Covid “vaccines” & pregnancy: Twitter blocks OffG for telling the truth
Social media is allowing promotion of vaccines with unknown effects on pregnant women, and “restricting” any dissent… no matter how well sourced.
By Kit Knightly – OffGuardian – July 28, 2021
Yesterday, the Scottish government put out a tweet containing potentially dangerous medical misinformation.
We at OffGuardian did our civic duty and corrected them, citing non-controversial proven facts available from official sources…. and within eighteen hours our account was “limited”.
We are now locked out of Twitter unless we remove the “misleading” tweet.
In short, Twitter is punishing us for telling the absolute, provable truth. Whilst allowing governments to promote experimental medical treatments which may harm pregnant women and/or their unborn children.
Here’s the original tweet, sent last night by the Scottish Government (@ScotsGov):
[Note the ultra-PC wording “pregnant people”, not “pregnant women”, because when you’re enforcing quasi-fascist medical practices, inclusive language is important.]
And here is our response, and Twitter’s demand it be removed:
We refute the labelling of our tweet as “misleading or potentially harmful”. Our fact-check of the Scottish government was three-fold, and each of the three claims can be supported with evidence:
Claim 1: “Women young enough to get pregnant have a greater than 99.99% chance of surviving Covid”
This is true. Many studies and experts have noted Covid’s low IFR, especially for people below 70 years of age. For example, a paper published in Nature last year found that “For every 1,000 people infected with the coronavirus who are under the age of 50, almost none will die.” And that’s not even accounting for the absurd ways so many countries count “Covid deaths.
Claims 2: “The NHS says there is no evidence Covid19 can cause miscarriage or impact the development of your baby”
Also true. You can read it on the NHS’s own “Covid19 and Pregnancy Website”, along with other choice quotes such as “If you’re pregnant your chance of getting COVID-19 is not higher than anyone else and it’s very unlikely you’ll get seriously ill with it.”
Claim 3: “The vaccines are experimental and have unknown long-term side effects”
Completely true. The phase 3 trials for the vaccines are not set to conclude until 2023, at least. And clearly we have no long-term data on injections which have literally existed for less than a year.
As you can see, far from being “misleading and potentially harmful”, these claims are both logically sound and supported by sources.
In fact, the tweet to which we are replying could far more accurately be branded “misleading and potentially harmful”, in so far as it is literally medical misinformation that presents a serious potential danger to public health.
Firstly, it claims Covid “vaccines” are:
The best way to protect you and your baby from the risks of the virus during pregnancy.”
… but they don’t quantify those risks. As we’ve already shown, the “risks” run from minimal to non-existent. (Plus, the “vaccines” may not even protect from infection or transmission of the alleged virus anyway, so even if there were a “risk”, the vaccines may do nothing to avert it).
Their graphic then claims that “Covid vaccines are recommended during pregnancy”, but that is an essentially meaningless statement. Anything can be “recommended”, but that doesn’t mean they are proven safe.
The simple truth is, obviously, there has been no time for any long-term studies on the physical or cognitive development of children born to vaccinated mothers, either post-birth or in utero.
That is our position: it is simple, logical, backed up with facts… and we are censored for saying it.
Not only are we “limited” for doing nothing but telling the truth, but the ScotsGov tweet remains, despite being potentially dangerous to pregnant women, and their unborn babies, all across the country.
*
Take a moment to examine the actual psychology of the process here, and see it for what it is – a microcosm of the way millions have been bullied and subjugated over the past eighteen months. Twitter could easily simply remove the tweet. They could delete the entire account. But they don’t.
Instead, they tell us we have to remove it ourselves. We are being manipulated into compliance, in the hopes we will be disempowered and learn to self-censor in the future. It is an exercise in purposed domination. But it only works if you let it.
We are forced by circumstance, namely the need to communicate with our readers and receive submissions, to comply with Twitter’s blackmail. For now. But we do so under protest. In the future, we will be making the inevitable move to alternative platforms. We suggest our readers join us there.
We will be removing the tweet, but we do not repudiate it. We stand by it completely.
The vaccines are untested and therefore potentially harmful to everyone (including pregnant women), whilst mitigating almost zero hypothetical risk. It is the truth, and it’s our responsibility to say it no matter what.
Two plus two equals four. We will never say it’s five.
Who Watches The Watchmen? – Fauci’s “Noble Lie” Exposed
By Charles Rixey, MA, MBA | Prometheus Shrugged | July 22, 2021
More than 100K pages of FOIA documents referenced here have been condensed into 173 pages of the most relevant selections in my appendix Prometheus Shrugged. It was here, last February, that the role of Dr. Fauci in ongoing academic censorship of COVID’s origin was first exposed.
A chronological narrative of the events described throughout my research will included in a forthcoming volume of DRASTIC’s set of published collections of evidence.
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote that truth goes through 3 stages:
1st, it is ridiculed; 2nd, it is violently opposed; and 3rd, it is accepted as being self-evident
Guess what’s next for us?
Six months ago, I began my first article on scientific censorship during COVID-19 by introducing Dr. Fauci as a surprise character that had emerged unexpectedly while digging through what was then 83,000 FOIA emails, published by US Right-to-Know over the course of the last year:
[see files related to Ralph Baric, Linda Saif, Rita Colwell, Colorado State/Rocky Mountain National Laboratory & the NCBI; other FOIA releases from Judicial Watch, Buzzfeed & the Washington Post include NIH funding of the WIV & Dr. Fauci’s emails]
I’ve been trying for quite some time to get people to understand the full scope of the Dr. Fauci ‘situation,’ but it’s clear that segments of our national leadership are preventing an honest and open inquiry into his actions because they fear the backlash/collateral damage that will result from the tarnishing of their sacred cow. It’s time Americans were told the truth – that the grant money sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV] is merely a footnote in this narrative.
