New Paper: Masks Achieve Nothing In Terms Of Spread
By Damian D. Guerra and Daniel J. Guerra | medrxiv.org | May 29, 2021
Latest analysis shows yet again – yet again – what we already knew from 40 years of published research. And also empirically from simply glancing over the past year’s real-world data. Masks don’t work!
Our main finding is that mask mandates and use are not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 spread among US states. 80% of US states mandated masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mandates induced greater mask compliance but did not predict lower growth rates when community spread was low (minima) or high (maxima). We infer that mandates likely did not affect COVID-19 case growth [15], as growth rates were similar on all days between actual or modeled issuance dates and 6 March 2021. Higher mask use (rather than mandates per se) has been argued to decrease COVID-19 growth rates [11].
While compliance varies by location and time, IHME estimates are robust (derived from multiple sources [17]) and densely sampled (day-level precision). Higher mask use did not predict lower maximum growth rates, smaller surges, or less Fall-Winter growth among continental states.
Mask-growth rate correlation was only evident at minima. This may be an artifact of faster growth at fewer normalized cases, as well as regional differences in case prevalence early in the pandemic. States in the high mask quintile grew at similar rates as states in the low mask quintile after maxima (when interstate total case differences were smaller than before minima).
In addition, mask use did not predict normalized cases at minima, and low mask growth curves trailed those of high mask (particularly Northeast) states before minima. Growth maxima and Fall-Winter surges did not differ between Northeast and other states. Northeast states exhibited the highest seroprevalence up to at least July 2020 [24] and constituted 80% of the top quintile of mask use, which may explain their comparatively lower Summer growth.
Overall, mask use appears to be an intra-state lagging indicator of case growth. There is inferential but not demonstrable evidence that masks reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Animal models [25], small case studies [6], and growth curves for mandate-only states [16] suggest that mask efficacy increases with mask use [11]. However, we did not observe lower growth rates over a range of compliance at maximum Fall-Winter growth (45-83% between South Dakota and Massachusetts during maxima) [17] when growth rates were high.
This complements a Danish RCT from 3 April to 2 June 2020, when growth rates were low, which found no association between mask use and lower COVID-19 rates either for all participants in the masked arm (47% strong compliance) or for strongly compliant participants only [8].
Masks have generally not protected against other respiratory viruses. Higher self-reported mask use protected against SARS-CoV-1 in Beijing residents [26], but RCTs found no differences in PCR confirmed influenza among Hong Kong households assigned to hand hygiene with or without masks (mask use 31% and 49%, respectively) [27].
Medical and cloth masks did not reduce viral respiratory infections among clinicians in Vietnam [9] or China [10], and rhinovirus transmission increased among universally masked Hong Kong students and teachers in 2020 compared with prior years [28].
These findings are consistent with a 2020 CDC meta-analysis [29] and a 2020 Cochrane review update [30].
Our study has implications for respiratory virus mitigation. Public health measures should ethically promote behaviors that prevent communicable diseases. The sudden onset of COVID-19 compelled adoption of mask mandates before efficacy could be evaluated.
Our findings do not support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates decrease with greater public mask use.
As masks are required in public in many US states, it is prudent to weigh potential benefits with harms. Masks may promote social cohesion as rallying symbols during a pandemic [31], but risk compensation can also occur [32]. Prolonged mask use (>4 hours per day) promotes facial alkalinization and inadvertently encourages dehydration, which in turn can enhance barrier breakdown and bacterial infection risk [33].
British clinicians have reported masks to increase headaches and sweating and decrease cognitive precision [34]. Survey bias notwithstanding, these sequelae are associated with medical errors [35]. By obscuring nonverbal communication, masks interfere with social learning in children [36]. Likewise, masks can distort verbal speech and remove visual cues to the detriment of individuals with hearing loss; clear face-shields improve visual integration, but there is a corresponding loss of sound quality [37, 38].
Future research is necessary to better understand the risks of long-term daily mask use [30]. Conversely, it is appropriate to emphasize interventions with demonstrated or probable efficacy against COVID-19 such as vaccination [39] and Vitamin D repletion [40]. In summary, mask mandates and use were poor predictors of COVID-19 spread in US states. Case growth was independent of mandates at low and high rates of community spread, and mask use did not predict case growth during the Summer or Fall-Winter waves.
Strengths of our study include using two mask metrics to evaluate association with COVID-19 growth rates; measuring normalized case growth in mandate and non-mandate states at comparable times to quantify the likely effect of mandates; and deconvolving the effect of mask use by examining case growth in states with variable mask use. Our study also has key limitations. We did not assess counties or localities, which may trend independently of state averages.
While dense sampling promotes convergence, IHME masking estimates are subject to survey bias. We only assessed one biological quantity (confirmed and probable COVID-19 infections), but the ongoing pandemic warrants assessment of other factors such as hospitalizations and mortality. Future work is necessary to elucidate better predictors of COVID-19 spread. A recent study found that at typical respiratory fluence rates, medical masks decrease airway deposition of 10-20μm SARS-CoV-2 particles but not 1-5μm SARS-CoV-2 aerosols [41].
Aerosol expulsion increases with COVID-19 disease severity in non-human primates, as well as with age and BMI in humans without COVID-19 [42]. Aerosol treatment by enhanced ventilation and air purification could help reduce the size of COVID-19 outbreaks.
