Smollett Redux: Hoax Stunt in Germany
By Doug E. Steil | October 17, 2021
We already know about a Jewish actor who had an obsessive urge to act out a fake victim-of-hate stunt intended to get public attention and sympathy, to enhance his career, and perhaps also incite a race riot in Chicago. Jussie Smollett is to go on trial soon. Yet his basic stunt has been copied in a different way with somewhat less drama earlier this month in Germany.
A few days ago a German-Jew pop star and “actor”, Gil Ofarim, born in Munich in 1982, provoked widespread outrage shortly after he claimed to have been told to pack in his chunky star of David necklace before being allowed to check in at the Westin Hotel in Leipzig, roughly ten days ago. The disputed claim was featured on German television news, with the obvious implication: Jews must not only be allowed to walk around Muslim neighborhoods in Berlin with a yarmulka on their head, free of any harassment, but also to wear gaudy jewelry around their neck that conspicuously announces their Jewishness.
In light of millions of Muslims living in Germany, also in conjunction with universal dislike of obnoxious displays of Jewish narcissism, the claim may have seemed to be sufficiently plausible to the general German public. Such an offensively criminal act it was! The organized Jewish community immediately sprung into action and staged a big demonstration at the hotel with hundreds of participants. The public was compelled to express their solidarity. The hotel employee, who was put on leave pending the result of an investigation, had already filed a complaint for defamation. Ofarim later filed a criminal complaint with the district attorney in Munich – presumably because they would be more sympathetic to his stunt there, where he was born.
In a video posted on Instagram last week, Ofarim described how he was told by an employee at the Westin Hotel Leipzig to remove his Star of David necklace so that he can proceed with the check-in. […]
One of the employees is reported to have filed a complaint with local police for defamation and the receipt of threats after giving a “very different” account of the encounter with Ofarim. The police are still investigating the case.
In the meantime, it has come out, the video cameras at the hotel indicated that Ofarim was not wearing a necklace, according to the evidence presented by the mass circulation Bild newspaper. It appears that Ofarim spontaneously decided to frame the hotel employee with a concocted projection, based on a previous encounter in his life, or just his imagination. This went up roughly an hour ago. The left image shows Ofarim showing off his star after he reported the incident, the right image shows a snapshot from the hotel surveillance video, which clearly shows him without the necklace.
A likely result of this entire scenario, even if proven conclusively, would be that in Germany the Jewish big-wigs would likely want to spring into action again, on Ofarim’s behalf, and ensure that the entire incident is hushed up. Since the hotel employee is not known to the public, little personal damage has been done, from their perspective. The intended Jewish victim message has already been conveyed to the public, and that’s all the people need to know; any revelations contradicting this narrative would risk inciting the public, so it would be irresponsible for the media to dwell on it. End of story. But wait, not so fast; this hoax story may be getting legs, finally. The Jewish stunt is finally unraveling under closer scrutiny, even though a follower of American news incidents like this would have been skeptical at the outset.
From yesterday:
When asked by the newspaper, the singer said: “It’s not about whether the chain was visible.” It is about the fact that he was insulted anti-Semitically. According to information from “Bild am Sonntag”, the Leipzig police now have “considerable doubts” about the originally described course of events. Ofarim said during an interrogation that he was no longer certain whether he was wearing a chain that evening.
I doubt the national television news will be featuring this follow-up in Germany, but the news deserves to be spread nonetheless. Maybe Ofarim will be widely shamed and consequently choose to seek refuge in Israel.
Vat-Grown Protein Is Just Patented Fake Meat
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | October 14, 2021
July 12, 2018, the FDA convened a public meeting to talk about what to call lab-grown meat. As reported in The Atlantic,1 at the end of the meeting there was no consensus. The war of words was aimed at choosing an association that would evoke a specific emotional response in the consumer.
Various speakers got up and called the lab growth “clean meat,” “artificial meat,” “in vitro meat,” “cell culture products,” “cultured meat” or “culture tissue.” Each term had its advocates and critics.
For example, the beef producers didn’t like the term “clean meat.” Danielle Beck, a lobbyist for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) told the reporter from The Atlantic the term is “inherently offensive to traditional meat producers, as if real meat is somehow dirty.”2
However, that’s exactly what the fake meat industry would like you to believe. In fact, the lab-grown meat market rests on the shoulders of the claim that eating real meat is destroying our planet. Singapore3 was the first country to give regulatory approval for products that look like meat and did not come from real animals.
The decision paved the way for the rest of the world, and today fake meat is becoming so popular that you’ll find it in most Walmarts, Targets, other grocery stores and some popular chain restaurants.4 The fake meat industry offered their product as a light in a dark world, as many were laboring under the excessive news reports of COVID-19 cases.
It may have seemed that the big tech giants were looking out for the food supply at an unprecedented time in history. But you don’t have to look too deeply into what’s happening to discover that patented fake meat is not about “saving the planet” or “sustainability” but, instead, is just another foray into controlling populations and amassing great wealth.
Lab-Grown Meat Is About Big Business
The food critic for the Financial Times5 wrote a piece in early September 2021, in which he made a strong case for how lab-grown meat is not about sustainability or making “green” decisions but, rather about intellectual property (IP) and creating a financial windfall.
He took a historical perspective on IP, listing the patents that have been filed protecting breakfast cereals, carbonated beverages, drugs, vaccines, genetically modified plants and pesticides. In each case the IP owned by Kellogg, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Big Pharma and agrichemical businesses was the lifeblood of their financial success. He writes:6
“Currently, there’s not a lot of IP in the meat industry … Saving animal lives, preventing the clear-cutting of rainforest, even the reduction of methane farts don’t excite investors — those changes can’t translate to profit.
The holy grail is replacing the meat we consume with a proprietary product, owning the IP on meat. Coca-Cola and McDonald’s managed to grow patented food products into two of the top food companies on the globe by market cap, but a patent on animal-free ‘meat’ could entirely dwarf their achievements.”
Bill Gates promotes the idea of eating 100% synthetic beef to fight climate change.7 The idea is one of his core tenets in his new book in which he lays out how to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. Mind you, this book was written by a man8 who built a 65,993 square-foot (6,131 square-meter) home with a 23-car garage, 20-person cinema and 24 bathrooms. He owns five other homes, a horse farm, four private jets and a “collection” of helicopters.
According to one study reported in Business Today, his annual carbon footprint is 7,493 metric tons of carbon, much of which is produced by his aircraft. In an article published in Forbes, March 22, 2021, one reporter writes:9
“Now, I don’t necessarily agree with Gates. And I hate the idea of governments deciding what their citizens should eat (which seems to be what Gates is suggesting). But my job is to help you make money. And there’s no question that there’s billions to be made in the technology behind plant-based meat.”
