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Businesses push back against Scotland’s vaccine passport

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | October 5, 2021

Resistance to the introduction of vaccine passes, based on various grounds and gaining momentum for different reasons – is not present only among the general population and customers. In Scotland, owners of businesses have joined those who are opposed to a mandated COVID passport system by announcing a weekend boycott of the program.

Their argument is that the scheme Scotland launched via an app is so technically flawed that it is causing chaos and harming their businesses, as it keeps customers and visitors to places like night clubs and football stadiums away by simply not working.

This seems to be yet another in UK’s botched schemes rolled out over the course of the pandemic, and besides being riddled with technical problems, another thing these have in common is that they cost a lot of taxpayers’ money – although the latest Scottish “omnishambles” as some are calling the app is “cheap” compared to some other UK COVID fiascos – it cost a “mere” £600,000 ($816,520) to develop, although that’s probably £600,000 too much, considering that it doesn’t appear to work.

The first to defiantly pull out of the scheme once it became apparent it was useless were football clubs, who have been hard-hit by COVID restrictions that kept fans out of stadiums and seriously undermined their revenues for months on end.

The app was officially put in practice last Friday morning, with the SNP-led government announcing people would need to show proof of vaccination to be let into this type of venue. But the very same day, realizing the app wasn’t working, Aberdeen FC simply abandoned this requirement for its fans to attend the game upcoming on Sunday.

“Nobody will be asked to show proof of vaccine,” the club announced on Friday, reacting to fans being unable to buy tickets because the app could not be used to prove their vaccination status. Other Scottish clubs, like Rangers and Hearts, soon followed suit, while owners of nightclubs and others in the hospitality industry did the same, saying the confusion was “farcical.”

What followed was Health Secretary Humza Yousaf having to reverse previous policy, saying that “nobody should be denied entry this weekend if they failed to show proof of vaccination, and admitted the widespread technical problems may take ‘days’ to fix,” the Telegraph reported.

October 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Why Is Info on COVID and Vitamin D Deficiency Suppressed?

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | October 4, 2021

Many years of research have demonstrated the multiple benefits of vitamin D to your health. These benefits include helping to build healthy bones and teeth,1,2 supporting lung3,4 and cardiovascular function,5,6 influencing genetic expression,7,8 supporting brain and nervous system health9,10 and regulating insulin levels.11

During 2020, scientists also discovered that the benefits of vitamin D for upper respiratory infections also include protection against COVID-19.12,13 In 2021, two new studies14,15 confirmed what many researchers had already determined: There is an association between vitamin D deficiency and “the risk of being infected with COVID-19, severity of the disease and risk of dying from it.”16

However, despite a known and safe side effect profile, benefits to patients with COVID-19 and the relative ease of acquiring the low-cost supplement, health “experts” have continued to suppress information that could very well save many lives. To achieve vitamin D toxicity, a person must take more than 40,000 international units (IU) each day and have a serum level above 500 to 600 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml).17

In addition to this they must also be taking excessive amounts of calcium to experience vitamin D toxicity. In other words, it’s more difficult to overdose on vitamin D than it is to overdose on acetaminophen (Tylenol). Taking more than 3,000 milligrams (mg) of acetaminophen in one day18 can lead to symptoms of an overdose. Signs of toxicity can begin in as little as 30 minutes after ingestion.19

Additionally, it is not difficult to overdose on acetaminophen since it is an ingredient in many over-the-counter cold preparations. Many people who take the drug each week are unaware it is found in combined products.20 The drug is responsible for 500 deaths, 56,000 visits to the emergency room and 2,600 hospitalizations each year.

According to experts, 50% of these injuries are from unintentional overdoses. By contrast, research has found that vitamin D toxicity is rare21 and usually caused by formulation errors, inappropriate prescribing, accidental dispensing or inappropriate administration.22

However, toxicity is not defined consistently across studies. One Irish study found a prevalence of 4.8%, but they considered an elevated result anything above 50 ng/mL (125 nmol/L),23 which is within the normal range of 40 ng/ml to 60 ng/ml.24 Another comparison is that, while studies have shown that the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency25 is 41.6% in the overall population and as high as 82.1% in people with dark skin, there is no known deficiency for acetaminophen.

Vitamin D Deficiency Linked With COVID-19 Severity

One of the newer studies was published in June 2021.26 The researchers sought to determine the role that vitamin D may play in mitigating the impact that SARS-CoV-2 has on morbidity and mortality. They recognized that the production of vitamin D through sensible sun exposure is often limited by geographical location.

Clothing, sunblock and skin pigmentation also limit vitamin D production in the skin. Serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D have been found suboptimal in adults from many countries and are not limited to specific risk groups. The study used an ecological design to find an association and looked at complications and mortality in 46 countries.

They used data from public sources to look for and find evidence of a vitamin D deficiency, which they defined as serum levels less than 20 ng/ml. Although lower than optimal levels for vitamin D, this has been a deficiency level consistently used by researchers.

The researchers gathered data from Worldometer on the number of cases, tests and deaths in a population. They found a statistically significant correlation between deficiency and infection and fatality.

Data analyses were not limited to a specific area of the world or population group but instead included data from 46 countries. The data from this study supported a review of evidence published in Nutrients in 2020 that demonstrated vitamin D levels were associated with:27

  • A lower number of cases in the Southern Hemisphere
  • An association with deficiency and the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome
  • An increase in mortality rates in older adults and patients with chronic diseases that are associated with vitamin D deficiency
  • Outbreaks during the winter months when serum levels of vitamin D are lowest

They concluded the data suggest28 “that vitamin D deficiency is associated with an increased risk of COVID-19 infection and mortality across a wide range of countries.”