Don’t Be Stupid – Inform Your Decisions
By Gillian Dymond | OffGuardian | May 28, 2021
Are you tired of having to watch everything you say, in case you’re accused of “hate speech”? Do you frequently have to bite back innocently-spoken words, when someone claims to be “offended” by them? Have you become used to avoiding lively debate or expressing frank opinions on social media, for fear of finding police officers on your doorstep?
If so, you’ll be glad to know that at last there is a whole class of people you may attack with impunity; people who may be derided, slandered and ostracised to your heart’s content; people so selfish and stupid that you are fully entitled to incite hatred against them with the full blessing of your government.
These are the Great Unclean: the “anti-vaxxers” who are not just nasty spoilsports, standing between you and the ever-deferred reopening of society, but who continue to waft death and disease through a world which can only be made safe by universal, and repeated, “jabbing”.
The opportunity to indulge in virtuous hate speech has been seized with zest by household names and obscure Twitterati alike.
“Love the idea of covid vaccine passports for everywhere,” enthuses Piers Morgan, “restaurants, clubs, football, gyms, shops etc. It’s time covid-denying, anti-vaxxer loonies had their bullshit bluff called and bar themselves from going anywhere that responsible citizens go.”
Edwina Currie has emerged from political oblivion to agree:
I hear what you say about someone exercising their freedom not to have a vaccination and they’re perfectly healthy. I don’t want them sitting next to me in the theatre. I don’t want them standing next to me at the theatre bar. I don’t want them next to me or anywhere near me or even in the same carriage on the train. So they can exercise their freedom by staying at home.”
As for the chorus of the immunologically saved on social media, here’s a sample meme:
If you’re antivax and you see me making fun of antivax people, I just want to say I’m talking about you personally and I hope you’re offended because you’re fucking stupid.”
Just try substituting one of a whole range of tenderly protected diversities for “antivax people” or “anti-vaxxers”, and watch the frisson of outrage creeping down any bien-pensant spine. But as the State extends its tolerance, even its encouragement, to our abusers, we covid sceptics, it seems, are fair game.
For there is no quarter from the government for those who are standing aloof from the stampede to get “shots into arms”, as believers in the WHO’s revised definition of herd immunity so crudely like to put it.
This is, after all, a government which, spurred on by behavioural psychologists and with malice aforethought, has industriously stirred up and exploited social disapproval as a potent means of shaming dissent and achieving maximum compliance.
Be kind, they urge you, and deprive yourself and your children of oxygen for your neighbour’s sake. Be responsible, and roll up your sleeve to receive the magic injection that will not only make you immortal but demonstrate your selfless concern for others. Don’t be stupid! Remember, having no symptoms doesn’t mean you’re not a silent super-spreader.
But do sceptics really deserve the contempt being dished out to them so freely?
Are they really so stupid?
Would any self-respecting “anti-vaxxer”, for instance, have been silly enough to come out with the nonsense spouted by the UK’s secretary of state for health, when he told us that:
If you think about it, the vaccine is a tiny bit of the virus in order to get your body to be able to respond.”
Really, Mr Hancock? Are you sure that’s what’s actually on offer here?
Perhaps Mike Yeadon, former head of respiratory research at Pfizer, can set you straight. As he pointed out to James Delingpole recently, “a tiny bit of the virus” is not what goes into these novel treatments – perhaps because, when it comes down to brass tacks, “no-one’s got any”.
What is actually being pumped into millions of arms throughout the world with such careless abandon is not, he says, “just a vaccine”. Although these gene-based medications do “ultimately raise an immune response … the way they do it is completely different from any vaccine we’ve used before … they induce the body, the cells of your body, to actually manufacture a piece of this pathogen, this infective agent. And you respond to that.”
“Anti-vaxxers” could have told you that, Mr Hancock, because they’ve done their own research, and they understand the difference between the traditional idea of a vaccine and what is currently being held up as the golden ticket to freedom. So please stop feeding us blatant untruths about what is actually being injected into all those trusting arms and making its insidious way around millions of bloodstream.
Let’s have the facts that would enable everyone to make a truly informed decision. It really doesn’t help when you fuel sectarian hatred by standing up in parliament and declaring that:
those who promulgate lies about the dangers of vaccines that are safe and have been approved … are threatening lives …”
The obvious response to that is, “those who promulgate lies about the safety of novel and incompletely tested gene therapies doled out on emergency approval only are threatening lives.”
The life of Peter Meadows, for instance: a superlatively healthy seventy-six-year-old, who, trusting government and NHS assurances that the “vaccines” were “safe and effective”, suffered an unprecedented heart attack within hours of receiving the Pfizer jab, and died a few days later: just one of over a thousand post-vaccine fatalities officially logged in the UK’s Yellow Card system to date – or perhaps, as the evidence is increasingly suggesting, of thousands of vaccine-related deaths which, unlike those ascribed to Covid, are not in line with natural mortality profiles.
It seems that those castigated for being “anti-vaxxers” are, in fact, far from stupid. On the contrary, they are the ones sensible enough to take the time and trouble to research and weigh up risks versus benefits before exposing their bodies to any of the novel gene therapies currently being hawked around as “vaccines”.
It is those who don’t search out the facts for themselves who are not using their intelligence, and who are thereby laying themselves open to the smooth sales talk of drug pushers in high places. Peter Meadows and his wife were apparently not handed even the minimal information supplied by the NHS regarding possible side effects they might suffer until after they had received their shots.
