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The Cost of Corruption

FLCCC Weekly Update | August 9, 2023

Whistleblower Dr. Umberto Meduri – a world expert on corticosteroids who helped found the FLCCC – joins Dr. Paul Marik and Dr. Pierre Kory to talk about his fight against the forces trying to stop the use of another lifesaving, repurposed, affordable drug.

To learn more about our protocols click here:
https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/

August 14, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

AIDS Inc. by Gary Null (2007)

August 13, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Free Speech To The Supreme Court — And Beyond!

Historic Missouri v. Biden Censorship Lawsuit Likely Headed To Supreme Court

BY ALEX GUTENTAG | PUBLIC | AUGUST 11, 2023

Yesterday the Fifth Circuit court heard oral arguments in the Missouri v. Biden case, and the judges did not hold back. One judge suggested the government “strongarms” social media companies and that their meetings had included “veiled and not-so-veiled threats.”

Another judge described the exchange between the Biden administration and tech companies as the government saying, “Jump!” and the companies responding, “How high?”

“That’s a really nice social media company you got there. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,” the judge said, describing the government’s coercive tactics.

Attorney John Sauer, representing Louisiana, masterfully argued that the government had repeatedly violated the First Amendment. He pointed to specific evidence of coercion in the Facebook Files.

“You have a really interesting snapshot into what Facebook C-suite is saying,” Sauer explained. “They’re emailing Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg and saying things like… ‘Why were we taking out speech about the origins of covid and the lab leak theory?’” The response, Sauer said, was, “Well, we shouldn’t have done it, but we’re under pressure from the administration.”

He also cited an email from Nick Clegg, Facebook President of Global Affairs, that pointed to “bigger fish to fry with the Administration – data flows, etc.”

On Monday, Public reported that these “data flows” referred to leverage the Biden administration had over the company; Facebook needed the White House to negotiate a deal with the European Union. Only through this deal could Facebook maintain access to user data that is crucial for its $1.2 billion annual European business.

But Sauer also made it clear that coercion was not the only basis on which the court could rule against the Biden administration. Joint activity between the White House and social media platforms would also be unconstitutional.

Sauer compared what the government had done to book burning. “Imagine a scenario where senior White House staffers contact book publishers… and tell them, ‘We want to have a book burning program, and we want to help you implement this program… We want to identify for you the books that we want burned, and by the way, the books that we want burned are the books that criticize the administration and its policies.”

Daniel Tenny, the attorney for the Department of Justice, was left nitpicking and misrepresenting the record. In one instance, he denied that Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins had hatched a plan to orchestrate a “takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration. Why? Because, Tenny said, according to their emails, they actually planned a takedown of “the premises of the Great Barrington Declaration.”

Tenny also stated that social media companies had not removed any true content. From the case’s discovery as well as the Facebook Files we know that is far from true. Facebook, against internal research and advicedid remove “often-true content” that might discourage people from getting vaccinated. Facebook’s own emails clearly suggest that the company only did this due to pressure from figures within the Biden Administration.

Tenny also claimed that when Rob Flaherty, the White House director of Digital Strategy, dropped the F-bomb in an exchange with Facebook it was not about content moderation. In fact, it was precisely about content moderation and occurred during a conversation about how Instagram was throttling Biden’s account. Ironically, the account couldn’t gain followers because Meta’s algorithm had determined that it was spreading vaccine misinformation.

Later, Sauer demolished an earthquake hypothetical that Tenny had introduced to justify state-sponsored censorship. “You can say this earthquake-related speech that’s disinformation is false, it’s wrong,” Sauer said. “The government can say it’s bad, but the government can’t say, ‘Social media platforms, you need to take it down.’ Just like a government can’t stand at the podium and say, ‘Barnes and Noble, you need to burn the bad books, burn the Communist books, whatever it is.’ They can’t say take down speech on the basis of content.”

Based on this hearing, the plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden may have a strong chance of winning. Biden’s DOJ simply had no valid arguments to present. The evidence is clear: the administration brazenly engaged in an unlawful censorship campaign and instrumentalized private companies to do its bidding. This total disregard for fundamental civil liberties will be a stain on the Democratic Party for years to come.

The Supreme Court will be the supreme victory in the US, but our free speech work won’t be done after we win there. No nation enjoys free speech protections like ours. And so, after we win in the US, you can expect to see us helping our allies abroad achieve similar protections from government strongarming, aka censorship, in their own nations.

August 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Maine Hospital That Fired Unvaccinated Nurses Over Mills’ Mandate Is Begging Them to Return Two Years Later

By Steve Robinson | Maine Wire |August 9, 2023

Nurses and other health care workers at MaineGeneral Health, one of Maine’s largest healthcare providers, were unceremoniously fired two years ago if they refused to take the experimental mRNA injections touted as COVID-19 preventatives.

Some of those workers were even slapped with misconduct charges for refusing to comply with the mandate, many were later denied unemployment benefits, and no requests for religious exemptions were honored.

Now, one of the nonprofit hospitals that left some employees jobless and without recourse to Maine’s unemployment insurance benefits is sending text messages to the same employees it cast aside practically begging them to come back to work.

“You were once a proud member of the MaineGeneral team. Would you consider rejoining us? We would be pleased to discuss options with you,” the MaineGeneral Health Recruitment team said in a text message to former registered nurse Terry Poland.

“As you know, nearly 2 years ago MaineGeneral had to comply with a state mandate for COVID-19 vaccination. We lost a number of great employees as a result, including you,” MaineGeneral said.

“MaineGeneral has eliminated the COVID-19 vaccination as an employment condition,” MaineGeneral said.

Poland, who lives in Augusta, had worked as a registered nurse for 33 years. Her career included employment with MaineGeneral, Central Maine Medical Center, Pen Bay Medical Center, and the Aroostook Medical Center.