Second Study Has Similar Results

A second study was published in September 2021 from Trinity College and the University of Edinburgh.29 These researchers also looked at the association between COVID-19 and vitamin D levels. What they found was that the level of ambient ultraviolet B light at a person’s home in the weeks before infection “was strongly protective against severe disease and death.”30

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.31 The researchers identified the association from data pulled from 417,342 records stored in the U.K. Biobank. This is a large-scale database that contains in-depth information on genetics and health from a half-million participants.32

From this cohort there were 1,746 cases and 399 deaths registered from March 2020 to June 2020. Unfortunately, on average, vitamin D levels were measured approximately 11 years before the pandemic. Therefore, the researchers looked at ambient UVB light that they found was strongly and inversely associated with hospitalization and death.33

These studies support and confirm earlier research published in 2020 and 2021 that demonstrate a strong association between vitamin D status and infection, hospitalization and death from COVID-19. Early papers published in May 2020,34 offered ample evidence that “vitamin D deficiency to address COVID-19 warrant aggressive pursuit and study.”35

By October 2020,36 research had revealed that people with vitamin D deficiency are at higher risk during the global pandemic and that supplements should be used to maintain circulating 25 hydroxyvitamin D at optimal levels. Retrospective data demonstrated that a deficiency was also associated with an increased risk of COVID1-19 infection.37

In a group of frail elderly nursing home residents with COVID-19 in France,38 researchers found that providing a bolus of vitamin D3 during illness or in the month prior had a significant impact on the severity of the illness and improved survival rates.

Further studies found similar results demonstrating that vitamin D deficiency was associated with increased severity and mortality39 and that supplementation may increase immunity and decrease susceptibility to the infection.40

Information Suppressed Despite Mounting Evidence

Despite mounting evidence that a simple and effective strategy was available to help reduce illness and mortality, health agencies sought to suppress the information. In the early months, many questioned the organized effort to create a situation in which more people were dying.

And yet, as the year wore on, it became more evident that U.S. health officials were intent on ensuring the highest number of people possible would take a genetic therapy experiment to protect themselves against a virus for which treatment protocols and preventive measures had been identified. The aim of some agencies was to put an end to Mercola.com. In the summer of 2020, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) launched a social media campaign to that end.41

It’s important to note that this self-proclaimed consumer advocacy group is partnered with Bill Gates’ agrichemical PR group, the Cornell Alliance for Science,42 and is bankrolled by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund, Public Welfare Foundation, Tides Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.43

The CSPI released a press release July 21, 2020,44 in which they falsely accused me of profiteering from the pandemic by selling “at least 22 vitamins, supplements and other products” to “prevent, treat or cure COVID-19 infection.”

However, in their own Appendix of Illegal Claims, it clearly shows that there are no COVID-19 related claims that exist on any of the products themselves. Rather, the links that CSPI uses go to Mercola articles and interviews — none of which are used to sell anything.45

NOTE: It is wise not to click on CSPI’s shortened links in the “website links” column as they do not currently point to Mercola.com product pages.

Three weeks later, CSPI president Dr. Peter Lurie46 sent an email August 12, 2020, to CSPI’s newsletter subscribers in which he repeated the spurious claim that I “profit from the COVID-19 pandemic” through “anti-vaccine fearmongering” and reporting of science-based nutrition shown to impact your disease risk.

CSPI Takes Public Credit for FDA Action

Interestingly, Lurie is a former FDA associate commissioner.47 It’s disheartening, but not surprising, that the FDA followed up with a warning letter in February 2021,48 for “Unapproved and Misbranded Products Related to Coronavirus Disease 2019.”

Lurie has publicly taken credit for this action,49 and thereby establishes the potential that CSPI is pulling the strings under the new administration through relationships they did not have in July 2020 when they first launched their assault on my free speech.

According to the letter, the FDA lists liposomal vitamin C, liposomal vitamin D3 and quercetin products for the treatment of COVID-19 as50 “unapproved new drugs sold in violation of section 505(a) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act), 2pt1 U.S.C. § 355(a).”

It’s ironic that Lurie offhandedly dismisses peer-reviewed published science51 that demonstrates your immune function is dependent on certain nutrients and they help to lower your risk of severe infection, whether it’s from COVID-19, the seasonal flu, the common cold or anything else.

Instead, he calls for mask-wearing52 that has no published scientific evidence to back universal use, as one of the most important prevention strategies against COVID-19. In a blog post, published May 18, 2021, he says, “… while mask relaxation may make sense for most of the vaccinated most of the time, it has the potential to destroy the social norm of mask wearing.”

CSPI Would Like to Censor Free Speech

I have been writing about the importance of vitamin D for your overall health for over a decade. Yet, the CSPI has chosen 2020 to censor my efforts to educate people on the importance of maintaining adequate vitamin D levels. In 2020, I co-wrote a paper with William Grant, Ph.D.,53 and Dr. Carol Wagner,54 both of whom are on the GrassrootsHealth vitamin D expert panel.55

The paper demonstrated the clear link that exists between vitamin D deficiency and severe cases of COVID-19. You can find the paper in the peer-reviewed medical journal Nutrients where it was published in October 2020.56

The FDA’s warning letter has highlighted statements in articles published on my website that are fully referenced, cited and supported by published science. I am committed to providing truthful information, for free, to anyone who wants it. I support having a rigorous scientific debate but cannot support unauthenticated and counterfeit accusations that fly in the face of published, peer-reviewed science.

It should never be a crime to report the findings of scientists and researchers. When censorship becomes the foundational method of influencing public opinion and health strategies, it is sure to lead down a disastrous road.

For the record, we have fully addressed the warning letter from the FDA. It is simply against the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution for the FDA to stop free speech that the CSPI does not like.

CSPI Has Repeatedly Violated Its Mission Statement

This is not the first time that recommendations from the CSPI have endangered public health. In the past, CSPI described trans fats as “a great boon to American arteries”57 after heartily endorsing them years earlier by saying, “there is little good evidence that trans fats cause any more harm than other fats.”58

In the real world, this highly successful trans-fat campaign that began in 1986 resulted in an epidemic of heart disease. When the organization began reversing its decision on synthetic trans fats, it never admitted the error and simply switched the blame, erasing the previous pro-trans fat articles from its website and then posting a timeline59 on artificial trans fats that simply skips what they previously promoted.

The timeline begins in 1993 when CSPI “suddenly” decided to urge the FDA to label trans fats, and works up to 2003 when CSPI proudly says it took out a full-page ad in The New York Times “slamming McDonald’s for ‘Broken McPromise’ on trans fat.” This, despite the fact that in 198660 they criticized McDonald’s for not switching to trans fats sooner, like other fast-food restaurants already had.

While CSPI would prefer you to believe they’ve always been against trans fats, some people still remember what they and their officers said in the past, and comments their officers and members made when they switched their position have been preserved on others’ websites.

For example, Weston A. Price61 details how CSPI’s director of nutrition Bonnie Liebman changed her organization’s tune in December 1992, when she totally ignored CSPI’s support for trans fats only a few years earlier and blamed the margarine industry for promoting trans fats, writing:

“We’ve been crying ‘foul’ for some time now, as the margarine industry has tried to convince people that eating margarine was as good for their hearts as aerobic exercise … And we warned folks several years ago that trans fatty acids could be a problem.”

Continuing in their historical footsteps, the CSPI continues to recommend eating unsaturated fats like oil and canola oil,62 while avoiding butter and other healthy saturated fats, saying that “changing fats doesn’t lower the risk of dying.”63

Trans fats aren’t the only foods that CSPI made an about-face on something they’d promoted as healthy for years, however. It wasn’t until 2013 that CSPI downgraded the artificial sweetener Splenda from the “safe” category to “caution.”64 It took another three years to downgrade it again from “caution” to “avoid.”65

Yet, the organization continues to promote diet sodas as a safer alternative to regular soda, saying it “does not promote diabetes, weight gain or heart disease in the way that full calorie sodas do”66 — even though numerous peer-reviewed studies say otherwise.67,68,69

The CSPI’s support of suspected, and in some cases well verified, health hazards of trans fats, and artificial sweeteners, along with soy, GMOs, low-fat diets and fake meat, reveals that the intent of the organization to protect and advance public health is questionable to say the least.

The CSPI appears more interested in protecting profitable industries and their effort to destroy companies selling vitamins and supplements with natural antiviral effects is just more evidence of that.

Sources and References

October 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

This week’s elections could pave way for Prague to Czech out of EU

By Paul A. Nuttall | RT | October 4, 2021

The elections in the Czech Republic later this week have largely been ignored, but the political situation in the country is not only compelling, it could have ramifications for the rest of Europe, and in particular for the EU.

Czechs go to the polls on Friday and Saturday in legislative elections that will determine who will lead the country for the next four years. These elections have been getting little attention in the international press, mainly because the focus has been on the elections taking place in Germany.

The Czech Republic has been led by a coalition government since 2017. The senior partner in the coalition is the ANO 2011 party, and its leader is the current Prime Minister Andrej Babis.

Babis’ party is described as ‘populist’. An ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, he recently attended the Demographic Summit in Budapest, where Babis and his counterparts from Poland, Serbia and Slovenia announced their intention to oppose further mass immigration in Europe.

Babis is also opposed to further EU integration and determined not to see the euro replacing the country’s current official currency, the koruna. He claims his party “will not hand over the sovereignty of the Czech Republic to the European Parliament or the European Commission.”

Recent polls put the ANO 2011 party in the lead with 27%. The main opposition parties, SPOLU (an alliance of liberals and conservatives) and the bizarrely named Pirates and Mayors party are polling around 21%. Both are committed to combining their votes in an alliance to force Babis from power.

Indeed, some commentators, who it must be said are firmly opposed to Babis’ politics, are predicting that the Czech Republic could be heading towards a constitutional crisis. However, it is expected that President Milos Zeman will use his constitutional powers to appoint the leader of the largest party as prime minister.

In all likelihood, this will be Babis, and it will give him the first opportunity to form a coalition. However, even if this is the case, he will be facing a big problem, as his current coalition partners have seen their support fall off a cliff recently.

The Social Democrats, who share power with Babis, are only polling between 4% and 6% and may not even make the 5% threshold to have candidates elected to parliament. And this puts Babis in a difficult position because, devoid of his main coalition partner, he will be forced to look elsewhere.

The ‘elsewhere’ in this case is most likely to be the Freedom and Direct Democracy Party (SPD), which is the most Eurosceptic political party in the country and is polling around 11%. The SPD is committed to a direct democracy law that will allow citizens to force referendums, and the one the party wants most is a referendum on Czech membership of the European Union.

SPD leader Tomio Okamura has made it clear that any negotiations for his party to join a future coalition will be conditional on holding such a referendum: “One of the fundamental conditions is for the government manifesto… to include a referendum law including the possibility of a referendum on leaving the EU or potentially NATO.”

Now this places Babis in a difficult position because, although he is a Eurosceptic, he does not envisage the Czech Republic leaving the EU anytime soon. Moreover, he is opposed to the idea of citizen-led referendums, or at least he would like prohibitive barriers implemented, such as a requirement for a huge number of signatories to force a referendum.

Another problem is that a direct democracy law would require the support of a three-fifths majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. However, the upper house, which is elected for a six-year term, is dominated by a pro-EU majority.

Nevertheless, the fact that an EU referendum is on the agenda could be seen as an outlier to where the Czech Republic is eventually headed. And let us not forget, the Czechs are not alone here. Recently, there have been noises in Budapest about the need for a referendum on EU membership in Hungary.

Although largely ignored, the elections in the Czech Republic this weekend will be fascinating, but even more enthralling could be the political “horse trading” that follows – the outcome of which could have ramifications for the rest of the EU.

Paul A. Nuttall is a historian, author and a former politician. He was a Member of the European Parliament between 2009 and 2019 and was a prominent campaigner for Brexit.

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Twitter backtracks after censoring a mother’s obituary

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 4, 2021

Twitter’s fact-checkers appended a “misleading” alert to an obituary about a young woman who allegedly died after contracting a rare blood-clotting condition provoked by the COVID-19 vaccine.

After being accused of going so far with its censorship that it would resort to censoring an obituary, Twitter relented to the backlash and reversed the censorship.

The woman in question, Jessica Berg Wilson, a 37-year-old mother of two, died in the first week of September from Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia, a rare blood disorder in which small clots grow throughout the body, damaging platelets and preventing blood from reaching key organs. According to her obituary, Wilson’s greatest life ambition was to “be the best mother possible” to her daughters Bridget and Clara.

“She had been vehemently opposed to taking the vaccine, knowing she was in good health and of a young age and thus not at risk for serious illness. In her mind, the known and unknown risks of the unproven vaccine were more of a threat,” it read.

Kelly Bee, a Twitter user, posted Jessica Berg Wilson’s obituary with the statement, “an ‘exceptionally healthy and vibrant 37-year-old young mother with no underlying health conditions,’ passed away from COVID Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia. She did not want to get vaccinated.”

However, Twitter flagged the post as “misleading” and blocked it from being replied to, shared, or liked.

The majority of critics were outraged that Twitter was censoring an obituary and they responded by urging their followers to help the tweet go viral in violation of the company’s warning. Twitter has since removed the “misleading” designation and revoked the shadowban.

Additionally, several bloggers, including Ben Domenech of The Federalist, retweeted the obituary. Ben’s tweet reads: Who @Twitter decided it was okay to say an OBITUARY is ‘misleading’ ?”

Another tweet said “Twitter is now censoring obituaries,” – posted by Sean Davis.

Furthermore, Sebastian Gorka, who worked in the Trump administration’s Department of Defense, tagged Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a tweet asking what aspect of the obituary was incorrect or “misleading.”

“Hey @jack, Jessica was healthy and died. Why are you censoring that fact as ‘misleading??” he said.

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

“My name is Bill Gates, King of Kings”

Source: The next outbreak? We’re not ready | Bill Gates | INTIDOMAIN 
By Richard Hugus | October 4, 2021

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

The evidence is in. Gene-manipulating injections advertised as a “vaccine for covid 19” have killed and injured many thousands of people. Instead of providing immunity to an alleged virus, the shots actually harm the immune system and turn it against us. The spike proteins created by the shots spread out to attack major organs in the body, leading to a thousand and one different health problems, including heart attacks, myocarditis, pericarditis, strokes, blood clots, spontaneous abortions, neurological disorders, depression, and death. Yet the medical establishment is urging everyone, including pregnant women and children, to get the jab. The ghost standing in as US President recently decreed that if people refuse the shot they will lose their job. This is coercion to accept a medical intervention known to be a danger to human health — a crime against humanity. Half the population of the country is now facing this coercion.

This only makes sense if we reason that the authorities want to harm us, or that there is something so important in the injection that they don’t mind harming us, as long as we get the injection. Bill Gates said early in 2020 that everyone on the planet should be “vaccinated.” Perhaps his dream was that when that is accomplished there will be no one left who will not be genetically modified (to Gates’s secret specifications) and thus no one left to hold him to account.

One of the most insidious arguments put forward by the authorities is that we are facing a health crisis so serious that individual freedom must be sacrificed for the common good, and therefore no one has a moral right to refuse the Frankenshot. This argument quickly comes down to whether human beings have inalienable rights — rights given to us by God, which the state does not have the power to take away or overrule. To accept or reject any substance being given to us is obviously such a right. And after this we can discuss the details — that the purpose of the “vaccine” is unclear, that its contents are unknown, that it has proven harmful to thousands of people, that we were not informed of adverse effects, that natural immunity should be recognized, that tests establishing the alleged disease were fraudulent, that there is no emergency, that there are safe alternative treatments, et cetera. But if we understand that the state is a lesser power, then we understand that it does not have the authority to order substances injected into our bodies.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

-U.S. Declaration of Independence

The cabal behind the medical tyranny we are facing doesn’t believe we have God-given rights because they don’t believe there’s a God in the first place. They apparently think that since they are billionaires, and billionaires have a lot of weight to throw around, that they can be gods. They also seem to believe there is nothing they are forbidden to do to other people because other people do not have souls — they are just biological entities evolved through random nature which the rich, by virtue of their power, are free to manipulate and improve upon. To technocrats, nothing is sacred. So it makes sense to them to risk injuring pregnant women and children and even experiment on the whole human race (beside their chosen few). Those who resist are now being segregated and punished, like Palestinians in their own land. Perhaps occupied Palestine is the oligarchs’ model for our future.

The ultimate goal may be the power that previous master-slave relationships were not able to achieve — a “read/write” capability in which the master has full surveillance power over the slaves and gives the orders for them to follow. Subtracted from the slave population, of course, will be those few billion dissidents and “useless eaters” who don’t fit in with the plan. They will be terminated. From this point of view it also follows that the genetic makeup of any living thing is just software which today’s sophisticated scientists can splice, delete, modify, or re-create as the masters see fit. From this point of view humans are no different than GM corn, soy, or cotton. GM humans can be used to bring in a nice profit as well because the masters will own their patents. Perhaps Monsanto agribusiness is another model for our future.

Taken to its logical extreme, reality itself is in the hands of our would-be masters. With proper control of the media, people can be made to believe anything, like that an illness similar to the flu is a “pandemic,” or that someone who has no symptoms of illness is actually sick, or that the unvaccinated are selfishly threatening everyone else with death, or that anyone who strays from the narrative is spreading “misinformation,” or that if someone goes into convulsions directly after getting jabbed it is not due to the poison that was just injected into them, or that a serum that injures and kills is “safe and effective.” In this world, the truth is what the powerful say it is, regardless of the facts. The powerful are a locomotive big enough to just run past any anomalies and contradictions, leaving us bewildered.

However, the ambitiousness of this insane program foretells its failure. History is full of great tyrants with grand plans who came in with spectacular fame but suddenly fell in disgrace, erased by time. The oligarchs’ main weakness is their lack of any sense of limits. Gaining some power, they then want it all. They reach too far, too soon, and expose themselves in the process. And then common humanity — always patient to a fault — finally decides to stand up and become a locomotive itself, running back over the entire plan and returning us to sanity.

If the world is going to see a great reset, it will not be the one Klaus Schwab and his Davos gangsters had in mind.

We should take heart. So much has been revealed! It’s as if the world’s worst criminals burst into the courtroom and offered up a horrendous public confession.

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

New Zealand Abandons Controversial ‘Zero COVID’ Policy

But lockdowns will remain until 90% of population is vaxxed

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | October 4, 2021

New Zealand has announced it is dropping its controversial ‘zero COVID’ policy after numerous critics pointed out that such an approach to eliminating the virus was impossible.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the announcement earlier today during a press conference in which she acknowledged, “The return to zero has been extremely difficult.”

“What we have called a long tail has been more like a tentacle that has been difficult to shake,” she added, noting that the delta variant of the virus forced a change in policy.

Critics had repeatedly asked how the country expected to maintain a ‘zero COVID’ policy given the emergence of new variants of the virus and decreasing efficacy of the initial round of vaccinations.

However, with 48% of the population fully vaccinated, no return to normal is expected anytime soon given that Ardern has said 90% will need to be fully vaxxed before the lockdowns will end.

Kiwis have faced continuous lockdown measures almost as brutal as their Aussie neighbors since the beginning of the pandemic.

As we highlighted  in August, Ardern mimicked Australia’s top public health official by telling citizens, “Don’t talk to your neighbors,” after the country went into full lockdown as a result of just a single COVID case being detected.

Authorities also previously announced that they would put all coronavirus infectees and their close family members in “quarantine facilities” even if they refuse.

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

“Natural Immunity” Is a Political Problem for the Regime

By Ryan McMaken – Mises Wire – 09/21/2021

Since 2020, public health technocrats and their allies among elected officials have clung to the position that absolutely every person who can possibly get a covid vaccine should get one.

Both the Mayo Clinic website and the  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, for example, insist that “research has not yet shown” that people who have recovered from covid have any sort of reliable protection. Moreover, the CDC page points to a single study from Kentucky claiming that people with natural immunity are more than twice as likely to contract covid again, compared to people who have been vaccinated.

This narrative is reflected in the fact that the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates are a one-size-fits-all policy insisting that virtually all adults, regardless of whether or not they’ve already had the disease, receive a covid vaccine. The official position is apparently this: nothing except the vaccine can provide any sort of resistance or immunity. So get a vaccine. No exceptions!

Health technocrats have repeatedly insisted that “the science” points unambiguously toward everyone receiving a vaccine, even to the point of pushing vaccines for children. All this in spite of the fact the risk to children from covid is far less than a dozen common daily risks, such as riding in an automobile.

The regime has attached itself closely to a vaccinate-everybody-no-matter-what policy, and a sudden u-turn would be politically problematic. So it’s no wonder there’s so little interest in the topic.

Indeed, in a September 10 interview, senior covid technocrat Anthony Fauci claimed that the matter of natural immunity was not even being discussed at government health agencies. Fauci’s response suggested that the facts of natural immunity warranted discussion at some point in the future. But the comment certainly fit the dominant regime narrative nonetheless: the facts of natural immunity don’t matter for now. Everyone should just get vaccinated:

CNN’s Sanjay Gupta asked if people who have already recovered from COVID-19 should still be required to get the vaccine.

“I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that,” [Fauci] said Thursday on CNN. “I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously.”

Maybe someday they’ll get to talking about it.

But some physicians aren’t as obsessed with pushing vaccine mandates as Anthony Fauci, and the evidence in favor of natural immunity is becoming so undeniable that even mainstream publications are starting to admit it.

In an op-ed for the Washington Post last week, Marty Makary of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine argues that the medical profession has hurt its credibility in pretending that natural immunity is virtually irrelevant to the covid equation. Moreover, the dogmatic “get vaccinated” position constitutes a lack of honesty about the data. Rather, Makary concludes:

[W]e can encourage all Americans to get vaccinated while still being honest about the data. In my clinical experience, I have found patients to be extremely forgiving with evolving data if you are honest and transparent with them. Yet, when asked the common question, “I’ve recovered from covid, is it absolutely essential that I get vaccinated?” many public health officials have put aside the data and responded with a synchronized “yes,” even as studies have shown that reinfections are rare and often asymptomatic or mild when they do occur.

And what are these studies? Makary continues:

More than 15 studies have demonstrated the power of immunity acquired by previously having the virus. A 700,000-person study from Israel two weeks ago found that those who had experienced prior infections were 27 times less likely to get a second symptomatic covid infection than those who were vaccinated. This affirmed a June Cleveland Clinic study of health-care workers (who are often exposed to the virus), in which none who had previously tested positive for the coronavirus got reinfected. The study authors concluded that “individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from covid-19 vaccination.” And in May, a Washington University study found that even a mild covid infection resulted in long-lasting immunity.

The policy bias in favor of vaccines ignores many other facts as well, such as the relative risks of vaccines, especially for the young:

The current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention position about vaccinating children also dismisses the benefits of natural immunity. The Los Angeles County School District recently mandated vaccines for students ages 12 and up who want to learn in person. But young people are less likely to suffer severe or long-lasting symptoms from covid-19 than adults, and have experienced rare heart complications from the vaccines. In Israel, heart inflammation has been observed in between 1 in 3,000 and 1 in 6,000 males age 16 to 24; the CDC has confirmed 854 reports nationally in people age 30 and younger who got the vaccine.

A second dose of the two-shot mRNA vaccine like that produced by Pfizer and Moderna may not even be necessary in children who had covid. Since February, Israel’s Health Ministry has been recommending that anyone, adult or adolescent, who has recovered from covid-19 receive a only single mRNA vaccine dose, instead of two. Even though the risk of severe illness during a reinfection is exceedingly low, some data has demonstrated a slight benefit to one dose in this situation. Other countries use a similar approach. The United States could adopt this strategy now as a reasonable next step in transitioning from an overly rigid to a more flexible vaccine requirement policy. For comparison, the CDC has long recommended that kids do not get the chickenpox vaccine if they had chickenpox infection in the past.

The nonscientific, ideology-induced blind spot for natural immunity also prompted The BMJ  (the journal of the British Medical Association) to note that “[w]hen the vaccine rollout began in mid-December 2020, more than one quarter of Americans—91 million—had been infected with SARS-CoV-2…. As of this May, that proportion had risen to more than a third of the population, including 44% of adults aged 18–59.”

And yet, the authors note this fact doesn’t appear to be a part of any policy discussion at all:

The substantial number of infections, coupled with the increasing scientific evidence that natural immunity was durable, led some medical observers to ask why natural immunity didn’t seem to be factored into decisions about prioritising vaccination.

This problem is reflected in the Biden administration’s drive for booster shots—announced in mid-August—even before there was any clinical research on booster shots at all. Even by mid-September, as one hospital’s chief medical officer put it, “the data is not compelling one way or another.”

But those sorts of details don’t trouble federal “public health” officials, and the Biden administration quickly moved toward pushing booster shots for everyone.

This Is Why There Should Be No Mandatory Medical Treatment

Of course, mandating vaccines—like mandating any medical treatment—would still be immoral even if we could list a dozen studies suggesting boosters are a boon and that natural immunity is no good.

What if there were twenty-five studies “proving” vaccines are better than natural immunity, but only twenty studies “proving” natural immunity is better? Would coercive vaccine mandates then suddenly be justified? Unfortunately, that’s exactly how many advocates for repressive covid policies think the world should work. For these people, policy is just a matter of adding up the number of studies “proving” their side is right, and then claiming this justifies forcing mandatory medications on millions of human beings.

(It never works in reverse, of course. The fact that there’s a lot of evidence—as Makary points out—against vaccines for those who have natural immunity, the dominant narrative is nonetheless that vaccines are “necessary” and “worth it” for everybody, always and everywhere.)

In the real world, however, many medications—including these new vaccines—come with risks that must be weighed against potential benefits. These decisions can only be made at the individual level, where patients must make their own decisions about what substances to put into their own bodies. In other words, blanket policies proclaiming “everyone must receive this medical treatment immediately, or else” contradicts the realities of the uncertainties and varying risk levels that affect individuals. The facts of uncertainty and informed consent were once considered a mainstay of medical ethics—and of any political ideology that actually respects self-determination and basic human rights. Unfortunately, the philosophy of “public health” appears to be uninterested in such trivialities.

At this point, it would be embarrassing for the regime to admit what actual scientific inquiry has shown: that natural immunity is generally superior to receiving the vaccine. The regime doesn’t like to be embarrassed, and neither do the countless doctors and nurses who have long toed the regime’s political line. So expect more of the same.

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Covid in Sweden: Everything on the table

Sebastian Rushworth, M.D. | October 2, 2021

A group of German celebrities have started the campaign “alles auf den tisch”, which literally means “everything on the table”. It’s a reaction to the shocking lack of indepence and critical oversight that has been exhibited by journalists ever since the pandemic began. The purpose of the campaign is to break through the blinkered media narrative that exists in relation to covid, and allow a wider range of thoughts and opinions to get out.

In order to accomplish this, the celebrities have interviewed a large number of doctors and scientists who have thus far been sidelined by the mainstream media, and put the interviews up on their site allesaufdentisch.tv. The campaign appears to have been pretty effective so far, since the site crashed on launch due to the massive amount of traffic it was getting. Luckily it’s up and running again now. As a part of the campaign, I was interviewed by violinist Linus Roth. We talked about happenings in Sweden, the covid death rate, and lockdowns. The interview is short but sweet, only around twenty minutes long.

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Vaccine Effectiveness Hits as Low as Minus-66% in the Over 40s, New PHE Data Shows

By Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • October 3, 2021

The new Public Health England (PHE) Vaccine Surveillance report was released on Thursday, allowing us to update our estimates of unadjusted vaccine effectiveness from real-world data.

Oddly, the report appeared on a new webpage this week, but the old page didn’t include a note to let you know, so it took me a while to discover it had appeared and where it was.

Following last week’s ‘fact check‘ from Full Fatuous – ostensibly of my piece but with some words of admonition for PHE as well, particularly over the accuracy of the population data – a new note appeared in the report: “Interpretation of the case rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated population is particularly susceptible to changes in denominators and should be interpreted with extra caution.” So there you go. All estimates in this post are based on the data PHE uses and are valid insofar as that data is accurate.

As before, the data is just for a four-week period, which, given that the early part of the Delta surge was dominated by the unvaccinated and the latter part has seen infections rise in the vaccinated, seems to me a mistake. A fairer view would cover the whole Delta surge (as with the estimates I make from the data in the Technical Briefings), but in any case the report gives a snapshot of current relative infection rates.

As Full Fatuous pointed out, PHE don’t recommend using this data to estimate vaccine effectiveness, saying it’s “not the most appropriate method” because it’s unadjusted for risk factors (and, inevitably, they don’t provide the data you’d need to adjust it). However, even if not recommended by PHE, it is certainly a valid method of calculating vaccine effectiveness, which is just a figure which states the relative risk reduction in the vaccinated group, as long as you bear in mind its limitations. All vaccine effectiveness estimates have limitations, and while adjusting for confounding factors is in principle important, it is helpful only if done well, and many studies do not do it well. Unadjusted estimates from raw data are a necessary starting point.

Perhaps the key confounder for the estimates of vaccine effectiveness against infection given here is whether people have been previously infected, with a common assumption being that a higher proportion of the unvaccinated will be previously infected, due to it being a potential factor in people’s decision not to be vaccinated. This may well artificially lower the vaccine effectiveness estimates, but since no one has yet produced data showing how antibodies-from-infection split between vaccinated and unvaccinated it is hard to know how far this is the case.

Unvaccinated here means actually unvaccinated, not partially vaccinated or post-jab. Hospitalisation means “cases presenting to emergency care (within 28 days of a positive specimen) resulting in an overnight inpatient admission”.

As England’s drawn-out Delta outbreak drags on, the infection rates in the vaccinated continue to outpace those in the unvaccinated, reducing (unadjusted) vaccine effectiveness further. For the 60s age group, infection rates are 63% higher in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated, up from 53% last week, giving an (unadjusted) vaccine effectiveness of minus-63%. But that has been topped this week by the 40s age group, the vaccinated among whom now have an infection rate no less than 66% higher than the unvaccinated, up from 46% in last week’s report and 27% in the report for the month ending September 5th. Vaccine effectiveness has been heading downward in the 30s age group as well, now just 8%, though interestingly it has actually been increasing in the under 18s. On this data, vaccine protection against serious illness and death appears to be holding up. I have included the two previous tables below for comparison.

With infection rates now, on this data, much higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated, what remaining justification can there be for vaccine passports, vaccine mandates, and any other policy based on the assumption that vaccines protect other people? When will the Government face up to the reality that vaccines provide poor protection against infection, poor protection against transmission, and thus poor protection of others, and so there is no justification for continuing to build-up the infrastructure of a two-tier, discriminatory state?

October 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

This Week in the New Normal #7

OffGuardian | October 3, 2021

This Week in the New Normal  is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.

1.THE WORST ARTICLE I’VE EVER READ.

The demonisation campaign against those who decline to partake in the untested gene therapy is pervasive and seemingly limitless. Article’s pop up claiming unvaxxed people should be banned from flying, banned from healthcare, banned from state benefits, and even fired from their jobs.

But this article in The Mirror is the worst of the worst. Quite honestly the worst, most hate-filled and insidious article I have ever read, and it is literally my job to search out and read hate-filled and insidious articles.

It’s titled:

Anti-vaxxers want to kill your babies, stage a coup and cause another lockdown!”

… and you don’t really need any more information than that. Read at your own risk.

2. THE RETURN OF LAB-GROWN MEAT

… well, not “the return” exactly, because it never went away. I guess “resurgence” is the better word. There’s certainly a sudden bump in the coverage.

The Guardian “asks the expert” if lab-grown meat will replace the real thing. The “expert” in question makes and sells lab-grown meat and, rather unsurprisingly, they say “yes!”.

And then the Times, with a tone of reluctant surrender, tells us we “must embrace lab-grown meat” whether “we like it or not”.

At the same time, Sky hosts a “climate debate” on lab-grown meat. One of those fake “debates” which serves a pre-determined agenda by basing a staged disagreement on fundamental assumptions which neither side questions.

In this case, it’s just assumed that LGM is good for the planet, and that actual meat is bad for it. Neither of those things are proven to be true.

But good news everyone! Your genetically synthesised meat-like protein paste is one step closer…whether you like it not.

3. “TREAT VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AS SERIOUSLY AS TERRORISM”

The result of the Sarah Everard trial in the UK has kicked off a wave of fear-based propaganda concerning just how much violence against women goes on, and what we need to do about it. Over and over again a list of very predictable names in very predictable publications talk up the idea that women are “still not safe”, or never “feel safe” (which is not the same thing).

Clearly, any murder is a tragedy for the victim and their family, but to present our country, or society, as inherently violent or dangerous is completely disengenuous.

Let’s just check the stats, for the sake of reality.

In the UK, and most of the Western world, violent crime has been generally on the decline for decades. In 2019, EU statistics found a 32% drop in homicides since 2008. In 2020, the UK suffered ~750 murders in a population of 68 million people, meaning a crude murder rate of 0.001% (or 1 per 100,000). Less than one-third of those killed were women, and only 20% of them were attacked on the street.

Our society is not perfect, but violent crime (against either gender) has literally never been less of a danger in the history of the country. In terms of violent crime, the streets are as safe for women as they have ever been. If they don’t feel safe, well that’s probably because the media keep telling them how much “danger” they’re in.

But why? Why the massive exaggeration of the danger? And why the clarion calls for “action” on violence against women?

Well, the same exact reasons behind the “pandemic” narrative. Because hysteria is always useful. Because the people in charge need us to be afraid all the time. Because they want to make sure different genders, races and orientations are constantly mistrustful of one another. And, obviously, because it can be manipulated into increased powers for the state.

Social media companies are already being pressured to “do more to protect women”. After Everard’s murder first in the news in March, people were suggesting male-only curfews so women feel safe on the streets. If Covid has taught us anything, it’s that well-stoked public panic can be parlayed into exactly that kind of insane policy.

The title of this section is taken from a tweet by British Labour MP David Lammy:

It’s not clear what (if anything) David means by this. It’s entirely possible he’s just an idiot playing to the gallery, but anyone familiar with the real purpose, and disastrous societal fallout, of the “War on Terror” should probably be concerned about just how far those in charge could go to (allegedly) “make women feel safe.”

BONUS: THE TOTALLY-NOT-A-CULT OF THE WEEK

Just want to point out that the vaccine-pushers of the New Normal are totally not in a cult.

Whether it’s dressing up dancers like syringes to prance around with glassy-eyed soul-dead TV hosts:

Or literally citing God as the source of the vaccine:

This is all very normal behaviour, and if you perceive it as creepy or cultlike, it’s only because you are a heretic…sorry, I mean a science denier.

BONUS II: PROJECTION OF THE WEEK

For those of you who don’t know who Keith Olbermann is, well I envy you..and apologise for introducing you to his existence. He’s a petty, ill-informed, opinionated loudmouth who takes up irrational and bigoted positions on pretty much everything, and trumpets those views loudly to anyone who’ll listen.

And yesterday, he tweeted this…

It takes a serious lack of self-awareness to get your third untested vaccination against a disease you have a 99.5% chance of surviving, and then lambast everyone not worried about the disease for being scaredy cats.

IT’S NOT ALL BAD…

The world of sport, especially American sports, is somewhat of a hotbed of “vaccine hesitancy”. This is down to several factors, most probably to do with many US athletes coming from working-class demographics with longstanding (and entirely justified) suspicions of both the media and big pharma.

By way of contrast with Olbermann’s spittle-spraying diatribe, we present the calm and rational position of NBA star Jonathan Isaac, speaking at a press conference on September 27th:

The NBA has already said they will dock the pay of unvaxxed players who refuse to comply with local mandates. And both the NBA and NFL have put in place massive restrictions on unvaccinated players to pressure them into getting the shot. The media, likewise, is piling on the pressure to conform.

All the players resisting in the face of such a powerful campaign deserve respect. And they serve as a reminder that Covid sceptics, or even just those people who want nothing to do with the vaccine, are not anything like the tiny minority the media tries to pretend we are. And our arguments are rational and informed, not based on the insults and mindless frothing outrage of those trying to pressure us into conforming.

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention the “mysterious rise in heart attacks” or the UK’s entirely manufactured “fuel crisis”.

October 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Hospitals Should Hire, Not Fire, Nurses with Natural Immunity

BY MARTIN KULLDORFF | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | OCTOBER 1, 2021

Among many surprising developments during this pandemic, the most stunning has been the questioning of naturally acquired immunity after a person has had the Covid disease.

We have understood natural immunity since at least the Athenian Plague in 430 BC. Here is Thucydides:

‘Yet it was with those who had recovered from the disease that the sick and the dying found most compassion. These knew what it was from experience and had no fear for themselves; for the same man was never attacked twice—never at least fatally.’ – Thucydides

We have lived with endemic coronaviruses for at least a hundred years, for which we have long-lasting natural immunity. As expected, we also have natural immunity after Covid-19 disease, as there have been exceedingly few reinfections with serious illness or death, despite a widely circulating virus.

For most viruses, natural immunity is better than vaccine-induced immunity, and that is also true for Covid. In the best study to date, the vaccinated were around 27 times more likely to have symptomatic disease than those with natural immunity, with an estimated range between 13 and 57. With no Covid deaths in either group, both natural and vaccine immunity protect well against death.

During the last decade, I have worked closely with hospital epidemiologists. While the role of physicians is to treat patients and make them well, the task of the hospital epidemiologist is to ensure that patients do not get sick while in the hospital, such as catching a deadly virus from another patient or a caretaker.

For that purpose, hospitals employ a variety of measures, from frequent hand washing to full infection control regalia when caring for an Ebola patient. Vaccinations are a key component of these control efforts. For example, two weeks before spleen surgery, patients are given the pneumococcal vaccine to minimize postoperative infections, and most clinical staff are immunized against influenza every year.

Infection control measures are especially critical for older frail hospital patients with a weakened immune system. They can become infected and die from a virus that most people would easily survive. A key rationale for immunizing nurses and physicians against influenza is to ensure that they do not infect such patients.

How can hospitals best protect their patients from Covid disease? It is an enormously important question, also relevant for nursing homes. There are some obvious standard solutions, such as separating Covid patients from other patients, minimizing staff rotation, and providing generous sick leave for staff with Covid-like symptoms.

Another goal should be to employ staff with the strongest possible immunity against Covid, as they are less likely to catch it and spread it to their patients. This means that hospitals and nursing homes should actively seek to hire staff that have natural immunity from prior Covid disease and use such staff for their most vulnerable patients.

Hence, we are now seeing a fierce competition where hospitals and nursing homes are desperately trying to hire people with natural immunity. Well, actually, not.

Instead, hospitals are firing nurses and other staff with superior natural immunity while retaining those with weaker vaccine-induced immunity. By doing so, they are betraying their patients, increasing their risk for hospital-acquired infections.

By pushing vaccine mandates, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci is questioning the existence of natural immunity after Covid disease. In doing so, he is following the lead of CDC director Rochelle Walensky, who questioned natural immunity in a 2020 Memorandum published by The Lancet. By instituting vaccine mandates, university hospitals are now also questioning the existence of natural immunity after Covid disease.

This is astonishing.

I work at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, which has announced that all nurses, doctors and other health care providers will be fired if they do not get a Covid vaccine. Last week I spoke with one of our nurses. She worked hard caring for Covid patients, even as some of her colleagues left in fear at the beginning of the pandemic.

Unsurprisingly, she got infected, but then recovered. Now she has stronger and longer-lasting immunity than the vaccinated work-from-home hospital administrators who are firing her for not being vaccinated.

If university hospitals cannot get the medical evidence right on the basic science of immunity, how can we trust them with any other aspects of our health?

What’s next? Universities questioning whether the earth is round or flat? That, at least, would do less harm.

Martin Kulldorff, Senior Scholar of Brownstone Institute, is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. kulldorff@brownstone.org

October 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Rep. Adam Schiff says YouTube’s ban of vaccine skepticism doesn’t go far enough

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | October 2, 2021

Rep. Adam Schiff praised YouTube’s decision to ban all vaccine skepticism but said it was not the “end of our fight against misinformation.”

On Wednesday afternoon, YouTube announced that it will ban all vaccine skepticism to stop the spread of what it says is misinformation. The ban not only applies to COVID vaccines but also any other vaccines that pharmaceutical companies produce.

While making the announcement, YouTube said: “Today’s policy update is an important step to address vaccine and health misinformation on our platform, and we’ll continue to invest across the board.”

YouTube’s decision was applauded by many, including Rep. Adam Schiff.

“YouTube’s curbing of anti-vaccine content is a strong first step,” the Democrat congressman wrote on Twitter. But this doesn’t mark the end of our fight against deadly misinformation. These policies must be enforced. And we must keep pushing for other companies to follow suit. What do you say, @Amazon and @Facebook?” hinting at his demands for more censorship.

October 2, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

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