They had no idea that the “vaccines” so confidently touted by Matt Hancock were not fully tested for immediate, let alone medium- or long-term, safety, and were issued under the “black triangle” system – ie, were still “subject to intensive safety monitoring”, with the proviso that a record should be kept of all adverse reactions experienced by those acting effectively as human guinea pigs on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies.
What is more, a “high volume” of such adverse reactions were anticipated by the apparently unconcerned UK government before the roll-out began.
Although the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is quick to state that the black triangle label “does not indicate that the product is unsafe for use in patients”, the common-sense response to such a claim, after careful examination of the Yellow Card data, must surely be, “Oh yeah? And now pull the other one!”
In fact, a Pubmed paper advising the US as to whether or not the black triangle system does indeed promote “more judicious prescribing” of new medications, concludes that, “Accelerated drug approvals could cause more uncertainty about drug effectiveness and safety, but specific labeling of newly approved medicines is unlikely to promote more judicious prescribing.”
How much more accelerated could approval be, than the emergency approval accorded to the new coronavirus “vaccines”? And how much less judicious their prescribing, encompassing, as it does, the wholesale jabbing of populations throughout the world, including young people and children, who are at little to no risk of succumbing to the disease, let alone dying of it? It is depressing to learn that Peter Meadows’ daughters had understood enough about the uncertain nature of the hastily concocted “vaccines” to urge their parents not to have the jabs.
Unfortunately, like so many others, the couple were swayed by a longing to return to their old normal, and by peer pressure whipped up by the likes of Matt Hancock and SAGE, rather than by the reasonable concerns raised by their daughters after careful scrutiny of the facts.
So, once more: just how stupid are anti-vaxxers? Interestingly, a recent paper by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Viral Visualizations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use Orthodox Data Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online found that, contrary to their popular denigration as “covidiots”, and to the embarrassment of the researchers themselves, covid sceptics “practice a form of data literacy in spades”.
Many of them “express mistrust for academic and journalistic accounts of the pandemic, proposing to rectify alleged bias by ‘following the data’ and creating their own data visualisations.” What they value is “unmediated access to information” and they “privilege personal research and direct reading over ‘expert’ interpretations.” And “Most fundamentally,” say the MIT team, “the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution.”
Exactly.
In which case, their dismissal of the WHO’s presumption, in claiming to be custodians of “The Science”, is hardly surprising. Nonsense, say the sceptics. Science can never be above questioning. It is not a bundle of rubber-stamped, government-approved dogmas, handy for facilitating some political or commercial agenda.
Like all forms of human knowledge, science remains eternally incomplete, the evolving construction of many minds researching truth in a continuing process of discovery: forming hypotheses, and attempting by all means possible to disprove those hypotheses; seeking to explain or resolve anomalies, but never holding any theory sacrosanct which further investigation might yet prove false; adapting to the gradual unfolding of new perspectives, as fresh evidence shakes the foundations of old paradigms.
It is the alleged “covidiots” and “anti-vaxxers” who, while they may not be scientists themselves, understand the principles on which the scientific method is based. As the MIT study admits, to complain that these irritating people “need more scientific literacy is to characterize their approach as uninformed and inexplicably extreme. This study shows the opposite: they are deeply invested in forms of critique and knowledge production they recognise as scientific expertise.”
All the same, the authors of the study seem to find the concessions they are compelled to make disturbing. “(H)ow do these groups diverge from scientific orthodoxy,” they wonder, “if they are using the same data?” Since all right-minded facts should show decent respect for the statutory consensus, surely anyone inducing them to defect in support of alternative, unsanctioned conclusions must be employing underhand methods?
“We have identified a few sleights of hand that contribute to the broader epistemological crisis we identify between these groups and the majority of scientific researchers,” the defenders of the true faith plead: and they shake their heads at the way “these groups skillfully manipulate data to undermine mainstream science,” quoting as examples the sceptics’ “outsize emphasis on deaths versus cases” and their suspicion of the officially promoted confusion of deaths “with” and “of” covid: both very good reasons, less partial analysts might say, for questioning the figures being spewed out ceaselessly by the government-funded mainstream media, and taken by a terrorised public to be gospel truth.
Yet it’s not just annoying amateurs, with their absurd claims that actual facts should trump any institutionally-coerced consensus, who question the official “narrative” – and, indeed the very existence of a pandemic, as traditionally understood before the WHO decided to “re-imagine” the term, on 4th May 2009, in anticipation of the projected swine-flu apocalypse (in the event, a damp squib, but a useful practice-run for the present resounding success).
After accumulating hard evidence in interviews with over a hundred eminent scientists and other experts, the Corona Investigation Committee, a team headed by Dr Reiner Fuellmich, are likewise challenging the means – essentially, a fraudulent PCR test capable of manufacturing cases on demand and fuelling the myth of the “asymptomatic superspreader” – by which the global coup and its predestined outcome, the push to “get jabs into arms”, have been so artfully engineered.
Dr Fuellmich – a lawyer qualified to practise in both the States and Europe – has already taken on such giants as Deutschebank and Volkswagen. We can only hope that the evidence which he and the rest of the Committee have gathered so painstakingly over the past year and shared with lawyers all over the world will continue to result in court cases where facts will triumph over consensus, vindicating the unvaccinated of “stupidity” before they are forced by the uninformed to wear yellow stars and find themselves rounded up in camps for the unclean.