She couldn’t believe that the hospital would contact her in such a manner after casting her life into chaos for nearly two years.

“I was livid. Like, how dare you force me out of a career that I’ve dedicated my whole life to, taken away my livelihood, my ability to earn a good income, and now you think I’m gonna come grovel back to you?” Poland said. “I don’t hardly think so. And that’s the attitude of most everybody that I’ve been in contact with since yesterday.”

A source told the Maine Wire that about 15 former MaineGeneral Health employees received similar text messages.

Poland refused to take the experimental COVID-19 shots after Gov. Janet Mills decreed on August 12, 2021 that healthcare workers would be forced to receive the shots as a condition of working in healthcare by October 1, 2021.

Documents reviewed by the Maine Wire show that MaineGeneral established a speedier timeline of Sept. 17 for compliance.

Eventually, the State pushed back the deadline to the end of October.

Poland was never opposed to vaccines generally speaking. Though she previously used a religious exemption to avoid taking an influenza shot, she willingly took the other vaccines required to work in healthcare prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, including immunizations for Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Hepatitis-B.

She said she was concerned about the novel nature of the mRNA technology, a form of gene therapy, which prior to COVID-19 had not been used in the standard schedule of immunizations.

“I knew enough not to take it. I’ve been a nurse long enough to know I need to question what new products are,” Poland said. “I’m not going to be the first one to jump on board of an experiment.”

When she discovered that fetal tissues are commonly used in the development and production of the drugs, that only strengthened her resolve as a Christian not to get the injections.

In previous years, Poland has said she was allowed an exemption from taking the influenza shot so long as she wore a mask during flu season. However, the hospital was unwilling to provide this accommodation for COVID-19.

As a result of her choice, Poland faced not only termination, but also an allegation of misconduct from her former employer.

When she applied for unemployment benefits, she was rejected because of the misconduct allegation.

When she appealed, she was turned away.

Documents reviewed by the Maine Wire show that the Maine Department of Labor determined that MaineGeneral Health “discharged” her; however, the agency concluded that Poland’s refusal to get the injections was a violation that constituted a “culpable breach of obligations to the employer.”

As a result, Poland had to rely on her savings to get by in the middle of economically disastrous government lockdowns and soaring inflation.

Poland then sought help from the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming that she’d been discriminated against on the basis of her religious beliefs.

MaineGeneral Health, in responding to the commission, argued that allowing Poland religious accommodations would impose an “undue hardship” on the hospital. On that basis, the commission declined to take on her case.

The Maine Human Rights Commission also rejected her discrimination complaint.

“[T]here has been positive energy between human resource personnel and managers who are in the process of working together to reach out to former employees to see if they are interested in returning,” said Joy McKenna, director of communications for MaineGeneral, in an email.

“Since Monday, we are only aware of a few people who have indicated that they are interested in having a conversation about applying for an open position,” she said. “We currently have 453 open positions, which is similar to our pre-COVID open position count.”

McKenna said the hospital did not intentionally fire unvaccinated employees in a way that would block them from getting unemployment benefits.

Some of those positions have been filled by foreign nationals with greencards, McKenna said, though she was not able to provide an exact number on Wednesday.

At the time MaineGeneral fired her, Poland was working at the MaineGeneral Rehabilitation and Long Term Care at Gray Birch facility in Augusta.

The facility provides nursing home and assisted living services and has a 37-bed capacity. Federal stats show the facility had 141 staff before the mandate and 110 after it was enforced.

In the years since she was fired, she estimates she’s earned only $12,000 and $17,000 as a home healthcare worker, a position that hasn’t provided similar benefits to the job she lost.

As a registered nurse, Poland was making about $75,000 per year.

She’s still not willing to give MaineGeneral another shot.

Poland is not the only one whose career was derailed by Gov. Mills’ mandate policy.

Jessie Boda worked for St. Mary’s Health System as a registered nurse in Psychiatric and Detox services for 13 years, her first job out of college.

When the mandate came down, she applied for a religious exemption.

In her letter requesting the exemption, Boda pointed to her religious faith and her concern over adverse vaccine reactions.

She also pointed out that natural immunity from a COVID-19 infection was in some cases a better protection against contracting the virus.

St. Mary’s, which has a formal affiliation with the Catholic Church, denied the request.

Like MaineGeneral, St. Mary’s also found a way for Boda’s exit from the company to prevent her from getting unemployment benefits.

“I did not comply and I never submitted a letter of resignation. Nor would they give me a letter of termination,” Boda said.

“The kind lady in the HR office gave me a letter stating my start date and end date of employment but told me she could not use the words ‘terminated’ or ‘fired’,” she said.

Boda took her case to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which agreed to investigate her case but concluded there was no grounds for the complaint.

Kevin Palmer worked as a credentialing coordinator for Southern Maine Health Care, the Biddeford location of MaineHealth.

Palmer, who is in his 30s, was never opposed to taking vaccines before COVID-19, but he was skeptical of what he saw as a rushed process to roll out the COVID-19 shots.

“I had heart surgery in high school, survived brain cancer in my 20s, and now they’re telling me I have to get this shot over a virus with a 99.99 percent survival rate?” he said.

Like Boda and Poland, Palmer sought a religious exemption and was denied.

Like Boda and Poland, Palmer was fired in a way that later prevented him from obtaining unemployment.

In his termination letter, the HR department wrote: “This is also to confirm that September 30 will be your last day of employment. We want to thank you for your service.”

Even though the hospital gave him an employment date in an email, the Maine Department of Labor ruled against him.

“I never got a penny,” Palmer said.

He wasn’t able to find another job until four months later and the job he eventually found came with a 20 percent pay cut.