Unfortunately, that may be the path that many will take to acquire wealth over health. Beyond Meat is already worth $12 billion10 and it’s projected to double by 2025. And yet, as the Forbes reporter points out, the meat industry is the tip of the iceberg. Synthetic biology uses technology to allow scientists to program life. It reconfigures DNA so that it produces something entirely new.
This is the technology that Beyond Meat uses to create more “realistic” burgers using soybeans. He also points out that Moderna and Pfizer COVID vaccines are made of a synthetic strand of genetic code and goes on to write, “I believe, with the possible exception of artificial intelligence (AI), synthetic biology has the biggest potential of any disruptive technology to radically reshape our world.”
Control Food Supply = Control Populations and Countries
In January 2021, an analysis by The Land Report11 found that Bill Gates owns 242,000 acres of farmland in the U.S. This has made him the largest private farmland owner.12 During Gates’ interview with MIT Technology Review, Gates said:13
“So no, I don’t think the poorest 80 countries will be eating synthetic meat. I do think all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time. Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.”
It is the last sentence in that paragraph that makes the most sense as you consider how Gates and other technocrats are aiming at controlling populations through central production and distribution of food. He says, “change the behavior of people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.” Promoting lab-grown protein is not about sustainability but, rather, about wealth and power.
Using intellectual property, tech giants hope to replace living animals with patented plant- and animal-derived alternatives, which will effectively control food supply. And Gates’ 242,000 acres of farmland spread across Illinois, Louisiana, California, Iowa and nearly one dozen other states14 appear to be earmarked for genetically engineered corn and soy crops.15 In other words, he’s farming the basic crops needed for (plant-based) fake meat and processed foods.16
Lab-grown meat alternatives differ from their vegetarian counterparts by virtue of initially starting with cell cultures from living animals. Mosa Meat grows their meat after harvesting a small number of cells from livestock “who are then returned, almost unscathed, to their fields.”17
As described in Popular Mechanics, Memphis Meats, in which Gates is a serious investor,18 tries to avoid animals whenever possible. Instead, they use cells that have been procured from animal biopsies.19
In other words, when a veterinarian has decided to biopsy an area of an animal to make a medical determination about an abnormal growth, Memphis Meats harvests cells that would have otherwise been discarded and grows those into lab grown meat. Swapping traditional, whole food grown by small farmers for mass-produced fake foods is part of the plan for The Great Reset.
The objective is to control the entire food supply. To that end, researchers and manufacturers are also looking at milk proteins made from genetically engineered Trichoderma reesei fungus to produce a dairy-like protein casein and whey. Popular Science named Perfect Day’s animal-free whey protein as the Grand Award winner in the engineering category of the 100 greatest innovations of 2020.20
The EAT Forum, co-founded by the Wellcome Trust, developed a Planetary Health Diet21 designed to be applied to the global population. It entails cutting meat and dairy intake by up to 90%, and replacing it largely with foods made in laboratories, along with cereals and oil.
Their largest initiative is called FReSH, which aims to transform the food system by working with biotech and fake meat companies to replace whole foods with lab-created alternatives. In other words, once tech giants have control of meat, dairy, cereals and oils, they will be the ones profiting from and controlling the food supply.
Private companies that control the food supply will ultimately control countries and entire populations. Biotech will eventually push farmers and ranchers out of the equation and will threaten food security. In other words, the work being done in the name of sustainability and saving the planet will give greater control to private corporations.
Health Dangers Associated With Linoleic Acid
It’s important to realize that whether it is plant-based or lab-grown, fake meat is a processed food. Imitation meat is not better, or even equal, to real meat. Foods that are not directly from the ground, vines, bushes, trees, bodies of water or animals is considered processed.
Lab-grown meat starts with a muscle sample from a cow. Once in the lab, technicians separate stem cells from the sample and then multiply those dramatically. The cells differentiate into fibers that form muscle tissue. Mosa Meat believes that one tissue sample can yield 80,000 quarter-pounders.22
Tissue growth inside an animal occurs when the blood supply delivers appropriate nutrients to produce healthy muscle growth. This requires that the animal is fed a whole and balanced diet, from which the body extracts the necessary nutrients in an appropriate amount to feed the cells.
The human body then extracts the nutrients found in regeneratively and biodynamically pastured meat. However, as science has demonstrated in the last two decades, growing cells on sugar causes growth, but will not yield health. The sheer ability to grow lab-cultured meat does not indicate that the end product will have any health benefit to the end user.
Plant-based fake meat contains excess amounts of omega-6 fat in the form of linoleic acid (LA). This is one of the most significant contributors to metabolic dysfunction. In my opinion, this metabolic poison is the primary contributor to the rising rates of chronic disease. LA leads to severe mitochondrial dysfunction, decreased NAD+ levels, obesity, insulin resistance and a radical decrease in the ability to generate energy.
The genetic engineering used to produce the flavor and texture of real meat does not reproduce healthy fatty acid composition because the substrate is canola and sunflower oils as the primary sources of fat.23,24 The sunflower oil used in both Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meats is 68% LA,25 which is an extraordinarily high amount.
It is dangerous because LA is susceptible to oxidation and causes oxidation byproducts called OXLAMs (oxidative linoleic acid metabolites). These byproducts devastate your DNA, protein, mitochondria and cellular membranes. This means that fake meat is failing all measures of sustainability and health.
Have You Considered Cultured Meat From Human Cells?
While lab-grown meat and dairy products may sound like science fiction, the next step for food manufacturers comes directly out of the 1973 dystopian film “Soylent Green.”26 The science fiction movie takes place in New York in 2022. In the story, the Earth is severely overpopulated, and people are living in the streets.
For sustenance, people are given rations of water and Soylent Green, which supposedly is a high-protein food made from plankton. In the end, you discover in this futuristic nightmare fantasy of controlling big corporations, that the high-protein drink is actually made from people.
Now, just months away from 2022, scientists are working on lab-grown “meat” made from human cells that are harvested from the inside of human cheeks.27,28 This grisly product was first presented as ‘art’ by a scientist and founder of the biotech firm Spiderwort. Tech Times reported November 22, 2020, that:29
“A new ‘DIY meal kit’ that can be used to grow steaks that are made mostly from human cells was just recently nominated by the London-based Design Museum as the ‘design of the year.’
Called ‘Ouroboros Steak,’ this is named right after the circular symbol of a snake known for eating itself tail-first. This hypothetical kit would later on come with everything that one person would need in order to use their own cells to grow miniature human meat steaks …”
These kits are not commercially available — yet. But it begs the question of what possesses someone to think that eating a lump of meat made from your own body could be a viable idea? The question must also be raised about whether this is cannibalism.