After all, Dr. Fauci controls nearly $4 billion of annual grant funding for the NIAID, the institute within the NIH he has directed since 1984; over 37 years, more than 50,000 research projects have been supported with more than $50 billion [conservatively] of taxpayer funds have been doled out to them.
It’s reasonable to hold him accountable for the results of his organization’s efforts, but the direct funding received by the WIV for Gain-of-Function (GOF) research represents only a tiny fraction of Fauci’s involvement in enabling risky research – the 2017 repeal of the GOF ban was decided without the consultation of the Trump administration, even though news coverage during the pandemic blamed him for the decision.
Neither Fauci nor his boss Francis Collins [the NIH director] bothered to clarify the record, which looks especially disgusting in the wake of persistent rejections of Senator Rand Paul’s assertions [with accompanying evidence] that the NIH ever financially supported such research:
Contents:
- Dr. Fauci’s true legacy
- The evidence of his involvement
- The questions Congress [and everyone else] should be asking Dr. Fauci
- The impact of his efforts
First, do no harm … to Fauci’s Legacy
It’s important to plainly state that I’m aware of the intense politicization of virtually every aspect of the pandemic and the pandemic response. Since many readers may not be aware, I’ll point out that my specific motivation for building a COVID-19 website and speaking to a broader audience about the various facets of the pandemic was to offer unfiltered information to counter the disgusting polarization I observed:
I felt obligated to re-iterate my stance, but the nature and importance of the situation can’t be ignored any longer, because Congress is now actively engaged in investigating the pandemic’s origins, and we must confront the truth if we are to gain meaningful insight that can help us prepare for future crises. There is no level of partisanship that justifies ignoring a tragedy of this magnitude.
“Everything rises and falls on leadership” – John Maxwell
It’s hard to place a dollar value on the impact of Fauci’s leadership decisions upon almost all aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is why it’s not difficult to understand the willingness of some to avoid a legitimate inquiry into the issue altogether. After all, he sits at the nexus of –
A) the NIH’s role in supporting the research & development of mRNA technology and new antiviral drugs like Remdesivir, and the resulting conflicts of interest that the NIH continues to ignore
B) His role in pushing those NIH-sponsored inventions; specifically, advocating for Remdesivir on the basis of weak evidence while rejecting legitimate investigations into generic alternatives with no less statistical support, as well as…
C) … His role in obfuscating concerning data and censoring public debate over the risk/benefit evidence emerging about COVID-19 vaccines. Had Fauci been bluntly honest about the unknowns involving the new technology throughout the pandemic, Americans would still largely have assumed the risk – at least, assuming that antibody dependent enhancement [ADE] was not a likely outcome. Oops.
D) His evolving stances on masking, lockdowns, school closures and other non-pharmaceutical interventions [NPI], largely the result of growing public awareness that those decisions have consistently been based upon reducing the accountability of cowardly officials, not the best interest of their constituents [Note: this is a conclusion from my research focus last year, that I will return to once the origin issue allows me to do so].
E) His refusal to address the blatant censorship of vaccine side-effect data; it takes a disturbing level of cynicism to witness the large-scale skepticism and uncertainty that has resulted from such censorship and then vilify those willing to speak up – and blaming them for any future vaccine breakout when one of the most likely causes would be ADE. ADE with SARS-CoV-2 would most likely result from the specific targeting of the MRNA vaccines, not vaccine hesitancy [in the absence of a simultaneous global administration of the jabs – which was never feasible under the geopolitical and temporal constraints of the pandemic.
Each of those factors has contributed to the fading perception of Fauci as ‘America’s Doctor, but each has also become a divisive litmus test for which the evidence for and against is hotly debated. My purpose here is not to offer judgment on those issues; rather, I want to highlight the fact that Dr. Fauci’s legacy includes elements far beyond the scope of my research – and the context of those debates is directly relevant for the proper framing of the failures illuminated here. The same hubris and gaslighting in defense of ‘Science’ has plagued everything.
My disgust doesn’t stem from casual reflection & an exaggeration of weak assertions to fan partisan flames. It stems from my analysis of 100K pages of FOIA documents, 1,000+ research articles reviewed, and my own published analysis of the the impact of Fauci’s censorship, which was the 1st of its kind.
My approach was external to science – from the perspective of an historian seeking to understand the ‘why’ behind the further collapse of trust in our institutions during the pandemic. My conclusions were formed over six months of investigation, and focused on the realization that one of the worst developments of the pandemic is the evaporation of public trust in scientists [see Edifice Wrecks].
I’ve never sought to inflame conspiracies or ignore evidence in support of zoonosis, but I’ve personally entered into discussions with a half-dozen of the scientists highlighted below, and none of them ever addressed the emerging evidence that, under normal circumstances, would’ve been part of the open debate that Fauci pretends already took place.
Every additional moment spent in denial and suppression just adds fuel to the coming backlash, and thus far discussions have ignored what I believe is the largest and most consequential elephant in the room:
F) Fauci quietly but directly ensured that scientific censorship was implemented, in large measure, to prevent public awareness of the extent of his role in GOF research and the controversies surrounding it. The evidence proves that, at the start of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci and many leading scientists moved to protect themselves – not us, who weren’t yet aware of the potential calamity at our doorstep.