“I ran out of money like everybody else. It was crazy. I was trying to apply to jobs, similar to what I had done in credentialing. And I couldn’t even get a job with with the experience I had because they were mandating the vaccine even for remote positions,” said Palmer.

“How crazy is that?” he said.

A Healthcare Worker Crisis Caused by Authoritarian Policies

Thousands of former healthcare workers in Maine are currently unemployed or working in other fields because they refused to comply with Gov. Mills’ order that they receive injections.

Some refused because they were skeptical of all vaccines or because of religious beliefs concerning the ethical problems with vaccine research that uses fetal tissue.

Others were fearful that the long-term consequences of the experimental products were unknown, unknowable, and potentially harmful.

But in every case, the substantial drop in employment in Maine’s healthcare sector because of the mandate has severely exacerbated a workforce shortage that threatens to undermine healthcare quality in the state.

Text messages like the one Poland received will hardly fix the problem.

It’s virtually impossible to determine how much of the sharp drop in healthcare employment has been caused by Mills’ order, how much of it was caused by COVID-19, and how much of it was caused by lockdown policies generally.

Regardless, labor statistics show Maine is in the middle of the steepest decline in healthcare jobs. Ever.

According to stats from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, those losses have been particularly acute in Maine’s nursing homes and assisted living facilities, like the facility where Poland worked.

In 2019, Maine had more than 22,600 individuals employed at nursing homes.

That number hit 19,800 in 2022.

At skilled nursing facilities, employment dropped from 8,426 in 2019 to 6,907 in 2022, according to Maine Department of Labor statistics.

The shortage of long-term care workers is all the more severe in Maine since the state consistently ranks as the oldest in the nation. As demand for nursing home beds increases, the number of workers available to provide that care has plummeted.

In home healthcare, total employment has declined from 4,401 workers in 2019 to 4,054 in 2022.

The same shortage can be seen in employment figures for hospitals in Maine. Mainers working in Maine hospitals declined from 33,000 in 2019 to 30,900 in 2021, according to federal statistics.

Even as Maine’s opioid epidemic has continued to break records for overdoses and deaths, the number people employed in the health sector that includes substance abuse facilities has declined from 7,509 workers in 2019 to 7,149 in 2022, according to Maine Department of Labor numbers.

One health care area that hasn’t seen such sharp declines is ambulatory health care, which includes facilities that are out-patient only, such as urgent care clinics and dentists offices.

At the same time the medical field is suffering from a lack of employees, Mainers have never spent more money on their health care.

Personal consumption of outpatient and in-home care topped $11,897,000,000 in 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s a massive increase over the $11.2 billion reported for 2019.

At least some of that money is making its way into the pockets of Maine’s remaining health care workers. According to federal stats, Mainers who work in health care or social assistance made a record $7,028,362,000 in collective wages — the highest ever in Maine history.

Vaccine Mandate Victims Seek Discrimination Case

Gov. Mills’ mandate was based on the theory that the pharmaceutical products being touted as “vaccines” or “immunizations” would prevent healthcare workers from contracting the virus or transmitting it to patients.

It’s now generally understood that the vaccine never inhibited transmission of the virus.

Mills, who has followed the recommended injection schedule, has herself caught COVID-19 twice despite getting the jabs.

The Aug. 3 decision by the Mills Administration to rescind the mandate after nearly two years followed on the heels of an embarrassing legal defeat in a case challenging the constitutionality of Mills’ decision to eliminate religious and philosophical exemptions from the mandate.

That court case hinges on the fact that Mills continued to allow medical exemptions while denying a comparable exemption for medical reasons.

Although the plaintiffs in that case, several healthcare workers who lost their jobs over the mandate, initially lost in Maine District Court, an appeals court panel has determined that the lower court erred when it rejected their claim of religious discrimination.

In May, when that decision came down, Matt Staver, who represents the plaintiffs via Liberty Counsel, said he was looking forward to discovery.

“We’re frankly looking very much forward to going to discovery and holding Governor mills and the Maine authorities accountable for this terrible and, frankly, unconstitutional decision,” said Staver.

[RELATED: Appeals Court Rules Against Gov. Mills in Case Challenging Vaccine Mandate for Health Care Workers…]

August 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Coral at the Great Barrier Reef Holds on to Recent Record Gains, Defying All Doomsday Predictions

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 10, 2023

Coral at the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) faces another year of exile from the climate scare headlines with news that the record levels reported in 2021-22 have been sustained in the latest annual period to May 2023. A small drop in the three main areas of the reef was well within margin of error territory, with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) reporting that regional average hard coral cover in 2022-2023 was similar to last year at 35.7%. Most reefs underwent little change during the  year.

Coral at the reef has been bouncing back sharply for a number of years, with a record 36-year high reported in 2022. But the news of this spectacular recovery has been largely ignored in most media since it had previously been a go-to poster scare story for collectivist Net Zero promoters. But connecting the fate of tropical corals to global warming was always a difficult ask since they grow in waters between 24-32°C. Short boosts in local temperatures can cause temporary bleaching, but it is scientifically impossible to pin it on human-caused climate change, although pseudoscientific ‘attribution’ computer models try very hard.

In the latest year, there was a short local temperature rise, but little bleaching was reported during the 2023 summer. No cyclones hit the reef and crown-of thorns starfish attacks were limited. Nevertheless, natural stresses will always affect the eco-system and AIMS states that these paused the growth of hard coral on some of the reefs.

Like most state-funded scientific bodies, AIMS is fully signed up to climate extremism and delivering politically correct messages to promote the Net Zero solution. Despite reporting what is now a substantial multi-year recovery, it notes that the future is predicted to bring more frequent, intense and enduring marine heatwaves, alongside the persistent threat of crown-of thorns starfish outbreaks and tropical cyclones. More frequent mass coral bleaching is a sign that the GBR is experiencing the consequences of climate change, it claims. However, in a different part of its latest report, AIMS accepts that the recent substantial recovery occurred despite two mass coral bleaching events in 2020 and 2022. There is an acceptance that this underlines that “widespread coral bleaching does not necessarily lead to extensive coral mortality”.