And that those behind the coup, along with all who enabled and enforced their unlawful actions by “just following orders”, are brought to justice before an international tribunal, to be charged with what the Corona Committee describes as “the greatest crime against humanity ever committed.”
Massive turnout in Syria election was loud shout of victory over terrorists, their sponsors, says analyst
Press TV – May 28, 2021
A political commentator has lauded the massive voter turnout in Syria’s presidential election as an outstanding sign and loud cry of victory notched up by people in the war-stricken Arab nation over Takfiri terrorist groups and their sponsors.
“Voters turned out in stunning numbers. Millions are said to have cast their votes. They were gleeful; the atmosphere was triumphant. The massive turnout was a shout of victory over foreign terrorists and the powers that backed them,” Richard Black, a former Republican member of the Virginia State Senate told Press TV in an exclusive interview on Friday.
He added that the election allowed Syrians to symbolically reject the horrors imposed on them by the United States, United Kingdom, France and their regional allies, stressing the latter have been relentlessly seeking to intimidate the Syrian nation by waging a reign of terror for more than a decade.
“The US, the UK, and France have been the unwavering supporters of al-Qaeda-linked terrorists since the moment that the war began [in Syria in March 2011]. To this day, they have been supporting terrorists controlling [Syria’s northwestern] Idlib Province,” the pundit said.
Black went on to dismiss criticism of Syria’s president election, stating that Western powers did not let voters in militant-held parts of Syria head to the polls and cast ballots because “they do not really care about elections or about freedom. Their objective is terror and conquest.”
“The occupying powers never gave a thought to holding elections, because their puppets would have been ousted. They are much too busy looting the wealth of Syrian people than to worry about elections in the areas they rule,” he pointed out.
The analyst also stated that Washington can by no means denounce Syria’s May 26 presidential election, as a large percentage of Americans believe that the 2020 US presidential poll was fraudulent and invalid.
He rejected as “ludicrous” demands by the United States and a number of European nations that Syria’s election should have been convened under UN supervision.
“If the UN needs to conduct elections in Syria, why shouldn’t they supervise them in the US, the UK, France, Germany, and Italy? By what authority does the UN run the internal affairs of sovereign nations?
“It is ironic that nations working to overthrow Syria’s government with a naval blockade, brutal sanctions, and armies of terrorists are now trying to tell Syrian people how to vote,” Black argued.
He underscored that Syria was in a much better position to hold presidential poll compared to the last round of election in 2014.
“During the 2014 election, foreign powers did everything possible to block Syrians from voting. Just before the election, many countries closed down Syrian embassies to prevent expatriates from expressing their will. The closure of the embassies was orchestrated by the US, which feared that an overwhelming vote in favor of Bashar al-Assad would embarrass the State Department and undermine its campaign against Syria,” the political analyst said.
Black concluded that Syrians have now driven out foreign-backed terrorists from most of their cities and towns, and could vote this time without having to brave explosives sent by Western powers to disrupt their election.
The Syrian parliament announced on Thursday that President Assad won his fourth seven-year term in the 2021 presidential race.
Hamoudeh Sabbagh, the parliament speaker, said that Assad won 95.1 percent of the vote as opposed to 88.7 percent in the 2014 election.
He said that about 14 million of the estimated 18 million eligible voters inside and outside Syria cast their votes, with a turnout rate of 78.64 percent.
Assad’s competitors, former Deputy Cabinet Minister Abdallah Saloum Abdallah and head of a Syrian opposition party, Mahmoud Ahmed Marei, won 3.3 and 1.5 percent of the vote respectively.
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Switch to Remote Learning Caused Large Increases in School Dropout and Learning Losses in Brazil
By Noah Carl • Lockdown Sceptics • May 28, 2021
Back in April, I wrote about a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which found that Dutch students made “made little or no progress while learning from home”. Now researchers have reported a similar finding in Brazil.
As in the Dutch study, the researchers used rigorous methods to gauge the impact of remote learning on student outcomes. In other words, they didn’t just compare outcomes in 2020 to those the year before.
In São Paulo State (where the study was based) state schools switched to remote learning only at the end of the first quarter, and they continued to teach remotely thereafter. This allowed the researchers to compare the change in outcomes between the first and last quarters of 2020 to the change in outcomes between the same two quarters of 2019.
They looked at two different outcomes: high dropout risk (i.e., whether the student had any math and Portuguese grades on his school record in the relevant quarter), and standardised test scores.
When comparing the change in 2020 to the change in 2019, the researchers found large increases in school dropout and learning losses.
Furthermore, they exploited a natural experiment to gauge the impact of switching back to in-person learning. In the fourth quarter of 2020, some municipalities allowed high-schools but not middle-schools to switch back. This allowed the researchers to compare middle- and high-schools in those municipalities with respect to the change in 2020 versus the change in 2019.
Consistent with the previous result, they found that switching back to in-person learning was associated with higher standardised test scores.
In the authors’ own words, their results show that “the societal costs of keeping schools closed in the pandemic are very large”. As such, they argue that “the public debate should move from whether schools should be open or not to how to reopen them safely”.
