Democrats, Republicans Face Off During U.S. House Hearing on COVID Origins and Possible Cover-Up
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 12, 2023
Two coauthors of the March 2020 Nature Medicine paper that asserted, just months into the pandemic, that COVID-19’s origins were “clearly” natural rather than lab-made faced questioning Tuesday during a hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus pandemic.
The hearing investigated “whether government officials, regardless of who they are, unfairly and perhaps biasedly tipped the scales toward a preferred origin theory,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), committee chair, said in opening remarks.
“We are examining whether scientific integrity was disregarded in favor of political expediency, maybe to conceal or diminish the government’s relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology or perhaps its funding of risky gain-of-function coronavirus research,” he said.
Tulane virologist Robert Garry, Ph.D., and Scripps Research evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen, Ph.D., denied the allegations in written testimony submitted prior to the hearing as “absurd and false.” And in more than three hours of questioning Tuesday by committee members, they insisted their conclusions in the paper were based solely on the “scientific process.”
Republicans’ questioning focused on demonstrating the Nature Medicine paper was coordinated and unduly influenced by government officials.
Lawmakers laid out evidence that all of the authors initially expressed serious concerns the virus may have leaked from a lab and of how that position changed just a few days later after a Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins and Jeremy Farrar, Ph.D.
The scientists drafted their paper “The Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2” within a few days of the call and published it the following month. The early drafts were shared with Farrar, Collins and Fauci, Paul Thacker reported.
Prior to yesterday’ hearing, the panel’s Republican majority issued a report, “The Proximal Origin of a Cover-up,” asserting a coordinated effort by Fauci and others to downplay the lab-leak hypothesis and suppress scientific discourse.
The report was based on 25 hours of testimony by the authors of the Proximal Origins paper and a review of 8,000 pages of documents, including subpoenaed emails and slack messages that had not yet been revealed publicly.
The evidence showed that in conversations with one another, the Proximal Origin authors expressed a lack of certainty about their singular conclusion but feared the political fallout of giving credence to the lab origin hypothesis.
Democrats vehemently countered the Republican assertions, insisting Fauci and Collins had no role in the findings. They produced their own report — “They Played No Role” — drawing on the same evidence to conclude that “that there was no cover-up of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and no suppression of the lab leak theory on the parts of Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins.”
In the highly partisan hearing, the Democrats used their time to accuse Republicans of having a “vendetta,” of “weaponizing” the origin discussion, using “extreme rhetoric” and of making “baseless allegations” that they claimed were responsible for the public’s loss of faith in public institutions.
Ranking Democrat Dr. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) repeatedly accused the Republicans of “confirmation bias” in their assertion that the lab leak is the more probable origin of the virus and of making “conspiratorial accusations without proof,” rather than “pursuing an objective analysis of the virus’s origins that is free from political interference.”
The ‘Proximal Origins’ fallout
The paper in question, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” played a key early role in shutting down debate about the origin of the virus.
Top public health officials used the paper as “independent science” to influence public discussion of the topic. Collins, then director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) posted the findings on the agency website. And in an April 17, 2020, press briefing at the White House, when asked whether COVID-19 had come from the Wuhan lab, Fauci cited the paper’s conclusions as definitive.
The paper had a major impact in the scientific community and the popular press, spurring thousands of articles declaring the lab-leak theory to be implausible or a conspiracy theory.
But communications obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by U.S. Right to Know, and a memo released in March by the congressional subcommittee have since showed that Collins, Fauci and Farrar of the Wellcome Trust played a key, previously undisclosed role in persuading the scientists to write the paper.
The FOIA requests also revealed that all of the paper’s authors had privately expressed suspicions that the virus was engineered or about the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s store of novel coronaviruses and work on them at low biosafety levels, US Right to Know reported.
‘Proximal origin of a cover-up’ vs. ‘they played no role’
Republicans questioned the scientists on their rapid shift from thinking that the virus was likely lab-made to their certainty, professed in both drafts and final versions of the paper, about its natural origins in a matter of days.
Representative Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) quoted a communication from Garry where he said:
“I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from, from the bat virus or one very similar to it to, uh, COVID-19 where you insert exactly four amino acids, 12 nucleotides and all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function.
“I just can’t figure out how this all gets accomplished in nature.”
She said, “So then within a matter of days, something changed, and that’s what this committee is trying to get to the bottom of, what happened within that three day period between the conference call and the paper that all of a sudden you did a 180.”
In response to repeated questioning on this topic, Andersen and Garry insisted their change in thinking was based on “the scientific process.”
They said new evidence emerged that changed their thinking, that their shift in thinking “evolved over time from early hypotheses to later conclusions published in the paper.” And that their shift had nothing to do with pressure from Fauci, Collins or Farrar.
Rather, Andersen said their paper presented “an agnostic view of what the evidence actually does tell us.”