But pockets of extremist catastrophism remain in the mainstream media, notably in the Guardian, fighting to keep the coral destruction story going. A year ago, the newspaper reported that the GBR still had “some capacity” for recovery, but the window was closing fast as the climate continued to warm. Of course the Guardian has form as long as your arm on this score. Back in 1999, George Monbiot told its readers that the “imminent total destruction of the world’s coral reefs is not a scare story but a fact”.

In last year’s Guardian report, Dr. Mike Emslie, who leads the AIMS monitoring service, said he felt a “couple of bullets” had been recently dodged. While the recovery is great, “the predictions are the disturbances will get worse”, he suggested. “The naysayers can put their heads in the sand all they like, but the frequency of disturbances is going gangbusters,” he claimed. Dr. David Wachenfeld from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority claimed “global heating” of 1.5°C is considered a “guardrail for reefs”, after which the bleaching comes along too quickly for strong recovery.

Coral reefs have been around in one form or another for hundreds of millions of years. Current global temperatures are towards the lower end of the paleoclimatic record. One might wonder how corals manage to survive temperatures up to 10°C higher in the past?

Back in the real world, we can see how the recent solid recovery was sustained across the three main areas of the GBR.

The recovery in the northern GBR actually started around 2017. Last year the coral declined slightly from 36.5% to 35.7%, and was easily within the margin of error calculated by the AIMS. Typhoon Tiffany passed through at the end of the previous reporting season, and could have been responsible for some loss.

In the centre of the reef, the strong recovery of hard coral cover to 32.6% last year eased slightly, but again, as the AIMS noted, it was within the margin of error.

The southern end of the GBR has generally had higher coral cover than elsewhere, but has shown greater variability over the observed record. Last year’s cover was 33.8%, compared with 33.9% the year before. Some coral was reported to have been lost due to starfish predations.

The GBR is the largest reef system on Earth and runs for over 1,400 miles down the eastern side of Australia. It is also the most surveyed reef in the world and the results of scientific endeavour are widely distributed. While this work is often politicised, it is clear that recent evidence shows that temporary spikes in temperature, which occur naturally in the oceans, can cause bleaching. However, this bleaching process can rapidly go into reverse when local conditions stabilise. These findings have been confirmed elsewhere, notably in the remote Palmyra Atoll, 1,200 kms south of Hawaii. A 10-year survey recently observed sudden changes in temperature up to 3°C on two occasions, leading to substantial damage to the coral. A 2015-16 spike led to 90% of the coral bleaching, but the researchers found that within a year only 10% of the coral had died. Within two years, the corals had returned to pre-bleached levels.

The researchers concluded that the coral structures “show evidence of long-term stability” – but don’t hold that front page.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor

August 11, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Winter Cold, Darkness Kill, While Summer Heat And Sun Save Lives Data Clearly Show

Cold and stupid policies are the real killers, not heat

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | August 11, 2023

German data from Bestattungen.de (Funerals.de) show that far more people die from cold winter weather than they do from hot summer weather.

Lately in Germany there’s been a coordinated disinformation campaign by policymakers and the media. all aimed at getting people to believe that summer heat is the real killer. And so, during heat waves, governments should declare states of emergency and usher restrictions, which could entail cancelling large outdoor events like festivals and sports matches, driving bans and lockdowns.

It’s all about saving thousands of lives and ensuring your safety, they (falsely) claim! And never mind that the mean summer temperature in Germany is under a comparatively cool 20°C.

All the focus on the dangers of summertime warmth seems odd, especially when most of us look forward to this season the most and dread the horrible long winters, a time when people are forced to spend so much time confined inside.

Winter kills, summer saves lives

Today I came across a report from Bestattungen.de (Funerals.de), a site that of course would be familiar with the business and statistics of dying. Clearly cold winter temperatures are far more dangerous than warm summer temperatures, according to their data:

Image: Besttatungen.de (translated in the English).

As the chart shows, mortality is 9.7% above the mean in the dead of winter, February, and is 7.1% below the mean right after Germans have been exposed to 3 summer months of now “deadly heat”. In fact, all the mortal suffering begins to end only once the temperatures finally warm up in April. Of course the report isn’t so recent, but we can rest assured that the mortality behavior hasn’t changed that much.

The data also suggest how crucial Vitamin D is.

The data also suggests the power of vitamin D. Fully tanked up on this crucial nutrient, people are much more resistant to infections and disease well into the fall. By mid winter, once vitamin D levels become depleted, far more become prone to disease, many experts say. This is why so many advised taking vitamin D during the COVID “pandemic”.

The following table shows the ranking, from the most deadly month to the least deadly month:

Source: Bestattungen.de 

Summer saves lives

Again, the bitter cold months of January and February are the real killers, while the summer months are the real life savers. It’s absolutely idiotic of policymakers to be focused and obsessed on summer heat plans. The only heat plan people need is: Get outside, take off your clothes and enjoy the hot weather! Shade and cold water is all you need to cool off.

According to Bestattungen.de:

The German Weather Service sees weather-related factors as the main reasons for the variance in mortality risk. Damp, cold air increases the risk of aggravating existing illnesses. Respiratory diseases in particular can become more severe in the winter months. Heart attacks can also be triggered by the weather.”

Other factors also include psychological aspects and the lack of daylight and its associated “winter depression” increased melatonin and reduced serotonin.

We need a “stupid-policy-protection plan”

We really need to ask ourselves and policymakers: Why is heating fuel being made so expensive when we know that it would save a lot more lives? Stupid government policy is what’s killing people, and not the life-saving German summers.

