brett Kavanaugh — whose jurisdiction includes the 6th Circuit — asked the Biden administration to submit a response to the legal challenges by Dec. 30, 2021.
In its response, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar argued the Biden administration possesses the authority, under federal law, to impose the mandate and the Supreme Court should not block a program that will save thousands of lives.
The Supreme Court will also hear arguments pertaining to Biden’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers at facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid funding. This rule is estimated to impact more than 17 million workers across the U.S.
In this instance, it was the Biden administration that filed an emergency request with the court, requesting it be allowed to temporarily enforce the healthcare worker mandate, which is currently blocked in 24 states following a series of injunctions issued by lower courts.
A brief filed with the Supreme Court by 14 Republican-led states described the mandate as “plainly unlawful.”
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service, which oversees the healthcare mandate, announced Dec. 29, 2021, it will begin enforcing the mandate in the 26 states where it is not blocked.
A modified enforcement timeline accompanied this announcement: Healthcare workers will now be required to receive the first dose of a COVID vaccine by Jan. 27, and the second dose by Feb. 28.
The Supreme Court’s move to hold oral arguments in deciding whether or not to issue an emergency stay is considered unusual. Typically, such cases are placed on the “shadow docket” and are decided without a full briefing or a presentation of oral arguments.
In this instance though, the Supreme Court may seek to alleviate the uncertainty which exists among employers and workers who remain unsure as to whether they are subject to a mandate or not.
It remains unclear whether a decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the injunctions against the healthcare worker mandate will impact all 50 states or only the 24 where the mandate is currently blocked.
Any emergency stay issued by the Supreme Court would not constitute a final ruling regarding either case, but would freeze the enforcement of the two mandates until legal challenges make their way through the federal appeals courts before, most likely, ending up in the Supreme Court for a full hearing.
Separate Biden administration mandates pertaining to such categories as federal contractors and military personnel also have been challenged legally.
In the most recent such example, Judge James “Wesley” Hendrix of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled against a mask and vaccine mandate for participants in federal Head Start programs. The rules were set to take effect by the end of January.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton described the ruling as “a win for the children of Texas.”
However, the Supreme Court will not examine any of these other Biden administration mandates in the Jan. 7 special session.
While the Supreme Court previously rejected requests for emergency stays against state-level vaccine mandates, the court is also viewed as one that is skeptical of the power of federal agencies to issue mandates relating to COVID countermeasures.
This stance was evident, for instance, when the court lifted a moratorium on evictions imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on the basis it was outside the agency’s authority.
Notably, a well-known Supreme Court decision from 1905, Jacobsen v. Massachusetts, which, according to proponents of vaccine mandates, sets a legal precedent for their legality, actually pertains to state-level mandates.
This argument was made by the state of Arizona in its lawsuit against the OSHA mandate, as previously reported by The Defender.
The lack of a federal-level precedent may therefore weigh into the justices’ decision.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
New plans, announced before Christmas, will require every secondary school pupil in the UK to take an on-site Covid test when school resumes after the Christmas break.
The government plans, allegedly to “monitor” Covid infection in students, go on to suggest that every child should receive a follow-up test 3-4 days later.
There are roughly 3.5 million school pupils aged 11-16 in the UK and they plan to test them all twice.
If just 2% of them test positive just once, the media will scream about 140,000 new “cases” of Covid in children.
Further, the “recommendations” suggest children should then continue to be tested twice a week, every week, or “more frequently if asked to do so”:
Secondary, college and university students and education staff and early years staff should then continue to test themselves twice a week, and more frequently if they are specifically asked to do so, such as in the event of an outbreak.
At least 7 million lateral flow tests per week, every week.
It’s not hard to see where it goes from there, with the headlines blaring that lack of social distancing over the holidays gave rise to a “fourth wave” (or would it be fifth? I’ve lost count).
I would start preparing for a new lockdown, if I were you.
The entire interwebs are ablaze with the term “mass formation psychosis”. Since a smart Ph.D. visited Joe Rogan everyone and their grandmother are now reading up on it, and emitting into the ether how the COVID panic (hysteria) is nothing but a mass psychosis. That is great. Except that it is January freaking 2022.
It has been a psychosis for nearly TWO YEARS now. It has been evident it is nothing but brain rot in the heads of excitable idiots this whole time. Aleksandr Lukashenko, a Belarusian potato farmer, and a much less educated man than Dr. Robert Malone, diagnosed it as a “psychosis” and an “info-demic” way back in March 2020.
“Despite some criticism on my part, I call this coronavirus nothing other than a psychosis, and I will never deny that, because I’ve gone through many situations of psychosis together with you, and we know what the results were.
“Coronavirus is yet another psychosis, which will benefit some people and will harm others.”