Garry testified that Collins and Fauci had very little input at the Feb. 1 teleconference and he thought they were just on the call “to gather information” from the experts.
Andersen and Garry along with several of the Democratic committee members repeatedly emphasized that Farrar — not Fauci or Collins — coordinated the call and provided the authors with significant guidance on the paper. Andersen said, “I describe him as a father figure” for the paper, Andersen said, “because I think that captures it.”
Ruiz and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) both suggested Farrar’s role in organizing the call exonerated Fauci and Collins, effectively disproving the idea that there was political interference in the findings.
But, Farrar — former director of the Wellcome Trust and currently chief scientist at the World Health Organization — has been a central figure in dismissing the lab leak theory as a “conspiracy theory,” Sam Husseini reported.
In February 2020, along with Peter Daszak, 25 other scientists signed a letter in The Lancet that dismissed the possibility of a lab origin of COVID-19.
“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” the letter said.
Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) questioned whether this continued certainty about natural origins today made sense given that it contradicted the testimony by former director of the National Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe.
Ratcliffe told the committee that, “If our intelligence and evidence supporting a lab leak theory was placed side by side with our intelligence and evidence pointing to a naturally occurring spillover theory, the lab leak side of the ledger would be long and overwhelming while the spillover side would be nearly empty, nearly empty.”
Ruiz claimed that most government agencies — four of them — deny the lab leak theory with low confidence. But the FBI and the Department of Energy have also determined with moderate confidence that the virus most likely originated in a lab.
Democratic members alleged the Republicans’ effort to investigate the politicization of the investigation of the origins of the pandemic inhibited the work of preparing for “the next pandemic.”
Ruiz said the Republicans’ actions had also led to “threats against scientists and public health officials.” Anderson agreed, saying “the misinformation, dis and conspiracy theories around the paper have resulted in significant harassment and threats” similar to those undergone by Peter Hotez, and alleged that he is on a “kill list.”
Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) said that such investigations “are actually creating a very chilling effect on the scientific process,” which hinders the ability of scientists and public health officials to thoroughly investigate and study future disease outbreaks.
She suggested that in the future the researchers should “double think what they put on their slack messages and channels and their emails and their text threads.”
But just last week the House subcommittee began investigating Dr. David M. Morens, a 25-year veteran of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), after it was revealed he used his personal email address to evade FOIA requests for communications related to the origins of COVID-19, The Defender reported.
Wenstrom broke the news in the meeting that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was also involved in the investigation.
Near the end of the hearing, both Garry and Andersen confirmed that they had been consulted by the CIA and FBI about the origins of COVID-19.
Wenstrup concluded by saying,“We’re exploring a potential coverup. That is what we are doing.”
He added, “You receive federal dollars, we appropriate those. Congress appropriates those federal dollars. We have a responsibility of oversight on behalf of our constituents and the very taxpayers that pay you. Sorry about that. But it’s our job whether you like it or not. And I take it seriously.”
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.
The Lies We Were Told
How long does it take to conclude some authority is lying? We don’t know this answer yet … apparently many years.
BY BILL RICE, JR. | JULY 11, 2023
I recently discovered an excellent Substack Newsletter authored by a registered nurse (Dee Dee) who has treated many (alleged) Covid patients. This nurse finally had enough and decided to share her stories and thoughts via her own Substack, which she started May 25th.
From reading a couple of her pithy posts, my take-away is Nurse Dee must feel like the main character in Joseph Heller’s classic novel Catch 22.
In that novel the experiences and observations of a fictional WW II bombardier tell readers the guidance and logic used by his superiors is complete madness.
Dee’s observations prompted my own question: When do citizens or employees finally realize that every supposedly-true thing they’ve been told is, in fact, a brazen lie?
For most people, at least with Covid proclamations, the answer seems to be “never.”
In other words, for many people, being lied to over and over doesn’t matter.
To put it mildly, such a revelation is a tad disconcerting.
Dee Dee’s observations from a June 2nd dispatch might show readers why I thought of “Catch-22,” where the message to bomber crews was “just do what you are told;” don’t try to figure out the logic.
With Covid, Nurse Dee identifies the goal of all orders. Instead of just “fly the dangerous mission,” the key message is: “Just take the shot.”
“The logic surrounding COVID-19 was circular. Every dictated premise, required blind faith and the goal was always the same; to take the shot.
“… You could not question the narrative and remain a good citizen …The mantra erupted, this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
“No argument could be interjected in the logic. It didn’t matter if you had not seen a new illness with unique symptoms … It didn’t matter if the science didn’t make sense. It didn’t matter if the measures were opposite to all your previous medical training.
… It didn’t matter that the vaccine did not stop transmission, and it didn’t matter if you had natural immunity. Essentially, we were told to accept every claim without evidence or reason. The orders had been given, just take the shot.”