Fauci LED the efforts to obstruct research into COVID’s origins, colluding with the President’s Science Advisor Kelvin Dreogemeier and Wellcome Trust head Jeremy Farrar, to proactively undermine consideration of the evidence that directly tied their global research initiatives to the lab at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To date, all of their efforts have been focused on preventing disclosure of embarrassing connections – not preventing another novel pathogen from sparking a global pandemic; to prevent future scrutiny, not future tragedy.
Scientists, if you’re struggling to understand the distinction between degrees of commitment to truth, I offer the example of Thích Quảng Đức, pictured here protesting the corrupt S. Vietnam regime in a prologue of the Vietnam War:
You see, the message for scientists who believe that a threat is existential is that words gain true meaning when they are supported by the actions & sacrifices of the speaker. What message are we supposed to derive from the COVID-19 pandemic?
I’d recommend pausing for reflection – on the image above, specifically – because what the world is beginning to see is that the scientific establishment made a mockery of the trust it had been given. The world’s leading experts in virology and public health called attention to a threat by setting the world on fire, rather than themselves – and then blaming us for being too simple to believe their noble lie.
Priorities
The baseline assumption of the public at large has been that Dr. Fauci has earned the benefit of the doubt thanks to his five decades of public service and consistency in defending establishment science – the admiration of which has risen nearly to cult worship in recent decades. The cognitive dissonance between appearance and reality have created a situation where trust in ‘science’ has reached its sacred peak at the exact moment when such trust is least deserved.
At the center of this incestuous arrogance is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the recipient of unquestioned adulation by those in the political sphere who have spent more than a century arguing that a Platonic ‘philosopher-king’ ideal must be forced upon intellectually vacuous masses whom, left to their own devices, would inevitably self-immolate.
Scientists reached new heights in the ivory tower when they warned us that man’s evil nature had left previous generations protected only by the horrific death equation of Mutually Assured Destruction. Setting aside the obvious complicity of scientists in the creation of nuclear weapons, trusting science over many decades has simply led to a new formulation of that Faustian bargain – Mutually Assured Corruption.
A Study In Scarlet
Before heading down the long and winding road, it’s important to explain what zoonosis is and why Fauci’s denial of basic facts simply kicks the accountability can down the road. Should we really be surprised that Dr. Fauci is ‘confused’ by the definition of “Gain if Function?” After all, not that long ago, he also ridiculed the idea that the virus could’ve come from a lab before finally admitting that it was a statistical possibility.
Zoonosis in the context of viral emergence doesn’t mean a virus originally sprung from nature – all viruses do. It means that the jump from animals to humans happened in the wild, as the result of a fortuitous combination of mutations that allow a virus to survive the switch. If human intervention artificially encouraged the process of adaptation by experimentation, or simply by virtue of bringing a virus to a lab and increasing the odds of such exposure, then the origin of a viral pandemic is a lab.
What’s sickening about his tortured twisting of language is that Fauci knows this better than almost anyone; thus his lies aren’t borne of ignorance. What he’s done is use his scientific gravitas to pretend that observers’ understanding of literal definitions is flawed because we are too ignorant to appreciate the complexity of the issues. The truth, however, is that our generation’s most prominent infectious disease expert is gaslighting the citizens of the country he swore an oath to protect [one could also use the term epistemic injustice ].
How a Psychic Healer Blog Convinced the Government to Fund “Long Covid” Research
By Phillip W. Magness | AIER | July 27, 2021
The National Institutes for Health (NIH) is exceptionally keen on the study of “Long Covid.” The federal agency recently allocated over $1 billion in funding for this purpose, and NIH Director Francis Collins has made the claimed ailment a recurring subject of his press commentary over the last year. The Department of Health and Human Services similarly signaled that it intends to classify “Long Covid” as a recognized disability for government funding and classification purposes.
So what is Long Covid, and why is it drawing so much attention and funding out of the federal government? As with any respiratory illness, Covid-19 does appear to have long-term sufferers who do not follow the normal recovery pattern and continue to demonstrate symptoms for weeks or months after an infection. At the same time however, the push to make “Long Covid” a distinctive medical classification unto itself appears to be a political phenomenon, wrapped up in clear signs of pseudoscience and linked back to a fringe “alternative wellness” blog that originally coined the term in March 2020.
A recent study published in the Lancet-owned journal EClinicalMedicine purported to document over 200 symptoms of Long Covid, ranging from fairly common Covid-19 ailments such as fatigue, cough, or long-term loss of smell to an eclectic assortment of problems such as hallucination, brain fog, tearfulness, insomnia, and mood anxiety. Media reports breathlessly repeated these findings to press the urgency of funding for Long Covid research, while also hyping the syndrome as a further justification for alarmism in justifying lockdowns and similar measures. After all, if Long Covid afflicts a sizable subset of Covid patients – as some claim – and can strike young people who are at a much lower mortality risk from the virus itself, then perhaps more restrictive measures are warranted on the general population – or so the argument goes.
Many lockdown advocates have seized onto the Long Covid narrative, incorporating it into their defenses of the draconian non-pharmaceutical interventions they have advocated over the last year and a half. The CovidFAQ website – a UK-based project set up by “neoliberal” activist Sam Bowman and British MP Neil O’Brien – invokes the threat of Long Covid in its attacks the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), arguing that the hypothesized syndrome undermines evidence that the virus is substantially less-severe among younger demographics. Several pro-lockdown scientists and epidemiologists issued coordinated statements attacking the GBD in October 2020 for “ignor[ing] the emerging burdens of long COVID.” These statements are usually offered as declarative assessments, treating Long Covid as an established medical fact.