Doesn’t it seem to you that the powerful forces of the world would like to remake the world, without a ‘war’(Emmanuel Macron has already called it a war), through this so-called ‘corona-psychosis’, or ‘info-demic’? Many people are asking: ‘what will happen after the pandemic?’”
Some need the permission of a PhD to start thinking, preferably a PhD they saw on a massive media outlet like Rogan.* Others, like Lukashenko have their common sense.
*Who is on record as saying that without lockdowns you would have had more COVID deaths.
With over 1,200 daily COVID deaths for many weeks the US is on track to reach a total of one million COVID related deaths by the end of March. A shameful record for 2022.
To think that every week over 8,000 Americans are dying, mostly in hospital ICUs is unbelievable. But that is no excuse that there is no serious attention by the mainstream media. Take a moment to reflect that this is more deaths than those in the 9/11 attacks and Pearl Harbor, combined. And it is happening every week.
The late stage problem
Hospitals have become killing machines, places where the kiss of death is a protocol following government guidelines. Despite wide COVID vaccine use deaths in hospitals because of late stage viral infection remain at a high level. Difficulty in getting COVID testing quickly and often probably contributes to the high death rate. Too many people do not get their COVID infection addressed early. There remains too little use of monoclonal antibodies early for infected people. So their infection progresses to serious lung and breathing problems. That is the beginning of the end.
And it will be a long time before the new antiviral drugs from Pfizer and Merck are broadly available and there will be more information on whether they are really safe and effective for all diverse types of people.
In hospitals, patients with breathing problems and upper respiratory distress are giving medical actions that may address pain but inevitably lead to death, often after many weeks in the ICU. They get the useless and harmful drug remdesivir, supplemental oxygen, steroids, and are intubated, put on a ventilator and usually put into a coma. And eventually they die and become another COVID statistic.
It has been reported that the death rate for COVID patients prescribed remdesivir (26%) exceeds the fatality rate of COVID patients prescribed ivermectin, which is recorded by the Medicare database at 7.2%. And it has documented serious side effects.
In a few successful court actions, such late stage COVID patients were given the cheap, safe generic IVM and – much to the astonishment of hospital doctors – have walked out of the hospital, completely recovered.
And there is considerable medical research literature supporting such use of IVM, principally because of its anti-inflammatory property. As just one example, a published medical 2021 hospital study found nearly a 50% reduction in deaths for patients with severe pulmonary involvement, the typical late stage COVID death-bed patient condition. The many doubters of IVM should pay more attention to the medical science literature.
But published medical articles are ignored by the medical and public health establishments.
Hospital shame
Hospitals stubbornly refuse to honor the few court decisions directing them to give death-bed late COVID stage patients a chance of surviving by administering ivermectin. Hospitals use an army of lawyers and every dirty legal trick to overturn or delay those few court decisions that reach the sensible conclusion that there is nothing to lose by using ivermectin.
Indeed, here is the ugly truth: Hospital protocols for late stage COVID patients have nearly a one hundred percent record of failure. Their patients suffer and then die. Families desperate to get ivermectin used usually fail and watch their loved ones die.
This is a medical disgrace. This is the power of corporate medicine. This situation exemplifies the loss of medical freedom. This is the epitome of medical tyranny. This is a total loss of medical ethics. This is an extreme example of doctors failing to live up to their Hippocratic Oath. They follow hospital rules and let their patients die without trying what has a medical justification. Without doing what other doctors have successfully done.
Apparently, that weekly death total is not enough to push hospitals and doctors to use what several nations have used to curb the COVID pandemic and save many millions of lives.
Hospital care arguments
Consider this paradox and hypocrisy. Virtually all hospitals put a priority on patient centered care. Patient-centered care focuses on the patient and the individual’s particular health care needs. The goal of patient-centered health care is to empower patients to become active participants in their care.
Clearly, denying patient and family pleas for using ivermectin for people facing death is totally inconsistent with this philosophy and hospital commitment.
Add to all this that demanding all patients use a one-size-fits-all medical treatment or hospital protocol is also counter to personalized medicine, long the hallmark of medicine. Doctors need the freedom to use what suits their patient rather than what the government dictates or accepting what it withholds.
Court actions to get hospitals allowing IVM use might be more successful if both patient centered care and personalized medicine arguments were presented to judges.
Conclusions
Time to let those who want to use ivermectin in an attempt to save their life get it. It is medically and morally the right thing to do.
With now a long record of hospital protocols for late stage COVID utterly failing to save lives, how can the medical profession justify not using a generic medicine that both research and clinical results justify and explain its ability to save lives?
They cannot.
Families trying to find a lawyer and a friendly court face a very, very difficult race to save their loved one stuck in the ICU just like a prisoner sentenced to death.
Is it COVID killing these people or the medical profession and their hospital employers? Worth pondering as you keep watching mounting COVID death numbers.
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.” … continue
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