Vax Passports: Where Your State Stands
Alliance for Natural Health | May 27, 2021
As more Americans get vaccinated against COVID-19, and vaccination recommendations extend to younger and younger Americans, we are starting to see more efforts to require vaccination as a condition of receiving services, as we’ve seen at American universities. This endangers autoimmune patients who are more at risk of serious adverse events following COVID vaccination. States can take a stand for medical freedom and privacy rights. To prevent de facto vaccine mandates that endanger millions of patients, we must encourage state leaders to take action to protect our health.
Ten states, so far, have taken steps to restrict or ban the use of vaccine passports, electronic applications that display an individual’s vaccination status or COVID lab test results. Many have done so through executive orders signed by the governor: Arizona, Florida, Texas, South Carolina, South Dakota, Montana, and Idaho. Three states have passed legislation along similar lines, including Utah, Indiana, and Arkansas.
These policies have important differences. In Florida and Montana, executive orders prevent businesses, in addition to state institutions, from requiring patrons to provide proof of vaccination to gain entry or service from the business. In Idaho, Arizona, South Dakota, Utah, South Carolina, Arkansas, Indiana, and Texas, the ban on vaccine passports is generally limited to entities of the state government or (in the case of Texas) any business that receives state funds.
Legislation is pending in the following states to prevent discrimination based on vaccination status and/or to prevent the use of vaccine passports: FL, NC, OK, HI, OR, RI, TX, WI, PA, and VT.
Texas State Senator Bob Hall, one of the sponsors of a bill preventing discrimination in Texas, had eloquent words to share about vaccine passports: “[My bill] aims to give Texans the peace of mind of knowing that their ability to navigate, participate, and function without being required to undergo an experimental medical procedure as a condition of that engagement is protected by law.”
Some governors have made positive statements, though have not yet taken action to prevent vaccine passports. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp tweeted, “I do not and will not support any kind of state-mandated vaccine passport… the decision to receive the vaccine should be left up to each individual.” Governor Pete Ricketts of Nebraska said “Nebraska will not participate in any vaccine passport program. This concept violates two central tenets of the American system: freedom of movement and healthcare privacy.” Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced “I oppose vaccine passports. The COVID-19 vaccine should be a personal health choice, not a government requirement.”
Some states are moving in the other direction. Hawaii is allowing fully vaccinated Hawaiians to travel between islands without quarantine and other testing rules, with plans in the works to launch a vaccine passport system. New York has already launched the Excelsior Pass, a voluntary app that allows people to upload negative COVID-19 test results or proof of vaccination. Governor Ned Lamont of Connecticut said he expects “some type of passport or validation … probably led by the private sector,” and that more planning will occur once vaccinations are open to everyone. Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina said his administration is exploring the development of vaccine passports.
We’re already seeing how this can play out. In Israel, for example, the government issues “green passes” allowing access to social, cultural, sporting events, gyms, restaurants, etc., to individuals who have either recovered from COVID or have had the vaccine. Green passes must be renewed every six months.
We are all eager for life to return to “normal” following extended lockdowns and isolation. But vaccine passports are not the answer. We cannot deny rights and privileges to those, such as autoimmune patients, who choose not to receive a medical procedure due to a legitimate medical concern.
Action Alerts!
- Florida and Montana residents, thank your legislators for banning vaccine passports. Take Action!
- If you live in a state that banned vaccine passports only in state institutions (AZ, AR, ID, IN, SC, SD, TX, and UT), thank lawmakers for taking action but urge them to extend the ban on passports to businesses in the state. Take Action!
- All other states: urge your lawmakers to take action to ban vaccine passports in your state. Take Action!
YouTube deletes video of Georgia mom’s testimony against mask mandates for kids
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 27, 2021
YouTube has once again deleted a video showing Courtney Ann Taylor speaking out against the mask wearing mandate imposed on children in schools in the US state of Georgia.
This time, the viral video recorded during a school board meeting got taken down from the YouTube channel of Grabien, Tom Elliot’s distributed news prep service.
Elliot revealed in a thread on Twitter that YouTube censored the video for a violation of community guidelines and medical misinformation rules.
However, Elliot, who unsuccessfully appealed the decision, believes not only that parents should have the right to voice their opinion on whether their children wear masks – but that Taylor’s comments did not actually violate YouTube’s policy quoted in the removal notice.
YouTube insists that its coronavirus-related moderation and censorship is based on the position of health authorities, most notably the WHO, yet not even this organization recommends that children must wear masks.
Elliot links to the WHO website where the topic of children and masks is discussed, with the UN agency concluding that there is no scientifically-based reason to make children wear masks.
Even though this is the argument Elliot used in his appeal, YouTube remained steadfast in its intention to prevent users from seeing the video, insisting that it does violate the medical misinformation policy, and justifying this as the need to be “a safe place for all.”
For those wondering what Taylor said and how it might be interpreted as spreading Covid misinformation, he provided a link to the Grabien website that has the video, uploaded on another platform, and a transcript.
Taylor is heard urging the school board to end the mandatory wearing of masks by children as unjustified, considering not only the availability of vaccines for adults, but also the fact that the virus does not affect young children. Taylor then shares that her 6-year-old had asked her to tell the school that she doesn’t want to wear a mask any longer.
Previously, YouTube deleted the same video uploaded by journalist Kyle Becker, but left it on large corporate channels like CBS and Fox, once again affirming the trend of catering to this type of users over independent creators.