With billion-dollar budgets and the prospect of additional sweeping policy measures at stake, it only makes sense to ask if the science behind Long Covid is sound. There is no doubt that some Covid-19 victims have symptoms that linger for weeks or months beyond the typical recovery, although that is true of many diseases. Whether it has 200 plus symptoms is another story – and a closer look reveals an alarming amount of outright quackery is currently shaping the scientific and media discourse around Long Covid.
The problem arises from the amorphous definition of the phrase “Long Covid” itself. Far from a careful clinical diagnosis, Long Covid has become a catch-all term for any extended medical ailment, real or imagined, attributed to the effects of the Covid-19 virus. An alarming amount of alleged data about the phenomenon traces back to a single source called the “Body Politic Wellness Collective” – an alternative medicine blog with dubious scientific credentials. To quote one recent study of the term’s origins, “the emergence and recognition of Long COVID as a potentially major public health problem is largely due to advocacy groups such as the Body Politic COVID-19 Support Group, and Patient Led Research For COVID-19” – the latter an affiliated survey administrator that, according to its own website, was “born out of the Body Politic Slack support group.”
The same Body Politic group frequently appears in an already large and growing literature on “Long Covid” in other scientific journals. In September 2020, NIH Director Collins devoted his personal column on the agency’s website to touting the group. He later credited their work when launching the aforementioned $1 billion research initiative. In July 2021, Body Politic reappeared at the center of the aforementioned EClinicalMedicine study along with a spinoff organization called the Patient-Led Research Collaborative. The two groups administered the survey behind the claim that Long Covid carries over 200 symptoms.
Before we get into the survey itself, it’s useful to take a closer look at the Body Politic group. TheWall Street Journal recently ran a lengthy expose of the organization by Jeremy Devine, an Ontario-based psychiatrist. Devine found that the group’s initiatives sprang to life at the outset of the pandemic in March 2020. They first coined the Long Covid moniker around this time, promoting it in a flurry of media appearances. In early April, the New York Times ran an op-Ed by Body Politic’s co-founder calling attention to the syndrome and recounting her own experience as a “long hauler” (which, at the time, consisted of experiencing symptoms for about three weeks after testing positive).
As Devine documented in the WSJ, the Body Politic group’s approach to scientific survey design appeared highly unorthodox. It frequently relied on self-reported descriptions of Long Covid symptoms, instead of independent medical verification. It also had a habit of diagnosing people with Long Covid even after they tested negative for Covid-19 itself. A March 2021 report by Adam Gaffney for StatNews called attention to similar problems with Body Politic’s research design. “[A]t least some people who identify themselves as having long Covid appear never to have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus,” Gaffney noted. They were nonetheless touted by the media as case studies in the alleged syndrome.
A closer look at the Body Politic group itself raises several red flags about their scientific qualifications. The group’s executive board boasts few, if any, actual medical practitioners or scientific experts. Instead we find an eclectic assortment of political activists, musicians, poets, and journalists, many of whom share common interests in “alternative medicine.” Body Politic’s Treasurer and principle support group organizer describes herself as a “practicing Spiritual Medium” who specializes in detecting “invisible illness.” The website’s Vice President is a “social & racial justice activist,” and its Secretary is an “aspiring sex coach.” Other affiliates include a self-described “socialist poet,” multiple “social justice activists,” and people who describe their careers as operating at the intersection between art and natural wellness. The group’s website and social media accounts frequently invoke political terminology from the critical theory literature. They describe themselves as “a queer feminist wellness collective and a space for inclusivity, accessibility, and crucial discussions about the very real connection between wellness, politics, and personal identity.” Their values statement espouses “patient-led” research to “democratize” medicine – descriptions that appear to forgo traditional scientific methods of testing and verification in favor of placing heavier reliance on patient testimonials and personal experience.
While the group’s activism alone does not disqualify their commentary, the unconventional qualifications of its leadership should raise suspicion about their claimed expertise on Long Covid. When NIH Director Collins personally promotes Body Politic’s work, he is creating a false sense of scientific credibility around their work. Few who read Collins’s statements are aware that the group he praises as “citizen scientists” might be better characterized as an odd assortment of psychic healers, magic crystal gurus, and alternative medicine activists. As a leading public health official, Collins’s many endorsements of this quackery border on irresponsible.
Turning to Body Politic’s survey projects, we quickly find that skepticism of their credibility is warranted. The group’s survey design specifically eschews requiring a positive Covid-19 test or antibody test to confirm that their respondents actually had the disease. “[W]e do not believe people’s experiences with COVID-19 symptoms should be discounted because they did not receive a positive test result,” states one justification for this unconventional data collection procedure. To qualify as a sufferer of Long Covid, it seems, a person needs only to claim that he or she suffers from Long Covid. Lived experience of the disease trumps any requirement of scientific verification.
The prevalence of unverified and untested Covid claimants being classified nonetheless as Long Covid sufferers is stunning. In the WSJ, Devine reports the numbers from the group’s first survey, administered through their website in 2020: “Nearly half (47.8%)” of Body Politic’s survey respondents “never had testing and 27.5% tested negative for Covid-19. Body Politic publicized the results of a larger, second survey in December 2020. Of the 3,762 respondents, a mere 600, or 15.9%, had tested positive for the virus at any time.” As Gaffney notes in StatNews, this practice raises the distinct possibility that survey respondents are misattributing other chronic symptoms to the virus.