In a recent dispatch, Dee listed about 30 truisms she (and all of us) were told. A few examples:
We were told the vaccine wouldn’t be mandatory.
We were told there would be two shots.
We were (then) told a booster was needed.
We were (then) told another booster was needed.
We were told there had been clinical trails conducted by the pharmaceutical companies that proved safe and effective.
We were told the vaccine would prevent the COVID-19 illness.
We were then told the vaccine would prevent serious illness.
We were told if everyone would just take the shot, it would be over.
We were (then) told there were breakthrough cases, where the vaccinated person became sick with COVID-19.
We were told even if you weren’t sick, you could give the disease to grandma.
We were told the unvaccinated are spreading the virus and creating mutations.
We were told, this is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
We were told vaccine passports were the new normal and would be required.
We were told the vaccine was mandatory for employment.
We were told nurses who refused the shot were stupid …”
Back to me: Forget the pronouncements of the CDC experts, of Dr. Fauci, or of Nurse Dee’s hospital supervisors … just think about people you’ve interacted with in your own life.
At some point, when someone has told you one falsehood after another, do you stop believing them?
For most people, three big lies and you’re out.
“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me …”
At some point, villagers did stop listening to the little boy who kept screaming, “A wolf is coming!”
Even politicians can take lying too far.
Here I recall John Edwards, a former U.S. Senator who was almost elected vice president of the United States.
Edwards lied repeatedly about an affair and then about fathering a baby with his mistress. Even when he “came clean” in a TV interview, his “confession” was replete with more lies.
I don’t know what John Edwards is doing with his life today, but I know he’s not running for political office. If he did, he’d be laughed off the podium. Everyone now gets that they can’t trust John Edwards.
The question I’m grappling with today is how many lies does someone have to tell before people conclude they’re listening to a serial liar? Is there a quota for one-lie-too-many, or a lie cut-off point?
In every-day normal life, it only takes a couple big whoppers before a friend becomes a “former friend,” a person to be avoided at all costs.
But not with our Covid liars. Apparently, there’s no limit to how many lies “trusted authorities” can tell … and still be considered “trusted” authorities.
In her very fist post, Nurse Dee wrote:
“Thrust upon our population was a labyrinth of lies. There were new daily mandates offering no explanation, making little if any, medical sense.
“… The medical interventions … coupled with preposterous statements from our leading experts, led me to personally, question everything. One question led to many questions until one day, I came to the realization, there were no answers.
“My questions met a variety of responses that included silence, laughter, and hostility. This was my first experience of being discouraged from asking questions.”
How does a person continue to function – as a sane human being – in a world that’s apparently insane?
Somehow, Nurse Dee (and me and you) … are still here, but we’ve had to adopt a new survival mechanism and are now functioning in a surreal new matrix where we know we have to live with insane notions; where we realize a never-ending cascade of “accepted” lies is our New Normal.
After reading Dee’s “Catch-22” anecdotes, I also had this question: How do serial liars keep telling all these lies? How do they get away with it?
This answer seems clear. Except for people like Dee, very few people call them out on their lies. (Thank you, mainstream media “watchdog” journalists).
Also, as I learned from a big story making the rounds today, the lying officials just keep doubling down on their lies.
An organization called the International Coalition of Medicine Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA) just issued a big press release telling everyone that the vaccines are still safe and effective and, just like we’ve all been told a million times … everyone should keep getting their next rounds of shots.
It’s clear to me that the purpose of this document is to counter the growing “spread” of world citizens who might, finally, be starting to question the pronouncements of trusted health authorities.
A few of the “Key messages from this group, which “brings together 38 medicines regulatory authorities from every region in the world, with the WHO as an observer” (In other words, a centralized, clearinghouse of expert liars):
* “False and misleading information about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines on social media often exaggerates the frequency and severity of side effects. Misinformation also wrongly attributes unrelated medical events to the vaccines.”
* “There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines have contributed to excess mortality during the pandemic …”
* Under the header, “Benefits of COVID-19 Vaccination,” the public is told that
“Millions of lives are estimated to have been saved by COVID-19 vaccination …”
I learned of this document from colleagues at the Brownstone Institute’s writer group.
A fellow Substacker added the link with this note: “A meticulous and immaculately supported take-down of this statement is needed. It’s been all over MSM today.”
I read the propaganda and immediately posted this reply:
“You could debunk/challenge every sentence …”
Two seconds before I made my post, another colleague posted this:
“Wow. Every single bullet point is a lie.”
Key take-away: The lies Nurse Dee was told every day – or almost immediately figured out on her own – are still being told today.
The damn liars have simply worn us down. I could debunk every one of those bullet points, but I’m growing tired of writing the same rebuttals over and over.
And as Dee observes, what’s the point? Even if someone does debunk all of these whoppers, these people are just going to keep lying … and keep telling us what to do.
The only conclusion I can make is that – especially regarding topics that might involve “life and death” – people, for some surreal reason, simply want to keep believing the liars.
Most people in the world must feel “safer” believing lies, lies that have killed and injured millions of their fellow citizens, including family members, friends and neighbors.
In our “Catch-22” world, the bigger the lies – and the more often serial lies prevaricate, the better.
For the liars, the benefits of lying are impressive. For the world’s skeptics, the costs of calling out liars are quite unpleasant.
Anyway, the lies aren’t going to stop.
‘Covid Censorship Proved to be Deadly’
BY BILL RICE, JR. | JULY 8, 2023
I wanted to make a quick post to recommend an exceptional and important essay published by The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion section.
In a brief essay (“Covid Censorship Proved to be Deadly”) author Brett Swanson shows how the Censorship Industrial Complex – or what he perfectly describes as “full spectrum censorship” – has effectively caused the unnecessary deaths (and misery) of huge numbers of world citizens.
As the essay makes clear, “truth” and “facts” have become “false narratives” or “dangerous misinformation” …. while false beliefs have become accepted as gospel/infallible truths.
Claims that are wrong, dangerous or dubious cannot be challenged.
As Swanson points out, the masses on social media quickly gleaned the speech they could not make (this shows the toxic effects of “self censorship.”)
The opinions of those who believe the “experts” might be “ignorant” were censored or not allowed to reach large numbers of people. Because of this, “falsehoods” could NOT be “dispelled.”
Swanson points out such a surreal template is the exact opposite of real science, which exists to challenge dubious claims.
A technology (the Internet) that could and should have been used to save many lives – and rebut many falsehoods – was instead used to bully and silence skeptics, who were really just trying to save lives and prevent outcomes that ultimately produced mass misery and devastating consequences for billions of world inhabitants.
The censored, bullied and demonetized skeptics are the real altruistic heroes, not the villains.
Theme fits perfectly with my next big story ….
I’m currently working on a story regarding the Covid outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier.
The true/vital lesson from this case study should have been that Covid does NOT threaten “everyone.” Per the lessons of the Roosevelt outbreak, this virus certainly doesn’t pose any real mortality risk to the young and middle aged.
But the “false narrative” quickly became that Covid threatens “everyone” … that younger adults and children were also “vulnerable.”
The truth – which would have eliminated irrational fear in most people – could NOT be disseminated as it would threaten the most important (false) narratives/initiatives.
As Swanson points out, the real goal in all of this “full spectrum censorship” is to PROTECT “authority.”
It would have constituted a “crisis” for those in authority if their pronouncements were exposed as “ignorance.”
The bottom line is that the massive and coordinated Censorship Industrial Complex was created to protect the power, wealth and continued control of those in authority.
At least The Wall Street Journal published this essay ….
… Also, The WSJ op-ed section deserves kudos for publishing this piece.
The author didn’t have the space to document the evidence of the huge spike in all-cause (non-Covid) excess deaths, but he still worked those points into his essay.
This by itself is a “win” for our side.
Shocking numbers of “vaccine” deaths/injuries and iatrogenic deaths/injuries are the giant elephants in the room in the mainstream media.
The reason most every-day citizens aren’t shocked by these scandals/truths … is that this story has been … censored. That is, this is NOT a “story.”
But at least The WSJ acknowledged this by publishing Swanson’s superlative essay.
Maybe the “news” division of the WSJ will follow-up on the author’s points and do some real journalism on these taboo topics?
Somehow I doubt this … but, still, the needle exposing the false narratives is moving in the right direction.
Judge Denies Biden Administration’s Attempt To Halt Injunction Against Censorship
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | July 11, 2023
On Monday, a federal judge from the Western District of Louisiana, Terry Doughty, upheld his ruling, preventing the Biden administration from engaging in specific types of communication with key social media entities.
The initial request to lift the ban on these interactions came from the administration on July 6th, but has now been met with refusal by Doughty. The judge had previously instituted this ban in response to a lawsuit by the Republican state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, who are challenging the manner in which government agencies cooperate with social media behemoths to curb the propagation of inaccurate or misleading information regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and election security.
Judge Doughty reasoned that the chances of success for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were high, and therefore upheld his order. The judge also rejected the notion that the administration would suffer any “irreparable injury” due to the communication restrictions between government agencies and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
“The First Amendment free speech rights of Plaintiffs by far outweighs the Defendants’ interests,” Doughty said in his judgment.
Doughty also dismissed the administration’s assertion that his preliminary injunction issued on July 4 was too extensive. He held that the injunction was specifically designed to block only those types of collaboration with social media companies that could infringe upon users’ “protected free speech.” He further opined, “Defendant officials can be and should be trained to recognize what speech is protected and what speech is not prior to working with social-media companies to suppress or delete postings.”
While the ruling restricts certain types of interaction, it does not ban all communication between the government and social media corporations. Doughty’s injunction allows for the continuation of meetings between the government and social media companies, specifically on subjects like cyberattacks.
Vaccines galore
But is more better?
By Dr Ros Jones | Health Advisory & Recovery Team | July 9, 2023
The picture above may shortly be out of date when the latest monoclonal antibody against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is added to the CDC list. The US approach stands in stark contrast to Europe’s.
So another dilemma for parents of young children who have already laboured long and hard over whether to give their children a covid-19 vaccine – will their children need this latest new immunisation?
An RSV vaccine developed in the 1960s got as far as human trials, but had to be hastily withdrawn when it became apparent that subsequent disease was far worse in the vaccinated than the controls. As expected, the babies made a good antibody response and there were no obvious serious side effects. Fast forward a few months to the next autumn’s RSV season and sadly for the drug company and even more sadly for the babies and their families, the vaccinated group developed much more severe disease than the controls (18/20 vaccinated infants hospitalised with 2 deaths versus 0 deaths and 1 hospitalisation in the 21 controls gives placebo efficacy of 100% against death and 95% against hospitalisation – wonderful stuff that normal saline!) Animal studies with the RSV vaccine had already highlighted such problems.
Similar difficulties were seen in candidate vaccines for SARS (SARS-CoV-1). No less than four new coronarvirus vaccines produced after the SARS outbreak in 2003 looked hopeful initially, until the animals were exposed to the SARS virus. Although the vaccinated animals cleared the virus more rapidly, they developed severe eosinophil infiltrates in their lungs, in contrast to the control animals, highly suggestive of an immune overreaction in the presence of the virus (a Th2 helper cell hypersensitisation).
Dengue vaccines have had similar problems, with Dengvaxia withdrawn after the vaccinated group experienced much more severe disease the following season. In that case, the vaccine had been rolled out widely in the Philippines without awaiting the one-year trial follow-up, in a moment of political hubris which resulted in their Minister of Health facing criminal charges, but far more seriously it also resulted in the deaths of at least 10 healthy children.
What all these disasters had in common was a condition called ADE (Antibody Dependent Enhancement). In the presence of a large immune response, inflammatory markers are activated; this led to acquired respiratory distress in the case of the SARS vaccine, severe wheezing and airway inflammation in the case of the RSV vaccine, and a severe systemic reaction with the Dengue vaccine.
So what of this latest RSV prophylactic? There are two types, firstly monoclonal antibodies which give so-called passive immunisation i.e. the infant is given injections of antibodies to protect them against RSV in the early months of life but these just disappear naturally. There is an existing drug called palivizumab which has been around since 1998, so it is not clear why they need the new one, nirsevimab. The main advantage of the new product is that it is given as a single dose, rather than the monthly injections recommended for palivizumab, which makes it more practical, hence the new version has been authorised for all infants, rather than the high risk groups only for whom the monthly palivizumab injections were recommended. Nirsevimab was approved for use in the EU and the UK last November, following trials involving 3580 treated infants. The report combines various studies – one involving only infants at high risk from RSV such as preterm babies or those with heart or lung disease, for whom there was a reduction in hospitalisation from 4.1% in the placebo group to 0.8% in the nirsevimab group. A second study then recruited healthy low risk babies and for them the reduction in hospitalisations was only from 1.6% to 0.6%. There was a reduction in overall infections, but it is not clear whether that means these infants will simply get RSV infection the following winter. Having said that, most hospitalisations for this condition are in infancy. But as so often, it seems that no longer-term outcomes are required for approval to be given.
Interestingly, the FDA have yet to approve it, although their advisory committee last month voted 21:0 to recommend it for all infants. A worrying observation in the FDA approval paperwork was an increase in all cause deaths in the nirsevimab arm of the various trials (12/3710 (0.32%) nirsevimab versus 4/1797 (0.22%) controls). I could find no mention of this on the European Medicines Agency or MHRA websites, although the same drug company results were submitted.
Meanwhile in April, the FDA approved a new RSV vaccine from GlaxoSmith Klein(GSK), Arexvy for use in over 60s, followed in May by approval of a similar Pfizer vaccine, Abrysvo. As with Covid-19 vaccines, Pfizer gave results as relative risk reductions, so an encouraging 66.7% efficacy, but much less impressive when looking at the absolute risk reduction of 0.24% (from 0.36% to 0.12%) for symptomatic lower respiratory tract infections. The number of hospitalisations was too small to look at efficacy. More worrying is that looking at the supporting information on the FDA website reveals both vaccines showing an increase in atrial fibrillation compared to the placebo and also neurological adverse events, namely Guillain-Barré syndrome and Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM) in the vaccinated group, with one fatality and one woman requiring 6-months hospitalisation. In two of the studies, flu vaccine and the new RSV vaccine were given simultaneously making it impossible to know which of the vaccines to blame.