Those defending the concept claim that since you’re eating your own body, it’s not cannibalism. However, if it ever becomes commercially available, what’s to prevent someone from growing meat from other people’s cells — and selling it? And the ick factor aside, how could this impact the spread of disease? For example, tribal cannibalism in Papua, New Guinea,30 led to a prion disease, which nearly wiped out a tribe of people.
In many villages, after an individual died, the villagers would cook and consume the body in an act of grief. Scientists who studied the tribe believe that one person developed a sporadic incident of Crutchfield-Jakob disease, also known as mad cow disease. Eating the neurological tissue then spread the disease throughout the tribe.
It doesn’t take much to imagine that the strange and unusual side effects being reported by people after receiving a COVID-19 injection may have long-term effects on body tissue. What happens when you culture and eat that body tissue, from yourself or someone else?
Is it Time for a Special Counsel on the Hunter Biden Scandal?
By Jonathan Turley | October 14, 2021
“Come on H this is linked to Celtic’s account.” Those nine words from a retired Secret Service agent to Hunter Biden in recently released emails may prove a nasty complication for some in Washington who have struggled to contain the blowback from the still-unfolding scandal linked to Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.
“Celtic” was the Secret Service code name for Joe Biden, and recent disclosures may puncture the media’s cone-of-silence around the scandal. The emails link President Biden to his son’s accounts and indicate a commingling of funds with money coming from controversial foreign sources. Even more embarrassing, the shared account may have been used to pay a Russian prostitute named “Yanna.”
The commingling of funds is the latest contraction of President Biden’s repeated claims that he was unaware and uninvolved in past dealings by his son. Given these links, there are legitimate questions of why the Justice Department has not sought a special counsel in the ongoing investigation of alleged money-laundering and tax violations linked to the president’s son. More importantly, even if there are no criminal charges, there is now a compelling need for an independent report on the alleged influence peddling operation by Hunter, his uncle James Biden, and potentially his father, President Biden.
In the latest disclosures from the laptop, a former secret service agent reportedly texted Hunter on May 24, 2018, when he was holed up with a Russian prostitute in an expensive room at The Jeremy Hotel in Los Angeles. Hunter wired the woman $25,000. That alone was nothing out of the ordinary for Hunter who, while his father served as vice president, seemed to divide his time equally between influence-peddling and personal debaucheries.
Hunter clearly only had influence and access to sell. We know now that foreign interests gave Hunter millions at a time that he admits that he was a crack addict and alcoholic — in his words, “Drinking a quart of vodka a day by yourself in a room is absolutely, completely debilitating,” as well as “smoking crack around the clock.”
However, the tranche of emails raises a new and disturbing element: the possible mixing of accounts and funds between Hunter and his father. If true, President Biden could be directly implicated in ongoing investigations into his son’s money transfers and dealings.
Most notable are the new emails from Eric Schwerin, his business partner at the Rosemont Seneca consultancy, referencing the payment of household bills for both Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. He also notes that he was transferring money from Joe Biden. If true, the communications indicate that some of President Biden’s personal expenses were paid out of shared accounts with Hunter, including accounts that may have been used to pay for prostitutes. Rosemont Seneca is directly involved in the alleged influence peddling schemes and questionable money transfers from Chinese and Russian sources.
Schwerin also was involved in President Biden’s taxes and discussions of a book deal for the then-vice president; he popped up in the donation of Biden’s official papers to the University of Delaware, with restrictions on access.
President Biden has long insisted that that his son did “nothing wrong.” That is obviously untrue. One can argue over whether Hunter committed any crime, but few would say that there is nothing wrong with raw influence peddling worth millions with foreign entities. The public has a legitimate reason to know whether the President or his family ran an influence peddling operation worth millions.
Given this record, there is little reason for the public to trust what it is reading about the scandal. The media has long refused to investigate the allegations or even report on emails contradicting the President. This was most evident when social media like Twitter actually blocked postings on the laptop or its content before the election. Powerful figures then issued false statements about the scandal to the public. Committee Chairman Adam Schiff who assured “this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin.” Some 50 former intelligence officials, including Obama’s CIA directors John Brennan and Leon Panetta, also insisted the laptop story was likely the work of Russian intelligence. The laptop is now recognized as genuine.
This is not the first contradiction for President Biden in his repeated denials of knowing anything about his son’s business dealings. Hunter himself contradicted his father’s repeated denial. Likewise, a key business associate of Hunter Biden, Anthony Bobulinski, confirmed the authenticity of the emails and accused Joe Biden of lying about his involvement. Bobulinski has detailed a meeting with Joe Biden in a hotel to go over the dealings.
Past emails included discussions of offering access to then-Vice President Biden. They also include alleged payments to Joe Biden. In one email, there is a discussion of a proposed equity split of “20” for “H” and “10 held by H for the big guy?” Bobulinski confirmed that “H” was used for Hunter Biden and that his father was routinely called “the big guy” in these discussions.
Just to make things more concerning is Hunter Biden’s recent acknowledgement that one of his laptops may have been stolen by Russian agents and was likely being used for blackmail purposes. The fact that the president’s son admitted that Russians may have intentionally seized one of his laptops during a drug binge, in order to blackmail him, raises serious potential national security concerns — especially if any of the emails include compromising information about the president directly benefiting from the very same accounts used by his son.
That creates a rather nasty problem at the Justice Department. Federal regulations allow the appointment of a special counsel when it is in the public interest and an “investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances.”
I do not see direct evidence of criminal conduct by President Biden even if he lied about his past knowledge of his son’s conduct. Indeed, influence peddling is not a per se crime even for Hunter. However, one value of a special counsel is the expectation of a report that can address whether the family engaged in influence peddling with foreign powers and whether foreign powers may have acquired compromising material from these laptop files.
In 2017, Democratic members and activists were adamant that the Justice Department should carry out an investigation involving President Trump and his family. Then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) insisted that, without a special counsel, “every American will rightfully suspect … a coverup.”
There is already a federal criminal investigation into these matters involving Hunter Biden, and the latest emails now link President Biden receiving money and benefits from related accounts as well as key players. Even if one questions a direct conflict of interest, it is hard to deny the towering appearance of a conflict in the ongoing investigation.
“The Big Guy” is now president and his administration is handling an investigation that could have political as well as legal implications for him and his family. It may be time for a special counsel.
2020 election was ‘bought by Zuckerberg’, researcher claims, citing $420mn turnout-boosting work
RT | October 14, 2021
Two nonprofits funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his allies spent $419.5 million to boost turnout in the 2020 presidential election – and “likely” secured a victory for Joe Biden, according to a study of the national vote.
The NGOs called the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) and The Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) claim they are working to make democracy stronger, more secure, and better at engaging civic participation in polling.