Facebook exec Nick Clegg says Facebook should spread “free expression” around the world
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim the Net | May 26, 2021
Facebook’s Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, in a tone-deaf opinion piece, encouraged America to spread not only its technologies but also its values, including “free expression.”
While the remarks are commendable, they are also ironic coming from an executive of a giant social media platform with a very poor record of respecting the freedom of speech.
“The US risks becoming a nation that exports incredible technologies, but fails to export its values,” Clegg wrote in the op-ed published on CNBC.
Clegg also offered a recommendation on how the US can regulate Big Tech platforms and spread American values around the world.
“By focusing on the areas where there is agreement on both sides, Congress can break the deadlock and create the most comprehensive internet legislation in a generation. In doing so, it can help to preserve the American values at the heart of the global internet.”
The Facebook exec rightfully condemned China’s massive internet censorship:
“The Chinese internet model — segregated from the wider internet and subject to extensive surveillance.”
He also noted Turkey, Vietnam and Russia, as countries that “have taken steps in a similar direction.”
Clegg continued to suggest that, “The open, accessible and global internet we use today has been shaped by American companies and American values like free expression, transparency, accountability and the encouragement of innovation and entrepreneurship. But these values can’t be taken for granted.”
Clegg’s piece was objectively commendable from a free speech stand point. However, it is hard to ignore the fact that he did not call out Big Tech platforms for their continued disregard for freedom of speech. The company he works at, for example, repeatedly censored the former president and millions of other American, and has refused to reinstate Trump’s accounts.
Google blocks ads from Italian author who suggested coronavirus could have originated in a lab
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 26, 2021
Facebook, YouTube and other major social media platforms have been enforcing extremely strict rules around what their users can and cannot say about coronavirus and the pandemic for over a year now, to make sure only messages and narratives aligned with state authorities and the WHO made it through.
But at this point, it looks like those rules are even more stringent than what officials are saying, to the point that, if applied consistently, Facebook would have to ban Dr Fauci for not ruling out the possibility that the virus was engineered by humans.
This has so far been considered the type of “misinformation” that is sure to get posts deleted and accounts suspended, as Facebook says it prohibits any discussion around coronavirus possibly being man-made.
Facebook is not alone, since YouTube has a similar censorship policy. Only last week, Google prevented Italian journalist Fabrizio Gatti from advertising his book that explores much the same topic that Fauci did in his recent comments. Google said Gatti – whose book also criticizes China’s role – was guilty of creating content with “speculative intent.”
“Once the infection is overcome with vaccines, as I write in my book, we will have to defend our democracies from totalitarianism and the digital monopoly,” Gatti said, reacting to the blacklisting, and urged Google to reverse the decision.
Other contentious rules enforced by YouTube concern any questioning of the usefulness of masks, regardless of the fact official recommendations and guidelines on this topic have been changing throughout the pandemic.
Along the same line, saying that coronavirus vaccines might cause serious harm to people will get content and/or users banned on Facebook – even if medical authorities in Europe and in other places say that at least two of them – AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson – can cause blood clots, though rare.
Even though tech giants behind the largest social media sites defend their policies as a way to prevent misinformation and promote official sources, those who have been on the receiving end – everyday users, medical professionals, journalists – see this as unwarranted censorship that stifles any debate.
And as former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson observed, this vigorous suppression of opposing views around Covid is a cause for concern, but is also emblematic of the general direction we’re headed in.
“This isn’t about Covid, it’s about whether or not as a society we’re going to allow people who have views that are sort of outside what the mainstream media want you to believe, to present those views. It’s becoming harder and harder to have honest conversations,” said Berenson, whose book skeptical of lockdowns and masks Amazon had temporarily banned.
The unseen evil of Covid restrictions … a dehumanising denial of physical contact
By Frank Palmer | The Conservative Woman | May 26, 2021
THERE should have been more outrage at the inhuman restrictions placed on us since March 2020.
The cat is now out of the bag about the psychological tricks used by the Government’s behavioural psychologists, with the collusion of the MSM – the terror tactics, the mixed messages creating uncertainty and insecurity, the successful attempts to polarise people, the gaslighting.
However, the full significance of the physical restrictions – the ‘social’ distancing, the prevention of meetings, the covered faces, the outlawing of affectionate hugs or handshakes – has not, I believe, been deeply enough understood.
The latter goes far beyond mind games, and has taken place in a modern culture that had already become increasingly depersonalised.
Long before Covid, face-to-face contact, or even telephone contact, with banks and other institutions (including GPs) was made progressively difficult. Staff at railway stations, banks and supermarkets were being replaced by machines. Enforced online accounts have been reducing us to disembodied digits. ‘Faceless bureaucrats’ abound.
In the streets, there was less and less eye contact or courtesy, with zombie faces headphoned, or glued to smartphone screens.
Aversion to physical contact was implied in the everyday language of ‘personal space’, ‘safe spaces’, and – in the cowardly euphemism for ending a relationship – ‘I need some space’.
‘I understand/sympathise’ was being replaced with ‘I know where you are coming from’ (a locution which already presupposes spatial remoteness).
Meanwhile, with online ‘socialising’ you don’t see or meet a person, you see a screen with an image, an increasing replacement for the real McCoy, a fantasy engagement devoid of the moral and emotional risks involved in engaging with a person ‘in the flesh’.