The Pfizer Abrysvo RSV vaccine is expected to be approved by the FDA in August for pregnant women, for whose infants there was a 0.8% reduction in hospital admissions for RSV infection over the following 6 months (from 1.3% to 0.5%). But the independent panel vote was not unanimous, and concerns were raised about an increase in preterm births. Indeed, the GSK RSV vaccine trial for use in pregnancy was already stopped for this reason. Because this is proposed for use in the mothers, it will need a large number to vaccinate to prevent one infant hospitalisation, given most babies don’t go anywhere near hospital for this condition. It is not at all clear whether those infants whose mothers have already been vaccinated, will also be offered the monoclonal antibody in a ‘belt-and-brace’ approach or whether the two different types of preventative are simply to provide a choice. GSK have specifically said that they do not anticipate their vaccine being used in infants: ‘evidence from an animal model strongly suggests that AREXVY would be unsafe in individuals younger than 2 years of age because of an increased risk of enhanced respiratory disease’ (remember the 1967 vaccine, whereas the Pfizer document only says of Abrysvo, ‘Pediatric studies should be delayed until additional safety or effectiveness data have been collected’.
It is noteworthy that approval for the vaccines has progressed via the FDA’s Priority Review mechanism – the excuse for Covid-19 vaccines was of course that there was an emergency due to a novel and deadly virus sweeping across the world, with a saviour vaccine the only way out of endless lockdowns. But what is the possible excuse for a priority vaccine for RSV? This virus was first isolated in 1956 and was presumably around long before that. But of course, if we’d been listening, we would have heard Sir Patrick Vallance in 2014 saying “In the future, medicines will come to market quicker with less data, with more research being conducted in the post-license phase”. It seems that the future has arrived.
The plethora of new vaccines in the pipeline, in particular mRNA vaccines which will be developed at the new UK government-funded Moderna facility in Oxford, must be subject to the proper scrutiny which has sadly been totally lacking in recent years.
This begs the question: what of the multitude of existing vaccines shown so graphically in the picture at the top of this article? It struck me that as a retired paediatrician in my seventies, now being labelled by the government as a conspiratorial ‘antivaxxer’, I had of course only had 2 vaccines in my infancy, smallpox and diphtheria. At age 7, I received the new polio vaccine and as a 13-year-old BCG against tuberculosis (and that only after a negative skin test showed I wasn’t already naturally immune). And that was it, until I reached medical school where I got the new tetanus vaccine. Yellow fever and Typhoid vaccines followed for a student elective in South Africa and then nothing until Hepatitis B vaccine 20 years later.
The generation below mine had only diphtheria, tetanus and polio in infancy with measles at 13 months. This UK timeline makes interesting reading. But my grandchildren’s generation are apparently offered 15 in their preschool years (many of course are combinations so an 8-week infant is now vaccinated against 8 different diseases simultaneously). But this is still well below the number offered (and indeed mandated for many schools) to American children. Perhaps the JCVI are full of ‘anti vaxxers’, let alone the Danish authorities where infants are only vaccinated against 6 diseases and with a much more spaced out programme at 3, 5 and 12 months.
Can anyone point me to the randomised trials showing that this huge sum total of vaccines is beneficial in terms of overall outcomes? Because I have failed to find it. Instead I have found interesting articles such as that from the Bandim project in Guinea Bissau, where the delayed introduction of childhood vaccinations in the 1970s gave a natural control group. In collaboration with the Statens Institute in Denmark, they found that killed vaccines were associated with an increase in childhood mortality. Or this one comparing the infant mortality of the healthiest 30 countries by number of vaccines given, which certainly showed no support for the idea that more is better.
Figure 1: Mean infant mortality rates and mean number of vaccine doses 2009
Statements from WHO, Gates Foundation etc that vaccination has been the biggest life-saving breakthrough does beg the question: if the same amount of money and effort had been put into ensuring every child had access to clean drinking water and adequate food (the most basic physiological need in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), then how many more lives would have been saved?
Would ‘Big Plumbers’ now be dominating public health policy?
Dr Ros Jones is a HART member and retired Consultant Paediatrician.
Blueprint for the New World Order
MERYL NASS | JULY 10, 2023
The UN has put out a number of concerning policy briefs and documents in the past 2 years and I will share them with you. This is the first :
First, now is the time to re-embrace global solidarity and find new ways to work together for the common good. This must include a global vaccination plan to deliver vaccines against COVID-19 into the arms ofthe millions of people who are still denied this basic lifesaving measure. Moreover, it must include urgentand bold steps to address the triple crisis of climate disruption, biodiversity loss and pollution destroying our planet.
Second, now is the time to renew the social contract between Governments and their people and within societies, so as to rebuild trust and embrace a comprehensive vision of human rights. People need to see results reflected in their daily lives. This must include the active and equal participation of women and girls, without whom no meaningful social contract is possible. It should also include updated governance arrangements to deliver better public goods and usher in a new era of universal social protection, health coverage, education, skills, decent work and housing, as well as universal access to the Internet by 2030 as a basic human right. I invite all countries to conduct inclusive and meaningful national listening consultations so all citizens have a say in envisioning their countries’ futures.
Third, now is the time to end the “infodemic” plaguing our world by defending a common, empirically backed consensus around facts, science and knowledge. The “war on science” must end. All policy and budget decisions should be backed by science and expertise, and I am calling for a global code of conduct that promotes integrity in public information.
Fourth, now is the time to correct a glaring blind spot in how we measure economic prosperity and progress. When profits come at the expense of people and our planet, we are left with an incomplete picture of the true cost of economic growth. As currently measured, gross domestic product (GDP) fails to capture the human and environmental destruction of some business activities. I call for new measures to complement GDP, so that people can gain a full understanding of the impacts of business activities and how we can and must do better to support people and our planet. [So clever how the wordsmiths portray the globalists’ desire to get rid of measures of economic activity as if this is linked to preventing environmental destruction!—Nass ]
Fifth, now is the time to think for the long term, to deliver more for young people and succeeding generations and to be better prepared for the challenges ahead. Our Common Agenda includes recommendations for meaningful, diverse and effective youth engagement both within and outside the United Nations, including through better political representation and by transforming education, skills training and lifelong learning. I am also making proposals, such as a repurposed Trusteeship Council, a Futures Lab, a Declaration on Future Generations and a United Nations Special Envoy to ensure that policy and budget decisions take into account their impact on future generations. We also need to be better prepared to prevent and respond to major global risks. It will be important for the United Nations to issue a Strategic Foresight and Global Risk Report on a regular basis, and I also propose an Emergency Platform, to be convened in response to complex global crises.
Sixth, now is the time for a stronger, more networked and inclusive multilateral system, anchored within the United Nations. Effective multilateralism depends on an effective United Nations, one able to adapt to global challenges while living up to the purposes and principles of its Charter. For example, I am proposing a new agenda for peace, multi-stakeholder dialogues on outer space and a Global Digital Compact, as well as a Biennial Summit between the members of the Group of 20 and of the Economic and Social Council, the Secretary-General and the heads of the international financial institutions. Throughout, we need stronger involvement of all relevant stakeholders, and we will seek to have an Advisory Group on Local and Regional Governments.
For 75 years, the United Nations has gathered the world around addressing global challenges: from conflicts and hunger, to ending disease, to outer space and the digital world, to human rights and disarmament. In this time of division, fracture and mistrust, this space is needed more than ever if we are to secure a better, greener, more peaceful future for all people. Based on this report, I will ask a High-level Advisory Board, led by former Heads of State and Government, to identify global public goods and other areas of common interest where governance improvements are most needed, and to propose options for how this could be achieved…
How HART was discredited on no basis
Government funded take-down looks increasingly ridiculous
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | July 9, 2023
In summer 2021, the private messaging forum that HART used was illegally hacked and our private conversations downloaded. Within 24 hours we were contacted by a small company called Logically AI who told us they were going to publish the conversations. This small company had a contract with the government worth over a million pounds of taxpayer’s money. The government may have thought it got its money’s worth when MPs who had been talking to members of HART decided they needed to keep a wide berth. However, the basis of the ‘discrediting’ was laughable.
On 27th July 2021, this article was published concluding with the following “factcheck”:
Figure 1: Concluding figure from Logically AI’s attempt to discredit HART
Let’s see how each of those “facts” have held up over time.
1. mRNA vaccines cannot be considered vaccines
A vaccine has a particular meaning in the minds of the public as an injection that teaches the immune system in order to prevent an infection. Official definitions have changed the meaning so that it could include these novel products. The CDC changed the definition twice since 2015.
In early 2015 a vaccine was an “Injection of a killed or weakened infectious organism in order to prevent the disease.” That year it changed to,“The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.”
Overnight the requirements that the intervention be inert and prevent disease were removed. By September 2021 the definition was changed again to: “The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.” Any internal treatment for any disease now fits the CDC definition of vaccine. However, whatever official definitions say does not change public understanding of a word.
While it was claimed that the covid vaccines could prevent infection which led to their regulatory approvals, these claims have all been abandoned in light of the real world evidence.
What the manufacturers say about their products in documents filed in accordance with financial regulatory requirements is instructive.
Moderna said, ““mRNA has been characterised as a Gene Therapy Medicinal Product… the association of our investigational medicines with gene therapies could result in increased regulatory burdens, impair the reputation of our investigational medicines, or negatively impact our platform or our business.” BioNTech also described their products as gene therapies.
Being a gene therapy does not mean that it will interfere with cellular DNA but it does mean that certain specific and more stringent testing is required. Instead, the shortened regulatory pathway designed for influenza vaccines (developed via a well-established egg based platform) was used. This pathway should never have been used for a novel platform like the covid vaccines.
2. Vaccine trials on children and young people were ‘rushed’
This point can be extended to all vaccine trials. The programme was, if you remember, referred to as “operation warp speed”. How can you have “warp speed” without rushing?
Basic medical ethics includes the principle that children are never given new drugs until there is a well established safety record in adults. For the covid vaccines the number needed to vaccinate in order to prevent a single death was a hundred thousand or more for young people, however the rate of serious adverse events, even in the trials, was 1 in 800.
The trials that were done on children were extremely small, with only 1131 adolescents vaccinated and followed for a minimum of 1 month from their second dose before approving for this age group. Efficacy calculations excluded all covid infections occurring prior to 7 days after the second dose. Antibody levels were also assumed to be a marker for likely efficacy, despite there being no antibody level which ensures protection against covid infection. The government wording says, the product aims “to generate neutralising antibodies, which may contribute to protection against COVID-19.” This is not based on any scientific evidence, merely hope.
The worst children’s trial was the one for under 5 year olds where approvals were pushed through using antibody levels only, as a marker of success rather than expending more time to measure an impact on actual levels of covid. They also changed the efficacy requirement for approval from 50% to 30%. When the two planned doses failed to induce antibodies, they simply added a third dose in just a fraction of the children. This elicited an antibody rise, but also apparently resulted in more significant covid infections in those vaccinated. 97% of the covid cases in the study were ignored in the FDA presentation from Pfizer.
3. Lockdown policies are ineffective against covid
With the passage of time it is now clear that every covid wave rises and peaks naturally. The peaks fall at predictable times of year. The claims that all spread was through close contact, everyone was susceptible and asymptomatic spread was a key driver were all false assumptions.
Having considered the reality about these three claims it is clear that long distance aerosol transmission was a key driver of spread. Lockdowns can do nothing to prevent that. Since Logically AI wrote this article, it has become obvious that even the most brutal lockdowns, leaving people starving at home and killing their pets, did not stop the spread of covid in China. In fact every attempt at lockdown suppression in South East Asia and Australasia failed in January 2022.
A meta-analysis of 32 papers by a group at John Hopkins University analysed the effect of lockdown, concluding that “lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, loss of life quality, and the undermining of liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are little to none.”
4. Vaccine can make the recipient magnetic
Don’t rush to think this must be imaginary. Here is a video where unsuspecting recently vaccinated people were tested to see if their arms were magnetic. Most were not, but a surprising number were – 6 out of 15 tested. You can watch full video here.
Some HART members experienced this themselves and there was no question that this was magnetism – with a genuine pulling force.
So what was the cause of this? There are various steps to the manufacturing process including one in which separation of the mRNA is necessary. Some manufacturers used tiny magnetic beads to carry out this step, although which manufacturers used which techniques and to what extent is hard to know.
All that it would take to make someone’s arm magnetic would be for contamination of the vaccine vial with some of these beads. It is now well established that there was significant contamination with bacterial DNA and likely endotoxins. Is it possible that magnetic beads were also contaminants in some vials?
No-one in HART claims to be omniscient and we are constantly challenging and testing each other’s viewpoints. We believe in open scientific debate and that can only happen if people are allowed to occasionally be wrong. However, looking back at the reviews that we wrote in March 2021, they have all stood the test of time (see our 2022 revisits for what changed).
Even the private, more speculative conversations that were had in private have also stood the test of time. The reason this is the case is that all were based on well-established basic science and on real-world evidence. It is a travesty that the same cannot be said for the official narrative. Powerful people claimed that fantasy modelling and beliefs based only on assumptions were “The Science” and when those proved to be baseless, they resorted to complaining that people had lost their trust in science. They have no-one to blame but themselves.
Featured Video
Weaponized Journalism: 2021 Sayer Ji Interview with NPR
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
How Rothschild Banking Clan Uses Its Vast Wealth to Influence World Events and Control Governments
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 15.09.2024
How powerful is the Rothschild banking family? How did they amass their fortune? Just how rich are they? Do they secretly control the world? Sputnik explores. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Europe facing gas price shock – Gazprom chief
- Ukraine continues recruiting people with disabilities
- Weaponized Journalism: 2021 Sayer Ji Interview with NPR
- Beyond Netanyahu: what Israel’s election means for Palestinians
- Lithuania plans universal conscription
- Lies, Damn Lies, and Ukraine News
- Financial Times rejects Nordic demands to correct Putin call story – media
- The Case for Less Unity in Europe
- Ukraine expands minority rights under EU pressure – but Russians remain excluded
- Albania takes anti-riot crackdown cue from France
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