August 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Preprint Servers Censored Research That Contradicted Government’s COVID Narrative

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 9, 2023

Preprint servers are being used to censor scholarly papers critical of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and policy errors made by the Biden administration, according to Vinay Prasad, M.D., MPH.

Prasad, hematologist-oncologist, professor and director of a medical policy lab at the University of California San Francisco said his lab has submitted hundreds of papers to preprint servers — but only those that deviate from the official COVID-19 narrative have been rejected.

The basis for rejecting those papers is inconsistent with standards applied for other topics or with the fundamental rules of the servers, Prasad explained in a recent Substack post and YouTube video on the topic.

“All [rejected papers] are consistent with scientific practices and norms, and similar papers not critical of the CDC or Biden administration have been accepted,” Prasad wrote.

“If only papers that praise the CDC are acceptable by preprint servers,” he added, “then the role of science as a check and balance on incorrect policy is subverted.”

Preprint servers were established to address inefficiencies in academic publishing. The peer-review process typically takes months or more, delaying the real-time sharing of scientific findings with the public.

Also, many journals are proprietary and can only be accessed through expensive personal or institutional subscriptions.

Preprint servers offer a location for scientific reports and papers to be available to the public while the paper goes through peer review — making scientific findings available immediately and for free and opening them up to broader public debate.

There is no peer-review process for preprints, although there is a vetting process.

Prasad said preprint servers are supposed to be neutral and supposed to post all research conducted with a clearly explained and reproducible methodology. The goal, Prasad said, is to be inclusive and make scientific debate possible.

But instead, Prasad said, several of the preprint servers have become “gatekeepers” for what science gets published.

“When the people who work there are rabid, politicized and biased,” he said, “I think that’s a problem.”

‘The preprint servers are really a disgrace’

To test the bias of preprint servers, Prasad’s lab did a comprehensive analysis of its own preprints. Lab staff analyzed outcomes for all preprints they submitted to SSRNmedRxiv (pronounced “med archive”) and Zenodo servers — which he noted is a “reproducible systematic methodology.”

They found “a startling pattern of censorship and inconsistent standards from preprint servers. Preprint servers appear to be playing politics,” Prasad wrote.

Specifically, MedRxiv and SSRN have declined to post articles critical of the CDC, mask and vaccine mandates and the Biden administration’s healthcare policies.

“Preprint servers are not supposed to be journals — they are not supposed to reject articles merely because the people running them disagree with the arguments within.”

But the analysis suggests they are doing just that. Even the preprint of Prasad’s analysis was rejected by both medRxiv and SSRN.

“They don’t want to post a preprint that makes their own preprint server look bad,” he said, adding, “That’s pathetic. You have to post it because it’s factually true.”

Examples of censored articles demonstrate the bias behind the servers’ decisions.

One paper re-analyzed a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found cloth masks reduced the rates of COVID-19 transmission in some Massachusetts schools.

Prasad’s lab found that by simply lengthening the timeframe of the data analyzed in the observational analysis, the paper’s conclusion was invalidated. The data showed instead that masks did not slow the spread.

The servers didn’t post their paper, he said, citing “the need to be cautious about posting medical content.”

Prasad said the article was censored, “because it calls into question something that, frankly speaking, is pretty stupid, which is masking children with cloth masks — a stupid intervention derived by someone who cannot read randomized controlled trials and then pushed with the full force of the federal government — with no credible evidence and no randomized data.”

The servers censored Prasad’s lab’s comprehensive analysis of preprint bias using the same justification — “the need to be cautious about medical content.”

He said, “No one could possibly believe that this paper would require the need to be cautious — it merely documents your [preprint server’s] prior screw-ups.”

Another censored preprint reported on the lab’s systematic review and meta-analysis of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination in 5 to 11-year-olds. The paper critiqued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the drug for that age group.

The SSRN also removed that preprint citing, again, “the need to be cautious about medical content.”

SSRN used the same “boilerplate language” to remove the lab’s review of methodologies and conclusions in Cochrane reports. Those findings supported the controversial conclusion of the Cochrane review that community masking had no impact on slowing the spread of COVID-19.

Another article, rejected by medRxiv, which documented statistical and numerical errors made by the CDC during the pandemic, was already accepted by a journal and is one of the 10 most downloaded articles of all time on SSRN.

“Here’s the point,” Prasad said, “You don’t have to agree with me, but this preprint server is not even letting the audience of scientists decide. Who gave them this authority? They don’t get to peer review the article. That’s not their purview.”

Overall the team found that 38% of their submissions to preprint servers were rejected or removed. Yet, these rejected articles eventually were published and extensively downloaded.

“The median number of downloads for a rejected/removed article that was later accepted by a different server was 4,142 vs. 300 for articles submitted and accepted without rejection or removal,” he said.

Their analysis found that overall, Zenodo does not censor articles, but SSRN and medRxiv do.

So, he said, these organizations, established to make science transparent and uncensored have become gatekeepers “for their friends, for the views that they like.”

He also said their policies were inconsistent, with no clear scientific principles guiding rejection.

“They’re rejecting 38[%] of our articles because these are critical of establishment COVID-19 policies,” he said, adding:

“The COVID-19 pandemic is in fact a great example of … how people in power suppress minority views even when those views are meritorious — like toddlers shouldn’t mask, school should be open, you don’t need to mandate boosters, you shouldn’t mandate boosters for young mennobody who had COVID should have to get the vaccine — those are sensible medical policies that are correct.

“History will vindicate them. They were all censored at one time or the other… The preprint servers are really a disgrace.”


Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

August 11, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , | Leave a comment

Judith Curry: How Climate “Science” Got Hijacked by Alarmists

John Stossel | August 8, 2023

Climate alarmists insist there’s a “scientific consensus” that says climate change is a crisis, and man causes it! Researcher Judith Curry tells me, “it’s a manufactured consensus.”