Their new study in the Lancet’s journal EClinical Medicine does not offer much hope that Body Politic has improved its survey design. Its authors state that “We analyzed responses from 3762 participants with confirmed (diagnostic/antibody positive; 1020) or suspected (diagnostic/antibody negative or untested; 2742) COVID-19, from 56 countries.” Unconfirmed Covid patients with self-reported Long Covid symptoms outnumber confirmed Covid patients by almost 2.7 to 1. To their credit, the group discloses the lack of PCR or antibody testing confirmation among the majority of their respondents. The extremely high rates of unconfirmed cases, however, are more than sufficient to cast doubt upon their claims to have identified over 200 separate Long Covid symptoms.
The survey’s design also appears to self-select for people who are inclined to claim Long Covid symptoms, whether valid or not. According to the paper, the survey consisted of 257 questions, took almost 70 minutes on average to complete, allowed participants to revisit their answers for up to 30 days, and was primarily marketed to readers of the Body Politic group’s various blogs and Slack channels. This design practically ensures that the majority of the people who received and completed the survey were drawn from a readership that already gravitates towards the group’s political messaging and medical eccentricities.
Imagine if a survey on diet products collected its sample entirely from the mailing list of Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Goop” store. And imagine if the CDC decided to use that survey as a basis for a billion dollar program to revise its food nutrition guidelines, claiming that it is a representative study of the average American’s diet. Because that’s essentially what NIH Director Francis Collins has done with Body Politic’s surveys when justifying his current research initiative into Long Covid before the public.
With most Long Covid research at the moment, self-diagnosis by amateur groups appears to have supplanted scientific rigor in driving the NIH’s research priorities. Even minimal scrutiny should cast doubt upon the Body Politic group’s deficit of scientific credentials and surplus of outright “alternative medicine” quackery. Yet in January 2021 the New York Times heavily leaned on testimonials from Body Politic’s resident psychics and alternative wellness healers in a feature story on so-called Long Covid, aiming to demonstrate the scientific validity of the diagnosis.
So did an August 2020 piece in the Atlantic that is widely credited with popularizing the concept. Indeed, the New York Times has turned its opinion page over to Body Politic writers on multiple occasions over the last year, giving them free rein to promote unscientific claims about the concept. Simply scanning over mainstream media coverage of “Long Covid” in the last year reveals that Body Politic-affiliated activists with dubious scientific credentials have become go-to “experts” on the subject. Here they are being interviewed in Vox, in the Guardian, in the Washington Post, on NPR, in Buzzfeed, and on MSNBC.
In calling attention to Body Politic’s influence over shaping the Long Covid narrative, I do not question the possibility that some of the organization’s activists may exhibit genuine long-term Covid-related symptoms, even if they are not a distinct classification unto itself. But scientific assessment of their claims remains woefully inadequate relative to the authority that the media has bestowed upon them. In this sense, much of the Long Covid literature bears striking resemblance to other claimed chronic illnesses that have less-than-robust scientific grounding (for example, consider the difference between Celiac disease – a rare but severe dietary illness involving gluten – and the mid-2010s “gluten sensitivity” craze, which mixed together real and imagined but also self-diagnosed symptoms, fad dietary practices, and dubious scientific attestation)
Despite their scientific shortcomings, Body Politic’s own surveys have found a welcome audience among many academics who should know better. Even leading medical journals now regularly tout Body Politic’s dubious survey results as if they are scientific fact.
Last fall, the BMJ published an article on “Long Covid” from a team of scientists led by Oxford’s Trisha Greenhalgh, an outspoken pro-lockdown regular on the BBC and other UK media circuits. Greenhalgh’s team estimated that perhaps as many as 10% of people infected with Covid develop “Long Covid” symptoms – a number that has since become a standard estimate for Long Covid risks.
Their empirical “evidence” for Greenhalgh’s claim, in turn, derives primarily from Body Politic’s “patient-led survey” of alleged Long Covid sufferers – the same survey where half or more of respondents never even had a confirmed Covid diagnosis. This was no accidental reliance on a substandard source, deriving from insufficient scrutiny of the survey’s methods. Greenhalgh credited the Body Politic group by name on Twitter for inspiring their paper, endorsing the “lived experience” of their “patient-led research.” Echoing the Body Politic survey, Greenhalgh and her co-authors further embrace the proposition “that a positive test for covid-19 is not a prerequisite for diagnosis” for Long Covid. It’s apparently sufficient to simply believe that you had a prior bout with Covid, and attribute your claimed long-term symptoms to the same.
Not surprisingly, Long Covid has become a favored fallback argument among lockdowner epidemiologists to argue for prolonged restrictions. Duke University’s Gavin Yamey has made a name for himself by credulously circulating conspiracy theories about the Great Barrington Declaration by blogger Nafeez Ahmed. Sure enough, he’s also a Long Covid activist, promoting Greenhalgh’s study as well as an assortment of news articles that blur the lines between legitimate reporting of long-term symptoms and quackery.
Although Body Politic is far from the only group advocating for Long Covid research funding, their high-profile promotion by the NIH, by leading news outlets, and by medical journals suggests a similar phenomenon to the pattern seen among other lockdown advocates in allegedly-mainstream epidemiology. We’re witnessing a full-scale breakdown of the screening mechanisms that normally steer scientific discourse away from fringe and conspiracist viewpoints – provided that those viewpoints may be used to advance the alarmist ideologies that have emerged around Covid policy over the last year. The doors have, sadly, been thrown wide open to psychic healing and alternative wellness gibberish. Lockdowner scientists have, in turn, given these suspect claims and defective survey designs a welcome home in the most prestigious institutions of journalism, government, and the ivory tower.