And of course, you have absolute control, where this simulacrum of a human presence can be ‘ghosted’ at the click of a mouse.
The upshot is that people are increasingly reduced to abstractions, which can obliterate the need for integrity in the way they are treated. A power-mad government can therefore easily reduce us to what Johnson called ‘pure mathematics’, or pieces on a chessboard.
In proper human interaction, the reality of the other person consists in their physical presence. We are embodied persons, with all the moral implications that generates.
Our moral imperatives are not mere mental abstractions. They are infused with references to our embodied nature, one sign of which is that our moral perceptions are not unrelated to our aesthetic sensibilities, which involve our sensory capacities.
Our reaction to wrongdoing or evil is not simply cerebral disagreement, it involves visceral repulsion. There are overtones of our sensitivity to beauty and ugliness in being appalled at the repulsiveness of greed, the slime of dishonesty, the filth of obscenity, and the stench of corruption.
We are not mere ‘rational beings’ (even Mr Spock has some feelings ). Our moral perceptions seem connected to a series of aesthetic contrasts between pure and impure, clean and dirty, savoury and unsavoury, harmonious and discordant, sweet-smelling and foul-smelling, and natural and unnatural (which are not for us mere ‘value-free’ biological categories).
That is not to say that our morality can be reduced to aesthetics. I merely emphasise a point about our embodied condition.
Professor Anthony O’Hear has reminded me of the significance of the following remarks of Simone Weil in her essay The Iliad, or the Poem of Force …
‘The human beings around us exert just by their presence a power which belongs uniquely to themselves to stop, to diminish, or modify, each movement which our bodies design. A person who crosses our path does not turn aside our steps in the same manner as a street sign, no one stands up, or moves about, or sits down again in quite the same fashion when he is alone in a room as when he has a visitor.’
The reference to (physical) presence is what is vital here. We meet people ‘in person’, and this presents a challenge to our self-centred tendencies in accepting the ‘reality’ of other people.
There are some things which are basic and primary to any further sophisticated views we reach about human beings. In one of his philosophy lectures, Professor David Hamlyn once asked: ‘How does an infant acquire the concept of a person?’
Pat came the answers from students about the ratiocination (the process of exact thinking or reasoning) involved in conceptual development.
‘No’, said Hamlyn, ‘the infant acquires it through being treated as a person. By being cuddled and burped, by being smiled at … and so on.’
In his essay Eine Einstellung zur Seele (An attitude towards a soul), Peter Winch argues that our primary reactions to people are ‘unreflective and primitive’, that these reactions are ‘part of the primitive material out of which our concept of a human person is formed’.
It seems to me that these instinctive reactions are present when we walk with someone and automatically match our steps to theirs, we harmonise with their facial expressions, and these reactions are not derived from ratiocination, nor from intellectually inferred beliefs about what it is to be human.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, challenges the idea that we infer mental states from bodily behaviour by saying: ‘We see emotion … we do not see facial contortions and make the inference that he is feeling joy, grief, boredom.
‘We describe a face immediately as sad, radiant, bored, even when we are unable to give any other description of the features – grief, one would like to say, is personified in the face.’
He also makes the telling observation that ‘we don’t see the human eye as a receiver, it seems not to let something in, but to send out …’
Again, our embodied nature is revealed in such expressions as ‘lending someone a sympathetic ear’, ‘being touched or moved by generosity’ or ‘my heart goes out to you’.
In the 19th century, after the prison reforms of 1835, ‘silent treatment’ was used in some US prisons as an alternative to physical punishment.
It consisted of forbidding prisoners from speaking to one another, calling them by numbers rather than by their name, and making them cover their faces – all to dehumanise them and break their will.
The physical restrictions, the prevention of interaction, and the face coverings imposed upon us by this government are equally unethical, if not downright evil.
But, for the reasons given earlier, so many people cannot see this. They have been forcibly alienated from their own nature and will no doubt uncritically accept their reduction to trackable digits on the biometric identity passes being planned – the price of their future so-called freedom.
Facebook is suppressing ‘facts’ that are flagged as promoting ‘vaccine hesitancy’: whistleblowers
RT | May 25, 2021
Facebook is taking aggressive steps to sideline any content, including factual material, critical of Covid-19 vaccines, two insiders have revealed to Project Veritas. The tech giant claims the policy was publicly announced.
The conservative media watchdog organization published a purported internal Facebook memo concerning “Vaccine Hesitancy Comment Demotion.” The policy aims to “drastically reduce user exposure to vaccine hesitancy,” the document states.
Another document leaked to Project Veritas discusses how to flag and categorize “non-violating content” that raises questions about vaccination, “thereby contributing to vaccine hesitancy or refusal.”
Comments can be “demoted” if they are flagged as directly or indirectly discouraging people from getting vaccinated. It doesn’t matter if the content is factually accurate, Project Veritas reported, citing the leaked documents.
According to the reported policy, “shocking stories” about side effects linked to the vaccines can be suppressed, even if they are “potentially or actually true events or facts that raise safety concerns.” The company explains that such content should be discouraged because it could “present a barrier to vaccination in certain contexts.”
Facebook is also said to target comments that claim vaccination is not necessary due to low Covid-19 death rates, or argue for natural herd immunity against the virus, as such views are considered “indirect discouragement” that could hurt immunization efforts.