Curry was a department chair at Georgia Tech when she spread alarm about climate change.

The media loved her then. She claimed there was an increase in hurricane intensity.

But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research: years with low levels of hurricanes.

“Like a good scientist, I went in and investigated.”

When she acknowledged a lack of evidence that hurricane intensity had increased, she was ruthlessly attacked by climate alarmists. Her career suffered.

Now Curry reveals nefarious ways “the science” about climate change has been corrupted.


John Stossel:

We are told climate change is a crisis, and that there is an “overwhelming scientific consensus”.

“It’s a manufactured consensus,” says climate scientist Judith Curry in my new video. She says scientists have an incentive to exaggerate risk to pursue “fame and fortune”.

She knows about that because she once spread alarm about climate change.

Media loved her when she published a study that seemed to show a dramatic increase in hurricane intensity.

“We found that the percent of Category Four and Five hurricanes had doubled,” says Curry. “This was picked up by the media,” and then climate alarmists realised, “Oh, here is the way to do it. Tie extreme weather events to global warming!” …

“I was adopted by the environmental advocacy groups and the alarmists and I was treated like a rock star,” Curry recounts. “Flown all over the place to meet with politicians.”

But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research – years with low levels of hurricanes.

“Like a good scientist, I investigated,” says Curry. She realised that the critics were right. “Part of it was bad data. Part of it is natural climate variability.”

Curry was the unusual researcher who looked at criticism of her work and actually concluded “they had a point”.

Then the Climategate scandal taught her that other climate researchers weren’t so open-minded. Alarmist scientists’ aggressive attempts to hide data suggesting climate change is not a crisis were revealed in leaked emails.

“Ugly things,” says Curry. “Avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests. Trying to get journal editors fired.”

It made Curry realise that there is a “climate change industry” set up to reward alarmism.

“The origins go back to the… U.N. environmental programme,” says Curry. Some U.N. officials were motivated by “anti-capitalism. They hated the oil companies and seized on the climate change issue to move their policies along.”

The U.N. created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“The IPCC wasn’t supposed to focus on any benefits of warming. The IPCC’s mandate was to look for dangerous human-caused climate change.” …

The researchers quickly figured out that the way to get funded was to make alarmist claims about “man-made climate change”.

August 10, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | Leave a comment

Claims that ‘Global Boiling’ Led to “Shocking” Melting of Greenland Ice Sheet are Nonsense

The Ice Sheet is Currently Bigger Than Normal

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 8, 2023

The new era of ‘global boiling’ has brought a return of the much loved climate scare story featuring the imminent demise of the Greenland ice sheet. The Daily Mail recently ran a headline noting the ‘Impact of Global Boiling‘, saying it has “shocking” photos showing how much the ice sheet has melted during the “hottest month ever recorded on Earth”. Snow melt is said to be higher than the 1981-2010 average.

But, alas, those who strive for accuracy in these matters are likely to quibble. The Earth is not “boiling” – that is the unhinged raving of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres – the claim about July comes from a computer model, while “ever” refers to data of varying quality going back barely 150 years. Furthermore, the surface balance of ice on the Greenland ice sheet is higher than the 1981-2010 average, and could improve on last’s year performance, when there was little or no loss of the surface mass after the brief summer melting season.

If the Mail is “shocked” by how much the Greenland ice sheet has melted this year, it probably didn’t consult the polar portal site run by Danish meteorologists, which updates an accurate record on a daily basis. Both graphs above show the effect of a cold June where the ice loss was considerably lower than the previous year. Warmer weather arrived from the south in late June in time for the peak summer melt season.

As the second graph shows, the accumulation of surface ice on Greenland is more than the 1981-2010 average, and a big improvement on a decade ago. But as the Daily Sceptic noted recently, the current improvement can be seen in an even better light. A number of scientific institutions still use a decadal 1981-2010 average for comparison purposes, despite data to 2020 being available. The cynical might note that the ice sheet lost just 51 gigatonnes a year in the 1980s, compared to an annual loss of 244 gts in the 2010s. Updating the average figure would greatly amplify the recent, and continuing, recovery in the surface ice mass.

The ”shocking” before and after photos revealing how snow melts in the summer, even in Greenland, were taken by NASA satellites over the Frederikshab Glacier running down to the warmer south-west coast. The information and photos came from a NASA blog aimed at educators headed ‘Wasting Away (Again) in Greenland‘. More than halfway through the 2023 melting season, reports NASA, “Greenland has seen a substantial transformation of its snow cover”. This line – if it’s summer in Greenland, the snow melts – is readily taken up by the Mail. “According to scientists, snow falls on the Greenland ice sheet every winter… but experts say hotter summer temperatures are reducing the amount of snow cover.” The NASA blog is heavily quoted: “More than halfway through the 2023 melting season, Greenland has seen a substantial transformation of its snow cover. … Changes are the result of the increasing warmth of summer weather that took hold across the region in late June.”

Hold the front page – snow melts during the summer in Greenland, not many dead.

It is not difficult to find areas of rock in Greenland, especially in the south-west where most of the population of 55,000 live. The climate in this area is characterised as ‘low Arctic’ and temperatures are well above freezing in the warmest months. Ice in the Arctic waxes and wanes on a cyclical basis, while the long-term Greenland temperature is fairly stable. At a time when the planet has seen a gentle period of warming over the last 100 years, Greenland even held back slightly on the general trend. The five-year moving average of -18.57°C in 1929 compares with a measurement in 2021 of –17.96°C. The largest boost, as with other areas of the world, occurred in a short period in the 1980s and 90s, as the World Bank graph below shows. Since that time, as elsewhere, the rate of warming has considerably declined.