Phillip W. Magness is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. He holds a PhD and MPP from George Mason University’s School of Public Policy, and a BA from the University of St. Thomas (Houston).
Prior to joining AIER, Dr. Magness spent over a decade teaching public policy, economics, and international trade at institutions including American University, George Mason University, and Berry College.
Senator Klobuchar ignores First Amendment with new bill to censor online “misinformation”
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim the Net | July 25, 2021
Section 230 is under attack again, this time by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) who introduced a bill that would make online platforms liable for the health “misinformation” posted by users to encourage mass censorship on the platform. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects online platforms from being sued over content posted by users.
The bill, called the Health Misinformation Act, would require online platforms to remove health misinformation, particularly vaccine skepticism during public health crises. Failure to remove such content would make a platform legally liable.
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
The liability, however, would be adjudicated by a court. The bill would require the Department of Health and Human Services of the current administration to determine what qualifies as health misinformation.
“These are some of the biggest, richest companies in the world and they must do more to prevent the spread of deadly vaccine misinformation,” said Klobuchar.
“Earlier this year, I called on Facebook and Twitter to remove accounts that are responsible for producing the majority of misinformation about the coronavirus, but we need a long-term solution.
“This legislation will hold online platforms accountable for the spread of health-related misinformation.”
The introduction of the bill came a few days after President Joe Biden accused social media companies, specifically Facebook, of “killing people” by allowing the spread of vaccine misinformation.
Earlier this week, On Tuesday, the White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield said the administration was exploring ways to hold social media companies accountable for publishing vaccine misinformation.
“Social media companies have a responsibility,” Bedingfield said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “We’re reviewing that and certainly they should be held accountable. I think you heard the president speak aggressively about this.”
She also said social media companies are not the only ones at fault.
“It is also the responsibility of the people creating the content. Again I go back to there are conservative news outlets creating irresponsible content sharing misinformation about the virus that’s getting shared on these platforms. So it is a big and complicated ecosystem and everybody bears responsibility.”
The Health Misinformation Act does not have the support of a single Republican, and that’s not likely to change.
The bill also hasn’t considered the First Amendment and all of the problems that come with having the government decide what is and isn’t health “misinformation.” It would likely turn into a political weapon to censor critics of those who are currently in power, just like it has in other countries where similar laws have been created.
While a review of Section 230 is a bipartisan issue, Republicans and Democrats want it changed for different reasons. The left wants it changed so that tech companies can be held responsible for misinformation and harmful content, while the right wants it changed so that they can sue tech companies for disproportionately censoring their content.
According to the Chamber of Progress, a center-left tech policy activism group, Klobuchar’s bill is a mistake.
“We all want less misinformation online, but this approach would turn future Republican presidents into the speech police,” Chamber of Progress’ chief executive Adam Kovacevich said. “Democrats would regret this.”
Met Office Issues First Ever Extreme Heat Warning!
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | July 24, 2021
The Met Office issued its first ever extreme heat warning last Tuesday:
https://news.sky.com/story/uk-weather-met-office-to-issue-first-ever-extreme-heat-warning-amid-sweltering-conditions-across-country-12359242
Now if you’re thinking that this is surely not the first time Britain has had hot weather, you would be right, as the small print (ie the bit nobody ever reads) in the Sky report explains:
In other words, its the first heat warning since 1st June!
I wonder, by the way, whether they will also be issuing “extreme cold warnings” this winter? Surely the Met Office would not be doing this just to scare the public about global warming?
As for this “extreme heat”, the heatwave in England has been pretty run of the mill.
In Central England, there were only five days above 28C, and no day topped 30C, which PHE say is their average threshold for a heatwave, depending on location.
So far this summer, these are the only days above 28C, whereas in 1976 there were seventeen, and sixteen in 1995:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
I gather that GB News were discussing the heatwave earlier this week. One might have hoped they would show a bit of realism, but sadly they appear to be just as gullible as the rest of the media. I am told they started harping on about the hot weather, and the fact that heatwaves last 13 days not 5 days as they used to.
Perhaps somebody should have told them that heatwaves are not caused by carbon dioxide, but by anti-cyclonic weather systems. I am not aware of any mechanism by which carbon dioxide can keep high pressure systems over Britain.
It never ceases to amaze me how grown up people can get themselves into such a tizzy about a few days of sunshine. Meanwhile, we are already back to typical British summer weather, sunshine and showers and average temperatures. No doubt the rest of the summer will carry on the same.
Banned by the Twitter Totalitarians
By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | July 23, 2021
I have just been handed my second stint in the Social Media Outer Darkness by the Twitter Totalitarians. The first was because I told the truth about the experimental gene therapies masquerading as vaccines, particularly the fact that they have not completed the clinical trials (which they haven’t), and that they are causing a huge amount of adverse reactions and deaths (which they are). On that occasion I was slapped on the wrist for 12 hours, but this time — presumably to teach me a lesson good and proper — the sentence has been increased to a whole week. Will it be the death sentence next?
And the crime m’lud? This was the Tweet that did it:
“The “Covid emergency” is a manufactured crisis, held up by 2 monumental lies: Asymptomatic Transmission + Fraudulent PCR Tests. The “Pingdemic” is thus part of the same manufactured crisis. Remember that when you struggle to put food on the table.”
Bearing in mind that they allow all sorts of scandalous, libelous, hateful content on their platform, which part of this in particular did the Twitter Totalitarians think was unpalatable? Note that I did not dispute the existence of a respiratory illness, which has proved deadly to some people. What I did was to state that a “crisis” was manufactured, chiefly by the use of two falsehoods, one being the claim that healthy people with no symptoms transmit the illness to others, and the other that the RT-PCR test can diagnose infection.