One of the Facebook whistleblowers who reached out to Project Veritas said that anyone who questions the “narrative” of “get the vaccine, the vaccine is good for you” will be “singled out.”
A second company insider, identified as a data center technician, said that Facebook is working to censor all content that can be deemed critical of vaccines.
“They’re trying to control this content before it even makes it onto your page before you even see it,” the whistleblower told Project Veritas.
In response to the leaked documents, a Facebook spokesperson told the media watchdog that the company “proactively announced this policy on our company blog and also updated our help center with this information.”
In February, the platform said it was expanding its efforts to combat “false claims” about Covid-19 vaccines. Under the initiative, Facebook said it would remove content that claims “vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they are meant to protect against” or that argues the jabs are “dangerous.”
The content crackdown comes amid growing concern about side effects that have been linked to the vaccines. Numerous countries temporarily suspended their rollout of the AstraZeneca jab amid reports of blood clotting in people who received it. The pharmaceutical company has insisted the vaccine is safe, a position that has been echoed by the EU’s drug regulator. However, some have argued that there is insufficient data to show that the vaccines represented on the market are safe and effective long-term, as their rollout was fast-tracked amid the pandemic.
Telegraph: UK Needs “Vaccine Force” To Produce Jabs “On Tap”
By Richie Allen | May 24, 2021
Yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph editorial focused on vaccine production. The newspaper claimed that the UK should set up a “Vaccine Force” in the same way that we maintain a standing army in peacetime.
According to the editorial:
One of the big lessons from this crisis is that vaccines are essential, one of modern civilisation’s greatest inventions and must be deployed far more efficiently and ruthlessly than Britain’s public health establishment had previously fathomed.
Ruthlessly? I’ll come back to that. The Telegraph claims that the country needs to be better prepared for pandemics and flu-seasons to come and that vaccine work and human challenge trials should begin immediately. The paper says:
We need to be much better prepared next time a new virus emerges. Like this time, vaccine work must begin straight away; but the difference must be that we need immediate human challenge trials.
It was a remarkable achievement that it took just 11 months for vaccines to start being injected; but next time the target should be closer to three.
We need massive production and distribution capacity on tap, at all times, just as we maintain a standing army even in peacetime. Never again should an epidemiological challenge lead to the country being locked down for months on end.
The Telegraph’s message is pretty clear. The paper wants the country to set up a vaccine army that will run mass-production facilities and human trials forever more. It wants this new army or “force” to be ruthless in its endeavours.
This, says the paper, is the only way to avoid lockdowns in future. Lockdowns are intolerable and devastating for the economy and health. The only answer, says The Telegraph, is to have vaccines “on-tap.”
By ruthless, the paper might mean that there should be little or no red-tape to prevent these vaccines reaching our arms. Maybe the paper means that the UK should be ruthless in dealing with refuseniks, because after all, refuseniks delay the end of restrictions.
I’m betting that The Telegraph didn’t come up with the idea of a “Vaccine Force” all by itself. But then again, what the hell do I know? I do know this. We really are here now.
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Genetic baloney in thick slices
MAYBE COULD BE INC.
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | July 8, 2021
Gene research companies tend to come and go. They start out banging and popping like fireworks in the sky, and then they fade out—selling themselves to larger outfits who’ve hired better liars…
Once upon a time, it sounded easy. Start with a disease, find the gene responsible for the disease, and correct the problem.
Then, researchers wondered, was disease the result of one gene or a group of genes acting together?
Either way, the proof would be in devising cures for diseases using gene therapy. “Not yet, but soon…”
And regardless, the major need was: money. Lots and lots of money.
This need required good PR people. “We have to pump up the idea that we’re on the edge of tremendous breakthroughs. We’re always on that edge…”
This hype also needed to obscure the fact that there wasn’t (and isn’t) ANY gene cure for ANY disease. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Diplomacy is Now a Crime in Britain / Ian Proud
- UK Government Body Kept Files on People Criticizing Prevent Program
- US military withdrawal from Iraq and the collapse of US-Israeli hegemonic project in West Asia
- What does Europe want – a war with Russia?
- She Followed the Actual Data on COVID Vaccines and Masks — Her Career Took a Huge Hit
- Florida AG Sues Pfizer, Bourla Over Deceptive Marketing of COVID Vaccines
- Von der Leyen gifts her spin doctor a job for life
- 10K More U.S. Troops Deploy as Trump Weighs New Iran Strikes /Suliaman Ahmed
- Iranian crew declared Dena training vessel ‘unarmed’ to US warship before deadly torpedo strike: Report
- Iran’s NPT debate moves beyond parliament
- If Americans Knew
- Israel is squeezing the life out of Palestinians – Daily Update
- The Israeli Right Portrays Islam as Murderous. It Serves a Political Purpose
- Jordan Has Had Enough: King Abdullah’s Scathing Warning to Israel
- Israeli Colonizers (i.e. Settlers) Kill Palestinian Man Near Salfit
- New Google Maps images reveal massive scale of devastation in Gaza
- Jewish supremacy, anti-Palestinian bigotry on display in Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Soldiers Abduct At Least 22 Across Occupied West Bank
- Eight Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks on Gaza
- Israeli former leaders and security chiefs threaten legal action over ‘Jewish terrorism’
- Israel map in LA Times ad includes all land from the river to the sea
- No Tricks Zone
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