The Greenland ice sheet is the alarmist scare story that keeps on giving because water flowing off the land can increase sea levels. The Mail notes that scientists have already warned this year that the Greenland ice sheet is the “hottest it has ever been” and will cause global sea levels to rise by 20 inches by 2100 if it keeps warming at the same pace. In fact this information is linked to an earlier article that referenced a science paper quoting temperatures between 2000-2011. The next paragraph of the current story reports a rise of four feet or 1.2 metres by 2300, “even if we meet the 2015 Paris climate goals, scientists have warned”. Scientists might “warn”, but all these opinions of greatly increased sea level rises are produced by climate models, often assuming outlandish future scenarios.

Again, as we have noted in numerous articles, sea level rises are notoriously difficult to calculate since land rises as huge weights are lifted from it. Many areas in the northern hemisphere show falls in coastal sea levels, and this process is ongoing since the Earth is currently in an interglacial phase. In fact, current rises of 2mm a year are tiny compared with the huge boosts between 12,000 to 4,000 years ago.

Again, hold that front page – shock 2mm annual rise will lead to civilisation being inundated in the next century by a catastrophic seven inch increase in sea levels. Not many expected to die.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

August 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Always Follow the … ‘Incentives.’

Dr. Karen Landers is widely admired in my state and is a hero to journalists and editors at our state’s largest news organization … But I’m not a big fan.
BY BILL RICE, JR. | AUGUST 8, 2023

As my readers know, I write articles and make posts anywhere I can which try to advance my hypothesis that the novel coronavirus was spreading widely in late 2019.

After I made yet another “early spread” post, a colleague made a reply that sums up everything far better than I’ve done to date. Here’s his astute post:

“There is absolutely no incentive for about 99%+ of the scientists in the world (administrative state, academic, private, corporate) to ever want to truly trace down the origin timing (and a case zero may be an impossibility). They would all look like quack minions if they discovered something other than the narrative.  Too many threw all of their chips into the narrative ship and should that ship sink…”

All this fellow skeptic did with this post was frame the debate using incentives as the psychological motivating factor that explains everything that happens. In doing this, he reminded me to always examine every topic from a “risk-reward” perspective.

The incentives – positive or negative – are all that really matter.

Why do many people, especially those in leadership positions, act in nefarious, disingenuous ways? Why are they not interested in exposing untruths?

To answer this question, one has to imagine the repercussions or harm such people would suffer if the truth was exposed. (These would be professional “risks”) […]

… and then compare these negative outcomes (disincentives) to the rewards or benefits that would (and did) accrue to these same individuals if they simply went along with authorized narratives many of these people must have known were either lies or, at least, very possibly, falsehoods.

Two case studies from my own state …

To illustrate my point, I can reference two “public health leaders” in my own state as case studies.

Dr. Fauci’s successor … that’s ‘high cotton’ as we say in Alabama.

The first example is Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, who previously served as director of UAB’s Division of Infectious Diseases, and was recently named as Dr. Anthony Fauci’s successor at the NIAD.

The second example is Dr. Karen Landers, one of the top officials at the Alabama Department of Public Health and the primary media spokesperson for this high-profile public health agency.

In my strong opinion, both public health leaders enthusiastically and daily promoted myriad Covid falsehoods

I also do not think either person could have risen to these high-ranking positions without having some intelligence. At some point, it must have occurred to both individuals that the positions they were championing weren’t necessarily supported by certain statistics, data or scientific studies.

Still, they supported all of these false or dubious positions.

Also, significantly, they took absolutely no steps to debunk any of these false or dubious narratives.

Here, I need to cite specific examples …

I’m confident in writing that both Dr. Marrazzo and Dr. Landers …

Supported draconian and civil-liberty-eviscerating lockdowns as a non-pharmaceutical “mitigation” measure, unprecedented measures they assured the public would slow or stop the spread of the coronavirus.

They both supported mask mandates that did nothing to slow virus spread and probably caused harm to the people forced to wear masks 8 to 12 hours a day for months or years.

They supported school closings and, once schools re-opened, student masking and social distancing.

They pushed the bogus narrative that Covid was a serious health risk to every citizen, including children who faced virtually zero mortality risk.

They endorsed the proposition that proven drugs like ivermectin and HCQ should not be used to treat Covid patients.

They either endorsed or didn’t criticize the myriad new “Covid protocols” used in hospitals even though these treatment protocols probably caused numerous unnecessary deaths.

They supported endless testing of asymptomatic citizens with PCR tests, testing which accomplished little if nothing to slow or stop spread or future cases.

They also never mentioned or questioned the fact the 40 to 45-cycle PCR tests were producing millions of bogus or dubious “cases.”

As far as I’m aware, neither Dr. Marrazzo nor Dr. Landers ever questioned the safety of Remdesivir, which many (ignored) scientists and doctors say killed many patients. (Update. Read this. Yes, Dr. Marrazzo “supported” Remdesivir. Big-time).

They never took any interest in investigating the possibility the coronavirus was spreading widely in America by late 2019 (although I myself presented both of them compelling evidence this was almost-certainly a fact).

And, of course, they strongly supported everyone over the age of 6 months getting a “vaccine.”

They both enthusiastically participated in the campaign to vilify the unvaccinated and spread the false narrative this was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

Today, they both still say the vaccine is incredibly safe and poses no real risks for anyone who got the original series of shots or now the extra “boosters,” which they still encourage everyone to get, including pregnant women and children.

Of course, these examples are my opinion, but these are opinions backed up by millions of skeptics, including countless intelligent scientists, doctors and writers/thinkers.

If our opinions are wrong, neither of these two alleged experts and public health authorities have ever agreed to a public debate to engage with these skeptics. This factual observation tells us these are not real scientists, who are happy to engage in scientific debates.