A new analysis of the 2020 election argues that the nonprofits are partisan vehicles to pump private money into the election system, a phenomenon previously unknown in the country’s politics. Their impact may have flipped the election for Joe Biden and potentially created fertile ground for manipulating election outcomes in favor of the Democratic Party.
“The massive influx of funds essentially created a high-powered, concierge-like get-out-the-vote effort for Biden that took place inside the election system, rather than attempting to influence it from the outside,” William Doyle, a researcher at the Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute in Irving, Texas, wrote regarding his team’s work.
“We call this the injection of structural bias into the 2020 election, and our analysis shows it likely generated enough additional votes for Biden to secure an Electoral College victory in 2020.”
According to an overview of the analysis, which was published by The Federalist this week, CTCL and CEIR pumped $419.5 million into local government election offices. The grants – which were funded by donors like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan – are comparable in volume to the $479.5 million that federal and state matching funds allocated for Covid-19-related election expenses during the 2020 campaign.
A large portion of the money went into various programs that directly boosted election turnout, by promoting mail-in voting or paying workers participating in outreach programs. Proponents of these investments argued that the millions of dollars were necessary to plug holes in election budgets left by the pandemic and a shortage of public funding from the federal government.
While both NGOs insisted they were acting in a non-partisan way, Doyle says the effect of their actions was staggeringly in favor of the Democratic candidate.
“Of the 26 grants CTCL provided to cities and counties in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia that were $1 million or larger, 25 went to areas Biden won in 2020,” he wrote. “The only county on this list won by Donald Trump (Brown County, Wisconsin) received about $1.1 million – less than 1.3 percent of the $85.5 million that CTCL provided to these top 26 recipients.”
The team is still in the process of crunching the numbers for all battleground states, but their preliminary analysis of Texas showed that the nonprofits’ per capita spending in the state overwhelmingly went to Biden-supporting counties. It wasn’t enough to swing the state blue, but researchers believe the NGOs may have flipped Georgia and Wisconsin for Biden, based on the preliminary analysis.
“We have good reason to anticipate that the results of our work will show that CTCL and CEIR involvement in the 2020 election gave rise to an election that, while free, was not fair. The 2020 election wasn’t stolen – it was likely bought with money poured through legal loopholes,” Doyle said.
He also noted that partisan private financing of the election system posed questions about its integrity. “Big CTCL and CEIR money” opened local election offices to “infiltration… by left-wing activists,” he said, citing as an example the hiring of workers from Happy Faces Personnel Group by Fulton County, Georgia. The firm was linked by some people to Georgia progressive politician Stacey Abrams, though claims that she partially owned it were reportedly false.
“CTCL drove the proliferation of unmonitored private dropboxes (which created major chain of custody issues) and opportunities for novel forms of ‘mail-in ballot electioneering,’ allowed for the submission of numerous questionable post-election-day ballots, and created opportunities for illegal ballot harvesting,” Doyle said.
Flu DID Circulate Last Winter – They Just Renamed It Covid
By Richie Allen | October 13, 2021
Flu is back. It took a gap year in 2020, but it’s back now, well rested and twice as dangerous. The “flu disappeared last Winter” claim is proof if ever you needed it, that people will believe anything if their television tells them it’s true.
Throughout 2021, the government and its medical advisers told us that there wasn’t a single recorded case of flu last Winter. They said that social distancing, mask wearing and working from home, eradicated it. No-one thought to ask them why those same measures hadn’t eradicated covid, but hey-ho.
The same boffins are telling us that as a result of opening up the economy and emerging from our covid bunkers, flu will return with a vengeance and that this spells trouble seeing as we’ve kind of lost our resistance to it. That is monumental bollox.
Flu never went anywhere last Winter. Neither did the common cold. They were re-branded as covid-19. You can take that to the bank. That’s not my opinion, that is fact. I’m not saying that covid doesn’t exist mind, just that everyone who sneezed last year was given a PCR test. Everything came back as covid.
It’s not just flu that has been re-branded as covid either. Tinnitus, dizziness, rashes, hearing voices, dead leg… everything has been linked to covid. It’s not funny. People believe this shit.
1 in 3 UK doctors believe that the re-emergence of flu and ever mutating covid-19 virus, spells doom for the NHS this Winter. One third of doctors when asked, say that they fear that the NHS isn’t ready for the perennial Winter NHS crisis. They’re right.
Of course, it doesn’t matter whether it’s covid, the flu or both. The NHS will collapse this Winter and it’ll be unlike anything we’ve ever seen previously. Hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers will walk away from their jobs before accepting Health Secretary Sajid Javid’s vaccine mandate. It’s going to be chaos.
Thirty years ago, there were twice as many hospital beds in the UK as there are today. The health service has been systematically destroyed over decades. The flu is back narrative is horse-shit. The total collapse of the NHS has been carefully planned.
They’re getting their excuses in early. Do you think they don’t know what the result will be, when they reduce the number of doctors, nurses and healthcare workers by forcing unsafe vaccines on them?
Do you think that they don’t know what the result will be, when they reduce bed capacity and treat nothing but covid, while leaving millions of people waiting for non-covid related illnesses?
Of course they know. It’s unimaginably evil isn’t it?
The War Against Ivermectin Intensifies
By Joel S. Hirschhorn | Principia Scientific | October 11, 2021
The unrelenting opposition to using ivermectin to treat and prevent COVID-19 is stronger than ever. This has resulted from a gigantic increase in demand for IVM by much of the public.
Despite big media tirades against IVM, the truth about its effectiveness (together with failure of COVID vaccines) has reached the public through many articles on alternative news websites and truth-tellers on countless podcasts. Its success has forced Big Pharma to create expensive copies of it.
And in my book Pandemic Blunder I made the case with data that using cheap, safe and effective generics like IVM and hydroxychloroquine would save 80 percent or more of COVID deaths. Esteemed physician Peter McCollough later said 85 percent. For the US, that means over 500,000 lives could have been saved, and globally over four million lives.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have died from COVID vaccines, the failed solution to the pandemic.
Merck, a maker of IVM, is getting much positive press coverage for its forthcoming prescription oral antiviral (molnupiravir). It is designed to replace IVM that they cannot make big money from. FDA will soon give it emergency use authorization because of the emerging clarity that COVID vaccines do NOT work effectively or safely.
That the Washington Post says that what Merck has created is the “first covid-fighting pill” illustrates how awful big media has been in ignoring the proven benefits of the IVM and HCQ generics. And ignoring the many failures of COVID vaccines. In its October 2 front-page story on the new Merck pill, it did not even mention IVM or present any data showing IVM as proven even more effective than the new expensive drug tested on only hundreds of people for a short period.
In contrast, IVM has been used successfully on hundreds of thousands of people to treat and prevent COVID.
Speaking as someone who is using IVM as a prophylactic, here is what I have seen in recent times. Though getting a prescription for it is very difficult and stressful it can be done through a number of websites. But then the battle just begins. Many pharmacies, especially big chain ones, will not fill IVM prescriptions if there is any evidence that it is being used to fight COVID.
And then you will likely discover, as I did, that virtually no pharmacy (typically small community ones) that will fill such prescriptions has any IVM. That’s right. There is a national shortage of IVM because of huge demand in recent months and because US makers have not escalated production.
Probably, millions of vaccine resisters are using IVM, especially those resisting booster shots.
Can you still get it? Yes, and even without a prescription. It will have to come from India, with many makers of IVM. It can take many weeks to get it. But the cost is a tiny fraction of what US pharmacies have been charging when they did have it in stock. Rather than $4 or $5 for a 3 mg pill, you can buy 12 mg pills for way under $1 a pill.
But there is more to the IVM story.
There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that there is massive medical science data showing absolute reliable data that IVM is safe and effective for both treating and preventing COVID. This is what should be a bold large headline in newspapers if we had honest big media: IVM SAFE AND EFFECTIVE ALTERNATIVE TO COVID VACCINES.
But instead, there is a constant barrage of articles and statements from government agencies asserting IVM should not be used to fight COVID. They argue it is unsafe and ineffective. Both are lies aimed solely at protecting the mass vaccination effort and the profits of big drug companies. And now protecting the new Big Pharma market for antiviral pills.
FDA has issued very strong warnings against using IVM for COVID. Nothing it has said follows the true science and mountains of data supporting safe and effective IVM use. Like other IVM opponents, it has conflated personal IVM use with the use of IVM products designed for animals.
This is even more infuriating. Merck, despite being a maker of IVM discredited its use for COVID by irresponsibly stating, “We do not believe that the data available support the safety and efficacy of ivermectin beyond the doses and populations indicated in the regulatory agency-approved prescribing information.”
Clearly, Merck, Pfizer and other vaccine makers are developing their own oral antivirals to directly compete with the cheap and effective IVM. These antivirals, unlike cheap generic IVM, would be patented so expensive pills could be sold worldwide. They will find some ingenious ways to copy IVM but make enough changes to get patents.
Already, Merck has begun production of its new pill to be taken twice daily for five days. Even more significant: The US government has made an advance purchase of 1.7 million treatment courses for $1.2 billion! That is over $700 per treatment. So much more profitable than making IVM. Forget the billions of dollars spent on vaccines that are injuring and killing many people.
I am confident in predicting that as more and more bad news about the ineffectiveness and dangerous side effects of COVID vaccines become increasingly known to more of the public, the big drug companies will increasingly switch from vaccines to prescription antiviral medicines.
This is what smart corporate business strategic planning is all about. With Merck, it has already started. And FDA, CDC and NIH will go along with this strategic switch.
This will preserve a trillion-dollar market for pharmaceutical companies. How the government and public health establishment weasel word their switch from COVID vaccines to antiviral pills will be a marvelous magical trick to watch. Do you think that they will admit that millions of people worldwide have lost their health and lives from vaccine use? Of course not. Expensive antiviral pills will simply be sold as a better solution.
Be clear about the science explaining why IVM and HCQ have worked. They both (along with zinc) interfere at the earliest stage of COVID infection with viral replication. Stop infection in its tracks. They work as prophylactics for the same reason.
If you keep a modest amount of IVM and HCQ in your body (and take zinc, vitamins C and D, and quercetin) any virus that enters your body can be stopped before major viral replication. The new prescription medicines coming from Merck and other Big Pharma are designed to serve the same function as the cheap generics.
This is the big truth coming to fruition: All the emerging information on COVID vaccine ineffectiveness and dangerous and often lethal side effects is forcing a major strategic shift to antivirals.
Congressman Louie Gohmert has recently made a number of solid observations about IVM:
“Almost 4 billion doses of ivermectin have been prescribed for humans, not horses, over the past 40 years. In fact, the CDC recommends all refugees coming to the U.S. from the Middle East, Asia, North Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean receive this so-called dangerous horse medicine as a preemptive therapy.
Ivermectin is considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be an ‘essential medicine.’
The Department of Homeland Security’s ‘quick reference’ tool on COVID-19 mentioned how this life-saving drug reduced viral shedding duration in a clinical trial.”
“To date, there are at least 63 trials and 31 randomized controlled trials showing benefits to the use of ivermectin to fight COVID-19 prophylactically as well as for early and late-stage treatment. Ivermectin has been shown to inhibit the replication of many viruses, including SARS-CoV-2. It has strong anti-inflammatory properties and prevents transmission of COVID-19 when taken either before or after exposure to the virus.”
“Ivermectin also speeds up recovery and decreases hospitalization and mortality in COVID-19 patients. It has been FDA approved for decades and has very few and mild side effects. It has an average of 160 adverse events reported every year, which indicates ivermectin has a better safety record than several vitamins. In short, there is no humane, logical reason why it should not be widely used to fight against the China Virus should a patient and doctor decide it is appropriate to try in that patient’s case.”
And that small number of adverse events pales in comparison to hundreds of thousands for COVID vaccines.
A new, comprehensive report noted that 63 studies have confirmed the effectiveness of IVM in treating COVID-19. This is a great website to see positive IVM data.
And consider what former Director of Intellectual Property at Gilead Pharmaceuticals, Brian Remy, said about the necessity of implementing Ivermectin. “It is simple – use what works and is most effective – period. Ivermectin used in combination with other therapeutics is a no-brainer and should be the standard of care for COVID-19. Not only would this be good for business and help avoid the criticism and bad PR, and potential civil/criminal liability for censorship, scientific misconduct, etc. for misrepresentation of Ivermectin and other generics, but most importantly it would save countless lives and end the pandemic for good.” Amen.
Want even more positive facts? Consider the India experience. In India’s deadly second pandemic surge, Ivermectin obliterated their crisis. Within weeks after adopting IVM cases were down 90 percent. Those states with more aggressive IVM use were down more dramatically. Daily cases in Goa, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi were down 95, 98, 99, and 99 percent, respectively.
And appreciate this: Dr. Kory and the FLCCC published a narrative review in May 2021, showing the massive effectiveness of IVM against COVID-19 in reducing death and cases. They concluded that it must be adopted globally immediately. Yet big media without respect for public health waged war against IVM. Now it is going crazy in support of the expensive Merck antiviral pill.
To sum up: The IVM story is far from over. We now have a pandemic of the vaccinated. From all over the world the fractions of people said to have died from COVID who were fully vaccinated are very high, often 80 percent. Many people with breakthrough COVID infections die.
Blame those deaths on the vaccines. Big media suppresses all the negative information on the vaccines and all the positive information on IVM.
This double whammy is pure evil. It is designed to pave the way for the new, expensive generation of antiviral pills once the medical and public health establishments backtrack from their vaccine advocacy and coercion.
About the author: Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Pandemic Blunder and many articles on the pandemic, worked on health issues for decades. As a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he directed a medical research program between the colleges of engineering and medicine. As a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, he directed major studies on health-related subjects; he testified at over 50 US Senate and House hearings and authored hundreds of articles and op-ed articles in major newspapers. He has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and America’s Frontline Doctors.
Opus Dei Ignores Complaint of 43 Women Held in Slavery

Some of the women enslaved by Opus Dei. | Photo: Twitter/ @meneame_net
teleSUR | October 10, 2021
Between 1974 and 2015, the Opus Dei held 43 women working without pay and in conditions similar to slavery in Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia.
This Catholic lay and clerical organization recruited the women as teenagers by promising to provide them with an education. Subsequently, however, they worked without pay as janitors, chefs, and maids in the service of the Opus Dei members and their guests.
In a letter sent to Pope Francis earlier this year, the exploited women emphasized they were deceived because they did not expect to become servants of the elite “in the name of God.” They also requested that the Catholic authorities apologize, compensate them for the damages, and stop these types of labor practices.
Among those involved in this violation of labor rights are ex-Regional Vicar Victor Urrestarazu, the Opus Dai highest authority Monsignor Fernando Ocariz, and Auxiliary Vicar of Rome Mariano Fazio Fernandez.
The women’s complaint was submitted to the Abuse Section of the Congregation for the Faith Doctrine of the Vatican Tribunal. On Sept. 29, Ocariz signed a decree to carry out a change in the Opus Dei’s South American structures.
In order to “improve the promotion and coordination of apostolic work,” he created the La Plata Region Vicar, which comprises Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina.
This and other purely administrative changes, however, have not solved the underlying problem. So far, the Opus Dei has not done justice to 43 Latin American women it affected.
Vaccine Effectiveness Drops Again, Now as Low as Minus-86% in Over-40s, Latest PHE Data Shows
By Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • October 10, 2021
The latest Public Health England (PHE) Vaccine Surveillance report was released on Thursday, meaning we can update our estimates of unadjusted vaccine effectiveness from real-world data.
As before, the report itself states this is “not the most appropriate method” to assess vaccine effectiveness as it is not adjusted for various confounders (and they do not provide the data that would allow such adjustments to be made). ‘Fact-checking’ website Full Fact (funded by Big Tech) are currently trying to censor the Daily Sceptic because, they claim, this means it is ‘incorrect’ to use the data in the report to calculate vaccine effectiveness. This is not true, however: regardless of what PHE deems to be the “most appropriate method”, vaccine effectiveness is defined as the reduction in the proportion of infections in the vaccinated group compared to the unvaccinated group, and it is perfectly acceptable to estimate it from population data, as long as any limitations in the data are acknowledged.
It is certainly not ‘incorrect’ to use the latest population-based data to get an up-to-date estimate of unadjusted vaccine effectiveness as part of tracking how the vaccines are performing on the ground.
Perhaps the most important limitations in this data are that the high-risk were originally prioritised for vaccination and that those who have been previously infected may be more likely to decline vaccination. Both of these would artificially lower the estimate of vaccine effectiveness. However, a recent population study in the Lancet adjusted its vaccine effectiveness estimates to take account of no fewer than 22 different confounding factors, including these, and in almost all cases this resulted in very little change. For instance, here are the adjusted and unadjusted estimates against infection by age. (Note that the high values here are for the whole study period; what the study showed overall is that in more recent months vaccine effectiveness has been dropping fast.)

Tartof SY, Slezak JM, Fischer H, et al (2021)
Two stay the same, two change by one point, one changes by two points and one changes by three points. This is typical of the vaccine effectiveness estimates in the study, with very few exceptions. This suggests that the unadjusted estimates from large population studies like this are already very close to the mark in most cases, with any adjustments being small. This gives us reason for confidence that the unadjusted estimates from the PHE data, even if, according to them, not “the most appropriate method”, will be sufficiently close to be useful.
So here, without further ado, is the table with the latest unadjusted vaccine effectiveness estimates, for the period September 6th to October 3rd. (For the previous three tables see my previous post.)
Note that 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”.

Strikingly, the (unadjusted) vaccine effectiveness (VE) in over-18s continues to drop. For those in their 40s it hits nearly minus-86% this week, down from minus-66% in last week’s report. This means the double-vaccinated in their 40s are now getting on for being almost twice as likely to be infected as the unvaccinated of the same age. Those in their 50s, 60s and 70s have similarly super-low VE estimates, while the unadjusted VE for those in their 30s goes negative for the first time, having been dropping for some weeks. For the under-18s, on the other hand – which is the group currently being vaccinated – it actually went up, from 84% to 88%.
Public health officials should be making a priority of investigating the reasons for this alarming inversion of vaccine effect in the over-30s. The fact that instead we have an effort from Government-approved ‘fact-checkers’ to suppress the reporting of it is disturbing, to say the least.
Vaccine effectiveness against serious disease and death continues to hold up well, save in the over-80s, where VE against hospitalisation has dropped from 59% to 51% since last week’s report, which is worrying as most of the deaths are in the over-80s. Effectiveness against death in the over-80s has been sliding more gradually from 70% in weeks 32-35 down to 64% in weeks 36-39, a month later.
Oddly, the text of the report contains an error. It states: “The rate of a positive COVID-19 test is substantially lower in vaccinated individuals compared to unvaccinated individuals up to the age of 39.” This is the same statement (word-for-word) the surveillance reports have made since they started reporting this data in week 36. However, it clearly is no longer true for those in their 30s, where the infection rate in the vaccinated is now slightly higher than in the unvaccinated, and needs updating.
A new PHE Technical Briefing has also been published recently, but we cannot update our VE estimates from that data as we usually do as they have decided to discontinue including it. A note explains:
Cases, hospitalisation, attendance and deaths by vaccination status are now presented in the COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report and therefore this data will not be produced in future editions of the variant technical briefing. These tables will be reinstated in the technical briefing if new variants of concern arise.
This is a pity as the Technical Briefing data, while limited to sequenced Delta positive tests, was useful because it went back to February and was published with a fortnight added at a time, allowing data for each two-week period to be analysed. The Vaccine Surveillance report data, on the other hand, only appears in four-week chunks a week at a time, preventing finer analysis, and only goes back to August.
What is really needed, of course, is for the full anonymised data to be released so that it can be analysed independently of Government and its favoured scientists. This is what those in Government and Parliament who care about transparency and truth should be pushing hard for, as without such full transparency the scope for real accountability is limited.
In the meantime, this real-world data from PHE, with infection rates in the double-vaccinated hugely outpacing those in the unvaccinated across many age groups, continues to make a mockery of the vaccine passports and mandates that have become oddly popular even as the data mounts-up that they are pointless.
Merck’s COVID ‘Super Drug’ Poses Serious Health Risks, Scientists Warn
“Proceed With Caution At Your Own Peril”
Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | October 9, 2021
As it turns out, all the scientists and doctors who insisted that Merck’s “revolutionary” COVID drug molnupiravir is extremely safe weren’t faithfully adhering to “the science” after all. Because according to a report published Thursday by Barron’s, some scientists are worried that the drug – which purportedly cut hospitalizations in half during a study that was cut short – could cause cancer or birth defects.
So much for having a “strong safety profile,” as Dr. Scott Gottlieb claimed in an interview on the day Merck first publicized the research.
It’s perfectly understandable why Merck might choose to play down this safety risk: assuming it’s approved, the drug is widely expected to be one of “the most lucrative drugs ever” – which is one reason why Merck’s shares soared into double-digit territory after the announcement.
As we reported earlier this week, Merck and its “partner” Ridgeback Biotherapeutics will profit immensely by charging customers up to 40x what it costs to make the drug, which Ridgeback originally licensed from Emory University for an “undisclosed sum”. The drug was developed with funding from the federal government.
According to Barron’s, some scientists who have studied the drug believe that its method of suppressing the virus could potentially run amok within the body.
Some scientists who have studied the drug warn, however, that the method it uses to kill the virus that causes Covid-19 carries potential dangers that could limit the drug’s usefulness.
Molnupiravir works by incorporating itself into the genetic material of the virus, and then causing a huge number of mutations as the virus replicates, effectively killing it. In some lab tests, the drug has also shown the ability to integrate into the genetic material of mammalian cells, causing mutations as those cells replicate.
If that were to happen in the cells of a patient being treated with molnupiravir, it could theoretically lead to cancer or birth defects.
In particular, Raymond Schinazi, a professor of pediatrics and the director of biochemical pharmacology at Emory who studied the drug while it was being developed, and published a number of papers on NHC, the compound that’s the active ingredient in the drug. He published a paper that showed the drug can produce a reaction like the one described above, and insisted it shouldn’t be given to young people – especially pregnant women – without more data.
Schinazi told Barron’s that he did not believe that molnupiravir should be given to pregnant women, or to young people of reproductive age, until more data is available. Merck’s trials of molnupiravir have excluded pregnant women; the scientists running the trial asked male participants to “abstain from heterosexual intercourse” while taking the drug, according to the federal government website that tracks clinical trials.
Barron’s even shared a paper published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases in May by Schinazi and scientists at the University of North Carolina which reported that NHC can cause mutations in animal cell cultures in a lab test designed to detect such mutations – something Merck claims it has tested for. The paper’s authors concluded that the risks for molnupiravir “may not be zero”.
Merck told Barron’s that it has run “extensive tests” on animals which it says show that this shouldn’t be an issue. “The totality of the data from these studies indicates that molnupiravir is not mutagenic or genotoxic in in-vivo mammalian systems,” a Merck spokesman said.
Still, scientists and doctors who have studied NHC say that Merck needs to “be careful,” and it’s not just Schinazi warning about the drug’s potential risks.
Dr. Shuntai Zhou, a scientist at the Swanstrom Lab at UNC, said “there is a concern that this will cause long-term mutation effects, even cancer.”
Zhou says that he is certain that the drug will integrate itself into the DNA of mammalian hosts. “Biochemistry won’t lie,” he says. “This drug will be incorporated in the DNA.”
Merck hasn’t yet released any data from its animal studies, but the scientists believe that it would take long-term studies to show that the drug is truly totally safe.
“Proceed with caution and at your own peril,” wrote Raymond Schinazi, a professor of pediatrics and the director of the division of biochemical pharmacology at the Emory University School of Medicine, who has studied NHC for decades, in an email to Barron’s.
Analysts are already warning that these questions about the drug’s safety suggest the reaction in Merck’s shares was a little “overblown”, to say the least. Investors apparently were so eager for a new “pandemic panacea” (now that the mRNA jabs have proven to be much less effective than advertised) that they didn’t ask too many questions about safety, or even question the paucity of data. One analyst for SVB Leerink Dr. Geoffrey Porges described investors’ reaction from Friday as “wishful thinking”.
Even once the FDA authorizes the drug, Dr. Porges believes it will come with strict limitations on who can and can’t use it. “I think it is effectively going to be a controlled substance”, Dr. Porges said, adding that the risks to pregnant women, or women who may soon become pregnant, could present thorny problems for the FDA’s advisory committee reviewing the drug.
Given that the safety risks of the drug seem well-documented already, Wall Street’s gushing about the drug’s prospects – “it really is THAT good”, one analyst insisted – seems like an idiotic blunder in retrospect. The product of what one might call “magical thinking”.
Fact-Checking the Fact Checkers
By Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • October 8, 2021
One of my recent posts on the Daily Sceptic was the subject of a ‘fact check‘ by Full Fact, which self-importantly describes itself as “the UK’s independent fact checking organisation” but is in fact funded by Google, Facebook and George Soros, among others, to help them suppress unapproved news and views. Even U.K. broadcasting regulator Ofcom has said it relies on the organisation to tell it what to censor regarding COVID-19, so unfortunately the dog has teeth and can’t just be ignored as one more absurd website with excessive faith in its own infallibility.
The post in question, from September 10th, simply reported on Public Health England’s latest Vaccine Surveillance report, which included infection rates by vaccination status for the previous month so allowed the calculation of an unadjusted estimate of vaccine effectiveness. Full Fact, however, took exception to the idea that vaccine effectiveness can be estimated in this way, because it wasn’t adjusted for confounders. Or used the wrong population data. Or because the article included the (entirely accurate) claim that the PHE report showed higher infection rates in the vaccinated in some age groups. Or because the heading didn’t include ‘caveats’. Or something. In any case, it was ‘incorrect’.
Here follows my correspondence with them, attempting to explain that the factual errors lay entirely in their ‘fact check’, not in my piece.
September 27th 2021
To: The Editor
Incorrect claim that report from Public Health England shows COVID-19 vaccines have “negative effectiveness” in the over-40s: Full Fact correction request
I’m writing to you from Full Fact, the U.K.’s independent fact checking organisation. I have seen an article you published on Friday September 24th so I know you are already aware of a fact check we published earlier last week, but I wanted to send an email to explain why we wrote that fact check.
The article you published on September 10th had the headline “Vaccines Have NEGATIVE Effectiveness in the Over-40s, as Low as MINUS 38%, Shows New PHE Report”
This headline falsely claims that a report from Public Health England (PHE) shows COVID-19 vaccines having “negative effectiveness” in the over-40s. It is not true that the PHE report shows this.
You note in your article that PHE says its data cannot be used on its own as a reliable measurement of vaccine effectiveness. However your headline makes a claim about vaccine effectiveness based on it.
As you will know we have published a fact check on these claims which is available on our website here:
“Vaccines do not raise your risk of catching Covid”
We are asking that you issue a correction on this article in line with the above. We would also ask that you bear this in mind when writing future articles about this data, including the one you published on Friday. We hope our fact check is helpful in this regard.
Please let me know if you’d like to discuss this further.
Many thanks,
Bethan Davies
Policy and Impact Manager
Full Fact
October 5th 2021
Good afternoon,
I just wanted to follow up on an email I sent last week about a fact check we have written on an article you published on 24th September. I will be updating this fact check on our website this week with details of what action we have taken so I wanted to check in with you before I do this. If you are planning to amend this article I’d be very grateful if you could let me know.
Many thanks,
Bethan
October 5th 2021
Dear Bethan
Thank you for your email.
Apologies – I appear to have missed your first email.
As you are aware, I have written in response to your piece ‘fact-checking’ my article of September 10th (here and now also here).
Your piece wrongly implies that people had been confused by PHE’s report as it “seemed to show for the month in question (August 9th to September 5th) that people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s were more likely to test positive for Covid if they had been vaccinated than if they hadn’t”. However, the report doesn’t “seem” to show that, it plainly does show that. Can you explain why your piece attempts to cast doubt on this correct understanding of the data in PHE’s report, and thus misinform the public about the infection risk among vaccinated and unvaccinated people during that month? Will you be amending your piece to ensure it does not confuse or mislead in this way and makes clear that in fact the PHE report does show that vaccinated people in those age groups were more likely to test positive for Covid during that period?
Your piece’s discussion about population estimates is interesting but I hope you will agree that people are entitled to present data and make calculations based on the population data PHE presents in its reports?
You say in your email: “PHE says its data cannot be used on its own as a reliable measurement of vaccine effectiveness.” Those are your words, not theirs. They say: “The vaccination status of cases, inpatients and deaths is not the most appropriate method to assess vaccine effectiveness…” (emphasis added).
However, regardless of what PHE say is the “most appropriate method”, the fact is that vaccine effectiveness is defined as the reduced risk of infection in the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated (see here). I am clear in the piece that the VE figures given are unadjusted (though they are controlled for age). I explain the limitations of the estimates and address the reason PHE gives for the sample being biased. This is a perfectly valid approach to presenting an estimate of vaccine effectiveness, provided the limitations are clear. It also needs to be kept in mind that studies which do attempt to adjust for various confounders can come with significant problems of their own (see e.g. this and this).
A study in the Lancet published yesterday confirms that vaccine effectiveness has been declining fast against Delta and over time – and that study used data only up to the start of August. This indicates that the VE figures you quote in your ‘fact check’ to counter mine are out of date. The point of estimating unadjusted VE from real-world data is to try to keep up with how vaccines are faring now, not six months ago. We are not trying to denigrate vaccines – that’s why we are sure to make clear their continued effectiveness against serious illness and death. We are only interested in reporting up-to-date factual information about them.
My question for you is why you appear to be attempting to cover over the fact that infection rates in the vaccinated are very high – on PHE data, higher than in the unvaccinated, with the gap increasing week-on-week? Would fact-checking energies not be better spent on those who continue to claim that the vaccines are highly effective against infection, a claim which looks less and less accurate with each passing week?
I would be grateful for confirmation that you have amended your piece to ensure it does not mislead about current infection rates in vaccinated people (according to PHE data) and about the latest vaccine effectiveness estimates.
Kind regards
Will
Will Jones
Associate Editor – Daily Sceptic
October 7th 2021
Dear Will,
Thank you for your response to my email.
We disagree with your point that we have misunderstood the PHE report.
We acknowledge in our fact check that your article mentions PHE’s caveats, but our fact check and the email we sent you initially are related to your headline, which has no caveats in it.
We are happy with information we included on vaccine effectiveness and we have made it clear to readers where this came from.
We very much appreciate you setting out your position. In conclusion however, after consideration, we will not be amending our fact check.
Kind regards,
Bethan
October 7th 2021
Dear Bethan
Thank you for your reply.
You say your ‘fact check’ is related to our headline. Please can you spell out more precisely for me what you object to in the headline? Is it because it doesn’t include the word ‘unadjusted’ before ‘vaccine effectiveness’? Or is it something else? Unadjusted vaccine effectiveness is still a form of vaccine effectiveness so the headline is not inaccurate on that point (and the caveats are explained in the piece). Part of the problem is that you seem to regard vaccine effectiveness as something which can only be calculated in a formal study, rather than a quantity representing the reduced proportion of infections in a vaccinated group versus an unvaccinated group which may be calculated on any such data set (with limitations acknowledged). It is therefore not ‘incorrect’, as you claim, for me to calculate vaccine effectiveness from population data and report on it.
I appreciate that you are happy with the information you have included on vaccine effectiveness. However, the important point is it is not valid to claim that an article using more up-to-date data on real-world infection rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated groups is ‘incorrect’ by citing out-of-date estimates from studies using data from earlier periods, even if they come from government sources. You can point out that the new estimates disagree with the old estimates, but that doesn’t invalidate the new estimates or make them ‘incorrect’. What you are doing amounts to attempted censorship of reporting on emerging data, rather than ‘fact-checking’.
You say you disagree that you have misunderstood the PHE report. But you clearly imply that the PHE report does not show infection rates higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. To quote:
This data had already caused widespread confusion, because it seemed to show for the month in question (August 9th to September 5th) that people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s were more likely to test positive for Covid if they had been vaccinated than if they hadn’t. In particular, a chart displaying the data seemed to give this impression.
This is a patently misleading section as you completely fail to acknowledge that the report plainly does show infection rates higher in the vaccinated in these age groups and instead attempt to make it sound like it does not and that this was a matter of ‘confusion’ on the part of others. The PHE report even explicitly states: “In individuals aged 40 to 79, the rate of a positive COVID-19 test is higher in vaccinated individuals compared to unvaccinated.”
I urge you again, as a matter of professional integrity and for the sake of the credibility of your site, to amend the ‘fact check’ so that it is not misleading in this way and makes clear that the PHE report is correctly understood as showing infection rates higher in the vaccinated in these age groups during this time period.
Kind regards
Will
Will Jones
Associate Editor – Daily Sceptic