On the first point, numerous studies, along with basic common sense, show that so-called asymptomatic transmission is a myth (see here and here). On the second, this document details conclusively why the RT-PCR test is unfit for use as a clinical diagnostic tool, and on one of the rare occasions this has been allowed to be tested in court, the judgement of a Portuguese court showed beyond doubt that the test is unable to detect infection and therefore not fit for purpose. Yet the Lockdowns, the masking, the bizarre restrictions, the anti-social distancing and everything else has been based on these two lies.
As for the rest of the Tweet, well the so-called Pingdemic, which magically started happening big-time on what was billed as “Freedom Day”, is downstream from these two monumental rivers of lies. The pinging of the app to tell people to self-isolate, which has then been causing whole businesses to close, is the result of the fraudulent tests and the absurd idea that people who aren’t ill can spread the illness they haven’t got. As for the food shortages? There are indeed signs of these starting to occur, and of course if they do happen on a big scale they will be blamed like everything else on Covid! Except it won’t be Covid, but the utterly unnecessary pinging of an unnecessary app, telling people to do unnecessary things, because of a manufactured crisis based on false claims.
The walls are not just closing in free speech; more than that they are closing in on truth-telling. It has been very noticeable that those getting censored have been people who have used facts and truth to challenge the manufactured crisis we’ve experienced since the start of 2020. The purpose of that manufactured crisis has been to lead humanity to a hideous dystopian Biosecurity State, run by Global Technocrats. The purpose of the censorship is to stop those who would hinder the creation of this Transhumanist Hellhole. If you can’t see either of these things yet, it really is time to wake up, since you too will have to live in the nightmare they are building for us.
Surgeon General says “equity” is the reason COVID “misinformation” needs to be censored online
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim the Net | July 23, 2021
In his address on the administration’s concerns about online health “misinformation” surrounding the pandemic, Biden’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said the misinformation concerns were focused on “equity.”
The White House has come under fire for its plans for a direct approach regarding online censorship, especially when it emerged that it was flagging posts on Facebook.
“Misinformation is a threat to our health, and the speed, scale and sophistication with which it is spreading is unprecedented,” Murthy said in the Thursday morning address. “I will not hesitate to say that and to call for greater accountability and action to address health misinformation.”
“A word about equity though,” he continued. “We recognize that equity must be at the center of our work to confront health misinformation. Here’s why: Because unequal access to the health care system, education and technology, means that some people have less access to accurate health information than others. And when those people instead encounter health misinformation, it can worsen their health outcomes, which exacerbates health inequity in what becomes a vicious cycle.”
The Surgeon General also highlighted what individuals can do to stop the spread of health misinformation.
“Last week, I issued a Surgeon General’s Advisory to call the nation’s attention to the threat of health misinformation. Since then, we have continued to emphasize what individuals can do to stop health misinformation in its tracks. That includes asking everyone to raise their own bar for sharing health information by checking to make sure it’s backed by credible scientific sources. As we say in the Advisory, if you’re not sure, don’t share.
“And we’ll continue to say that, on social media and in a video PSA we’ve created and released and in conversations we’re convening with people around the country. We’re also mobilizing other stakeholders to address misinformation. From technology companies and healthcare professionals, to researchers and community-based organizations. In fact, right after this briefing, my office will be hosting a conversation with community organizations around the country to address the steps that they can take to stop the spread of health misinformation.”
Murthy’s address was met with criticism on some social media quarters, especially considering the administration’s remarks on fighting the “health misinformation” over the past week.
Last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed that the administration would be flagging vaccine misinformation content on behalf of Facebook. On Friday, Biden said Facebook was “killing people” by allowing vaccine misinformation to thrive on its platform.
On Monday, Psaki doubled down on her earlier remarks, saying the administration has not “taken any options off the table.”
She added that it was “up to Congress to determine how they want to proceed going forward. We are not in a war, or battle, with Facebook. We are in a battle with the virus.”
President Biden was himself this week accused of promoting misinformation when he falsely stated on a CNN town hall that those who are vaccinated won’t get COVID.
“We’re not in the position where we think that any virus, including the Delta virus, which is much more transmissible and more deadly in terms of unvaccinated people, the – the various shots that people are getting now cover that,” Biden said in Cincinnati, Ohio on Wednesday.
“You’re OK,” he suggested. “You’re not going to – you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”
Biden’s statements would fall foul of his and The Surgeon General’s censorship proposals and have not been censored online.
Only 1.6% of Schoolchildren Forced to Self-Isolate For 10 Days Went on to Develop Covid
By Toby Young • Daily Sceptic • July 23, 2021
A new study by a team of researchers at Oxford has found that of the one million schoolchildren sent home and forced to self-isolate for 10 days every week last term, 98.4% did not go on to develop Covid. The Telegraph has more.
Forcing hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren to self-isolate because a classmate had Covid was unnecessary as daily testing would have been as effective, an official study suggests.
The results of the study, by the University of Oxford, emerged on the last day of term for most schools, when more than one million pupils are off because of the virus and after months of disruption to education. […]
The team behind the study said the results also offered reassurance for policymakers trying to end the pingdemic because they showed that the virus could be controlled in a less “destructive” way.
It came as the latest figures revealed that up to one million people a week are being asked to isolate in England and Wales, with record numbers being pinged by the NHS app.
The Oxford study found that 98.4 per cent of children who were sent home for 10 days never went on to develop Covid – a result set to anger parents and pupils forced to stay at home needlessly.
For those that can’t get past the Telegraph‘s paywall, BBC News also has the story.
This study complements numerous other studies – such as this one in Sweden – showing that very, very few people are infected with COVID-19 in schools, whether children or staff, and that school closures were completely unnecessary. Bizarrely, the BBC quotes the lead author of the Oxford study describing his findings as “good news” since it means sending a million schoolchildren home every week just in case they have Covid can now be replaced by daily testing, with only those who test positive being sent home. But, of course, it isn’t “news” since we’ve know how pointless the quarantining of healthy schoolchildren is for at least a year. And I suspect parents of school-age children (like me) won’t regard this news as “good”, so much as confirmation of their worst fears, namely, that their children’s sacrifice over the past 16 months has been for nought.
Here is how you do the Big Lie/ CNBC and the 99.5% of deaths in the unvaccinated
By Meryl Nass, MD | July 22, 2021
First CNBC set up the story. It provided facts that actually don’t mean very much but sound frightening. It said the virus is 1,000 times more transmissible than the original. In fact, precisely this strategy was used in the early days of Covid.
The variant is highly contagious, largely because people infected with the delta strain can carry up to 1,000 times more virus in their nasal passages than those infected with the original strain, according to new data.
At the onset of the pandemic, in March 2020, SARS-2 was alleged to be 1,000 times more transmissible than SARS-1. And today, the hot story is that the Delta variant is 1,000 times more transmissible than the original strain of SARS-2. Which would make it 1 million times more transmissible than SARS-1.
But what does that really mean? In the real world, more transmissibility is generally associated with lowered virulence. And that is precisely the case when you compare SARS-1 and SARS-2, and the Delta versus the original Covid strain. Each has considerably less virulence than the earlier coronavirus.
It means the Delta variant might be as transmissible as the flu. And it happens to be the least virulent of the seven variants being evaluated in the UK.
Now that you have gotten everyone’s attention, you throw in some quotes from the CDC Director, who happily obliges with more meaningless drivel:
“The delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters at a briefing Thursday. “It is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of, and that I have seen in my 20-year career.”
Aggressive sounds pretty bad, but what does it mean? In fact, it has no medical meaning. The claim of high transmissibility is repeated, while nothing else is being said.
How transmissible is flu? CDC states that between 3% and 20% of Americans get the flu each winter, within a brief 3 months. Delta is presumably in the same ballpark.
The stage has been prepared. The CDC Director has opined on the latest horribleness. The audience is nervous and paying full attention.
What comes next appears to be from a reliable source. But in fact, it came out of left field. There is no source. No attribution whatsoever.
CNBC stated:
“In hospitals around the country, 97% of people admitted with Covid symptoms are unvaccinated, and 99.5% of all Covid deaths are also among the unvaccinated.”
The numbers cannot be verified by the press, or by me, or by anyone who does not have an official list of the vaccinated. Most people were vaccinated in mass clinics. The vaccinations are not in their medical records. There are no insurance claims for the vaccine, which was free. While the states and CDC do have those lists, somewhere, CDC has previously claimed it could not match the list of the vaccinated to reported post-vaccination deaths to corroborate and evaluate them.
In the UK, with similar vaccination rates as the US, it was reported that the majority of hospitalizations are occurring in the VACCINATED. This according to Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief science advisor, who is also known as a member of the Fauci Covid origin cover-up cabal.
According to Reuters, Vallance now says he misspoke.
Vallance earlier said at a news conference with Prime Minister Boris Johnson that 60% of people being admitted to hospital with COVID-19 have had two doses of vaccine.
“Correcting a statistic I gave at the press conference,” Vallance said on Twitter. “About 60% of hospitalisations from COVID are not from double vaccinated people, rather 60% of hospitalisations from COVID are currently from unvaccinated people.”
When the public has no means of verification, the media (as well as government officials) can say anything they please. How does 99.5% sound? There’s nothing stopping you. So why not go for broke? And if there is pushback, just change the numbers tomorrow.
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Israel’s recurring use of terror on civilians
By Bob Finch | January 26, 2009
Insanely disproportionate use of violence against unarmed civilians… continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Iran unveils new control measures over Strait of Hormuz transit
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- Ceasefire no longer viable after 200 days of Israeli violations: Hamas
- Israeli strikes intensify across southern Lebanon, casualties reported
- Left in Disbelief: Israel in Panic over Hezbollah FPV Drone Nightmare
- Trump Taps Israel Lobbyist From Mossad Cutout FDD To Join Iran Negotiations
- Trump’s Blockade Snatches Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
- Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of the Strait of Hormuz
- Mali: a new front in the Western war on multipolarism
- CHD Scientist: CDC, FDA COVID Vaccine Safety Monitoring ‘Insulting, and Many People Are Injured’
- If Americans Knew
- Israel’s New Ambassador to the ‘Christian World’ Served as Envoy to Azerbaijan During the Ethnic Cleansing of Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh
- US set to sell $1B “Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System” to Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 32 Across S Lebanon, Including Children – Amid “Ceasefire”
- Israel to pour $730m into propaganda arm amid reputational crisis
- Real Cost of Iran War Likely Double the $25 Billion Figure the Pentagon Gave to Congress
- Israel conducts farthest-ever strike in long history of attacks on Gaza humanitarian aid flotillas
- In Gaza, Israel commits 10+ ceasefire violations a day – Daily Update
- US ships 6,500 tons of munitions, equipment to Israel in 24 hours
- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
- Israel’s top Jewish religious body ‘refuses to condemn’ smashing of Jesus statue
- No Tricks Zone
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
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