Now let’s look at the consequences from being spectacularly wrong …

So what consequences have these alleged experts suffered from being spectacularly and stunningly wrong about so many important public health subjects?

Answer: There were no negative consequences. In fact, the careers of both ladies flourished.

As noted, Dr. Marrazzo just got the biggest promotion in the world of science, replacing “Science Himself” Dr. Fauci as the head of the agency that basically controls scientific research in America.

As far as I know, Dr. Landers didn’t get a promotion, but she’s still one of the public faces of the Alabama Department of Public Health, an agency which has never had more power or influence.

She certainly never had to worry about losing her cushy and prestigious job.

Career benefits can come from ego-boosting feature stories …

And both are literally celebrated as heroes of public health in my state.

In a recent article about Dr. Marrazzo’s big promotion, I pointed out that al.com (the largest “news organization” in Alabama) wrote a glowing piece on Dr. Marrazzo as a leader who “made a difference” in Alabama. In fact, the headline said Dr. Marrazzo actually made the citizens of our state “smarter.”

The same news organization also celebrated the contributions of Dr. Landers in a series of articles that told readers who Alabamians should exalt as brave and all-knowing public health heroes.

This series – “21 Alabamians who made a difference in 2021 – ” (highlighted) people who … made our state a better place to live this year.”

Excerpt: “Landers … has become a key public figure as the state battles COVID-19. Her calm demeanor and straight-forward answers have been a reassuring voice amid the changing health landscape …”

Regarding those alleged “straight-forward answers,” I’ve interviewed Dr. Landers and sent her office many emails trying to find out why the ADPH didn’t investigate two people who almost certainly had Covid in late 2019; trying to find out how many Alabama children really died “from” Covid and what the cycle threshold was on the PCR tests the agency used to determine Covid “cases.”

I can report I’ve never gotten one “straight forward answer” from this lady and/or this public health agency. 

I also speculate I’m probably the only journalist in my state who doesn’t consider the information disseminated by this agency as infallible.

But my main point is the point my colleague made at the beginning of this article. That is, these two people clearly personally benefitted from spreading false or dubious Covid (dis)information.

Today’s thought exercise considers what would have happened to their careers if they’d acted like me and actually questioned a few of the authorized Covid narratives.

I can make these predictions with high levels of confidence: Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo wouldn’t be getting ready to replace Dr. Fauci … and Dr. Karen Landers would now be retired from the ADPH.

Nor would either person have been the subject of the fawning feature stories al.com published.

Above, I write neither of these ladies is stupid. That is, they figured out all of the above on their own:

“Go along with the authorized narrative” = “Fantastic career accolades and unlimited prospects.”

“Challenge the authorized narrative” = “That’s it for my public health career.”

And one can multiply these two “cost-benefit” case studies by every public health official in the world and by just about every political leader or every person who leads any important organization.

All the operative incentives point to … one authorized narrative being protected and pushed … forever and ever, I guess.

While I would argue the actions and statements of these public health officials contributed to many unnecessary deaths and immeasurable harm to countless Alabamians and made residents of our state dumber not “smarter,” from their perspective or from their (selfish) mental calculations … they definitely “chose wisely.”

My own ‘case study’ is the corollary of this maxim …

I’ll end with a “case study” of someone who did challenge the authorized narratives – me.

Did I suffer any professional or personal “harm” by opposing the authorized narrative?

Well, I lost friends. Some family members are embarrassed by my efforts and rarely talk to me anymore.

My Facebook account was suspended and de-boosted repeatedly, which meant a professional writer couldn’t do any writing that would reach a large audience using that speech platform.

I could find only one news organization (uncoverDC.com) that would pay me to write contrarian Covid articles.

My main job or skill set is as a “journalist,”  but I’m now-un-hirable at 100-percent of corporate news organizations.

However, if I wrote the type articles al.com journalists write, I’d probably have no problem landing a real (paying) job in journalism. If I’d kept my real views private, all my former friends would still think it was okay to interact with me. Family members wouldn’t be nervous about engaging with me.

My professional and financial prospects would probably be much better than they are today.

So about that “road less travelled” … before you take it, you better think long and hard about where it might lead.

This said, this should also be said …

Actually, though, the world and all its roads can lead us to interesting places. God might have a larger plan for all of us, even the contrarians.

As it turns out, I’m as poor as I’ve ever been, but my writing (thanks to starting a Substack newsletter) has reached more people than ever and my words might be influencing more “debates” than ever.

I certainly don’t want this article to come across as whining because I wouldn’t change anything I’ve done.

If a few people like me didn’t criticize people like Dr. Marrazzo and Dr. Landers, who would?

The world does need at least a few contrarians … and I guess this is my lot/purpose in life.

When you write as much as I do, you have to do a little thinking about the topics you’re writing about.

At least I now understand why the world is full of “leaders” like Dr. Marrazzo and Dr. Landers.

In investigative journalism, “follow the money” is supposed to guide our thinking. But I might adjust that maxim to say … follow the incentives. They’re all backwards, but at least this tells us why the world’s like it is.

August 9, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Dr Jonathan Engler Dismantles The Covid Pandemic & mRNA “Vaccine” Narratives

Doc Malik | July 30, 2023

Dr Jonathan Engler is qualified in both medicine and law. During a varied career he has worked as a doctor, medical adviser within the pharmaceutical industry, entrepreneur and barrister. He has 4 adult children and 2 grandsons, and lives near Manchester in the North of England.

Jonathan co-chairs the Hart Group with Dr Clair Craig and is on the exec of Panda, for both of which he regularly writes and reviews articles.

In this conversation, Jonathan dismantles both the official Covid and mRNA “vaccine” narratives.

Enjoy and as ever love to you all x

Websites –

HART Group

Panda

Twitter –

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August 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment